She is risen! CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND's third season brings Rachel Bloom/Aline Brosh McKenna's brilliant show back to former glory

After the usual sophomore slump of a second season (not bad, mind you, but just a little "less"), CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND has bounced back to all of its buoyant glory, creativity and entertainment that knocked our socks off during season one. TrustMovies' spouse declares it his favorite television series of all time, and if I can't quite go that far, I must admit that it is up there with the very best.

The brainchild of its star Rachel Bloom (above) and writer Aline Brosh McKenna (shown at right), the series is comparable to The Mary Tyler Moore Show -- with which it has a surprising amount in common: the workplace and a bunch of wonderfully goofy and memorable characters, and a young woman heroine negotiating career and love. The differences are (1) a much more modern, internet-age time frame and all that entails and (2) a heroine who, rather than being re-active to all the people around her, is absolutely pro-active (or pro-negative) so that all those around her become satellites.

Plus -- and this of course is the clincher -- the show is dotted, episode after episode, with its own fabulously funny and entertaining musical numbers that comment trenchantly on all the characters, while giving each one the chance to perform and shine.

From their handling of one musical number after another, it seems clear that Bloom and McKenna must have an encyclopedic knowledge of musical theater (and a bunch of other musical genres, too), for their riffs and take-offs are simply and delightfully on-target.

Has there ever been a heroine quite as simultaneously enchanting and appalling as Rebecca Bunch? I doubt it. The word crazy in the title proves absolutely on the mark. Toward the end of season two, it sometimes seemed that our girl was going too far over the top. The particular beauty of season three is that it finally addresses Rebecca's craziness and even allows her to -- at least try -- to address it, too.

As with all the best series, the supporting characters grow and change in ways that make them ever more precious to us. And this show treats almost all its characters as something special -- whether they're friends, work-mates, love objects or blackmailing stalkers.

How Crazy Ex-Girlfriend movies its plot along so handily is another of its miracles. Eventually, you quit wondering and/or worrying about who is going to end up with whom and simply lean back and enjoy these wonderfully crazy (and just real enough to make you identify and quiver a bit) folk for who they are and what they might become.

I had thought perhaps season three would be the capper and finale. But no, there will be more. If the creators can keep their next season up to this level, we're in for a continuing and rare treat.

Originally shown on The CW (the cable channel owned jointly by CBS and Warner Brothers) and now streaming now on Netflix, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend can be seen -- binged or doled out in pleasurable mini-doses -- in all its three-season glory. 

Armando Iannucci's THE DEATH OF STALIN: Russian history as both tragedy AND farce

They say that history plays out the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. British filmmaker Armando Ianucci has come up with the brilliant idea of playing both simultaneously and then executed that idea in exactly the manner it needs to work best. THE DEATH OF STALIN is at once horrifying and hilarious, ridiculous and rueful and best of all somehow true to the history that we (we older folk, at least) remember hearing -- if not, thankfully, experiencing.

Americans may have to wait for the full-out Donald Trump dictatorship to get a taste of that -- the difference being that Trump and his flunkies don't possess one whit of the intelligence of those Russians, back then or, for that matter, now, particularly that of the putrid Putin. Trump and crew have got the entitlement, vanity and avarice down pat, but more will be needed.

Mr. Iannucci, pictured at right, has shown us what he's capable of many times before -- from Alan Partridge to In the Loop to Veep (the last of which I still have not seen). The Death of Stalin may be his masterwork, something unlike anything I've previously witnessed at the movies.

After giving us just a smidgen of historical facts about the time and place we're about to enter, he tosses us into it -- at a radio concert overseen by Paddy Considine (below) to which Comrade Stalin now wants the recording. Problem is, there has been no recording made.

The uproar, the all-out fear this causes, together with how the situation is handled, proves a master-stroke in bringing out the humor and horror, and the movie simply continue in this vein -- growing more so as events pile up.

One of the more unusual choices Iannucci has made is to have each of his actors use his or her own accent through the film. Consequently, rather than having all the actors ape faux Russian accents (as in the recent Red Sparrow), each simply uses his native one. Since most of the cast is British, most of the accents are, too -- from Stalin's (mouthed by Adrian McLoughlin) to his sexy son's (Rupert Friend) to Lavrentiy Beria, the miscreant who hopes to assume power once Stalin is gone (played by the great Simon Russell Beale, below, left).

But wait, Olga Kurylenko, who plays the concert pianist who helps sets this all in motion, is Ukranian by birth and so uses her own very eastern European accent. And then we have the likes of Steve Buscemi who plays Khrushchev (shown at far right, below)...

...and Jeffrey Tambor (below, as Malenkov), both of whom speak with their own very American accents. While this is initially shocking, given how movies so often handle "foreign-sounding speech," even more shocking is how damned well this works. Our ear gets used to it all in a flash, and the actors can then simply continue with their spot-on performances, which mix smiles and shocks that blend beautifully with the humor and horror on hand. In its entirety, the movie works its magic like little else you will have seen.

The Death of Stalin also brings us a look at the lives of those Russian apparatchiks in ways that other films have not. How they can spin on a dime from yes to no, right to wrong, good to bad -- all the while exhibiting the kind of craven fear, occasionally bolstered by cold fury, that working under the thumb of insane dictator like Stalin could produce. The result looks something like what Mel Brooks might have come up with, had he lived his entire life in abject terror.

While most of the cast is male, and first-rate, we also get a couple of nice turns from the distaff side: Ms Kurylenko and the so-versatile-that-she-is-often-unrecognizable Andrea Riseborough (below) as Stalin's daughter Svetlana. Still, as in Stalin's time, this was a man's game and the various ways he could play it seem as numerous as the characters on view. And while one might win for a time, there was always another schemer waiting in the wings with claws held back but at the ready -- as Iannucci's final pre-end-credits note/visual makes cleverly clear.

In the crack cast, literally everyone manages to stand out at one time or another -- Michael Palin giving the subtlest performance and Jason Isaacs (below), along with Rupert Friend, offering the most over-the-top (all three work perfectly, by the way). I have to acknowledge Misters Buscemi, Tambor and Beale as the standouts here. For sheer versatility and delight, consider Beale's performances in this film, together with those in The Deep Blue Sea and the cable television' series Penny Dreadful to recall how no-limits incredible this actor can be.

Final credit, however, must go to Iannucci and his co-writers. What a brilliant job this humorist/filmmaker and crew have done in not simply combining but also perfectly balancing history, humor, horror and character into something vastly entertaining, thought-provoking and just a little fear-inducing, too. It's happening in today's Russia all over again. Could that kind of terror happen here? If our country grows any dumber and less alert, yes, absolutely.

From IFC Films and running 107 minutes, The Death of Stalin, after opening in some major cities a week or so back, hits South Florida (and elsewhere) tomorrow, Friday. March 23 in Miami at the Landmark at Merrick Park, Regal South Beach 18 and AMC Sunset Place. Beginning the following Friday, March 30, the film will open in Miami at the O Cinema Miami Beach and the AMC Aventura; in Fort Lauderdale at The Classic Gateway Theatre, in Coral Springs at the Regal Magnolia Place 16, in Hollywood at the Regal Oakwood 18, in Pembroke Pines at the Regal Westfork 13, in Boca Raton at the Regal Shadowood, and in Palm Beach Gardens at Cobb's Downtown at the Mall Gardens Palm 16.

With A QUIET PASSION, Terence Davies has given us his masterpiece (so far, at least)...

... as well as gifting that fine actress Cynthia Nixon with the opportunity to shine brightly in the best role she's had thus far. So very good is Ms Nixon that her work bears comparison with that of last year's best actress, Rebecca Hall. In A QUIET PASSION -- which tells the story of one of America's greatest poets, Emily Dickinson -- writer/director Terence Davies has found the subject and the means to express it that puts into play all of what is best about his work (his great feeling for period style, speech and behavior) and none of what sometimes mars his efforts (extremely slow pacing in which meaning can disappear into the too lengthy moment). Here, everything works together to form what seems to me very close to film perfection. 

Most surprising of all is how wonderfully funny, genuinely witty and humorous so much of his movie turns out to be. (The filmmaker is shown at right.) Could Emily Dickinson have been this charming and delightful? I hope so, for together Ms Nixon and her director certainly make the poet seem so. And very believably, too. Granted, hers is very dry wit, but that would seem to befit the time and place --Massachusetts in the mid 1800s -- and Davies' dialog is endlessly enriching. Really, we hang on every word as we savor the humor, anger and, just as often, the surprise.

Dickinson was an original, a quiet rebel who simply stood her ground, as we note from the film's first scene, in which the head mistress of a girls' school gives the younger version of Emily (played by Emma Bell, above) a good dressing down -- at which our young poet stands her ground and gives us an appropriate taste of what is to come.  Mr. Davies has always preferred quiet, smooth elisions to any flashy effects in his films. Here his flashiest and most remarkably effective is a family photo session in which the younger Emily morphs subtly into the older Ms Nixon, below. This is brilliantly, beautifully handled, and I'd watch the entire film again just to see it once more.

The entire Dickinson family, in-laws included, is brought to wonderful life by the ace cast Mr. Davies has assembled. Keith Carradine (below) seems to grow into a better and stronger actor as he ages. This may be his finest hour playing Emily's stern but loving father who, as much as he is troubled by her behavior appears to somehow secretly treasure it. How Carradine exhibits this is one of the film's wonderful and most subtle accomplishments and also provides the chance for the actor to show a delightfully stern comedic sense. (His "I am smiling" is perhaps the movie's most hilarious line.)

The lovely Jennifer Ehle (below, right) plays Emily sister, Vinnie, with such graciousness and joy that you'll want a sister so tender but honest, while Duncan Duff handles the brotherly duties with typically patriarchal entitlement -- a state against which Emily smartly and rightly railed for most of her life.

Even the sad sister-in-law Susan (a fine turn by the splendid Jodhi May, shown below right) is given her due, in one scene in particular, in which sapphic love is alluded to but not directly addressed.

This seems wise, as -- from what we can tell by Davies' interpretation of Dickinson's life -- the poet would have wanted a heterosexual love but due to a combination of her moral stringency, fear of intimacy and health problems both physical and mental (very possibly a kind of agoraphobia or even something a bit bi-polar), any love relationship beyond that of her immediate family was not to be.

Throughout his movie, Davies intersperses Dickinson's poetry, as appropriate to the theme of the moment. This should send both newcomers and lovers of her work back to the source. The cinematography, too (by Florian Hoffmeister), as per usual for a Davies film, is first-rate.

But family -- ah, what that appears to have meant to Emily! The movie captures this as well as any film I've seen, yet without the usual attached sentimentality (think Little Women in any of its incarnations). There is a stringency here that befits Dickinson so very well, and there is marvelous good humor, too. There is also a coming-to-terms with sickness and death that's appropriate to a tale like this and characters such as these.

I would say that A Quiet Passion is a masterpiece of biographical film-making. But that is too puny. Let's just call it a masterpiece, period. From Music Box Films and running two hours and five minutes, the movie opens this Friday, April 14, in New York City (at the newly re-opened Quad Cinema and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema) and at three venues in Emily's home state of Massachusetts. On April 21 the film hits Ann Arbor and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal), and from there it will soon open across the entire country. Here in South Florida, it opens on May 12 at the AMC Sunset Place, South Miami; the Living Room Theaters, Boca Raton; and the Bill Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables. To view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and venues.click here, then scroll down and click on THEATERS. 

TrustMovies bonus: Watch HOTEL NOIR -- Sebastian Gutierrez's latest (and still in limbo) charmer -- for free!

Made in 2012 but, after a brief pay-per-view window, still stuck in distribution limbo, HOTEL NOIR is the latest film to have been written and directed by one of TrustMovies' favorite filmmakers: Sebastian Gutierrez. No other movie-maker that I can think of has this guy's oddball sense of humor coupled to an enormous love of women (in so many ways). His product is as charming, enjoyable and off-the-wall as it gets, as demonstrated by his trio of "lovely lady" movies -- Women in Trouble, Elektra Luxx and Girl Walks Into a Bar.  This trilogy (I'd call it that, anyway) offers non-stop delight, with the additional "plus" of an anything-goes attitude that views sexuality as something that ought above all to be enjoyed as pleasurable and joyous -- hell, even humorous, too.

Gutierrez, pictured at right, may not be the first to make a movie that harks back to 1950s noir, but it is certainly one of the more lovingly recreated. It doesn't so much make fun of noir as it does pay it a grand homage -- while at the same time taking the kind of multiple stories and plot strands that this filmmaker so dearly loves and bouncing them into each other with pizzazz and finesse.

My biggest surprise here in that the movie does not have quite the buoyancy and lightness of that earlier trilogy, the reason being, I suspect, that the themes and concerns of film noir -- mystery, murder, betrayal and love (generally unrequited when not out-and-out trashed) -- don't exactly lend themselves to things graceful and lighter-than-air.

Still, what Gutierrez has accomplished here is quite lovely to look at -- the black-and-white cinematography is aces -- with performances from some fine actors, many of whom have graced his earlier work, that pull you in and keep you amused and impressed throughout.

Chief among these is Gutierrez regular, Carla Gugino (above), as a cocktail lounge chanteuse with connections to quite a number of other characters in the film. One of these is the good-looking cop played by Rufus Sewell (above, right. and below, whom the filmmaker used earlier to fine effect in his "naughty mermaid" cable movie She-Creature).

Malin Akerman (below, center) plays a night club performer with ties to the mob and a yen for Mr. Sewell, while Kevin Connolly (in the rain-soaked auto three photos up) plays a nasty piece of work who evidently has attributes that make him very good in the sack.

Since its title would indicate than there's a hotel involved here, most of the film indeed takes place in one -- in which another of our favorites, Rosario Dawson, below, works as a maid who moonlights as, well... other things. 

Along the way she encounters another Gutierrez delight, Danny DeVito, below, who actually begins this movie with a shaggy dog narration that leads to.... No. I don't want to give one more thing away.

Completing the major cast members is another favorite, Robert Forster, below, playing the older, kindly and more seasoned cop who is partner to Sewell. Sex, mostly straight with a little gay tossed in, rears its lovely head, as do a robbery, several killings and a number of surprises along the way, a couple of the best of which are saved for the last.

For folk who are partial to noir, you can relax into this one, knowing that for all the fun to be had, the movie still plays it straight, never descending into camp. The actors are all on the same page regarding style, and much of the fun comes from their very genuine, straight-faced line readings provided by Gutierrez's smart and charming script.

The filmmaker tells me that Hotel Noir came about because YouTube, which commissioned Girl Walks Into a Bar, asked for a follow-up (not a sequel but a similar size/cast movie), so he responded with the idea of a black-and-white period film noir.  

Shot in just 15 days (by Gutierrez regular, Cale Finot), the result can now be viewed by TrustMovies' readers free-of-charge. Gutierrez has graciously agreed to keep the movie up on line for a month, but don't wait too long. I'd hate to have you all ready for a nice evening of noir, only to discover the movie is suddenly gone. To access the film, click here , and if that does not work for you, copy and paste the following link into your web browser: https://youtu.be/PIWxLniIi9c .  Oh -- and Mr. Gutierrez suggests that you view the movie in as high a definition as possible because, yes, it does look good! . 

Catching up with one of 2015's best films: Michael Almereyda's knockout EXPERIMENTER

TrustMovies has long had a soft spot for the films of Michael Almereyda, They're odd, certainly, but they've usually hit this viewer in ways that most other movies don't. His latest, EXPERIMENTER -- all about the life, career and experiments of behavioral scientist Stanley Milgram -- is, I wager, his best yet: the most accessible yet different of his entire oeuvre. The experience of viewing it is like sitting in on perhaps the best, most wonderful, rich and expansive high school or college class that you've ever taken: one that combines science, philosophy, behavior, ethics, and a whole lot more. Ever better, this writer/director (shown below) has expanded his own kit of moviemaking tools and tricks to include an array he's never offered up until now.

The result is a film that grabs us from the outset and hold us fast, as we meet Milgram (the always excellent Peter Sarsgaard. shown above, left, and below, right), his soon-to-be wife (the better-than-ever Winona Ryder, above, right, and below, left), and a host of subsidiary characters playing the helpers and participants in Milgram's notable experiments -- the most famous of which (from the 1960s) would be that little ditty in which folk were given instructions to shock their "partner" with increasing doses of electricity whenever a wrong answer was given until they were using enough "power" to render the recipient dead. A wide majority of these fine Americans (and later folk from other countries) willingly obliged -- making clear that the behavior of the Nazis during WWII (doing what they were told, no mater the consequence to other people) was maybe not so far afield from "normal" human behavior, depending on the circumstances. The results of his experiment did not make Milgram particularly popular among his peers (who earlier claimed nothing like this could ever happen) nor among the common folk who preferred to see themselves as, by nature, generally good and kind. More than anything else, I think, Milgram managed to puncture our deep-set capacity for hypocrisy and denial.

How Almereyda brings all this to fruition -- breaking the fourth wall, using an elephant out of nowhere and quite brilliantly, creating the 1960 and 70s with spot-on decor and often completely fake "theatrical" backgrounds, in the process making us understand and accept so much more than most movies even attempt -- educates us and entertain us in equal measure, giving insight into the life and mind of this quite special scientist and man.

In the fine and precisely-chosen supporting cast, a particular standout is Jim Gaffigan, above, playing one of the Milgram's most enjoyable "actor/helpers" in the experiment. From Magnolia Pictures, the movie got a limited theatrical release and some VOD play last year. It's now out on Blu-ray (the transfer looks spiffy indeed!), DVD and digital download. Do not miss it. (Having just watched it the other evening, I am adding it right now to my post on the Best and Most Underseen Movies of 2015. In fact, if TM had a list of "top ten" films, rather than "top 50," Experimenter would probably rest in that tier, too)

Owen Wilson/Zach Galifianakis/ARE YOU HERE: Matthew Weiner's first film is a sneaky winner

I don't know much about Matthew Weiner, pictured below, but I do know that his Mad Men is hands-down the best American television series I have ever seen. This of course had me a little worried about his debut as a filmmaker: So much to live up to, after all. I am happy to report that his entry into movie-making, ARE YOU HERE, which he wrote and directed, is a lovely piece of work: fresh, funny, moving and real. You can think of it in a number of different ways, one of these being a modern-day screwball comedy (with pot standing in for alcohol). It is also a kind of back-and-forth road trip (for the automobile and the soul). Best of all, it a movie in which characters actually learn and grow and change. Believably.

If Mr. Weiner does pack a lot into his just-under-two-hour film, and then ties things up rather nicely, this will go counter to expectations, since Mad Men ties nothing up. Everything simply keeps expanding outward while its characters go with the flow and often seem to have learned very little (we do, however). But that is one of the wonders of what a great TV series can offer. A two-hour film is a different kettle of fish, from which audiences demand both more and less. And Weiner gives it to them. If you pay attention, you'll come out of Are You Here refreshed and feeling good. But you'll also have had to wrestle with certain notions: that being an "outsider" (the character played  by Zach Galifianakis) has as many bad as good points, that anti-depressant drugs can be useful, that the lifestyle of a successful "player" (Owen Wilson's character), along with the easy money and sex, is so much fun that you might not want to give it up, and finally that compromise can actually result in something better than what recently preceded it.

From what we see on Mad Men and now in this film, I would guess that Weiner has a wonderfully all-embracing belief system that is able to take in opposing ideas easily and thoughtfully, play with them a bit, then send them snapping back at us. He has given us a story of two old friends, Steve (Wilson, above, left) and Ben (Galifianakis, above, right), enablers both, who care for each other in their own special way. When death and an inheritance take the men back to their childhood town, a lot begins to happen.  (Weiner's take on friendship is a particularly succulent one.)

This brings Ben's uptight and angry sister (Amy Poehler, above, right) into the mix, as well as Ben's father's widow (Laura Ramsey, below), a young woman who leavens the movie with some real surprise. The script is peppered with smart and often funny one-liners -- "Honestly, I don't know why the farmer and the cowhand can't be friends," will have some of us Oklahoma! fans chuckling -- while other bits of dialog ("Just to be clear: If I'm sober, you're interested?") are sure to bring us, as well as certain characters, up short.

Are You Here offers so much about the way we live now-- from the real estate ladies' seminar to the need for natural foods as well as for major supermarkets -- that both the fun and the substance of the film are in constant array.

And that cast! Wilson has rarely been better. He brings a complicated character into full bloom (his chicken scene, above, is something else), while Galifiianakis moves from crazy delight to a deepened, richer (literally and symbolically) man who can at last appreciate the need for behavior-adjusting drugs.

Poehler is harsh, but she never allows the character's humanity to entirely depart, and Ramsey makes what could be a too-good-to-be-true woman into a steely but fragile young lady trying her best to live up to her own high standards.

I suspect that some of my compatriots will misinterpret this movie as a "failed comedy" or some sort of "feel-good rom-com." It's much more than that. Give it a shot -- and find yourself in Matthew Weiner's complicated and very interesting universe.

Are You Here -- from Millennium Entertainment and running 113 minutes -- opens theatrically this Friday, August 22. In New York City, catch it at the AMC Empire 25; in L.A. at the Sundance Sunset Cinemas or the Laemmle Noho 7. To see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters, click here and then click on TICKETS at the top of the screen.