SOBER MINDS: Charlo Johnson's short-but-impressive look at noted wildlife photographer Paul Hughes' work, life and philosophy

TrustMovies had previously heard of neither the filmmaker Charlo Johnson nor the subject of his new film, a famous Irish wildlife photographer named Paul Hughes. Having seen the film -- which bears the oddball but appropriate title SOBER MINDS -- both men are now, I suspect, rather indelibly imprinted on my memory.

Mr. Johnson, shown below, has made a number of short films already, at least one of which -- Positive Discrimination -- has been nominated for and/or won some awards. I wouldn't be surprised to find Sober Minds following in its footsteps.

This new film is short, all right -- just 17 minutes -- but it packs in a wealth of information, ideas, beauty and (for those of us humans who love to prettify and sentimentalize animals and wildlife) some sadness, along with a salutary punch in the gut.

Photographer Hughes (shown below) is, I rather think, someone who suffers fools not at all, and Mr. Johnson simply and immediately engulfs us in this man's world: the wildlife he so loves, his photos of that wildlife, some of his own history, his philosophy, how he shoots (and when), and even the kind of music that pumps him up to achieve maximum potential, as well as a little of his personal life, too (raw youth, romances, and the like).

What we learn about the man and his work, as well as about ducks and ducklings, swans and cygnets, and especially foxes and their young makes for enticing viewing. And as good as Hughes' photographs of wildlife are, Mr Johnson's movie is equally good, with expert cinematography by Andrei Ghenoside and Jaraslava Waldeck, editing by Mark Gilleece (who also edited that terrifically funny zombie movie, Stalled), lovely animated titles (see photos at bottom) from Toshiki Nakamura and a good musical score from Rob Smith.

Together and in such a short time, this team allows us to enter the world and the mind of Mr Hughes and come away informed, perhaps chastened and certainly wiser than when we went in. Man may be at the top of the current food chain, but, yes, all species end up as predators and prey. And while there is immense love and beauty, charm and delight in Hughes' photos, he never lets us forget the "wild" in wildlife.

"People aren't revealing," notes Hughes. "That's the difference in wildlife. No pretense. They're acting out their true nature."  Which leads us into the film's title and what this means to Mr. Hughes. In all, Sober Minds is a model of a short documentary: lively, thought-provoking, and beautiful.

The short will premiere at the Oscar and BAFTA qualifying Rhode Island International Film Festival on 12 August. If you're not in the Rhode Island area, the documentary will then head to St. George, Utah where it screens at DocUtah International Documentary Film Festival in September followed by Tacoma Film Festival in October. Let's hope the short will eventually be available elsewhere: on DVD, digitally and via streaming. I'll keep up with this and post here where else you might be able to view it, as soon as that information becomes available.

An Irish filmmaker explores Russian life: Johnny O'Reilly's entertaining soap opera, MOSCOW NEVER SLEEPS

Basically a soap-operatic set of interlinked stories telescoped to fit into a one-hundred-minute format, MOSCOW NEVER SLEEPS begins like yet another of those Russian movies about life in Russia that sets out to show us all too believably (see Leviathan or The Fool) how ugly, heartbreaking, corrupt and nasty it is for all the characters -- no matter what their station in life. But then, as the movie wends its very lively way along, something odd happens, and you slowly begin to see things in a slightly more positive light.

This most likely is because the movie was made by an Irishman, Johnny O'Reilly, pictured at left, who is said to have lived in Moscow for the past dozen years, and is clearly rather smitten with the place -- as awful in so many ways is it probably is (whether you're Russian or Irish). As writer and director Mr. O'Reilly has given us quite the set of characters, each one brought to fine life by the excellent set of actors he and his casting directors and Elina Ternyaeva & Yulia Milovidova have corralled.

These folk, who include the likes of a very ill but very popular Russian television star (Yuri Stoyanov, above) and a pair of not-very-happy nor friendly step-sisters (Anastasiya Shalonko and Lyubov Aksyonova, below, left and right), out for a night on the town that turns into something a tad more appalling...

a not-so-nice business mogul (Leviathan's Aleksey Serebryakov, below), who's in the midst of being screwed by the state and maybe also by his would-be singer/girlfriend,

who is suddenly torn between her richer, more powerful current beau and her poor-but-hunky ex, who is now in hot pursuit. These latter two are played by Eugenia Khirivskaya (below, right, and at bottom, left) and Oleg Dolin, (below, left and bottom, right) who, if you like your men big, beefy and beautiful, is one hell of a knockout here.

There are a number of other key players, including a granny, her son, grandson, and the son's put-upon wife, and each set of characters and their circumstances are handled with precision, brevity and smarts, so that we come to care as much for these people as the film's short running time can possibly allow.

Another plus are the many gorgeous shots of Moscow, by day and night, that make the city seem, for all its cavalier cruelty, something special and beautiful. (You can certainly understand why those three sisters longed for the place.) So lively and fast-paced is Mr. O'Reilly's keen direction that we have little time to do more than hang on for the alternately funny, moving and wild ride -- by the end of which Russian life seems to have at least partially redeemed itself. Well, almost.

Distributed via Snapshot Productions, the Russian-language film (with English subtitles) hits theaters nationwide, beginning June 9th, 2017 in New York City at the Village East Cinema, June 16th in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Ahrya Fine Arts  and Town Center 5, and June 30th in Washington, D.C. at the Landmark E Street Cinema. The film will then expand into additional cities throughout the summer.

With SING STREET, John Carney goes three for three. Yes, a song can indeed save your life.

First Once. Then Begin Again. Now SING STREET. Filmmaker John Carney seems bent on proving to the world how important music is in all our lives. It certainly was in his own, as this latest and heavily biographical movie so buoyantly demonstrates. His first film used complete "unknowns" as its stars; his second tapped the talents of some very "known quantities" -- Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo and others -- and succeeded as well.

With Sing Street, Carney (shown at left) is back to using more "unknowns" again, and the film is every bit as wonderful as his other two. It'll leave you walking on air, feeling delight in both living and listening -- to a score that pays homage to some of the great groups of the 80s while creating original songs that are bouncy and beautiful, graceful and gorgeous -- all on their own. As an added perk, the filmmaker may have jump-started the careers of two young performers we're bound to be seeing much more of in time to come.

Critics, while almost unanimously embracing the film, have mentioned that its story is anything but unique. Starting a band from scratch is not the newest idea to hit music, films or life itself, for that matter. Yet so utterly specific is Mr. Carney as writer and director, and so interesting, funny, moving and real are all the characters he and his actors have created that it is not in the least difficult to imagine you're seeing all this for the first time. And loving every damned minute.

Carney cleverly places us first in the family situation, as we see our hero, Cosmo, a marvelous debut by young actor Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (who might possibly want to consider adapting a "stage" name?). He is shown above, right, with Jack Reynor, who plays his older brother and mentor, Brendan, with such richness, subtlety, range and skill that Reynor comes very close to stealing the movie.

Yes, there have been many movies about starting a band. But the reason for starting this one is certainly a bit different: to impress and then get to know a slightly older girl named Raphina.  As played by Lucy Boynton (above), a veteran of some dozen roles already, it will be this role, I suspect, that puts Ms Boynton firmly on the map. She's beautiful and charismatic, all right, but she also possesses that particular quality of seeming even more so when she seems to trying the least.

Together, Cosmo and Raphina make quite a pair, and the girl's history of troubled parentage and having already another boyfriend just adds to the pair's chemistry and the movie's suspense. Ditto the troubled relationship of Cosmo's own parents (played by Aidan Gillen and Maria Doyle Kennedy) whose economics and intimacy are both spiraling downwards.

Each band member, even those given the least screen time, registers as special and real (that's Mark McKenna, above, right, as the band's smartest and most versatile member) -- and the school bully, too, has something interesting in store from the filmmaker. The songs, as I say, are just lovely. Best of all is the scene in the school gym/auditorium, with the band performing and Cosmo suddenly having a rather special and charmingly low-key-but-spectacular fantasy about everything he wants suddenly coming to fruition.

There are many high points in this wonderful film, but this scene, I think, reaches highest of all. It lets us know from where Mr. Carney is coming, and that, yes, for sure: a song can save your life. (I believe that last phrase was to be the title of Carney's second hit -- until someone had the lesser idea to change it to Begin Again.)

Sing Street, released via The Weinstein Company and running a just-about-perfect 106 minutes, opened to fairly rapturous reviews in NYC and L.A. a couple of weeks back. It opens across country this Friday, April 29. Here in South Florida, you can find it at the Gateway 4 in Ft. Lauderdale, the Regal South Beach in Miami Beach, the Cinemark Palace 20 in Boca Raton, and the Carmike Parisian @ City Place in West Palm Beach. Elsewhere? Just click here and enter your zipcode to learn the theater nearest you.

Ireland's entry into the BFLF sweeps--Paddy Breathnach's VIVA--filmed in Cuba, in Spanish!

Hey -- if France can submit a movie filmed in Turkey in the Turkish language, then I guess Ireland can submit one filmed mostly in Cuba with all the dialog in Spanish. France's Mustang has made it all the way to the final five nominees. while VIVA, the Irish submission written by Mark O'Halloran and directed by Paddy Breathnach, (shown below), managed to be one of the final nine foreign language films shortlisted for a possible Oscar. It's a lovely movie, and while it deals in what some will call cliches of the transvestite/ transgen-der genre, so all-embracing and emotionally resonant is Viva that most audiences, GLBT to arthouse/ mainstream, should find themselves falling for it, heart and soul.

Featuring two terrific lead performances (and a bunch of fine supporting turns), the movie tells the tale of Jesus, a Cuban teen on the cusp of young manhood who does the hair and wigs of the performers at a local trans club but want more than anything else to himself become a performer. With his mom dead and his dad in prison (perhaps dead, as well), he's a near-orphan who has learned to take care of himself with help from a wide assort-ment of friends.

As played by newcomer Héctor Medina (shown above), Jesus is a smart, somewhat scrappy kid, given to luxuriating in certain music and mostly scraping by in today's Cuba, where living above poverty level isn't easy for many people. Into his life one evening comes a man -- played by that wonderful Cuban actor, Jorge Perugorría (shown below, right, and best known here in the USA for Strawberry & Chocolate), the less I say about whom will benefit the movie's plot twists.

The relationship that develops between the two men plays out over the remainder of the movie and it is one that runs the gamut from anger and pain to just about everything else you can pack into a 100-minute movie. This kind of film lives or dies on the quality of its lead performances, and the two men fill their roles as well as you could possibly want. Perugorría has always been an actor of great strength, resourcefulness and subtlety, and he bring just about all he knows and practices into this role of a man who must now learn to go against everything he has formerly known and lived by. You'll alternately want to punch him out and embrace him.

Young Medina possess a wonderful delicacy that goes well beyond anything fey or feminine.  His early renditions of songs for the trans bar possess the kind of subtlety and grace that put to shame most of the drag queen performances we see on film. However, this is not what the usual spectators want, and so Jesus must adapt to the desires of his somewhat crass audience. He does -- losing as much as he gains in this process of adaptation.

Fortunately the movie is about a lot more than drag performances, and the strong pull that this relationship saga offers is what finally makes it so moving and compelling. Friendhip, love, "family," and more coalesce into a drama of great strength and power, making Viva the kind of keeper you don't initially expect.

From Magnolia Pictures, the movie opens in theaters this Friday, April 29. in New York City (the Angelika Film Center); in the Los Angeles area (Laemmle's Playhouse 7, Monica 4-Plex and NoHo 7, and at the Sundance Sunset Cinemas); and all over Southern Florida at nine different venues. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Streaming choice: Mark Cousins' brilliant, poetic and quirky 15-part odyssey THE STORY OF FILM

A hit at various festivals internationally and shown on television here and there (most prominently on our own TCM channel), the nearly 16-hour (divided into 15 slightly-more-than-one-hour episodes) THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY, by critic and documentarian Mark Cousins, is a genuine "find" -- and watching it via Netflix streaming, at your own speed and frequency, is probably the best way to tackle this immensely smart and enjoyable ride through cinema history, from the viewpoint of one singular fellow with a lot of good ideas and the capacity to deliver them in the best fashion possible.

Some of the rather crass Netflix viewers (click and then click again on the various reviews) seem to have objected to Cousins' Irish accent above all else. Bullshit, I say. Listening to his gorgeous, lilting voice is one of  the great pleasures of this documentary.  I often have trouble with Irish accents in narrative films. But here, as the words bubble off Cousins' lips (the filmmaker/
narrator is shown at right) so gracefully and understandably (out of the five episodes I've watched so far, I barely missed a single word), his narration, which is occasionally quite poetic, proves a consistent delight. (One Netflix viewer describes Cousin's voice as "monotone"; the viewer clearly has no idea what that word means.)

What this series offers is a look at the entire history of motion pictures, from their birth (in various countries around the world) to their slow maturation and continuing growth. If you follow this blog at all, you'll know that TrustMovies has probably a greater knowledge of film and its history than your Average Joe. Yet I can't tell you how many new directors and films I've had to add to my list from watching this series. (And I'm only up to episode 6 out of 15.)

Cousins is much less concerned with the major Hollywood blockbusters (those slippers, above, are from you know what), about which we've by now heard, seen and learned everything we would want (often much more than we'd want) than he is with how movies influence each other, and how directors and producers borrow, steal and homage each other to the point where film gets faster, sharper better and more intelligent -- and sometimes slower, sweeter, better, more intelligent and deeply felt.

What is so particularly wonderful and inclusive about The Story of Film is how it treats so many of the countries of the world as equally important to the USA. (This drives crazy some viewers, particularly those who must find American exceptionalism in everything.) So what a pleasure and an education it is to learn more about, say, the early work of Egypt's Youssef Chahine or actress Kyôko Kagawa (above), who has worked for and with some of the greatest Japanese directors.

Cousins does not simply show us clips from what seem like one million movies; he interviews actors, writers, directors and other film historians, interweaving these gracefully into his whole scenario. You come away from this amazing program with renewed appreciation of everything from the light (that began it all) to POV, German expressionism, dissident filmmaking (as Cousins calls it) and an evidently famous Chinese actress, Ruan.

I'd never heard of heard of Ruan, but Cousin's little sidestep into her brief life put me immediately in mind of a more recent and very lovely Chinese film, Electric Shadows. His take on Ozu, whom he calls the greatest filmmaker who ever lived, is quite splendid: "He was interested in centering the human body while de-centering, like the Buddhists, the human ego." (You won't always agree with the filmmaker; whom I suspect has a better liking for Baz Luhrmann, above, than do I.)

What is especially wonderful about The Story of Film is its moral seriousness -- but without any finger-wagging or sermonizing -- which renders the series truly progressive, as well as alert and caring about the whole history of cinema. Cousin's sections with Stanley Donen alone make the project worthwhile. When Donen tells us how, though he hated the work of Busby Berkeley as a young man, he has come to love it since ("His movies didn't change. I changed."), one can only wish that we, all of us  -- artists, critics, movie-goers -- could embrace this understanding and admit it to our minds and hearts.

I've just now begun episode six (and Chahine, who is shown above with Mr. Cousins). Already I am wanting to race ahead to see every single section, while trying to slow them down and make them last longer: a happy conundrum. Well, as they say, this should be my worst problem. You can stream The Story of Film now via Netflix. Just click here... (You can also purchase actual DVDs of the series or order them up digitally by clicking here.)

FitzGibbon/Doherty's A FILM WITH ME IN IT: 2010 arrives with a crack, black comedy

Twits of various sorts -- male variety -- people the new and delight-
fully funny black come-
dy A FILM WITH ME IN IT, from its two main characters -- about as useless a pair as you're likely to find -- to the subsidiaries. And while the funny, bloody events that transpire do so due to accidents involving a falling-apart apart-
ment, you can as easily see them as part of god's grand design of human error and utter laziness with which he has blessed his "children." It's been awhile since I've found myself in a nearly-empty screening room in which the few critics present were all laughing aloud this often.

The concept here is a fine one, and the tone's on target, too. We often hear the phrase "pitch-perfect" used in reviews, but it's seldom as "perfect" as you'll find here -- which is all the more surprising because the film deals with several grizzly deaths, one after another, and one funnier than the next -- due to the very clever way the director (Ian Fitzgibbon, shown above) and writer Mark Doherty (shown below, left, and cleaning the bathtub further below) prepares us for all this. We go right along with it, too, laughing mightily, despite the grim proceedings. This is due partly I think to the deaths being "accidental" rather than murderous, which might make them creepier, more suspenseful and such, but would not allow us to laugh our heads off while remaining as guilt-free as we do.

We may be guilt-free, but the two leading characters get off not quite so easily, for the accidents occur because of the sheer laziness and stupidity of our boys (Mike Judge should love this movie), underplayed to a "t" by writer Doherty and Dylan Moran (shown above, right). Memorable barely begins to describe these two. Doherty, with his constant hang-dog depression, and Moran, clearly suffering from the delusion that he is god's gift to everyone, could hardly be better, making perfect foils for each other and catnip for viewers in need of some great laughs.

"Deadpan" is an oft-usedword, and the films it describes are too-oft delivered in a semi-comatose state. That is not the case here. This is deadpan done right -- as funny as it gets: subtle, original and outrageous. From the beginning, with Neil Jordan playing a director for whom Doherty is auditioning, A Film With Me In It has great fun at the expense of the movies, never more so than during its finale, in which Jonathan Rhys Meyers makes an appearance. Along the way, some terrific actors -- Keith Allen, Amy Huberman and Aisling O'Sullivan -- do terrific jobs, managing, just like the leads, to make us laugh out loud while giving performances that are absolutely truthful and real.

January is a month notorious for providing the dumping ground for bad movies, with the first films released in any new year often among its worst. If A Film With Me In It is an example of what we're in for this year, 2010 might prove to be a moviegoer's blessing. The film opens New Years' Day at the IFC Center, which is becoming -- now with its five screens -- an ever more indispensable part of New York's independent and foreign film scene. Check show days and times here.