Don't listen to the usual critical establishment: John Crowley & Peter Straughan's adaptation of THE GOLDFINCH proves rich, joyous, artful and moving storytelling

"I can't believe they did it!" raved my spouse as we left the local theater where THE GOLDFINCH has recently opened. Spousie had read the novel a few years back, loved it, and had looked forward ever since to a possible movie version. TrustMovies himself had never read the book and so sat down to view the film as a clean slate. He, too, loved it -- swept away within the opening moments and held fast throughout the two-and-one-half-hours of crackerjack storytelling, wonderful performances, and the most artful melding of past and present, youth and adulthood, time periods, places and -- most important -- that very difficult transition of loss and grief into understanding. Not to mention the uses and importance of art.

Every movie that director John Crowley (shown at right) has so far made is a good one -- from Intermission and Boy A through Is Anybody There?, Closed Circuit and the especially wonderful Brooklyn. And now he has given us what is certainly his most ambitious work and one that, I believe, will hold up beautifully and should have future audiences asking, "How in hell did this one go so unappreciated?"

Interestingly, each of Crowley's six films is in a different genre. He never repeats, and yet each takes its particular genre and lifts it quite nicely. The man is not a writer, but damned if he does not recognize a first-class story -- as well as the way to best bring it to life.

What is so funny -- surprising, rather than hilarious -- is that in the case of The Goldfinch (very well adapted by Peter Straughan from the popular novel by Donna Tartt), were you asked to give a precis of this story, you would be very hard put to do so. It's about so many people and so many things and events. Ms Tartt evidently knew just how to pull the reader into her complex tale, and so, film-wise, does the Crowley/Straughan duo.

The main event in all this the filmmakers do not allow us to see, except in small pieces, throughout their movie. It's major, though, and awful, leading to the kind of loss that can never be patched. Various characters deal with this loss in differing ways, and while it is loss and grief that bind the movie, so fascinating is the story and the characters who fill it that instead of becoming a some kind of "downer," the movie end up lifting us in rather remarkable ways.

The heavy lifting may be done by the filmmakers and Ms Tartt, but the marvelous cast assembled here certainly does its part, too.  The major roles of Theo Decker and his bizarre Russian friend, Boris, are taken by (in adulthood) Ansel Elgort and Aneurin Barnard (above, right and left, respectively) and in childhood by Oakes Fegley (at right, two photos up) and Finn Wolfhard. Each actor is not only exceedingly good, but each also makes a fine older or younger version of himself.

The distaff side is equally well represented by the likes of Nicole Kidman (above), Sarah Paulson (shown at bottom, left), Willa Fitzgerald and Ashley Cummings (below), and again, each is precisely on the mark. Crowley has always been terrific with actors, especially in his understanding of just how hard or soft to go with the various important moments. Here, he hits everyone of them with grace and ease

Crowley and Straughan (along with cinematographer Roger Deakins and editor Kelley Dixon)  understand how to create important moments of transition regarding events, characters and moods without ever once hitting us over the head. Demeaning critics have referred to this movie as "flat." Which makes me wonder how any intelligent, genuinely watchful viewer could confuse flatness with artfulness and subtlety?

Well, see for yourself, my friends, as this crackerjack tale moves from New York City to Las Vegas to Amsterdam and back. Along with everything else that's so fine here, the film's last visual is spectacular: Simplicity itself, it unites present and past with a poignancy in which all seems perfection and the best is yet to come. For that moment, at least. (Below, right, is Luke Wilson, with Ms Paulson, who brings new meaning to the term bad dad.)

Distributed via Warner Brothers (with Amazon involved in its financing), The Goldfinch has opened this past week, nationwide. If you love a good story told artfully and beautifully, give it a whirl. Click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.

With BROOKLYN, John Crowley and Nick Hornby come close to touching pure movie joy

BROOKLYN will knock your socks off. But so quietly and gently that you'll imagine you're still wearing them. It is difficult to explain how and why this movie is so special, but allow me to try.

First off, in the midst of our horrific modern world -- ISIS murderers abroad and hate-filled, stupid Republican Presidential "front-runners" funded by corporations and the wealthy bent on turning us all into minimum-wage slaves here at home -- Brooklyn exists as a reminder of an earlier, lost time. So, yes, this is nostalgia. But it's nostalgia done right, in which actions have consequences and the themes of family, homeland, coming-of-age, and the meaning of autonomy are treated seriously.

Secondly, in their actress/star, Saoirse Ronan (shown on poster, top; above, right; and variously, below), director John Crowley (at right) and screenwriter Nick Hornby have a winner and the strongest contender I have seen so far for the Best Actress "Oscar." Ms Ronan -- never a showy actress and, while quite attractive, no great beauty, either -- possesses the ability to display the kind of cool and collected inner strength that most actors would give up a year of Botox to be able to understand and use. But there it is in full view here -- in her speech, movement, face -- displayed in ways that none but the finest actors can muster. In every role -- from I Could Never Be Your Woman and Atonement through The Way Back, Hanna and Violet & Daisy to the more recent The Grand Budapest Hotel, Ronan shines differently and brightly. Here, at last, she becomes the movie's spine.

Fortunately, this actress is surrounded by other fine performers that bring fully to life a past time and place, together with the people who inhabited it. The tale is of a young woman in Ireland smack at the moment of mid-last century, with seemingly no real opportunities ahead of her. Consequently, her sister and her local parish priest arrange for her emigration to America -- to Brooklyn, where most of the Irish seem to have ended up.

On the way there. Eilis (that is her name) endures a seasick sea voyage (above), and once she arrives, she is homesick to near distraction and feels greatly out of place. But as helped by a kindly local priest (a nice change of pace for Jim Broadbent), employed at a posh department store, and stationed in a rooming house for young women run by a delightful Julie Walters (below, center), our girl begins to blossom, if just a bit. (The scenes around the dinner table at that rooming house are so wonderfully real, alert and on-the-mark that you may feel you've stumbled into a legitimate theater piece and are suddenly watching live actors.)

Then love enters the picture -- personified by a young Italian kid who likes Irish girls. As played to perfection by Emory Cohen (below), who brings such an unusual combination of sweet masculinity and savvy decency to his role, this performance becomes an indelible portrait of first love.

How director Crowley -- who, by the way, has so far given us nothing but excellent, under-seen, independent films (Intermission, Boy A, Is Anybody There? and Closed Circuit) -- brings all this to fruition is key. He never pushes, but instead allows Hornby's excellent, full-of-specifics screenplay to keep things on track by making every moment count. It would seem that Crowley has at last connected with a subject that will resonate hugely with the masses -- and then done that subject full justice.

The odd thing about Brooklyn is that so much works out so well for our heroine that one might wonder along the way just where the "conflict" will come from. Interestingly, it arrives directly from Eilis herself as she returns to Ireland to visit mom and finds herself more than a little attracted to her former home and its people.

Holding the film together is Ms Ronan, who simply gleams with hope and promise. And strength. This actress will pull you into her world like nothing you'll have seen, then hold you in her strong, clear gaze until you imagine that, yes, anything is possible, after all. And you may feel, as though for the first time (certainly at the movies after a very long dry spell) real, radiant joy for characters you have come to love.

Brooklyn, from Fox Searchlight and running 111 minutes, opens today in South Florida and elsewhere. Click here, then scroll down and click on THEATER LISTINGS to find a theater near you in just about any state on the map. Your friends are probably already telling you that this is the movie to see. If not yet, they soon will be.

NSA, meet MI5! In CLOSED CIRCUIT, John Crowley offers a timely & unsettling thriller

You want timely? You couldn't ask for a movie more attuned to what the western world seems ever engaged in: Spying on its own citizens. CLOSED CIRCUIT -- the tight yet expansive British thriller directed by John Crowley and written by Steven Knight -- hits the proverbial nail smack on the head, and the explosion that follows is as much about the uninten-ded results of this spying as it is of the spying itself. Though it will put Americans who follow the important news immediately in mind of what the NSA is up to, being British, the film instead follows the exploits of MI5 and its minions who fancy themselves doing good work that must be done to protect their country, even as they blackmail, betray and murder innocents. Ah, but it's all in a day's work!

Mr. Crowley, shown at right, certainly has a versatile resume (Intermission, Boy A, Is Anybody There?), in which each film proves richer than its genre might initially indicate. This is true once again with Closed Circuit, a thriller that indeed has some thrills but offers as much food for thought as it does action, chase scenes and death. It's a "distanced" movie -- from the explosion that sets the off the plot to the relationships that hold that plot together (and then tears it apart). Packed with as solid a British cast as you could corral (with an Australian, an American, a German and a Slovak thrown in for good measure), the movie speeds from incident to incident, with the connections between them often left out so that we must fill in the blanks as the film quickly progresses. And, indeed, it does move fast.

After that initial explosion, there's a a terrorist plot of some sort in which the actual terrorist (Denis Moschitto, above) is quickly caught and must be defended, a funeral for a dead lawyer, his replacement, a Special Advocate to help with the defense, conspiracy, investigation and... well, lots more. Surprise is as important to this film as it was to last week's cracked comedy The World's End, so you'll get no more info on plot development here.

Rather, let's talk about the exceptional cast, led by Eric Bana, above, as the replacement lawyer, and Rebecca Hall (below), as that Special Advocate. The two have a history, it turns out, which is both a help and a hindrance to them.

Bana's friend and mentor, played by Ciarán Hinds (below, left) is on hand,

as is Jim Broadbent (below) as the very business-like-but-close-to-the-vest Attorney General.

On the distaff side, we have Julia Stiles, below, as a suspicious-for-good-reason reporter for The New York Times,

while MI5, the dears, are represented by Riz Ahmed, below,

and Anne-Marie Duff, below, whose straight-ahead, brook-no-deviation stance has consequences for all -- including its supposed friends and co-workers.

Perhaps the most chilling scene of the year involves Mr. Ahmed quietly, professionally taking care of business -- murder -- while destroying a family in the process.

Simply to keep abreast of things, you'll have to pay close attention at all times. The British justice system -- as you may have found watching the French one in action, via Spiral -- is different enough from our own to make for some confounding issues. This is nothing that you can't surmount by keeping your eyes on the screen and your mind alert. (You might also refer to the film's web site info on the British legal system by clicking here.)

The kick to Closed Circuit hits you during the film but also after the movie ends. The idea of the all-powerful, secret government is by now -- thanks to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many other whistle-blowers -- a fact we understand as present and continuing. Despite Barak Obama's promise of transparency, then lying through his teeth about the activities of the NSA, the movie is probably as much on the mark about America's secret government as it is about the British. Same shit, classier accent.

What whistle-blowers can expect, as we see here, is at best a stand-off -- after which and for how long they will remain safe is very much up for grabs.

Closed Circuit, from Focus Features and running a swift 96 minutes, opens Wednesday, August 28, nationwide. Click here, then enter your zip code and choice of movie ticket provider, to find a theater near you.