Family history and the Holocaust explored anew in Jeff Lipsky's unusual THE LAST

Jeff Lipsky is back. This storied producer, shown below, who has also directed a number of interesting films -- one of which, Flannel Pajamas, is among TrustMovies' favorites -- loves to push envelopes. And while those envelopes would ostensibly seem to be filled with the usual envelop-pushing subjects such as sexual taboos, the results are films that actually push our ideas about those things, rather than the things themselves. Folk who want more sex and violence will likely feel cheated by Lipsky's movies, while those willing to have some of

their precious notions/beliefs upended in ways surprising but maybe salutary should find the experience bracing and perhaps a lot more than that.

Lipsky's latest, entitled THE LAST, may be one of his best. (I'll have to let it roll around a lot more before coming to any air-tight conclusions.) It is certainly one of his more provocative endeavors, dealing as it does with The Holocaust and the multi-generational history of one particular family in quite an unusual manner. Who these people are, together with how they got that way and what they plan to do about it, once they've learned the truth, makes for quite a movie.

The film begins by a lake with a certain Jewish ritual. The family here is mixed-faith: Jewish on the great-grandparents side downwards, Catholic on the side of the father (Lipsky regular, the fine Reed Birney, above), with dad's daughter (Jill Durso, below, right) about to convert to Judaism as she marries her hot-looking Jewish hubby (A J Cedeno, below, left).

A day at the beach with 92-year-old great-grandma (a most memorable performance by Rebecca Shull, below), during which our elderly non-heroine talks about her past, changes everything for the entire family.

How each member of each generation reacts to this news comprises the meat of the movie, and while the filmmaker, as is his wont, gives us all this via conversations, the dialog is good enough to keep us glued and alternately surprised and off-kilter.

Lipsky forces us, simply via dialog, to imagine, even experience World War II from a different viewpoint that we've heretofore encountered. He allows the leading members of his fine ensemble -- including Julie Fain Lawrence (above, right, as Birney's wife, Melody) -- to have their own scene or two in which they grapple, with intelligence and emotion, with this news.

It's both challenging and oddly diverting to be forced to come to grips with what's exposed here -- which includes everything from religious faith, morality and hypocrisy to genocide, justice, euthanasia (or maybe murder) and what actually constitutes a Jew.

And though the story is told almost exclusively through conversation, which includes a ton of exposition, so well-performed is the film -- especially by Birney, Shull and Lawrence --  that I think you won't mind. The younger generation is perhaps not quite as skilled, but even that makes a certain sense, given the fact that age, coupled to experience, does count for a lot, in performing, as in building character.

The Last is likely to set more than a few teeth on edge. I hope it plays down here in Florida, where audiences are more likely to be subjected to nonsensical feel-good twaddle such as Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel. What a mitzvah it would be to give our audiences something to actually think about that maybe shakes them up a bit.

From Plainview Pictures and running (just a tad long at) 123 minutes, The Last opens in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and the newly reopened East 62nd Street and 1st Avenue cinema, the CMX CinéBistro. Over the weeks to come, the film will play other cities across the USA -- it hits Los Angeles on April 26 at Laemmle's Royal and Town Center 5 -- click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Vincent Perez's World War II, anti-Nazi oddity, ALONE IN BERLIN, makes its DVD debut

That handsome, exotic-looking hunk, Vincent Perez (shown below), has had quite an acting career -- some 66 roles already (his 53rd birthday arrives this Saturday) -- topped off in my estimation by his performances in Queen Margot and the late Patrice Chereau's masterwork, Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train. His career as a director has remained pretty much a non-starter, however, and his latest endeavor, ALONE IN BERLIN, will not do much to burnish this.

Alone in Berlin is not an awful film by any means, but it never somehow takes off, instead simply sitting there, waiting to happen. As my spouse noted about a half-hour in, "I can't figure out the focus here." In a way, this at least means that M. Perez is not hitting us atop the head with his "point," but on the other hand he could easily has made his movie crisper, tighter and more compelling. As director and co-adapter (with the team of Achim and Bettine von Borries) from the novel by Hans Fallada, Perez seems content to simply let the story tell itself, with pacing that seldom varies as incident (very) slowly piles upon incident until, at last, the viewer is drawn in.

The movie's cast is certainly A-1, led by Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson (above), with Daniel Brühl (below) bringing us another of his naughty Nazi performances, à la the recent Zookeeper's Wife. Thompson and Gleeson plays a German couple in 1940, in the midst of the Second World War, whose son is killed -- this is the first thing we see in the film -- on the front lines in what I suspect is France.

The couple, who were never, it appears, pro Hitler or pro-Nazi (it is made clear that the husband is not a party member) are so angry and unsettled by their loss that they -- in particular, he -- begin writing post-card size messages against the Nazis and Hitler and leaving these in odd but public places where they are sure to be found. (Such a thing, along with the couple who perpetrated it, is evidently a part of German history.)

Now, as partisan/agitator/protest goes, this is very small potatoes. But it is also what makes the movie at least unusual. We know how little real good this can do, and yet it is all these two people seem capable of, and in fact, simply must engage in due to their anger and loss. And indeed, it does seem to make the local Nazis -- leaders and underlings -- lose their cool.

There is some suspense generated as our protagonists place their little cards and once are almost caught, and there is interest aroused in the way that Brühl's investigator goes about tracking the couple. (Oddly, the film's most compelling section has to do with the sleazy fellow falsely accused of planting the cards, and what happens to both him and his investigator in the wake of all this.)

I suspect you will keep watching (we certainly did) just to learn what happens and why. Alone in Berlin is not great cinema, to be sure. But neither is it anything like a total loss. From IFC Films and running 103 minutes, the movie arrives on DVD this coming Tuesday, June 13 -- for purchase and/or rental.