Khrushchev-era bureaucrats do their worst in Russia's entry into this year's Oscar sweeps: Andrei Konchalovsky’s DEAR COMRADES!

Russian-born writer/director Andrei Konchalovsky (shown below) has had quite a genre-jumping career both in English-language films (Runaway Train, Duet for One, Tango & Cash) and in his own language (including 1979's Siberiade through 2016's Paradise) and now, at age 83 he is offering up his latest, a pitch-black satire/drama of Khrushchev-era Russia entitled DEAR COMRADES! The result is a movie that moves from initially rather funny (albeit in a very dark manner) to ugly and finally unexpectedly moving, given that our main character Lyuda -- an attractive middle-aged mother who is also a Stalin-worshiping apparatchik -- has proven such as irredeemable creep for most of the proceedings.

As portrayed by the excellent actress Julia Vysotskaya (shown below, right, and further below), who is often Konchalovsky's leading lady, Lyuda undergoes one of those "dark nights of the soul" that, in the hands of a lesser actress and filmmaker, might prove anything from merely condescending to outright schlocky. 

Ms Vysotskaya keeps her character so on-track, truthful, angry and increasingly anguished that she carries us along moment to moment without missing a beat, as she's dragged kicking and screaming to confront who she is and what she has done. 

The small-minded hypocrisy embedded in all of the apparatchiks we see in the movie, though first used for humor, satire and dark fun, pretty quickly becomes so nasty and self-serving that only, TrustMovies suspects, the very thick-skinned and nearly unfeeling among us will be able for long to continue viewing Dear Comrades! as black comedy. Or even as satire. It moves well beyond either. 

The plot involves workers at a large factory going on strike and then demonstrating against the state. Which is of course ludicrous, as Russian workers under the Communist regime were always, according to the state, incredibly happy with their place in the overall scheme of things. (Just as the majority of Russian citizens today, as per their glorious current leader, are supremely blessed and content with Russia's brand of Capitalism.) How both the local powers-that-be, as well as the higher-ups in Moscow, handle this protest situation could hardly be worse.

The generation gap is also present and accounted for via Lyuda's daughter, whose disappearance during the protest sparks the remaining action of the film. Under whatever label you want to use -- political, religious, cultural -- how the elite and entitled evade, as they always do, in every country, the rules and restrictions that impede the rest of us, is brought to pulsating life (and death) in Dear Comrades! 

One might accuse the filmmaker of sentimentality due to the ending of his film, which some audiences may interpret as a scene of hope but which just might be the darkest would-be joke in the entire movie. This is 1962, remember, and look what has happened in and to Russia since then. Hope may spring eternal. Unfortunately, so does despair.

Dear Comrade! is Russia's entry into this year's Best International Film "Oscar" race, but what its chances are, given our (one hopes) soon departing President's treasonous, term-long fellatio-flirtation with Vladimir Putin, this may not be the most popular of countries just now. Whatever happens, awards-wise, it's good to see Konchalovsky working so close to his optimal once again.

Distributed via Neon and running 121 minutes, the movie opens for an Oscar consideration week-long virtual run at New York City's Film Forum this Friday, December 25. Catch it now, or maybe later, when it reopens for a normal (what the hell does that mean, these days?) theatrical run.

Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Download debut: Tom Hooper/Lucinda Coxon's THE DANISH GIRL

One of this past year's juiciest piece of "Oscar" bait, THE DANISH GIRL proved a relatively successful arthouse hit with audiences, even if many critics found the film wanting. TrustMovies is only catching up with the movie now, upon its video and streaming debut, but he can readily understand both how it turned heads and left something less than a fresh taste in certain mouths. Speaking of taste, the movie is every bit as tasteful as we would expect from Tom Hooper, the director who gave us Oscar winner, The King's Speech, and the filmed version of Les Miz.

Mr. Hooper (shown at right) and his screenwriter, Lucinda Coxon (shown below, who based her writing on the book by David Ebershoff), do their best work early on in telling this very "inspired-by" tale of one of the world's first transgendered women. That would be Einar Wegener -- who became Lili Elbe -- aided by his supportive and hugely long-suffering wife, Gerda Wegener. Both spouses are artists (he of landscapes, she of portraits), and both are talented and (eventually, in her case) successful. Exactly how much of this "story" is actually true I

couldn't begin to vouch for, but it is told in the manner of so many of Hollywood's highly tasteful and lovely-to-look-at historical bio-pics. So it's an easy watch. For awhile. The movie captures our attention via the lead performance of that very fine actor Eddie Redmayne, shown below, who plays Einar/Lili and is quite adept is showing us how this young husband is initially captivated by women and their clothing, and then, once his wife has persuaded him to pose in those clothes so that she can finish a painting, is quickly drawn first into cross-dressing and eventually into the all-out desire and need to become a woman.

Mr Redmayne and Alicia Vikander (below), who plays his wife, are both superb at keeping us alert, watchful and entertained, as well as making us believe that they are indeed soul-mates. The details of the couple's life together and their careers go some distance in making the first half of the film as compelling as it is.

Once Einar begins to get Lili-fied, however, either Ms Coxon did not have enough specifics to draw from or Mr Hooper could not bring these to much life because the movie soon begins to deal mostly in the obvious and the cliched.

As Lili engages in flirtation with an admirer (Ben Whishaw) and is reunited with an old friend and schoolmate (Matthias Schoenaerts, below) who soon bonds with Gerda, the filmmakers seem reduced to too much vamping -- dragging the film out to to fill the two-hour running time.

Yes, we understand how difficult it was back in that even-more-patriarchal-day for a man to relinquish his maleness, but instead of offering up some thoughtful ideas and intelligent dialog, the film instead is content with mostly standard stuff.

Still, this is quite a beautiful movie to look at; the cast is competent and often much more, and the subject is as timely as Caitlyn Jenner (and certainly more interesting than anything I've yet seen or read about her).  

From Focus Features and running 120 minutes, The Danish Girl has been available for digital download since February 16 and will make its DVD and Blu-ray (the transfer to the latter is excellent) this coming Tuesday, March 1 -- for purchase or rental.

The shoo-in for Oscar's BFLF? László Nemes' Hungarian Holocaust rhapsody, SON OF SAUL

The sure-fire equation for the Best Foreign Language Film award: Quality + Holocaust = BFLF. Add some originality and you've got an even more likely bet. László Nemes' new film, SON OF SAUL, certainly touches all three of those bases. As much as I expected to find the film wanting in major regards, I, like so many of our critics (audiences, too, I suspect), found myself quickly under its spell. It was only last year that another of these Holocaust honeys -- Ida -- walked away with the award, and now, here's another that everyone seems to be counting on to win.

Why is Son of Saul so special? Because of the perspective -- quite literally, the visual point-of-view -- taken by the filmmaker (Mr. Nemes is shown at left). From the beginning and for almost all of this 107-minute movie, the camera stays close to the face and figure of its protagonist, Saul -- a member of the Sonderkommando at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, that group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in their machinery of large-scale extermination during World War II.  What makes this perspective so strange yet pointed is that for maybe the first time on film, we see a concentration camp and its workings only marginally, off to the side and not, as it were, the main attraction. Of course, it is, and this is what gives Nemes' film such a strong combination of gravity, irony, and originality.

We see what's going on, all right, and we know exactly what it all means, and it is as horrible as ever, yet perhaps somewhat easier to view when taken, as does our "hero," Saul (an indelible performance from almost-newcomer Géza Röhrig, shown above and below), along with all of us who are watching, as something foregone and impossible to change. We don't focus on the atrocities, but we know very well that they are a constant life-ending, death-embracing presence.

Saul simply does his job without comment or feeling. Until one day everything changes. What happens and why is part of the plot and best left to your own discovery. At the same time that Saul is suddenly busy with his new "project" -- which, by the way, can be taken realistically or symbolically: It works well on both levels -- the Sonderkommando members are plotting something of their own. They know that their lives, though marginally better than the other Jews in the camp, will soon end in death, after which they will be replaced by more of the same.

These two plot strands weave in an out of each other as the movie reaches its climax, which, as does much of the rest of the film, works both realistically and symbolically, offering in its strange way, hope from despair. Or not. It is also possible to dismiss all this, as a few critics have done, as sentimental and utterly unearned.  I disagree:  The hope here is always in sync with the reality of the situation, making for a kind of balance that remains fraught and fierce, in which the best that can be hoped for is terrible indeed.

Caveats? Maybe. The unusual perspective provided by the filmmaker works in a kind of "smartly confusing" manner. Because we're privy to so little and only know parts of the two puzzles at hand, we can't really know specifically how all this might or could work out. This means that we have to accept what we know and go with the flow. We do, yet a few too many coincidences begin to rankle. Certain things seem too easily accomplished and not so believable. Yet because of our limited perspective, we can't be sure, and so we accept it. This is, in its highly circumscribed way, very smart, corner-cutting movie-making.

For all its barely-glimpsed horror and the despicable history we now know all too well, Son of Saul left this viewer in a quiet, thoughtful state: won-dering at and appreciating -- against insurmountable odds -- life and hope. In the end, the movie is about something bigger than our own tiny lives.

From Sony Pictures Classics, Son of Saul opens here in South Florida this Friday, January 29, at the Tower Theater, Miami; Cinema Paradiso, Ft. Lauderdale; Living Room Theaters, and Regal Shadowood 16, Boca Raton; Carmike Muvico Parisian, West Palm Beach; Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth. You can click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters, nationwide.

"Mainstream" movie of the year: Adam McKay's important and marvelously entertaining THE BIG SHORT

Having seen only a handful of the usual mainstream contenders for Best Picture "Oscar," TrustMovies is in no position to weigh in officially. Of everything he's seen so far, however, THE BIG SHORT -- Adam McKay's adaptation of Michael Lewis' seminal non-fiction account of a few smart "money" guys who saw the financial collapse coming -- is by far the most important film of the year. It is also among the most entertaining.

Yes, Spotlight is equally riveting and is also about something very important. But I would suggest that the subject of McKay's movie (the filmmaker is pictured at left) -- the 2008 worldwide financial collapse -- is even more important than the Catholic Church's long-running parade of sexual-predator priests. Why? Because what caused that financial collapse affects many more of us and is still going on, to the horrific detriment of America's (and most of the world's) poor and middle class -- to everyone, in fact, except the wealthy. It is most responsible for the widening gap between the rich and the rest of us, and the movie points this up like nothing we've so far seen, and does so in a manner to make us laugh, sure, but then grow very, very angry. All over again.

Both films sport crackerjack casts, and each director draws terrific a performance from every actor. But because The Big Short features a number of characters who are not a little bizarre, this makes for some sublimely entertaining performances, especially from Christian Bale, (below), Steve Carell (above, with his hand up, in one of the film's pivotal scenes) and Ryan Gosling (shown two photos below, center right, facing Mr. Carell).

Each actor is superb, though never "showy," at literally every moment in which he appears on screen. And McKay makes the most of them, as well as of his very fine supporting cast.  This is, by the way, a very "male" movie -- as is, of course, the Wall Street/Banking sector of our society.

Women, with very few exceptions, are peripheral to this business, and how Mc Kay uses them here cannot be unintentional. Marisa Tomei is that stand-by-your-man wife; Melissa Leo the blinkered career woman, and, in his most talked-about touch, explanatory guides Margot Robbie (in a bubble bath) and Selena Gomez (at a casino table) are right out of your typical James Bond movie.

The story that McKay and Lewis (along with co-adaptor Charles Randolph) offer up is not the easiest one to follow, unless you've already followed that financial collapse with some acuity. But these guys make it about as easy to access, as possible, considering. And they make it surprisingly fun and funny, as well -- even if the laughs are often at our own expense. The scene with one of the "enablers" (Byron Mann, above, left) toward the film's conclusion is a humdinger indeed.

At 130 minutes, this Short is not short, but there's not a boring moment in the whole shebang. In fact, things seems to grow ever more important, appalling and entertaining as the film builds to its suspenseful (even though of-course-we-know-what-happened) conclusion. (Above are, left and right, Finn Witrock and John Magaro as relative newbies on the big-time financial block.)

The movie is a call to action -- of some sort, at least. Republicans will do all they can to discredit it, but I'm afraid the cat is out of the bag. Wall Street and the Banks are not just corrupt; they are uber-corrupt. And so are our politicians for allowing this greed and stupidity to flourish. (Above: Billy Magnussen and Max Greenfield as two slimey and unrepentant sub-prime mortgage brokers.)

I have to admit that nothing in the past career of Mr. McKay would have given me an idea that he could bring us a movie this important -- and at this level of film smarts. Well, I know now. And I am duly impressed. The manner in which he occasionally breaks the "fourth wall" and how he handles those explanatory moments are sophisticated marvels of making the most of what needs to be done.

TrustMovies is also rather amazed that Paramount -- a Viacom company, hello -- released the film, but I am grateful that it has. Whatever The Big Short does or does not achieve come awards time, this wake-up call will have reached millions in the coming months and millions more when it finally arrives on video and digital.  If you can't wait till then, just know that it is worth the price of a theatrical admission -- and then some.
Click here to learn where you can view it now. 

With European Film Awards winner, YOUTH, Paolo Sorrentino offers up another amazement

A master class in filmmaking, from a visual standpoint, certainly, YOUTH is... what? Paolo Sorrentino's best yet? Don't we say that nearly every time a new movie appears from this guy? Why not? In my estimation, he is among and perhaps the finest living filmmaker, even if his movies are, yes, all over the place. But what he lacks as a screenwriter, he more than makes up for as a director. As a writer, he seems to cajole, even fondle, his screenplays into providing the kind of imaginative, rich, one-of-a-kind visuals in which so many of us art-movie fans exult.

Sorrentino's stories fascinate, as well: tales told to make their themes resonate -- even if sometimes not as strongly or in as condensed a fashion as we might like. And yet, post viewing -- and I have seen most of his movies more than once -- I find myself enjoying and learning from them even more. With Youth, the filmmaker (shown on set, at left) has made a movie about -- among other things -- age, art, love, family, moviemaking, creativity and commerce -- and he's wrapped all this into a near-constant array of stunning color, composi-tion and juxtaposition.

Take the poster image, shown at top, as one instance. This is from one of the film's most ravishing scenes, in which youth and age are juxtaposed to marvelous effect in a lush, deep and dark several moments that brings to the by-now tiresome "dream sequence" something unique -- and visually beyond compare. (The cinematographer here is the great Luca Bigazzi.)

The story is one of two old friends -- a retired composer/conductor (played by Michael Caine, above) in his consistent and increasingly elegant less-is-more mode) and a filmmaker (Harvey Keitel, below) working on what may be his final opus. The two spar (often about a girl they once knew), enjoy each other and their surroundings (a first-class hotel high in the Swiss mountainside) and try to work through their various family problems (the Caine character's daughter is married to the Keitel character's son).

Further complications arise when the maestro is contacted by a very high-level personage and asked to come (briefly) out of his retirement while, simultaneously, the filmmaker finds himself having trouble finishing his screenplay worked on (in the Italian style) by a bevy of screenwriters (shown below).

Along the way, much is made of the composer/conductor's series of songs that have proven his most acclaimed and popular work. Much is also made of a certain leading actress, who is to be the star of the filmmaker's new work. We hear about both of these over and over again, from different angles and various other characters. This is quite a build-up. Many filmmakers would be content to leave it at that (or fearful not to, and then have to make good on their inflated claims). Not so Sorrentino.

When we meet at last that famous star, as played by Jane Fonda (above and below) in a role that requires not merely terrific acting but a near-complete abandonment of the usual "star" vanity, Ms Fonda more than delivers the goods.

Likewise, the movie's finale, when, at last, we approach the moment when we're about to hear that famous and much bandied-about music. We expect, of course, a cut to black, as the movie ends, letting instead our fertile imaginations provide the celestial music. Oh, no. Sorrentino, together with his composer David Lang, provide an ending so glorious, aurally and visually, that it brings this 124-minute movie to a grand close.

In the youth department of Youth are Rachel Weisz (above) as Caine's daughter, and Paul Dano (below, right) as a famous young actor researching some background material for his latest role. Both are fine, especially Mr. Dano, but they take an understandable and expected back seat to their elders here.

In set piece after set piece, Sorrentino provides great beauty (to crib from the title of his previous film), as well as fine irony and ideas to chew over at some later time -- maybe when you watch the film again. One of the things I liked best about Youth, in retrospect, is how it makes rather joyful and endearing fun at movie-making and movie-makers.

God knows that Sorrentino takes his art and craft seriously. Yet he also, I believe, understands that, hey, it's just a movie. But since it is a movie, why not make of it every glorious thing we can?

Youth, from Fox Searchlight Pictures, while continuing its run in New York and Los Angeles, opens around the country Friday, December 25 (what a Christmas present for film-goers!), Here in Southern Florida it will play in West Palm Beach, Naples, Delray Beach, Hollywood, Miami and Fort Lauderdale.  Click here then enter your location to find a nearby playdate.

The best-yet from Andrew Haigh, 45 YEARS gives Rampling and Courtenay plum roles

What a career so far has had British writer/director Andrew Haigh. Though TrustMovies has not seen his first film, Greek Pete, his second (Weekend) and third, the just-opening 45 YEARS -- with two seasons of the fine HBO series, Looking, boxed between -- is more than enough to place this fellow among the top tier of filmmakers who understand how to probe relationships and their place within the society around them. Haigh (shown below) will probably never make an Avengers blockbuster, but for those of us who want intimate, honest and revealing on our menu, he is not only the chef du jour but very likely de la vie.

Haigh really is a writer. His dialog sparkles, not so much with Wilde-ian or Coward-like bon mots, but with a reality that grounds everything and even, sometimes, does indeed sparkle with wit and charm. Mostly though, it reflects so very well the character of the speaker that we come to understand as fully as possible the person we're watching and with whom we're empathizing. This is no small potatoes. For those of us who want to enter the lives of others as fully as possible, in fact, his work proves about as fulfilling as it gets. If he is no great visual artist as yet, it seems to be that with each new project, he grows quietly and slowly in this regard, as well.

45 Years is his most fully realized work yet, even if Looking, with its series approach, allowed him to probe at greater length. In this latest work, he's cast two superb actors, Charlotte Rampling (above) and Tom Courtenay (below), playing long-time mates who, one typical and pleasant morning, get some news that sets in motion all kinds of unearthings and repercussions.

The film is full of such understanding of how long-time marriages work, as well as how we can, even into the later years, be surprised by ourselves and our significant others, whom we seem never to know as fully as we might have imagined.

Here, as the couple and their closest friends prepare for a celebration of the pair's marriage (45, though not a major anniversary, is being celebrated due to a missed event some years previous), we and they learn things that might be better have been left unexplored. Once opened, however, the contents keep bubbling over.

Haigh allows us to get a fine sense of the couple's everyday activities, and, as we probe their inner lives, we discover more. Ms Rampling has seldom has the chance to explore a character this fully and exquisitely, and she rises to the challenge with every movement, expression and pore (I should think she'd be a shoo-in for Best Actress nomination.). Courtenay has the harder role because, being a man, his character has simply repressed so much for so long that the unearthing leaves him weak and spent, even as he barely comes to terms with it all.

The supporting cast is fine and effective, with Geraldine James (above) the standout as Rampling's best friend and sounding board. But it is Mr. Haigh to whom the lions' share of the praise must go. He has taken a short story (by David Constantine) and adapted it beautifully, then filmed the result with the help of his fine cast so that we enter these lives about as fully and believably as possible, with nary a touch of melodrama.

The movie takes us to the brink, as does Ms Rampling, leaving us in a state of breathless agitation and near wonder. It will leave intelligent audiences talking amongst themselves, I suspect, about the finale and what it presages, as few other films have done this year.

45 Years, from Sundance Selects and IFC Films and running a precise and swift 95 minutes, plays New York City at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema; in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal.

Here in Southern Florida, the film will open January 22 in Miami at MDC’s Tower Theatre and the South Beach 18, and at the O Cinemas in Miami Beach. On January 29, look for it at the Cosford Cinema, Miami; in Broward at Cinema Paradiso, Hollywood, and The Classic Gateway 4; and in Palm Beach County at the  Living Room Theater and the Regal Shadowood 16, both in Boca Raton; at the Movies of Delray and the  Movies of Lake Worth.

On February 5, it hits  Key West's Tropic Cinema and Sarasota's Burns Court Cinemas. February 12 will see it open in Ft. Myers at the Regal Bell Tower 20; in Naples at the Regal Hollywood Stadium 20, Silverspot; and in Benita Springs at the Prado. On  February 26, it comes to Orlando's Enzian theatre.