Business saves the planet in Mark van Wijk and Pedram Shojai's documentary, PROSPERITY...

...and not just any Capitalistic business. Oh, no: It's "conscious business," rather than the unconscious variety we're evidently more used to, that is going to do the trick here. If TrustMovies sounds a tad unconvinced, this is only because it seems a little late in the game to be offering up -- as does the new documentary PROSPERITY -- a very small-potato/band-aid solution to something so major, even as climate change and warming/rising oceans flood entire islands and shorelines and cause hurricanes to hit more often and more strongly. But, hey: Every little bit counts. Or does it?

It does indeed, according to director Mark van Wijk (shown at right) and his subject/narrator Pedram Shojai (below) who together travel some of the globe to interview examples of this new-ish business trend and explain how Conscious Capitalism/Business works, while in the process helping just about everyone. It is indeed encouraging to see and hear some of these business "leaders" explain what they're doing and why: among them, Paulette Cole, a lady who owns ABC Carpet and Home; Naomi Whittel, whose cocoa business out of

Panama is also going great guns; and Thrive Market, which brings healthy organic food to America's heartland at a reasonable price. Unfortunately, among other businesses included here is Whole Foods, the main purpose of which, other than making very rich its owner, has been to provide the elite with food to eat (together with the ability to feel so good about their going organic) and has by now been involved in enough scandals to disqualify its inclusion. The recent sale of Whole Foods to Amazon immediately lowered many of the prices, but against Amazon's increasing monopoly on business worldwide, I am not sure whether all this will play in any kind long-term positive fashion. Of course, neither am I sure that our planet itself will play out in any long-term positive fashion.

The movie grows more interesting when it deals with a company like The Container Store that appears to be dedicated to its employees, who in turn seem very dedicated to their clients, us consumers. You can still make money, some of these business owners assure us. Profit will be there, but it will simply be a smaller one. Of course, that's anathema to many Capitalists.

Things grow even more interesting when we arrive at The Stakeholder Theory vs The Shareholder version. Sustainable investing -- and how to democratize this  -- comes into play, as well, and we even learn about banks that have a conscience!

The documentary ends with a section on how to act regarding all this and what, specifically, we, as individuals, can do. Shops more wisely, support businesses that give back to society, you know the routine.  Many of us have been doing this for years, so perhaps we can be forgiven for not noticing much change -- except for the worse.

Still the movie is beautifully filmed, and it is always encouraging to note even a dent being made in plastic recycling/reduction (toward the end of the film, no less than Proctor & Gamble gets involved with the native Panama community). In my estimation, individuals can help, but for all this to actually "take off," one might think a good push from government would be in order. Good luck with that.

Prosperity, from Well.org, and running 84 minutes, hits theaters (the IFC Center in New York City and Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in Los Angeles)  According to the distributor, the film will also be available via via well.org's Global Online Free Screening as of October 5, 2017.

Colorful animation about crayons for kids: Frank Gladstone's THE HERO OF COLOR CITY

OK: It's not Pixar. Not even Dreamworks. And forget about the enchanting, mysterious likes of Laika (Coraline, ParaNorman, and the just-out Boxtrolls). No. The new animated movie titled THE HERO OF COLOR CITY is something of a throwback to the simpler days of telling a small story with relative efficiency and simple but hugely colorful animation, using some OK-and-famous voice talent and rolling out a movie that should please undemanding parents and kids. Once, that is, they get past the pretty awful beginning scene in which the crayons come to life and spout some really third-rate dialog. Yikes!

The screenplay is credited to five writers but only one director, so I'll mention him: Frank Gladstone (pictured left), who has done a serviceable job of, well, I guess, putting it all together. The story begins with a young boy involved in his drawing, until it's bedtime and his mom insists he go to sleep -- after which his crayons come to life and head off down a magic chute to a place called Color City. Once there, the movie grow more colorful and things begin to percolate. A minimal plot takes hold and the "character" of various crayons appear. These are more or less based on their colors. Yellow is always scared, red is red hot, white wants to be used more in place of always remaining as background, while black is tired of constantly always being used to make the "outline." You get the picture.

Except that some of these colors/characters seem utterly arbitrary (green and blue, for instance), so it would appear that not a lot of thought went into this screenplay. I took our two grandkids -- age six and nine -- to the press screening, and both enjoyed the film. At 77 minutes, it's just short enough to make the cut, and because the movie does get better as it moves along, it's a tolerable watch.

Of the voices, Christina Ricci's in the lead role of Yellow (above) comes off best. She's got ample screen time and makes the most of her frightened character's learning how to face things and "brave up."

Every children's movie needs an antagonist that the protagonist can bounce off, and Hero of Color City has a pretty good one (a pair, actually) in the drawing of a king and his small sidekick (shown left and center, above) that our sleeping child from the film's beginning has made. When this pair comes to life and chases the crayons onto their home turf, there's a big misunderstanding regarding who this "monster" and his pal really are and what they want.

What the movie does best is toss color at us: everything from full-out primaries to day-glos and more. Especially lovely are the scenes of the multi-colored sea (above). Since part of the plot has to do with colors draining out and disappearing, we lose some of this fun along the way. But never fear: It all comes back again in the end.

This film may even have a larger purpose: As the end credits roll, we're told that kids can now recycle their crayons and give less fortunate children the chance to make use of them (at least I think that's what's being said), along with a web address that offers more information.

The Hero of Color City, the rare animated movie from Magnolia Pictures, opens tomorrow, Friday, October 3, all across the country. Here in New York City, although the film was advertised in this past Sunday's NY Times as opening at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema, turns out it will play instead at the AMC Empire 25. You can see a listing of all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters by clicking here and scrolling down.

Mai Iskander's GARBAGE DREAMS high- lights Egypt's Coptic Christian trash trade

Trash (and what to do with it), like other forms of pollution -- not to mention global warming -- is set to become one of the world's more talked-about subjects in the years ahead of us, so GARBAGE DREAMS, the new documentary by Mai Iskander (shown below, with a certain ought-to-have-been-
President), is nothing if not timely. Her film covers the Zaballeen (which, we are told, is the Arabic translation for "garbage people"), a Coptic Christian community on the outskirts of Cairo that occupies the world's largest "garbage village." Sounds enticing, no?

More varied and interesting than it might first appear, Iskander's documentary actually tracks a recent time when this community, a staple of Cairo garbage-collecting for a century, is threatened with extinction because of Egypt's sudden importation of foreign workers and companies to handle the collection. The Zaballeen have made a "go" of their business and their lives due to their very early use of recycling methods, but now these seem not to matter to the powers-that-be (for whom modern methods and cheap labor are more important). Consequently, everyone is scrambling to survive.

The film centers, more or less, on three Zaballeen boys in their late teens -- Adham, Nabil and Osama -- and on Laila, a kind of social worker/ teacher in the community. Adham (pictured at left on the poster, top), the most business-attuned of the three boys, has a dad who is in prison for illegally construc- ting an apartment for his son so that he can marry (local tradition insists on the groom's having his own digs, pre-nup); Nabil (pictured at right on the poster, top), more family-oriented, is in a similar situation, not being able to afford an apartment prior to marriage; Osama (pictured at right), on the other hand, may have some developmental problems: He can't seem to hold down a job and his priorities appear a little "off." Laila, meanwhile (she's shown standing, center, below), is always present: helping, advising, and providing an ear to listen and a (symbolic) shoulder to lean on.

Iskander's documentary weaves in and out of these lives -- at one point, going into Cairo to talk with the apartment dwellers whose trash is being collected; at another joining two of the boys on a trip to Wales to learn about recycling techniques. Though there is a bit of narration, and a number of facts/situations presented, certain things are simply not addressed. Since it is the government -- of Cairo? of Egypt? -- that has created the problems by hiring the foreigners without so much as even warning the Zaballeen, one would imagine an interviews with some government officials to see how to improve things. Perhaps because Egypt is not a western democracy, this is not possible. But it would have helped -- if not the situation, at least our understanding of how it might be resolved -- had something about this been explained or addressed. (Are Coptic Christians perhaps relegated to second-class citizenship in a Arab/Muslim state?)

By the end of the film, which pretty consistently holds your attention and is -- god knows -- exotic in its steeping us in the life of a village of garbage, I was confused about what was actually happening, or what might still happen -- and why. While Garbage Dreams had its world premier at the 2009 SXSW fest and has won a multitude of awards from smaller film festivals around the country, I won- der if this might be due more to its subject and locale than to its outright excellence as a documen- tary. It's interesting, but it leaves a few too many sub- jects not fully explored. Garbage Dreams opens Wednesday, January 6, at New York City's IFC Center.