L'INNOCENTE: Beautiful Blu-ray transfer highlights Luchino Visconti's final film

Said to have been filmed while its director was wheelchair-bound and making its debut at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival just two days before he died, L'INNOCENTE, the final movie from Luchino Visconti, arrives on Blu-ray in a lovely transfer that offers up quite an array of splendors that those of us who loved the filmmaker's work will certainly appreciate.

Gorgeous interiors, eye-popping in their sumptuous detail, compete with soulful performances from the three beautiful actors in leading roles, while lushly-shot, highly sensual sex scenes plus some full-frontal, male and female nudity keep the eyes from ever being tempted to look away from the Panavision-size screen.

With an intelligent screenplay by Visconti (shown at left) and two of his usual collaborator -- Suso Cecchi D'Amico and Enrico Medioli -- adapted from the novel by Gabriele D'Annuzio, the movie tackles some of this filmmaker's favorite themes, from love, trust, jealousy and betrayal to the entitlement of the elite and the uses/abuses of guilt.

The plot involves an atypically randy and straying husband (he's honest with his wife about his affairs), played by Giancarlo Giannini (below, at the height of his sexual attraction and prowess), his wife (Laura Antonelli, an Italian beauty also at the height of her own), and in an odd casting choice that pays off ten-fold, Jennifer O'Neill in the role of hubby's beautiful, wealthy, take-no-prisoners mistress.

When that wife (below) appears to have taken a lover of her own, the husband's world is turned upside down -- never more so than when said lover, after showering at the fencing club in which the husband is a member, steps out of the shower in front of that husband with his ample cock displayed, as if to ask, "Can you top this, buddy?" And, yes, for hubby, it's all downhill from there.

Tropical sickness, pregnancy, parentage and more enter into things but both Visconti and D'Annuzio are clearly more interested in the philosophical aspects of the story than they are in the sometimes heavily melodramatic events on view. This helps steady the movie from going overboard. As awful as circumstances get (do they ever!), Visconti's patience, cool calm and eye for beauty keep it all on course.

As fine as is each of the performances, however, the major surprise is Ms O'Neill (at left). This is by far the best performance TrustMovies has seen from this actress.

Yes, her Italian has been dubbed (and very well) but her keen intelligence, as well as an unusual power and strength, come through in fine fashion.

Perhaps this shows what a smart and talented filmmaker like Visconti could bring out of an actress, or maybe simply what the actress herself is capable of that no director/writer had yet tapped into near fully enough.

As usual, with the Blu-rays from Film Movement, bonus material is on the slim side, but there is a very nice video essay, Reframing L'Innocente by Ivo Blom that shows the amazing detail and research Visconti demanded regarding the film's sets, costumes and production design, as well as a 16-page booklet of photos and an essay from author Dan Callahan.

From Film Movement Classics, in Italian with English subtitles and running 129 minutes, L'Innocente hit the street last week -- on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital -- for purchase and/or rental.

April's Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman: MY BRILLIANT FRIEND -- a quiet tale of violence

The following post is written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman

This heart-full Italian series, co-produced by HBO, is so absorbing that the woes of present-day pandemic drift imperceptibly down the grimy byways of poor suburban mid-century Italy on breath of air. Based on much-loved and admired novels by pseudonymous writer, Elena Ferrante, the story explores the challenging, adoring, quietly violent bond between two girls, Lila and Elena (Lenu), whose lives are yoked to a neighborhood of drab low-rises outside Naples. Series one begins in childhood and lasts through adolescence; their young adult relationship unfolds in the second, episodes dropping Monday evenings, now more than half concluded.

In the opener we glimpse storyteller Lenu, age 60, tapping out the story on an Apple computer. Tinged with bitterness, her tale paints pictures of dominance, machismo, submission, self-abnegation that will unfold in four series — one per novel.

The set (left) is described as one of the largest in Europe, an entire neighborhood recreated including apartments, shops, dusty streets and island vistas (Ischia, below) described in the novels.

The sets and locales are magnets for tourists, creating a boom not unlike what ‘Outlander’ inspired in Scotland. The difference is that “My Brilliant Friend” is true literary and film beauty; ‘Outlander’, despite its Jacobite history attracting genuine interest in Scotland’s clan past and wars with the English, does not climb out of the paperback fantasy/romance genre.

‘Brilliant’s’ director, 43 year old Saverio Costanzo, manages to burn into your mind the waste inherent in post-WWll poverty, emotional and physical violence nurtured in a small neighborhood governed by petty extortion and the secrets everyone knows. (Below, Costanzo, center left, above young Elena, “Lenu” with her parents, far l, siblings, and crew members.)

Costanzo is quoted in the Guardian: “It’s a story that somehow belongs to everyone. I found myself…in Elena’s and Lila’s shoes. It’s like a mirror...a kind of miracle that happens very rarely…..”. Michelle Obama is an admirer; Hillary Clinton is quoted: “...hypnotic... I could not stop reading or stop thinking about it.”

Both girls are brilliant —differently. Lila is an instinctive philosopher and didact; she sponges up everything there is to know on all subjects, a strangely exceptional child for whom the very young actress, Ludovica Nasti, is a perfect fit. (Nasti, is like a giant...a genius… says Costanzo.) Lenu, played in childhood by Elisa del Genio, is smart but must work to achieve. When she does, she is number one, but her winning is the product of dogged effort not genius. In their poor household, Lenu’s mother, grudgingly, cruelly, goes along with her advancing in school at the urging of an empathic teacher (Dora Romano, below).

Lila’s father, the gnarly owner of a shoe repair shop, dismisses education beyond elementary school for his daughter; her defiance and his brutality are the outcomes. It is the dis-affirmation of her sharp little mind, her right to succeed using her intelligence, that undergirds Lila’s perpetual spite and later self-destructive life-choices. Later you hear her father’s cruelty in Lila’s young adult voice as she forewarns Lenu: Don’t listen — the witch inside me is talking. Lenu has been positioned as the submissive, like Lila’s brow-beaten mother.

It is hard to convey how engrossing the story of these two little girls becomes. You float through childhood with them, pushing boundaries, daring, competing, yet supporting each other, recalling your own neighborhood confrontations, games and escapes as you share in theirs, likely more violent than your own.

Then come the bully-cum-mobsters, the flirtations, the books, the rain deluges, the parental shoutings, the ignored violence (even killings) the street peddler’s calls, streets fogged with dust. They sit on a bench reading and reciting ‘Little Women’ to each other, the pages of their shared copy increasingly tattered. The genteel poverty of Alcott’s ‘Little Women’ was lovely beauty to these waifs in their homely world; Jo, the writer, is their goddess.

By the third episode, rightly called ‘the Metamorphoses’, the girls are adolescent, and Lenu (Margherita Mazzucco) is mortified by the blood between her legs — is she dying? The sharply-dressed Solara brothers (they look like light is ‘shining down on them’) flatter and cajole a shy girl into their new car. ‘Those guys don’t just kiss, they bite like mad dogs’, says Lila (Gaia Girace). Sure enough, the shy girl is dropped off bruised, devoured.

Lenu discovers the power her body has over boys, even with her acne-spotted face, and secretly savors Lila’s defiance. Suddenly the fights in the street aren’t the noise of adults swirling overhead, but involve themselves.

The girls’ relationship waxes and wanes. Lila resents Lenu’s being in school; she proves her superiority by teaching herself Latin and Greek in secret. At other times, Lila teaches Lenu how to analyze text, prodding her to improve, living through Lenu’s success. To Lenu, her life is flat without the dynamite of Lila.

Lila’s defiant marriage to the thuggish Stefano (Giovanni Amura, below) steps her up from poverty into comparative luxury and offers a new target for her anger. She provokes his repeated beatings (boasting they make her stronger) and more drama is injected into the girls’ friendship.

Lila buys Lenu her high school books — her mother weeps with gratitude — our first shred of sympathy for the desperately angry woman. Then, in the chapter called ‘Erasure’, Lila turns on her friend, mocking her cruelly, transferring her rage on to Lenu who is climbing out of the neighborhood milieu into a more socially-conscious one.

As the girls mature, Lila continues to sharpen her claws on Lenu, and we imagine their adult friendship uneasily. (Ferrante describes the feral Lila as acting with “a hiss, a dart, a lethal bite.”) Lenu pines for Nino, Francesco Serpico, (below); the married Lila gets between them.

Still we watch, our own youth and dashed dreams immersed in theirs as Lenu’s passivity and Lila’s betrayals mount up. The story-telling is so dreamily fine, the atmosphere so reminiscent of one’s own despite all its differences in time and place, it will transport you there from the view of deserted streets out your windows.

View the series trailer here.

Note: If you would like to see more about epidemics, superstition, masks, and handwashing, check out the following:
Downton Abbey, Season 2, episode 6 for the 1918 Spanish flu (PBS, passport; Amazon Prime).
Outlander, Season 3, episode 10 for a shipboard typhoid outbreak in the 1700’s (Starz, Netflix).
The Physician, lovely film with Ben Kingsley and Stellan Skarsgård, for a battle with the black death in 11th century Persia (Netflix).
Ken Follett’s World Without End episode 106 for arrival of the black death in 1341, in which ancient Persian texts are used to guide the treatment of the plague (Starz).

QUEEN OF HEARTS: Trine Dyrholm stars in Denmark's entry into the BFLF sweeps

If you'll recall, the QUEEN OF HEARTS -- at least in the famous Lewis Carroll tale which the three leading characters in this eponymously-named film take turns reading to a set of pretty young twins -- is perhaps most remembered for constantly shouting "Off with his head!" This is worth noting, since that romantic-sounding title might put you in mind of various rom-coms you've seen over the years. That this film, directed and co-written by May el-Toukhy (shown below), is Scandinavian, however, might re-direct you into darker territory.

And though we are not talking an Ingmar Bergman-level of serious filmmaking here, the movie is perhaps the darkest example of the lives of the Scandinavian haute bourgeoisie to be seen in quite some time. Queen of Hearts is Denmark's entry into the newly titled Best International Feature Film category (formerly called the Best Foreign Language Film), and as such would be expected to deliver some prestige goods. It does -- and then some.

TrustMovies would be pleased to see the film arrive on the Academy's shortlist of nine movies considered for this award, perhaps even rising to become one of the five nominees. Yet it is such an incredibly dark film that I rather think an embrace by the entire Academy may prove difficult.

Queen of Hearts deals with an older woman's affair with her husband's son from a former marriage, and if your mind, as did mine when I heard this plot hook, moved into Phaedra territory or that of any number of melodramatic movies made around this theme, think again. That the older woman is played by one of the Denmark's finest actresses, Trine Dyrholm (shown above and below, and recently seen here in Becoming Astrid and Nico, 1988), only makes the movie even more of a must-see, and Ms Dyrholm plays each moment to its max without ever overdoing.

There is a single unnecessary scene of tears -- that perhaps indicates some sort of repentance but comes across as too easy -- meant to humanize our non-heroine; otherwise the movie is spot-on emotionally and psychologically. It is at its finest at the very moment when other films would take that melodramatic/soap-operatic turn. Instead this one offers up a gut punch unlike any we've experienced.

The other two leading roles -- Magnus Krepper (above, left, as the husband/father and Gustav Lindh (below) as the son -- are equally fine, the former caring but distant, the latter caring and all too present. Likewise the supporting roles all add to the specificity and believability of the scenario.

I can't go into more of the plot maneuvering without giving away genuine spoilers. Suffice it to say that this unusual character study takes you places you have not been and may not care to go. Once you've made the trip, however, it'll burn itself onto your memory.

Distributed via Breaking Glass Pictures, in Danish and Swedish with English subtitles and running 123 minutes, Queen of Hearts opens theatrically this Friday, November 1 -- in New York City at the Cinema Village and in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Glendale. 

In Netflix's POINT BLANK, Joe Lynch has smartly remade the crackerjack French thriller

Back in 2011 we were extremely impressed with a little French thriller called Point Blank, directed and co-written by Fred Cavayé. Now Netflix is releasing a very-close-to-the-original remake of this film, again titled POINT BLANK, and I am happy to say that it is almost in every way a comparable feat.

Considering the 1967 John Boorman film of the same title (but leaving out the not-so-hot Mickey Rourke bomb from 1998), it would seem that Point Blank movies are very much worth seeing.

The new film, with a screenplay adapted from M. Cavayé's original by Adam G. Simon, has been directed by one of my favorite action directors, Joe Lynch (pictured at right), a fellow about whom -- given his achievement with Everly and Mayhem -- it might be safe to say that nobody has given us a more gleeful array of over-the-top violence and anarchic bedlam.

Mr. Lynch tones down the gleeful here, if not the violence, as the story involves a very pregnant woman held hostage and even knocked around a bit more that might seem righteous or bearable.

The movie begins with a bang (several: yes, gunshots), as a figure crashes through a window and runs away pursued by others. Who's bad and who's good will not shake out for some time yet, and so much happens in the first few minutes without our quite knowing exactly what, why or even how, that we must simply take it all in and trust that an explanation is on offer.

It is, and it leads to a lot more violence, surprise and fun as a male nurse (Anthony Mackie, above, right) taking care of that initial run-away man (Frank Grillo, above left), who's now in hospital, is forced to get that man out of the hospital and away from the police before his own pregnant wife comes to harm.

To tell much more of the plot would create spoilers, so I'll just say that along the way we meet a hard-boiled policewoman (Marcia Gay Harden, above, left) and a bunch of cops, not all of them as devoted to "protect and serve" as you might prefer. The movie's most emotional performance, and the one that finally grounds it to some kind of reality is given by Christian Cooke (below), as the frightened, angry and helpful/helpless brother of the Grillo character, caught between rescuing his bro and doing the right thing.

The other crack performance comes from a character we meet only late in the movie, though we've been hearing about him -- Big D -- for most of the film. As played the very scary, funny and surprising Markice Moore (shown at bottom), Big D turns out to be a not unsophisticated movie lover sporting a jones for the work of William Friedkin. Seems to TrustMovies that Big D and his scenes are where the movie differs most from Cavayé's original. This, and the fact that the French version offered, even later in the game, a bit more welcome surprise about the identity of the good guys and the bad.

Otherwise both films are absolute delights of their hostage-thriller genre, offering plenty of action, fun, and sure, violence, betrayal and other assorted naughtiness. Lynch's pacing, as ever, proves on the mark, and he gets good performances from his professional and well-chosen cast.

Streaming as of yesterday, July 12, on Netflix, Point Blank is certainly a shoo-in for action fans smart enough to follow and stick with a plot that has more in-and-outs/ups-and-down than the spoon-fed pablum we're usually offered, or the at-least-one-hour-too-long super-hero movies audiences still seem willing to sit through and discuss as though these were remotely intelligent or worth our nearly-end-of-times time.

Sex, family, betrayal, and very poor policing in Muayad Alayan's melodrama, THE REPORTS ON SARAH AND SALEEM

"Let not make this more than it is," snaps Israeli cafe owner Sarah to the Palestinian man, Saleem, who delivers her bread and is also fucking the daylights out of her, to their mutual satisfaction, in the new Palestine/ Germany/Netherlands co-production, THE REPORTS ON SARAH AND SALEEM. But what exactly is "this"? It's not Romeo and Juliet by a long shot, and in fact, it's not much more than any other typical sexual dalliance you'd encounter between consenting adulterers.

Ah, location, location, location -- right?  And because our adulterers are here, in the Israel/Palestine conundrum, the affair takes on all kinds of unwanted, unpleasant attachments that eventually involve each of the lovers' spouses, their children (one as yet unborn) and the "authorities" who control both locations.

The Palestinian filmmaker, Muayad Alayan (shown at left), working from a screenplay by his brother, Rami Musa Alayan, has concocted a very interesting, mostly engrossing situation (said to be based on fact) in which his two protagonists are neither very intelligent nor even particularly likable. In fact, the character we end up most rooting for is Saleem's wife. (Sarah's husband, a high-level policeman, turns out to be an asshole.)

What happens here, what the authorities "make" of the situation, and how this affects not only the title characters -- Saleem played by Adeeb Safadi, above, left, and below; Sarah by Sivane Kretchner, above, right, and at bottom -- but also their families and friends, turns a hot, sexual tryst into something impossibly severe and nasty.

As you might expect, the Israelis possess the lion's share of the power and use it to their own ends, while the the Palestinians do the same, with the lesser amount they have to muster garnering less results. None of it works well for the protagonists and finally begins to dirty those around them, too. (That's Maisa Abd Elhadi, below, as Saleen's wife.)

TrustMovies' problems with The Reports on Sarah and Saleem has less to do with the set-up, which is a fine one, than with its execution, which is given over too much to coincidence -- a child conveniently breaking some glass allows for an important escape-- and a little too much ignorance or stupidity on the part of everyone from Sarah and Saleem to the authorities on both sides of the fence. Those Israelis appear awfully slow on the uptake until, all of a sudden -- would they take that long to track some phone calls? -- they smarten up. (Ishai Golan, below, portrays Sarah's husband.)

The movie does give new, if actually untrue in this case, meaning to the idea that the personal is political. Well, not unless the powers-that-be want to make it so. Toward the conclusion the ironies grow a little heavy-handed and suddenly things descend into high melodrama and near camp before concluding on a note of feel-good female bonding. I had trouble buying into the latter half of the film, but you might manage it a bit better. On the technical side, all aspects -- from cinematography to set design to editing --  are impressive.

Released by DADA Films, running 127 minutes, in Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles (a little English is spoken now and again), the movie opens here in South Florida this Friday, July 12: in Miami at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, in Fort Lauderdale at the Classic Gateway 4, in Boca Raton at the Regal Shadowood and Living Room Theatres, and at the Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth. To view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and scroll down.

Blu-ray debut for MAZE, Stephen Burke's 1980s-set prison drama of the Irish "Troubles"

Garnering good reviews when it opened theatrically here in the USA this past March, the 2017 movie MAZE seems to have impressed most critics because of what is doesn't do -- giving us the usual "prison break," all-action razamatazz -- as much as for what it actually does, which is to offer a mostly quiet, reflective look at how this particular prison break, the largest in Europe since World War II, was planned and then executed.

As written and directed by Stephen Burke (shown at left), Maze (named for the now demolished British prison) is more much interested in the how and why of the break-out than in the actual thing itself, and -- for more demanding adult audiences, at least -- this pays off via depth of character and more believability that is usual in this genre of film

This is not to say that the prison break itself is not exciting. It most definitely is, and it is filled with the kind of you-are-there intensity, documentary-like camera work, and an absolute realism during which it seems like just about anything could happen -- which is pretty much what does, i.e.: the best laid plans, and all that.

Getting to this point is what takes up most of the movie, and while there are scenes of prisoner confrontation, with both the guards and other prisoners, the relationship that develops between one prisoner, who plans the break (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, above), and the guard he deliberately befriends (Barry Ward, below) is what provides the meat of the movie.

These prisoners planning the break, you see, are part of the Irish Republican Army -- the film takes place after the more famous "hunger strikes" that received world-wide attention at the time -- and so are doubly shunned by both the prison staff and by the British prisoners, all of which makes planning and then executing the escape all the more intriguing and difficult.

The movie looks at events that are now decades past with a kind of  "both sides now" approach that sees neither side as out-and-out villains -- even if, we must conclude, these Irishmen had legitimate grievances that were never properly addressed by the British. If only things could have been viewed more evenhandedly back in the day, peace might have come somewhat sooner. But then, legitimate grievances seldom are handled properly by the folk in power, are they?

The supporting cast is as up-to-snuff as the two leads, and technical aspects as fine, as well. The Blu-ray transfer provided by theatrical distributor Lightyear Entertainment is good, and the extras here include a director's commentary and a bonus short film -- titled 81 -- from Stephen Burke.

Distributed here in the USA via MVD Visual/MDV Entertainment Group and running just 93 minutes, Maze hit the street on DVD and Blu-ray earlier this week and is now available for purchase and (I hope) rental.

Kim Byung-Woo's TAKE POINT: action, betrayal and international naughtiness via South Korea

Don't get involved if you want to stay alive -- the moral of this new film would seem to be -- with either mercenaries nor the governments of the USA, China, North Korea or South Korea. That's what happens to the two heroes of TAKE POINT, written and directed by Kim Byung-Woo, an ever-so-lightly-political action/adventure thriller in which betrayal is epidemic.

It doesn't matter whose side you imagine you may be on, you're still as good as dead.

Our heroes here (one of them takes a rather long time revealing himself) are a South Korean mercenary, now-residing in America with his pregnant wife, nicknamed Ahab (played by Ha Jung-woo, above and on poster, top), and a North Korean doctor (played by Lee Sun-kyun, below) whose job is to tend to the well-being of North Korea's premier, known here as "King."

The two men refer to each other as "Northie" and "Southie"(or so the English subtitles would have it) and eventually, if slowly, begin to bond and grow to respect their opponent for very good reasons. Mr. Lee played the lead role in that crackerjack South Korean crime thriller A Hard Day, and he is every bit as good (with much less to do) in this new film. Mr. Ha -- a staple of more first-rate South Korean films than you can shake a stick at -- is hugely impressive all over again. (That's Jennifer Ehle, below, right, who plays Ahab's American operative.)

The movie itself is manufactured to within an inch of its life, and yet it moves fast enough and is so filled with exciting twists and turns that it should more than keep fans of action, assassination, politics, explosions, and mistrust more than satisfied. The plot has to do with the mercenaries' need to kidnap and keep alive the North Korean head-of-state, and much of the action is seen via visual monitors located all over the place (including different countries) that show only one side of the action. Consequently, it is rare for more than than even a few cast members to share the screen in any particular scene.

So much is always happening simultaneously -- our Southie has to save the life of the North Korean President via everything from CPR to a blood transfusion at the same time as he is directing his team of mercenaries how to get out of ever more dangerous situations -- that the viewer barely has a chance to draw a breath. This makes the movie move like gangbusters. On the down side, however, is the heavily accented English spoken by both our heroes, which is difficult enough to understand that you may wish for the English subtitles to translate, not just the Korean dialog, but the English portion, too.

Yes, the movie is in many ways beyond ridiculous, with the events we see requiring super-human strength, skill and smarts from (and luck for) our two heroes. But if you can so easily accept the sanitized silliness of the latest Mission Impossible nonsense (which, clearly, most of the world did), then Take Point should prove a cakewalk of unusually piquant delight for most action fans. And if the film's finale offers up a nice nod toward a possible united Korea, it's too bad the filmmaker could not have allowed the emphasis to remain on the two men at the closing moment, rather than only on our heroic "Southie."

The film opened this past Friday in California in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas, and will expand eastward across the country in the days to come. To find the theaters nearest you, click here and then click on Find a Theater and then just keep clicking on View More until you've exhausted either the list or yourself.