Environmental pollution vs neighborhoods of color in Alexander John Glustrom's dire doc, MOSSVILLE: When Great Trees Fall

Right off the bat, we meet a local undertaker who informs us, "Mossville is a small community. But a lot of people do die." Gosh: You think there might be a problem here? More like a mini-apocalypse. Mossville, the very-nearly late and lamented town, as well as MOSSVILLE: When Great Trees Fall, the documentary that tells the town's terrible story, slap you in the kisser with the connection between deliberate environmental pollution and the destruction of not merely individuals but entire communities -- most readily those inhabited by minorities and the poor.

There's nothing subtle about the message or the style here. As directed by Alexander John Glustrom, the film may be about as awful and depressing as any you've seen regarding this growing problem worldwide.  The documentary also seems rather hit-or-miss as to what it has the time and budget to cover. Yet even this somehow works to the film's advantage, as it manages to include what's most important, while doing this in a 75-minute time frame.

In that short period, Mr. Glustrom gives us a history of the town (it began just post-slavery, as seven families joined forces to begin the community, and it had prospered ever since -- until large industry came in and began its destruction).

The latest industry to creep in has been SASOL (a South African-based firm that stands for South African Synthetic Oil Liquid), which we see at work both here, building its new Louisiana plant, and at home, where it began during Apartheid and has continued suppressing South African blacks ever since. (We even see Louisiana's ex-governor Bobby Jindal making his sell-out speech regarding SASOL.)

The man the movie concentrates on most fully is also one of Mossville's last residents: Stacey Ryan (above), a husband and father whose refusal to leave Mossville, where he was born and raised, has resulted in his increasing ill health and living apart from his family. We watch as Stacey must provide his own heat, gas and water -- as all utilities no longer reach his home, thanks to SASOL and the local government.

The final indignity comes when the company tries to prevent him from even driving up to and/or leaving his place of residence. They cannot do this legally, however, so for once Stacey wins the day. The photo above shows his tiny piece of land and home surrounded by a fence he has built; below, we see SASOL's encroachment upon that land.

As the documentary moves inexorably along, you'll probably find yourself alternately sad and/or seething, over and over again. Put yourself in Mr. Ryan's shoes, and you'll feel the kind of torture that leads to a slow, agonizing death. The film makes its necessary point about how environmental pollution and human rights abuses are linked due to the kind of corporate power and sleazy politicians that see lives  -- particularly these kinds of lives -- as utterly expendable.

By the way, the would-be "buy-outs" SASOL offers Mossville residents are shown to be so paltry that they do not allow those residents to move into decent accommodation elsewhere. When, toward movie's end, Ryan prays to his parents, long dead from cancer like so many other Mossville folk, "Daddy, mommy: Give me strength," and then, "Dear Lord, just give me enough time to see my baby raised, then I can go see my parents," you will be ready to plead with the man to toss in the towel. And hope that someone has the courage and smarts to get SASOL off the face of the earth.

Technical aspects are all they need to be, with the music of Carlos José Alvarez properly beautiful, solemn and dirge-like. From Passion River, the documentary opened in virtual theaters this past weekend in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.

Fred Peabody's THE CORPORATE COUP D'ÉTAT makes home video debut on DVD and VOD

If only the noted documentary filmmaker Fred Peabody had stuck more closely to his titular theme of THE CORPORATE COUP D'ÉTAT, this 2018 documentary might have been a more important contribution to the field. As it is, the film mostly tells us what we've already known from countless other docs and/or from simply paying attention to the news: that corporate power has taken control of the political process in the USA (and, for that mater, throughout much of the rest of the world).

Mr. Peabody, shown at left, begins with an interview with philosopher John Ralston Saul (shown at bottom of post) who first warned us of this takeover a quarter century ago.

From there we move to historians, economists and current journalists such as Lee Fang and Matt Taibbi who are trying to keep us abreast of the continuing sellout of our government to corporations and their lobbyists.

Watching Mr. Fang follow one of those politicians down a hall and around corners, trying his best to get her to answer even a single simple question is to experience such frustration and anger that you may come close to having your very own mini-explosion. (That's writer/activist Maude Barlow, below)

The documentary's biggest problem crops up when it gets to the subject of Donald Trump. Granted, that's when practically any and every problem -- country-wise, climate-wise, economy-wise, you name it -- crops up. And while uber-twat Trump would indeed seem the expected outcome of greed and inequality on a scale not seen since the Gilded Age, do we really need to spend so much time having those who voted for this congenital liar explain why they did so? We've read and/or heard all this before, and it seems less germane here than sticking to the original subject would have been .

On the plus side, journalist/activist Chris Hedges  (above, left) and philosopher/activist Cornell West (not shown) both seem more toned down but as intelligent as ever. Hedges takes us to what are called "sacrifice zones" -- places such as Camden, New Jersey, that capitalism has destroyed for profit -- and the view is appalling.

We meet an angry, well-spoken homeless woman (above) who fills us in on hers and her husband's history, view snippets of the 1976 Chayefsky/Lumet movie, Network (also corporation-prescient), and hear Mr West opine that "We're a prisoner of hope," even as he explains that "There's a Donald Trump inside every American. But I also hope and pray that there's a Martin Luther King inside them, too." Amen to that.

Even if half of this documentary seems too far off-subject, what's there is still plenty interesting. And it'll leave you feeling that investigative journalists like Lee Fang are major assets to our crumbling democracy. From First Run Features and lasting just 90 minutes, The Corporate Coup d'État hits the street on DVD and VOD this coming Tuesday, November 12 -- for purchase and (I hope) rental.

DVDebut for Ivan Sen's modern-day, Australian-outback, slow-burn western, GOLDSTONE

The award-laden (in Australia, at least) Australian movie GOLDSTONE harks back to those American westerns (with a sizeable helping of film noir tropes added to the mix) in which an outsider appears in town to investigate what looks like a simple problem that soon opens up into an entire web of corruption and sleaze. So, yes, we've seen this before. (Bad Day at Black Rock, anyone?). The difference in Ivan Sen's movie resides in the compellingly bleak-but-beautiful outback vistas that amaze the eye, and in the two lead performances, especially that of Aaron Pedersen in the role of the mixed-race detective who comes to "town" (we use that word loosely) to investigate.

Mr. Pedersen (above), who was so frighteningly fine as one of the two crazy murderers in last year's best couple-in-jeopardy survival movie, Killing Ground, is even better here as the taciturn fellow who just wants to do his job. The actor is especially good at allowing us to imagine all that roils beneath his quiet-but-deep surface.

His co-star is the younger actor Alex Russell, above, who plays the town's one lone cop, a man in the process of slowly being corrupted by the powers-that-be -- both corporate and political --

played respectively by David Wenham (above, right) and Jacki Weaver (left, getting a piggy-back ride). Few actors do buttoned-down sleaze better than Mr. Wenham, while Ms Weaver is always a delight, especially when she is being sweetly vicious, as here (and in Animal Kingdom).

De rigueur these days is a nod to sex trafficking, here via a bevy of beautiful Asian girls like the one played by Michelle Lim Davidson, above), whom one of our heroes decides he must help.

Also often seen in Aussie films is that sub-plot about native Aboriginal lands being stolen by the sadly winning combination of corporate power and local politics. That surfaces here via two characters: an old man named Jimmy (David Gulpilil, above) who appears to be a kind if spiritual leader to the particular group of Aboriginals and another named Tommy, played by Tommy Lewis (aka Tom E. Lewis), shown below,

who has renounced his tribe to go to work for the opposite side. Both actors -- probably the most seen of all Aborigine performers -- hold a special place in Australian film. Lewis, who died earlier this year, made his movie debut in that classic (and still hugely powerful) The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), while Gulpilil made his in Nicolas Roeg's famous Walkabout (1971). Both have worked steadily ever since, and their contribution to Goldstone, in terms of performances and the movie's underlying theme of the destruction of Aboriginal land and culture add to the undeniable gravity here.

Goldstone opens with a montage of archival photos showing, among other fascinating shots, Australia's use of slave labor via the Chinese and the Aboriginals. What follows brings all this up to date in a tale that offers its own depressing plus ça change effect.

For all its weight and slow-burn build to an exciting climax, the movie will seem to many older viewers not all that original. We've seen its like before, many times over.

And yet writer, director, editor, composer and cinematographer (whew!) Ivan Sen (shown at right) still manages to make most of it seem reasonably fresh and consistently compelling. He draws fine performances from his cast -- and a super one from Pedersen -- leaving us, once again and forever, it seems, watching the "haves" slowly, quietly and very effectively destroy the "have-nots."

From Lightyear Entertainment and running 110 minutes, the movie, after finding a limited theatrical release this past March, hits DVD this coming Tuesday, September 11, via MVD Entertainment -- for purchase and (I hope) rental.

Note to Lightyear and MVD: Please invest in the English subtitles options for any future release that sports thick Aussie accents. We missed probably one-quarter of the dialog, thanks to this omission.

Netflix streaming tip: OKJA is yet another amazing blockbuster from Bong Joon-ho

Is there anyone else in the movie world making such intelligent, suprising and entertaining blockbusters as that South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho? I don't think so. He is indeed the new Spielberg but also something quite "more." After his Snowpiercer (from 2014), he has now gifted us with OKJA, the new sci-fi/fantasy/(sort-of)monster movie that features as its leading character a stalwart adolescent girl up against a corporate world that controls us all these days. Really: I can't think of another moviemaker (Mr. Bong is shown below) who could begin a film as though it were a child-and-her-adorable-giant-animal movie and then, by its end, give us one of the most memorable, moving, surprising and disturbing scenes to ever grace the screen (and I mean any kind of screen, not simply the "theatrical" variety).

That scene, by the way, may make the movie a more difficult experience for kids -- even though they'll love and appreciate most of the film.

And yet, because Bong is such a smart and gifted filmmaker (Mother, Memories of Murder, The Host), he is able to simultaneously give us the "happy ending" that those kids (and, come on, us adults, too) so want, while forcing his audience to view the larger picture -- in a manner so stunning and wrenching that it will seem like nothing you've encountered previously.

For thie alone, Okja deserves, and will undoubtedly receive, its placement on many of the year's "best" lists. (In fact, Variety has already picked it as one of the top movies of the year at our current halfway point.)

The film's story -- no spoilers here -- is all about a girl and her pet pig. That the pig is one of many genetically modified porkers and has grown to "monster" size has been no problem, since the girl, her grandfather and their pig live way the hell out in the countryside where they see (and are seen by) nobody else.

In the supporting cast are the likes of Paul Dano (above) and Jake Gyllenhaal (below), but the movie belongs to the Korean actress Ahn Seo-hyun, as the girl, Mija, and to the special effects department that created Okja and her giant breed. She and they are wonders indeed.

The drama arrives when the corporate entity (personified by the gifted and funny Tilda Swinton) that owns the pig takes it away from the girl to become the mascot for a new line of "pork products." Will our heroine allow this to happen? Not on your strip of breakfast bacon. So our filmmaker orchestrates everything from top-notch chase scenes to a pig-in-the-china-shop spree in a Seoul mall, from a marketing parade in Manhattan to a scary scene in one of those experimental laboratories.

But Bong is simply smarter than almost all the other would-be-blockbuster moviemakers. He always sees both sides of the situation, and so continuallly surprises and unsettles us. He understands that the power of money and greed can work both ways, that corporations can make themselves rich while feeding the planet, and that animal activists who want to harm neither animals nor humans will occasionally do both. He also understands the impulse not to kill other life forms we come to care for, and this, finally, is what sets up the film's biggest conflict.

So, sure, children will find more on their plate than movies like this usually provide. But give them the chance to view and handle it, and I suspect they'll remember this film for a long, long time. Stick with it, and you will, too. Opening a only a few theaters (in New York City at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Monica Film Center), the film will find its biggest international audience via Netflix streaming, where it is now playing.

Best Foreign Language Film front runner, TONI ERDMANN, opens on Florida screens -- plus a word about this category's other nominees

So much has already been written -- much of it quite compelling -- about Maren Ade's latest, most ambitious and successful work, TONI ERDMANN, that TrustMovies will keep his coverage relatively succinct. For those of us who were blown quietly away by Ms Ade's first full-length film, The Forest for the Trees, and then found ourselves even more impressed by her second one, Everyone Else, her new achievement will not be seen as all that surprising.

We would have given this unique filmmaker placement in Variety's annual 10 Directors to Watch with the advent of her first film back in 2003, rather than only this year, with the success of her newest film. But then, that famous show-biz bible is not particularly known for its predictive abilities. (Better to wait until a director has garnered immense praise and won a bunch of awards before taking a chance on her.)

Ms Ade, shown at right with what will probably be the most talked about "costume" of the new millennium, has made a movie that many people are calling a comedy. Indeed, there are some wonderful, even amazing, laughs to be had during this long but increasingly meaningful and attention-grabbing film. Yet it takes perhaps a full hour before the comedy aspect of Toni Erdmann thoroughly sets in.

Even then, the immense drama that has built up between a father and daughter in their struggle to come to terms with each other, with their relationship and with their respective understandings of what it means to "do the right thing" -- this is what keeps the movie growing and churning with life and surprise.

The comedy, hilarious as it is, seems almost incidental. This has been true of all three of Ade's films. In The Forest for the Trees, we initially chuckle at the main character's attempt to "fit in" to the world; by the finale we're knocked for a loop by what all this leads to. Everyone Else has us alternately laughing and wincing at the hypocrisy of its characters, yet we never once lose contact with their humanity, strengths and weaknesses.

Toni Erdmann hands us the increasingly oft-told tale of a society in which appearance is all, soulless corporations rule, and the fight of one man against the many can make real change. And yet, as old-hat and obvious as this may sound, Ade's great skills at both writing and directing turns her tale into a rich and wondrous concoction, the likes of which you will not have previously seen.

She breathes new life into everything from the requisite sex scene (a humdinger, and for all sorts of reasons you won't expect: Petit-Fours, anyone?) to the lets-all-get-nude scene (an utter delight) to the moment in which our heroine is suddenly coaxed into singing a song and turns the scene into something special in, again, ways you just won't expect.

The two lead performances are award-worthy all on their own: Sandra Hüller (above) as that corporate-striving daughter and Peter Simonischek (below, left) as her crazy-like-a-fox dad, whose bizarre methods have their own wonderful logic and lead finally to making this film one of the most joyous and surprising adventures in growth and change that you will have seen for... well, a very long while.

After opening in December in New York and Los Angeles, Toni Erdmann -- from Sony Pictures Classics, in German with English subtitles and running two hours and 42 minutes -- will soon be seen around the entire country. Here in South Florida it opened last weekend at the Tower Theater, Miami, and will open this Friday, February 10, in Boca Raton at both the Living Room Theaters and the Regal Shadowood. To find the city and theater nearest you, simply click here and scroll down.

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Even though Toni Erdmann has become the darling of the critical set (myself included, unlike my mixed feelings about that other critical darling La La Land), I must admit to being a tad surprised that the film made it, not just to the Oscar shortlist, but to becoming an actual nominee for BFLF. I'd vote for it, for sure, but it seems to me to demand -- via its considerable length and unusual "indirection" (its genre-jumping tendencies) -- too much of the usual Academy voter, who might prefer a movie such as The Salesman, which I also loved and which is far easier to follow along with and understand.

That a film such as A Man Called Ove has been included among the nominees points to the Academy's ever-continuing love of the feel-good and obvious. If Ove should win, it will set back the BFLF category by a good decade or more. I have not yet seen either Land of Mine or Tanna, so cannot comment on their worthiness -- except to say that, of late, the Academy seems to include a war-themed film (last year's A War) and an "indigenous/primitive people" movie (last year's Embrace of the Serpent), so, yes, they're doing it again this time.

Big Business Back When: Rod Serling and Fielder Cook's PATTERNS comes to Blu-ray

While screen- and television-writer Rod Serling, below, was best-known for creating and writing the TV series The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, his best work may very well have been the script he wrote for the 1955 "live" television special aired on the Kraft Television Theater and the following year was made into a motion picture (yes, they used to do that sort of thing), both of which were titled PATTERNS. The movie version -- which makes its Blu-ray debut this week -- is now 60 years old. It holds up astonishingly well.

Featuring not a trace of Serling's now hallmark creepy/other-worldly plots and tone, Patterns is a tale of big business and Capitalism in the middle of the last century, as it appears to move from something benign and reasonable into the beginnings of the kind of dog-eat-dog free-for-all exemplified by today's Big Pharma, Monsanto, and Donald Trump.

This is a myth, of course. Big business and Capitalism have always been dog-eat-dog. It just depended on who was running the particular show. In this tale, the man who owns and runs the company, Mr. Ramsey (played by Everett Sloane, shown standing at left, below, and at left again, three photos down), is nothing like the kindlier, gentler man who was his father, a fellow who knew and cared about his employees.

Ramsey fils is cut-throat and he expects his underlings to be so, too -- including his newest hire, Staples (no relation to the current office behemoth), played by Van Heflin., below, left.

The pivotal character here, however, is an older man, Briggs (the superb Ed Begley, above, right: Watch him in the scene in which he crushes the eggshell), a man left over from the father's regime, who tries to keep the company on its former course. Ramsey is determined to rid the firm of Briggs, while Staples attempts to prevent this.

The supporting distaff side is performed very well by Beatrice Straight (as Mrs.Staples, above, right) and Elizabeth Wilson, below, left, as Briggs' and then Staples' kindly secretary. Other familiar faces (Andrew Duggan, for one, shown left, two photos below) fill out the rest of the able cast. Serling's writing is first-rate -- smart, real and avoiding the melodramatic, even when voices are at their highest decibel level. When one character tells another by way of a compliment -- "You admit mistakes. You don't pass the buck" -- one can only marvel at how far down we've come that so many Americans now believe in a man like Mr. Trump who is unable to ever admit a mistake and always passes the buck. (Note his recent handling of his Obama "birther" nonsense: Refusing to admit he was wrong, he now blames it all on Hillary's 2012 campaign.)

Serling's writing, the direction by Fielder Cook and all the performances are simply terrific -- moment to moment gold from everyone on screen. The Blu-ray transfer here is also very good, the best I've seen so far from The Film Detective. The movie also reminds us -- unconsciously, of course -- of the place of women in our society back in the mid-20th Century. Even so, it also takes us back to a time when people -- employees -- still mattered. And when decent employment was available for so many. (Except, of course, people of color. We don't see a whole lot of them here.)

The movie's final scene is simply dynamite, as Ramsey and Staples face off. The outcome must have seemed amazing in its own era. In fact, it still is. If you've never seen Patterns, now's the time. And if you have, back in its day, you'll probably want to take a look again. From The Film Detective and running just 83 minutes, the Blu-ray arrives this coming Tuesday, September 27, for purchase, and I hope (somewhere, somehow), rental.

The media, power & justice: Docfactory/Jean-Philippe Tremblay's SHADOWS OF LIBERTY

SHADOWS OF LIBERTY, the 2012 documentary credited to DOCFACTORY and Jean-Philippe Tremblay (shown below), begins with a barrage of statements against our current U.S. media with no identification of any of the speakers. This is off-putting, but hang on: Post the opening-credits sequence, identification begins, and those speakers are an impressive lot. Ditto what they have to say -- all of which centers around the manner in which our mainstream media, whenever the corporate power that owns it is wielded, consistently works against transparency and truth.

We see this via a number of instances in which corporate power trumps the news. Roberta Baskin looks back on how CBS News covered (and then didn't) the NIKE employee abuse story. As an example of one of the "black holes" of journalism, we peruse again, via Kristina Borjesson, the infamous TWA flight 800 plane explosion, along with the cover-up that followed. This remains one of the sleaziest chapters in a history chock full of them.

We get some other good history, too: How, during the 1930s, the idea of for-profit took over the airways, leading to the more than 236 billion dollars per year that the media currently (or at least back in 2012, when this doc was made) brings in via advertising. Which, in turn, is why between 40 and 70 percent of what is considered "news" today comes not from actual reporting but from the work of corporate public relations.

We revisit one of the saddest chapters in American journalism history with Gary Webb and his story of how the CIA and the Contras helped sponsor America's crack cocaine "epidemic." (See Kill the Messenger, if you haven't already.) We hear about the Telecom Act and then the mergers -- one after another after another -- that followed this further encroachment on media accountability and responsibility. And then, of course, there was 9/11 and the lies (hugely bolstered by most of our media) that took us into Iraq and the resulting forever-quagmire.

Whistle-blowing? Oh, yes. Here's the tale of Sibel Edmonds and how she uncovered the Marc Grossman conversations with the Turks involving nuclear secrets, and was then fired for her trouble. And finally we have NBC's wondrous would-be "reality" series, To Catch a Predator -- surely some kind of nadir in the annals of television. (Oh  please: There are now so many that we've quite understandably lost count.)

For those of us who follow media, none of this will be news. But taken together, as it is here, what emerges is enough to maker an intelligent viewer despair at the state of our nation's journalism. (See Spotlight to have a modicum of that faith restored.) One might wish for more current events from this movie, but then again, it was made back in 2012 and researched a good deal prior to then. And almost everything we see and hear in the documentary remains as true and still as "under-reported" today as it was at the time it was"news,"

Two statements from this documentary remain particularly timely and important: "Our country was founded on the idea that if you give citizens the information they need, they can govern themselves." And "If we want the U.S. media to be better, we have to fight for this."  Amen.

From Bullfrog Films and distributed by Icarus Films, Shadows of Liberty comes with two versions on one disc: the theatrical version running 93 minutes and a shorter "classroom" version running just 53 minutes.