Lulu Wang's lovely family dramedy, THE FAREWELL, opens here in South Florida

Already lauded with near unanimous critical acclaim, coupled to positive audience ratings, THE FAREWELL, a new film from Lulu Wang, is all about a young Chinese-American woman and the family reunion in China that she has with her grandmother, who's just been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

If this sounds like a recipe for the maudlin "family" films we often get from television, do note that Ms Wang, pictured at left, has offered us a unique experience, during which a smile will rarely disappear from your face, nor a chuckle from your throat. The Farewell is a movie that gives that overused entertainment term "dramedy" a good name. Yes, it is moving -- but it is equally funny, charming and most of all surprising. And it ends with two quick scenes/moments -- the first on the streets of New York City, the second above a housing project in China -- that are so brilliant, so perfect, I hope they'll take your breath away, as they did mine.

The conflict in The Farewell has to do with whether or not to keep grandma's diagnosis a secret from her, letting her imagine that she is really doing OK, with little more necessary than to recover from her bad cold and cough. The Chinese branch is determined to do just that, while the Chinese-American group -- personified by the grand-daughter, Billi (a wonderful performance from Awkwafina, shown front row, center, above), and her parents -- are much less certain of what should happen here.

As writer/director, Ms Wang gives us culture clash served up with both a gimlet eye and a genuine feeling for how deep go the differences in Chinese and American culture. Little is easy here, save for the wonderful affection between grand-daughter and grandma (called Nai-Nai and played with a serenely dour comedic sense by an elderly newcomer named Shuzhen Zhou, above, right).

Over its maybe just slightly long 100 minutes, the movie fairly steeps you in Chinese culture. Even when you don't understand it all -- just like the Japanese bride of the family cousin, whose upcoming wedding is the supposed reason for this sudden get-together -- you will indeed understand that you damn well better watch and listen and figure out everything you can. And you will, as Ms Wang does not make things that difficult to understand. Along the way, as I say, that smile will rarely leave your face. By the finale, you will have partaken in the not just expected very moving and emotional scene but in so much more, as well.

I rather wish that, in addition to getting to know grand-daughter and grandmother, we might have learned more about that cousin and his bride (above), and a couple more of the extended family members. There was time for this, but instead it was spent somewhat repetitiously on Nai-Nai and Billi. But that's a small price to pay for so much else that works so splendidly here. And the two-moment ending, as I say, is sheer cinematic wonder.

From A24, in English, Mandarin and a little Japanese and Italian (all with English subtitles), The Farewell opens nationwide today. Here in South Florida, you can find the film in Broward County at the Paradise 24, Davie, and the Gateway 4, Fort Lauderdale. In Palm Beach County, look for it at at the Cinemark Palace, Living Room Theaters and Regal Shadowood, all in Boca Raton; at the Cinemark 14 in Boynton Beach; at the Movies of Delray, Delray Beach; and at Cobb's Downtown at the Mall 16 in Palm Beach Gardens. In Dade County, it's playing at the Aventura Mall 24, Aventura; The Landmark at Merrick Park 7, Coral Gables; the O Cinema, Miami Beach; the South Beach 18, Miami Beach; and the Sunset Place 24, South Miami. Wherever you live around the country, click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.

Responsibility, PTSD and culture clash fuel Benjamin Gilmour's unusual Aussie film, JIRGA

Australia’s pick for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2019 Oscars and winner of the Best Independent Film Award from AACTA, the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts, JIRGA, the new film by Benjamin Gilmour (shown below), despite its production history being about as fraught as they come, turns out to be -- if you can forgive one whopping bit of coincidence and unbelievability -- a remarkably unusual, thoughtful and finally very moving experience.

Why so fraught? Here's what the writer/director tells us in the press notes for his film:

“I was approached by a Pakistani producer who had found a Pashtun financier ready to put up $100K for the production of my script in Pakistan. My film was set in Afghanistan, but to benefit from the finance we'd need to shoot in Pakistan's Khyber Paktunkwha province. I approached Sam Smith, a talented actor from Sydney (not the singer) who was up for the adventure. We flew to Islamabad, only to discover the financier did not have permission to shoot from the ISI -- the Pakistan secret service -- who actively blocked the production after reading the script, considering it too politically sensitive. The Pashtun financier pulled his money out. Sam Smith and I were stranded in Pakistan with no team and no money and were now being tailed and harassed by the secret service. We could have flown back home then, but instead decided to shift the whole shoot to Afghanistan, risking our lives and investing some crowd funding and personal savings to make it…”

The result certainly proves worth everyone's time and finances (including ours, at least in terms of 78 minutes spent, together with the price of a movie ticket). This tale tells of an ex-soldier who committed an act somewhere between accident and war crime, and who has been hugely troubled by it ever since. He has determined to return to Afghanistan and the village/community where the event took place and offer himself up to "justice."

Fortunately the actor chosen to essay the role of ex-soldier, the generically-monikered Sam Smith (shown above and below), makes a most attractive and believe protagonist. Graced with handsome face and lean, lithe body, Smith is onscreen almost constantly, and he slowly pulls us in to his odd, difficult and sad quest. There are varied ways soldiers and ex-soldiers handle their individual Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder -- from group therapy or out-of-control anger to murder and suicide.

Smith's character Mike Wheeler's choice is certainly one of the more unusual ones, but the filmmaker and actor have collaborated well and made this choice strange but believable, thanks to a generally good script that shows both the difficulty of communication via language and the help that money (taped to our protagonist's body, above) can provide.

Along his journey, Mike encounters a kind and caring taxi driver (Sher Alam Miskeen Ustad, above), who bonds with our hero via music and a strange boat trip on a pink swan raft, before the two must separate suddenly when the Taliban appears.

This "escape" scene, below,  proves the movie's low point, as it is more than a tad unbelievable, as is the wandering in the desert that follows before Mike has somehow been found/rescued by a band of what seemed to me Taliban soldiers but perhaps were just a group of unattached "freedom fighters."

The leader of this group eventually bonds with Mike (thanks to the one fellow in the group who speaks enough English to communicate).

One wonders why the filmmaker did not dispense with the foolish "escape" and simply have the armed men at the road block be the group who captures Mike, keeping him in its underground lair until it eventually understands his mission and helps guide him toward it.

That said, the remainder of the film slowly coalesces into a very believable and moving conclusion involving that titular Jirga (below), as well as the family member (at bottom) of the dead Afghan man who unknowingly set Mike on his crazy but somehow understandable mission.

Though most of the supporting cast are untutored amateurs, they play their various roles well enough to pull us in, and Mr. Smith, via face and subtle acting skill, does the heavy lifting gracefully and well. Gilmour's film highlights the kind of trauma that has bedeviled so many of the soldiers who fought in the seemingly unending and certainly pointless middle-eastern wars -- both Americans and, in this case, Australians who fought in Operation Slipper.

From Lightyear Entertainment, in English and Pashto (with English subtitles), Jirga opens this Friday, July 26, in New York City at the Village East Cinema, and in the Los Angeles area on August 2, at Laemmle's Music Hall 3. More playdates should be coming soon. Click here to view the most current schedule of cities and theaters.

Identity, change, freedom and responsibility in Atsuko Hirayanagi's oddball debut -- OH, LUCY!

When the performance of Shinobu Terajima (the blond on the poster at left) in OH, LUCY! walked away with a nomination for Best Female Lead at this year's Independent Spirit Awards, this surprised a lot of us.

Once we'd seen the movie -- which opens in New York and Los Angeles this week -- we understood. (The film, written and directed by Atsuko Hirayanagi, also garnered a Best First Feature nomination.)

This is the unusual tale of a depressed and repressed middle-aged Japanese woman who, via an odd turn of events, ends up taking a course in the English language that very quickly sends the life she's been used to into a tailspin.

Ms Hirayanagi, pictured at right, has made a very strange but completely compelling movie that pulls you in from its initial scene, in which a hushed, almost sweet, suicide occurs, as a young man whispers goodbye into our heroine's ear before jumping in front of one of those Tokyo subway trains. As we find out more and more about this woman named Setsuko, who will soon be calling herself  "Lucy," it becomes increasingly clear how problemed she is.

Her English teacher, with whom she has but a single session before her life is thoroughly upended, is played by Josh Hartnett, an actor who could upend just about anything or anyone. Hatnett took a brief respite from acting a few years back, and since then his choice of roles, as well as his performances, have only grown richer and more interesting.

As an English instructor with quite an unusual teaching style, Hartnett (shown above, center, and at bottom) soon doubles as a unlikely romantic lead, the kind of guy who just can't resist sex when it is forced upon him aggressively enough. The actor gracefully goes from teacher to heart-throb to heel without missing a beat, and there are scenes here in which he seems to have regressed to an overgrown kid, losing ten years in the process.

While Hartnett helps hold some disparate pieces and places together (the movie moves from Japan to Southern California and back), the film belongs to its star and leading lady, Ms Terajima (above and below, right), who uses that blond wig to help effect a personality change that seems at once bizarre but absolutely necessary.

We meet Lucy's sis, another angry lady (played with ferocity and confusion by Kaho Minami, above, left) and her daughter, Lucy's niece, Mika (the adorable Shioli Kutsana, below, right), who is the catalyst for those English lessons and just about everything else that follows.

Oh, Lucy! goes from dark to delightful, sweet to sad without losing its footing. The workplace in Japan is not presented as anything very good, and the fact that suicide occurs or is mentioned a number times throughout doesn't say a whole lot positive about the culture or the society. Sure, America presents a kind of alternative, but this is clearly just a stopgap before real life intrudes again and must finally be faced.

From Film Movement, in English and Japanese (with English subtitles) and running 96 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, March 2, in New York City at the new Landmark 57 West and the Village East Cinema, and in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt. The film's director will be making personal appearances in both New York and L.A. Check theater schedules for details.

In Andrew Becker & Daniel Mehrer's SANTOALLA, a near-empty Galician village mirrors immigration, culture clash and murder

In their debut film, SANTOALLA, a new documentary, Andrew Becker and Daniel Mehrer take us to that titular location, a word which turns out to be a kind of contraction of the actual name of the tiny village of Santa Eulalia in Galicia, Spain. Here, amidst the lovely-if-wild landscape and the charming, friendly goats, we meet an interesting couple from The Netherlands, Martin Verfondem and Margo Pool, who, two decades back, decided to leave the "big city" and find some quiet, rustic spot far from civilization where they could set up their own self-sustaining farm and home.

After traveling Europe and Asia for two years in their RV, the couple (shown below; the filmmakers are shown above, with Mr. Becker on the left), at last found what they imagined would be the perfect spot: the nearly deserted village of Santoalla, which at this point in time had only a single Galician family remaining there: an aged husband and wife and their two sons, one of whom is mentally handicapped.

What happened once Martin and Margo bought an abandoned stable, began turning it into their home, planting their crops and raising their farm animals, turned out to be not quite what this enterprising couple had in mind. Initially, however, things looked awfully good. The pair seems like as perfect a couple for this sort of endeavor as you could find.

Becker and Mehrer give us Martin and Margo's story via archival photos and film, along with interviews with Margo and the neighboring family. As tensions rise due to that family's (the husband and wife are shown below) objecting to Martin's plans for not only his and Margo's farm but for the little village itself, we also get some local television reporting, courtroom appearances, and finally, once Martin suddenly and inexplicably disappears altogether, the local police are called in.

This is a sad, depressing but not, TrustMovies thinks, all that unusual a true-life tale, particularly when tradition clashes with modernity, one culture with another, immigration raises its head (if in a rather different manner than we are sued to these days) and the power implicit in being the sole occupants of a town is suddenly challenged. Yet for all that's going on here, the documentary drags from time to time. Instead of all those lengthy tracking shots, minutes might have been better served by footage devoted to further interviews with police, as the mystery begins to be solved.

On the other hand, I suspect that the local police were maybe not so eager to give extended interviews. Certainly that neighboring family was not. From what we see of the four of them, they were never more than quasi-welcoming to begin with, and the wife/mother (shown above), in particular, contradicts herself often enough to seem an outright liar. (Either that, or she has already grown demented.)

By the end of Santoalla, we've seen and heard enough to have our appetite for resolution sated, our feeling for poor, left-alone Margo increased exponentially, and perhaps our idea of starting an organic farm in a lovely far-away location thoroughly dragged through the mud of reality. Still: those friendly, prancing little goats are fucking adorable.

From Oscilloscope Films, running 83 minutes, and in English and Galician with English subtitles, the documentary opens this Wednesday, July 19, in New York City at the Quad Cinema, on Friday July 28 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall 3, and in Taos, New Mexico, on Sunday, August 13 at the Taos Center for the Arts.  Click here and then click on SCREENINGS on the Task Bar at top to see any subsequently scheduled screenings.

The Bushmen (and women) are back -- in Simon Stadler/Catenia Lermer's GHOSTLAND

The very first scene of GHOSTLAND -- African natives viewing an airplane -- a new documentary about the bush people of Namibia, may have us elders recalling a very popular, though to my mind rather heavy-handed and condescending movie called The Gods Must Be Crazy, which detailed a Bushman's interface with modernity in a highly comic manner. This new movie, while having its funny moments, is much more even-handed (the earlier film was a narrative, in any case), as it shows us a bush tribe undergoing some change and adaptation to the world of today.

As co-written (with Catenia Lermer) and directed by Simon Stadler (the latter shown at right) -- this is a first film for each of them -- the movie makes up in simplicity, honesty and feeling what it may lack in slick professionalism. It captures the character -- individually and as a group -- of this unusual Ju'Hoansi tribe in ways that range from funny and charming to quietly compelling. The movie also makes its points without condescension -- to both those natives and the western world with which they must increasingly interact.

Initially, it's the western world that comes to them. "The first time we saw the white man, we thought it was a ghost," one of them explains (hence the movie's title), and even when the tribe gets to know the western world and its discontents, it still remains unconvinced. "Sometimes white people are crazy," one explains. "They want too much and work too much, and it seems they never sleep.” Amen.

Seeing a homeless man begging in a German city, "It seems white people can also be poor." Still, the tribe is indeed learning the ropes of "civilization." As one of them notes, "We have to work with the tourists to survive." First the whites and their crew get to know the natives (and so, of course, do we) and then they take them on a kind of "field trip" to the modern world. Seeing the tribe and its first experiece in a supermarket is as much of a wonder to us as the supermarket is to them.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the film takes our tribe into the world of another African tribe, the Himbas (that's a Himba woman, above), and the interplay is fascinating. Then the opportunity arises for four of the natives to take an extended trip to Germany where they will mix and even "teach." From being up in that airplane they watched at the film's beginning to taking a trip in the subway ("We are under the earth!"), the four tribe members take in our modern world in wonder but with irony and intelligence. And yes, they do teach.

The update we learn in the end credits is both helpful and sad. One wishes to know why certain events occurred. In fact, there is a lot more we might have learned here. But the filmmakers obviously preferred to simply watch and listen, rather than do a lot of questioning. Even so, what we see, hear and feel should make budding anthropologists thrill, and folk who love documentaries just happy to have experienced the film.

From Cargo Film & Releasing and Autlook Film Sales, Ghostland opens tomorrow, Wednesday, December 14, in New York City for a two-week run at Film Forum, Elsewhere? Not sure. But you can at least learn more via the film's website.

Our SUNDAY CORNER With LEE LIBERMAN -- THE PHYSICIAN: Islamic extremism in 11th Century Persia is déjà vu all over again

"The scholar's work is more sacred 

than the blood of martyrs."

-- the Quran.

Novelist Noah Gordon (shown below, now near 90, and called 'the most successful writer you've never heard of') authored a trilogy spanning 1000 years about physician Rob Cole and his descendants. The first book of this trilogy (1986), THE PHYSICIAN, became a film directed by German filmmaker Philipp Stolzl (Young Goethe in Love, North Face, Erased) and has spawned a musical that debuts this June in Germany. Neither the novel nor the movie gained a following here but were much appreciated abroad. Now, at least, the film is streaming on Netflix for fans of fictional historical drama like Restoration (also on Netflix) or Lawrence of Arabia. The Physician, however, is loaded with political relevance to us because of its war on secularism by radical Islam. (Click here for Noah Gordon's web site and a list of his historical novels.)

Set in 11th century Persia and England, the adventure-romance pits Islam's great Golden Age of scholarship (8th to 13th centuries) against a dark and gloomy Europe. We meet up with the barbaric state of medicine in England in the jocular person of rogue, con-man "Barber." Stellan Skarsgård attacks the role (of tooth extractor, butcher of limbs, peddler of phony elixirs and bawd) with gusto.

An orphan boy, Rob Cole (Adam Thomas Wright, below) watched his mother die of 'side-sickness' -- appendicitis was a death sentence. Now homeless, he attaches himself to Barber and learns the tricks of the trade but he's frustrated -- diseases of the inside were guesswork and dissection of the human body was a crime. Rob grows up craving knowledge about how the inside of the body works.

Adult Rob Cole is played by Tom Payne, a better actor than, and lookalike to, Lorenzo Richelmy of Netflix's Marco Polo. Payne (below, right) is currently in AMC's The Walking Dead and is compelling enough to hold the center even in the midst of players with much more gravitas.

Barber's "eye-sickness" leads Rob to seek out a tribe of Jews whose healer removes the offending cataracts and explains his source of knowledge -- Ibn Sina (also called Avicenna), the master of science, philosophy, and medicine of Persia. Rob's road to enlightenment carries him from that moment through land, ocean, and desert travel until finally he becomes a student in Isfahan, Persia at the side of Ibn Sina. An historical figure (b 980 - d 1037) and author of 'The Canon of Medicine', still greatly revered, Ibn Sina is brought to life by Ben Kingsley, below. The scientist is said to have authored 450 known works of which 240 have survived including 150 on philosophy, 40 on medicine.

At the time, we are told, some say erroneously, that Christians were unwelcome at Ibn Sina's Madrassa. Since Jews were accepted, Rob circumcises himself during his desert journey to Isfahan and takes on a Jewish identity, calling himself Jesse ben Benjamin on his arrival.

Jesse continues to be daunted by the religious ban on dissection -- "necromancy" being punishable by death in Persia as well as England. But his entrepreneurial skills make him a problem solver -- especially useful as an epidemic of plague begins to decimate the population. The Shah at the time (Olivier Martinez, below) is the chief support of Ibn Sina's scientific work. A vain and secular tyrant, he's ripe for overthrow, outraging local religious leaders:

"Why did our citizens have to die [of plague]?" shouts the Imam (Makram Khoury). "It is the sins committed each and every day in the university whose Godless philosophy corrupts our city..... Isfahan is decaying from vice and apostasy. The Shah's time is over, and now there is only God... Allahu Akbar!"

A religious revolution is brewing. The tolerant, decadent Shah will be swept away in the denoument, driving out Jews and scholars and destroying Ibn Sina's university. The militant Seljuk Turks join forces with the mullahs whose fervor is a mirror image of 21st century religious extremism. The Turkish period will eventually contribute to the decline of the Islamic Gol-den Era. (The rule of the Seljuks, by the way, was followed by Mongol rule throughout Persia.)

Criticism doesn't change one's mind about the film's being a fairly entertaining and fast-moving tale. There are particular objections to the tampering with history creating inaccuracies about the known life and times of Ibn Sina. Still, all reimagined history is guilty of same -- the abridging of fact for the purpose of story-telling. Also there's the soap-opera framework including Rob/Jesse's dangerous romance with Rebecca (Emma Rigby), a Spanish Jew who has been sent to Isfahan for an arranged marriage to a much older Jewish aristocrat (below: Rebecca en route Isfahan).

Still, the yarn immerses you satisfyingly into ancient Persia through close-ups of daily life. Woven into the tapestry are Muslim calls to prayer and orthodox Jewish ritual at home and worship (the blowing of the shofar and wearing of prayer phylacteries), the burying alive of a woman adulterer, a medical school that functions with impressive urgency, costuming that feels real in off-whites and rich desert taupes and browns, and lovely effects by Pixomondo (Marco Polo, Game of Thrones) that bring the city-in-the-desert setting to life.

What enlivens the whole affair for me are the provocative politics, starting with the sameness of 11th and 21st century radical Islam. Then there's the contrast between the Golden Age of Islam and the intellectual poverty of the West at the time; and last, is the stunning present day reversal of fortunes between Middle East and the West. It's enough to make the viewer think twice about the inevitable and cyclical rise and fall of nations and the persisting tension between religious belief and intellectual progress. As for imaginary Rob Cole: Following his bout with radical Islam, his trajectory went up.

The above post is written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman.