Todd Haynes' WONDERSTRUCK may leave you (and your kids) in that special state. I hope so.

Finally: A children's movie that really is for children. And for their parents. And maybe especially for their grandparents. (WONDERSTRUCK is set back in time in both the 1920s and the 1970s.) Best of all, this is not one of those Marvel or DC "stupid-hero" films, of which we've seen far too many of late. At the press screening I attended a month back, here in Fort Lauderdale, as the end credits rolled, there was a burst of spontaneous applause the likes of which I've not heard in all my two years down here in Florida. There were only maybe a dozen of us critics at the screening, but that applause sounded like it was coming from a hundred or more.

As much as TrustMovies has enjoyed and appreciated the films of Todd Haynes (shown at left: Carol, I'm Not There, Far From Heaven), he would not have guessed this guy capable of directing a movie for children that worked this well. (But, then, he was equally surprised by the success of David Lowery in directing the Pete's Dragon remake.)

Mr. Haynes' use of everything from the terrifically talented young actors involved to some fine, collage-like animation, an amazing diorama and New York City's American Museum of Natural History, in combination with the increasingly lost art of genuinely imaginative storytelling (the screenplay is by Brian Selznick, from his book of the same title) joins to make Wonderstruck a wonderment indeed.

Haynes and Selznick have divided their film into two stories that eventually connect. One is that of the young girl, Rose, played with wondrous openness and grit by newcomer Millicent Simmons (above), who leaves her comfortable New Jersey home to journey to New York City back in the 1920s to find and meet her idol and famous actress (brought to life by Julianne Moore). The other story, set in the 1970s, follows Ben (Oakes Fegley, shown below, the fine young actor who also played Pete in that Dragon movie), who comes to New York City to find the father he has never known, after his mother (Michelle Williams) has died in an accident.

How these stories weave together so beautifully and delightfully -- using New York's American Museum of Natural History in perhaps the most thrilling and meaningful manner I've yet seen on film (one that puts those Night at the Museum movies rather in the shade) -- is as wondrous as all else in the film, and the scenes involving the children at play (and learning) are so filled with energy, believability and sheer joy that they take their place among the great "kid" scenes movies have given us.

Ms Moore (above) plays yet another dual role (as she does in the better-than-you've-heard and under-appreciated Suburbicon), and she is alternately hard and soft, caring and not-so, and of course aces at both.

How Haynes' and Selznick's movie works itself out is less surprising than it is a kind of consistently visual (while mostly non-verbal) amazement. The movie deals in large part with deafness, and the way it handles this -- via conception, execution and especially performances -- is, I think, exceptional, original and quite moving without ever needing to jerk those tears.

How Mr. Haynes achieves this, with the help of Mr. Selzlnick, of course, is what makes him such a singular and thrilling filmmaker. Do stay through the end credits, which are joyful, explosive, colorful and finally meaningful, too. A word must be said, too, for the other and already quite seasoned young actor in the film, Jaden Michael (above, right, and below, left), who plays Jamie, the kid who encounters Ben on the city's street and befriends him. Young Master Michael is certainly the equal of his two fine co-stars. Mr. Haynes has managed to encourage (or maybe simply allow) three indelible child performances to burgeon here, and great thanks are in order. This is magical movie-making.

One of the year's best films, Wonderstruck -- from Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions and running a just-right 115 minutes -- after opening last week on the coasts, will hit South Florida this Friday, November 3. In Miami, it plays the AMC's Aventura Mall and Sunset Place, the Cinepolis Grove 15, and Regal's South Beach 18; in Fort Lauderdale at the Gateway 4; in Boca Raton at the Regal Shadowood 16, in Boynton Beach at the Cinemark 14, and at The Movies of Delray. On the following Friday, November 10, it will opens throughout the country. Click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.

MARIE'S STORY: Jean-Pierre Améris' wondrous film about handling handicaps in France, 1900

What a glorious tale is MARIE'S STORY, and what a privilege it is to be able to so completely enter a new and alien world like the one shown us in this French film by Jean-Pierre Améris. The movie will surely bring to mind, for older folk, The Miracle Worker and the story of Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan. Talking place in the verdant French countryside, in roughly the same decade that the Keller story occurred here in the USA, this tale of a blind and deaf French girl, Marie Heurtin (Keller and Huertin were born but five years apart), will enchant and move you in ways both expected and surprising. And the fact that you will know, almost from the first scene, where the film must go will not in any way make the journey less wondrous or gripping.

M. Améris (shown at right), who has earlier given us several fine films, including Romantics Anonymous and Bad Company (French version), is evidently not a filmmaker content to stay in the same genre. Other than via the quality of his films, I am not sure you would know that this is the fellow who had made them all. As chirpy, chipper, bubbly and odd as was Romantics Anonymous, Marie's Story proves equally quiet, clear and deeply felt. Both are as different as can be and yet work about as well within their genres as they possibly can. In his new film, Améris seems to know exactly where to place the camera -- and when, and for how long -- so that special moments become just that, without ever trying our patience or resorting to mere cliché.

Marie's story is that of a blind and deaf girl whose father refuses to commit her to an asylum and instead takes her to a convent where the nuns teach and train deaf girls. But blind and deaf? That's another matter. Thanks only to Sister Marguerite (played by the versatile and always commendable Isabelle Carré, at left, above), who insists that they give Marie (a knockout performance from Ariana Rivoire, above, right) her chance, we are able to experience the pain and emptiness, and then the growth and change that occur.

The supporting cast is small but well-used, with the fine Brigitte Catillon (above, center) as Mother Superior and Noémie Churlet (above, left) as Marguerite's best friend and accomplice in Marie's training.

What seals the movie's success is how well the filmmaker, who both directed and co-wrote (with Philippe Blasband), has managed to bring us into the world of Marie, in all its sadness, hunger and finally joy. Perhaps the deepest moments arrive as Marie must come to terms with Marguerite's increasingly fragile health.

The natural world and its beauty is shown us in the way Marie finally understands it. We are there, at one with the girl, as she progresses from wild child to alert, thoughtful, caring young woman. What a journey!

One of the gifts and grace of motion pictures comes in affording us the opportunity to go places we would never otherwise venture. Marie's Story manages this -- in spades.

The movie -- another don't miss from Film Movement and running just 95 minutes -- opens this Friday, May 1, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. It will hit L.A. at Laemmle's Royal on Friday, May 29, and in between and after at a number of cities across the USA.

Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, past and present, with cities and theatres listed.

Alex Gibney's MEA MAXIMA CULPA: SILENCE IN THE HOUSE OF GOD

In his new documentary, Alex Gibney, the prolific director of some 27 documentaries and the man who took on ENRON, torture in Iraq, Freakonomics, Jack Abramoff, Eliot Spitzer and Wall Street now turns his attention to The Catholic Church. The results, as shown via MEA MAXIMA CULPA: SILENCE IN THE HOUSE OF GOD, are properly staggering. One of the many things that distinguishes Mr. Gibney's work is that the filmmaker (shown below) goes after the big boys rather than the ever-expendable foot soldiers doing the bidding of the man (or men) upstairs. His latest documentary is no exception. There have been several other excellent, earlier, pedophile exposés (among them films by Amy Berg and Kirby Dick) but I believe this latest casts the widest net and probes deepest.

Rather than simply concentrating on a single priest -- the Reverend and pedophile Lawrence Murphy, who, while he was "serving" at St. John's School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, abused more than 200 children over a 24-year period -- Gibney only begins here. By the time his film ends, he'll have gone upwards in the hierarchy of The Catholic Church in Wisconsin, the USA, and finally Rome, coming to rest upon the Vatican's current Pope Benedict XVI, proving to my mind (and I suspect most who see this film) that the current Pope knew -- for years! -- of Father Murphy's transgressions and those of many other pedophile priests and determined to keep them secret, thus protecting those priests, their supperiors and of course the Church itself. Papal infallibility? My ass.

Don't worry. The filmmaker never gets as grossly intemperate as I just did. Instead, he lays out his tale quietly and methodically but, since the details are so shocking and unpleasant, there is no chance to anyone growing bored with the film -- which concentrates on several of Murphy's young victims, both then and now, some 40 years later. (That's the Reverend and one of his victims, shown above.) Gibney details everything from how and when the abuses took place to the ways in which the children tried to get word out about what was happening. Murphy smartly chose those kids who parents did not "sign" and so could not be easily informed by their children of what was going on. When the children are finally able to reach the eyes and heart of a substitute priest while Murphy is away, this man tries to alert the authorities, but -- surprise! -- nothing happens.

As young men, the group creates flyers to distribute throughout the community (like the one shown at right). Still there is no change to the status quo. In the Vatican, as the Mafia, the rule of Omertà (silence) is all-powerful. So Gibney digs. Into records, and then interviews with priests, higher-ups, the kids and journalists, he probes. More garbage is unearthed. Along the way Gibney stages his reenactments quietly, using shadow and subtlety, so that we get the sense of what happened without the obvious and mostly unnecessary actors-playing-parts scenes that ruined the recent documentary, Orchestra of Exiles.

The movie does travel back and forth to different time frames frequently, and I wonder if some of the information presented could have been organized differently so that it flowed a bit more easily. I would imagine that this is the most difficult part of putting together a documentary: organizing the reams of information into an intelligible, organic whole that leads us inexorably toward our conclusion. Gibney, despite an occasional gaudy visual (see photo below) gets it mostly right, and by his movie's end, we understand that The Catholic Church -- in these, as I would imagine all cases in which the deeds of that church collide with the best interests of its parishioners -- will always win out. Even and especially when those parishioners are children, the most vulnerable of them all.

Mea Maxima Culpa..., a presentation of HBO Documentary Films and running 107 minutes, opened yesterday, Friday, November 16, in New York at Film Forum and will play a two-week run. Mr Gibney will appear in person tonight, Saturday, at the 7:50 screening. Note: the daily 5:40 screening offers English subtitles for the hearing impaired.