Family history and the Holocaust explored anew in Jeff Lipsky's unusual THE LAST

Jeff Lipsky is back. This storied producer, shown below, who has also directed a number of interesting films -- one of which, Flannel Pajamas, is among TrustMovies' favorites -- loves to push envelopes. And while those envelopes would ostensibly seem to be filled with the usual envelop-pushing subjects such as sexual taboos, the results are films that actually push our ideas about those things, rather than the things themselves. Folk who want more sex and violence will likely feel cheated by Lipsky's movies, while those willing to have some of

their precious notions/beliefs upended in ways surprising but maybe salutary should find the experience bracing and perhaps a lot more than that.

Lipsky's latest, entitled THE LAST, may be one of his best. (I'll have to let it roll around a lot more before coming to any air-tight conclusions.) It is certainly one of his more provocative endeavors, dealing as it does with The Holocaust and the multi-generational history of one particular family in quite an unusual manner. Who these people are, together with how they got that way and what they plan to do about it, once they've learned the truth, makes for quite a movie.

The film begins by a lake with a certain Jewish ritual. The family here is mixed-faith: Jewish on the great-grandparents side downwards, Catholic on the side of the father (Lipsky regular, the fine Reed Birney, above), with dad's daughter (Jill Durso, below, right) about to convert to Judaism as she marries her hot-looking Jewish hubby (A J Cedeno, below, left).

A day at the beach with 92-year-old great-grandma (a most memorable performance by Rebecca Shull, below), during which our elderly non-heroine talks about her past, changes everything for the entire family.

How each member of each generation reacts to this news comprises the meat of the movie, and while the filmmaker, as is his wont, gives us all this via conversations, the dialog is good enough to keep us glued and alternately surprised and off-kilter.

Lipsky forces us, simply via dialog, to imagine, even experience World War II from a different viewpoint that we've heretofore encountered. He allows the leading members of his fine ensemble -- including Julie Fain Lawrence (above, right, as Birney's wife, Melody) -- to have their own scene or two in which they grapple, with intelligence and emotion, with this news.

It's both challenging and oddly diverting to be forced to come to grips with what's exposed here -- which includes everything from religious faith, morality and hypocrisy to genocide, justice, euthanasia (or maybe murder) and what actually constitutes a Jew.

And though the story is told almost exclusively through conversation, which includes a ton of exposition, so well-performed is the film -- especially by Birney, Shull and Lawrence --  that I think you won't mind. The younger generation is perhaps not quite as skilled, but even that makes a certain sense, given the fact that age, coupled to experience, does count for a lot, in performing, as in building character.

The Last is likely to set more than a few teeth on edge. I hope it plays down here in Florida, where audiences are more likely to be subjected to nonsensical feel-good twaddle such as Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel. What a mitzvah it would be to give our audiences something to actually think about that maybe shakes them up a bit.

From Plainview Pictures and running (just a tad long at) 123 minutes, The Last opens in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and the newly reopened East 62nd Street and 1st Avenue cinema, the CMX CinéBistro. Over the weeks to come, the film will play other cities across the USA -- it hits Los Angeles on April 26 at Laemmle's Royal and Town Center 5 -- click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Two new series come to Netflix streaming: ALTERED CARBON and BABYLON BERLIN

The future (a little-too Blade Runner-ish in style: see below) and the past (Germany shortly before its pre-WWII fascist takeover) are the subjects of two new continuing series via Netflix streaming. ALTERED CARBON imagines our world (along with some off-worlds) a very long time time from now, when the very wealthy -- gheesh, them again! -- can live forever, while the rest of us are mostly slave labor who work, work, work and then die. The big difference here is that everyone's "life force" is now embedded in a small item called a "stack,"  which gets implanted somewhere behind one's neck. So, no matter what happens to your body, if your stack remains OK, you simply change into a new "sleeve" -- the term for whatever body is currently available (at a price, of course) for use by someone whose old one is damaged beyond repair.

This odd new kind of body-hopping makes for some very amusing fun at times -- the best of all being a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of an Hispanic family whose grandmother has recently departed. But the family -- most of them, anyway -- want their abuela back for the holiday and so her stack is implanted into the only available sleeve, that of a recently departed criminal who is bald, portly and mustachioed. The ensuing conversation is one of the most amusing things I've seen all year, and when the subject turns to religion, faith, and this whole idea of "eternal life," the series suddenly also becomes quite intelligent and insightful.

The main plot has to do with a murder mystery involving one of those very rich (James Purefoy, above -- and, yes, he's full-frontal again and as big and beautiful as you'll have remembered from Rome) -- which needs to be solved by the series' hero (a very sexy and buffed Joel Kinnaman, below).

Unfortunately this main plot keeps getting derailed far too often and quite unnecessarily via violent action scenes that become tiresome almost immediately.  These, of course, are why most of our younger and increasingly stupid crowd tunes into a shows like this, but eventually the action/violence has more of a numbing effect than anything else because it keeps detracting from rather than adding to the interest of the plot.

One subsidiary character that proves his worth is the Edgar Allen Poe-like artificial intelligence creation (played by Chris Conner, shown below) who is both the hotelier and the hotel (called The Raven) which he manages. (AI, it seems, has come a very long way over the ensuing eons). Mr. Connor proves lots of witty fun, and the series perks a bit whenever he appears.

Altered Carbon is the creation of a writer/producer named Laeta Kalogridis, and she has hit a number of ever-current hot buttons with her new series -- mostly those that push the sex and violence envelopes. I've reached the middle of episode seven at this point (there are ten nearly hour-long ones in the first season), but I don't think I'll continue. Another two and a half hours is more than I want to spend in a supposedly brand new world that turns out to be too much of the same-old same-old, even as it keeps losing rather than gaining interest because of those endless action sequences, as well as from simply tossing too many characters at us, both from the past and the present (even if they turn out to be incarnations of the same people). Tighter would be better, Ms Kaolgridis. But then, of course, we might not have enough episodes to fill up an entire series.

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BABYLON BERLIN proves that the past can be every bit as fascinating as some imagined future -- if you rely on interesting characters and depth of characterization rather than a bunch of tiresome action scenes. Created by a trio of smart German filmmakers -- Henk Handloegten, Achim von Borries and Tom Tykwer (that last name best-known over here for Run Lola Run, Perfume, Cloud Atlas, 3 as well as the late and somewhat lamented Netflix series Sense8) -- this German cable presentation was co-directed by all three men and co-adapted (from the novel by Volker Kutscher) by them, too.

Set in the late 1920s in Germany's new Weimar Republic, which was already in major trouble, what with severe inflation and unemployment adding to the post-WWI problems of the state. With the right wing already railing against the rise of Communism, and various divisions of it -- Stalinists, Trotskyites and Leninsts -- jockeying for power, the term "hot bed" doesn't begin to describe the Berlin of this time.

Into all this comes our maybe hero Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch, above), a police commissioner from Cologne, ostensibly to help with a local investigation but with an agenda of his own, of which we will eventually learn. Our heroine Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries, below) is doing all she can to keep her family out of complete poverty, which includes a new day job helping the police department and night work as a prostitute.

There's a high-jacked freight train, a printing press run by the Trotsky faction, a massacre by the Stalinists, an underground pornography ring, and a femme fatale blond who dons a number of disguises along the way. How these plots and characters broaden, deepen and coalesce provide Babylon Berlin's engine, which runs surprisingly smoothly and quickly towards its who-knows-what destination.

Performances are first-rate, from leads down to the very small roles, and the look of the series is simply terrific. Every scene proves an absolute pleasure to view and it all looks real, too -- alternately ritzy and outhouse-dirty. I've never been to Germany, let alone the Germany of the 1920s, but all this sure strikes me as real, enticing and revolting

Part noir, part would-be history, part adventure, love story, and lots more, the series is a surprise in so many ways. Tykwer and his cohorts should be very, very proud. As of now TrustMovies is only into part seven of the 13 episodes in season one. But unlike Altered Carbon, this is one series I plan to finish. Both are available now in the U.S. (and probably elsewhere, too) via Netflix streaming.

Emiliano Rocha Minter's WE ARE THE FLESH further pushes the sex-and-violence envelope

Were it not for the use of the same time- and place-setting word -- twice -- in the press material describing this new movie from Mexican filmmaker Emiliano Rocha Minter, viewers like me might not be so easily taken in by WE ARE THE FLESH. God knows, the filmmaker himself never uses this highly descriptive phrase. He proves much too canny for that. He simply shows us a very grungy, dirty, crazy-looking enclosed space, then lets our imagination do the rest. Into this space an even crazier-looking man unloads his heavy cardboard burden and then begins preparing what might be the least appetizing meal ever captured on film.

Señor Rocha Minter, shown at right, would have us wondering "Where the hell are we?" And were it not for that all-purpose/oft-seen-and-heard phrase which we reviewers were sent and that quite dutifully and immediately fills in all the blanks, we might still be wondering. I will not use that phrase in my review and will hope that you don't get wind of it elsewhere, because it simply makes things way too easy. Despite its use, the filmmaker does provide some clues that indicate that something other may be happening. For instance, where in hell do those eggs come from? Wouldn't their continuing existence indicate chickens, too?

Into the environment of our weird but rather sexy little hermit (nice job by Noé Hernández, bearded above then post-corpse clean-shaven below) comes a pair of siblings who explain that they have been wandering the city for days and are very hungry. (The duo is played by María Evoli, at right, two photos below, and Diego Gamaliel, at left). Our oddball host feeds them and almost simultaneously begins feeding them a line of bullshit about all barriers having now been broken so we can give in to our darkest impulses, especially those involving sex or violence.

Before you can say incest, sis is sucking on bro and bro is fucking sis. And yes, this is all viewed hard-core style. (I did mention envelope-pushing in my headline, right?)  And, as our hermit watches all this while jacking off, we get a nice dose of double voyeurism, to boot.

Further, our host appears to have a heart attack while climaxing (the "little death" leads to the big one: shades of John Garfield!), but before long he is back again and weirder than ever, taking the threesome into murder, cannibalism and goodness knows what else.

The film's pivotal scene -- and maybe its best: it's as oddly moving as it is grizzly -- involves a military man, kidnapped and sacrificed for his blood and body. This leads to an orgy and the appearance of many more people than we've so far seen, and then to an ending that changes everything.

Rocha Minter's clever sleight-of-hand is the most impressive thing about the film. Though it is full of darkness and occasional bright shards of light (as below), it also offers some visual oddities like the major sex scene (done via rather needless and artsy posterization effect), plus a moment or two that capture our "heroine's" face in a singular manner (above), and unusual shots of a vagina and penis/scrotum, all at rest.

The orgy finale, which looks something like a particularly bad night at the old Studio 54, is followed by that game-changing denouement. And if this is not quite enough to lift We Are the Flesh into horny-porn greatness, it will at least leave those viewers who've stuck around for the duration a few things to mull over. And, yes, you could call this a "mixed review."

Being released in a dozen or so cities across the U.S. via Arrow Films -- unrated, I would images, due to its hard-core scenes -- the movie opens in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Arhya Fine Arts this Friday, January 13, and in New York City on January 20 at the Cinema Village. Elsewhere? Yes: It will also open for weeklong runs in Texas (in Laredo and San Antonio) on January 13, in Denver and New Orleans on January 20, and in San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Columbus on January 27. Special screenings throughout January and February include El Paso, Houston, Phoenix, Cleveland, Portland (Oregon) and Albuquerque. 

Jerzy's back--and as fine as ever--with a new, unusual slice of happenstance, 11 MINUTES

What a career -- fifty years of it --  Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski (shown below) has had. From his full-length debut movies Walkover and Identification Marks: None, both from 1965, through his latest and one of his most spectacular to reach these shores, opening this Friday in New York -- 11 MINUTES -- the man seldom repeats himself yet keeps entertaining us while very cleverly pushing our filmic boundaries. This new film is no exception. It's quietly enthralling for its initial 70-odd minutes before exploding, literally and figuratively, into one of the more wondrous explorations of non-benign serendipity you're likely to have witnessed. This is equally eye- and mouth-opening cinema.

Skolimowski is the man responsible for a movie that so many of us love and yet would probably forget to place on our best lists: Deep End. For me, 11 Minutes is right up there with that unusual film. But it is so very different in style, if not theme. This filmmaker has one of the darker sensibilities in modern cinema, and I do not mean something like the cheapjack variety that a Tarantino exhibits. The Skolimowki version is bone deep, I think, perhaps due to his having grown up under Communist rule in Eastern Europe. And it is not that the man is resolutely negative. His films are usually full of life and fascinating behavior, but the overall vision is of a world that will come to naught. And he makes us feel the loss.

The plot here is rather... not there. Instead we have maybe a half-dozen different stories involving characters who are clearly inhabiting the same town at the same time. But their lives are quite separate.

Were not Skolimowski such an intelligent and clever writer/director, we might lose interest in these people as the film progresses, Instead we stick with them because their stories, even if disconnected, are clearly important (to them, and the filmmaker makes them important to us, too).

There's a hopeful young actress (Paulina Chapko) and the clearly sleazy director (Richard Dormer) with whom she has an audition (three photos above); her over jealous boyfriend (Wojciech Mecwaldowski) two photos above; and an ex-felon hot dog vendor (Andrzej Chyra, just above) who really knows his dogs, both canine and edible varieties).

A drugged-up drug courier (Dawid Ogrodnik, above) who takes a little extra time delivering sex ,as well; an elderly artist composing outdoors; a young man about to take up stealing; and a young woman, suddenly homeless and walking a dog (played by striking newcomer Ifi Ude, below) are among the disparate group.

What makes 11 Minutes so unusual is its structure. What we see in this film is roughly the same eleven minutes but viewed from the perspective of all these different characters. So the film seems to bounce back and forth in time, but because we're seeing things so strangely, we can only just keep up with the proceedings. That is, until, finally, we begin to view various threads assembling. Not all of them, mind you, but enough to keep us on our toes.

The film's distributor is billing its movie as a "thriller," but it's not. Too slow-moving for that genre, it is more of a drama, but one that unspools -- unravels, really -- in quite unpredictable fashion.

Even so, little will prepare you for the finale, in which it all comes together with shock, surprise, sadness and wonder. The cinematography here is extraordinary (via Mikolaj Lebkowski), and once you've picked your jaw up from the floor, you may very well murmur, as did I, "My god -- Skolimowki's done it again."

From Sundance Selects/IFC Films and running just 83 minutes, 11 Minutes will open Friday, April 8, in New York City for its exclusive theatrical premiere engagement at the IFC Center. Elsewhere? I hope so. A film this intelligent and this much fun ought to find wider circulation.

Jeff Lipsky's back with MAD WOMEN, another unusual, dark and semi-transgressive film

Jeff Lipsky -- who, some years ago, gave us the exquisitely-attuned-to-characterization-and-behavior drama Flannel Pajamas -- is back this summer with a new envelope-pushing film called MAD WOMEN. The women in question are a mother-daughter pair brought to fine life by a combination of acting chops and Lipsky's hallmark ability to cast with an eye for both oddity and truth. The result is a movie that bears all of this writer/director's best abilities, along with some of his limitations, as well.

As good as Lipsky's movies often are in terms of characterization and performance -- the filmmaker is shown at left -- they tend to go on well past their running time's expiration date (Mad Women is his lengthiest so far at 131 minutes). This time, however, there's something noticeably missing that finally becomes a deal-breaker: Mad Women lacks the propulsion necessary to drive the film forward. Consequently, we get oodles of character quirks, smart dialog and subjects worth exploring (including a first-time-on-film sexual connection, along with life as seen by both voyeurs and participants), yet the outcome is generally listless.

I suspect this is due more to Lipsky's decision to split the plot and narrative into two camps -- that of the mother's and the daughter's -- than to anything else. Mad Women tracks three generations of hugely narcissistic women (there's a grandmother involved, as well) and their failure to properly connect with their men or even with society on some necessary level. Mom (the quite interesting actress Christina Starbuck, above), is a former jailbird now running for mayor of one of those "ideal" little towns that used to be found around the USA.

The movie comes back again and again to a certain time and place (above) in which she addresses her well-wishing audience members and explains to them her stance on various issues. (She appears both progressive and a little crazy -- which is maybe the only legitimate reaction to our current state-of-the-nation.)

Her daughter Nevada (Kelsey Lynn Stokes, above), smart but stunted, has taken to babysitting as an occupation, until the man of her dreams walks over to introduce himself, at which point a budding love story begins to bloom.

Dad (Lipsky regular and consummate actor Reed Birney, above) connects the two women and has his own back story -- which we get, as with all the stories, mostly via exposition (Lipsky is not fan of the show-don't-tell school of film-making).  While each of these three character's back stories are fascinating and uber-quirky, none get the depth we need to truly understand or empathize.

This is particularly true of the envelope-pushing connection that two of these characters share, which -- according to the press materials -- could be the real deal-breaker for audiences, just as it might be for Nevada's new boyfriend (played by a high-voiced hunk named Eli Percy, above). It's not, however, because, like so much else in this movie, it simply sits there: announced but unexplored.

Lipsky seems to want to address humanity's hypocrisies, and god knows, there are  plenty of them here into which to delve. (That's grandma, above, played by Sharon Van Ivan -- of whom we know the least, save for a single important hypocrisy.) Yet the route the filmmaker takes doesn't pay off much, due to our hearing about all the "big and important stuff" via exposition, while leaving out so much else that might pull us into the lives of these people. That said, Lipsky does manage a quietly subversive denouement, bringing together a few of the themes he's announced previously.

The performances are all as good as you could ask for, under the circumstances. Mr. Birney, with his cool grace and stability pretty much holds the film together, even though his character is the least filled-out of the three family members. Stokes and Percy are fun to watch, too, while Starbuck is good enough to make you wish we could enter her character's life and history more fully.

If you're already a Lipsky fan, you'll want to try Mad Women. But I suspect newcomers to his work might better start with his earlier Pajamas. The movie opens this Friday, July 10, at the Village East Cinema in New York City, on July 17 at the Cinema Arts Center in Huntington, NY, and at the Sundance Cinemas in Los Angeles on July 24th, followed by a limited national release in August.