Lauren Greenfield's documentary, GENERATION WEALTH, opens in South Florida

What a bizarre (but still somewhat absorbing) misfire is the new documentary, GENERATION WEALTH, written, directed and produced by Lauren Greenfield, shown below, who back in 2012 gave us another oddball, interesting and not entirely successful doc, The Queen of Versailles. The movie begins as some kind of warning/exploration about how our society is worshiping/pursuing the almighty dollar to the point of no return. Early on, we view an Asian ESL teacher making sure her clients learns the really important words: Louis Vuitton, Lanvin, Hermès and so on.

Then we meet a few of these "pursuers," including a couple of workaholic hedge-fund managers, one of whom eventually goes to prison.

Tossed in with all this is also a school-bus driver who travels to Brazil to get some major plastic surgery, a stage mother and her single-digit daughter intent on finding fame via beauty contests and maybe a reality TV show, and finally Ms Greenfield herself, along with her mother, husband, children and all their stories.

Focus is clearly not Greenfield's strong suit, and before long the viewer may be wondering whether the movie's title ought not have been Generation Workaholic (which would include both Greenfield and her mom), or maybe Generation Addiction (which could include just about everyone covered in this documentary, as each is addicted to something). We even get a small recap of the husband/wife who were the subjects of The Queen of Versailles.

Greenfield's movie is simply all over the place in terms of locale, subject matter, characters, and themes. Had she concentrated more firmly on any one of these, she might have been able to put together a cogent piece of agitprop. Instead the focus keeps shifting and slipping to the point that you may want to grab her script and take a red pencil to about half of it.

The way that Greenfield and her friends and family keep popping into the narrative is almost embarrassing. Had she made a film about this subject only -- her own sense of partial abandonment by her mother and the effect that has had on her life and that of her own family -- she might have had a subject worth tackling. (Her mom, who keeps smiling throughout, clearly would prefer not to think about nor admit to past mistakes.)

And for all Greenfield's would-be concentration on wealth and greed, this is hardly news to anyone who follows cultural/economic trends. Ditto the need for too much body enhancing surgery. And/or the quest for fame. By opting to cover so much by using so many, she weakens her theses and manages to give us both too much and too little at the same time.

Pornography even gets it due via ex-porn star Kacey Jordan, and we view a Bar Mitzvah complete with go-go dancer/strippers but by the end of this overlong documentary, nothing we hear or see registers as either original or even remotely bracing. I would say that Greenfield needed a better editor, but four of them are listed in the credits. I guess it really is the focus here that is most out of whack. I wish Ms Greenfield better luck next time.

An Amazon Studios Release and running 109 minutes, Generation Wealth -- after opening in our major cultural capitals a couple of weeks back -- hits South Florida this coming Friday, August 3. In Miami, it will play the Regal South Beach 18, AMC Aventura, and AMC Sunset Place. In Boca Raton, look for it at the Regal Shadowood.

MABOROSI: Early, much-loved movie from Hirokazu Kore-eda gets Blu-ray/DVD debut

I first encountered the work of Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda (shown below) via his marvelous After Life, a bizarre, philosophic and enchantingly original riff on the post-death experience. Since then I've seen each of his subsequent films (those released here in the USA, at least) and enjoyed every one of them. Yet the movie that brought him to international attention -- MABOROSI, his first narrative film released in 1995, three years prior to After Life -- I am only now catching up with, due to its at last getting a Blu-ray/DVD release, thanks to Milestone Films.

The film is worth the wait. Not surprisingly Maborosi, which refers to a kind of strange light sometimes seen at sea, deals with so many of the themes that are clearly important to its director: family, loss, love and responsibility. Even more interestingly, TrustMovies thinks, is that fact that all these themes are dealt with in a manner even more graceful, subtle and quiet than in any of Hirokazu's later films (which are themselves pretty graceful, subtle and quiet).

While the director usually writes his original screenplays (or occasionally bases one on a manga), with Maborosi, he worked from a screenplay by Yoshihita Ogita (adapted from the novel by Teru Miyamoto). Whether he was deliberately more careful in adhering to the screenplay or it simply worked out this way, his movie is almost exquisitely calm, composed, placid and beautiful.

In telling a tale of disappearance and death, family and obligation, the director makes a rare visual poetry out of loss, grief and only very painful, difficult renewal.

Beginning with the disappearance of a much loved grandmother (above) and then all too soon the apparent suicide of a beloved husband and best friend (below), our heroine, Yumiko (Makiko Esumi), barely able to shoulder the co-responsibility of caring for a young child before her loss, now is forced to do it all nearly alone.

Still, new life beckons, and Yumiko accepts it, as a new husband and his daughter joins her and her little son, bringing them to a small, strange and beautiful -- if pretty desolate -- seaside town.

The movie relies even more on its visuals than on its rather sparse dialog to guide us along, and because those visuals are so beautifully composed (the cinematography is by Nasao Nakabori), we follow effortlessly. And though we are told of those illusory seafaring lights, the film itself is so full of odd, dark and beautiful lighting effects (as above and below) that it very nearly becomes its own "Maborosi."

Our heroine (as well as we viewers) wants nothing more than explanation. We expect that things -- important things -- will be revealed. Nothing ever is. Perhaps that is the point: Nothing conclusive can be revealed.

Yes, the past is always present and always will be -- until memory leaves us. The point is not allowing that past to engulf us but rather moving ahead. All of the filmmaker's work seems to underscore this. The beauty and poetry he gives us in the process is what makes that work so special.

From The Milestone Cinematheque and running 110 minutes. Maborosi arrives on Blu-ray/DVD  this coming Tuesday, July 10 -- for purchase and (I hope) rental.

Shubhashish Bhutiani's HOTEL SALVATION explores life, death and family in India

When the grandfather of the family suddenly announces that he is soon going to die and wants to make his final pilgrimage to a holy city on the banks of the Ganges River, his adult son -- an overworked accountant or financial planner, from the sound of things -- first tries to convince his father otherwise but then finally agrees to accompany him on the trip.

From this unusual premise comes a movie -- HOTEL SALVATION, co-written (with Asad Hussain) and directed by first-time full-length filmmaker, Shubhashish Bhutiani, shown at right) -- that offers up almost all the usual and expected results: father-son arguments, followed by some bonding, family problems and relationships brought to the fore and then solved. Surely you know the routine by now.

What makes this movie a bit different is all the detail that arrives via its sub-continent setting: the religion, the life, the culture and the cuisine in which we're steeped.

The immediate family (shown below) provides our main characters: the grandfather Daya (Lalit Behl, center), father Rajiv (Adil Hussan, left), mother Lata (Geetanjali Kulkarni, near right) and daughter Sunita (Palomi Ghosh, far right).

Once Daya and Rajiv have reached their Ganges destination and its titular hotel, we meet more diverse and interesting characters such as the hotel proprietor and a widow woman (Navnindra Behl, below, right), who, it turns out, has been waiting quite a few years for her time to die.

Along the way we get a number of light philosophical discussions about life, death and religion (this is definitely Salvation-lite), some family history to sort out, and interesting religious practices such as bathing a corpse in the Ganges and then cremating it, drinking "holy" water from that same river (yikes!) and donating a cow (wow!).

Interestingly enough, what looks like the film's climax arrives in the middle, but then we're suddenly up and running again. And if the movie -- except for its location -- takes us nowhere we've not been previously, in one culture or another, its actual finale provides a nice mix of sorrow and an odd sort of joy. It is both predictable and moving.

From Film Movement, in Hindi with English subtitles and running 100 minutes, Hotel Salvation hits DVD and digital this coming Tuesday, July 10 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Netflix streaming "must" -- the Fanny Herrero and Cedric Klapisch series, CALL MY AGENT

What a brilliant idea coupled to just-about-perfect follow-through is the delightful French cable series, CALL MY AGENT (Dix pour cent), available now on Netflix streaming. The idea is so good, in fact, and so original -- I don't recall its ever being done anywhere before -- that one wonders why Hollywood hasn't immediately co-opted it. The series tells the story of a somewhat large and successful agency for French film stars and the staff who work there.

While we get to know that staff and their lives, each episode actually revolves around a different French movie star, playing him- or herself, struggling with a particular problem -- from aging and the need for a little Botox to love and fidelity, child care, dementia, and just about any/everything else you might imagine.

The brainchild of writer Fanny Herrero, shown at left, with some help from director/producer Cédric Klapisch (he directed two of the initial episodes and helped produce a half dozen of them), the series is one of the most consistently entertaining, enthralling, funny, sweet and all-round-delightful shows TrustMovies has lately encountered. It's up there with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Imposters (season one, anyway; I have not yet seen season two).

Why Hollywood hasn't done this probably involves how huge, often ugly, heartless and far too humorless La La Land actually is. The French film industry, at least according to a number of its actors whom I've interviewed over the years, is just small and cozy enough -- like maybe a great big family, with all the warmth, anger, differences and ups-and-downs most families encounter -- to make a series like this one actually kind of plausible.

When I first began watching the series, while I loved each episode and every sparking moment, I also wondered how folk not as familiar as I with French films and their stable of actors might react to it. For many Americans, even those who occasionally attend foreign films, their knowledge of French movie stars may begin and end with Isabelle Adjani or Juliette Binoche (and, yes, both these stars get an episode here). So far, however all those people to whom I've recommended Call My Agent have fallen in love with it, too.

Ms Herrero has managed to create, via her agents and their helpers (shown on poster, top, and in the photos above), a group of people with whom we fall in love and are happy to stick with through thick and thin.

Ms Binoche, above, gets to end the second season with an episode that finds our agents at the Cannes Film Festival, and it shows off this actress' ability for goofy humor in a manner than Bruno Dumont could learn from.

Along the way we see actors such as Virginie Efira and Ramzy Bedia (above), the great François Berléand (below, playing Don Juan opposite a large, plastic yellow duck),

and the versatile Audrey Fleurot (of Spiral and the new Netflix series, Safe) as a recent mother who, below right, must learn to pole dance for her next role.

Each of the problems that confront these actors is so well-chosen and different, one from the next, that interest and enjoyment never flag. Further, each famous actor gives herself/himself over so completely to whatever is at hand that your respect and admiration for these "stars" should only increase.

That's Line Renaud and Françoise Fabian (left to right, above) as feuding old acquaintances, and Cécile de France (below, center) as the actress facing the perennial face-lift challenge.

And yet, with all this star power, what really makes the series zing and swing is the fabulous cast assembled to play the agenting staff. Every one of these actors deserves stardom (and may have it soon), so very well-chosen and talented is each. It is their characters and their stories that finally make this series as charming and addicting as it is. Miss this one at your own peril.

Call My Agent can be seen now on Netflix, in its first two seasons. We fans are now eagerly awaiting season three.

DVDebut for one of the year's best films: Maysaloun Hamoud's IN BETWEEN

Below is TrustMovies' original review of a film 

that arrives on DVD this coming week. 

If you didn't catch it in theaters, 

now's your chance. It's a winner.

A terrific melodrama all about the evolving place of women in the Muslim world -- particularly that special Muslim world that exists within the state of Israel -- IN BETWEEN, the first full-length film from Budapest-born Maysaloun Hamoud -- is an impressive piece of work in several ways. It offers a look at three very different Muslim young women, each coming to grips with her own needs and desires that conflict with those of her parents, religion, and "tradition." Yet in Israel, for all the other problems that state presents for Muslims, these women are allowed to dress as they wish, become successful in careers usually reserved for men, and choose their significant other out of love, lust or just plain compatibility, rather than the more traditional, "arranged" manner.

Ms Hamoud, shown at left, wrote and directed her movie, and she succeeds equally well in both endeavors. Her dialog is smart and on-target while visually, she and her attractive, talented performers, in addition to the well-chosen locations, camera-work and editing, keep us not merely engrossed but pretty much swept along in all of the growing and mostly fraught goings-on. The filmmaker not only brings to fruition her story and characters, she also leaves them (and us) at an almost perfect moment of ironic, double-edged success: "in between," indeed. The movie's final frame is as memorable as any I've seen in a long while.

The leading characters here are Leila (Mouna Hawa (above), a successful, high-powered lawyer who'd like to meet the right man; Salma (Sana Jammelieh, below), an artist supporting herself as best she can, with an arranged marriage in store, even though her sexual preference is otherwise;

and Noor (Shaden Kanboura, below), a chubby, sweet, and highly traditional young woman about to marry an even more traditional jerk. When Noor moves to Tel Aviv in order to be closer to her school where she studies, and then in with the other two women, change begins to occur.

How this change happens and our characters evolve is particularly believable -- well conceived and executed, via the work of Hamoud and her actresses. Each of the women's stories is brought to fine life, and how they are interwoven is exemplary.

We see and empathize with the interplay of the desire for greater freedom, the needs of family, the demands of the workplace, and the place of men -- lovers (that's the very sexy Mahmud Shalaby, above), fiances, and fathers -- in all this.

The look we get at Arab night life in Israel may surprise you, but I don't doubt that's it's relatively authentic. Ditto the family scenes with both Salma and Noor. (There's a scene near the finale involving Noor, her father and her fiance that is quite surprising and moving.)

By the time we get to that final, wonderful moment of what is perhaps -- no, absolutely -- a victory, I wouldn't go so far as to call it Pyrrhic, but Ms Hamoud makes it clear that this is anything but complete. In Between is must-see for film-goers interested in the changing roles of women, particularly those in the Middle East.

From Film Movement, running 103 minutes and in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles, the movie opened theatrically in the USA in early January and hits the street on DVD this coming Tuesday, May 1 -- for purchase and/or rental.

In Cédric Klapisch's BACK TO BURGUNDY, vintner siblings harvest, fight and reunite

Oenophiles (both real and would-be: who can afford good wines these days?) will probably be drawn to (and with good reason) BACK TO BURGUNDY, the new French film by Cédric Klapisch, one of our favorite, consistently-on-target filmmakers. Whether he is dealing with family (Un air de famille), a group of young, free-spirited students (L'Auberge Espanole and its couple of continuations, as these kids grow up), his lovely/funny/moving ode to the city of Paris, or his look at the French "haves" and "have-nots" (My Piece of the Pie), his films are alert, stylish and eminently watchable. With this new endeavor, M. Klapisch (shown below) returns to the theme of family, this time with a slightly narrower canvas than that of his early work, and the result is a film that resonates ever more strongly as it moves along, uncovering character, growth, humor and immense beauty -- in both its good-looking cast and its gorgeous vineyard locale.

Back to Burgundy (its French title, Ce qui nous lie translates as "That Which Binds Us") begins with a little boy looking out on the vineyard his family owns and describing his feelings about it. It's a lovely scene that immediately engulfs us in the environment of a vintner. This kid will appear now and again throughout the film, especially toward its finale when, in a couple of scenes handled with simplicity and great feeling, the past and present are beautifully united.

Our kid will grow up into a character played by Pio Marmaï (shown below), an actor TrustMovies has enjoyed since seeing him in Living on Love Alone, back in 2010. Marmaï, as Jean, had left his home in France after a falling out with his father, leaving his two siblings to run the family vineyard. He has traveled the world until settling down and starting a vineyard in Australia, where he has formed a strong relationship with a woman and fathered his own son. Now, news of his father's approaching death has brought him back home.

The strong bond between brothers and sister remains, even if it has been frayed a bit, and the movie's major concern has to do with how the three will handle their estate, which, thanks to government taxes, presents some major problems. His sister, played by Ana Girardot (below) is the only one of the three to be presently unattached to some romantic relationship.

Brother Jérémie (François Civil, below) is married to the daughter of a local and competing vintner who is both powerful and controlling. How the three will solve their problem--  which seems to have a number possible solutions -- by joining forces or perhaps with more certainty by remaining apart becomes the thrust of the story. Along the way, we meet various employees, see a harvest or two underway, and get to know subsidiary characters with surprising finesse by Klapisch, who seems to have tamped down somewhat his usual improvisational style to meet the needs of this particular and more formally-told tale.

The film is filled with mostly decent people, doing the best they can while trying to stay out of their own way. Smartly co-written by Kalpisch and Santiago Amigorena with collaboration from supporting actor Jean-Marc Roulot, Back to Burgundy is especially clever in the manner it acknowledges how so many of us prove to be our own worst enemies. On the other hand, these folk's specific problems can also be offset by their specific gifts.

The screenplay also allows us to see those differences in male and female characteristics and how these can be made to work to the advantage of both, to be amused once again by generational differences, and eventually to meet Jean's partner (Maria Valverde, below, right) and the couple's son and begin to understand the vagaries of this relationship, as well. Finally, and despite maybe one coincidence too many, the question of who -- and what -- constitutes family is addressed with emotion and skill enough to make this movie even more moving and encouraging than you may expect.

A film for anyone who loves family, France and wine -- from Music Box Films and running 113 minutes -- Back to Burgundy (in French with English subtitles) opens this Friday, March 23, in New York City (Angelika Film Center), San Francisco (Vogue Theater) and Seattle (SIFF Cinema Uptown) and then on March 30 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal and Playhouse 7 theaters -- as well as elsewhere across the country, where it will play some 50 locations. Here in South Florida it will open on April 13 at the Savor Cinema, Cinema Paradiso, and the Movies of Delray and Lake Worth. Click here (then scroll down to click on THEATERS) to view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and venues.