Making birders of us all, Judy Irving is back with a new documentary, PELICAN DREAMS

Has it really been eleven years since The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill burst upon the documentary scene and turned a lot of us into the "birders" we didn't know we were? Hard to believe, as it seems like only a few years ago that those parrots landed. Now, the woman who made that excellent documentary, Judy Irving, returns with a new one devoted to pelicans. Nowhere near as brightly colored as those parrots (except, it turns out, when they are mating!), and generally quite a bit larger, too, pelicans are most noted for their huge bills and pouches, as well as for executing some amazing, straight-down-and-speedy dives into the sea for their next meal, which is a single dish: fish.

If you are one of those folk who think you prefer parrots to pelicans, maybe think again. It appears that Ms Irving's love of birds (the film-maker is shown at left) is so utterly contagious that she'll turn you into a pelican lover in no time. I suspect that, should she set her site on the life of the lowly sparrow, she would have us (and it) quickly eating out of her hand. (Now that I think of it, the sparrow has recent-ly been done; see Bird People, if you haven't already.)

PELICAN DREAMS begins with a grabber: a lone pelican (above) is found wandering and walking across the Golden Gate Bridge. (She will later be nick-named GG, in honor of that bridge, though her official moniker, as listed on her leg band, is Pink 193).

Once the bird is taken to a wildlife shelter, Ms Irving follows GG's progress at the same time as she begins giving us some wonderful information about the life of the pelican -- everything from how they change pouch and eye color (below) when mating to the purpose of the near-constant preening of their feathers.

Irving's smart, caring narration, coupled to some excellent cinematography, makes for a fine entrance into the world of this bird -- which does indeed resemble a flying dinosaur (which is how Irving thought of them when she was a young girl).

Along the way we meet some awfully nice teams of husband/wife wildlife caregivers, who add to our knowledge of both GG and several other pelicans who have been injured and will try to be brought back to flying life. We also learn about a special brand of pelican air conditioning, how the bird manages to get frostbite, the earlier scourge of DDT and the later one of oil spills, and finally the havoc that climate change is already wreaking on the pelican population.

If you enjoy limericks, there's a good one here about the bird, but there is also some bad news. From the combination of things -- overfishing and climate change, to name but two -- being a pelican in the 21st Century means starving to death. These birds can only handle small fish, but hunger makes them attempt the eating of larger sizes, as well as the pieces of unused fish that fishermen toss away. We see one bird rescued from choking to death on the oversize head of a salmon.

One of the most amusing/amazing sections of the film deals with a pelican named Morro, above, who has not been able to fly again, exploring for the first time the inside of the house where his keepers reside. This is special. But then, so's the whole movie.

Pelican Dreams -- from Shadow Distribution and running 79 minutes -- opens this Friday, November 7, in New York City (at the Angelika Film Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema) and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal, Playhouse 7 and Town Center 5. It will also open concurrently in Santa Ana, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Monterrey and Palm Springs, and in the weeks to follow will open all around the country. To see currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters listed, click here and scroll down.

Open Roads 2012 alumnus, TERRAFERMA from Emanuele Crialese, hits IFC Center

Immigrants again, this time on a small island off the coast of Sicily, where our hero, Filippo -- one of the members of a very divided family -- is out on the family's fishing boat with his grand-father when the pair encounters a surprise. Now: what to do? In Emanuele Crialese's wonderful new film TERRAFERMA, the decision that the young man and his grandpa make sets in motion all kinds of further happenings that show us the immigration problem from various angles and via a number of different viewpoints.

No mere intellectual study, however, Crialese's movie (the filmmaker is shown at right) tosses us smack into the action and forces us up against conflicting ideas and feelings that are as apt to be as visceral and shocking as they are sometimes beautifully moving. He doesn't simply stack up the pros and cons in two neat piles; no, he gives each side its weight and understanding, with the scales finally tipping, as they ought, toward humanity. This is the very talented filmmaker who earlier gave us Respiro and one of the best immigrant movies ever made, a work of art called Golden Door, so it is splendid to have him back with a new work like this one.

There's a scene here as memorable as any I've seen all year, in which our hero is out on the moonlit sea with a girl he hopes might become someone special. Suddenly in the near distance they see something approaching. Is it a school of dolphin? Shark!? No. What happens next is now ingrained on my memory forever. The boy reacts as the sensible seaman he is; the girl, a tourist on the island, represents our typical kindly, liberal but untutored mentality. And the outcome disrupts everything.

The islanders, as well as the family members take sides on the questions of "illegals" and "rescue-at-sea" in ways sometimes surprising that also remain open to change. Filippo's mom (ace actress Donatella Finocchiaro, shown two photos up) is probably the most conflicted, wanting to follow both the business-like imperative of her brother, who'll do anything to keep tourists coming to the island, and her father, who hews to the old ways.

Filippo (a lovely, very real performance from Crialesi regular Filippo Pucillo, above, right and further above), is conflicted, too, in his own confused and adolescent manner. Only Gramps (a noble, angry performance by Mimmo Cuticchio, shown below, in the midst of a message made of fish) has any certainty. This makes the resolution of the film -- which, like so much of this year's Open Roads, brings the theme of justice to the fore -- all the more difficult and dearly earned.

Terraferma, another must-see via the annual FSLC Opens Roads series of new Italian cinema, and distributed in the USA via the Cohen Media Group, opens today, July 24, in Manhattan at the IFC Center, and in Los Angeles on August 9, at the Laemmle Music Hall 3. Elsewhere? Click here (then scroll down and hope for the best). Whenever Cohen Media Group sees fit to update its web site, you may be able to find out where else this fine film is playing.

Get ready to shake, rattle and roll: Castaing-Taylor and Paravel's LEVIATHAN

OK. TrustMovies admits that experimental cinema is often not his cup of tea. But he tries to see some of it, occasionally, just to keep alert to the new. Once in awhile -- as with Denis Côté's recent Bestiaire, or a few years back, Il Divo, in which the Paolo Sorrentino under-stood just how experimental he could be and still create an actual movie -- the result can be shocking and ravishing and unique. In LEVIATHAN, the new and quite experimental documentary from Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel (shown below, with Ms Paravel on the left), the result is a near-non-stop "assault on the senses," as my screening companion put it.

As usual, I found some interesting moments along the way, and some zowie film tech-niques that, even as I write this, are likely already being incorpor-ated into more main-stream movies, probably those of the horror genre. (Like Psycho, this film has its own shower sequence: see below) Well, terrific, for this is where I think experimental film proves most useful. When viewed on its own as a single entity, for me at least, it tends to be repetitive and tiresome. Yet bits and pieces of what it discovers will find their way into other movies and will be used in a manner that can be understood and appreciated by us doltish masses (some of us, anyway), thus furthering the art of the motion picture.

That said, Leviathan is one of the most unremittingly grueling experiences, visually and aurally, that I’ve ever had in a movie theater seat. So much so, it became a badge of honor not to leave that seat for any reason: not to use the bathroom, not to seek the solace of the noisy Manhattan streets outside, not to do anything but just sit there and drink it in until those final credits rolled (which were rather difficult to read; someone could have chosen a clearer typeface). But I did it – and I am proud!

The film takes place on a large fishing vessel in the North Atlantic, where we see a "catch" being made, though it takes a long time to even know where we are or what is going on. Slowly (very) and noisily (very, very) things are revealed. The filmmakers' style is to put us so very up-close-and-personal to the crew, the machinery, the fish and all else that we almost feel like a cog in the machine.

There is almost no intelligible dialog, either, only a man or two mumbling now and again. Instead there are crashes (of the waves, and the machines), clunks (as the huge net of fish bangs back and forth), and other ambient sounds -- but more loudly than you will have heard them previously.

Yet I question the filmmakers’ choice of shooting methods – deliberately refusing to pull the camera back to give us a stronger sense of where we are. They do pull back occasionally (see those birds, below) but not nearly often enough. I understand that part of the point is to confuse us and make us feel vulnerable and frightened, like those poor fish (it'll be awhile before you want to dine off ocean life again). But enough, already.

It takes only a very short time to achieve this in-the-middle-of-it-all effect, yet the filmmakers go on and on. There is about 40 minutes of content here -- if that -- stretched to double time. And then they bore us to distraction with an interminable shot of Mr. Tatoo in the ship's galley. Sure, we're getting one of those long shots we've been craving, but to no purpose that I can ascertain. (Still, I hope that Hellman’s mayonnaise product-placement on the dining table netted them enough money to make their next movie.)

Leviathan, an endurance test of major proportions, makes Castaing-Taylor's earlier bleating-sheep-and-depressed-cowboys documen-tary, Sweetgrass, seem like a James Bond adventure. The movie, from Cinema Guild and running 87 minutes, opens this Friday, March 1, in New York City at the IFC Center. The exclusive Los Angeles engagement of the film begins Friday, May 10th at Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters shown.