Innocence & insistence power Tom Shadyac's legitimately feel-good film, BRIAN BANKS

A true-life tale that shines a most interesting light on  -- immediately and without any undue effort -- everything from the Black Lives Matter and Me2 movements to our woeful criminal justice system, BRIAN BANKS tells the story of the high-school student of the title, a 16-year-old boy with the not-at-all-impossible dream of playing for the NFL, whose life and career are cut short by an accusation leading to a prison term that destroys any possible football career. How this young man, seemingly innocent from just about every angle imaginable, sets out to prove this innocence against the odds is what lies ahead.

From a screenplay by Doug Atchison and directed by Tom Shadyac (shown at left), Brian Banks turns out to be that relatively rare "inspirational" movie that actually proves to be genuinely inspiring, rather than the faux feel-good we usually get from this genre. Mr. Atchison's screen-writing and dialog are up to the task at hand, while Mr. Shadyac's direction is just as good, seldom hitting things too hard or repeating what we know.

If repetition does occur -- as when Brian (played exceedingly well by Aldis Hodge, above and below) is told, over and over by the very folk he implores to help him -- this is for good reason, as he (and we) come to better understand just how loaded and unfair the criminal justice system is for the certain types of people who can so easily become incarcerated for years/decades. And, yes, I mean poor and/or "of color," rather than, say, Jeffrey Epstein.

What makes the movie -- and from all accounts, the man himself -- so stirring and active-positive, is Banks' unrelenting fervor and determination to prove his innocence. Mr. Hodge turns what could become annoying, repetitive and even tiresome into something rich and mammoth.

Hodge, who looks remarkably similar to the real Brian, wins us over completely, just as he does the folk from the California Innocence Project to whom he turns for help. The group's leader, Justin Brooks, played with his usual professionalism and subtle flair by Greg Kinnear (at right, below), is loathe to take on Brian as a client because the deck is so stacked against Banks that Brooks feels the result will only defeat and depress this prisoner, now a parolee, even further.

Interestingly, we don't learn the details of just why Brian has been tossed into prison until about a half-hour into the film. This is smart movie-making because it keeps us in a certain suspense, even as we grow to appreciate Brian himself. And when we do finally see what happened and meet Brian's accuser (brought to life by a terrific Xosha Roquemore), any puzzle pieces remaining begin to fall into place. (That's Sherri Shepherd, below, right, equally caring and commanding as Banks' mother)

If you are familiar with the story of Brian Banks, the movie should bring it all to fine life. If you're not, I suspect you'll be even more transfixed. From Bleecker Street and running just 99 minutes, the film opens nationwide this Friday, August 9. Here in South Florida, you can find it in the Miami area at a number of Regal Cinemas, at AMC's Sunset Place 24, Hialeah 12 and Aventura Mall 24 and at the Flagship Cinemas 14, Homestead; in Broward County at AMC's Pompano Beach 18 and the Cinemark Paradise 24 in Davie; and in Palm Beach County at the Cinemark Boynton Beach 14 and Cinemark Palace, Boca Raton. Wherever you live across the country, click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.

ROLL RED ROLL: Nancy Schwartzman's expansive documentary about rape culture at that Steubenville, Ohio, high school

The rape, back in 2012, of a teenage girl by a couple of guys from the Steubenville, Ohio, football team did not go unnoticed by our national press. I recall reading about it in The New York Times in the months afterward and being surprised (but not really) at the nastiness of both the thing itself, and of some of the reactions of the students and adults who were involved, even as bystanders, to this ugly event.

Even if you remember a lot about this, too, TrustMovies suspects you will still be surprised and quite interested in the information garnered by filmmaker Nancy Schwartzman and how she has delivered it for further exploration in her new documentary, ROLL RED ROLL. The movie is quietly involving and finally as depressing as it is devastating.

Ms Schwartzman, pictured at left, has a low-key but penetrating style; this is nothing like so many of the obvious, repetitive and cliche-ridden weekly television programs that deal with "true crime."

Instead, the filmmaker has unearthed enough behind-the-scenes information and subsidiary characters, one of which -- a female crime blogger named Alexandria Goddard (shown below) -- seems as close to the heroine of the documentary as you'll find. Ms Goddard, when she first heard of this incident, did her own digging, and her blog posts made much of the town of Steubenville angry as hell. For very good -- if very guilty -- reason: As in so much of American, today, just as at the time of this event, boys, machismo, and football trample just about everything in their path. Especially girls and even a remote sense of justice.

One of the most interesting things about the documentary is the manner in which it demonstrates both the horror and the help produced by social media. What we see of these footballers' texts speaks volumes about male entitlement and the place of the female in American society. And the collusion between everyone from parents and students to school administrators and teachers to protect the guilty and tarnish the victim is appalling, disgusting. What is uncovered here goes both farther back and farther ahead than this single rape incident.

Schwartzman also reconstructs the night of the crime, the where and the when, along with the police investigation, then puts it all together so that we easily follow things. By the time Anonymous becomes involved, further goosing justice into a "woke" state, you'll be holding your breath yet again. Schwartzman and her crew have done a major service in helping to upend the ongoing rape culture so prevalent in our own and much of western (hell, eastern, too) society, personified perhaps most clearly and wretchedly by the current President of the United States.

A Together Films release running a lean 80 minutes, Roll Red Roll opens in its theatrical premiere this Friday, March 21, at Film Forum, New York City. Other playdates? I don't find any currently listed on either the distributor's or the film's web site. But if you are not currently in the NYC area, the documentary will air later this spring as part of the popular PBS series, POV. Check your local PBS station for more details.

Concussed! Sean Pamphilon's THE UNITED STATES OF FOOTBALL explores the NFL's foot-dragging non-reaction to head injuries

As someone who has never much enjoyed watching nor playing the game of football (ouch!), TrustMovies is not part of the fan base that filmmaker Sean Pamphilon is looking to reach with his new documentary, THE UNITED STATES OF FOOTBALL. He's after football lovers such as himself, a fellow who had some hopes and dreams of his own son maybe eventually becoming a player. Not any more. Early in the film, in fact, he features a quote from President Obama to the effect that if he had a son, he wouldn't want him to play football. The statement, along with the movie itself, is due mostly to the medical findings regarding the progressive degenerative disease, CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), which affects the brains of men who've suffered, over and over again, traumatic blows to the head -- the very kind received by many if not most American football players.

This film is, as you might guess, an activist documentary meant to alert viewers to a problem and then do some-thing about that problem. On this level, it works very well. Style-wise, Pamphilon (shown at right) may be all over the place, traipsing back and forth a good deal, but he make his points and gets them across in a believable and anger-provoking manner. The effects of CTE on players -- some of them shown to us here -- are depression, dementia and loss of impulse control early on, followed eventually by something like near-catatonia and death at an age sooner than it ought to come.

The film focuses on one ex-player in particular, Kyle Turley (above) -- now a musician who composed much of the music we hear in the film and a CTE activist -- his family and his fears about succumbing to this disease. We also meet another activist, one whom it is said has done the most to ring the CTE alarm bell, Sean Morey (below), another fellow who lives in fear of what he may become. There are perhaps another six to eight players we see and/or hear about, a couple of whom committed suicide once their diagnosis and/or symptoms became apparent. Yes: CTE is that appalling.

I must say that seeing these players -- all younger than I and some of whom are now reduced to empty husks -- is a shocking thing (the late Ralph Wenzel is among them), one that ought to make football fans think long and hard about the "benefits" of this very violent game. It will not, of course. We live in an increasingly fraught culture that demands and rewards violence (George Zimmerman, anyone?), and the biggest attraction of football for many men has always been its violence. The movie begins to address this issue -- it takes a quick look at a section of a regular sports broadcast that consistently dwelled on this "violence as entertainment." But then it moves quickly on.

The main villain here, according to Pamphilon and many of the players he interviews is the NFL (along with its mouthpiece Roger Goodell) -- in its refusal to face these issues squarely, even though evidence of what injuries to the brain can do has been readily available since the 1920s. Pretense, foot-dragging and the rest of the arsenal of hypocritical behavior come to the fore whenever money-making ability is challenged, and so it is here. The film's indictment of the NFL, along with many football coaches, is as scathing as it is on-the-mark, and the movie will bring tears of rage and frustration to your eyes at the immense and enduring ability of humanity to deceive itself.

Among the most shocking scenes is the simple home-movie-like section devoted to young kids butting heads at football practice. Noel Coward one wrote jokingly in a lyric, "Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington." Has he seen this film, he'd have warned Mr. Worthington not to let his son near that football field.

The United States of Football, running a little long at 101 minutes, opens today in Los Angeles (at The Landmark) and New York City (at the Quad Cinema) and elsewhere. It will hit most major cities in the weeks to come. To view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters -- click here and scroll down to your state....