THE MIMIC -- Thomas F. Mazziotti's smart little ode to identity, grief, friendship, sociopaths and more -- opens in theaters and via VOD

While it may not be quite as smart, or even as deep, as it thinks it is, THE MIMIC -- the new film written and directed by Thomas F. Mazziotti -- proves fast, funny and enjoyable enough to keep us entertained for all of its 82 minutes. 

The movie also boasts a first-rate cast, each of whom uses whatever screen time he or she has (some roles are very brief) to nail character, while keeping us alert and often pretty delighted with what we see and hear.

This is the first of Mr. Mazziotti's movies I've seen (the filmmaker is shown below) and the first he has both directed and written, and it's good enough for TrustMovies to hope for more. However, it's only his third film in 20 years, so I am not holding my breath.

As I finished watching the film and then noted the many famous cast members listed in the end credits, I immediately went back to the beginning of the film so I could pick out certain actors. But then I quickly found myself enjoying the witty dialog and performances so much that I just kept watching. Had there been more hours in my day, I'd have viewed it all a second time right on the spot.  

That cast is led by one actor I always enjoy -- Thomas Sadoski (shown below) -- and another, Jake Robinson, whose career I've only just noticed. Both are quite good in roles that mirror each other in ways that prove especially interesting because of their contribution to both the movie's themes and its entertainment quotient.

Mr. Robinson (shown below) looks at times enough like a younger version of Mr. Sadoski that the two could almost be related, and since one of the movie's themes concerns identity, mimicry and character, this certainly adds to the fun.

Further, as much as these two g uys are clearly attracted to each other, the question keeps cropping up whether one of them is a sociopath or merely a mimic, so their physical, as well as psychic connection allows for a maximum of homoerotic (though not homosexual) frisson. Both actors play into all this with considerable finesse and zest.

Sociopaths seem just about every-fucking-where in our current movies and TV, and Mazziotti makes wonderful fun of all this via so many of the movie's various characters calling humorous attention to the fact. Like serial killers (even more prevalent in our entertainment culture) that exist in fiction exponentially more than in real life, sociopaths too are maybe a tad over-rated and over-exemplified these days. (On the other hand, we've just finished four years of a U.S President who is one, so maybe this is understandable.)

Stylistically the filmmaker tries some tricks that mostly work -- moving from color to black-and-white, and using a fun clip from Gaslight. He also breaks the fourth wall and, in one scene featuring M. Emmet Walsh and Doug Plaut, he breaks a lot more. Gina Gershon (above, left) and Austin Pendleton (below, right) each get their own fun camero, too, and Matthew Maher is especially good in the role of restaurant owner/bartender.

Mostly, though, the movie belong to Sadoski and Robinson, and these two score nicely. If you're expecting some big reveal at the finale, don't. There's a little something, but fortunately, Mazziotti's doesn't make too much of it. Or of anything much else, really. This is a small little indie film that, in its own way, simply delivers its ideas and entertainment with enough wit and skill to pass muster.

From Gravitas Ventures and running, as I say, just  82 minutes, The Mimic opens in theaters in limited release and via VOD today, Friday, February 5. Take a chance, particularly if that cast intrigues you. Click here for more information.

Giuseppe Tornatore's CINEMA PARADISO hits Blu-ray, DVD and 4K UHD from Arrow/MVD

A wonderful Christmas present that checks off the whole list of boxes -- nostalgia, family, friendship, love of cinema, coming-of-age films, and movies-about-movies among these -- Arrow Academy's release this holiday month of 1990's Oscar-winning Best Foreign Language Film, CINEMA PARADISO, is cause for celebration. Written and directed by Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore, who has never made an uninteresting film and in fact has given us several terrific ones, the movie (which I had not seen since it's original release) holds up beautifully. 

Signore Tornatore (pictured at left), at this point in time, has offered up something doubly, maybe triply, nostalgic. The film begins as a remembrance via an aging adult male who has just been informed of someone's death in the small Sicilian village where he grew up.

As the past is relived, we're awash in marvelous old movie images from so many European and American movie classics, as we learn that the dear departed -- the projectionist at the local cinema -- was the man who helped this boy find his place in life as well as his career. 

That's right: a projectionist of film, a profession that today barely exists in our current age of digital. When was the last time you were in a theater in which a projectionist ran the film? For that matter, when was the last time you were even in a theater? Add another layer of nostalgia here. Proust would kvell.

That this projectionist/mentor is played by that late, great and amazing French actor, Philippe Noiret (above, top) is another huge plus, along with the beautiful job done by Salvatore Cascio (below with Noiret and on poster, top), who plays the adorable, energetic, funny and altogether delightful child in what is one of the truly memorable performances by children in the history of film.

Early in the movie we're made aware how the village priest rather doubles as the town's censor, making certain that any scenes involving sex or even the idea of it -- kissing in particular -- are removed from the film before his parishioners can view them. One of the strengths of the film is how the culture, politics, religion and economics of this lively little village comes to life. The scenes set in the cinema itself are among the movie's best.  

Nearly half of Cinema Paradiso involves our hero as a child. Once he transitions to young adult, the character is played by the then-gorgeous young actor Marco Leonardi, (above, left, and below, right) in whose budding love life we (and the projectionist) become involved.

If Tornatore is not a particularly subtle filmmaker, neither is he heavy-handed. Cinema Paradiso is broad in both style and performance, but all of it works and at precisely the right level. (Only the not-so-great old-age make-up seen on some of the characters toward film's end stands out as too much.) The film also grows more beautiful visually as it moves along.

"Movies are finished," one character intones toward the finale, and soon our now-aged hero is walking through the old deserted and dilapidated movie house that once brought him such joy. The film has renewed resonance today, as we watch what might be the last gasp of movie theaters worldwide, due to this ongoing pandemic. Let's hope not.

From Arrow Academy, distributed here in the USA via MVD Entertainment Group, and full of terrific extras that include a nearly hour-long recap of Tornatore and his career (up until 2000, when the documentary was made) which will make you want to go back and watch every one of his films once again; another half-hour doc about the making of this film, its sudden withdrawal from the Berlin Film Fest, its subsequent wondrous Cannes debut, and who picked it up for U.S. distribution; and finally a recap of the famous kissing sequence, with each film and actors identified. Cinema Paradiso arrived on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD earlier this month. If you're already a fan, a revisit is in order. If you've never seen this lovely, award-winning film, what delight lies ahead!

The breakdown of a problemed man in Peter Mackie Burns and Mark O'Halloran's RIALTO

One's forties is a difficult time to come out of the closet. This is hardly your coming-of-age period, after all, particularly when you've already got a life, a wife, kids, career, house and all the rest. In the case of a fellow named Colm, the leading character in RIALTO, we don't even know if he has ever realized until now that he had strong homosexual leanings. 

Colm's angry, abusive and controlling dad has recently died, leaving him maybe grief-stricken, more likely just hugely confused. His mom's bereft and needy, and Colm has now gone so far into himself that he can barely communicate with his wife or with his nearly-grown son. Only his daughter seems still close to the guy.

As well directed by Peter Mackie Burns (shown at right) with a very fine screenplay by Mark O'Halloran (Viva), Rialto places you inside the falling-apart life of Colm in such a strong and true manner that, as much as you might want him to make other choices along the way, nothing he does registers as unbelievable. Stupid maybe, but so clearly caused by anger, uncertainty and fear that you cannot help but empathize, even as you cringe. Oh, and did I mention that our "hero" is about to face unemployment, having been made redundant to his job?

As played exceedingly well by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (above, of Maze), Colm has recently found himself semi-stalking a pretty young man named Jay (Tom Glynn-Carney, shown above and below, right, of Tolkien). Though their first assignation is rather a disaster, Colm is smitten, while Jay appears to see something perhaps kinder and needier than he has found in some other clients (Jay's a part-time prostitute, you see, raising money to help take care of his girlfriend and newborn baby).

Jay offers Colm what he wants and needs -- jacking off and undressing for him, and finally giving him a good, hard ass-fucking -- yet it's clear that he cannot and will not be able to commit to Colm. (The sex scenes are graphic but not full-frontal, and there's a lovely, tender scene of Jay caring for his infant baby midway along.) Meanwhile, Colm's behavior grows more unhinged until we wonder what could finally be in store.

Because we really don't know much about Colm's background, other than dad, his death, and Colm's distancing from his wife and son, we're not in any position to figure him out on much of a psychological level. 

For some this might detract from the film's enjoyment, and god knows filmmakers Burns and O'Halloran are clearly folk who do not believe in happy endings, nor maybe even happy middles. 

Yet in terms to providing a look at a grown man's breakdown -- mental, emotional, sexual -- Rialto works quite well. From Breaking Glass Pictures and running 90 minutes, the film had its Virtual Theatrical Release last month and will hit VOD & DVD today, Tuesday, October 20 -- available via Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, Fandango, Xbox and InDemand.

Character and conversation as you've seldom seen 'em: Jonás Trueba's THE AUGUST VIRGIN

 

I suspect you'd have to go back to early Eric Rohmer to even vaguely approximate what you'll get in the new film from Madrid-born writer/director Jonás Trueba entitled THE AUGUST VIRGIN. And yet this Rohmer-esque outing is so overlayed with Spanish culture, character and language that --- other than realizing that the movie is basically all character-building via conversation -- even the low-key, ironic, philosophical and very French M. Rohmer may seem awfully far away. 

From the first scene and onward, there is such radiant warmth to this new movie, as an about-to-be-33-year-old woman meets the older man from whom she is subletting an apartment for a couple of hot August weeks -- the usual time when most Spaniards hightail it out of Madrid to let the tourists deal with the heat. Senor Trueba (shown at left) introduces us to his heroine, Eva (played by Itsaso Arana (shown above and below), who co-wrote the very good screenplay) as she meets and converses with man whose apartment she'll be living in for two weeks.

There is so much warmth and kindness expressed here that, from the outset, the movie emanates a sense of safety and good will so rare in films these days -- even in supposed comedies -- that you may not quite know what has hit you. If you're someone who demands action and adventure, you've already stopped reading. To set the record straight for the rest of you, let me not overpraise this little movie.

The August Virgin is a bit too long, and the first half is better than the second, though the latter is still quite good. But Trueba and Ms Arana have set up such an interesting character in Eva -- questioning, questing, intelligent, thoughtful, honest and hopeful -- that they don't quite deliver as fully as you may expect. Yet compared to much of what passes for adult entertainment today, they still succeed quite mightily.

The movie is full of small incident, as we follow Eva over her two-week period and meet all kinds of new characters, some of whom she already knows, others who are new to her. And though we don't come to know any of them nearly as well as we do Eva herself, each person we meet seems well worth our time and hers. 

Trueba captures the essence and enjoyment of companionship, of simply being together and savoring the moment as beautifully as few filmmakers have managed. The movie is cast exceedingly well, and every performer comes through in terms of creating a full-bodied character in the short time allotted, while entertaining us, too. Past loves appear -- one a definite "ex," the other maybe a wanna-be -- along with a slightly estranged friend and her new baby, a couple of British/Welsh ex-pats, a Reiki massage therapist who makes your period less painful, and finally a broodingly attractive fellow who seems to interest Eva in a way that is different from all the rest.

The filmmaker uses Madrid in a manner that should greatly benefit tourism (if the world ever opens up to all that once again) -- even in the heat of August. And if we leave the movie maybe wishing we'd learned just a little more about this special young woman, I think you will still be quite grateful for what you've experienced. From Outsider Pictures, in Spanish with English subtitles and running 129 minutes, The August Virgin hit virtual cinemas across the USA and Canada this past weekend. Click here for more information and to learn how and where you can view it now.

April's Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman: MY BRILLIANT FRIEND -- a quiet tale of violence

The following post is written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman

This heart-full Italian series, co-produced by HBO, is so absorbing that the woes of present-day pandemic drift imperceptibly down the grimy byways of poor suburban mid-century Italy on breath of air. Based on much-loved and admired novels by pseudonymous writer, Elena Ferrante, the story explores the challenging, adoring, quietly violent bond between two girls, Lila and Elena (Lenu), whose lives are yoked to a neighborhood of drab low-rises outside Naples. Series one begins in childhood and lasts through adolescence; their young adult relationship unfolds in the second, episodes dropping Monday evenings, now more than half concluded.

In the opener we glimpse storyteller Lenu, age 60, tapping out the story on an Apple computer. Tinged with bitterness, her tale paints pictures of dominance, machismo, submission, self-abnegation that will unfold in four series — one per novel.

The set (left) is described as one of the largest in Europe, an entire neighborhood recreated including apartments, shops, dusty streets and island vistas (Ischia, below) described in the novels.

The sets and locales are magnets for tourists, creating a boom not unlike what ‘Outlander’ inspired in Scotland. The difference is that “My Brilliant Friend” is true literary and film beauty; ‘Outlander’, despite its Jacobite history attracting genuine interest in Scotland’s clan past and wars with the English, does not climb out of the paperback fantasy/romance genre.

‘Brilliant’s’ director, 43 year old Saverio Costanzo, manages to burn into your mind the waste inherent in post-WWll poverty, emotional and physical violence nurtured in a small neighborhood governed by petty extortion and the secrets everyone knows. (Below, Costanzo, center left, above young Elena, “Lenu” with her parents, far l, siblings, and crew members.)

Costanzo is quoted in the Guardian: “It’s a story that somehow belongs to everyone. I found myself…in Elena’s and Lila’s shoes. It’s like a mirror...a kind of miracle that happens very rarely…..”. Michelle Obama is an admirer; Hillary Clinton is quoted: “...hypnotic... I could not stop reading or stop thinking about it.”

Both girls are brilliant —differently. Lila is an instinctive philosopher and didact; she sponges up everything there is to know on all subjects, a strangely exceptional child for whom the very young actress, Ludovica Nasti, is a perfect fit. (Nasti, is like a giant...a genius… says Costanzo.) Lenu, played in childhood by Elisa del Genio, is smart but must work to achieve. When she does, she is number one, but her winning is the product of dogged effort not genius. In their poor household, Lenu’s mother, grudgingly, cruelly, goes along with her advancing in school at the urging of an empathic teacher (Dora Romano, below).

Lila’s father, the gnarly owner of a shoe repair shop, dismisses education beyond elementary school for his daughter; her defiance and his brutality are the outcomes. It is the dis-affirmation of her sharp little mind, her right to succeed using her intelligence, that undergirds Lila’s perpetual spite and later self-destructive life-choices. Later you hear her father’s cruelty in Lila’s young adult voice as she forewarns Lenu: Don’t listen — the witch inside me is talking. Lenu has been positioned as the submissive, like Lila’s brow-beaten mother.

It is hard to convey how engrossing the story of these two little girls becomes. You float through childhood with them, pushing boundaries, daring, competing, yet supporting each other, recalling your own neighborhood confrontations, games and escapes as you share in theirs, likely more violent than your own.

Then come the bully-cum-mobsters, the flirtations, the books, the rain deluges, the parental shoutings, the ignored violence (even killings) the street peddler’s calls, streets fogged with dust. They sit on a bench reading and reciting ‘Little Women’ to each other, the pages of their shared copy increasingly tattered. The genteel poverty of Alcott’s ‘Little Women’ was lovely beauty to these waifs in their homely world; Jo, the writer, is their goddess.

By the third episode, rightly called ‘the Metamorphoses’, the girls are adolescent, and Lenu (Margherita Mazzucco) is mortified by the blood between her legs — is she dying? The sharply-dressed Solara brothers (they look like light is ‘shining down on them’) flatter and cajole a shy girl into their new car. ‘Those guys don’t just kiss, they bite like mad dogs’, says Lila (Gaia Girace). Sure enough, the shy girl is dropped off bruised, devoured.

Lenu discovers the power her body has over boys, even with her acne-spotted face, and secretly savors Lila’s defiance. Suddenly the fights in the street aren’t the noise of adults swirling overhead, but involve themselves.

The girls’ relationship waxes and wanes. Lila resents Lenu’s being in school; she proves her superiority by teaching herself Latin and Greek in secret. At other times, Lila teaches Lenu how to analyze text, prodding her to improve, living through Lenu’s success. To Lenu, her life is flat without the dynamite of Lila.

Lila’s defiant marriage to the thuggish Stefano (Giovanni Amura, below) steps her up from poverty into comparative luxury and offers a new target for her anger. She provokes his repeated beatings (boasting they make her stronger) and more drama is injected into the girls’ friendship.

Lila buys Lenu her high school books — her mother weeps with gratitude — our first shred of sympathy for the desperately angry woman. Then, in the chapter called ‘Erasure’, Lila turns on her friend, mocking her cruelly, transferring her rage on to Lenu who is climbing out of the neighborhood milieu into a more socially-conscious one.

As the girls mature, Lila continues to sharpen her claws on Lenu, and we imagine their adult friendship uneasily. (Ferrante describes the feral Lila as acting with “a hiss, a dart, a lethal bite.”) Lenu pines for Nino, Francesco Serpico, (below); the married Lila gets between them.

Still we watch, our own youth and dashed dreams immersed in theirs as Lenu’s passivity and Lila’s betrayals mount up. The story-telling is so dreamily fine, the atmosphere so reminiscent of one’s own despite all its differences in time and place, it will transport you there from the view of deserted streets out your windows.

View the series trailer here.

Note: If you would like to see more about epidemics, superstition, masks, and handwashing, check out the following:
Downton Abbey, Season 2, episode 6 for the 1918 Spanish flu (PBS, passport; Amazon Prime).
Outlander, Season 3, episode 10 for a shipboard typhoid outbreak in the 1700’s (Starz, Netflix).
The Physician, lovely film with Ben Kingsley and Stellan Skarsgård, for a battle with the black death in 11th century Persia (Netflix).
Ken Follett’s World Without End episode 106 for arrival of the black death in 1341, in which ancient Persian texts are used to guide the treatment of the plague (Starz).

Pedro Almodóvar's PAIN AND GLORY is, yes, painful and glorious (and funny and moving, and subtle and smart)

Anyone who has followed the more-than-40-year career of Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar can hardly help but have noticed the tonal change in his films from the crazy, highly sexual and often darkly comedic to the more serious -- if still sometimes dark and sexual -- explorations into family and Freud (granted, his very own version of the good doctor).

Almodóvar's later films may have been successful to varying degrees, just as were his earlier movies -- though to listen to some critics/fans, those early comedies were all fabulous and wonderful; instead, they too were a mixed bag -- yet one of the distinct pleasures of contemplating this man's fecund career (he is shown at right) comes in seeing, little by little, the enormous depth and growth involved.

TrustMovies is certainly not alone in finding his latest film, PAIN AND GLORY, the pinnacle and culmina-tion (but not the finale, I hope) of his career.

In it, Antonio Banderas (above and below) -- who has appeared in numerous Almodóvar films over the years and whose career took off via this filmmaker -- plays an aging filmmaker very much like Almodóvar, whose life story we see unfurl here via flashback and present-day excursions into his current life of enormous physical pain (everything from excruciating back pain to migraines),

drug addiction, the rekindling of both a friendship and a hugely important love relationship, and a possible career rehabilitation via the rediscovery of one of his successful older films.

If this sounds like a lot to cover in a mere two hours, let it be known that the filmmaker does it all with breathtaking skill, surprising subtlety and intelligence, the expected (but still gorgeous) visuals exquisitely combining composition and color, and drawing spot-on performances from a well-chosen cast that includes Penélope Cruz (above, playing his mother in her younger days) and Julieta Serrano (below, right, as older mom).

The two performance highlights, however, come from that fine Argentine actor Leonardo Sbaraglia (below, right), playing the ex-lover with such passion, wit and alertness that this pretty much constitutes a career-best role -- in a career that already has some really spectacular ones (Wild Horses, Intacto, Contestant and King of the Mountain),

and from Asier Etxeandia (below), as the ex-friend and actor who starred in the filmmaker's most famous work, now estranged but gleefully ready to reconnect via drugs and maybe a new acting role. Etxeandia is exciting to watch in action, and his role is one of the film's best written and realized, as well as its most complicated creation.

Almodóvar does not attempt to make his "hero'" all that heroic. He's a user -- not just of drugs but of people. Watch sadly at how he treats his devoted personal secretary (Nora Navas, below, right). But, oh, god, he is so human. And his creativity, from what we can gather, is worth saving and encouraging.

As the filmmaker's delightfully intelligent younger self, Asier Flores (shown at bottom) proves a real find. This youngster gets one of the film's perfect scenes, in which incipient sexuality overtakes our hero in one marvelous, sudden rush. No explanation necessary, and Almodóvar doesn't belabor the point. (Shown below is the amazingly sensuous César Vicente, who plays the key element in that pivotal scene.)

Another bit of perfection occurs at film's end, when the writer/director simply moves his camera just a tad, in the process quietly letting us know that, "Hey, it's only a movie, right?" Sure. But what a movie!

From Sony Pictures Classics (and I would guess a front-runner for Best Foreign Language Film nomination), in Spanish with English subtitles, and lasting 113 minutes, Pain and Glory, after opening in key cities, hits South Florida this Friday, October 18, all over the Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach areas. To find the theater(s) nearest you, simply click here, then click on GET TICKETS, scroll down to the October 18 dates and find your local theater(s). Or just fill in your zip code in the blank space and make things even easier.