Streaming follow-up: fans of Spain's gorgeous GRAN HOTEL finally get a third-season finale!

If comments on this blog are any indication, that delectable and beautiful soap opera via Span-ish television, GRAND HOTEL, has got to be one of the more popular foreign TV offerings currently avail-able on Netflix streaming. Fans have been begging the famous "content distributor" to give them that final season for nearly a year now. At last, here it is -- in 24 episodes of 44 minutes each.

When Season Two ended with the shock and jolt that left many of us with our mouths hanging open, some of us imagined that this indeed was indeed the end of the series -- in which the characters, many of whom were very bad people, got what they deserved. Still, we wondered, what about all the others? Now we know.

The series, based on an idea by a man and woman whom I would guess are the Spanish equivalent of what we over here in the USA call showrunners -- Ramón Campos (above, right) and Gema R. Neira (above, left), both of whom produced and collaborated on the writing of most, maybe all, of the episodes -- takes place in and around the titular grand hotel (filmed at the famous Palacio de la Magdalena) in the lush and verdant seaside locations of Santander in Cantabria, Spain.

Both outdoors and indoors, the series is a visual knockout, what with the gorgeous exterior shots and the highly detailed interiors -- oh, the flatware and china, the exquisite decor and costumes -- Gran Hotel proves a non-stop feast for the eyes. Comparisons have and will continue to be made to Downton Abbey, and they are certainly apt. But for my money this Spanish series beats out the British one, bigtime. Even if, I must admit, the third season does have its longueurs now and again. In order to reach its finale via those 24 episodes, a certain amount of padding is present.

Still, if you become as heavily involved with all these many, many characters as did I (and clearly many other viewers), it may be difficult not to become absolutely wrapped up in the often silly but always enjoyable plotting. This final season offers up the Alarcon's spoiled-rotten ladies' man son (Eloy Azorín, above, left) suddenly smitten with a nurse named Laura who has come to care for the wounded after season two's sudden "mishap." As played by Marta Hazas (above, right), this character proves a wealth of surprise, fun and, well, you'll find out....

Of course we have more of the Inspector Ayala (Pep Anton Muñoz, above, left) and his not-so-swift assistant (Antonio Reyes, above, right), both of whom manage to become even more fun as the series progresses, along with our ever-kept-apart lovebirds, Alicia and Julio (Amaia Salamanca and Yon González (on poster, top, and in the photo just below it), who remain as engaging as ever, though Ms Salamanca seems to have grown older and less lustrous, given all her poor character has had to put up with over 66 episodes.

Gran Hotel has become one of my favorite shows, due, I think, to the Spanish-ness of it all. I found it even more of a soap-opera than Downton Abbey, yet I liked it much better. These are some of the most memorable characters you'll spend this much time with -- so specific and interesting, despite the fact that they -- some of them, at least, like Doña Teresa, played by the very fine Adriana Ozores, shown center, above, in one of her more provocative moments -- get away with murder and somehow we still care about them. (This is one of the series' more troubling and interesting accomplishments.)

Then there's the whole "randy priest" thing involving our lying, murdering and adulterous Sofia (Luz Valdenebro, at ), along with the surprise of Javier finally learning to commit to his nutty wife (and the fact that he can only get an erection with her, of all things!).

And then, especially, there is Belén (played with enormous steel and force by Marta Larralde, shown center, above) -- who for some reason, despite her truly nasty deeds and utterly heartless demeanor, I'll remember best and with real fondness from the episodes in which she gives birth to and then loses her offspring -- a time in which she was most human, caring, vulnerable and sad.

Is there a villain in TV history you can hate more thoroughly yet find so damned sexy and alluring as that key character, Diego, played with such relish and smarts by Pedro Alonso (above, left)?  I doubt it.

This season, there are several new and very enjoyable characters, led by Alicia's dear friend Maite (played with delicious verve and flair by Megan Montaner, above) and the hotel's new and unusual maître d' (essayed by that fine and duly famous Spanish actor Lluís Homar, below).

With all its silliness and faults -- maybe even because of them -- I believe this to be an extraordinary series, like nothing else I can recall seeing. Its take on power, money and the coming of the Spanish middle class, and its joining, toward the end, of the wealthy to the poor (via "Duke" Alfredo and Doña Angela and her crew) I found most moving and progressive. Podemos would surely approve.

Gran Hotel, can be seen now via Netflix streaming or on DVD and Blu-ray. Do check it out. (That's the lovelorn, lovable and ever-naive Andrès, above, a waiter-turned-heir who is played by the uber-lovable actor, Llorenç González.) 

Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's SPRING offers some novel, enthralling genre-jumping

Combination love story, horror and sci-fi/fantasy, SPRING proves a most rewarding movie experience. Written and directed by a twosome fairly new to film -- Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead -- their movie makes up in originality and specificity what it sometimes lacks in slickness and pacing. It is first and foremost a tale of genuine love, of a young man toward a woman he is just beginning to know. On her part, this may be something new in her very old existence, but it proves strange and important enough to struggle with.

The filmmakers, shown above, with Moorhead on the left, deliver a movie that makes wonderful use of its two co-stars -- Lou Taylor Pucci (below, right), an actor whose depths we're only beginning to discover, and a German actress new to TrustMovies named Nadia Hilker (below, left), of whom, after her work here, we are sure to be seeing more.

In rather quick succession, Spring bops us with a mother's death, a bar fight, and a sudden get-away to foreign climes -- in this case one of the more picturesque Italian locations imaginable: Polignano a Mare (below), where our hero, Evan (Mr. Pucci) arrives knowing none of the locals and little Italian. This actor has always has a knack for playing vulnerable, sweet guys, and he is using it again here. In Spring, however, he couples it to a strength both physical (he wins that bar fight) and moral. Evan is a decent guy faced with a difficult dilemma. Oh, boy, is it difficult.

The dilemma is all about the woman he meets and falls into love and lust with, played quite strikingly by Ms Hilker. We viewers are given entrance into her secrets long before Evan makes his tardy discovery, and so we can sympathize with her situation, even more so, the more we learn of it -- which is all about genetics, DNA, evolution and history, plus a rather large leap into sci-fi-cum-horror territory.

And yet, of all modern movies I've seen that begin to address this, Spring seems to handle it in by far the most empathetic manner, from the POV of the, well, shall we say, "monster" of sorts. Ms Hilker manages to be at once utterly charming and vivacious and then -- thanks to some excellent make-up and special effects -- everything from ugly to scary to horrific. The filmmakers' wide-screen compositions are alternately gorgeous and shocking (the cinematography is by Moorhead himself).

The moviemakers play their "horror" cards adroitly by showing us bits and pieces and then, at two or three points, what look like completely awful and very different breeds of "manimals" and sea life. All this is both shocking and fascinating, due to the premise on which these evolutionary high-jinx are based.  (There is also a fine little sub-plot dealing with Evan's job helping a local farmer, lovingly played by Francesco Carnelutti.)

Further, as Evan get more deeply involved in his lover's problems, the movie spills out loads of exposition, as she tries to explain to him exactly what is going on. This exposition might stop a lesser movie dead in its tracks, but because we care so much for both these characters, as they try to communicate and understand each other, we're held in place, even at the "talkiest" moments. This process becomes, for them, vital and immediate, and for us, surprisingly invigorating. The ending, as seems right, fills us with both dread and a kind of sublime peace. In its unusual way, this film has as much to say about the iterations of love, as does the just-opened Amour Fou.

Spring, then, is a love story first and sci-fi/horror second. It also marks an auspicious, second-full-length film for Benson and Moorhead. The movie -- released theatrically via Drafthouse Films and on VOD from FilmBuff, unrated and running 109 minutes -- opens this Friday, March 29, in a dozen cities across the country (here in NYC, it plays the Cinema Village; in the L.A. area it's at the Sundance Sunset Cinemas), and the following Friday, March 27, it will hit another nine. Throughout April it will reach most of the country's other major areas. You can see all the currently scheduled playdates by clicking here and scrolling down. However you choose to view it -- in a theater or via VOD -- do view.

A sequel full of food, fun, scenery & impressions: Michael Winterbottom's THE TRIP TO ITALY

If you loved (or hated or fell anywhere in between) Michael Winterbottom's earlier The Trip, his new lark, THE TRIP TO ITALY should keep you pretty much in that same frame of mind. If anything, this one's even a bit easier to enjoy because the scenery is a lot better -- not to mention the hotels and food (if only we could taste it!). The earlier movie had our enterprising duo Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing themselves and touring Britain's finest restaurants. This new film does the same -- but in Italy. 'Nuff said?

Yes, we get the same constant wordplay, humor, impersonations and competitiveness that Coogan and Brydon (above, right and left, respectively) produce when they rub up against each other. Though, this time, all of it is tempered with some other interesting stuff: family (some of whom join the pair en route), and -- gosh, can it really be so? -- a little empathy from the guys  toward each other.

Filmmaker Winter-bottom, shown at left, is master of versatility. He rarely does the same thing twice. Perhaps, due to the surprise success of The (first) Trip, he's repeating himself for once. And we can be grateful for it. This fellow, who more often than not dabbles in very dark places -- from his first film, Butterfly Kiss, onwards through I Want You, Wonderland, The Claim, The Road to Guantanamo, The Killer Inside Me and Trishna -- might also have been delighted to tackle some out-and-out comedy again.

For their part Coogan and Brydon are as delightful as ever, whether giving us more of their Michael Caine interpretations, or Pacino or De Niro and on and on. Or finally, bonding a bit with wife or offspring and trying provide some husbandly/fatherly advice and/or affection.

Movies like this tend to be rather short. Interestingly, Winterbottom and his boys see to it that the humor and interest don't flag for the entire 108-minute running time (the initial Trip lasted 107). Well, that gorgeous scenery does change, as do the cities, hotels and food.  As someone once demanded, "What's not to like?"

The Trip to Italy, from IFC Films, opens this Friday, August 15, in New York City at the IFC Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema; it is said to be opening in Los Angeles this coming Friday, as well, but I have not been able to determine at which theaters.  (The following Fridays, Aug 22 and 29, it will open at various Laemmle theaters around the L.A. area.)

Justin Owensby's CHAPMAN opens in New York City and Los Angeles; Colorado should be proud.

Movie scenery doesn't get much prettier than that of CHAPMAN, a new melodrama with occasional touches of romance, comedy and drug use. "Where was this filmed?" wondered my spouse aloud, as we watched. "Maybe Colorado, as one character was wearing a Colorado shirt..." According to the end credits, that would be exactly the state, and boy, does it look glorious. All by itself, too: none of this "added special effects" stuff. The scenery, with cinematography by Sean Stiegemeier, is one good reason to watch the movie.

Another is the remarkably smart visual casting in the younger/older selves of the two main male characters. Otherwise, it seems as though first-time, full-length filmmaker Justin Owensby, for whom I have given up trying to find a decent photo (not to mention any from the movie itself), had some issues from the past to work out and so handled them via this not uninteresting but finally too shallow and easily resolved movie. In fact, the more information that Mr. Owensby doles slowly out, the less interesting and believable things become. The story has to do with an approaching-middle-age man with a lot of issues from the past that now come back to corral him.

Soon he is flyng back to his former home, where old (sort-of) friends appear and try to engage him. Or not. There's a smart, sassy girl at the rent-a-car booth who used to know him -- which leads to some sex, deserved anger, and a bell-hop costume. Slowly, via flashbacks we discover who this guy was and now is and what events from the past seem to have unhinged him this thoroughly. That's it. At the end of it all, you'll feel that it's been certainly painless to view. But that is not the same thing as a recommendation to watch.

Chapman, by the way, refers to an evidently famous dam in the state's National Park area. Chapman, the movie, opened yesterday in New York City (the Quad Cinema) and Los Angeles (Laemmle's Music Hall 3).

Stream a Kat Coiro/Kate Bosworth mini-fest: AND WHILE WE WERE HERE & LIFE HAPPENS

The name Kat Coiro (the actress/writer/director/ producer is shown at right) is coming up a bit on Netflix these days, what with the recent limited theatrical release of her movie AND WHILE WE WERE HERE and an earlier one, LIFE HAPPENS, both now available to stream. Neither film is spectacular or must-see material, but both have things going on that make them worth a watch. Both also star Kate Bosworth (below, left), a performer TrustMovies usually enjoys watching. Ms Bosworth -- a very pretty, blond actress who may initially seem like this millennium's version of Sandra Dee

-- possesses more pointed, sharper features than the round-faced Ms Dee had in her heyday, while her choice of material (Black Rock, Another Happy Day, Big Sur) has proven rather dark, and sometimes as sharp as her pert features. In these two collaborations between Coiro and Bosworth -- one lighter, the other darker -- we get a chance to see (to some extent) just what both women are capable of.

While the rom-com Life Happens is an ensemble piece, offering a host of good performers doing their thing and mostly making it work, And While We Were Here, is a rom-dram

(tending toward melodram) showcase for Bosworth, who stars as an unhappy wife named Jane, vacation-ing in Naples while her musician husband works a gig there.

Jane herself is working on a book about her grandmother's time in England during WWII, and much of the movie is given over to her listening to tapes on Gran's reminiscences (voiced by Claire Bloom, whom we never, unfortunately, get to see). Out walking one day, Jane asks directions of a young man, and her question leads eventually to a relationship developing.

The husband is played by Iddo Goldberg (above right, with Ms Bosworth), the young man by Jamie Blackley (below). Both are effectively used as foils for Jane, one seeming to imprison her, even as the other offers freedom. The real questions, however, involve identity: Who is Jane and what does she really want?

Ms Coiro and her crack cameraman, Doug Chamberlain, use space and composition quite well, and some of the shots of Naples and its bay and famous castle, in high-definition, are eye-poppingly gorgeous. After watch-ing the film, I felt as if I'd taken a nice vacation to a country I dearly love.

Ms Bosworth is unafraid to make Jane sometimes annoying and petty, and she pulls us into her situation as well as possible, given the so-so screenplay (also by Ms Coiro) that goes from not begin nearly detailed and specific enough in its almost impersonal dialog to occasionally and obviously spelling things out that would be better left unsaid.

Overall, though, the movie works, thanks to the performers, the exquisite location, and the fine visuals throughout.

In Life Happens, Ms Bosworth plays Deena, a bent-on-success writer and best-friend/roommate of Kim (Krysten Ritter, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ms Coiro), a dog-walker and animal lover who longs to open a shopping mall devoted exclusively to pets. The third roommate is a 20-something young woman named Laura (Rachel Bilson), whose main claim to fame is that she is still a virgin. The three -- shown below, with Bosworth at right, Bilson center and Ritter at left -- make a fetching trio.

This is a rom-com, and so into the mix must come some men. Three of them --  Jason Biggs, shown below, left; Justin Kirk, center; and Geoff Stults, right -- do their studly stuff just fine, with Stults' non-pushy sexuality and Kirk's comic quirks a big plus (Biggs' role is barely there).

There are some cute moments -- off an on -- in the film's first half, but as written and acted, these characters, the girls in particular, seem so insistently spunky and cute that the movie is always threatening to curdle on us. Again, it's the screenplay, which offers up girls so dumb regarding everything from condom use to job hunting that our sympathy is soon in short supply. "When one of them finally admits, "We acted like total mental patients!" you will sadly agree.

If you last out the first half, however, the remainder of the movie brightens considerably. Characters begin acting like real people and the adults they are, and you realize that the film might just earn its happy ending. (How Bilson's professional virgin makes her condition pay off is particuarly juicy.)

You can stream both movies off Netflix now, although DVDs and other viewing sources are also available.

Siberian rhapsody: Vasyukov & Herzog's HAPPY PEOPLE: A YEAR IN THE TAIGA

If you have ever wan-ted to spend some time in the distant and cold Siberian wonder-land known as the Taiga, have I got a movie for you! It's a documentary originally shot by, from what I can gather, a newcom-er to Russian filmmak-ing, Dmitry Vasyukov (for Russian television, perhaps?) and then edited down from its four-hour length to just 90 minutes by documentary maven Werner Herzog, who then narrates the mini-film he has created out of Vasyukov's footage.

Herr Herzog (Grizzly Man, The White Diamond), shown at right, is no slouch when it comes to the documentary format, though his narrations (Cave of Forgotten Dreams -- yikes!) can sometimes up-end things a bit. Here, though, he has put together a lovely little narrative guide to his compressed version of Vasyulov's film (the original filmmaker is shown below), allowing us to spend what seems like just the right amount of time in this frosty landscape with its thought-ful but taciturn trappers as they go about their work (lots) and play (little) during the full calendar year of the movie's sub-title.

What makes this film as unusual as it is, and so innately interesting, I think, is that the inhabitants here live and work in conditions not all that much different from those of a century (or two, or three) past. How it this possible, in this day and age, we wonder? Well, the Taiga is still a wilderness, remote from civilization (as we know it, at least). Running water? Telephones (of any kind)? Medical aid? Forget 'em. Along with much else that we would consider mandatory. (They do seem to have electricity -- or batteries.) And yet, as we spend time here, especially with the hunter/trappers on whom the documentarians concentrate, the lives of these singular men begin to seem, well, more and more "normal."

I believe that Herzog's narrative (composed with the help of Vasyukov and Herzog's son Rudolf), always fluid and to the point, has much to do with this, along with his usual feeling for and understanding of his subjects. However odd the place that the filmmaker chooses to visit -- in the middle of a bunch of bears or on death row -- he brings us up-close-and-personal as best he can. And this is usually quite close enough.

The men we spend most of our time with are two hunter/trappers, Vasily and Gehnady, from whom we learn everything from how to set a foolproof and relatively humane trap, to how to keep other predators away from the kill -- and mice away from one's provisions. The small windows of their huts are sealed with soft plastic rather than glass, which the bears too easily break.

We learn about trees and skis, and the importance of a straight board. As for tools, "A good wedge is a man's savior," notes a trapper, as he demonstrates just why. Mosquitoes? Yeah, and like you've never seen them (the natives must make their own insect repellent -- out of tar).

All of this information and so much more must be passed from father to son, as we occasionally see being done. Is there any choice in this for the offspring? Do any of them head off to the big city? It would seem not. With no TV, radio or newspapers, do the children even know that an outside world exists?

As you might suspect, the dogs here are indeed man's best friends, and probably the most moving (and caring) parts of the movie involve the men's tales about their canines. One story, concerning Vasily's dogs and a bear, is something else.

With only a couple of exceptions over the years, the subjects that seem to interest Herr Herzog, he manages to make interest us, too. With Happy People, as with so many other of his films, we viewers simply trail along behind him, happily. The documentary, via Music Box Films, opens this Friday, January 25, in New York City exclusively at the IFC Center. To see all upcoming playdates -- in 25 cities around the country -- simply click here, and then click on the word THEATERS about halfway down the screen.