Fatih Akin's revenge/morality tale, IN THE FADE, gives Diane Kruger a terrific role....

...which she tackles and wrests quite sadly and quietly to the ground. Ms Kruger is one of those actresses -- Farewell My Queen, The Bridge (American version), Disorder -- whose delicate beauty can easily mask her talent, or at least sometimes overwhelm the viewer's ability to concentrate on the latter. In her latest (Cannes-winning Best Actress) role of Katja, the wife and mother, who, near the beginning of IN THE FADE, suffers an unimaginable loss, that beauty is tamped down some, while the talent remains strong.

The co-writer (with Hark Bohm) and director of the film is Fatih Akin (shown below), the well-known and well-regarded German filmmaker born (in 1973) of Turkish parents, whose previous films, as well as this one, tend to deal with "outsiders," along with society's reaction to them.

Whether these films are drama (Head-On), comedy (Soul Kitchen) or tinged with mystery/thriller elements (The Edge of Heaven and this latest addition), the movies always seem to bulge out of their genre: the comedy grows dark, the drama gets crazy, and now, with In the Fade, what at first looks like a thriller complete with aspects of terrorism and revenge, grows into something more. As usual, it's the "more" that makes Herr Akin such an interesting but also somewhat elusive and less conventionally satisfying filmmaker. I am not certain that he will ever manage a typically mainstream movie (nor, I suspect, would he want to), but this is why TrustMovies will never miss a film of his if I can help it.

As usual, the less you know about the movie, plot-wise, the better in terms of your enjoyment and surprise. Ms Kruger (above, left, and below, right) plays a character who fell in love with her drug dealer (Numan Acar, above, right) when still a very young woman, waited for him to finish his relatively small prison term, married him, conceived a child (below) and is in the process of the (relatively) happy-ever-after section of life -- when all this is suddenly interrupted.

The event leads to a police investigation, during which Katja's history comes back to haunt, a trial (below and further below) involving home-grown terrorists (some of the details of which will set your teeth on edge), and then a judgement that results in vengeance, along with quite a bit more.

Mr. Akin is concerned with themes of immigration (of which he himself is a product), and a Germany in which neo-Nazis, who have been alive and consistently kicking since just post-World War II, are gaining strength and seem even stronger in today's world, where alternative "facts" via the internet seem ever more available and aggressive.

Akin's movie moves from the simpler questions of why and then how to the more complicated ones of now what? and is this justice? and then to the queasy convolutions that right and wrong can sometimes take. Along the way, there is plenty of suspense and even a few thrills, and if the filmmaker were merely making a revenge tale, we would probably have had a much more conventional and obviously enjoyable, if simplistic time.

Instead, we're put into the mind and soul of Katja, her grief and her anger, and Ms Kruger sees to it that we respond to this darkness, finally asking ourselves, Might be do something similar -- if we had the guts and commitment? The journey, let alone the destination, is not an easy one, but it is certainly worthwhile. Just don't expect the simple-mindedness of a Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood movie. In the Fade may be neither blockbuster entertainment nor great art, but it is good film-making -- with a mind, heart and morality all its own.

From Magnolia Pictures and running 106 minutes, the movie opens this Wednesday, December 27, in New York City (at the IFC Center and the new Landmark 57th Street) and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal) before making its way around the rest of the country in limited release over the weeks to come. It hits South Florida on January 26 at Fort Lauderdale's Savor Cinema, Hollywood's Cinema Paradiso, and Miami's Tower Theater. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters. 

Peter Berg's PATRIOTS DAY is a (sort of) patriotic, suspenseful look at that infamous Boston Marathon

PATRIOTS DAY, which opens nationwide today, proves a pretty good example of what a docu-drama can accomplish when it is written with some flair, filmed smartly and acted well, This one, directed and co-written (with four other writers) by Peter Berg (shown below) takes us back a few years to the 2013 Boston Marathon and the sudden bombings that rendered the event what is now referred to -- as with every act of (so often) homegrown terrorism -- as a national "tragedy." I would call the recent and rigged election of Donald Trump far more tragic for America than any of these murderous events, but the dreadful results of this election on everyone except the wealthy are only beginning to unfurl.

As is his wont -- see Deepwater Horizon, Lone Survivor  or his early (and still best) film, Very Bad Things -- Mr. Berg does a busy, brawny job putting together the many pieces of his docu-drama. Patriots Day is filled with all kinds of characters, and those to be major to the movie are singled out early. Most of these are based on real people, and the film has been cast (with a single exception) exceedingly well, with faces and figures that seem for the most part quite reasonable and real. The cast here does not resemble the usual ultra-buffed-and-toned, perfect-teeth people from so many of those TV, cable and movie journeys into the supposedly "real."

The one exception, unfortunately, is the movie's star, Mark Wahlberg (above and below, center), who gives a perfectly OK, if occasionally heavy-handed performance as the Boston cop who holds the movie together and becomes its focal point. This character does not even exist in reality, so basing the movie around him seems much too easy a way to earn questionable emotions via short-cut storytelling. (That's Michelle Monaghan, two photos below and at bottom, who has the thankless role of the made-up wife of this made-up character.)

So many other of the real characters, shown here in both their acting counterparts and (at the finale) as themselves, are so vital and interesting, that I believe the movie could have succeeded even better by simply using them and leaving out Wahlberg's created-out-of-whole-cloth cop. As much as his many scenes might seem to help hold the film together, they're actually unnecessary and simply add foot-tapping time to the film's very long, two-hour and seven-minute length. Tightened up, it might have zipped by and still had its cumulative emotional effect.

The movie's most suspenseful scene involves the kidnapping/car-jacking of a young chinese immigrant, the results of which will keep on edge anyone who did not follow all the ins and out of this bombing scenario (and very probably even those who did). Unfortunately the scene ends with our heroic fellow telling the cops to "Get those motherfuckers!" Even if the guy actually uttered these by-now-uber-cliched words, here, they come off as mere fodder for the mainstream.

The finale, in addition to showing us the real people involved, also demonstrates how Boston came together in a way in which citizens helped each other through the crisis. It's good to be reminded of this, though the movie does bang its point home a bit hard. (That's a thinned-down John Goodman, above, center, as the police commissioner, and Kevin Bacon, below, as the FBI guy in charge of the case.)

Still, for the most part, Patriots Day does a good job as docu-drama, moving fast and steadily toward the initial incidents, and then showing us the police/FBI work that went into discovering the identities of the perpetrators. All this does bring up an interesting point about surveillance vis-a-vis privacy. In this case, having cameras everywhere in public places was able to bring the culprits to justice and makes its case for this kind of surveillance.

On the other hand, all the private phone-tapping and email-probing did little good in this instance (the government has evidently not been able to make a case against the older Tsarnaev brother's wife). The fight for privacy of all Americans in terms of their correspondence -- spoken and visual -- still matters.

From CBS Films, Patriots Day opens wide today, Friday, January 13. To find a theater near you, simply click here and then scroll down, type your zip code into the proper slot, and press ENTER.

Home-grown terrorism, 1960s-70s style: With AMERICAN PASTORAL, Ewan McGregor directs and stars in the latest Philip Roth adaptation; Woody Allen tackles the theme in his Amazon streaming series, CRISIS IN SIX SCENES

Given how life-and-time-changing were the rather large number of incidents of home-grown American terrorism back in the 1960 &70s -- as Civil Rights appeared so strongly on the national agenda, the Vietnam War raged, protests mounted, and bombings and other assorted acts occurred (I don't think we referred to them as "terrorism" back then; they were instead "violent protests" or assassinations) -- it seems odd how little our cultural landscape, then or now, reflected this.

Considering how many movies, books and TV shows covered the Manson family and its so-much-more sensational

crimes, this lack is more than a little noticeable. We've seen a few documentaries down the decades, and we had the pretty-good TV movie Katherine (which has, since then, had its title changed to 'The Radical'), the musical Hair, of course (but that offered protest than was non-violent), and a few novels that, mostly quite after-the-fact, addressed the issues that were then at hand and quite vital to the good old USA.

One of these was Philip Roth's American Pastoral, first published in 1997, of which we now have a movie version, also called AMERICAN PASTORAL and directed by and starring Ewan McGregor (shown at right), with a screenplay adapted by John Romano. The other currently-streaming-via- Amazon cultural artifact that tackles this time period and its discontents is -- of all things -- the latest endeavor by one, Woody Allen, and is titled CRISIS IN SIX SCENES. The two works, while covering similar territory, could hardly be more different.

This is not unexpected, of course, considering the oeuvre of Mr. Allen and Mr. Roth. But comparison of both these two new "entertainments" -- having seen them in the same week, as did TrustMovies -- proves rather striking and edifying. While neither work is entirely successful, both are eminently worth seeing, mulling over and enjoying for their various strong points, which are many. American Pastoral explores terrorism and its results darkly, while Crisis in Six Scenes gives us the light and quite funny/satiric side via the usual Woody witticisms/characterizations. Both make you think and ponder nonetheless. Seen together, they add up to a particularly tasty, nourishing and worth-digesting meal.

I have not read the Roth novel, and therefore can only go by what the movie version offers. (I have read several of Roth's early works and found them sometimes funny and well-written but awfully misogynistic.) The movie, it seems to me, shows that Mr. McGregor has real potential as a filmmaker -- even if the result he has given us here is remarkably flat. But wait: It's often that very flatness that keeps us glued to the enticing and engulfing plot.

Everything is straight up and straight out, from the early exposition/narration to the individual scenes that tell and show us what we need to know. The story, of the "perfect" American family -- Dad's a high school football hero, mom's a beauty queen, and their daughter, ah, there's the catch. She's a lovely little all-American blond named Merry, with a stutter, a keen intelligence and perhaps the kind of real and all-inclusive empathy that (we're being told of late) can prove unhealthy.

In any case, Merry turns into a protester and then into a "terrorist," and the remainder of the movie details the unraveling of this family in a succession of scenes that grows darker and more unsettling, partially because we never completely learn how and why the change (or maybe growth) in Merry happened. We do get a major clue, however, in the scene with the family around the television, as one of those Vietnamese monks of the time self-incinerates himself as the world watches. Merry's reaction here is so strong, so indelible (the fine little actress, Hannah Nordberg, above, right, nails this moment) that it brings the concept of empathy to searing life. Nothing is quite the same thereafter.

If Nordberg allows us inside her character -- she does so again, in a scene that skirts the Oedipal (or its female counterpart) -- most of the other actors do not. And this seems almost purposeful, as we skate along the surface and the plot details build. Jennifer Connelly (three photos above) is fine as the beautiful wife who finds her own way of coping (though Roth's misogyny is most apparent here), David Strathairn (above) impresses, as always, as the narrator, schoolmate, and Molly Parker (below) does, as well, as Merry's double-duty therapist.

Orange Is the New Black's amazing Uzo Aduba shows us a whole new side as our hero's assistant at the glove-making factory (is she Roth's idea of the "good negro"?) that he has taken over from his aging father (the very good Peter Riegert. below). And then there is Mr. McGregor. This actor has been just fine in film after film. Here, he is perfectly OK, but it is in and through him that the flatness of the film most shows up. He's the character we're able least to get inside: Utterly passive; he reacts to everything but rarely acts on his own. While this may have been Roth's and now McGregor's intention, it does leave a kind of hole in the movie.

And yet this very hole forces us to wonder and consider everything anew. American Pastoral may leave you unsatisfied in certain ways, but I suspect your will mull it over. And maybe over again. Is this the plight of the American father and man? To have all the expectations laid out in one neat, long row? And then to have them, like those famous dominoes, fall flat? What was America's responsibility in that very unjust Vietnamese war? And how exactly does an act of political violence assuage anything? (Dakota Fanning (below, right) plays the daughter Merry grown up, and she, too, is flat but still impressive, while leaving us longing for answers, of which there will be none. And rightly so. This character's empathy is far-ranging, eternal and clearly destructive to her and those around her.

From Lionsgate -- and supposedly running a more than two-hour time frame, which now seems to have now been cut down to around 105 minutes -- the movie opens nationwide this Friday, October 21. Here in South Florida it will play the AMC Aventura 24 in Miami, Regal's South Beach 18 in Miami Beach, and the Cinemark Palace 20, Boca Raton. Click here and then click on GET TICKETS to find the theater nearest you.

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The game-changing character in Mr. Allen's new series -- quite similar in intentions and even looks (if not at all similar in style and depiction) to American Pastoral's Merry -- is Lenny Dale, played by, of all people, Miley Cyrus (above, left), who is actually good -- charming, bright and alluring -- enough to attract another important character, the also bright-but-too-buttoned-down young businessman, Alan, played by the very good John Magaro (above, right).

It is into the upper-middle-class home of TV and novel writer, S. J. Munsinger (played by Mr. Allen, above, left) and his wife, Kay (the wonderful Elaine May, above, right), that the gun-toting Lennie breaks one late night, turning the Munsinger household upside down. On the run from the law for a number of "terrorist" acts, Lennie brings up those same themes of justice, retribution, rights and wrongs.

But this, being a Woody Allen creation, uses all these same themes for lighter entertainment. The series begins, however, with a montage of 60s events -- civil rights, Vietnam, etc -- that offers ample evidence of Lennie's claims, and so, even as we chuckle and chortle throughout these six episodes, with each one lasting around 22 minutes and giving us a little over two hours of fun and games, we are still consistently reminded of what -- out there and far away from this comfortable household -- is happening to others, thanks to American policy, both foreign and domestic.

If this sounds like an odd combination, it certainly is. Yet Allen pulls it off with his usual savoir faire. His S. J. Munsiger (note the syllable similarity to a certain J.D. Salinger -- which is used for a very funny situation late in the series), offers Mr. Allen in his typically nerdy, neurotic schlemiel mode (just older here). He is as funny as ever, and his ability to satirize the 60s/70s in terms of how events effected (usually not) the comfortable middle class is very much on target.

In his large supporting cast appear everyone from Joy Behar (above, center), as one of Mrs. Munsinger's book-club attendees, to famous French comic Gad Elmaleh as one of Kay's marriage- counseling clients. (Some of her advice to these clients is very funny, if not perhaps very typical). The break-in leads to consciousness-raising, romance, and some silly but funny derring-do (below) by Sidney and Kay -- all before the everything's-gonna-be-fine finish, which seems to gather together on screen maybe half of Westchester County.

From the ever more active Amazon Originals production group, Crisis in Six Scenes is streaming now and should provide copious laughs and not a little nostalgia for the senior set. Amazon Prime members can watch it free of charge.