Sweet, smart, feel-good fun: Jeremy LaLonde/ Jonas Chernick's JAMES VS HIS FUTURE SELF

Can a sci-fi premise, already a tad unbelievable simply by virtue of its being science-fiction, succeed via the strength, intensity and just-plain-earnestness of its performances? Yes: If it has all that plus some very good writing and direction. JAMES VS HIS FUTURE SELF -- a smart, sweet, witty combo of sci-fi, rom-com and important life lessons -- is on my best-of-year list already. It left me in tears, not of sadness but outright delight, due to how well-handled, in every way, it so thoroughly is. Movies that succeed this beautifully often get that reaction from me, and this one managed it in spades.

Sci-fi films, historically, have been replete with life lessons -- though many of the bigger would-be-blockbusters tend to offer those of the apocalyptic, end-of-humanity-in-one-way-or-another sort. The absolute joy of James Vs His Future Self comes via its small-scale, just-one-guy-and-his-problems premise: the eponymous James, played by the film's co-writer and co-star, Jonas Chernick (below, left of another marvelous Canadian movie, My Awkward Sexual Adventure). Oh, the film does have humanity headed for a not-so-nice time, but this is used predominantly for toss-away humor (oh, god -- the end of tomatoes!). What Chernick and director and co-writer Jeremy LeLonde (shown above) make certain we care about most is James and those very few but vital folk who surround him.

These would include BFF and maybe more, played with complete, fall-in-love-with-her charm, sex appeal and beauty by Cleopatra Coleman (above, right) and an actor we just don't see enough of anymore, Daniel Stern (below).

Stern plays the other part of the eponymous title, and he plays it so damned well that the fact that he and Chernick possess completely different faces and body types doesn't matter in the slightest. Both actors are so alert, incisive and in the moment that they carry us along like a river run wild.

Time travel is the sci-fi theme here, and the fact that we've seen this more times than can be counted on fingers and toes matters not one whit. The filmmakers bring such spontaneity and wit, along with charm and surprise, to their mix that I suspect, from first scene onward, you'll be hooked.  (That's Frances Conroy, above, who does a bang-up job with her two or three scenes.)

Four of the five leading characters in the film are physicists; only James' sister, played by Tommie-Amber Pirie, above) is not among the uber-intelligentsia, but she's a nice addition, in any case. This is such a genuinely delightful movie, I can fully understand why, as of now, it's at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

From Gravitas Ventures and running just 95 minutes, James Vs His Future Self has been available on VOD since the beginning of the month. Check your local service provide or go to the usual suspect to find it fast.

WELCOME TO HAPPINESS: Oliver Thompson's how-(not)-to-fix-your-life movie opens

This is somewhat unusual. Two days in a row TrustMovies finds himself covering a film dedicated to providing a particular philosophy of life. With yesterday's Ma Ma, Julio Medem told us to "think, feel, experience, struggle, suffer" and all the rest -- and do it full out -- while in today's WELCOME TO HAPPINESS, first-time writer/ director Oliver Thompson (below) pleads with us not to waste time wishing to fix the past. Instead, get on with life. Though the Medem movie is much classier, bigger-budgeted and more assured, I'll go with Mr. Thompson's philosophy.

To be quite truthful, both movies are a mess, yet both have their charm and offer some enjoyment along the way. In Welcome to Happiness, the lead character, a 'blocked' children's-book writer named Woody (played by Kyle Gallner, below) rents an apartment from a landlord named Moses (Nick Offerman, shown at bottom), whom we might, had we a religious bent, view as a kind of 'god' (or at least a heavy-duty religious figure). That's because Woody's job, as per Moses, is to shepherd the folk who arrive at this apartment through some questions, a bit of rock holding and finally into a closet in which exists a door that will open to them and transport them to a place where they can undo their prior mistakes. Wow -- nice! Well, maybe.

We meet a few of these people -- primarily Nyles (Brendan Sexton III, below, right) and Ripley (Josh Brener, below, left), both of whom would dearly love to change the past. They're connected, in way that they will probably never come to know. And that's all right. Fortunately Thompson understands enough not to belabor exposition like this.

There's also a would-be girlfriend, played with her usual verve by Olivia Thirlby (below, right), Woody's frustrated agent (Paget Brewster, two photos below), and a very lovely strawberry blond (Molly C. Quinn), who acts as a kind of tour guide for Woody. Unfortunately these ladies have very little character to display or plot to develop. As too often happens with male filmmakers, it's just the guys who are worth our interest here.

Not that these guys are not important nor have not been given any less than their due via the excellent actors. Thompson does better, woman-wise, by the wonderful Frances Conroy, who plays one of the pair who lies behind that fabled doorway.  So life lessons are learned by all, the most important being: Move on. The past cannot be changed, and in any case, the repercussions from this might be worse than what we already have.

The movie is a good fifteen minutes too long, as well. Thompson doesn't know how to quit while he's ahead. Yet he's given us an mostly engaging, oddball effort that combines fantasy, philosophy and (some) fun. I'll be interested to see what he offers up next.

Meanwhile, WELCOME TO HAPPINESS, from FilmBuff, opens today, Friday, May 20, in New York City at the Cinema Village, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's NoHo 7. Elsewhere? Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates. And, if you're not near the selected theatrical cities, don't worry: the movie is simultaneously available via VOD.

Streaming tip: Ted Koland's BEST MAN DOWN is a sweet little film about love, loss and friendship

TrustMovies can't swear to this, but it seems to him that the little rom-com-drama BEST MAN DOWN, written and directed by Ted Koland, must be based on either something that actually happened to the filmmaker or that he heard about from a friend. The movie is simultaneously so precise and bizarre that it is difficult to imagine where a tale this unusual -- filled with such detail and odd characters -- might have come from other than life itself. If not, then Mr. Koland (pictured below) must have quite an imagination. Well, that's an artist's stock in trade, right? On the other hand, we're always told: Write about what you know.

Either way, the filmmaker certainly seems to know these characters well --from the groom (Justin Long) and bride (Jess Weixler), his best friend and their "best man" (Tyler Labine) as well as the several new characters who are introduced, once something happens to that best man.

These would include an entirely other family: problematic mom (Frances O'Connor), her struggling daughter (Addison Timlin, below) and nowhere-near-decent stepdad (Evan Jones).

How and why these two sets of characters interact provides the tale the movie tells, and it's a good one: oddball but quite believable, given the circumstances in which these characters find themselves.

I don't want to spoil the plot surprises, so I will simply say that at the wedding of the characters played by Long and Weixler (above), something happens that sends our newlyweds, rather than on the honeymoon they had planned, onto a road trip of surprising discovery.

Our twosome argues and re-connects and learns things along the way, and so, I think, do most of the other characters, too. These are not lollopalooza life lessons writ large but rather quiet little things that sneak up on them -- and us.

In fact, the whole movie sneaks up on you. Then it's over, and you realize how lovely and quietly significant it has been. Performances are exactly what they should be, with Mr. Labine (above, left) perhaps topping them all by playing a character of whom our perception changes most drastically, from beginning to end.

Mr. Koland ought to be proud. Best Man Down is the kind of film that makes little waves and wins few awards. But it's a shoo-in for success on Netflix streaming, where it's now playing and leaving audiences who appreciate something different feeling chastened and pleased at how well their time's been spent.

On DVD & Blu-ray: THE DETAILS -- Don't pass up Jacob Aaron Estes' smart comedy

A life-lessons-cum-racoon comedy, THE DETAILS came and went from theaters with something approaching the speed of light. And why not? When more than a dozen movies open in any given week (last week's total here in NYC: 21), how can audiences with limited time and money possibly keep up? Consequently, some of the most creative and original stuff gets lost in the shuffle.

One such movie is Jacob Aaron Estes' very funny, dark, sad and unusual comedy about how life happens, with the responsibility for what happens only partially our own. That partial bit, however, is still major, and owning up to things (or not) is a big part of the problem. Almost a decade ago, Mr. Estes (shown at left) gave us his first full-lengther, the excellent (and also dark) coming-of-age movie Mean Creek. Since then he's done only a bit of writing and no directing till now, so it is very good to have him back in business. This guy is still surprising us, giving us a movie that, once seen, will take a permanent, if minor, place in our collective memory.

What happens, from the very outset is ridiculous but oddly believable, given the characters on view. These include our hero (a good job from the slowly maturing Tobey Maguire, above, center), as a young doctor, semi-happily married (with one child) to Elizabeth Banks (above, left).

The rest of the ensemble includes his also married best friends, Ray Liotta (above, doing some very nice and quite different work here) and Kerry Washington, and a needy, nerdy next-door neighbor (the incomparable Laura Linney, below, with Maguire, and doing, as always, yeoman work),

and a more-than-down-on-his-luck fellow whom our hero plays basketball with (an excellent and near-unrecognizable Dennis Haysbert, below). How Mr. Estes has mixed and matched these characters so delightfully and crazily without quite ever losing our understanding or good will is something of a marvel.

His purpose, I think, is to make us look at life from a different angle. He succeeds, while also revealing the depths of denial of which we humans are capable and offering up a group of racoons that ought to win Best Movie Animal Life Award, should the Academy ever deign to offer such a prize.

Also included on this DVD/Blu-ray is a feature we don't see so often anymore but, here, it's one that demands your watching, once you've seen the finished film: both an alternate beginning to the movie and an alternate ending. While not changing the point of his film, Estes' alternates offer even more fun. I'm not sure, in fact, that I wouldn't prefer the alternates to the actual beginning and end. Either way, the movie works its magic and demands a viewing.

From Anchor Bay Entertainment and Radius-TWC and running 101 minutes (the alternate stuff adds just a few more), The Details hits the street this Tuesday, April 30, on DVD & Blu-ray, for sale/rental.

Raoul Ruiz's NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET: the loveliest good-bye in the history of film?

To answer the question in the headline, if this is not the loveliest, most playful, profound and artful of good-byes, then it is certainly up there will the best of them. Having just removed the screener from my Blu-ray player and still a bit high from this filmmaker's quiet visual pyrotechnics and verbal poetry, coupled to the idea that we will have no more from the man -- born Raúl Ernesto Ruiz Pino and later known as the filmmaker Raoul Ruiz and even later as Raúl Ruiz -- who died a year and one-half ago, I probably should wait a bit before trying to write about this particular confluence of art and leave-taking, for fear that sentimentality will prove too strong a force. But as the film opens today, and I have promised to cover it, let's just... wing it.

NIGHT ACROSS THE STREET (an intriguing title that I cannot begin to explain: how is this different from night next door?) offers many of the same themes and styles that always seem to have attracted Señor Ruiz, among them exile and identity, present and past, young and old, life and death, the corporeal and the ghostly, the experimental and the surreal, and theory brought to odd life -- regarding film and just about everything else. Born and raised in Chile, Ruiz worked as a filmmaker until the U.S.-aided Pinochet coup, when he escaped to France, where he lived and continued to work over the decades. As I understand it, toward the end of his life, he returned to Chile to make this final film (plus a few others as yet unseen by us hoi polloi). I've only viewed maybe a dozen of his enormous output of 117 (both shorts and full-lengths), but it does seem to me that this "Night" is not only his best but in many ways the apotheosis of his oeuvre.

For one thing it is infinitely playful. Did this filmmaker's touch continue to lighten even as he grew older? It would seem so, as both this film and his penultimate work, Mysteries of Lisbon, are among his most playful without being quite so insistently confusing as some of his earlier films. (Or maybe I've just grown up enough to better appreciate him.)

Ruiz's last film begins with some aerial shots across landscapes and then seascapes. Then we're in a classroom (above) in which a professor attempts to teach his class of students -- young, older and very old -- how to see and hear with their eyes shut. Instead of beginning with something remotely normal and then morphing into the surreal and bizarre, we seem to be there already -- but in a more playful fashion than usual.

We meet our hero, Celso as both a boy and old man, and in bits and pieces come to learn something about his/their life and interests. We meet Beethoven, the real deal (see photo at bottom), or at least as Ruiz conceives him, and we even make a trip to the cinema with him (the composer is amazed, as indeed he should be). Time jumps all over the place, and so does the "reality" of some of the sets. Clearly, we're seeing our characters at times against obviously superimposed backdrops, and with some things simply drawn in (note the curtain on the window, above).

All this is just "there," for us to note or not. There is a wonderfully confused political discussion at a soccer game (above)  which to my mind reflects the politics of Chile, even today. And we're soon made aware of an assassination plot against our poor Celso, who is about to retire from his office job, where his seemingly oncoming dementia is worsening.  Or maybe he's simply preoccupied. (When we find out just who the assassin is, it's mind-bending.)

There's a large cast here, and most of them manage to remain light and nimble against what I can only describe as great odds of having to (and perhaps not able to) know what the hell is really going on. But they're game, and somehow, even if they don't quite understand, I think we finally can and do. This is Celso's life, in its specifics -- adventure in its literary form, with pirates (below, in background) and poetry jousting for pride of place -- but it is also, somehow, all of our lives. In contemplating his own mortality, Ruiz is showing us ours.

Just what are the facts of Don Celso's life? There don't seem to be many than are definitive or that we can hang on to. Yet history -- or maybe it's simply imagination -- appears to be repeating itself, but in a different mode. In the Ruiz world, a super-violent crime comes across as something almost wistful, a hint of the past wafting through the window like an aromatic little breeze. Well, anyway, no such thing happened, our hero assures us.

By the by, it is suggested that we're afraid of both staying and of leaving. Well, when leaving means something rather permanent, as here, of course we are. But that's humanity for you. Toward the end we learn how a camera is like the inside of a gun barrel (above) -- and this is one of the most wonderful visual effects I've yet seen. As is the symbolic meeting of the young and old Celso, below, which is simple and so very effective.

The movie can only make you think: My god, what a life this fellow Ruiz really had -- if only in his imagination. Night Across the Street never loses its unique playfulness, no matter how weighty the themes that are tackled. I don't see how the filmmaker could have gifted us with a more teasingly profound yet graceful good-bye.

Ruiz's movie, via The Cinema Guild, opens today, Friday, February 8, in New York City at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. I don't see any other upcoming playdates, but surely some new ones will appear soon.

Photos are from the film itself, except for that of Señor Ruiz, 

which comes courtesy of Getty Images.