This year's smarty-pants award goes to Donato Carrisi and his mystery, THE GIRL IN THE FOG

Can a movie be too clever for its own good? For proof, look no farther than the Italian mystery-thriller entitled THE GIRL IN THE FOG, making its USA debut via home video this week.

As written (from his own novel) and directed by Donato Carrisi, with some nice cinematography by Federico Masiero, the movie looks good, sounds good (Carrisi knows how to write decent dialog), and is very well-acted, as you might expect, starring as it does three of Europe's leading actors, two from Italy and one from France.

Signore Carrisi, shown at left, offers up a tale that is hardly original -- the kidnapping, in a down-on-its-luck Italian resort town, of a teen-age girl -- but what he proceeds to do with this is unusual and inventive, initially seeming to indict Italian society, media, police, parents, psychiatry, religion: yes, pretty much the whole sphere/schmear.

Top-billed and, as usual, earning his place is first-rate actor Toni Servillo, below, as the (in)famous police detective assigned the case, who is determined to make the very most of it -- and does, by any means necessary.

The chief suspect in the case is portrayed by Alessio Boni (below), who is equally fine as the poor schlub of a high-school teacher upon whom most of the guilt is directed. Signore Boni brings a put-upon persona, as well as a good deal of latent sex appeal to the role.

As the town's psychiatrist (or maybe psychologist), whom we early on find oddly interviewing the police detective, the more-often-seen-in-action-movies Jean Reno does a fine job of quiet exploration. The movie hops and skips about in time, back and forth, back and forth, keeping us on our toes and, for awhile at least, pleasantly confused.

If you enjoy mysteries, particularly those determined as much to surprise and outguess you as to pull you in, TrustMovies recommends this one almost whole-heartedly. His "smarty-pants" problems with the film have to do with its insistence on being clever and different at the expense of good storytelling.

There are spoilers ahead, which I usually don't offer -- but there's little way to come to terms with my doubts about the film without spilling some beans. So skip to the final paragraph if you intend to seek out this movie for a viewing. (Above is pictured the parents of the missing girl, well-played by Daniela Piazza, left, and Thierry Toscan.)

Carrisi waits until very late in the movie to even introduce the fact that there is a lot more that just a single murder going on here, and the manner in which he gives this to us piles exposition upon exposition -- and actually seems to pull the rug out from under his earlier indictments of the media and publicity-seeking policemen. (That's Lucrezia Guidone and Marina Occhionero -- above, right and left respectively -- as the suspect's wife and daughter.)

Finally, when we realize that there are actually three murderers here -- all of them the leading characters! -- we can't help but wonder if the movie is simply out to get the male gender, with the women here just fodder for use and disuse. Or maybe it's actually about a worldview of utter cynicism and misanthropy. In any case, for all the fun we may have had trying to figure things out, the film leaves a rancid taste in our mouth -- mostly out of what feels a lot like bad faith.

Still, if unusual mysteries are your cup-of-whatever, try The Girl in the Fog. It'll keep you engaged for at least much of its 128-minute running time. From Distrib Films US and released to home video via Icarus Films Home Video, the movie hits the street on DVD this Tuesday, August 6 -- for purchase and (I hope) rental. (That Greta Scacchi, above, who makes a smart, brief appearance late in the movie.)

Charlotte Rampling gets another (semi) juicy role in Barnaby Southcombe's (semi) mystery thriller -- I, ANNA

It's usually an unalloyed pleasure to watch Charlotte Rampling work -- whether in an odd-but-revealing documentary like The Look, or giving a grand and probing performance in the recent 45 Years, or as here, in the made-in-2012-but-only-now-getting-a-video-release movie I, ANNA. Ms Rampling is often better than the films she's in (45 Years in an exception, but this one is not), although paired with that very capable actor Gabriel Byrne and surrounded by support that comes from Eddie Marsan, Hayley Atwell and Jodhi May, these actors bring enough luster to keep you interested and alert.

As directed and adapted (from the novel by Elsa Lewin) by Barnaby Southcombe (shown at left), who has worked in television for some fifteen years (this is his first full-length feature), the movie tracks the tale of an older woman named Anna (Ms Rampling), as she goes out for the first time to one of those "dating" evenings that take place in the meeting rooms of large hotels, and at which she uses the pseudonym, Allegra.

Just previous to this, we've seen her in a phone booth (no cell phone for this lady!) asking if she might join someone (lover? ex-husband?) on some sort of trip. We only see one side of the conversation, but the answer appears to be negative. Sure enough, Anna meets someone at the dating night, but  before you can say "Have fun, honey," our girl suddenly appears to come awake and rise from the floor next to her date -- who is now a very bloodied corpse.

What happened here -- and how -- is what the movie is mostly about. That, and the not-very-professional police work done by our "hero," the investigating detective played by Mr. Byrne (above), who meets our heroine in the building's elevator, where she has left her umbrella, and appears to fall in love at first sight (well, hell: the object of that love is Ms Rampling, so why not?).

Does our Anna (above) return that interest? Yes, sort of, but this lady, particularly as brought to life by the actress, is a rather complicated person. Divorced, she has a daughter and grandson with whom she lives and in whom (the daughter, at least, played with loving annoyance by Ms. Atwell) she confides.

Slowly and bit by bit (a little too slowly, in fact, and with too many of those bits), the filmmaker lets us have a closer look at what happened on that fateful night. Other possible suspects come to the fore -- the man's ex-wife (Ms May) and his son -- yet back and back we keep coming to the Rampling character. And the actress does not disappoint.

Unlike Dominique Sanda (whom we viewed only yesterday), Catherine Deneuve, Stefania Sandrelli, as well as other actress of this age range, Rampling has not grown matronly. She is as stunning and svelte as ever -- just older. And I think she is more able now than ever before to be expressive and deepen her performances.

Mr. Southcombe does have a major surprise in store for us, and the fun of this lies in how we suddenly see the ways in which we've been misled all along. For his finale, the filmmaker clearly has a choice of two directions. While I would have chosen the other one, the needs of today's marketplace surely predicated the unjustified and less-than-believable ending of I, Anna.

From The KimStim Collection and running 93 minutes, the movie is being distributed in the USA by Icarus Films Home Video, and will appear on DVD this Tuesday, June 21, for rental or purchase.

Cerebral sci-fi done smart, creative (and cheap): James Ward Byrkit's reality-bending COHERENCE

Oh, dem comets! If one of 'em is expected to make an appearance in a genre film, you just know things are gonna go baaaad! Remember Night of the Comet? (Yeah: the early zombie movie.) Or Day of the Triffids? (That was just a meteorite shower, but still...) Or the wonderful Spanish film The End (Fin), in which our ensemble watches a comet blaze overhead, and suddenly every-thing goes quietly kaplooey. You can now add COHERENCE to the comet-calamity sub-genre, for this new and relatively bracing sci-fi film show us what happens at a dinner party comprised of six guests plus host and hostess when said icy, small solar system body suddenly heats up, races by and displaces -- or maybe just re-jiggers -- the known (but ever-expanding) laws of physics.

Writer/director James Ward Byrkit (shown at left), whose first full-length film this is (except for one TV movie he directed back in 2001), takes the menacing comet scenario and does something pretty different with it. He turns it into a sci-fi/man-woman relationship drama/ thriller done on what looks like an ultra-cheap budget that still proves large enough to sustain his intentions and ambitions.

The film is both interesting and challenging. It's made for genuinely adult movie-goers -- or for older kids who already have some understanding of physics and other of the sciences and who can wrestle a bit with "alternate universe" theories. In this one, you might say, "the other" finally comes home. Coherence is the kind of film in which not only do you not know what is real, neither do you know who.

The movie may remind you of another release from the ever-interesting distributor Oscilloscope, which last year gave us the terrific It's a Disaster, in which friends gather for a brunch rather than a dinner and all hell breaks loose. "Disaster" was primarily a black comedy, and a very good one, Coherence is more a drama or at least a melodrama, in which you must pay sharp attention to things like color, numbers, and especially character.

Though the movie's an ensemble piece, one character stands out from the rest: a young woman named Em, played very well by an actress who used to be known as Emily Foxler but is now going by Emily Baldoni, due, I guess, to a marriage. This is usually a career mistake (remember Robin Wright Penn and Farrah Fawcett Majors?), but in any case, Ms Foxler/Baldoni turns in a most interesting performance. If I ever watch this movie again, I'm going to concentrate on her character throughout, for it's the pivotal one.

Each member of the acting ensemble turns in a good performance (you can see them all listed here), and Mr. Byrkit's writing and direction are generally up to snuff. There is a time midway along, when his characters unbelievably begin behaving more like physicists than everyday people, but this only lasts briefly before they revert to their more human, problematic selves.

To get into the "plot" would be to give away far too much. Sci-fi buffs will need to simply get on board and stay focused during the sometimes bumpy ride that will toss you around but never quite knock you from the saddle. Byrkit's ending is especially toothsome. It's excellent in and of itself, but it also cries out for a sequel. I'll be waiting -- if and when the filmmaker wants to give it to us.

Coherence, from Oscilloscope and running 88 minutes, opens this coming Friday, June 20, in New York (at the Village East Cinema) and Los Angeles (at the Los Feliz 3), and in the weeks to come will hit another ten cities. To view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and then click on SEE THE FILM, and then keep scrolling down until the playdates appear.