Oscar-winner Juan José Campanella returns with a new must-see, THE WEASELS' TALE

Delightful, dirty, old-fashion fun is given a few up-to-date twists in a movie that has -- particularly in these Covid-riven times -- just about everything necessary to pack in audiences. (Even if they are packed only into their own living room, viewing -- we hope -- via a nice, big wide-screen TV.) THE WEASELS' TALE (El Cuento de las Comadrejas) arrives via Juan José Campanella, the Argentine writer/director who gave us the 2010 deserved winner for Best Foreign Language Film, The Secret in Their Eyes (the original, not that crappy American remake from 2015).

Senor Campanella (shown at right) and his co-writer Darren Kloomok have created a smart and relatively fast-moving (given the film's 128-minute running time) romp involving just about everything: comedy, wit, mystery, thrills, surprises, movies-about moviemaking, the evils of Capitalism run amok, and especially the setting up of the older generation against the younger -- which of course will bring in seniors by the thousands. 

That Campanella does decent justice by and to all of these genres and themes makes it easy to simply sit back and relish the fun. The Weasels' Tale may not be a great film, but it certainly is grand entertainment.

The filmmakers put us immediately into the home of some elderly, retired folk from the Argentine movie industry: one of those rare Oscar-winning Best Actresses in a foreign-language film (Graciela Borges, above and below); her has-been, barely-was actor husband (Luis Brandoni, below, right), along with the film director (Oscar Martínez, below, second from left) and screenwriter (Marcos Mundstock, center, right) both of whom were responsible for many of the actress' hit movies back in the day.

From the first lengthy scene we learn that this quartet has been living in a kind of love/hate relationship in which the three men bond against the grand dame, and everyone is relatively miserable-yet-content. "Look at how happy we are,"gloats the self-satisfied film director, and the other men agree. "There are no villains in this piece." Just then, of course, a car pulls into the driveway of their home and out step an attractive young man (Nicolás Francella, above, second from right, and below, left) and woman (Clara Lago, above, left) who've seemingly gotten lost in the countryside but immediately recognize the old actress and prove to be among her most ardent fans. Yes, we're off to the races.

How Campanella wittily and charmingly compares movies to life and Argentina's greedy present to her dictatorial past, together with how these six fine actors brings their very interesting, even complex characters to life, makes The Weasels' Tale a consistent delight. Events grow darker, betrayals abound, and were it not for the terrifically stable tone of humor the filmmakers sustain throughout, things might tumble off track.

They never do. The movie proves consistently amusing, even pertinent. (TrustMovies would not be surprised if this became the highest-grossing foreign-language film for the coming year.) And our heroine -- the real one -- even gets that death scene that's so far eluded her over a long career. 

From Outsider Pictures, the film begins its theatrical and virtual cinema premiere this coming Friday, December 11 at over two dozen theaters across the USA and Canada. Click here for more information and to view the theaters at which, or virtually, the movie will screen.

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.

DVDebut: Denis Dercourt's low-key but lovely and moving comeback tale, IN HARMONY

A dozen years ago French actors Cécile De France and Albert Dupontel delighted international audiences with their special chemistry and charm in Danièle Thompson's wonderful ensemble piece, Avenue Montaigne. How very nice to see these two fine actors together again in the leading roles of Denis Dercourt's 2015 film (just now getting a U.S. DVD release), IN HARMONY (En équilibre). This is one of those quiet, low-key movies about us humans that the French do so very well.

As directed and with a screenplay adapted (from the memoir of his career by stuntman/equestrian Bernard Sachse and Véronique Pellerin) by M. Dercourt (shown at right), the movie unfolds with an easy, graceful flow that never pounds home any point or moral, even as it keeps us wondering exactly where it might be going.

The same year that Avenue Montaigne appeared, M: Dercourt gave us a splendid and low-key psychological thriller about career and revenge entitled The Page Turner. That film, as does this one, also kept us guessing about outcome and motive -- though in a completely different genre.

After equestrian/stuntman Marc Guermont (played by Dupontel, above and below) is involved in an accident on a movie set, he is left in a wheelchair, with his stuntman career suddenly cut short. (Names have been changed here, either to protect certain reputations or to better make this a fictionalized account)

A visit from the woman from the insurance company (Ms De France, below) that represents the movie studio sets in motion a tale that encompasses everything from accepting responsibility to past and future career choices to making the best of a not-so-hot situation.

How the filmmaker weaves all this together -- loosely but lovingly, without pushing any moment or any moral too hard -- turns the film into a particularly quiet and thoughtful meditation on how our lives and careers, from generation to generation, find their way to fulfillment. It is also an odd kind of love story -- consummated only briefly and then left as memory.

The love of horses is deeply felt here, and those who feel the same should embrace the movie thoroughly. Ms De France has a lovely scene in which her character mounts a horse for the first time, and the actress is, as always, spot-on from moment to moment.

Dupontel, as ever the consummate man's man, brings his whole arsenal of feelings to the fore, even as music and piano playing enter the picture and help bring the movie's themes to fruition.

This is not a great film by any means, but it is a good, solid one -- providing 87 minutes well spent. From Distrib Films US with its DVD arriving via Icarus Films Home Video, In Harmony hits the street today, Tuesday, July 10 -- for purchase or rental.

Kubrick? Sure. Vitali? Who? Tony Zierra's FILMWORKER is an original for the ages

Coming out of FILMWORKER -- a new documentary by Tony Zierra about a young and quite capable actor named Leon Vitali who gave up his career (and much else, too, I suspect) in order to act as helper/disciple/jack-of-all-trades to a certain filmmaker named Stanley Kubrick -- I was more surprised, delighted and finally moved-to-tears and to an extent I could never have imagined possible when I sat down to watch this film.

Odder still is the fact that, while I admire all of the work of the late Mr. Kubrick, he is not a filmmaker I would place anywhere near the top of my "favorites" list. Filmworker, however, is a movie and Mr. Vitali a man, the likes of which and whom I shall most likely remember so long as my memory lasts. What Vitali (shown above) has done and why he had done it, along with what Mr. Zierra (pictured below) has managed to provide via his documentary are so stirring and strange that, if there has been anything much like this previously, it has certainly not been recorded as beautifully as it is here.

TrustMovies must say, however, that this documentary is simply "all over the place." It jumps back and forth in time and location and even includes interviews with actors -- Stellan Skarsgård and Pernilla August -- who, so far as I know, never worked with Kubrick (although they did work with Vitali during his acting career). Yet none of this will matter in the least -- not for real film mavens, anyway -- and this is because every scene here, every moment simply resonates. There is nothing -- not two successive seconds -- that I would have wanted to miss.

Why did Vitali choose this life route? Early on, one friend of his surmises that, like a moth to the flame, he was "burned by Stanley's light." Well, yes, but, unlike that now-dead moth, Vitali just kept going on and on and on. Part of the great joy you will experience by the end of Filmworker has much to do with how very much Vitali has been able to accomplish (and he is still going strong!). He has made more than good on what he set out to do.

Zierra's documentary shows us quite a bit of Vitali's early work as an actor, culminating (here, at least) with his wonderful performance as Lord Bullingdon (above) in Barry Lyndon, the movie that brought him together with his soon-to-be "idol" (and coincidentally my favorite of all of Kubrick's films). From what we see and hear in this film, Vitali did much of his acting work on British television, but he also excelled at legitimate theater and in a few other films.

When he began his assorted work for Kubrick -- on The Shining (above), Full Metal Jacket and finally Eyes Wide Shut (below) -- he slowly became a kind of jack-of-all-trades -- and master of them all, too. One did not, it appears, let Mr. Kubrick down. Ever. And by the end of this film, you'll probably feel, as did I, that Vitali most likely came as close as anyone in achieving this goal.

And our boy did not simply help on the sets of those last three Kubrick movies. Oh, no. He was also responsible for everything from preserving the reels of film themselves to making certain that only the best prints of all existing Kubrick oeuvre reached whatever screening or festival was required. His reward (other than, I hope, a decent salary)? Well, he got to pee off the porch with his idol during filming of The Shining. And that, as one interviewee points out, even Jack Nicholson never got to do!

The movie is chock-a-block with tidbits like this, and while Vitali himself never dishes on his master, plenty of other folk do. So we come away from Filmworker feeling that Mr. Kubrick was not a particularly kind or likeable fellow. And yet this did not seem to matter to Vitali, nor does it, finally, matter much to us. (Below is a Kubrick doll seen in the doc that Vitali evidently treasures.)

By the end of this amazing film, you'll probably realize that what you've seen is a love story. Maybe one-sided (or maybe not) and without, I am assuming, any sex. But it's a great love story nonetheless. Other than making me understand and appreciate what Vitali was trying to do, what the documentary most made me think and feel is that I want to see all of Kubrick's movies again, so I can perhaps better appreciate them -- a reaction that I suspect would please Vitali.

From Kino Lorber and running a mere 94 minutes, Filmworker opens this Friday, May 11, in New York City at the Metrograph, and next Friday, May 18, in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt, after which (as of now, at least), it will play another 18 cities throughout the country. Click here and scroll down to view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

In Michel Hazanavicius' idol-toppling GODARD MON AMOUR, an "untouchable" gets touched

It was probably a good idea to have a relatively "mainstream" French director like Michel Hazanavicius (of the OSS movies and the Oscar-winning The Artist) be the one to make a movie about that French filmmaking icon Jean-Luc Godard. I mean, what has Hazanavicius got to lose? Something like this could ruin in perpetuity the reputation and maybe even the career of a French ''art' filmmaker. But by giving us a kind of mini-biopic of only a few years in Godard's life (the time when he claimed as his girlfriend one, Anne Wiazemsky,

whose memoir of those years this movie is based on) and then turning the result into more of a comedy than anything else, Hazanavicius (shown at right) has provided us an entertainment that at least cursorily explores the man and his ideas, politics and filmmaking.

While the resulting movie has already inflamed the hearts and minds of those who hold up Godard as some kind of filmmaking god (which gives TrustMovies yet another reason to remain an atheist), GODARD MON AMOUR (Le redoubtable, in its original French title) is mostly a smart take-down of a man who has been idolized and lionized just a little too long and hard.

As played -- very well, too -- by the ubiquitous French actor Louis Garrel, above, our Jean-Luc is shown to be smart, talented, and onto some genuinely ground-breaking cinematic stuff. Unfortunately, he is also petty, pompous, jealous and something of an overall twat. His determination to "change" (because of the current political/social situation), without realizing that the result of this change would produce neither better nor more accessible movies, seems to be the point of this Wiazemsky/Hazanavicius collaboration. (Or perhaps that's just my own opinion of this guy's career.)

In the role of Anne, the lovely Stacy Martin (above) does more than a credible job of creating an intelligent and lively young woman, greatly enamored of her famous man, who over time begins to see the feet of clay and cracks in the facade. In the supporting cast, Hazanavicius regular, the gorgeous Bérénice Bejo (below, right), takes the role the grounded best friend, and a number of other good actors fill out the more minor roles.

But the movie belong mostly to Garrel and a little less so to Martin, and both actors come through with colors flying. Garrel, in particular has the look, the attitude and the coldly withholding quality said to be Godard hallmarks. You can easily imagine, in fact, that the man we see here will turn into the man whom we never see in the recent Faces Places documentary because he refuses to answer the door to Agnès Varda and JR.

There's plenty of humor to be found in the film -- from Garrel's performance in general to Jean-Luc's near-constantly breaking eye-glasses and most of all in the evolution of his film theory from something individually helmed to a kind of nitwit collectivism.

Bonus treat: we also get a nice, long, and very impressive look at M Garrel, naked and full-frontal, which, for all I know may have really sent poor M. Godard around the bend, jealousy-wise. As I say, there's lots of good fun to be had here, and just as with that documentary made a few years back about J.D. Salinger, the critical response seems much more to do with "How dare you sully the reputation of such a great man?!" than with the quality and worth of the actual movie itself.

From Cohen Media Group, in French with English subtitles and running a just-about-right 107 minutes, Godard Mon Amour opened two weeks ago in our cultural capitals and today hits South Florida and elsewhere at art theaters near you. In Miami, look for it at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, and in Palm Beach County at the Movies and Delray and the Movies of Lake Worth.

Must-see for movie fans and doc lovers -- Daniel Raim's HAROLD AND LILLIAN: A HOLLYWOOD LOVE STORY

Previous to viewing the new documentary, HAROLD AND LILLIAN: A HOLLYWOOD LOVE STORY, TrustMovies had never heard of the husband-wife team of storyboard artist Harold Michelson and film researcher Lillian Michelson, two of the unjustly unsung folk who labored for decades in film-making areas that the Motion Picture Academy has never seen fit to honor.

Written and directed by Daniel Raim, shown at right, the movie certainly honors the two, along with the fields in which they worked. Unless you are already a knowledgeable part of the motion picture industry, you'll come out of this film with a new understanding of exactly what a good storyboard artist and film researcher can contribute to a movie -- from helping a director and editor get exactly the right shots in the right sequence to learning what kind of underwear teenage girls might have worn in turn-of-the-century Russia.

You'll simultaneously be treated to what is quite a beautiful and enduring love story that spans a couple of generations, as you get to know one of these two people pretty well. Harold Michelson has now departed, but his wife Lillian is still going strong, and she makes a delightful, smart, and sometimes very moving narrator of the events told here. (That's she, above, in her research department, and below, in her youth with Harold.)

The two found each other early on, just after Harold, who was older than Lillian, served in World War II. Against the wishes of his family (for Lillian was an orphan, with absolutely no "prospects"), Harold moved out to Hollywood to pursue art jobs, and Lillian soon joined him, and both their careers took a fast jump-start.

Lillian's, however, was soon crushed by conventions of the time. She was fired for being pregnant. The movie never makes any big play for feminism, but it is feminist all the same by virtue of the tale it tells. (The story of the pair's autistic son, and how the Freudian psychology of the day "helped" the family is one for the books. It will have you seething.) One of the particular joys of the documentary is the smart and often adorable and funny animation used throughout, drawn in charcoal, which is what Harold used on his now famous storyboards.

Whether animating Hitchcock, above (the director asked specifically for Harold to do his storyboards on for The Birds), to The Graduate (below), about which after reading the screenplay, Lillian tells us, Harold couldn't understand why folk found the film funny. That's what Mike Nichols with his keen understanding of humor, contributed. Harold's storyboards, it seems, contributed a lot of the film's best visuals. When we see a clip of Nichols accepting his Oscar for direction and thanking the "group effort" that made this possible, you'll be shaking your head white muttering, "Indeed!"

We hear about so many of the films Harold was a part of -- The Ten Commandments is one of the best known -- that by the end of the documentary we're utterly sold on the importance of the storyboard artist. We also come to better appreciate Lillian's research work.

Certain moviemakers -- from David Lynch to Danny DeVito (above) -- are also on hand to sing the Michelsons' praises. Deservedly so. DeVito, especially, is a font of knowledge and fun. Comparing Harold's storyboard art to the finish film (as in Winter Kills, below) -- which the movie often lets us do, is is eye-opening, too.

And because Lillian makes such a lovely companion as she tells us of her life-and-love journey, we hang on every word (her voice -- chipper, chirpy and wonderfully positive -- is an utter delight to hear). By the end of the movie's 94 minutes, we've been educated, surprised, charmed, moved and royally entertained. Can you ask much more from a documentary? Considering both how Hollywood always takes to heart movies about itself (most recently, The Artist and La La Land) and also how very good this new documentary is, I think I see an Oscar contender here.

Distributed via Zeitgeist Films -- a company that doesn't release a hell of a lot of movies, but I am having trouble recalling even one of their films I didn't hugely appreciate -- Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story opens this Friday, April 28. in New York City at the Quad Cinema and on May 12 in Los Angeles, at Laemmle's Monica Film Center, Playhouse 7 and Town Center 5. To view all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters listed, click here.