SPOTLIGHT ON A MURDERER: one of Georges Franju's lesser works hits Blu-ray/DVD

If you've ever wanted to learn more about those semi-famous son et lumières that were born in France back in the 1950s and then came to international prominence in the 60s, have I got the film for you! Rather pedestrian in all other ways, this disappearing-corpse-that-then-turns-into-a-murder-mystery movie was directed and co-adapted by Georges Franju, the fellow who gave us the enduring Eyes Without a Face and the lesser-known but lovely WWI fantasia, Thomas The Imposter.

In the Special Features section of this nicely produced Blu-ray disc, M. Franju, shown at left, discusses the film on camera in footage made during the shooting of this 1961 release. The filmmaker explains that he wanted his movie to be all sorts of things -- from mysterious to thrilling to funny, surprising and more. SPOTLIGHT ON A MURDERER is all of those things. What it isn't, however, is very good. The film was co-written by the team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who gave us the novels upon which both Diabolique and Vertigo was based, as well as the adaptation of the much better Eyes Without a Face.

This odd mixture of tones worked better in other Franju films. Here, however, it combines with the typical and not particularly convincing "mystery" tropes and the lavish attention to detail regarding the design and execution of the son et lumière in a manner that becomes almost a kind of "exercise" in weirdly near-experimental film-making.

It's fun for buffs, certainly, and for Franju "completists," too, but it will probably leave the more typical arthouse/foreign film patron scratching his head -- in wonderment. Or annoyance.

On the plus side is the very starry (for its day) cast of pros, led by a young and slickly handsome Jean-Louis Trintignant and the then popular Dany Saval (both shown above), with names like Pierre Brasseur (below) and the sleazily sexy Philippe Leroy in supporting roles.

The plot has to do with an old, wealthy Count who inhabits a fabulous French castle and one day disappears. When his would-be heirs gather, what they learn sets off the plot in which, one after another, they begin being "bumped off."

Modern-day movie-goers will remain a few steps ahead of the plot at all times -- except for a couple of genuine surprises along the way. And the use of the castle for the son et lumière, the design and execution of which (above) cleverly figure into a few of the murders, is also fun. If only the film's pacing had been a bit faster.

Still, the chance to see a Franju film of which few of us will have heard should prove enticing to many, as will the chance to view M. Trintignant so young and spry.

From Arrow Films' new Arrow Academy division, in French with English subtitles and running 95 minutes, Spotlight on a Murderer is distributed here in the USA via MVD Entertainment Group and hits the street for purchase and/or (I hope) rental this Tuesday, May 30.

As usual with Arrow's endeavors, the transfer is excellent, bringing the black-and-white cinematography to crisp, sharp life. Extras includes the original trailer for the film, plus that aforementioned interview, which is part of a made-for-French-television documentary from Le courrier de cinéma series shot during film-making in 1959 and aired on New Year's day 1960. The documentary includes interviews with Franju, Brasseur, Trintignant, Saval and other actors and runs 28 minutes.

Streaming sleeper: the Johnston/Mason/Boyes ultra-timely thriller, NOT SAFE FOR WORK

How rare is it to discover a suddenly streamable genre movie that's first-rate yet never even received a theatrical release? Very. Which makes NOT SAFE FOR WORK (TrustMovies has finally learned what the Internet acronym NSFW actually means!) pretty much a must-see, especially for fans of sharp, tight, cat-and-mouse thrillers, of which we see damned few good ones anymore.

As directed by the capable-in-many-genres Joe Johnston, (shown at right) from a smart screenplay by Adam Mason and Simon Boyes, this little movie lasts only 74 minutes, yet for most of its running time is one of those eyes-on-a-screen-from-which-you-cannot-look-away endeavors. It's that tight and exciting.

Best of all, this is a film that relies not upon near-constant special effects but is instead concerned with clever plot mechanics, a very good script and smart dialog to whisk it along, abetted by the kind of direction that knows where to put the camera when and how to cut for maximum speed and intelligibility (the editing's by Rick Shaine).

Add to this a situation that puts you in the midst of Big Pharma, a major corporation, the Mafia and a large law firm -- yes, all of our favorite kinds of people, even though one of these turns out to be a red herring -- and you have a recipe for fast-moving, top-notch entertainment. All the more so for the movie's being near-completely unknown to most movie-goers.

Another smart move: making its hero nothing like a superman (he actually does some dumb things along the way) yet proves someone who, when severely tested, can rise to the occasion. As played by the excellent Max Minghella (above, who it is nice to see in a lead role), this guy is fun to be around, never more so than when he's playing for very high stakes.

The heroine is a pretty and bright secretary (Eloise Mumford, above), and the villain a very smooth-talking fellow (played by JJ Feild, below), who gives his character a most interesting spin.

The major supporting roles are played by Christian Clemenson (below), as the boss of the law firm;

Tom Gallop, as Minghella's co-worker (gasping, below) and Alejandro Patino (shown at bottom) as the building's kindly janitor.

Every cast member nails it. As does this juicy little out-of-nowhere movie. The film's ending has evidently proven problematic for some audiences. Too bad. Considering all we know these days, what happens here could hardly be more on the mark.

In retrospect you may have a few logic questions, but while it's moving along, Not Safe for Work is mostly riveting. It's available now via Netflix streaming, Amazon Instant Video, and on DVD.

Mathieu Amalric tries his hand at Georges Simenon in a cold 'n clammy THE BLUE ROOM

I'm only luke-warm to THE BLUE ROOM, which surprises me, considering how much I've enjoyed the work of Mathieu Amalric, especially as an actor (he both stars in and directs this movie) and also as a filmmaker (Le Stad de Wimbledon, The Screen Illusion). Not having read the novel by Georges Simenon on which the film is based, I'm going only via what I viewed on screen. This is, pretty much, a nicely formal, old-fashioned (right down to the size of the screen: 1.33:1), traditional (despite the nudity, including some full-frontal from both sexes), psychological murder-mystery non-thriller (Amalric appears to have deliberately drained away any possibilities of actual suspense, chills or thrills).

This last assessment is not necessarily a negative, for the director/actor (shown at right) seems intent on putting character (within the framework of the society at large) ahead of all the standard stuff we seem to want from our mysteries. But what we get from our characters, every last one of them, is gloomy and morose. These people are about as glum as characters come. Granted Amalric/Simenon may be indicting a society or class. But, really: If anything remotely pleasant happens here, you can be sure it will soon come back to bite you and the character in the ass.

The story is simplicity itself: a married man (Amalric, above, right) has an affair with a married woman (Stéphanie Cléau, above, left), which neither cuckolded spouse (Léa Drucker, below, plays the wronged wife) seems to know about (though both may suspect). Death, maybe murder, ensues, and the illusion of justice must be served -- even if justice itself may or may not have been done.

For all the attention to character on display, in the end we don't really learn that much about anyone -- except that these are very unhappy people. Style-wise, the movie is mostly a pleasure to view. Color (or often the lack of it) plays its part; both interior and exterior shots are well composed and lighted (cinematography, by Christophe Beaucarne, is top-notch); and the performances are all that the adaptation (by Amalric and Ms Cléau) allows.

Amalric and Cléau prove darkly passionate lovers (with love scenes,above and below, to match) in a relationship that seems to hark back more to school days than present-day, while the wonderful Ms Drucker (so fabulous in the under-seen The Man of My Life) does what she can with a role that's not allowed to budge.

Although the movie runs only 75 minutes, it seems rather longer, due to the low-key, unchanging, enervating atmosphere it conjures. Don't get me wrong: Amalric proves an extremely economical filmmaker in many ways, so this is an accomplishment of sorts. And some will find the movie exactly to their taste, I suspect. But what passes for subtlety in certain circles can look pretty heavy-handed to others of us.

The Blue Room, from Sundance Selects via IFC Films, opens theatrically today, Friday, October 3 -- for Yom Kippur! -- in New York City at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal. (The following Friday, October 10, it will open at Laemmle's Playhouse 7 and Town Center 5.)

Coincidence City! In RUSHLIGHTS, Antoni Stutz piles on the happenstance like crazy

So many coincidences abound in the first ten minutes of RUSHLIGHTS (the meaning of which you'll have to crib from the movie's opening quote that dates back to the 1700s) -- from look-alike ladies to packing up the wrong person’s luggage to the discovery of an inherited estate -- that you might as well sit back and savor the nonsense of this would-be mystery thriller, all the better to mine some entertainment out of its modern-day but distinctly old-fashioned story of love, larceny and identity theft. These coincidences do continue, by the way -- and then some.

There’s even Chekhov’s famous “gun” mounted on the wall -- about which the noted author suggested that if the gun appears in act one it had better go off by act three. Director and co-writer (with Ashley Scott Meyers) Antoni Stutz , shown at right, goes Chekhov one better by having that gun explode almost immediately, leading to yet more hilarious coincidence. At this point in the film, you'll either be rubbing your forehead in amazement or laughing out loud.

Meanwhile you can admire the chiseled abs and other areas of the male half of the movie's romantic equation (Josh Henderson, above, left) and the cute face and lively spirit of the female, Haley Webb (above, right, and below), who fuck like bunnies every chance they get.

Short little scenes begin and end so quickly that they don’t deliver either what we need or even what we expect. This sort of style can have its perks -- surprise, among them -- but here it seems to rob us of the normal exchange that might go on between characters to help further the plot via characterization rather than piling on more incident and event.

The old-fashioned plot has to do with our twosome driving from L.A. to Texas and trying to con their way into inheriting the estate of a recently deceased roommate (a very iffy proposition to begin with, made even iffier by everything that follows). When characters are this dumb, it's difficult to work up much enthusiasm for them.

Incidents seem invented to grab certain audience segments (Oh, hey, this should work for the gay crowd!) rather than move the plot along intelligently, but often, the result is such sleazy, silly fun that you may not mind too much. Aidan Quinn, above, shows up as a maybe too-nice lawyer who offers his help to the couple. He's half of a brotherly duo that also includes the town's sheriff.

“I’ve enjoyed about as much of this as I can stand,” notes that sheriff (played with his usual swagger and sass by Beau Bridges, above), at one choice point along the way. Though you may agree with the lawman,

you’ll probably want to stick around to enjoy all of these out-of-the-woodwork shenanigans, which include some nasty stuff from a certain very naughty, haughty (well, he's British) and sleazy drug dealer (Crispian Belfrage, above) who turns up again and again to offer further nonsensical surprises.

Rushlights, running 96 a-little-too-long minutes, opened yesterday at the following theaters and locations across the country: in Los Angeles at the Chinese 6, Hollywood; in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, at the TX Studio Movie Grill, Dallas; in the Phoenix, Arizona area at the Harkins Valley Art in Tempe; in Gainesville, Florida, at the Hippodrome;  in the CT-NJ-NY-PA area, at The Picturehouse, Pelham, NY; in Columbus, Ohio, at the Gateway Film Center; in Detroit at the Bel Air; in Houston, at the Premiere Renaissance 20; in Miami at the Palace 18; and in Minneapolis-St. Paul, at the St. Anthony Main in Minneapolis.

John Daschbach's faux friendship movie, BRIEF REUNION, hits theaters (briefly)

Remember way back in the days when Netflix actually cared about serving its customer base? When its rating system offered a middle star (out of five) that indicated the movie was "just so-so,"  a category into which most movies indeed fall? Of course, this meant that most of Netflix movies were rated only just so-so, which meant that members would not necessarily rush to put these films on their list. How much "smarter," then, to change that third star to the category called "liked it," where it remains today. So on Netflix, just as on Rotten Tomatoes, you aren't allowed to have mixed feelings about a film; you either "liked it" or you "didn't like it." Bullshit. But then that's our great big world of (no)truth-in-marketing.

I bring this subject of Netflix and the just so-so rating up from time to time, as both a deserved dig at this trend-setting service, as well as to highlight certain movies that fall directly into the just so-so category, as does the film under consideration today: BRIEF REUNION.

The film's first-time-full-length writer/director John Daschbach (shown at right) has managed to make a movie that, for every good thing we see (and there are plenty of these) there seems to be something equally negative.

Eventually the movie sort of cancels itself out. It isn't a waste, exactly. You'll remember some good about it. Yet, overall, the whole thing doesn't exactly work. Or, when it does -- kind of -- it doesn't work all that well. As you can imagine, this kind of movie experience is a frustrating one. There is one undiluted plus: The scenery (the movie was filmed in Vermont and New Hampshire) is always verdant and lovely.

We know from the beginning -- the opening shot features star Joel de la Fuente, above left, in heavy disarray -- that something is terribly (and a little too heavy-handedly) wrong. Then we're having dinner with Joel, his wife (the just-seen-last-week), Alexie Gilmore, (above and below) and their friends. Enjoy this scene, as it is literally the only pleasant few moments in the rest of the movie. In these, the group chats and laughs and dishes and giggles, and a warning is given about a fellow from their old college days who is suddenly back in the picture but is not to be trusted. Or dealt with. At all. Under any circumstances.

Now what kind of a movie would we have, were a warning like that to be heeded? Exactly. So, when that old friend (Scott Shepherd, below) shows up the next day, our hero, de la Fuente, barges ahead doing everything he shouldn't and sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss. Predictable? My god, yes. But not uninteresting, either. And because the plot line involves social media, suspicious software and the way so many of us live now, the film possesses a certain attraction.

The casting, right down the line, is good, too. While it's nice to see an Asian-American actor performing in the lead role, de la Fuente, who seems to have done most of his work on TV and is serviceable and attractive, doesn't quite fully deliver. On the other hand, his character, as we slowly learn, is a weak, lying, frightened, cheating creep, so of course we can't identify much. (Or can we?)

Ms Gilmore is fine as the confused wife, and Shepherd makes his sleazy character someone whom we really and fully dislike. (The actor, if not the character, gets to redeem himself via a nice surprise toward the finale.) The women characters -- including Raven Pierson as our hero's secretary, Francie Swift as his old girlfriend, and particularly Kristy Hasen (below, left) as the girlfriend of the "old friend" -- are a lot more sympathetic than the two main males on view. This unbalances the movie but, again, also makes it a bit more interesting.

Coincidence rears its head, typical in this kind of film, and as it moves ahead, events pile up so suddenly and swiftly that some credibility is lost. And yet, still, we hang on. Until, finally, a character that we initially imagined we knew and maybe cared about, literally and symbolically disappears on us. Brief Reunion is a frustrating experience. I can't say I'm sorry I saw it; but as good as it sometimes is, it really needs to be better.

The film opens this Friday in both New York City (the Quad Cinema) and Los Angeles area (Laemmle's Noho Seven). If you're not near either big city, never fear: Brief Reunion will be coming soon to iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, and the aforementioned Netflix.

The Joe Wright/Saoirse Ronan HANNA: a whirlwind of fairy tale fun, guns and family

TrustMovies is sorely tempted to rave about HANNA -- the new film directed by Joe Wright and starring the amazing Saoirse Ronan -- till the cows come home. It is simply so much fun, and so well acted, written and directed. For awhile. And then it lapses into almost standard, attenu-ated chase mode until  -- the movie simply stops. And that's it. And yet it is so rich and frisky, fast-moving, funny and even thought-provoking for such a good long while that, while we can't forgive it its tiresome finale, we can and will remember it for its fulsome beginning and middle.  Which are, at this point in time, a mere quarter into the new year, as good as anything else we've seen.

If director Wright (shown at left) wanted to leave behind his penchant for classy historical romances (Atonement and Pride & Predjudice; I'm leaving out his near-complete misfire The Soloist), he couldn't have picked a better project than this one.  Part mystery, part fairy tale, part family drama, part James Bond thriller (see below), part comedy, part satire, part coming-of-age (to name but a few of the genres packed into this pudding), it is finally the theme of family that gives Hanna its unusual weight and punch. Who is this strange young girl, clearly trained to be able to fight and kill? (Shades of Kick-Ass and last week's Super, yet very different from either of them.) We know who Hanna's father is (the very hunky Eric Bana), though her mother -- alive, dead? -- seems up for grabs. And what kind of a father trains his daughter to kill without a trace of either qualm or remorse?

Wright and his writers -- Seth Lochhead and David Farr -- start with a relatively shocking scene involving reindeer entrails and then keep the pace moving so swiftly and giddily that we're happy to go along for the ride. And quite a ride it is -- literally. Our heroine has been raised in the arctic. When she finds herself instead in the dessert, this is baffling enough. But then in the film's most delightful section -- also its most exciting and funny -- she comes upon a British family that more or less takes her in.

These four are played by Olivia Williams, Jason Flemying, Jessica Barden (below, left, also seen in Tamara Drewe) and Aldo Maland, and a weirder bunch you'll not have imagined. From having no family (or at least a very dark, strange one), Hanna is thrust into the clutches of one the goofier yet most endearing of British oddball families -- from whom she learns, glancingly, all sorts of of new feelings and behavior. Ms Ronan is marvelous in this section; well, when isn't she? But here, she has even more to handle and manages it all with great aplomb.

Assigned to meet her father in Germany, Hanna runs afoul of a couple of very nasty spy types: Cate Blanchett (below, center) at her most automaton/mean machine, and a very creepy, funny and blond Tom Hollander (below, right) in a role unlike any, I believe, that he has so far played.  (Perhaps he's channeling Dirk Bogarde from Modesty Blaise?) Casts do not get much better than the one rounded up here, and Ms Ronan leads it with strength & panache.

Regarding that ending, since so much else went so well, was there no one to say to the filmmaker: "Stop. This chase is tiresome and predictable. Can't we do something different, please?"  I guess not.  But as I say, so much has gone so right with Hanna, that I suppose we can forgive -- overlook?-- its last few minutes.

What cannot be overlooked, however, is the film's rating. As the violence was proceeding apace, I remember thinking to myself, "This movie certainly deserves its 'R' rating!" Well, guess what? In its infinite stupidity, our rating board has given Hanna a PG-13. That a film so steeped in violence could have ended up with this rating is a disaster. And don't tell me that Focus Features, its distributor, had the movie trimmed down to get that PG-13. Of course it did. But why? It still reeks of murder and terror, of some particularly gruesome sorts -- not to mention what happens to Hanna's erstwhile family. Just because they don't show this last bit hardly means that it did not happen.  And this is something that both children and adults alike will be able to figure out. If everyone concerned had let this film stay true to itself, rather than trying to have it both ways, Hanna might have been a classic. In any case, our rating board should be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail. Or did someone simply gift them with a little payola?

Hanna opens this Friday, April 8, at theaters (as they say) everywhere. On the film's web site I tried to find a way to locate that proverbial "theater near you," but came up blank. Maybe you'll have better luck....