Toni Servillo in Francesco Amato's screwball comedy from Italy, LET YOURSELF GO

After viewing that great Italian actor Toni Servillo in everything from the fine films of Paolo Sorrentino to the delightful and/or ruminative political/economic satires of Roberto Andò to the pitch-black family comedy It Was the Son and so many more wonderful movies, it may come as a particularly bright surprise to see him in what can best be described as an Italian screwball comedy.

In Francesco Amato's new film, LET YOURSELF GO (Lasciati andari), Signore Servillo plays an up-tight Jewish psychiatrist who is saddled with at least as many problems as the fairly woeful clients whom he (sort of) treats. Of course, our shrink is able to hide his problems better.

The film's co-writer (with Francesco Bruni and Davide Lantieri) and director, Signore Amato (pictured at right), has created something we don't see all that much of these days, particularly featuring an actor in the lead role as fine and full-fledged-serious as Servillo.

That would be the screwball comedy -- something so goofy and ridiculous that you certainly can't take it seriously yet conceived and executed so well that you can't help but be royally entertained.

And when TrustMovies calls Servillo's character (shown above, center) a Jewish psychiatrist, don't go to this movie expecting anything in which religion plays much of a part (Catholicism is almost as important here as Judaism). Fortunately, more than anything else, the film is a very human and humane comedy. You end up rooting for just about every character in it. And since a couple of them are escaped felons and another in a con artist/scammer, this is something of an accomplishment for Amato, his cast and crew.

The movie begins with a very screwy-looking fellow (the scary/funny Luca Marinelli, above, right), having just buried something in the ground, trying his best to count off the paces from where his "loot" now resides. Clearly he is mathematically, maybe mentally, challenged. But he's oddly amusing, even so. We won't return to him again until perhaps the movie's final forty minutes. But when we do, the remainder of the "plot" suddenly begins falling into place, and the film grows more bizarre and hilarious right up into and including the end credits (which you really must sit thru to reap the full comedic benefits).

Along its meandering but wise and witty way, Let Yourself Go makes smart fun of everything from psychotherapy (above) to physical fitness (below), synagogues and Communion. To try to describe the plot would only give away too much and probably ruin some fun in the process.

Best to just mention how very good is the Spanish actress Verónica Echegui (at right, above and below, of My Prison Yard and Bunny and the Bull) as the young exercise trainer who gives our shrink his new lease on life.  Ms Echegui has been doing lovely work for fifteen years now. She does not seem to age much and just grows more charming and versatile with each new role.

As for Servillo, the actor proves he can handle a mainstream comedy as easily and well as he does those various "art" films. He knows how to simply be quiet, alert and on-the-mark and thus manages to pull in every bit of humor he (and his movie) needs. As the "straight" man around whom the satellite of comic performers revolve, he asks for neither laughs nor sympathy yet somehow gets both. What an actor this guy is!

A non-stop delight that grow better, funnier and crazier as it moves long, Let Yourself Go -- from Menemsha Films and running 112 minutes -- opens here in South Florida this coming Friday, March 2 in the Miami area at the AMC Aventura, in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters and the Regal Shadowood, in Fort Lauderdale at the Savor Cinema, in Hollywood at the Cinema Paradiso, in Tamarac at The Last Picture Show and at the Movies of Del Ray and Lake Worth.

THE DROWNING: Bette Gordon's adaptation of Pat Barker's novel, Border Crossing, misfires

Award-winning British writer Pat Barker's novel Regeneration received a good film adaptation back in 1997 (the movie has since been re-titled Behind the Lines), but so far as I know, most of her work remains unfilmed. This changes some, though not for the better, with the release of the new movie THE DROWNING, based on Barker's 2001 novel Border Crossing. The filmmaker here -- Bette Gordon -- is one whose work I have much admired, especially her 2009 movie Handsome Harry. Not having read the source novel by Ms Barker, TrustMovies can only go by the screenplay adaptation, credited to Stephen Molton and Frank Pugliese, which is pretty much a hash. It seems to want to keep us guessing, regarding of one the story's leading characters. Yet, because it also keeps pointing rather directly to that character's guilt and total inability to be trusted, the result makes the other lead character, our protagonist, seem like a total jerk for continuing to behave as he does.

Ms Gordon, pictured at left, gives her film a moodiness that does go a certain distance in pulling us in -- the bleak New England scenery proves a help here -- and her opening is indeed a grabber, as a loving couple takes a walk, only to be hit with the sight of what appears to be a young man, below, about to commit suicide by jumping into uncertain waters.

Yet what follows -- tons of coincidence that reeks more of plotting and planning than of happenstance -- seems so deliberately and aggressively created to keep us off-balance (remember Jagged Edge: the granddaddy and best example of this sort of thing?) that it all soon grows more tiresome than interesting.

The good cast -- a couple of B-listers and one up-and-comer -- does what it can with this scenario. Josh Charles (below, right, and at bottom) plays the would-be "hero," a shrink who turns out to have more than a nodding acquaintance with the young man he rescues from that water, but the under-rated Julia Stiles (below, left) is rather wasted in the completely re-active role of the shrink's wife. (If you haven't seen Ms Stiles' ace performance in that terrific black comedy It's a Disaster, put that one on your list).

In the role of the "suicidal" antagonist, Avan Jogia (below), keeps us guessing until he begins to mostly annoy us -- given his character's rather obvious traits. Is this kid evil? Or not? And whose responsibility might it be to take care of this?

Everyone we meet, from his parole officer (Tracie Thoms) to his shrink to his dad to -- well, you name 'em -- has evidently been compromised in some major way. This would appear to be the kid's special skill, but the movie also lays much of this at the feet of the far-too-stupid characters, especially our shrink, below, who surround him.

If you make it through the finale, you will indeed get a drowning, but by then, the movie has totally gone off the rails. There is no depth to any of these characters -- just a lot of creaky, pasted-together exposition to explain the past. Consequently, the question that the movie's poster (at top) asks: If evil exists, can it be transformed? gets no real answer.

From Paladin and running 99 minutes, The Drowning opens in New York City tomorrow, Wednesday, May 10, at the IFC Center and is said to be moving from there into limited national release. 

LIKE CRAZY: Paolo Virzi's latest comedy/ drama is his best ever (that's going some!)

The film of the year, so far, LIKE CRAZY (La pazza gioia, and not to be confused with the Anton Yelchin/Felicity Jones rom-com from 2011) arrives via that grand Italian master of the off-kilter family dram-com, Paolo Virzi, who has already given us a quintet of terrific movies: My Name Is Tonino, Caterina in the Big City, The First Beautiful Thing, Every Blessed Day, and Human Capital. His latest is his best. And that, movie lovers, is saying something.

Virzi's film (the director/co-writer is shown at right) follows the adventures of a pair of unusual women, both of whom are inmates of a highly progressive psychiatric clinic in a beautiful mountain region in Italy. How we meet them and how they meet each other and slowly bond make up the initial portion of the film. One day, after their work detail is finished but their bus back to the clinic has not arrived, the two board public transportation and then set off for some off-the-books fun.

The remainder of the movie tracks their movements -- and those of their care-takers -- as the women try to reconnect with their former lives, and we, via the very ingeniously inserted flashbacks, fantasies and delightful dialog, learn more and more about exactly who these two really are.

As played by two of Italy's finest actresses, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (above, right, and only recently seen in the dreadful Slack Bay) and Micaela Ramazzotti (above, left, of The First Beautiful Thing), these women will eventually become two of the most memorable characters you'll have cared for on screen. Ms Tedeschi is a whirlwind of motor-mouth amazement as the lady who may (or may not) have links to Italy's power crowd, while Ms Ramazzotti plays the poor, sad but resilient mother of a child who has been taken from her, for reasons we eventually discover.

How both stories and characters play out give these wonderful actresses the opportunity to demonstrate just how very good they are, and both come through with terrific, in-the-moment performances that are simply amazing in their depth, breadth and detail.

What Virzi and his co-writer, Francesca Archibugi, bring to the party is a splendid mix of liveliness and incident that never once flags. You'll have a hard time recalling another movie with as high an energy level as this one put to such smart and delicious use.

The amazing thing is, that amidst all this energy and humor and life being lived at the edge, the movie and its two characters keep deepening until, by the finale, we are moved something fierce. And while TrustMovies often pooh-poohs the use of coincidence in films, the very big one Virzi hands us in his penultimate scene at the beach seems so right and so somehow earned that you may shed those tears as copiously as you need without experiencing a trace of guilt.

Like Crazy -- a title that's ironic, just and true -- is one of those crowd-pleasers that will rope in critics and the art house crowd alike. It's a marvel of a movie that has already walked away with five David Di Donatello awards (Italy's Oscars) and, if that country has the good sense to submit it for our Best Foreign Language Film category, it may walk away with that prize, too.

In the recent British delight, Their Finest, one character explains that the big difference between life and movies is that life really has no purpose, while movies are able to take life and then give it that. Like Crazy, just like Their Finest, puts this theory into magical, meaningful practice.

From Strand Releasing, in Italian with English subtitles and running just under two hours, the film opens this Friday, May 5, in New York City (at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas) and in Los Angeles on Friday, May 12, at Laemmle's Royal and Playhouse 7.

Here in South Florida it will open on Friday, May 19, all over the place: in Miami at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, in Fort Lauderdale at the Savor Cinema, at the Cinema Paradiso in Hollywood and at the Living Room Theater in Boca Raton. In the weeks to come Like Crazy will hit another eight or ten theaters across the country. Click here and then click on Screenings to view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

A don't-miss surprise: Anna Mastro & Paul Shoulberg's original movie-movie, WALTER

What an enjoyable, unique and smart little movie is WALTER, a film as psychologically on-the-mark as it is a real "movie-movie." It's also, by the way, a perfect example of the kind of film that TrustMovies lives for but sees damned little of: It asks you to trust it; you do, and then it appears to betray that trust and yet, in reality, does nothing of the sort. In fact, it makes you realize anew how movies are able to pull you in to their unique universe -- hook, line and sinker -- making you believe things you never would in real life but here accept as gospel because it's, hey, just a movie, so let's go along with it. And then it turns those tables.

The product of screen writer Paul Shoulberg and director Anna Mastro (shown at left), Walter begins as one thing and ends as quite another. Yet the transition is wonderfully seamless and, after the fact, the more you consider the movie, the better it becomes. To detail the plot would be to give far too much away. So let's just say that this film involves a ghost, god, heaven and hell -- all things that, unreal as they are on one level, nonetheless remain terribly important to so many people. Certainly they do to the movie's titular hero, Walter (a memorable job by Andrew J. West, shown below and evidently best known for that tiresome, zombies-forever Walking Dead series. If you enjoy this series, you owe it to yourself to see Mr. West's work here).

In one of those lovely synchronicities that feed creative endeavors, much of the movie is set in a movie theater where Walter works and where some of the excellent supporting cast circle around him.

These include his boss (a funny and surprisingly caring Jim Gaffigan), his nemesis (the sexy, smarmy Milo Ventimiglia) and his beauteous lady love (Leven Ramblin, above, left, and last seen to excellent effect in 7 Minutes).

Also on hand are several other first-class performers, each of whom adds luster and pizazz to these polished proceedings. Justin Kirk (above, left) plays that aforementioned ghost with the necessary annoyance and angst, while William H. Macy (below) offers another of his very funny and intelligent performances as the psychiatrist to whom Walter turns to rid himself of that ghost.

Virginia Madsen portrays our hero's frustrated mother with the proper sublimated craziness; Neve Campbell enchants, as usual, as a woman out of Walter's submerged past; and best of all perhaps is Peter Facinelli as the absent dad who keeps returning via flashback to create someone memorable, charismatic and sad.

Humanist down to its delectable toes, Walter, the movie as well as the character, is a kind of puzzle -- but it's one you won't comprehend as such until, suddenly, you do. It's a movie about the movie experience, and how we give over our trust to something that may seem pure fantasy -- quixotic and even silly -- in order to learn and better understand the world around us, along with the fantasies that world promotes as well as the reality beneath the fantasy. By doing so, we're as entertained as we are enriched.

You can catch Walter now on DVD via Netflix (I hope it'll stream eventually) and from Amazon, for either purchase or rental.