Andrew Scott shines in Brendan Higgins' and Simon Fellows' unusual drama, A DARK PLACE

An oddball endeavor if ever there was one, A DARK PLACE (originally titled Steel Country) takes place in small-town Pennsylvania but was filmed in Georgia with a British director (Simon Fellows, shown just below) at the helm and its leading actors all from Ireland.

Whatever: The movie works, and in fact does a lot more than that. It gives the fine actor Andrew Scott (shown on poster, right, and further below) the best role I've yet seen him play, as it very unusually and interestingly places a character somewhere on the spectrum of Aspergers syndrome in the center of this tale involving a child's disappearance, a cover-up, and a desperate attempt to do the right thing.

Small-town America in the time of Trump (the first thing we see in the film is a Trump placard on a shabby front lawn), with its own special structure serving the wealthy and powerful, is front and center here, with everything working just fine, so long as people know their place -- and stay in it.

Mr. Fellows does a good job of bringing Brendan Higgins' first-class screenplay to life. His pacing is steady and increasingly fraught, as our difficult hero, Donald, a sanitation worker (played by Mr. Scott), attempts to learn what really happened to the young boy who used to wave to to him daily on his sanitation route and is now said to have accidentally drowned.

As the information Donald gleans points ever more clearly toward a cover-up, the powers-that-be -- from police to community "leaders" -- close ranks. What some critics have pointed to as preposterous and/or risible plot turns strike TrustMovies as more like business-as-usual in small town America.

And so, anything goes, and by the finale our hero is lucky to have been left in one piece. What he feels he must do is thus horrible yet perfectly understandable, under these Trump-land circumstances and those of his own constantly anxious state.

Mr. Scott's rich, lovely and angry performance as the quirky, unstable Donald carries the movie. He is as difficult as he is worth caring for and about. And the two most important women in his life -- his "ex" (played sadly and smartly by Denise Gough, below),

and his co-worker, Donna, who also carries a torch for the guy (a wonderful job by Bronagh Waugh, below) -- make Donald's exasperating-but-worth-it combination painfully obvious.

His daughter (a clear-headed and loving performance from Crista Beth Campbell, below) is the only character to whom he can comfortably turn for the sustenance he craves.

That those three lead performances (by Scott, Gough and Waugh) are being played by Irish actors doing a surprisingly good job giving us Pennsylvania accents adds to the unusual quality of the film, and a special nod must be given to the fine screenplay from Mr. Higgins, who captures small-town creepiness and unexpected kindness with equal care and believability.

Two scenes stand out among many that nail our hero's singular and difficult world: his sudden verbal use of his and Donna's names as a reason for them not to connect, and another, purely visual moment, as Donald quietly sits in the middle of a closed circle of drawing pencils, all arranged by color. In a world more just, in which Academy members dare venture beyond what the box-office and/or typical media pundits offer up, Mr. Scott's performance might draw Oscar consideration.

This quiet, sad little film is so much better than many other big-budget dramatic wanna-bes featuring "name" actors and/or directors that you ought not let it get by without a watch. From Shout! Studios and running just 89 minutes, A Dark Place arrived on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download last week -- for purchase and/or rental.

Nicolas Pesce's THE EYES OF MY MOTHER: horror often viewed at a discreet distance

Beginning with a scene on a country road in which the driver of a truck sees something untoward just ahead of him, and then taking us into the lives of one of the strangest families to be found on film, this new pristine, black-and-white movie makes Norman Bates look like a piker and shows up the Austrian oddity, Goodnight Mommy, as the artsy piece of schlock it is. THE EYES OF MY MOTHER will not be to everyone's taste (not even to all horror aficionados) but it ought to quickly take its place in the annals of quietly creepy, one-of-a-kind movies.

Its writer/director, Nicolas Pesce (shown at left), spares us much of the gore quotient possible here but none of the ghastly realizations of exactly what has been, is now, or soon will be going on. Believe me, these are lulus. And because they are often seen at a discreet distance, with music that quietly foments rather than knocks our eardrums silly, the result is often as breathtaking as it is horrifying. This is a film, no matter how "good" it may be, that you will not want to recommend to those who have trouble with the transgressive.

Eyes, surgery, cattle, obsession and a whole lot more make themselves felt in ways major and minor throughout the film, along with the bizarre behavior of not just the three principals in the family -- dad, mom and little girl -- but in the smiling interloper who sets into play the awful plot and then pays for it, bigtime, in a manner that may put you in mind of The Secret in Their Eyes.

You do not need plot details for a movie like this. Best, I think, if you're a horror fan, to simply approach it as tabula rasa as possible. The little girl (above) grows up into a young woman (below) who proves both one of the great horror villains and a characters who, given her fraught history, remains somehow vulnerable and (almost) sympathetic.

The cinematography (Zach Kuperstein) is stunning throughout, and the performances of every cast member on the nose. The logic of the film may leave something to be desired, but because The Eyes of My Mother has the strong, dark feel of a waking nightmare, you will probably forgive this (or not even notice) -- so simple yet propulsive is this relatively short (only 76 minutes) tale.

The behavior of our "leading lady -- the unusual but very fine Kika Magalhaes --  is so keyed to need, parenting (that's dad, being bathed, above), and socialization (the latter achieved, it would seem, via old movies, mostly noir, seen on TV) that whatever happens here seems somehow less over-the-top than the manner in which our "heroine" has most likely been raised.

From Magnolia's Magnet division, in mostly English and a little Portuguese with English subtitles, the movie opened this past weekend, December 2, in five cities and will hit another 14 this coming Friday, December 9, and even more over the weeks to come. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters. Simultaneously, The Eyes of My Mother is available via VOD, Amazon Video and iTunes.

Christian Petzold's PHOENIX explores post-Holocaust love, identity, guilt and avarice

That old standard, "Speak Low," gets quite the workout in PHOENIX, a new film from German movie-maker Christian Petzold, who seems, with each addition to his oeuvre, to be journey-ing further and further back in time and history. His Yella and Jerichow were relatively modern-day tales; Barbara took us back to East Germany in the 1980s; now his new one reaches all the way to immediately post-Holocaust, as the few Jews left were returning to their former homes throughout Europe -- or heading for Palestine.

As is the case in all of Petzold's work I've seen -- the co-writer (with Harun Farocki) and director is shown at left -- the plot relies on a very interesting, and usually only partially believable twist, played for all it is worth. And with this filmmaker, that means it's worth at least a watch. Phoenix, in my estimation, proves his most fully satisfying work to date because it takes the several themes at hand -- the Holocaust, self-identity (with emphasis on those of both Judaism and feminism), physical appearance, loyalty and love -- and blends them into a surprisingly effective whole.

If Herr Petzold could be said to have a muse, it would be his lead actress in several films: Nina Hoss (above, right, below, left and poster, top), who is as fine here as she always is, maybe even better. Ms Hoss has the ability to convince us that reams of subtext, as well as an enormous and roiling past exists within her slight frame and beautiful, expressive face -- all of which is true in the case of her character, Nelly.

Nelly has just returned from a concentration camp, where she was left for dead from a gunshot wound to the skull. In addition to being resuscitated, she has also undergone a major face lift, hoping to get something like her original face but coming up with a visage that is similar but also different enough to be a tad confusing.

Her friend Lene (Nina Kunzendorf, above) is making arrangements for the two of them to leave for Palestine, but Nelly is not ready for that. She wants to find her husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld, below), a pianist who used to accompany her on the piano when she sang professionally.  Clearly still head-over-heels about the man, Nelly can't abide the idea, planted rather firmly by Lene, that her husband ratted her out as a Jew to the Gestapo so he could play the get-out-of-jail-free card.

The set-up is clear and the movie proceeds from that set-up, full speed ahead but with enough ambiguity and mixed signals to keep us -- and its characters -- on our toes. Nelly's identity is locked into her love for Johnny more strongly than anything that happened to her in the camp as a Jew (this fact riles Lene not a little).

And though Johnny appears pretty much as Lene paints him, so obsessive and enormous is Nelly's love for the guy that she has us wondering if, maybe hoping that, she could be right. The movie rises slowly to some excellent suspense, some striking visuals, and to a finale that is absolutely on the mark -- emotionally, psychologically and dramatically sound.

Performances are fine from all involved, and one of the pleasures of the movie is that, while providing suspense and entertainment, it never slights the importance of the Holocaust to history (and German history), and in fact offers up a few choice ideas about human behavior and our ability to all too easily forget and even forgive.

Phoenix, from Sundance Selects -- the title refers to a club in which cabaret and other post-war amenities (above) are offered and at which our Johnny has a job, as well as to that famed Firebird rising from the ashes -- opens this Friday, Just 24, in New York City at the IFC Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. In the Los Angeles area, look for it at various Laemmle theaters beginning July 31.

Netflix streaming tip: Daniel Nettheim's THE HUNTER--as close to tragedy as movies get

In high definition -- which is how we viewed it via Netflix streaming -- THE HUNTER*  is a particularly beautiful film. What makes it so special, however, is its tragic view of the world in which we currently live. Set in the mountains of Tasmania, the large island off the southeast of Australia, the movie never screams negativity.

Quiet and relatively placid, save for a couple of altercations and one very suspenseful scene, this award-winner in its home country moves along with a odd deliberation provided by its writers (Alice Addison and Wayne Fimeri, from the novel by Julia Leigh) and its director (Daniel Nettheim, shown below, of mostly Aussie TV). Yet it is never for a moment boring. In fact it simply gets better, tighter and more to the point as it moves slowly forward.

Willem Dafoe, above, in one of his best roles (that covers a lot of good territory) plays Martin, some sort of mercenary, in this case one who can track and trap or maybe kill an animal -- the Tasmanian Tiger, thought to be extinct. He's been hired by a large corporation in the biotech industry with an agenda that only slowly becomes clear.

Martin takes up a rather shaky residence with a mother (Frances O'Connor, above, center) and her two children (dad's gone missing in those mountains some time back, and mom is not a little depressed), but this hunter soon warms to them and they to him. Green activists, meanwhile, are trying to shut down logging on the mountain, and the loggers are growing increasingly angry.

Friend of the family, Jack (played by Sam Neill, above), has designs on mom and is clearly annoyed at Martin's intrusion; he may very well have another agenda, as well. This meaty stew is stirred slowly and not at all melodramatically. Even when events occur that would be fodder for Hollywood's big-budget violence-and-explosions factory, these are handled with a smart restraint that keeps us focused on the real issue.

When that issue comes to the fore at the climax, so well has its foundation been laid that the finale hits like a ton of bricks. For anyone who cares about the environment, the saving of endangered species, and the question of how to deal with unchecked corporate power, the movie has much to say, little of it promising. This is why I feel it comes about as close to real tragedy as any film I've seen in a long while.

That is also why the denouement is a tad disappointing. The movie-makers or maybe the producers, I suppose, were attempting to offer us a little uplift. At this point, however, uplift is not particularly believable, given what we've seen and know. Slight spoiler ahead: Better to have left the boy be, and Martin to his fate. The Hunter is available now on DVD and Blu-ray, is streamable and probably available as well via VOD.

*Not to be confused with the movie of the same name that opened at the beginning of 2012.