Sasha Joseph Neulinger's REWIND: The sexual-abuse documentary to end them all. (If only.)

It is simply so strange to call a documentary about sexual abuse "wonderful." But, really, REWIND -- the first film, perhaps the only one necessary from fledgling director Sasha Joseph Neulinger -- is exactly that. More than anything else, I think, the reason for this is that Mr. Neulinger explores sexual abuse -- his own and that of his sister -- in such a way that, although the abuse indeed comes across as truly awful, the movie leaves not a trace of the usual sleazy, voyeuristic aftertaste that so many other films, despite perhaps their best intentions, nonetheless provide.

There is something so honest, direct and, well, kindly (yet not necessarily forgiving) about Neulinger's approach to everything and everyone we meet here (the filmmaker is shown at left) that his relatively short movie proves consistently riveting and finally inspiring. And god, no, I am not talking about yet another piece of "triumph-of-the-human-spirit" nonsense. His film is instead a terrible story and generational family saga told about as well as it could be, given the time, effort and rather small budget involved.

Sasha's family (that's mom and dad with their infant, below) had a video camera since the child was born and which his father often used -- his mom early on called it "a wall" (an opinion which I suspect many of us can easily relate to) -- and which Sasha himself begins using at a surprisingly early age.

This kid (below) was very bright from the get-go, but then, between kindergarten and first grade, that brightness dimmed -- why, by whom and for what reasons the remainder of the documentary explores from many angles and in surprising depth, considering its short, 86-minute length.

To go into much detail would spoil the film in a number of ways. Enough to say that, as Sasha delves into his and his family's past, speaking with everyone from family members to social workers, doctors, lawyers and police, what he uncovers and further explores is not merely unsettling and deeply disturbing but, due to the filmmaker/participant's combination of intelligence, perseverance and generosity, we emerge from the movie chastened and enhanced. As Sasha himself seems to do.

Certainly -- of course -- it would have been better had none of this horror happened. But it did. And it in the annals of "making the best of things," it seems to TrustMovies that Mr. Neulinger has done his share and one hell of a lot more. The end credits give us a proper update on everyone involved here. The participants include a very well-positioned and powerful cantor at Manhattan's most prestigious, Upper-East-Side synagogue, and even some majorly sleazy power players such as Rudy Giuliani and Cyrus Vance, Jr. (You may remember some of the reportage from the late-20th-Century time that all this was taking place.)

I could be wrong, since no one ever knows -- inadvertently or purposefully -- everything about anything, but this family would appear to have come through these events about as well as could be expected. So does the viewer. (That's Sasha and his younger sister Bekah: above, as children; below, as adults.)

From FilmRise, Rewind was to have opened theatrically this past March but is now streaming via VOD. It also had its broadcast premiere on PBS' Inde-pendent Lens earlier this month. However you choose to view it, do see it.

Sexual abuse tracked, as Deborah Kampmeier's TAPE gets a "virtual theatrical" release

Now that most theaters are closed, thanks to the current Corona virus, we'll be seeing more and more new movies -- particularly those of the small independent variety -- opening in what is termed a virtual theatrical release: available to digitally stream but only at what would be normal theatrical screening times, sometimes followed by online live panel discussions about the film and the topics it addresses via Crowdcast.

That is the case of the torn-from-the-headlines, sexual-exploitation-and-revenge film under consideration here: TAPE, from writer/director Deborah Kampmeier, who back in 2007 gave us an interesting movie entitled Hound Dog.

Tape could hardly be more au courant, dealing as it does with a very smart, sexy male sexual predator and the women, past and present, he has abused. And Ms Kampermeier, shown at right, sets things up stylishly and creepily, as one of our two heroines, Rosa -- played by the unusual looking and acting Annarosa Mudd, below -- wires herself for sound and then utterly defaces herself. This is not simply shocking but pretty horrific to view. It's an attention-grabber that certainly works.

From there we move to a group of young actresses going through the "audition process" for the movie's immediately recognizable villain, a handsome, suave and especially well-spoken fellow, Lux, who seems to specialize in making women feel empowered -- even as he utterly debases them.

This smart, savvy and very sexy predator is played by an actor now named Tarek Bishara (shown below, and if the face is familiar but the name not so much, you might better remember him under his former moniker of Thom Bishops), who does a first-rate job of convincing these poor young women to do exactly what he wants, although the purpose of this -- other than an enjoyable fuck -- is not nearly so readily apparent.

Even as Rosa goes about her plan to tape Lux (via video and audio) as he despoils his latest lady, a very sad and unfortunately pretty stupid young woman -- you'll begin by excusing this due to maybe youth and innocence, but as the movie wears on, her behaviors grows sillier and ever more incredible -- named Pearl (Orphan's Isabelle Fuhrman, below), the film's credibility begins to deteriorate. By the finale, a showdown at gunpoint in a New York restaurant during which Kampmeier tosses in everything from porno streaming to Bill Cosby, Tape has become, well, laughable.

This is too bad because, god knows, the movie's heart is in the right place, and the performances are as solid as the increasingly weak script allows them to be (Mr. Bishara is particularly convincing in his lovely little "You're-in-charge" speeches), and the tale is said to be based on fact.

Fact, however, needs more reality than Kampmeier seems able to muster, as the entire plot to wire things up goes off too easily (despite one glitch that then revolves itself almost magically), as does the whole unmasking scene, including bringing in a newscaster to present all the evidence. References to Titus Andronicus abound, as does a look at everything from female objectification to eating disorders. In the end, though, and despite strong performances, it seems at most oddly surface. And not very believable.

From Full Moon Films and running 98 minutes, Tape hits the virtual theatrical realm today. Click here for all the information regarding how to access the film and/or the Q&A's following the screenings -- which will run for the next two weeks. The film will then be available beginning April 10th on VOD platforms Amazon, iTunes, GooglePlay and Microsoft.

Women power at OPENS ROADS 2018: Marco Tullio Giordana's NOME DI DONNA and Francesco Patierno's DIVA!

Two of the eight films I've been able to view for this year's OPEN ROADS are decidedly feminist -- but in quite differing ways. One is a documentary about the famous Italian actress (still alive but not longer making movies), Valentina Cortese, the other a fictionalized account of the journey one single mother must make in bringing to justice the powerful workplace boss who has propositioned her and then made her work life miserable after she rejects his "proposal." Both are worth seeing, though the documentary is the stronger and more interesting work.

DIVA! is the over-used but still appropriate title for the film that gives us a very oddball yet fascinating and surprisingly intelligent and even sometimes moving account of the life and career of Ms Cortese, who began her film work in Italy, moved on to Britain and finally America, before returning to her homeland and Europe to continue performing in movies and legitimate theater.

The filmmaker is Francesco Patierno (shown below), who last year made a much-heralded documentary titled Naples '44, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, and back in 2003 the well-received narrative film, Pater familias.

For whatever reason(s), though Cortese is still alive, only archival footage of her and from her movies is used here. When the Cortese character is "shown" us, she is portrayed by eight different actresses, each standing in for a specific time frame. You might think this would be confusing or simply too strange to work very well, and yet it really does. The actresses include some of Italy's best, and the words they speak -- which appear to come from Cortese's oww diaries, letters and reminiscences -- resonate and sparkle with acute intelligence and feeling. Cortese certainly had a way with words (really: what a command of language she has!) and hearing her words spoken so well, with such understanding and emotion, makes the documentary continuously alive and riveting.

The actresses include the likes of Isabella Ferrari (above), Anita Caprioli and Barbora Bobulova (below), each one quite different and yet seemingly a fine stand-in for the actress herself, as the bio-pic documentary skips back and forth in time, resonating more on an emotional plane than via any strict time line.

Intercut with these actresses speaking the words of Cortese are numerous clips of the star's film work, as well as archival photos of her younger days. (That's she in her heyday, below, and as an older actress, further below, and at bottom in one of her earliest films.)

We meet Cortese's various lovers, co-stars, directors and producers -- among them Dassin, Truffaut, Zeffirelli, Losey, Gilliam, Zanuck, Richard Basehart and many more -- as they get screen time (or at least verbal remembrances), in which Mr. Zanuck comes out worst of all. As the film rolls along, even as crazily back-and-forth in time as it goes, there's a character, a personality and a strength here that is genuinely surprising.

I have never seen another bio-pic-doc anything like this one, and I doubt I would recommend that other filmmakers try it this way. But Patierno has certainly achieved something unusual and memorable. When I think of Ms Cortese from now on, in addition to her many fine performances, this documentary is sure to come immediately to mind.

Diva! plays at Open Roads this coming Wednesday. June 6, at 8:30pm. Click here for further information and/or tickets.

Marco Tullio Giordana (shown below) has long been one of my favorite Italian filmmakers. His The Best of Youth still stands as an amazing movie achievement. He has been represented at Open Roads before, and his latest film, NOME DI DONNA could hardly seem more timely, dealing as it does with sexual harrasment of a woman by her powerful and wealthy employer. What's more, it is beautifully photographed and acted, and features a lovely supporting turn by Adrianna Asti (at left, two photos below), as one of the residents in home for the elderly into which our heroine, at the film's beginning, is hired to work.

That character, Nina, is single mom with a young daughter and a genuinely caring and thoughtful boyfriend (who in not that daughter's dad) in tow. Nina is played by Cristiana Capotondi (shown below, right and further below), an actress whom I've enjoyed since first encountering her in the wonderful Italian film, Kryptonite! (click and scroll down). She is very good in this role, as well.

As directed and co-written (with Cristiana Mainardi) by Signore Giordana, Nome di donna proceeds quickly and smartly along its designated path, with never any doubt about the kindness, strength and overall quality of heroine, which Ms Capotondi brings to fine life.

Nor is there any doubt about the incident of sexual abuse that sparks the action of all that happens for the rest of the movie. It is also more than clear that the abuser has practiced this on more women in his employ than merely Nina.

The movie is particularly good at showing us the ins and outs of the Italian justice system, workers' unions, and how the workers at this home for the wealthy elderly, when their employment is threatened by the one woman who stands up for herself, will band together against this woman and allow the sexual abuse to continue. It also shows us, via Nina's daughter and what she "learns" at school, how immigrants are so easily demonized in Italy (as they are elsewhere throughout Europe) these days.

So how to fight all this? While Giordana, his cast and crew deliver the goods, all right, and his film is consistently interesting as it moves along its charted course, everything begins to look a little too easy -- almost pre-ordained. "I don't want to brag, but I've won every case," her lawyer (Michela Cescon, below) tells Nina. One wonders, what with the Italian courts so noted historically for their rather lax understanding of justice where the powerful are concerned, how all this can work itself out so easily. Well, maybe Italian courts are changing these days? God knows, American courts certainly are -- for the worse.

In any case, once the movie reaches its conclusion, you can feel free to bask in good feelings. Whether or not you'll be able to believe it all is another matter. I wonder if even Giordana actually believes it. The film's final nasty joke involving a newscaster, together with the ironic song played on the soundtrack, indicates that, for all the feel-good going on here, there remains an awfully long way to go toward gender equality.

Worth seeing, Nome di donna screens at Open Roads today, Saturday, June 2, at 3:30pm (with a Q&A with the director following the screening) and again Tuesday, June 5, at 4:30pm. To see the entire Open Roads schedule, click the link preceding. And to see TrustMovies' earlier posts on this year's series, click here, here and here.

Childhood sexual abuse meets the cult of American macho in Travis Mathews' DISCREET

Possibly as dark, dismal and depressing a movie as you are likely to encounter, DISCREET, the new film from Travis Mathews (writer and co-director of Interior. Leather Bar.) is also worth seeing for a number of reasons -- starting with the fact of its remarkable subtlety. 

Mr. Mathews (shown at right) doesn't slap us in the face with anything. And considering the subjects he's dealing with -- childhood sexual abuse, revenge, murder, suicide, prostitution, group sex in blindfolds, and homosexualty trying its damndest to disguise itself as the activity of really macho men -- this is quite a feat. Instead, Mathews parcels out his information via visuals and sounds, memories and current activity that come to us in small, oblique shards that we must piece together.

Piece them we do. And, boy, is the finished product ugly. 

The movie's non-hero, Alex (played in properly dark, if one-note fashion by Jonny Mars, above), is carrying around a load of traumatic memory. Instead of trying to work this out via more usual routes -- a therapist, perhaps -- he has taken to arranging oddball group sex sessions between men (below), while simultaneously stealing their money;

hiring a young man to do who-knows-what with the very fellow, now old and infirm (Bob Swaffar, at left, below), who molested Alex in his younger days; fellating and/or jacking off a local wealthy Hispanic man in his sauna (João Federici, shown at left, two photos down); and then onwards to actions that are much, much worse.

The breadth (if not the depth) of the despicable goings-on here is near breathtaking, and yet Mathews gives it to us as though these were merely every-day events. (Perhaps, for those engaging in them, they are.) This makes it seem all the more awful. Intercut with the degradation is the interesting web site of a young and pretty Asian woman with whom Alex seems to want to connect.

Yet despite this tiny morsel of hope, along with the attempt of Alex's mother to share her son's life in some small way, our boy is dead set on a course of major destruction. Throughout, the filmmaker never strays from his oblique style, dark content and refusal to provide us with one bit of the usual positive spin. The result is one of the more unnerving, queasy-making movies in recent memory. And yet, due to Mathews' subtle, indirect approach, TrustMovies does not remember a single moment of overt violence, blood nor gore to be seen. Yet all of this is present, somehow, via the unspoken "threat."

Discreet opens this Friday, June 1, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall 3 and simultaneously will be available via VOD. The movie is certainly worth a look -- if you're ready for something strange and about as far from feel-good as you can imagine.

Movie sop for seniors: Rosemary Rodriguez's SILVER SKIES hits Florida theaters this week

It's true that we seniors enjoy seeing ourselves up there on the (as we used to call it) silver screen, but I suspect a lot of us may bridle at depictions such as those in the film that opens this week in Florida theaters. SILVER SKIES is the name of a Southern California apartment complex that doubles as the movie's title, and it is filled with seniors of relatively humble means who suddenly find themselves threatened with eviction when the property is sold to someone planning to turn it into expensive condos.

The biggest draw for the aged here will likely be the once-upon-a-time starry cast of now elders that include the likes of George Hamilton, Valerie Perrine, Barbara Bain, Alex Rocco, Mariette Hartley and Howard Hesseman (among others). And, yes, it is interesting to see how these actors have aged from the time of their career height until now. But as written and directed by Rosemary Rodriiguez, shown at right, the movie lurches clunkily from caricature to caricature, comedy to bathos, and coincidence to coincidence, with occasionally more-or-less believable moments in between. That last is due mostly to the work of the actors on view.

Ms Rodriguez's script is simply bad -- obvious and predictable -- as it tackles subjects that range from gentrification and the real estate market to senior sex and senior sexual abuse, and then abjectly fails to give these the kind of nuance that would make them seem anything more than crass and manipulative. Think of it as an old-fashioned TV sit-com, using today's hyped-up sexual situations and their accompanying language as fodder.

We get it all here, including Alzheimer's (via the character played by Mr. Hamilton, above). While I realize that this disease can render its victim sometimes incapable and at other time more competent, the range this character depicts seems much more due to the needs of the plot than to anything remotely real or genuine.

The cast comes through as well as possible under these circumstances, with Ms Perrine (above) looking as lovely and tart-like as ever, Ms Bain appropriately old-but-caring and Ms Hartley still exuding intelligence and class. After only maybe a half hour of viewing, my spouse likened Silver Skies to suicide-by-movie, but we soldiered on. Arriving toward the finale, the film did seem to improve somewhat, but I suspect that may have been due to the fact that we were, at that point, so worn down by it that we welcomed whatever might come -- so long as it ends.

If you are desperate for something "senior," the film -- opens this coming Friday, October 7, in the Miami area a the AMC Aventura and Sunset Place, in Boca Raton at the Regal Shadowood, in Sarasota at the Regal Hollywood, and in the Ft. Myers/Naples area at the Regal Belltower and Hollywood Stadium.

In CALL ME LUCKY, Bobcat Goldthwait honors (a little too heavily) mentor Barry Crimmins

If you've never heard of stand-up comic and social activist Barry Crimmins (TrustMovies hadn't, prior to viewing this new documentary), don't worry. You'll know a lot about this man and his life and career by the time you've finished watching CALL ME LUCKY. This is a life and career filled with event and comedy (angry though much of it is) and not a little surprise, as well. The film's director is Bobcat Goldthwait (shown below), whose movies over recent years -- in quite disparate genres -- I have come to think represent some of the best and most original creations of modern American cinema.

So far as I know, this film marks Gold-thwait's entry into the field of documentary filmmaking, and for the most part he has does a commendable job. His movie melds talking-head interviews with his subject, Mr. Crimmins, as well as with a number of well-known comics who have known and/or worked with Crimmins (from David Cross (shown at bottom) to Margaret Cho, Kevin Meaney to Patton Oswalt). We get a kind of history of both the man and his time: what America was going through in the days when this comic was so funny, so angry, and -- it turns out -- so very helpful to many up-and-coming new stand-up comics. He was a "good guy," even if he seemed to have a kind of half-buried chip on his shoulder.

Where that chip came from and why is something we learn in the course of the film, and since the filmmaker chooses to keep it under wraps for quite a time, so will I. It becomes the major surprise of the movie, and changes the course of the documentary, just as the event itself changed the course of Crimmins' own life. Suddenly we're in the midst of Congressional hearings and testimony that will surprise viewers who may not have paid a lot of attention to AOL at the time, nearly two decades back, during which the Internet was evolving into a major part of our lives and our world.

All this proves unusual and most interesting, even as it explains -- partially, at least -- why Barry Crimmins (shown at left in his younger days and below in current times) never broke through to become the kind of household name that other, perhaps less talented but more mainstream, comics managed to do. And then, about 90 minutes in, give or take a few, at just about the time most documentaries would be ending, the director does something that I found almost shocking, given the kind of movies he has handed us thus far. He suddenly turns the film into a non-stop laudation of Crimmins from his contemporaries that is repetitive and needless -- given all we've already seen and heard about this man.  After a few minutes of this, you're ready to scream "Enough already: We get it!"

This kind of overkill adulation befits neither Goldthwait -- whose previous work may have seemed like overkill to some (not to me), but at least was dripping with irony and satire -- nor Crimmins, who, given what we see of him, must have been embarrassed to view these final minutes. This is a shame because the final section of the film left both me and my spouse in a foul mood, when only a quarter hour before, we'd been with the movie, heart and soul.

So, if you find yourself blanching at the sudden swell of overkill praise, maybe stop right there, eject the disc from your player, and simply recall what has come before. That much, at least, is definitely worth seeing and hearing. Call Me Lucky, from MPI Media Group, arrives on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital Download this coming Tuesday, October 13 -- for purchase and/or rental.