First love gets a second time around in Warren B. Malone's Brit rom-com, ACROSS THE RIVER

Random Media has come up with a number of interesting little films of late, several of which have been covered here at TrustMovies.

The company's latest addition, ACROSS THE RIVER, is yet another enjoyable piece of cinema that is small-scale but well enough directed, written and acted to qualify as a success and good enough to be placed on the "watch-it" list of those viewers who appreciate independent cinema, no matter the country of origin (in this case, it's Britain).

The writer/director is a fellow named Warren B. Malone (shown at left), whose first full-length feature this appears to be, after having made a few short films. Even then, Across the River is only 75 minutes long -- which proves just enough to grab us and keep us interested for the day that our two ex-lovers, who've "met cute" after maybe a decade apart, spend slowly and haltingly discovering who each other have since become.

The river in question is London's Thames, and the two folk who need to cross it -- there are various work stoppages going on which make it difficult to get either the tube or a taxi --

are ex-lovers Ryan (played by Keir Charles, above) and Emma (Elizabeth Healey, below). Mr. Charles is particularly good: full of low-key charisma and the kind of slightly goofy quality that can be quite sexy when it is also easy-going and never pushy. Ms Healey, on the other hand, has the more difficult role of the tight-ass, professional woman who must slowly unburden herself of both inhibitions and history. But she is attractive and very good at keeping her feelings close to the vest.

The movie's "re-meet cute" situation proves a tad manipulative, what with a flashback and an awfully coincidental dropping of a cell phone, but once we get past the first few minutes, and Ryan and Emma have properly reunited (even if only to grumble and argue for awhile), the movie springs quietly to life and we're off and running.

How and why these two knew each other and what happened to them leeches slowly from the screenplay, and the two actors (who are credited as screenwriters, in addition to Mr. Malone) perform with enough improvisational style that we easily buy into their relationship -- both then and now.

And if the movie relies a bit too much on the usual small talk -- of the paint job on the Houses of Parliament and the look of the popular London Planetree -- which is often overpowered into silence by the (also low-key) musical score, the filmmaker at least knows where he is going and how to get us there.

In its last 20 minutes or so, the movie rises to its own occasion and  -- interestingly enough, once our couple has again been separated -- actually becomes more intense, funny, charming and propulsive. The film's ending, in fact, is even rather moving. In all, this is 75 minutes of British not-quite-rom-com slice of life that proves worth experiencing.

From Random Media, Across the River made its worldwide debut via Digital, DVD and VOD yesterday, July 17 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Rufus Norris' BROKEN proves this year's most event-prone (though serious) movie

Event-prone?  More like event-wracked. Every time we catch our breath something new -- and not too nice -- seems to happen. We expect our action movies to be chock-a-block with event, but serious dramas? Not so much. TrustMovies is conflicted about BROKEN, but I suspect no more so than many of those folk -- filmmaker, actors, screen-writer and perhaps even the novelist upon whose book the film was based -- who have brought this movie to very odd, stop-and-start life.

The filmmaker here is actor-turned-director Rufus Norris (shown at left), whose first film this is, and his movie is cast and acted quite well (as we often get when thespians sit in the first-time-director's chair: witness last year's Quartet) by an excellent cast of both unknowns and knowns. Much of the movie takes place in a small cul-de-sac where several houses very nearly butt up against each other and where much that happens in one house is made privy to the others by virtue of proximity. This is both a bad and, finally, a good thing, but it makes for a hell of a lot of tsuris as the movie moves along.

If I had to place the film into a particular genre -- though it deals with themes such as the proper care of an emotionally troubled/handicapped young man (a fine Robert Emms, above) coming-of-age, bullying, diabetes, and love/romance/commitment -- I'd have to call it a slice-of-life movie, event-packed variety. We're really seeing into what transpires to this odd little "forced-community" in something of the manner, if in very different film style, that we got from Martin Ritt's 1957 film, No Down Payment, over a half-century ago.

The three homes with which we're most concerned are inhabited by a nice family broken by divorce, when mom walked out on dad (Tim Roth, above); another not-so-nice one (featuring a nasty, bullying dad played by Rory Kinnear, below) broken by death; and a third in which aging parents are being slowly broken by trying to tend to their emotionally and intellectually handicapped young-adult son. (You can rather quickly tell where the film's title comes from, and, as Alain Resnais might say, You ain't seen nothin' yet.)

What holds, barely, all of this together is the Roth character's daughter, nicknamed Skunk, and the marvelous performance by the new actress who plays her, Eloise Laurence. Ms Laurence is a natural, and her work here is something like what was achieved by Mary Badham in her To Kill a Mockingbird debut.

While Broken doesn't begin to compare to Mockingbird in either its popularity or art, it is almost impossible to imagine the film without Ms Laurence in this role. She handles everything from comedy to pain (physical and otherwise) in exemplary fashion and is a joy to watch each step of the way. In what is probably the film's funniest extended sequence, as the girl pleads, insists and annoys dad for a new cell phone (below), the actress is an unalloyed delight.

Also on hand are excellent performers like Cillian Murphy (below, left, and badly messed up) and Zana Marjanovic, further below, as nanny to Skunk and her brother, who gets rather close to the man of the house.

Scene by individual scene, it is difficult to fault the film, mostly because the acting is so very good. But the accumulation of fraught incident after fraught incident, together with the occasional too convenient coincidence (a car happening by just as a beating is taking place) indicates that perhaps the filmmaker was trying too hard to include everything in the novel. He gets a lot in, all right, but at a price. Almost nothing seems given the time and detail that it demands. This is why multi-part cable series tend to do a better job with event-laden novels: They have time enough to explore.

Still, Boy A screenwriter Mark O'Rowe has done a journeyman job with the novel by Daniel Clay; that excellent cast is worth seeing; and the performance of Ms Laurence almost demands a viewing. Director Norris also does a nice job of allowing us to see that no one here is pure villain or hero. There are shades to us all.

Broken, from Film Movement and running but 91 minutes, opens this Friday, July 19, in New York City at the Quad Cinema and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall, Beverly Hills. The film will open simultaneously in 21 cities across the country before expanding to other venues in the weeks to come. To see all currently scheduled playdates, click here and scroll down.