Cody Calahan/Peter Genoway's tale-within-a-tale, THE OAK ROOM, hits theaters and VOD

If you're a fan of smart storytelling, especially of  a tale-within-a-tale-within-a-tale, THE OAK ROOM, the new Canadian film from director Cody Calahan and writer Peter Genoway, might do a lot more than merely float your boat.

Beginning with a bar and a bit of a heard-but-not-seen rumpus, then a late-night appearance, the past, money owed, and a tale about a tale, we're maybe already one-third through the new film when all this is beginning to look a lot like mere vamping. Yet this is being handled

well enough -- in the writing, directing and acting -- that we're more than willing to go along. 

Director Calahan (shown at left) and writer Genoway fill their film with enough clever visual and verbal clues and repetitions -- everything from that bar and a beer bottle to a wrist watch, wet shoes, cold feet and even class difference -- that the stories grow deeper and more serious as they move along. 

Simultaneously, the movie fills with slowly accumulating menace, leading to an outburst that  arrives as a penultimate event, rather than a finale. 

In retrospect, TrustMovies suspects you'll find  the storytelling here pretty remarkable and The Oak Room itself a surprisingly interesting and engaging piece of filmmaking.

The small cast is made up of a half-dozen men, with each character particularly well-drawn and -acted, and three of these six guys offering change and surprise along the way.

I'll not go into the "who, what and why"  to avoid the usual spoilers, but I will list these fine actors: Ari Millen (three photos up), RJ Mitte (two photos above) and Peter Outerbridge (just above) take the lead roles with utter panache, 

while super support arrives via Nicholas Campbell (above), Martin Roach (below), and David Ferry. Who these characters are and what they want is revealed slowly and cleverly, keeping us ever on our toes and thinking that we've now got things all figured out. Not quite.

Even as the final credits roll, you'll still be mulling it all around in your mind, piecing together the fragments still missing. For those who enjoy story-telling, puzzles, mysteries and the kind of suspense and uneasiness that build ever so gradually, The Oak Room should satisfy in a myriad of ways.

From Gravitas Ventures and running just 89 minutes, the movie hit a few theaters along with VOD just last weekend, Friday, April 2. Click here to see the various digital venues on which you can view the film. 

DVDebut for Ivan Sen's modern-day, Australian-outback, slow-burn western, GOLDSTONE

The award-laden (in Australia, at least) Australian movie GOLDSTONE harks back to those American westerns (with a sizeable helping of film noir tropes added to the mix) in which an outsider appears in town to investigate what looks like a simple problem that soon opens up into an entire web of corruption and sleaze. So, yes, we've seen this before. (Bad Day at Black Rock, anyone?). The difference in Ivan Sen's movie resides in the compellingly bleak-but-beautiful outback vistas that amaze the eye, and in the two lead performances, especially that of Aaron Pedersen in the role of the mixed-race detective who comes to "town" (we use that word loosely) to investigate.

Mr. Pedersen (above), who was so frighteningly fine as one of the two crazy murderers in last year's best couple-in-jeopardy survival movie, Killing Ground, is even better here as the taciturn fellow who just wants to do his job. The actor is especially good at allowing us to imagine all that roils beneath his quiet-but-deep surface.

His co-star is the younger actor Alex Russell, above, who plays the town's one lone cop, a man in the process of slowly being corrupted by the powers-that-be -- both corporate and political --

played respectively by David Wenham (above, right) and Jacki Weaver (left, getting a piggy-back ride). Few actors do buttoned-down sleaze better than Mr. Wenham, while Ms Weaver is always a delight, especially when she is being sweetly vicious, as here (and in Animal Kingdom).

De rigueur these days is a nod to sex trafficking, here via a bevy of beautiful Asian girls like the one played by Michelle Lim Davidson, above), whom one of our heroes decides he must help.

Also often seen in Aussie films is that sub-plot about native Aboriginal lands being stolen by the sadly winning combination of corporate power and local politics. That surfaces here via two characters: an old man named Jimmy (David Gulpilil, above) who appears to be a kind if spiritual leader to the particular group of Aboriginals and another named Tommy, played by Tommy Lewis (aka Tom E. Lewis), shown below,

who has renounced his tribe to go to work for the opposite side. Both actors -- probably the most seen of all Aborigine performers -- hold a special place in Australian film. Lewis, who died earlier this year, made his movie debut in that classic (and still hugely powerful) The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), while Gulpilil made his in Nicolas Roeg's famous Walkabout (1971). Both have worked steadily ever since, and their contribution to Goldstone, in terms of performances and the movie's underlying theme of the destruction of Aboriginal land and culture add to the undeniable gravity here.

Goldstone opens with a montage of archival photos showing, among other fascinating shots, Australia's use of slave labor via the Chinese and the Aboriginals. What follows brings all this up to date in a tale that offers its own depressing plus ça change effect.

For all its weight and slow-burn build to an exciting climax, the movie will seem to many older viewers not all that original. We've seen its like before, many times over.

And yet writer, director, editor, composer and cinematographer (whew!) Ivan Sen (shown at right) still manages to make most of it seem reasonably fresh and consistently compelling. He draws fine performances from his cast -- and a super one from Pedersen -- leaving us, once again and forever, it seems, watching the "haves" slowly, quietly and very effectively destroy the "have-nots."

From Lightyear Entertainment and running 110 minutes, the movie, after finding a limited theatrical release this past March, hits DVD this coming Tuesday, September 11, via MVD Entertainment -- for purchase and (I hope) rental.

Note to Lightyear and MVD: Please invest in the English subtitles options for any future release that sports thick Aussie accents. We missed probably one-quarter of the dialog, thanks to this omission.

Jamie M. Dagg's sophomore effort, SWEET VIRGINIA: good cast, good score, so-so movie

SWEET VIRGINIA, the second full-length feature from director Jamie M. Dagg, bears more than a passing resemblance to this year's much better mystery, Wind River. For starters, Jon Bernthal acts in both: here in the leading role, in Wind River playing a supporting part. Both take place in out-of-the-way locations and feature a murder mystery at their center.

But in Wind River, the theme of justice is paramount; Sweet Virginia, a much more manufactured concoction, is content to connect its dots via the father of the film's "villain" being a big fan of its hero, an injured-and-thus-retired rodeo cowboy named Sam Rossi. The connection is tenuous at best, silly at worst.

So be it. And since we must, in all fairness, deal with what we have, Sweet Virginia does offers a number of pluses. Director Dagg, shown at left, has assembled an excellent cast, a good musical score (by brothers Brooke and Will Blair), and a number of scenes that pack in enough suspense, mystery and drama to keep us hooked.

The biggest problem -- other than there seems to be no ongoing investigation by authorities of the triple murder that begins the movie (one scene, hell, even one shot, of something like this might have set our minds to rest) -- is the exceedingly coincidental quality of the tale told here.

That cast, though, is a very good one. Led by Mr. Bernthal, above -- who currently seems to be the go-to guy for "strong silent type" roles and is here able to communicate with few words a depth of feeling and caring that helps considerably in keeping us attached to the wobbly plot -- it also includes another excellent and upcoming young actor in the role of Bernthal's ambivalent antagonist,  Christopher Abbott (shown below) of Hello I Must Be Going and James White.

Our hero's main squeeze, a lately widowed woman, is played by the fine Rosemarie DeWitt, below, while the always interesting Imogen Poots (two photos down) has the role of the character who sets the story in motion: a three-year unhappily married woman (also recently widowed by that multiple murder) who does not, it turns out, possess a whole lot of smarts or morals. The women, as so often happens in American movies, play a distinct second fiddle to the guys.

The screenplay and dialog for Sweet Virginia were written by twin brothers Benjamin and Paul China, and the Chinas prove good at plot machinations without undue exposition -- even if, as noted above, those machinations soon begin to seem more manufactured than organic. (I did miss some of the mumbled dialog toward the beginning of the film, however. I suspect this was due less to the actors than to the sound quality of the streaming link we critics were sent, in which ambient sound and musical score occasionally overpowered dialog.)

The very dark cinematography, coupled to the location shooting (said to be Alaska but filmed in British Columbia), the musical score, and low-key performances of characters who are themselves all pretty dark and unhappy, combine to bring a finale that features some violence and blood (but not enough to qualify as gore).

From IFC Films and running a just-about-right 93 minutes, Sweet Virginia opens theatrically tomorrow in New York City at the IFC Center, (and maybe elsewhere, too), as well as simultaneously via VOD.