Filippo Timi and Sebastiano Mauri's FAIRYTALE hits digital and DVD here in the USA

If you tend to be a sucker for very strange cinema (as am I), you probably won't find an odder example than FAIRYTALE (Favola), the Italian movie from 2017 based on the popular stage play by actor and sometimes writer Filippo Timi, one of my favorite performers, whom we get to see far too seldom here in the USA. TrustMovies interviewed Signore Timi back in 2010, when he played the role of Mussolini in Marco Bellocchio's Vincere. Versatile in the extreme, he sometimes proves nearly unrecognizable from movie to movie.

In the case of Fairytale, Timi (above, left) has co-written the screenplay (with the film's director, Sebastiano Mauri, above, right) as well as essaying the leading role of Mrs. Fairytale, an American housewife in the 1950s who is, pretty much unbeknownst (initially, even to herself), going through a process of heavy-duty self-discovery. On one level, this involves everything from mere temptation to adultery and murder, on yet another, it embraces cross-dressing, transgender, homosexuality, heterosexuality, pansexuality, depression and (societal-induced) mental illness.

As the film opens, our heroine (above) is flitting around her very 1950s home (as envisioned by Italians of the 21st Century), and all by themselves, the costumes, set and production design are reason enough to sit through this gloriously cockeyed movie. So is the tiny taxidermy-mounted poodle, Lady, who begins this bizarre concoction (in animated form) and then stays with us throughout, as some weird kind of security blanket for our thoroughly addled homemaker.

In addition to the eye-popping decor, we also get a dose of just about all your could ask from a film about America in the 50s: Doris Day, UFOs, straying husbands, unfaithful wives, the mambo and Douglas Sirk/Ross Hunter-inspired melodrama. As an encyclopedia of movie knowledge and references, we get quite a lot from Fairytale, too, including Mildred Pierce (below) and All About Eve (further below).

Timi is pretty much the whole show and he is, as always, exraordinary, but very good support is provided by Lucia Mascino (above and at bottom) as the next-door neighbor and friend who becomes quite a bit more over time,

and by Luca Santagostino (below, playing triplet brothers in this neighborhood with flair and versatility). And although daddy issues don't seem to raise their head in the course of the film,

mommy issues certainly do, via the funny, incisive performance of Piera Degli Esposti (below), in the role of Fairytale's rather commanding mother. As lunatic as the movie is, start to finish, it's also clearly trying to persuade audiences to think longer, harder and more pointedly about gender, the roles we assign to this, and the somewhat "iffy" results we continue to get.

While the USA, France and other western countries have all made their own mark on the subject, Fairytale seems to me the very peculiar Italian version of it all.

The fact the Signore Timi, whom I have found to be -- both on screen and in person -- among the "straightest," most "male" and powerful of actors and personalities has been, according to the IMDB, married to the film's director, Signore Mauri, for the past four years would seem to indicate that he has found his own gender-bending way to deal with all this. More power to him!

From Breaking Glass Pictures and running just 90 minutes, Fairytale makes its DVD and VOD debut this coming Tuesday, May 12 -- for purchase and/or rental. It's over-the-top and then some, but if you're looking for an escape from the world of our current and ever-present Covid-19 menace, this movie may very well get you the hell out of here. (It's even got an American flag for the "patriots" among us.)

Israel and Palestine in a whole new light (and genre): Sameh Zoabi's TEL AVIV ON FIRE

What a low-key delight is the new genre-melding movie, TEL AVIV ON FIRE. Taking on the Israel-Palestine conflict -- which we've now seen in just about every manner one would imagine possible, from documentaries such as the questing/philosophic (David Hare's Wall), historical (Colliding Dreams) and the bring-us-together sort (In the Land of Pomegranates) to narrative thrillers (The Little Drummer Girl, either version), family sagas (The Other Son), love stories (Omar) and sex-tryst films (the recent Reports on Sarah and Saleem) -- it provides quite the new perspective.

The genre we have not seen much of regarding this particular subject is comedy. To which you might immediately respond, "And for good reason, dummy!" Until you've viewed the movie under consideration here, that is.

As written and directed by Sameh Zoabi (shown at right), Tel Aviv on Fire might best be described as shambling -- which is not simply deliberate but a huge part of its charm. The film starts slowly and moves even more so. Yet that quiet, unhurried pace builds continually into something near amazing: funny, feisty, satiric, ironic and quite delightful. At film's end TrustMovies was in a state of sheer joy at its underhanded accomplishment of casting the kind of light on this more than 70-year conflict that both upends it and forces you to view it differently.

Even the film's seemingly incendiary title (which doubles as the name of a Palestinian soap opera that is also quite popular with the women of Israel) is part of the fun here. Our hero, a shamblin' man named Salam (Kais Nashif, above), who works as a low-end go-fer at that soap opera which his uncle produces, in order to get back into the affections of his old girl-friend, as well as gain faster thoroughfare at the Palestinian checkpoint, tell a fairly minor fib -- he claims to be a writer on the soap -- which results in his liaison with a Israeli military officer (Yaniv Biton, below) that actually does lead him into that writer's position.

What happens after gets sillier, funnier and much more productive in terms of irony and even depth of perspective, as everyone from the cast, director, original writer, Salam's ex-girlfriend (the lovely Maisa Abd Elhadi, below, left), the lead actress in the soap (a very funny Lubna Azabal), and that military officer's wife all become involved in the goings-on.

One of the small but piquant joys of the film is how this Palestinian soap opera seems different in scale yet all too redolent of soaps around the world. Ditto how love stories resort to such similar schemes to work themselves out. And, yes, how the male ego -- whether Israeli, Palestinian, or any other culture/nation -- proves every bit as tender and typical as you might expect.

The movie may be low-key, but it's an absolute triumph in just about every way -- never more so than when it addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without violence yet head-on, dead-on and with such unalloyed precision and delight.

From the Cohen Media Group, running 97 minutes, in Arabic and Hebrew (with English subtitles for both), Tel Aviv on Fire, after opening on the coasts earlier this month, hits South Florida this Friday, August 23. In Miami, look for it at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, in Hollywood at the  Cinema Paradiso, in Fort Lauderdale at the Savor Cinema, in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters; and at the Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth. Wherever you live around the USA, to see if the film is playing anywhere near you, click here.

An Irish filmmaker explores Russian life: Johnny O'Reilly's entertaining soap opera, MOSCOW NEVER SLEEPS

Basically a soap-operatic set of interlinked stories telescoped to fit into a one-hundred-minute format, MOSCOW NEVER SLEEPS begins like yet another of those Russian movies about life in Russia that sets out to show us all too believably (see Leviathan or The Fool) how ugly, heartbreaking, corrupt and nasty it is for all the characters -- no matter what their station in life. But then, as the movie wends its very lively way along, something odd happens, and you slowly begin to see things in a slightly more positive light.

This most likely is because the movie was made by an Irishman, Johnny O'Reilly, pictured at left, who is said to have lived in Moscow for the past dozen years, and is clearly rather smitten with the place -- as awful in so many ways is it probably is (whether you're Russian or Irish). As writer and director Mr. O'Reilly has given us quite the set of characters, each one brought to fine life by the excellent set of actors he and his casting directors and Elina Ternyaeva & Yulia Milovidova have corralled.

These folk, who include the likes of a very ill but very popular Russian television star (Yuri Stoyanov, above) and a pair of not-very-happy nor friendly step-sisters (Anastasiya Shalonko and Lyubov Aksyonova, below, left and right), out for a night on the town that turns into something a tad more appalling...

a not-so-nice business mogul (Leviathan's Aleksey Serebryakov, below), who's in the midst of being screwed by the state and maybe also by his would-be singer/girlfriend,

who is suddenly torn between her richer, more powerful current beau and her poor-but-hunky ex, who is now in hot pursuit. These latter two are played by Eugenia Khirivskaya (below, right, and at bottom, left) and Oleg Dolin, (below, left and bottom, right) who, if you like your men big, beefy and beautiful, is one hell of a knockout here.

There are a number of other key players, including a granny, her son, grandson, and the son's put-upon wife, and each set of characters and their circumstances are handled with precision, brevity and smarts, so that we come to care as much for these people as the film's short running time can possibly allow.

Another plus are the many gorgeous shots of Moscow, by day and night, that make the city seem, for all its cavalier cruelty, something special and beautiful. (You can certainly understand why those three sisters longed for the place.) So lively and fast-paced is Mr. O'Reilly's keen direction that we have little time to do more than hang on for the alternately funny, moving and wild ride -- by the end of which Russian life seems to have at least partially redeemed itself. Well, almost.

Distributed via Snapshot Productions, the Russian-language film (with English subtitles) hits theaters nationwide, beginning June 9th, 2017 in New York City at the Village East Cinema, June 16th in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Ahrya Fine Arts  and Town Center 5, and June 30th in Washington, D.C. at the Landmark E Street Cinema. The film will then expand into additional cities throughout the summer.

Don Roos does a sweet and sour, main-stream soaper with THE OTHER WOMAN

Really? Don Roos? The guy who gave us The Opposite of Sex and Happy Endings? That's right. But did you realize that Mr. Roos received co-screenwriting credit on Marley & Me? Remember, too, that this fellow also furnished us with Bounce. His career can certainly be seen as a moving between the independent and mainstream scenes. It's into the latter area -- though with a relatively small budget, I suspect -- that his new film THE OTHER WOMAN lands. And not with a thud. This is a classy, entertaining, intelligent and very well-acted soap opera that centers on that title character and is told mostly from her point of view. Fortunately, with warts and all.

The filmmaker (shown at right) directed and adapted his movie from the novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman, and he is blessed to have the collaboration of Natalie Portman in the title role. Still looking only a few years older than her debut in The Professional, Ms Portman uses her sly combination of charm and reticence -- and, oh my, yes, beauty -- to ingratiate herself to the other characters, as much as to us viewers before allowing us to see all the areas in which her character has not quite grown up and yet has taken on a load -- assumed home-wrecker, second wife, stepmother -- for which she's simply not ready. Yet.

Ms. Portman (shown at left) glows, radiates and luminesces, giving a much better performance here than in that let's-see-how-many-basket-cases-we-can-cram-into-a-single-silly-movie Black Swine, er, Swan.  Though without the ballet, biting, blood and faux lesbian sex, it's unlikely that The Other Woman will turn into quite such a box-office bonanza. Portman's Emilia is both a rich character and a complete one, and the movie that surrounds her asks its viewers to open up to things -- helpful or not -- just as its heroine must do.

Roos hasn't lost his appreciation for smart dialog, even in a relatively mainstream soap. Of a private school, we are told: "Experiencing rich people of all colors is not diversity," and the give-and-take between Emilia and her stepson William (a terrific job by Charlie Tahan, shown at near right) is lots of fun without ever losing its believability. Content-wise, The Other Woman at times seems like an updated version of those 30s melodramas with heroines you can root for who nonetheless need to learn their lessons. Stylisticaly, the filmmaker handles flashbacks with an appropriate flash, while obtaining quick, finely-drawn performances from his entire supporting cast.

As the guy who leaves his wife for the pretty face who targets him from day one, Scott Cohen (above, right) is exemplary: an older, serious counterpoint to Portman's goofy grace, energy and occasional self-pity. By the end, it's Cohen who has given the movie much of the weight it has accrued.

As Emilia's workplace friends who give generally good advice (which she often doesn't take), Anthony Rapp (above left) and Lauren Ambrose (above, right) bring humor, smarts and individuality to fairly stock characters.

As the wronged wife, who may very well have deserved it, Lisa Kudrow (left) adds another smart performance to her gallery of indelible supporting turns. This actress is always so good, it's little wonder she's used again and again with each new year.  Out on DVD/Blu-Ray now are two of her good movies from last year: Paper Man (in which she's used in a middling manner) and Easy A (in which she's been given a terrific supporting role). Here, she's icy and then angry, and the scene in which she's allowed to have a moment of actual feeling for the woman who's wronged her is a fine one indeed. Kudrow excels at nasty, but she's even better when she's allowed to combine this with the other layers that make up our individuality.

Also in the cast are Debra Monk and Michael Christopher (who is as good here as I think I've ever seen him), playing the Portman character's parents. There's a lot of talent both on-view and behind the camera, plus the occasional lovely visual (as below: the DP is Steve Yedlin ). In short: you'll find plenty to make The Other Woman worth watching.

From IFC Films, the movie begins its run this Friday, February 4, in New York City at the IFC Center and in Beverly Hills at Laemmle's Music Hall 3. In something of a switch, the film has been playing On-Demand since the beginning of January and will end its VOD run tomorrow, February 3, in preparation for its theatrical release.