Halle Berry fuels Luis Prieto's alternately pulse-pounding and stupid thriller, KIDNAP

Come on, admit it: Sometimes a really good bad movie can be a lot of fun. The most current example is KIDNAP, a film in which Halle Berry plays a beleaguered mother for whom it is not enough that her ex is trying to take all custody away from her. When she turns her back for a couple of minutes, her son is summarily kidnapped (and not, unfortunately, by his dad).

That the audience at the screening TrustMovies attended-- made up mostly of the general public, with a few of us critics scattered throughout  -- was alternately gasping and laughing aloud (the film is not a comedy) should give you some idea of the bizarre nonsense embedded here. This is 94 minutes of ridiculous but often exciting fun.

The director here is Luis Prieto (shown at right), and the screenwriter is Knate Lee (of the Jackass movies and Bad Grandpa, so provenance does count for something). Prieto does a bang-up job with the action, of which there is plenty, but within that action comes most of the stupidity, as well. I'll just make reference to a single scene, in which our heroine, who looks to weigh in at about 85 pounds, over-powers a huge woman who must weigh maybe 250 or more, while being choked to death in the front seat of her car, from which she manages to eject the huge woman who is, yes, behind her in the back seat. (Berry's character manages a similarly bizarre feat, much later in the film, while underwater.)

If you can believe shit like this, you'll swallow, I guess, just about anything -- including the scene in which Ms Berry puts her car in reverse, backs up onto a major highway with the traffic coming toward her at least 60 miles per hour... and does not get hit.

What? You thought you'd stumbled into a sneak preview of the Wonder Woman sequel. 'Fraid not. Still, gasping and then laughing together in a packed theater is not the worst experience in the world. So, if you've an appetite for this kind of thing, by all means indulge it.

Ms Berry looks stunning, as per usual, and the villains are as naughty and nasty as you could wish, while the young actor who plays Berry's son is properly adorable.

While one might question the intentions of an entertainment based around the kidnapping and possible death (and who knows what else prior to that) of a vulnerable child, we're now in the world of Trumpland, after all. So grit your teeth and bear up. (This film, I am told by a fellow critic, is actually three years old, having been stuck in bankruptcy limbo, because of the demise of its former distributor).

Opening nationwide today, Friday, August 4, Kidnap (now being given to us via Aviron Pictures) can be seen all across the country. Click here to find the theater(s) nearest you.

A parenting/parentage problem brought to life in Anna Muylaert's smart DON'T CALL ME SON

The last time we heard from Anna Muylaert was just last year with her Oscar-submitted for Best Foreign Language Film, The Second Mother, a wonderfully complicated movie in which ironies abound and everything from class and economics to pride and parenting are involved. Ms Muylaert's latest endeavor, DON'T CALL ME SON (Mãe Só Há Uma), is a lot less complicated, while sporting a half-hour shorter running time, too. This does not mean that the movie is any less rich or deep, however. In fact, in just 77 minutes (plus credits), this writer/ director (shown below) manages to believably probe a very fraught situation.

What happens here is that an adolescent son and his slightly younger sister are yanked away from their mother who, it turns out, stole them when they were both babies. Via DNA matches, both kids are reunited with their birth families (or, in the case of the daughter, what's left of that family), whom they neither know nor care to know, while the only mother they have known is tossed into jail.

A situation like this one is unfair to everyone involved but must somehow be handled as best as it can, and in Ms Muylaert's hands it becomes an opportunity to make us think and feel and even smile -- if not outright laugh at times -- without ever getting near anything "fake." (The line, "He looks like my dad," has seldom seemed so moving.) This would be accomplishment enough, but the filmmaker also tosses a few more bombshells into her mix.

The young man (played by newcomer Naomie Nero, at right, above, and center, below) -- originally named Felipe but known as Pierre for most of his life -- is one of those raging hormone adolescents who plays in a rock band, is an androgynous cross-dresser, and has sex with both boys and girls. The family he comes into is of a completely different economic and cultural class than he is used to. And the two mothers -- birth and thieving -- are played by the same actress. TrustMovies would never have realized this, had he not referred to the press information, post-viewing. In any case, that actress -- Daniela Nefussi (at left, above and below) -- is superb: hugely different and completely believable in both roles.

Via adeptly chosen scenes, we view and understand the feelings of everybody toward the situation at hand and how it evolves: the birth mom and dad; that family's younger brother who, of course, views this new addition as the supreme interloper onto his former secure territory; even the social workers involved in the case. The movie also brings up questions that are not so easily answered regarding identity and one's place in the family and the world. This is difficult enough for those of us living what we might call "normal" lives. Seen here, it seems initially maybe insurmountable.

Then the filmmaker gives us just one moment of sweet rapprochement that is simple, smart and rings absolutely true. Ms Muylaert, as they say, has done it again. Don't Call Me Son -- from Zeitgeist Films, in Portuguese with English subtitles and running 82 minutes -- opens today, Wednesday, November 2, in its U.S. theatrical premier at New York City's Film Forum. It opens in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal next Friday, November 11, and will hit at least another ten cities over the weeks to come. (In South Florida it opens at Miami's Tower Theater on November 18.) Click here then scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.