Cam Christiansen's animated film of David Hare's thoughtful, rigorous play, WALL

The Israel/Palestine situation, with emphasis on the 435-mile long wall that helps divide the two peoples/nations, is the subject of the beautiful, sad, moving and thought-provoking new animated film, WALL, written for the screen by David Hare and based upon his 2009 play of the same name.

As animated and directed by Cam Christiansen (shown above, right, with Mr. Hare) in black/white/gray tones to which but a trace of color is very occasionally added -- only toward the conclusion do we get a riot of gorgeous color, via the graffiti that decorates the Palestinian side of the wall -- the film's loose yet rich visuals seem to TrustMovies an excellent complement to the very-much-worth-hearing ideas and arguments presented here.

Playwright Hare, who narrates a good deal of the movie, knows better than to simply take the expected left-leaning stance toward the whole situation, in which the "solution" of the wall has proven to be every bit as much of a problem. According to the International Court of Justice, the wall is contrary to international law, yet we see an animated version of the discotheque suicide bombing that was a major precursor to the wall and can understand why it has been built.

The movie is a journey, both geographically (inside the wall and in the Palestinian-occupied area outside) and emotionally/intellectually via the thoughts and ideas of a number of people we meet (Israeli and Palestinian), during which we come to better understand the reason for and the results (some of them perhaps unintended) of the wall.

As you might expect from Hare, the "take" on all this is measured, low-key, intelligent and necessarily problematic. As one of many speakers we hear from during the course of the film, a presumably left-leaning Israeli, notes early on, "Eighty per cent of the terror attacks against Israel have stopped since the wall. Am I not meant to be pleased by this?!" Yes. But.

For the Palestinians who must earn their living, most of whom we must assume are law-abiding and peace-loving, the wall means daily injustice writ large, via the checkpoints through which they must pass, usually waiting in impossibly long lines, often deliberately kept in that state. Does it really come down to death via terror or hardship via the wall. As Hare notes, the first is irreversible; the second, while reversible, has so far not been.

From famous Israeli writer David Grossman and a Palestinian taxi driver to a Hamas torture technique used against those suspected of informing and our arrival in the huge but now-barely-there city of Nablus -- the animation for which is simply stunning -- this journey is a consistently compelling one.

The finale, by the way, is a supreme example of art triumphing over oppression -- even if only in our minds and hearts. Ctrl + Alt + Delete indeed.

Wall, a National Film Board of Canada release that runs just 81 minutes, has its theatrical premiere this coming Wednesday, April 3, in New York City at Film Forum for a one-week run. The entire run is being shown free of charge, by the way, thanks to the generosity of the Ostrovsky Family Fund. Tickets are available via the Film Forum box-office on a first-come, first-served basis on the day of show only.

Emma Thompson, superb as usual, in Richard Eyre and Ian McEwan's THE CHILDREN ACT

If you are looking for a movie full of ideas, excellent performances and situations that will move you and make you think -- without actually forcing you into some preordained box -- THE CHILDREN ACT may be exactly your cup of classy British tea.

As written by Ian McEwan (from his novel) and directed by Richard Eyre, the film probes subjects such as oddball religion beliefs, the law, justice, and most especially, what your responsibility is to someone whose life you have entered and irrevocably changed.

Mr. Eyre (Stage Beauty, Notes on a Scandal), a director of theater, opera, film and television, pictured at right, has had an up-and-down movie career, and this is one of his "ups," encompassing so much so gracefully that you may find yourself thinking about the film as much after viewing as during.

The film's main character is a noteworthy British judge named Fiona Maye, played exceptionally well by Emma Thompson (below), whose workload seem to concentrate most on cases involving children at risk. She soon finds herself embroiled in a case involving a family of Jehovah's Witnesses whose teenage son desperately needs a blood transfusion that the son and his parents all reject for religious reasons.

Simultaneously Judge Maye is going through a bad time in her sexless, emotionless long-term marriage to her University professor husband Jack (a tamped-down but still effective Stanley Tucci, below), who is about to embark upon an extra-marital affair. When the judge decides that she must meet with and question the son regarding his reasons for not agreeing to the blood transfusion, everything suddenly begins to change.

How and why this happens provides the meat of the movie, and, my, is there a wealth to chew on. All of it is held together via Ms Thompson's very strong performance -- which is spot-on moment to moment. The actress takes us through changes minute and major, allowing us to see clearly her character, flaws and all, helping us understand the reasons for each new decision that she must make.

In the pivotal role of the son, Dunkirk actor Fionn Whitehead (above) is even more remarkable here. He captures both the closed-off strength of the religious cult believer and then the strange, sad, buoyant freedom that can come via the release from that brainwashing. A word, too, must be said for the fine Jason Watkins, who plays the judge's aide, a kind, quiet fellow would clearly do anything for his boss yet is treated by her as something approaching the invisible.

What happens in the course of this thoughtful, deeply felt and surprisingly realistic film involves such sudden and life-changing events that even the possibility of these happening to our cast of characters offers more real nourishment that a year's worth of the overdone plots of mainstream soap operas. Viewers who insist on melodrama and cliché may go away unsated, but those who appreciate genuine feeling -- along with characters who struggle with right and wrong and all the stuff in between -- will come away from this film richly rewarded.

From A24 and  running 105 minutes, The Children Act seems to have opened here in South Florida one week prior to its originally scheduled playdate. It hit theaters this past Friday, September 21, at the Movies of Delray and Lake Worth, the Living Room Theaters, and the Tower Theater in Miami. Wherever you live across the country, click here to find the theaters nearest you. If you can[t find a theater close to you, note that the movie is also playing simultaneously via DIRECTV.

Fatih Akin's revenge/morality tale, IN THE FADE, gives Diane Kruger a terrific role....

...which she tackles and wrests quite sadly and quietly to the ground. Ms Kruger is one of those actresses -- Farewell My Queen, The Bridge (American version), Disorder -- whose delicate beauty can easily mask her talent, or at least sometimes overwhelm the viewer's ability to concentrate on the latter. In her latest (Cannes-winning Best Actress) role of Katja, the wife and mother, who, near the beginning of IN THE FADE, suffers an unimaginable loss, that beauty is tamped down some, while the talent remains strong.

The co-writer (with Hark Bohm) and director of the film is Fatih Akin (shown below), the well-known and well-regarded German filmmaker born (in 1973) of Turkish parents, whose previous films, as well as this one, tend to deal with "outsiders," along with society's reaction to them.

Whether these films are drama (Head-On), comedy (Soul Kitchen) or tinged with mystery/thriller elements (The Edge of Heaven and this latest addition), the movies always seem to bulge out of their genre: the comedy grows dark, the drama gets crazy, and now, with In the Fade, what at first looks like a thriller complete with aspects of terrorism and revenge, grows into something more. As usual, it's the "more" that makes Herr Akin such an interesting but also somewhat elusive and less conventionally satisfying filmmaker. I am not certain that he will ever manage a typically mainstream movie (nor, I suspect, would he want to), but this is why TrustMovies will never miss a film of his if I can help it.

As usual, the less you know about the movie, plot-wise, the better in terms of your enjoyment and surprise. Ms Kruger (above, left, and below, right) plays a character who fell in love with her drug dealer (Numan Acar, above, right) when still a very young woman, waited for him to finish his relatively small prison term, married him, conceived a child (below) and is in the process of the (relatively) happy-ever-after section of life -- when all this is suddenly interrupted.

The event leads to a police investigation, during which Katja's history comes back to haunt, a trial (below and further below) involving home-grown terrorists (some of the details of which will set your teeth on edge), and then a judgement that results in vengeance, along with quite a bit more.

Mr. Akin is concerned with themes of immigration (of which he himself is a product), and a Germany in which neo-Nazis, who have been alive and consistently kicking since just post-World War II, are gaining strength and seem even stronger in today's world, where alternative "facts" via the internet seem ever more available and aggressive.

Akin's movie moves from the simpler questions of why and then how to the more complicated ones of now what? and is this justice? and then to the queasy convolutions that right and wrong can sometimes take. Along the way, there is plenty of suspense and even a few thrills, and if the filmmaker were merely making a revenge tale, we would probably have had a much more conventional and obviously enjoyable, if simplistic time.

Instead, we're put into the mind and soul of Katja, her grief and her anger, and Ms Kruger sees to it that we respond to this darkness, finally asking ourselves, Might be do something similar -- if we had the guts and commitment? The journey, let alone the destination, is not an easy one, but it is certainly worthwhile. Just don't expect the simple-mindedness of a Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood movie. In the Fade may be neither blockbuster entertainment nor great art, but it is good film-making -- with a mind, heart and morality all its own.

From Magnolia Pictures and running 106 minutes, the movie opens this Wednesday, December 27, in New York City (at the IFC Center and the new Landmark 57th Street) and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Royal) before making its way around the rest of the country in limited release over the weeks to come. It hits South Florida on January 26 at Fort Lauderdale's Savor Cinema, Hollywood's Cinema Paradiso, and Miami's Tower Theater. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters. 

The stories of Israel & Palestine converge in Dorman & Rudavsky's exceptional doc, COLLIDING DREAMS

One of the most memorable documentaries TrustMovies has seen during this new century was Joseph Dorman's wonderful Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness from 2011, so of course his interest was immediately piqued upon learning Dorman had a new doc arriving soon. It opens this week, in fact, and if it is not the triumphal, spirited blend of history, joy, sorrow and surprise that marked the earlier film, considering the subject matter of Dorman's new work, which he co-directed with Oren Rudavsky, this should come as no surprise.

COLLIDING DREAMS tackles nothing less than one of, if not the thorniest situations in the world today: the state of the State of Israel and the (as yet) non-State of Palestine. Dorman (shown at left) and Rudavsky (below, right) very wisely approach their subject via history rather than mere opinion or some godawful, religious-nut idea that "the Bible says we belong here," and this, more than anything else, I think, is the reason for their surprising success. The filmmakers do not ignore religion, nor its place in Jewish history, but neither do they give it undue credulity. Instead they weave their generally well-

chosen history with interviews (43 of them!) with both Arabs and Jews, including artists, educators, policy-makers and a number of men-(or women)-on-the-street. What this approach accomplishes best is to allow the audience the take in a large number of important ideas along the way, mull them over, and judge for themselves how they fit into Israel and Palestine's history then and now. (This is a film you may very well want and need to see more than once.) Colliding Dreams also places Zionism -- and what it has meant along the way from its creation until today -- front and center, allowing us to learn more about the various incarnations the idea has incorporated.

The play of history, Zionism, culture, religion, land and ownership is expressed better in this film that I have elsewhere seen, and if this sounds like I am calling the movie "fair and balanced," then so be it. Yet it is more than that. Whatever our "feelings" regarding Israel and Palestine, Colliding Dreams forces us to confront ideas that run counter to our own and then deal with them.

I hope that some audiences, at least, will be willing to do this. When one interviewee, a Palestinian, notes that Zionism did indeed unite the Jews, he adds that Zionism also must be judged by its effect on the local community.

Another speaker notes, later in the doc, how most "conquered" people behave after their conquest, and how this has not held true for the Palestinians. We learn of The Balfour Decclaration, the "peaceful violence" that led to more organized Arab resistance to the Jews, Jabotinsky and early nationalism, the rise of Hitler and the consequential increase in the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine.

By the time we get to the Six-Day War (quite a different look at this subject than we got from the recent Censored Voices), we're tightly wrapped in the usual straight-jacket dilemma: The Jews have got to have a place they can call home. But what if that home already belonged to someone else?

What Dorman and Rudavsky want most, I suspect, is for us to be able to look at things from both sides. So often here people speak of their dreams as meaning their dearest wishes. When, at the end of the film, one of the speakers -- a man who has fought and killed Arabs over the course of his life -- introduces us to his Palestinian son-n-law, he explains that it is the passage of time that is most responsible for this turn of events.

That's why history turns out to be the best guide. Look at America and its black population. Look at the growing legitimacy of the GLBT community throughout much of the western world. Look at Catholic and Protestant Ireland a half century ago and today. Time is the great healer. But will most of us -- not to mention the world itself, what with climate change upon us -- be alive to witness the evolution of Israel and Palestine? Whatever: Dorman and Rudavsky's documentary is a fine and necessary step in this process.

Colliding Dreams -- from International Film Circuit and running a lengthy but invaluable two hours and fifteen minutes -- opens this Friday, March 4, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle's Royal and Town Center and at the Edwards' Westpark 8 in Irvine. The following Friday, March 11, it opens here in South Florida at the AMC Aventura; the Living Room Theaters, and Regal Shadowood in Boca Raton; the Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth;  To view all currently scheduled playdates and theatres/cities, simply click here.

A streaming must-see: Charles Sturridge's adaptation of duMaurier's THE SCAPEGOAT

British filmmaker Charles Sturridge (shown below in younger days) has had an interesting career, though not one to which most Americans will have given much thought. Best known, I should think, for the Brideshead Revisited TV mini-series from 1981, he has also made three movies very much worth seeing: A Handful of Dust (from 1988), Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991) and Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997). His successes have been in the classic, what we might call Masterpiece Theater mode, yet his choice of projects (or perhaps what have landed in his lap) tend to be quirky and not as easy to pigeon-hole as some critics or audiences might like. A Handful of Dust, based on the Evelyn Waugh novel, was for its time almost like a deliberate smack in the face of folk who love "classy" Brit TV and film; Where Angels Fear to Tread, in which a lovely, sexual Helen Mirren comes (and goes) with shocking brevity, also rocked (a bit gently, based as it was on an E.M. Forster novel) family, tradition, class and the meaning of decency; while A Fairy Tale, in its strange and delightful way, combined the likes of Harry Houdini with Arthur Conan Doyle, Peter Pan, photography and, yes, fairies.

Now comes what may be one of Sturridge's best films -- THE SCAPEGOAT -- which he has adapted from one of the lesser-known novels of Daphne du Maurier, and from which another movie was adapted back in 1959, which starred Alec Guinness and Bette Davis. (TrustMovies saw that film when he was in his late teens but barely remembers it now. Next time it plays TCM, he'll have to grab it.) In the novel a Britisher visiting France runs into his doppelganger/
double, and soon finds himself impersonating this Frenchman and infiltrating the man's family and business. Sturridge has -- more interestingly and a little more believably, too -- set the scene in England, in the early 1950s at the time of the coronation of Elizabeth II.

The look-alikes here are played by Matthew Rhys (above), about whom differences of class and character are all. John Standing, at right, is a decent, if rather untested, school teacher, while Johnny Spence (at left) is a aristocratic cad, someone the Brits might call a "bounder." As the men meet almost at the film's beginning, we know but little about Standing (he has just been let go from his teaching job at a prestigious boy's school, below) but almost nothing about Spence.

What happens after this initial meeting, and from there onward in this fast-moving and often riveting combination thriller/family drama, is full of both the expected and the not-so. What is most surprising about this genuinely stirring movie is how it manages to subvert expectation to become a kind of lovely, moving thriller -- one that's charming and imaginative as it tosses us into someone else's world. Thrills, you see, can come in all kinds of packages, and Sturridge has once again chosen a work that offers him the opportunity to pull, but gently, the rug out from under the expectations of his audience.

The family into which Standing becomes a part is inhabited by some pretty caddish and unhappy sorts, including Johnny's mother, Lady Spence (Eileen Atkins, at right) who never seems to be able to rise from her bed...

...as well as a sister (the wonderful, as always, Jodhi May); a callow brother, played by Andrew Scott (at left, three photos below); a lovely, pliant wife (Alice Orr-Ewing), an ador-able, spirited daughter (Eloise Webb, at bottom, left), and a sexy conniving sister-in-law (Sheridan Smith, below, and lately of Hysteria) with whom Johnny has clearly been having an affair.

Around the periphery scurry other characters: the family's maid (a fine performane from Phoebe Nichols), its clergyman (Anton Lesser, below right), the take-charge chauffeur (Pip Torrens) and a young Frenchwoman (the great Sylvie Testud) who relocated to London during the war, it seems.

How John manages to take Johnny's place in the family members' minds and finally in their hearts provides the meat of the movie, and what a tasty, nourishing feast it does become. Ms du Maurier seldom wrote uninteresting plots, which is one reason so many of her evergreen works have been adapted into films -- Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel to Don't Look Now and The Birds, among many others.

This one proves so due to its doppelganger premise, which is always a good hook, even more so for what Sturridge does with it. His specific time period -- as Queen Elizabeth is about to be crowned and television is making its way into England -- proves just about perfect for the tale he tells. The movie begins with the arrival of this aristocratic family's first television and ends with the family watching the coronation on their new and oh-so-tiny set. Ms Nichols' final speech, about this event and how it applies to what's going on in the family, is a humdinger -- making beautifully clear the reason for the particular place, period, and doppelganger theme.

Midway to two-thirds' through the film, what must happen in these movies about "doubles" does occur. How the filmmaker handles this -- in an almost perfunctory fashion: it's the most typically thrilling but also least commanding part of the film -- indicates where his interest really lies: in character rather than event.

Who of all these characters figures out which man is which proves a large part of the exquisite fun here, while giving two of the performers in this crack ensemble cast the chance to really shine. The Scapegoat, first shown, I believe, on British television, is now available via Netflix streaming (you can add it to your NF queue, as well, then wait until the time, if and when, it becomes available here on DVD). This is such a wonderful, old-fashioned tale done so well that it qualifies as don't-miss entertainment.

James Ivory's CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION finally opens. Rejoice!

How good it is to have James Ivory (shown below) making movies again. Actually, he made this one nearly three years ago, but it has taken that long to garner theatrical release. (Thank you, Screen Media.)  His latest -- THE CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION -- though missing the producing abilities of his late filmmaking partner Ismail Merchant, is up there with the best of his excellent work.  It's much smaller in scale than some of his films, and quieter, too.  Ivory's movies have always been wiser -- subtler, as well -- than those of many other filmmakers, but here there is even more of a sense that this filmmaker and his constant screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, as they approach their own final destination, are growing more thoughtful, their ability stronger than ever to see both within & without, the individual & the world.

In this delectable tale, based on a novel by Peter Cameron, a young and handsome university teacher named Omar -- played by Omar Metwally, shown below (who also essayed the tortured husband in the under-appreciated Rendition) -- in order to ensure his continuing career, has received a grant to write an authorized biography of a famous, now-dead novelist.  Though the novelist's estate/family refuses to give its authorization, Omar's girlfriend Deidre (Alexan-
dra Maria Lara, shown two photos below) detects in the family's mis-
sive a possible change-of-heart, and so off to Uruguay on a surprise visit goes our young man.

The estate -- an enormous, gorgeous parcel of verdant land (the film was shot on the Argen-
tine pampas) -- turns out to be run by the novelist's widow (Laura Linney), his brother (Anthony Hopkins), the bro-
ther's lover (Hiroyuki Sanada) and the novelist's mistress (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her young daughter.  The group, welcom-
ing but mysterious, are brought to splendid life by these well-cast actors. 

Allegiances shift, though Omar -- a hesitant young man, at best -- never pushes things, and we slowly learn who these people are and what they want.  Compressing the novel has no doubt resulted in teles-
coping events and characters, and while this lends a certain "expectedness" to the plot (which is actually rather thin), so fine is the performance of each actor in his or her role that every second counts. Time -- and the movie -- never seem to drag.

What wonderful faces -- and the talent to back them up -- these actors possess!  Linney (above) is gracious but commanding, with Gainsbrough (below) vulnerable and needy.  Hopkins (two photos down) is stoic and smart, while Sanada (at right on horseback far below, the star of The Twilight Samurai, and the torn spy in Ivory's White Countess) remains warm and protective.  On the sidelines, as the town's wealthy gossip, is Argentina's Norma Aleandro (shown at bottom), herself no piker in the face/talent department.

I have never found Mr. Ivory any great stylist but yet look forward to each of his films for its beauty of place and time and for his usually very well-chosen casts.  Here, his fine Spanish cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe (Talk to Her, The Sea Inside, Goya Ghosts -- and, my goodness, the last two films in the Twilight Saga) does some splendid work with color, light and dark.  Note the scene between Linney and Lara in the Uruguay home: It's rich, deep and beautiful.

There is a nifty little discussion toward the conclusion of the movie about whether life or literature is more important, especially as concerns the writing of the biography at hand.  "Life," insists one character, because "literature can take care of itself."  I would suggest that, here, life wins -- and out of it art is born.

At the finale of the film, one character remarks of another that she appears to have become a nicer person since they last met.  Indeed.  Ivory's movie has no villains, only characters who are unhappy, perhaps because they have not found their right "place." They finally find it in this lovely film, though it is not the place they might have imagined. The filmmaker's ending offers some wonderfully odd details of dialog and image that refuse to spell everything out but instead set you to thinking and connecting.  I hope that Mr. Ivory, approaching his 82nd birthday, will yet offer us more movies.  If not, The City of Your Final Destination, for me, makes an intelligent and graceful conclusion to a splendid career.

The City of Your Final Destination, from Screen Media Films opens in New York City on Friday, April 16 at the our great old art theater, The Paris. The following Friday, it opens in Los Angeles at various Laemmle theaters and then begins its slow national roll-out to other cities. Click here for specifics.