Pedro Almodóvar's PAIN AND GLORY is, yes, painful and glorious (and funny and moving, and subtle and smart)

Anyone who has followed the more-than-40-year career of Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar can hardly help but have noticed the tonal change in his films from the crazy, highly sexual and often darkly comedic to the more serious -- if still sometimes dark and sexual -- explorations into family and Freud (granted, his very own version of the good doctor).

Almodóvar's later films may have been successful to varying degrees, just as were his earlier movies -- though to listen to some critics/fans, those early comedies were all fabulous and wonderful; instead, they too were a mixed bag -- yet one of the distinct pleasures of contemplating this man's fecund career (he is shown at right) comes in seeing, little by little, the enormous depth and growth involved.

TrustMovies is certainly not alone in finding his latest film, PAIN AND GLORY, the pinnacle and culmina-tion (but not the finale, I hope) of his career.

In it, Antonio Banderas (above and below) -- who has appeared in numerous Almodóvar films over the years and whose career took off via this filmmaker -- plays an aging filmmaker very much like Almodóvar, whose life story we see unfurl here via flashback and present-day excursions into his current life of enormous physical pain (everything from excruciating back pain to migraines),

drug addiction, the rekindling of both a friendship and a hugely important love relationship, and a possible career rehabilitation via the rediscovery of one of his successful older films.

If this sounds like a lot to cover in a mere two hours, let it be known that the filmmaker does it all with breathtaking skill, surprising subtlety and intelligence, the expected (but still gorgeous) visuals exquisitely combining composition and color, and drawing spot-on performances from a well-chosen cast that includes Penélope Cruz (above, playing his mother in her younger days) and Julieta Serrano (below, right, as older mom).

The two performance highlights, however, come from that fine Argentine actor Leonardo Sbaraglia (below, right), playing the ex-lover with such passion, wit and alertness that this pretty much constitutes a career-best role -- in a career that already has some really spectacular ones (Wild Horses, Intacto, Contestant and King of the Mountain),

and from Asier Etxeandia (below), as the ex-friend and actor who starred in the filmmaker's most famous work, now estranged but gleefully ready to reconnect via drugs and maybe a new acting role. Etxeandia is exciting to watch in action, and his role is one of the film's best written and realized, as well as its most complicated creation.

Almodóvar does not attempt to make his "hero'" all that heroic. He's a user -- not just of drugs but of people. Watch sadly at how he treats his devoted personal secretary (Nora Navas, below, right). But, oh, god, he is so human. And his creativity, from what we can gather, is worth saving and encouraging.

As the filmmaker's delightfully intelligent younger self, Asier Flores (shown at bottom) proves a real find. This youngster gets one of the film's perfect scenes, in which incipient sexuality overtakes our hero in one marvelous, sudden rush. No explanation necessary, and Almodóvar doesn't belabor the point. (Shown below is the amazingly sensuous César Vicente, who plays the key element in that pivotal scene.)

Another bit of perfection occurs at film's end, when the writer/director simply moves his camera just a tad, in the process quietly letting us know that, "Hey, it's only a movie, right?" Sure. But what a movie!

From Sony Pictures Classics (and I would guess a front-runner for Best Foreign Language Film nomination), in Spanish with English subtitles, and lasting 113 minutes, Pain and Glory, after opening in key cities, hits South Florida this Friday, October 18, all over the Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach areas. To find the theater(s) nearest you, simply click here, then click on GET TICKETS, scroll down to the October 18 dates and find your local theater(s). Or just fill in your zip code in the blank space and make things even easier.

A murder mystery from Hirokazu Kore-eda? Yes, as THE THIRD MURDER opens in theaters

Really? A murder mystery from Hirokazi Kore-eda, the fellow who has made all those wonderful Japanese films about family and relationships and philosophy and responsibility? Yes.

And THE THIRD MURDER is indeed about family and relationships and philosophy and responsibility. And also, especially, about justice, motive and character --  that last in every sense that you can imagine for this hugely encompassing word.

Mr. Hirokazu, pictured at right, whose classic Maborosi (the new Blu-ray release of which TrustMovies covered only last week) rather set the Japanese standard for films concerning all of the above themes, has now taken those themes and applied them to the murder mystery genre.

The results will most likely please his current fans a good deal more than they may satisfy those who expect anything remotely like a conventional murder mystery.

The Third Murder begins in a dark and deserted field at night in which a rather grizzly murder (followed by a cremation) takes place. Thanks to Hirokazu's skill and subtlety, sound effects jar us more than the visuals.

It seems clear from the beginning exactly who the murderer is. But who he is in terms of his character and why he has done the deed remain murky yet continually compelling. And Kôji Yakusho, above, who plays this very unusual role is equally compelling.

We learn something of the Japanese justice system, meet friends and family of the victim, as well as of that of murderer's defense attorney (Masaharu Fukuyama, above) -- who initially does not want this case but slowly grows closer and closer to the man he is defending.

What is learned about the victim will hardly ingratiate the guy to viewers, and once we've met his sleazy wife and hugely troubled daughter, this third murder begins to become as understandable as the first two, which we learn of in the course of the investigation.

Still, this is murder, and so justice must be served. But how? The defense attorney's father (above, who is himself a judge) offers one solution, but his son keeps soldiering on, hoping for a way to get his client a life sentence (or less) rather than death.

Religious motifs -- yes, that cross (seen above and below) -- figure in prominently,

as do dead birds, a thank-you note and peanut butter. Motives are mulled over and seem initially promising but then unclear, while truth, as ever, is utterly elusive.

Toward the finale, there is a scene of such supreme visual power, depth and even a weird kind of suspense as our two heroes come as close as possible to "joining."

Now, I have seen this kind of visual done previously on a number of occasions, but never as well as here. The sense of separate entities trying their best to understand each other and become one has rarely been brought to such vibrant, emotional and philosophic life.

If you are in the market for any cut-and-dried procedural or even a mystery with some sort of surprise finale, better look elsewhere. But if the ever-amazing and endlessly engaging ideas of family as both salvation and hell, justice as an elusive goal worth pursuing, and character as something that evolves rather than springs fully formed from DNA, then The Third Murder might just be your cup of chrysanthemum tea.

From Film Movement and running 124 minutes, the movie opens in New York City this Friday, July 20, at the Quad Cinema and on August 3 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal, with other cities to follow in the weeks and months to come.

Architecture, connection and commitment grace Kogonada's masterful debut, COLUMBUS

The perfect antidote to summer's uber-marketed blockbusters and indie rom-com drivel, here's a movie made for intelligent adult audiences who want something original from their cinema and are willing to watch real characters deal quietly but bracingly with important events and themes in an atmosphere of great, if often man-made, beauty.

Architecture has seldom seemed as vital and important to our life as it does in COLUMBUS, the debut film from a fellow named Kogonada, a South Korean-born U.S. immigrant raised in the Mid-west and now living in Nashville. His movie so lives and breathes its architectural wonders that the viewer is able to do this, too -- relishing each new place, and the compositions through which we see those places, in rapt appreciation. (The cinematography here is by Elisha Christian, and the editing by Kogonada himself.)

Visual beauty and the wonders of architecture have been captured elsewhere, as in La Sapienza by Eugène Green, but Kogonada, as writer and director, has also been able to capture character -- succinctly and realistically -- two in particular: Jin (played by a surprising John Cho, below, left), the son of a famous architect whose father in now in hospital in a coma in this architecturally amazing city of Columbus, Indiana; and Casey (the equally fine Haley Lu Richardson, below, right). a young girl with aspirations to architecture stuck here in Columbus taking care of her maybe-still-drug-addicted mother.

How these two people meet, slowly bond, and finally prove important to one another is handled by the filmmaker with such efficiency, honesty and believability that the movie will probably stand as some kind of filmmaker's/screenwriter's manual on how to achieve this sort of thing.

The character-building and theme-revealing is given us via much of the architecture that we, along with our two characters, view, and this is handled equally well. (The movie should make you more fully aware, if not appreciative, of your own surroundings.)

The pacing here is very slow, yet so much is going on that I doubt you will mind. Event-wise, very little happens, yet by the finale immense changes are occurring. And if Kogonada resists not just melodrama but even perhaps the idea of drama itself, he nonetheless brings us to the point of caring a great deal about these two people and their lives.

The movie's single misstep, in my estimation, is the one scene in which, suddenly, and for no good reason I can fathom, the soundtrack goes silent -- just at the point at which our heroine has been prodded to explain her deepest feelings about her love for architecture. Is this just too precious for the likes of our own, culturally-deprived ears? Or was the screenwriter perhaps unable to quite render le mot juste? This would certainly be one question I'd ask Kogonada in a Q&A.

Otherwise, Columbus is a glory of a movie: quiet, commanding, and utterly beautiful to see. Running 104 minutes, it opens this Friday in New York City at the IFC Center, and in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt. (Kogonada is said to be appearing for several Q&A at both the IFC Center and the NuArt during the coming weekend. Click here and here for the schedules. I'm not sure how one man can be in two place at once -- maybe via video? -- and on separate coasts, to boot, but both theaters are claiming to have him.)

André Téchiné's new jewel, BEING 17, may mark the top of his illustrious career -- with some help from Céline Sciamma

A great, unfolding love story, as well as a wondrous coming-of-age film, BEING 17 is the latest addition to the oeuvre of one of France's gifts to cinema, André Téchiné. Working steadily for over fifty years, Téchiné, shown below, is now 73 years old and his abilities only seem to grow stronger and more assured. Even what may look, upon initial viewing, like a misstep usually prove better with an additional watch. His are some of the best coming-of-age movies ever made: rich, wise and bone-deep. This filmmaker offers behavior above all, then lets us, along with his characters, struggle with the meaning of that behavior until it is somehow sorted out. Not always to the best ends. But always with truth, feeling and even, sometimes, humor.

In his latest film two boys, toward the end of their school years and on the cusp on young adulthood, find themselves engaged in angry competition and even physical fighting. This is brought on more by one -- Tomas, the mixed-race, adopted son of a kindly, hard-working farm family in the mountains -- than by the other, Damien, who is the son of the town's doctor mom and soldier father, the latter most often found abroad in some area of conflict.

Téchiné usually works with some of his country's best and most iconic actors -- from Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche to André Dussollier and Gérard Depardieu, as well as discovering and making the most of young talent that then goes on to find its own impressive career (Gaël Morel, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet and Roschdy Zem, among many others).

So it is again, as one of France's finest and most versatile actresses, Sandrine Kiberlain stars here as that doctor mom (the still boyish and beautiful Alexis Loret, above, right, of Alice and Martin, plays the soldier dad). Ms Kiberlain (two photos up and above, center) is as eloquent, exotically lovely and engulfing as ever, but the movie belong rightly to its two young stars: Kacey Mottet Klein (above, left, who already has a major resumé behind him, including Sister, Home and Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life) playing Damien, and newcomer Corentin Fila (below), who plays Tomas.

These two young men are terrific actors, representing that oh-so-tricky age of 17 to alternately ferocious and moving affect. There is not a false moment in any of their work nor in any of Téchiné's -- along with Ms Sciamma's who collaborated on the sensitive but never too-explanatory screenplay. Where these feelings of anger are coming from and why are the questions that keep arising, and the filmmaker lets the answers come haltingly and very believably.

I am not certain there is another movie-maker who understands any better how character-building is a thing that goes on and on, revealing itself in small increments along with the growth and change that occurs. And he has found two young actors who can embody this halting growth and change quite splendidly -- coming as it does at the most pivotal and difficult time of life. The two young actors keep us with them, held in an alternately angry and loving embrace, through events minor and major.

The film takes place over four seasons at school, in the home, on the farm and throughout the countryside. Being 17 is a visually beautiful movie (could there be a more gorgeous place to live than here?) but also an equally intelligent one. And it takes its place -- along with an earlier film this year, Summertime -- as one of, maybe the finest of dramas/earned-love-stories of our new millennium.

The movie -- from Strand Releasing and running a just-about-perfect 116 minutes (In French with English subtitles) -- opens this Friday, October 7, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and the IFC Center, and in Los Angeles on Friday, October 14, at Laemmle's Royal and Playhouse 7. Here in the South Florida area it will open on Friday, October 21,at the Bill Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables, the Tower Theater in Miami, the Savor Cinema in Fort Lauderdale, and at the Lake Worth Playhouse in Lake Worth.  Click here, then scroll down to click on Screenings, to view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters across the country where the movie will be shown over the next few weeks.

Li Lu's complicated love-at-first-sight tale, THERE IS A NEW WORLD SOMEWHERE

A young woman named Sylvia -- whose boss at a New York art gallery explains that her work is not good enough to be included in even a group show -- is so fed up that she quits, leaving town to attend the wedding of a friend in Austin, Texas. At the night-before party she makes eye contact with a hot-looking guy who, on this first date, invites her to come away with him. This could be the start of a movie in any number of genres, from kidnap thriller to feel-good love story. In the hands of writer/director Li Lu, however, it becomes something more complicated and interesting.

Ms Lu (shown at right), a Chinese-born filmmaker whose first full-length film this is, seems most interested in slowly developing character, and while the manner in which she does this may seem initially rather typical, if beautifully filmed, stick with THERE IS A NEW WORLD SOMEWHERE. It gets better as it goes along, and in its two attractive and talented leads, Agnes Bruckner (two photos below) and Maurice Compte (below), it boasts actors who can hold the screen and our attention well enough to hit pay dirt thoughtfully and quietly by movie's end.

A psychotherapist friend of Trust Movies once told him that any two individuals could form a lasting relationship, the only prerequisites being that the two were autonomous and that they wanted that relationship. Ms Lu's movie would seem to bear out this theory, even though our two characters here are not yet autonomous. But they're trying to be, and by movie's end they've made some growth in that direction.

The ups and down, stops and starts of that growth, as well as the small bits of information we begin to learn about Esteban, the male part of this duo, is what gives the movie its slow, quiet propulsion. The dialog ranges from simply OK to a good deal more than that. "You don't trust anyone, do you?" he asks of her early on. And this seems, unfortunately, to be true.

She also does not appear to enjoy sex all that much, though the pair has it with some frequency. (It may be that he does not know how to or care about satisfying her, but she may also not be able to be satisfied so easily.) And yet they are drawn to each other both physically and emotionally.

So "New World Somewhere" is a road trip/getting-to-know-you kind of movie -- which turns darker as more and more reality, along with the past, begins to intrude. Leaving the wedding party so suddenly was a selfish thing to do, and Sylvia will eventually cop to and pay for this. Esteban, for his part, has major abandonment issues resulting in an inability to "try."

When, at a particular moment, an early lie in the relationship is uncovered, everything seems to change. But even then, Ms Lu has more on her mind that simple closure and conclusion. There is indeed a new world somewhere. But getting on the right road to that world can take an awful lot of work.

From Emerging Pictures (in its theatrical release) and Gravitas Ventures (for its VOD release, which began this past Tuesday, August 2), the movie, running 103 minutes, is worth seeking out and wrestling with. Click here to see all further theatrical screenings. VOD platforms include iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, Playstation Store, VUDU, Amazon Video, Microsoft and Hoopla.