FREE MEN -- French Algerians under the Vichy regime -- opens in L. A. and Boston

What makes FREE MEN, the new film from Ismaël Ferroukhi (who gave us a better one, Le Grand Voyage, a few years back), so initially fascinating is its time and place (WWII France under the Nazi-driven Pétain regime) and char-acters (Algerian émigrés, some legal, some not). This is a situation and subject we've rarely if ever seen, and it is a good one. The movie stars A Prophet's Tahar Rahim (below, left), along with Michael Lonsdale (shown at bottom in virginal white), here playing the Imam of the Paris Mosque, and Mahmoud Shalaby (below, right) as an Algerian singer with the voice of a sexy angel who has a couple of secrets best kept under wraps. Unfortunately, as writer and director, Ferroukhi tends toward melodrama as events build, some of which are simply unbelievable (would the French police so easily dimiss their illegal-immigrant informant, once his usefulness has ended?)

The movie's thriller elements are mostly made hash of, coincidence plays far too large a role, and M. Rahim, practically one-note throughout, is not used here as well as he was by Jacques Audiard. Still, there's that terrific time and place to enjoy, and I have to say how lovely it was to witness Arabs rescuing Jews. Ah, those were the days!

Free Men, distributed in the U.S. via Film Movement, while continuing its run in New York City at the Quad Cinema and Lincoln Plaza Cinema, opens today, Friday, March 23, in Los Angeles (at Landmark's NuArt) and Boston (at its Kendall Square Cinema). Click here (then scroll down) to discover where else around the country you'll be able to see the film.

Sorry for the short post (adapted from my earlier one when Free Men made its New York debut at the beginning of this month as part of Rendez-vous with French Cinema), but TrustMovies is flying back to NYC from his visit to L.A. today, so there is little time to expand on that post.

Julia Haslett's oddball but not uninteresting AN ENCOUNTER WITH SIMONE WEIL

Who was Simone Weil? You, as had I, may have heard of her off and on over the years: a Jewish writer/philosopher who was ascetic/
religious, and... uh... didn't she die in the Holocaust? You'll find out, should you watch the bizarre little documentary AN ENCOUNTER WITH SIMONE WEIL, written, produced, directed and edited by novice filmmaker Julia Haslett. One thing you are sure to learn is how to pronounce Simone's name. TrustMovies has always said Weil, as in Wile. But, no: It's Weil, as in Vay. Being a French name, the l is silent and the ei pronounced as a long a. And the W? Well, Simone was born of Alsatian parents, from the region nearest Germany, and so the W, I guess, is pronounced as a V. (TM is spending so much time on pronunciation because, well, the movie itself proves a bit of a cheat.)

"Encounter" begins with the filmmaker, shown at right, telling us about the suicide of her father and then how she came upon this bit of writing from Ms Weil: Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. This may be Weil at close to her best. (Later we hear nonsense such as Not religion but revolution is the opium of the people. Of course: A good revolution is guaran-teed to put one into a sleepy, drugged up state!)  In any case, Ms Haslett is so impressed with the former statement that she makes it a point to learn all she can about Ms Weil, who died at the age of 34 in 1943. And we tag along with her, learning on the run. Haslett also has a brother, Timothy, shown below, with his own depression problems, whom she worries over -- quite genuinely and with good cause.

The filmmaker, it turns out, is suffering from guilt (and how could any of us not be, who have had close family members kill themselves), much in the manner that Weil herself suffered -- though in Simone' case, it appeared to be for the helpless masses rather than for particular individuals. In addition to severe health problems, this suffering was her cross to bear. And if that sounds a tad religious, so be it. The lady had quite a Jesus complex. Still, as one acolyte tell us, Weil embodied "the union between the most demanding intellect and the heart." Says another: "You can't come away from reading her unscathed." Yet, scathed, Haslett informs us, is what she desires to feel and be.

As the film moves along, you may feel that the filmmaker is growing awfully worshipful of Weil. Just wait. Soon, because she so desperately wants to have a "real" encounter with her heroine -- "Even a fleeting glimpse will help me get closer to her," Haslett tells us -- she is placing photos and writings on the floor and communing with them, perhaps hoping to "channel" Simone or head over into the paranormal realm.... "But I'm getting carried away," she admits at around the halfway point, and we heave a heavy sigh of relief.

When Haslett sticks to Weil's history, the movie is most interesting: Simone's time spent fighting in the Spanish Civil War (She was a pacifist: yet another contradiction), her first mystical experience, her move from politics to religion and her inability to give in fully to the latter (good girl!), why she was called the Red Virgin, her work during World War II, and much more.

As Haslett's brother's condition worsens, so does the filmmaker's own anxiety: Isn't her brother worth more than her Weil work? This is where the movie either falls apart (it did for me) or may come together for you. We don't really learn enough about Haslett's family to make what happens as meaningful as it ought to be. Instead we see a demonstration for the prisoners at Guantanamo (above), which of course mirrors, in its way today, the work that Weil did back then. Haslett even goes so far as to work in a factory, as Weil once did, to experience solidarity with the masses for whom she felt so strongly.

This philosopher said some lovely, true things (What separates us is also our link). But true to her constant contradictions, she also had a death wish. Haslett's movie will undoubtedly set some viewers off to learn more about Weil through her writings, and this is a very good thing. What the movie does most, however, is to reveal how difficult it is to effectively combine your own personal story with that of your biographical subject -- particularly when that subject exerts such a strong pull as does Ms. Weil.

An Encounter With Simone Weil (85 minutes from Line Street Productions) opens this Friday, March 23, at the Quad Cinema in New York City, and perhaps elsewhere soon. Click here to see all currently scheduled screenings -- though most of them listed appear to be in the past rather than the future.

All photos are from the film, except that of Timothy Haslett, 

which comes courtesy of WayneandWax.com

Boxed-in, and brilliantly, Stephen Dorff shines in Gabe Torres' riveting BRAKE

You can Drive all you want and get nowhere fast (and glossily). For my money, it's BRAKE that's the "car" movie you must see -- even if it takes place in the trunk rather than behind the wheel. It is also light years better than last year's tiresome, if efficient, Buried, in which, like this film, a fellow with ties to the U.S. government is kidnapped by terrorists and kept in a very tight place for the length of the movie.

Tight-place movies (or "contained-thrillers," as this budding mini-genre now seems to be called) are usually difficult, both to make and to sit through, because they allow so little in the way of variety -- certainly of place, but also of movement and even energy. In Buried, Ryan Reynolds was mostly frightened: realistically and genuinely but finally boringly. With Brake, director Gabe Torres and writer Timothy Mannion have concocted a film in which, though their star -- the very gifted Stephen Dorff, here giving an award-worthy, humdinger of a performance -- is drugged then stuck inside the trunk of a car, there is still so much going on, plot-wise and character-wise, not to mention lighting and sound (this allows for more variety than usual without sacrificing the necessary sense of reality and danger), that there is not a boring moment in the whole movie. In fact, against all odds for this weird little mini-genre, Brake just keeps getting better and better.

This is Mr. Manion's first produced script, and it's a gem. (You can find out more about it at this online interview with the screen-writer, but I beg you to watch the movie first.) It will take me a second viewing to find faults, omissions or mistakes here. On first viewing, things simply moved too fast to catch my breath, for the author has provided so much more than the usual fodder for this genre -- other characters as voices, objects within the trunk of the car that are of more than passing interest, and situational possibi-lities (is this some kind of exercise?) that could change everything.

From the director's standpoint, Mr. Torres keeps his camera (his excellent cinematographer is James Mathers, and the first-class editing is from Sam Restivo) close and at the ready but also pliant and versatile enough to handle everything that happens, while keeping us glued to the screen. An intelligent, strict-but-fluid POV is vital to movies such as Brake, and Torres and his crew are on top of this with terrific attention and skill.

And then there is Mr. Dorff. Yes, we know this guy (shown above and below) is gorgeous, sexy and a good actor. But he's never had a challenge such as this one -- and he rises to the occasion like nobody else I've seen. I suspect Dorff is pretty intelligent; god knows his character, a secret service agent named Jeremy Reins, certainly is. He's strong, disciplined and very smart, so it's a pleasure to accompany him on this strange journey. Dorff's face is front and center throughout most of the movie, and how he communicates the variety of his character's thoughts and feelings is little short of brilliant. This is an award-winning performance of incredible strength, intelligence and discipline. If only enough people will view it -- a problem for small independent movies shown first on VOD -- he should be a shoo-in for next year's awards.

The movie's ending -- both expected and then not -- is probably going to be it's most problematic portion. However you react to it, I think, is less important than how you react to the rest of the film, which is -- for one of the most difficult of all genres, the "confined space" movie done on a small budget -- simply spectacular.
Don't miss it.

Brake, from IFC Films and only 92 minutes long, has been playing via VOD for the past month and will open theatrically on Friday, March 23 -- in New York City at the IFC Center, and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Noho 7.

Douglas Tirola's ALL IN: THE POKER MOVIE -- history, cards and a lot of talking heads

Do you love poker? Then you're a shoo-in for ALL IN: THE POKER MOVIE, the new documentary that looks very much like a labor of love from filmmaker Douglas Tirola (An Omar Broadway Film, A Reason to Believe), who insists (maybe once too often) that poker is somehow America and America poker. Poker is a part of our history, played by everyone from Presidents to pikers, and full of that rebellious streak that so personifies our country. Or something like that. Juggling historical footage with a large array of present-day talking heads and taking us into important games and events (the rise, fall and -- maybe -- rise again of online poker), the movie would seem a "must" for poker-heads and possible viewing, too, for people like me, who may have played poker as kids but don't have much interest in it now.

Tirola, shown at left, begins with the FBI indictment of online poker (notes one player, expressing the movie's typical poker-centric universe: "Like the Kennedy assassination, everyone remembers exactly where he was when he first heard about this"), then goes back in time to gather up that history and talk with folk both classy (historian/author Doris Kearns Goodwin and social commentator Ira Glass) and crass (you choose, once you've seen the movie). We hear a lot from actor Matt Damon (below), who, along with Edward Norton, made that famous flop poker-movie Rounders -- of which and about which we see so much here that for awhile it appears that Mr. Tirola is trying to conjur some kind of revival (or maybe a remake) of that film.

We learn about and watch some old footage of poker legend Thomas "Amarillo Slim" Preston, as well as meeting one of the newest legends, pro player Chris Moneymaker (yes, that's his real and, as we see, quite fitting name). Mr. Moneymaker, shown below with his daughter on his lap, turns out to be the most interesting thing in the movie (along with a fellow named Henry Orenstein, who invented the "hole cam," now used in all video-ed poker games), and his entry into online poker provides the film with its most suspenseful moments (unless you follow poker and already know the outcome).

How poker grows from being a player's to a spectator's sport also proves an interesting journey, and a discussion of exactly how poker has become so popular leads to the film's funniest line: "Things don't grow that don't have growabilitiness to them."

Statistics are occasionally spoken of and shown on-screen -- in 1961, most homes included a card table; in 1991, almost all casinos had closed their poker rooms; in 2001, 60 million Americans played poker weekly -- and someone tells us that poker is now more popular than the NFL games. Really?

Much is also made of the freedom that is being taken away from us Americans by the government's banning of online poker. However, as of this year, online gaming appears to be coming back, via various of our individual states, so freedom, thank god, is secure again. Even if this may be, in reality, the freedom to get fleeced. Earlier in the movie, in reference to Rounders, one person calls this, "The best movie ever!" Yes, notes another, "Thank you for bringing million of suckers into the game and making us rich!"

All In: The Poker Movie, from 4th Row Films and a little too long at 109 minutes (though I may have seen a slightly longer version on the screener sent me than the 100 minutes that will play theatri-cally), opens this Friday in New York City at the Cinema Village. Upcoming playdates all the around the country, with cities and theaters, can be found by clicking here and then scrolling down.

Master of time, place & feeling, Terence Davies is back with THE DEEP BLUE SEA

I have heard certain film fans equate the work of Terence Davies (Of Time and the City, The House of Mirth, The Neon Bible, The Long Day Closes and Distant Voices, Still Lives) with nostalgia. Well, yes, all of Davies' film deal with the past. But they are so much more than mere nostalgia that TrustMovies never thinks of that word when a Davies film comes up. So keenly and meaningfully does this movie-maker capture time and place, together with the feelings that these arouse in his narrator or protagonist that Mr. Davies creates an unforgettable world like no one else's -- which we can then enter. He has done it again with THE DEEP BLUE SEA, a shimmering, classic testament to the power of love and lust to create and destroy.

In his new film, which he directed and adated from the play by Terence Rattigan, in addition to offering up a place (England) and a time (post-WWII) and those "feelings" he is so adept at churning, Mr. Davies (shown at left) has given one of our finest actresses, Rachel Weisz (Agora) the chance the inhabit one of modern literature's great dissections of a woman overcome with and by love. Ms Weisz (below) does the role proud, and Mr. Davies does the same by Ratttigan, though in a manner more elusive and impressionistic than what the playwright achieved. I wonder what the late Terence would think of this work by the Terence still with us? I'd like to imagine he'd be surprised, and then, after a time of getting used to it, thrilled.

Initially, it is a surprise to view Weisz, above, as someone so passive and acted upon. Yet the more we see and study her, the more it is clear how -- after a passion-free marriage to her husband, a judge (beautifully limned by Simon Russell Beale, below) -- her adulterous affair with the former RAF pilot, played with energy, charm and more than a hint of trouble by a fine Tom Hiddleston (shown two photos below, of Thor, Midnight in Paris and War Horse), has not simply knocked her off her feet but damaged her balance and her ability to understand and act.

All this is shown rather than told us, with Davies' usual quiet camera, and his long takes and splendid use of music (from the song sung in the subway air raid to the 50s standard You Belong to Me). If the filmmaker were not so damned empathetic (and Ms Weisz not so riveting and deeply embedded in her character), we might grow tired of this troubled woman who's clearly a pain to those around her and a danger to herself. But we don't.

Instead we begin to identify even more strongly with her character Hester, and then, amazingly enough, with everyone else. The two Terences have given us a deep, sad and finally kind lesson about love in many of its forms.

From the stern but understanding landlady (played by Ann Mitchell) to the would-be doctor who helps in time to trouble, to the husband and his cold, graceless mother (a fine job by Barbara Jefford, below) and even the somewhat callow lover: Everyone is doing the best s/he can, which makes the film all the sadder -- and then all the wiser.

This is a rich, warm movie -- and one that is, as you'd expect from Mr. Davies, exceedingly beautiful. It is also quiet and almost shockingly calm. Even the melodrama -- yes, love can be quite melodramatic -- is subdued. But if you've ever experienced heart-break, you should be able to identify. And as a film buff, you'll bask.

The Deep Blue Sea (98 minutes, from Music Box Films) opens this Friday in a raft of cities in New York, California and Florida and will then expand elsewhere across the country. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Action! In THE RAID: REDEMPTION Gareth Evans offers the stuff in nearly pure form

One hundred minutes of practically nonstop whop!-smack!-chop!-whack! action is an interesting, if risky, concept to hang a movie around. When the action is as well-done -- fast, furious, and relatively "believable" (as this sort of martial-arts-madness goes) -- as that found in THE RAID: REDEMPTION, fans of this genre had best get ready for a trip to heaven. For the rest of us, however, a few questions -- none of them deal-breakers -- may remain.

A filmmaker new to me, Gareth Huw Evans (pictured at left), has written, edited and directed The Raid, so it is to him that all queries should certainly be directed. My first is "What's this 'Redemption' thing at the end of the title?" Was there an earlier Raid: Damnation or Raid: Retribution that we missed, to which this one's a sequel? I don't think so. Then why not simply call your movie The Raid and leave it at that, since the plot -- simplicity itself -- entails nothing more than a raid upon a housing complex in which a notorious crime lord and his henchmen are holed up? Well, maybe this is all just a marketing ploy, as redemption is big these days -- even though it more often comes out like redumbtion.

Evans' film also calls into question the meaning of the term "action movie." Is this a work, like the recent, tip-top French thriller Point Blank, which starts with a bang and then races around the city, hospital, corporate headquarters, police station and deserted warehouse as it develops its tightly-wound plot and very interesting characters into a fine piece of genre cinema that is certainly full of action? Or is it something like the relatively recent duo of District B-13 and its sequel, that, while highlighting the action art of parkour, also tackles racism, class-ism and the haves and have-nots with humor, irony and quite a bit of charm? Or maybe what is meant by an action film today is simply an extension of the Bruce Lee/Robert Clouse 1970s movie Enter the Dragon, in which, for its time, the newly discovered (in the west, at least) martial arts were given front-and-center, on-screen demonstration.

The Raid comes closest to the last of the above three films, as the lion's share of its time is devoted to showing us the Indonesian martial art of Pencat Silat, as demonstrated by its stars Iko Uwais (shirtless, two photos above, and above, with firearm) and Joe Taslim, below with mouth agape -- and practically all of the rest of the film's huge cast, every last one of whom seem to know how to fight like crazy. In terms of martial arts combat, The Raid may contain the best (it certainly contains the most) I've ever seen.

I expect the camera has been sped-up somewhat, so that the rat-tat-tat of hands against hands (and other body parts) is near-constant, while the combination of these super-athletic, super-strong, super-agile performers and Evans' editing skills is often breath-taking. I suppose a martial arts expert might be able to find fault here, but I certainly could not.

The film is tight (for awhile), frightening and bloody (the first victim is a mere child, even if he is part of the villain's operation), and when the fighting starts, it is fast, super-violent and -- sight and sound-wise -- full of shocking effects. One of the filmmaker's favorite is picking up a fellow by the legs, swinging him around and breaking his head againts a cement wall. You should have heard the sounds emanating from the excited male critics at the screening I attended. Zowie! The females seemed a tad less taken with the proceedings.

However, at one hour and forty minutes, the movie is -- for any audience not terribly attuned to martial arts -- maybe 15 to 20 minutes too long. The plot, as I noted, is quite simple: Find the gang-leader and arrest him. And since the building he's in has maybe 16 floors (the ad says 30, but there are not), this will obviously take some time. Two surprises occur along the way, both of which have been telegraphed a bit strongly, and the final showdown fights last so very long that all but the most die-hard martial-arts fans will probably be wishing our heroes could grab a gun instead of their fists and end this thing fast.

Don't get me wrong: I'm impressed with The Raid, so far as it goes. But for an action flick that includes more than (very, very good) fighting, I'll take the likes of Point Blank and the District B-13 duo. In Indonesian with English subtitles (don't worry: this is not a dialog-heavy film), the movie, from Sony Pictures Classics (yes, I'm shocked, too, but I guess, as we near the end of times, this storied distributor of art-house cinema must have decided to widen its scope and grab a larger audience) opens this Friday in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, DC and San Francisco. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Emil Chiaberi's MURDER BY PROXY looks at group killings in the workplace and school...

... and then connects the dots. It's the connection that makes this movie so fascinating and well worth one's time. Beginning with a look at the United States Postal Service, Russian-born first-time filmmaker Emil Chiaberi probes the condition known as "going postal" and, more important, the particular kind of workplace that spawned the phrase and why. Turns out, according to his new documentary MURDER BY PROXY, that at the bottom of many, maybe the majority, of cases of workplace violence is a condition much in the news these days -- but oddly sequestered as though it existed in only the school environment: bullying.

Bullying does not necessarily end with one's school days, though as adults in an environment with some choices, we can more often avoid it. The USPS, it turns out, was not and is not -- particularly from the time in which the postal service turned from a government agency into a wholly-owned government business -- a place safe from bullying. According to the several USPS employees present and former that Mr. Chiaberi (shown at right, who both wrote and directed the film) has brought together, it is rather the perfect place to raise this "art" to a nasty, full-time occupation.

One of the heroes of the documentary, probably the most heroic, is postal worker Charlie Withers (above, testifying), who tells a good deal of the story here. Once the USPS went full-throttle business, a combo of social Darwinism and roughshod Capitalism was the order of the day. And as usually happens, the people holding most of the power use that power badly. "They never stopped being on his back," one woman explains about how the men in charge treated the first of workplace killers whom we meet.

Of the second "gone postal" worker we hear about, Thomas McIlvane (who killed several people in Royal Oak, Michigan, before turning his gun on himself), one of his co-workers tells us "There was an overwhelming feeling of relief that those people (the murdered ones) were gone. I understand why he did it." This is very strong stuff.

It seems that those same bosses had done similar damage in the state of Indiana (without this type of repercussion) before coming to Michigan, where they did it all again. Their message was clear, notes a worker: "If we can do this to McIlvane, we can do it to any of you." Well, they did.  And then, so did he.

Postal worker Withers (center, above), whose presence and gentle demeanor helps hold the film together, is at his most dear as he speaks about his family and daughter. But it is also he who turns the workers' grievances into a petition and tries to get his day in court. Not surprisingly, the union turns a blind eye to his and the workers' entreaties. ("It seemed like they just wanted this whole thing to go away.") So he, along with some others, tries to get the state of Washington's legislature to turn this into a workers' protection law. We follow their efforts as the movie progresses.

A combination of re-enactment, stock footage, newscasts (below) and some very unsettling film from the massacres (above and further above and below), the documentary also uses some funny, clever propaganda films of past times for humor and ironic effect -- as well as scenes from mainstream movies that make their point (two photos down).

The movie may jump around a lot but it never goes far afield from its theme. And when Chiaberi begins connecting what has happened across America over the past few decades -- the cruelty toward workers that has long been a part of the our system but that has increased since the 1970s; Ronald Reagan's breaking of the air traffic controllers' strike that has led to the sickness-unto-death of our unions; how the scale of CEO pay to workers' pay has risen from 35 to 1 up to 425 to 1; religion's role in all of this and so much more -- the movie really takes off. And though the documentary does not mention this, our Supreme Court's Citizens United decision would seem to be the very apotheosis of this trend.

You will realize how much has gone on that is connected to workplace violence in which the media, perhaps unwitting pawns of the powers-that-be, has treated each incident (which have grown enormously since the 1980s) as an event, something to blame on the "crazy shooter," rather than addressing the same problems that lie behind almost each one. How can the aggression of the bosses toward the workers not find some release? It does, finally, in aggression by the workers -- not only in multiple killings, but in various forms of sabotage, as well.

Accountability -- and the halting of abusive management -- would seem to be the key to progress. But the bullying continues, everywhere, and there is little indication of a move in a better direction. Until there is, I would wager, for all the supposed drop in individual crime across the country, we'll see a continued rise in workplace/school violence. Next time you read of another incident, do a little legwork and find out what lay behind the violence.

Murder by Proxy (from RF Releasing, 75 minutes) is being screened now in cities around the country, beginning at the scene of one of the crimes, Royal Oak, Michigan, at the Landmark Main Art Theatre. Unfortunately that screening occurred yesterday only, and I apologize for not getting this post up sooner.  The film will next be seen in Washington DC on Tuesday, March 20, at the Landmark E Street Cinema, and then in New York City at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on Tuesday, March 27.  Click here then scroll down to check for further screenings or to purchase the DVD.