Marcel Rasquin's HERMANO: brotherhood, futbol, life & death in one swell melodrama

If the opening of HERMANO -- the sound of a baby crying and what follows -- doesn't grab you immediately, you probably shouldn't bother with this exceptionally skilled piece of Latin American melodrama, the first full-length narrative from young Venezuelan filmmaker Marcel Rasquin. This beginning is at once a huge cliche, but one that is filmed with such immediacy and acted with such feeling and specificity that -- boom -- you're hooked.

The award-winning Señor Rasquin, shown at left, has been able in this sturdy little movie to give us life -- in all its complicated beauty and terror -- in the barrios of Venezuela. He shows us (with very little "telling") via his complicated, intertwined plot, how family, sport, drugs and crime are inextricably connected, to the point where, it seems, you can't choose one or two of these without the rest tagging along.

Likewise the feelings the movie engenders, both in its characters and us viewers. These are complicated, too, never more so than in a series of ugly incidents, as one bad thing leads to the next and the next and finally to a kind of mini-holocaust that is simply horrific and all too believable. Drugs, murder, betrayal; help, love, sacrifice -- they're all on display here, often even within the same person at various times.

The story is that of two brothers -- related by chance, love and time rather than by blood -- and their mother: a wonderful family of the kind that we should all be lucky enough to experience.

Both brothers love futbol above all else (except family): Julio, the old, bigger and brawnier (gorgeous newcomer Eliú Armas, above, right) is a stronger but less talented player than the younger Daniel (Fernando Moreno, above, left), but both play together so well that Daniel insists that their duo not be broken up -- even when he is recruited by the Caracas Futbol Club.

Events are important to this movie, but they never trump character-- which, in everyone we see, including the drug lord, is complicated. (Even he proves to have some decency, along with his own understanding of familial responsibility.)

The finale, when it arrives is as surprising, moving and -- yes -- as complicated as all that has come before. Rasquin has captured life here, using melodrama as his genre, and in doing so has made a simply splendid little movie.

Hermano, from Music Box Films and running 97 minutes, opens today, all across the country. Click here and then click on THEATERS (just below the film's title) to see all currently scheduled playdates with cities and theaters.

NEIGHBORING SOUNDS' Kleber Mendonça Filho digs into people, place, class & conflict

Brazil? Having never been there, I know it mostly via movies: narrative and documentary. From Bus 174 to Elite Squad (and its fine follow-up), Lula to the DZI Croquettes, Found Memories to Waste Land and Rio Breaks (to name but a few), the view moves from rich to wretched and back again -- sometimes encompassing both at once. One of the more interesting examples of recent Brazilian film-making is also one of its most sophisticated and challenging, NEIGHBORING SOUNDS by Kleber Mendonça Filho (pictured below), a fairly new filmmaker whose first full-length narrative movie this is.

The movie takes place on a single large and long city block in the coastal town of Recife. We see the history of the place in black-and-white photographs that begin the movie. Then we switch to color and the present day. We see this single block via a number of people who reside there or service the area (the fellow who delivers the bottled water also doubles as the local pot dealer). The families seem relatively well-to do (the block is very nearby the beach; if I am not mistaken, it nearly butts up against it), and one of them, now a grandfather, together with his sons and their extended familes, pretty much owns the block and the surrounding area.

What distinguishes this film, more than anything else, is how Mendonça Filho, as writer and director, pulls you into the lives of the inhabitants so thoroughly that you feel you know and understand them as problemed human beings remarkably well. You also see how economics, class and color separates these people, even as they themselves seem not at all cognizant of this. Yet they are, and so are we.

Separated into three sections labeled Guard Dogs, Night Guards and Bodyguards, the movie captures unease amongst the "entitled" class about as well as anything I have seen. No actual mention is made of this unease, but is there almost constantly -- from the series of minor breaks-ins (on local autos) to the hiring of a team of "security" experts (above) to what looks like a typical Brazilian "tenants meeting (below, which apes rather well some of our own NYC co-op meetings I've been involved in over the years).

The filmmaker's pace is measured, all right, but it never slow nor boring, with the occasional shock or surprise along the way, as when grandfather's maid meets up with one of our security guys, and makes love inside an apartment he is watching over. In the midst of their lovemaking -- oh, but why spoil things?

The family we get to know best (above) includes a loopy mom, her two kids and her all but absentee husband. What happens amidst the delivery of a wide-screen TV (and another to the apartment next door) is one of the many highlights here. We also get to know grandad's two grandsons, one an "upstanding" real estate entre-preneur, the other a petty thief. We also come into contact with the former's cleaning staff/servants, who appear to have a wonderful relationship with their "boss." Sort of.  The way the relationship works is subtle, but it's definitely displayed for us to witness.

Mendonça Filho never insists; he rarely even tells. He simply shows. And what he shows is among the more impressive and original narrative films to open this year.

Neighboring Sounds, distributed by The Cinema Guild and running 131 minutes, makes its theatrical debut today, Friday, August 24, at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and the IFC Center in New York City. You can see other currently scheduled playdates for September through November by clicking here.

LITTLE WHITE LIES: Guillaume Canet's ensemble follow-up to Tell No One opens

Good actor, yes. Smart director, absolutely. But accomplished screenwriter? Not yet, I'm afraid. Guillaume Canet, one of the most popular actors in France and the filmmaker responsible for the international hit thriller Tell No One and the very funny, quirky, and intelligent comedy satire Whatever You Say has come a cropper with his latest offering, LITTLE WHITE LIES. Not that there isn't plenty to admire in this ensemble piece about a band of successful French 30-somethings (with their leaders a decade or so older) spending time together at the beach and summer home of one of their wealthier members. But most of the admiration goes to the performances of the actors -- all of which are expert and riveting.

M. Canet, shown at left, had some writing help with his earlier two films: Philippe Lefebvre on both, and Harlan Coben upon whose novel of the same name Tell No One was based. With Little White Lies, Canet's gone solo, and it shows. From the very construction of his movie right through to the finale, which flails and then fails, due to the weakness of this construction, it is becomes more and more clear that a key element is missing. That element is the movie's pivotal character, played by Jean Dujardin, whom we see at the film's beginning, slightly, and only cursorily from then on. And yet, at the climax, it becomes clear that he is, in a sense, key to the entire movie -- at least so far as his compatriots on view are concerned. Well, sorry: As the song says, Jean-ny, I hardly knew ye.

Let me say that it is a pleasure to finally see M. Dujardin, shown at right, actually "acting" beyond the quotation marks. For foreign film-loving Americans, at least, our only opportunity to see this actor has been in the OSS movies and then in his (perhaps a tad premature) "Oscar" winning role. Both these characters have had him acting in quotes, as it were, in performances that demanded a kind of built-in comment on the actual performance underneath (if this makes any sense to you). Dujardin does this kind of thing very well indeed, but how I finally longed to see him simply act in a more everyday sort of role. Now, we finally can. Except that he's barely there -- before he's not. (But first he's in some heavy-duty prosthetics and make-up that may put you in mind of Lon Chaney's peak years.)

What makes Little White Lies worth seeing (and it is, for those who enjoy French cinema) are its many fine performances within its starry ensemble cast. This includes Benoît Magimel (at left), as a chiropractor whose declaration of feelings for one of the group sets off a kind of slow-simmering fuse during this summer vacation, while calling into question what sexuality is all about and what it means to realize, later in life than is often experienced, that you are very attracted to someone of your own sex.

Marion Cotillard (above) and Gilles Lellouche (below, right) are two actors we're seeing more often of late, and both do themselves proud in their roles here, as friends with love problems of their own. How they handle them makes for fun, sadness and eventually a certain degree of self-realization.

In the film's perhaps central role (not pivotal in the way the Dujardin's is, however) we have François Cluzet, below, whom M. Canet in Tell No One helped set back on a path to lasting stardom. I've never seen Cluzet less than terrific, and he comes through once again as a powerful man who's used to having his own way and can get pretty nasty when things go wrong. During this particular vacation things go very wrong.

An actor that I have not much noticed until now, Laurent Lafitte, below, makes quite an impression as the lovesick dolt who must share every unexceptional moment of that sickness with all of his friends. Lafitte is very funny, with just enough of hangdog pout to make you care for him a bit (he's cute, too, with a tall, rangy body, and Meditteranean dark eyes and full lips).

Ms Cotillard gets the most attention of any of the women (well, she is Canet's companion), but the others here -- Valérie Bonneton, Pascale Arbillot, Anne Marivin and Louise Monot (shown three photos above, with Lellouch) -- are also quite good.  (Canet writes some excellent dialog that his cast goes after like hungry dogs.)

A kind of caretaker of the group -- he's older, wiser, too -- is played, and very well, by Joël Dupuch, above. This actor is the one saddled with "the big speech" -- an opportunity that underscores the fact that Canet does not quite yet understand that movies list toward the "show" rather than the "tell." Instead, the screenwriter has Dupuch spelling everything out for his little group: who they are, what they've been doing and why it's so wrong. Lesson learned!

This dressing-down of course leads to the film's finale, in which speeches are made and tears shed profusely -- all of which left this viewer, at least, utterly dry-eyed. It's way too much and it goes on for an unconscionable length of time. (The movie itself is two hours and 34 minutes long -- overkill for this genre by any standard.) And yet there are a lot of laughs, pain and tears here that are both enjoyable and believable. So I guess we must take the good with the not-so. On his next project, now in post-production, Canet is collaborating again on his screenplay -- this time with no less than James Gray. We look forward.

Meanwhile Little White Lies, from MPI Pictures, opens tomorrow, Friday, August 24, in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema, and in Los Angeles at The Landmark -- with other cities in the offing, I hope (though I can't find any trace of them on the MPI site).

Gorgeous beyond belief -- beyond Baraka, at least: Fricke's and Magidson's SAMSARA

In an article that appeared in this past Sunday's New York Times' Arts & Leisure section, filmmaker Ron Fricke -- who, with Mark Magidson, created the movie SAMSARA that opens this Friday in New York and Seattle -- keeps insisting that he and his producing/writing partner are not trying to "say anything" or make their images "go together," "make too much sense" or "tell a linear story." God forbid.

Shot on 70 millimeter film (but evidently not to be shown in theaters in that manner, since so few are left that have this capability), the movie is, according to its makers -- Fricke is shown at left, Magidson, below -- not a documentary in the usual meaning of that term because it has no narration and no identification of place nor personage as it moves along. (The end credits offer some of this, but by then you'll have to try to reconstruct it all again, in your mind, to figure out who and what went where.)

Can it be possible to shoot all these images and have them not speak to you in any social/political/artful manner? I doubt it. It certainly, for TrustMovies at least, was not possible to view these images in any content- and/or meaning-free manner. Let's describe and then discuss a few of these now, then see what you make of it all.

Filmed over five years on five continents in 25 countries, the images are as varied as they are usually gorgeous. (Even the shots of slabs of recently slaughtered meat hanging aloft are beautifully composed and shot.)

The film begins with images of three eastern dancers, eyes a-popping, strutting their stuff. From there we go to scene of an erupting volcano, then to sleeping humans and then to the top of an incredible mountain temple and to little boys who are, I guess, novice monks. They (and we) watch as a piece of spectacular art, below, is created before our eyes using only the tiniest -- what? colored beads? grains of sand? -- as the medium.

"These things all exist in our world! I thought to myself with joy. "They're not some special effects created by 'the movies'."  But then those special effect begin. Granted, they're little more than speeded-up camera-work that shows us day becoming night becoming day again. Or shadow and sunlight spreading across the walls of an interior. Or humanity, Asian-style, moving a bit faster than they're actually doing, to make a point. Whoops! No point is being made, right? Then why speed up that camera? See: We're making points even when we don't realize it.

The film's funniest -- maybe looniest -- section covers some amazing caskets (below) designed to reflect who the corpse was when alive and/or what he did for a living. (One of these caskets is constructed in the shape of a gun.)

Even editing -- especially editing -- makes its own points. For instance, moving from humanity (did I mention the many baptisms, see below?), the earth and art to what comes next in this film seems to make a certain point, as we go from beautiful images to horror: death in the animal world so that we may eat -- from chickens to hogs and onward -- would seem to be making some point or other. Well, it's all in how you view it, I suppose.

Except where certain specific images are concerned. The filmmakers go out of their way to shoot some Africans in their native garb and facial display. Then, later in the film we come back to -- if not these exact Africans, then others suspiciously like them. Only this time, see below, they are holding rifles. I'm sorry: We're supposed to make nothing of this? Please: The ability to make connections, to see links, and to tell tales that reflect our humanity -- to care -- is what separates us from Republicans.

Oh, well. If it sounds like I am dissing this movie, I am doing anything but. Samsara is a bountiful visual experience (and the music that goes along with it is wonderful, too). It deserves to be seen by everyone. I'm just a tad astounded at the filmmakers' pretense of doing all this without any sense of  purpose other than creating images. Perhaps they are worried that any trace, the mere scent, of an "agenda" might rule the movie out for certain audiences. (Particularly those who love to say, 'I don't want to see anything political!" As though there is--ever was--anything that is not.) The film's final shots, too, would seem to be saying something about art and its brevity. Or perhaps our very planet -- and its. Enough: See this movie, and see what you can connect.

Samsara, from Oscilloscope Laboratories, opens Friday, August 24, at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema in New York City -- in 4K resolution (which I had to look up to understand, so I've linked it for you) and in Seattle at the Cinerama, also in 4K. In the weeks to come, it'll be appearing across  pretty much the entire United States (though not, I think, to be seen in 4K everywhere). Click here to view all the currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters.

The shots above are taken from the film itself, 

with the exception of those of the filmmakers, 

which come courtesy of thelip.tv and BYOD.

THE VICTIM: The Biehn family & friends' home movie opens at NYC's Quad Cinema

Written and directed by and starring Michael Biehn, produced by and co-starring his wife Jennifer Blanc, and making use of a number of family friends -- all of whom (including not just the cast, but most of the crew members, too) are generous-ly shown to us via photographs during the end credits -- THE VICTIM is a run-of-the-mill thriller with some interesting things on its mind, without the film-making skills to bring these to much semblance of life.

Mr. Biehn has shown his acting/
action chops a number of times in the past, from the original Terminator movie to the recent and under-rated apocalyptic thriller, The Divide. Here, saddled with writing, directing and acting chores, the load proves a bit too heavy, and the result seems more of a barely believable (and that's being gener-ous) exploitation flick than anything else. This may be exactly what the Biehns wanted to achieve, but even exploitation movies can be fun and fulfilling on certain levels, so I wish they'd done a better job.

Night scenes, which seem to comprise about half of the film, are muddy and difficult to see. Further, Biehn has a habit of introducing his heavy-handed flashbacks -- there are a lot of these -- with a blinding flash coupled with some camera effects (see above), both at their beginning and their end. We get a little sex  (the star still packs an impressive six-pack in the abs department, while Ms Blanc--also above--sports a very good body, too) and a whole lot of violence, from torture to bloody beatings to murder committed and attempted.

Biehn, above, also allows much of his dialog to be shouted rather than spoken, and a little of this goes a long way. The story has to do with a pair of good-time girls out on a double date with a pair of cops. Rough sex turns into accidental death and one of the girls goes on the run.

There is what might be called a "twist" at film's end, though it seemed to me that this had been telegraphed almost from the beginning. The cast, which includes Ryan Honey (above) and Denny Kirkwood (below) as the dirty cops,

and Danielle Harris (below) as the unfortunate victim, does its best with the material given it -- which occasionally rises to some interesting philosophy but at other times is so unbelievable as to border on camp.

The Victim , from Anchor Bay Entertainment, opens this Friday, August 24, in New York City at the Quad Cinema and will also play the UK Frightfest at the Empire Cinema, Leicester Square, London, on August 24 and 26, as part of the fest's Discovery program.

Dax Shepard/David Palmer's quirky HIT & RUN has plenty of laughs, charm and action

Has it really been 13 years since Doug Liman made his best film, GO? Yep, and some of us have been waiting ever since for a quirky, funny ensemble comedy as good as that one to come along and sweep us off our feet. HIT & RUN, the new quirky, funny ensemble comedy co-directed by David Palmer (shown below) and Dax Shepard is not Go-level (it's not nearly as sophisticated nor as interestingly "linked") but it's as unusual, charming and fun as anything else we've seen in quite some time.

The movie begins benignly and sweetly, with Shepard (below, left) and his leading lady Kristen Bell (below, right) in bed, he assuring her, via some quite intense and lovely words, that all will be well. Everything certainly looks well for this hunky/pretty blond twosome, but then little by little it grows less and less so until life, limb and true love are all threatened with extinction.  And the laughs never stop coming. The movie has a very quirkly premise involving witness protection, a past crime, false identity and payback time, but since this is a rom-com, we're happy to welcome something a little different.

The eager, smart cast that has been assembled throws itself into things with lovely, wild abandon.

The players include Kristin Chenoweth (above, right, as Bell's helpful boss), Michael Rosenbaum (below, left, as Bell's nuttily jealous ex-boyfriend),

and especially Tom Arnold (below, top, as a witness protection officer who's very bad with guns) and Jess Rowland (below, bottom, as a local cop learning to use a brand new toy).

In the villain department are Bradley Cooper (dredlocked below, center) and Joy Bryant (below, left), and while both are fine, it's the good guys, dumb as they often come, who concern and amuse us most.

In a movie like this one, tone is very close to all-important; fortunately the co-directors, together with their cast, manage to strike just the right one: goofy and sweet so that, no matter how bizarre the happenings ahead, we stick with these crazy, lovable characters. This is not as easy as Hit & Run makes it seem, so congratulations are in order all around.

At 100 minutes, the movie's a tad too long; ten of those could have been lost with little lacking. But even attenuated, the film has built up enough laughs (more important, enough good will) to carry us though to the finale. After his good acting work in a number of recent films (especially The Freebie) and now this co-directing credit, Mr. Shepard is looking very good and ever more marketable.

Hit & Run, from Open Road, opens tomorrow, Wednesday, August 22, in New York in several theaters -- and elsewhere, I'm assuming. You can click here, then click on the BUY TICKETS link to discover where it's playing in your area.