Mexico and drugs--again--in Bernardo Ruiz's rather stock doc, KINGDOM OF SHADOWS

Anyone who has followed the seemingly eternal tale of this country's "war on drugs," and the connections provided by our own government (remember Iran-Contra?), drug runners, and dirty politicians and dirty police on both sides of the border will, I suspect, find little new or particularly riveting about the documentary that opened today, KINGDOM OF SHADOWS, written and directed by Bernardo Ruiz. This year, especially, there have a number of documen-taries and narrative films on the subject, with plenty more having reached us in past years.

Having seen many of these recent movies myself, I wasn't certain what to expect from Kingdom of Shadows, save for some new ideas, new information, and maybe other ways to look at the entire situation, in which our neighbor to the south, the forever drug-and-violence-addled Mexico, is front and center once again. Instead what I got was mostly more of the same, without any of it adding to the information I either already knew or could easily figure out. Filmmaker Ruiz, shown at left, has cobbled together stories from three participants: an old-time drug dealer (now, it seems, retired), a younger ex-dealer who becomes an undercover drug enforcement agent for the USA, and a woman whose job it is to find links to the "disappeared," folk of all ages and both sexes who have been lost and most likely murdered due to their involvement in the drug trade or simply to their being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Don Henry Ford, Jr. (above), tells us what it was like in times past ("Back in the day, nobody carried a gun"), while Oscar Hagelsieb (below) tells his story, which includes how the violence so epidemic today began to spread from the narco-involved to those who were not. We hear about corrupt police (surprise!) and maybe the most interesting tidbit: How the Mexican community longs for the days when there was just one strong drug cartel in charge of it all. We also learn how the new(er) police force, the Fuerza Civil, is seen as a more trustworthy alternative. Really? OK.

The third wheel is Sister Consuelo Morales, below, who appears to have given up her life to tend to the needs of the families of those "disappeared." Her story (and the little we learn of those she tries to help) proves the saddest. But because none of these three stories connect in any way other than being obviously drug-related, there is little "build" to the movie. We got more involved in those "disappeared" in that very good Mexican soap opera of a few years back, Casi Divas.

Also interviewed is a member of Human Rights Watch, and we see, particularly at the finale, face after face of the grieving family members of those who've gone missing. Mexico seems to me even more troubled and deeper in despair than at anytime I can recall. Or maybe it's just that the Internet has brought down so many barriers that used to disguise how countries routinely lie about everything.

A perfectly acceptable, entry-level look at the "drug war" and its consequences, Kingdom of Shadows -- from Participant Media and running just 74 minutes -- opened in theaters today, as well as being available via VOD.

France's submission for the Oscar is... Turkish! Deniz Gamze Ergüven's exhilarating MUSTANG

What are the ways out of (or around) the forced marriage by her fundamentalist family of a young Muslim girl to a man she has no interest in or connection to? We learn a few of these in the new movie MUSTANG, and they are, for the most part, utterly crap alternatives -- one worse than the next. And considering that the film has, as its collective heroine, five sisters, all of marriageable age, Mustang proves a treasure trove of anti-fundamentalist messaging. It is also, despite its sometimes sorrowful events, an absolutely thrilling, exhilarating and often joyful experience.

Written and directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven (shown at left) -- a cosmopolitan young filmmaker born in Turkey and educated in France, South Africa and the USA -- the movie offers yet again a Turkish tale of the evils of fundamentalism and patriarchy, particularly where the female of the species is concerned. We've seen a number of these movies with Turkish settings, from Bliss and The Edge of Heaven to the BFLF Oscar entry, When We Leave and especially last year's surprise The WatchTower. None, however, has had quite the bracing effect of bringing its theme to life as does Ms  Ergüven's effort.

I suspect this is because the filmmaker concentrates as much on the vitality of her heroines as she does on their plight. Consequently, we are immediately charmed and continue to react to the girls' bravery and spunk, despite some of the awful things that will happen to them.

This becomes a fine balancing act, and Ergüven pulls it off rather spectacularly. She has terrific help from the young actress, Günes Sensoy, who in her film debut, proves remarkably gifted at creating a character named Lale (above), who turns out to be part "Annie" and part "Nancy Drew" but mostly just a decent and believable kid -- raised, as were her sisters, by her grandmother -- who suddenly sees her life turned upside down by an angry fundamentalist uncle with designs, I would guess, on the dowries these five attractive sisters will fetch.

The movie begins with a high-spirited scene at the beach as school lets out and the girls bid goodbye to a beloved teacher, after which the sisters and a few of the young boys go for a frolic in the sea. From there it's all down-hill, as the fundamentalism of the male elder and, yes, the enabling women of the family and town, crush our girls. Yet the spiral is leavened with near-constant push-back from the younger set. The form this takes ranges from talk-back humor to out-and-out disobedience.

There is a price to pay, of course, and it comes as one after another of the sisters is married off. To whom and how makes for fascinating viewing, as do the various ways in which the sisters do or don't avoid the worst. What actually is the worst becomes the movie's unsettling shock and surprise.

Toward the finale, Mustang (whose title is never spelled out, but you'll readily understand to what it refers) turns into a kind of thrilling life-and-death struggle: a thriller, a mystery, a chase-and-action movie -- all without lessening or slighting its theme and message.

The film is France's submission for Best Foreign Language Film this year, and despite its seeming much more Turkish than French, it is indeed a co-production of France, Turkey, Qatar and Germany. Under any label, it's a damned good film.

Mustang -- from the Cohen Media Group, in Turkish with English subtitles and running 97 minutes -- opens this Friday, November 20, in New York City at the IFC Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, and in Los Angels at Laemmle's Royal. Over the weeks to come it will appear in another dozen cities (including, on January 15, the Living Room Theater and the Regal Shadowood here in Boca Raton and the Tower Theater and Miami Beach Cinematheque in Miami; the Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables; at the Regal Hollywood in Naples; the Regal Bell Tower in Ft. Myers; and the Regal Winter Park in Orlando. Click here and scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters around the country.

Alanté Kavaïté's THE SUMMER OF SANGAILE: Lithuania's entry into this year's Oscar sweeps

TrustMovies can't quite imagine what some of the older members of the Academy will make of the hot lesbian love scenes in THE SUM-MER OF SANGAILE, the official Lithuanian entry into the upcoming Best Foreign Language Film contention. Whatever reaction those scenes produce, I can't help but think that members will be greatly impressed with the cinematic beauty and quiet, tender artfulness of this unusual movie. Its plot may be a mere wisp, involving the coming-of-age of its fragile heroine, yet the film's visuals -- beginning to end -- prove stunning.

That the film, written and directed by Alanté Kavaïté (shown at right), won the Sundance Film festival award for directing (world cinema -- dramatic) should give some indication of how surprising those visuals are. Beginning with our heroine, Sangaile (the lovely Julija Steponaityte, below), entranced by the amazing-if-frightening work of a local stunt pilot during his air show, the film almost immediately cuts to our other protagonist, Auste (Aiste Dirziute), also a looker but one whose true beauty emerges more slowly as the film progresses.

Auste (below), hugely attracted to Sangaile, sets about meeting and seducing the slightly younger girl, and she make no bones about any of this. A bright, creative young woman, gifted in fashion and photography (both the clothes and the photographs seen here are good enough to turn the heads of titans in both industries), Auste uses these skills to draw Sangaile -- who early on in the film has a clearly unsatisfying sexual encounter with a young man from Auste's group -- close, closer, then whew!

All the while, Ms Kavaïté's concern for the environment in which these girls exist -- the incredibly verdant countryside, the spacious sky, the local lake, the very different homes in which the two girls live -- into which come the almost profound art that Auste produces with the visual help of Sangaile combine to create a memorable fragment of a movie. (The outstanding cinematography is by Dominique Colin.)

Sangaile has health problems -- diabetes, perhaps, and vertigo that keeps her from pursuing her dream of flying -- and she also has a somewhat distant mother, a former ballerina who appears to have had some trouble honing her parenting skills.

For her part, Auste seems surprisingly competent as both an artist and autonomous person. She "manages" the relationship as best she can, while helping Sangaile toward her own autonomy. The movie, however, is finally more a visual feast than any deep exploration of character or relationship.

But as that, The Summer of Sangaile is well worth seeing as it gently yet luxuriously probes the place of family, friendship, sexuality, creativity and challenge in the lives of the young.

From Strand Releasing, in Lithuanian with English subtitles and running 97 minutes, this Lithuania/France/Netherlands co-production opens in New York City at the IFC Center this Friday, November 20, and in Los Angeles at the Sundance Sunset Cinema on December 4.

Finally -- a chance to see the Dick Miller/Roger Corman classic, A BUCKET OF BLOOD, in a newly-restored, hi-def version

In this year's delightful documentary, That Guy Dick Miller, viewers learned a lot about a certain classic exploitation film from the late 1950s called A BUCKET OF BLOOD, the movie that pretty much put Mr. Miller of the map. One of the things I craved most while watching that nice little doc was the chance to actually see A Bucket of Blood. Now, thanks to a company called The Film Detective, we can -- and in a very well-restored, hi-def version, at that.

Directed (and not at all badly) by Roger Corman and written by Charles B. Griffith, the movie is a near-perfect time capsule of its era -- from the black-and-white cinematography that nicely apes film noir to its tale of a shy and schlubby waiter in a beatnik cafe of the day (the film's "take" on beatnik culture is funny and quite on the mark) to its take-down of pompous art critics and art culture (as true then as it is now).

The famous (especially for those of us who love our character actors) Mr. Miller, above, plays that waiter with a wonderful mix of sincerity, goofiness and the kind of edge that comes from being put down over an entire lifetime. Miller has always been a fine actor, and here, in a leading role, he owns the movie and delivers in every way.

The dialog is crisp and unshowy, with humour bubbling up pretty consistently, and when the movie turns dark, it does so quite believably -- even if the idea of the art on display fooling anyone for long is rather ridiculous. But that's part of the satire here. Supporting roles are handled well, and the film's running time of just 66 minutes means that it's over before you can object to its craziness.

For Miller fans, this restoration should be a must. For anyone else who wants to know what B-moviemaking was like back in the day (and what Mr. Corman could do with a minuscule budget and a lot of talented help), A Bucket of Blood should prove eye-opening -- and lots of fun. It arrived on Blu-ray just prior to Halloween. Click here for more information.

Mor Loushy's CENSORED VOICES: Can 48-year-old audio tapes become a visual experience?

The answer to that question in the headline above, if you had much doubt to begin with, is a resounding no. At least not as given us in the new documentary, CENSORED VOICES, by director/co-writer Mor Loushy (shown below). This does not makes the movie a failure, exactly, because those audio tapes -- of conversations recorded in 1967 between Israeli soldiers (just coming off their experience in the immediately historic Six Day War between Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbors) and future writer Amos Oz and editor Avraham Shapira -- prove too interesting and full of a very different sense of reality than the nation-building tale we've heard ever since Israel decisively won that war, in which five countries, aided by another nine, arrayed themselves against Israel with more than double the troops of that tiny country, and promptly went down to ignominious defeat.

As the Israeli nation cheered, the powers-that-be went to work immediately to begin the legend-building. The tapes that Oz and Shapira produced were quickly censored and only now, via this new documentary, are they being heard, at least fitfully and at last uncensored. But how do you take audio tapes and turn them into the kind of visual experience that moviegoers expect, if not demand? Ms Loushy's answer is to begin with a shot of the now elderly Mr. Oz and what looks like one of the tapes itself, then stick that tape into an old-fashioned player, and away we go. But what about the remaining visuals?

The filmmaker begins fairly quickly cutting back and forth between now and then, showing us -- without any identification -- old men whom we imagine may be the aged counterparts to the voices we hear on the tapes. This back and forth uses plenty of archival footage, too, which we very soon begin to realize is not necessarily connected to the actual voices we hear. This is unsettling to begin with and simply grows more so as the movie continues.

The archival footage is not uninteresting, and it seems to follow to some extent what is being told us via the tapes. But all specificity is missing. And the movie's sound design is such that we get ramped up by sounds that play upon cliché to produce the desired effect. For their part, the old men we see all look glum and concerned by what they are apparently hearing. But so what?  Around the halfway point I realized that I would have preferred simply hearing the translated tapes and dispensing with the visuals entirely.

What we hear is certainly worth our while, as these soldiers talk about how the events of the war left them, well, something less than feeling thrilled and victorious. Instead we hear of massacres and atrocities, and of the "other side" being treated, as one soldier points out, like victims of the WWII Holocaust. "Don't think about it; just kill everyone you see," one soldier recalls being told. To their credit, the soldiers do acknowledge that, had the other side been victorious, just as bad (and maybe worse) might have occurred.

Mixed feelings surface often here. "Perhaps the tragedy," notes one fellow,"is that I identified with the other side." And while, early on, we're told that these interviews "may not do the best service to what they call 'national morale,' we may do a small service to the truth," one does wonder if the small group of soldiers represented here can be made to actually stand for the entire Israeli army? As I recall, Mister Oz has been a peace-nik for quite some time now, as also, I suspect, has Mister Shapira. As am I, for that matter.

Along the way, one solider recalls the mother of another dead Israeli soldier crying out that the western wall is not worth even her dead son's fingernail. And finally, an American reporter for ABC News, in covering the largest of the Six Day War's refugee camps, notes that "The only thing growing here are seeds of revenge." Amen to that bit of prescience.

At this documentary's end, we finally see the names of these elderly men we've been viewing, and as the end credits roll, we are told, "The archival footage used in this documentary was collected from many sources. The people shown in the archival footage are not the same individuals speaking on, or described in, the audio tapes created in 1967." So:
Piece all those visuals together as you're able.

Censored Voices, from Music Box Films and running 87 minutes, opens this coming Friday, November 20, in both New York City (at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema) and in Los Angeles on Friday, November 27 (at Laemmle's Royal), followed by a national roll-out.

With THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT, Kyle Patrick Alvarez takes us back to the 1970s and some ground-breaking research

Kyle Patrick Alvarez jumped onto my filmmakers-to-watch list with his first film, Easier With Practice, back in 2009, appeared there again with his second feature C.O.G., and now, with his newest movie, THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT, must be moved to the favorite filmmakers category. Mine is a fairly wide-ranging "favorites" list, of course, but as concerns filmmakers who explore the male in modern American society, I find Alvarez one of the most interesting, perhaps one of the best.

If "Practice" and C.O.G. dealt with mainly one man (and a few of his surrounding friends or relatives), The Stanford Prison Experiment concerns a bevy of them -- students chosen for the now infamous experiment in which the subjects were placed in the confines of what appeared to be a kind of prison, with some acting as prisoners, the others overlording it as guards. The filmmaker, shown at right, and his screenwriter, Tim Talbott, use the appropriate documentary style to push us into their venue and make it seem utterly real. Very initially, the young men react as expected, joking and taking things none too seriously. It does not, however, take long before the young men acting as guards, goaded somewhat by those in charge of the experiment and told, falsely, that they were chosen based on their leadership qualities (in truth, they were chosen via the flip of a coin), begin to exercise that power that people in "policing" positions seem to feel is their god-given right. What happens after is shocking and powerful.

The experiment was to have lasted two weeks; it ended far sooner than that, as breakdowns, physical and mental, came more rapidly than the 'doctors' in charge could foresee. The man at the helm of the experiment, played with ramrod sternness by Billy Crudup (above, left), initially appears the primary villain. By the end of the film, guilt is not so easily or thoroughly placed, though the good doctor willingly assumes his share. The only woman on view is the doc's significant other, played well by Olivia Thirlby, who challenges her man and forces him to consider the gravity of what he's doing.

Among the prisoners and guards, an excellent acting ensemble is given the opportunity to shine, and there is nothing less than superb performances offered all around. As you watch the film, in fact, you may find yourself realizing that, had one of the most "put-upon" prisoners been assigned a guard role, he would have been every bit as ugly and hurtful as a guard as he is frightened and pleading as a prisoner. And of course, you wonder how you would have acted under these circumstances.

The film's (and the experiment's) ace-in-the-hole, however, is having an actual prisoner -- a black man (played beautifully by Nelsan Ellis, shown second from left, three photos above) who has spent years in San Quentin -- on hand to verify the "truthfulness" of the situation and the reactions of the men. This adds another layer of irony and reality to the situation, while also making for some superb theatrics.

In 2002, a fine foreign film titled The Experiment (starring Moritz Bleibtreu) gave us its own version of these same events, German style. More fictional, as well more suspenseful and exciting, this movie should make an interesting co-feature with Alvarez's new one. (In 2010, yet another version of the Stanford experiment -- also titled The Experiment -- was made starring Adrian Brody, which I have not seen).

After a limited and relatively short theatrical release, The Stanford Prison Experiment -- form IFC Films and running a lengthy 122 minutes -- hits the street on DVD this Tuesday, November 17, for purchase or rental.

ENTERTAINMENT isn't -- unless you're on that very special Rick Alverson wavelength

When TrustMovies sat down to view ENTERTAINMENT, the latest film from Rick Alverson, he vaguely recalled the filmmaker's name. After watching Entertainment, he looked up Alverson and realized that, sure enough, he'd seen the filmmaker's earlier work, The Comedy (TM's review of which can be found here). In the annals of filmmaking, I suspect that Mr. Alverson, shown below, may rate as one of the oddest ever to see his films obtain theatrical release: the least desirous (and perhaps the least able) of giving audiences anything like what they are used to (and most probably both expect and want to be) seeing and hearing.

This writer/director (his co-writers here are his star, Gregg Turkington, and Tim Heidecker, who starred in The Comedy) has again come up with a character and situation, the likes of which you'll have never encountered in your wildest dreams: a stand-up comic whose routine barely qualifies as funny and whose audience is made up of outliers from prisoners to the denizens of comedy clubs in deserted areas which civilization seems to have bypassed completely.

The Comedian, for that is how he is billed (played by Turkington, below), tells jokes in an angry fashion, and when he is heckled by those in his audience, which occurs with some regularity, lashes out at them fiercely.

His act is preceded by that of a young man (Tye Sheridan, below, of Mud and Joe) who wears a semi-clown costume and whose "comedy" consists solely of bouncing up and down. Whether the filmmaker means us to take this as the level to which our current "entertainment" has fallen, or maybe to understand that this is the best that outlying audiences would deserve, I can't say.

Either way, unless Mr. Alverson is trying to prove himself a modern-day Samuel Beckett, his film makes little sense on any kind of literal level. As it proceeds, the comedian makes regular phones call to his daughter, all unanswered, and so he leaves short, longing messages. But as there is no back-story, we're only left to wonder about all this, which in any case seems designed to give us a reason a care about our our poor, nutty protagonist. But the comedian hates his audience (Alverson must, as well), and of course he also hates himself.

Subsidiary characters include John C. Reilly (above) as some kind of cousin/friend, who gives the comedian advice; Michael Cera, sporting very short hair, as a rest-stop hitch-hiker; and Lotte Verbeek as a :Chromotherapist, giving a lecture on color; plus a few more well-known indie performers.

Repetitive beyond understanding, as well as perhaps the indie endurance test of all time, Entertainment proves a vision of hell for the performers, their audience -- and us, the real audience here. Offering ultra-widescreen vistas (of little that proves interesting), the movie builds (I use that word loosely) to a climax involving the opportunity to do his stand-up act at the estate of an important Hollywood big boy. What happens is... oh, but why spoil it for you?

The IMDB credits list 30 producers on this film, which may be -- short of Kickstarter-funded movies -- some sort of record. I think it may have been since viewing Gus van Sant's Gerry that I've seen a film this wayward and pointless. But if you prize something slow and different above all else, Entertainment may prove to be yours -- in spades.

The movie -- from Magnolia Pictures and running 110 very long minutes -- opens tomorrow, Friday, November 13, in New York City at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and the Landmark Sunshine Cinema, and in Toronto at the Carlton Cinema. In the weeks to come it will hit a number of other major cities across the country. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates with cities and theaters listed.