How can Andre Ujică’s THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NICOLAE CEAUCESCU be so damned interesting?

And I mean "interesting" (in the headline above) not to a Romanian -- for whom the movie of course would hold a fascination -- but to a reasonably intelligent American, one who knows only a bit of Romanian history but hardly enough, even, to follow closely what is going on in this very unusual movie. And yet follow it he does, in wonderment and awe. This must have something to do, he thinks, with power: How it "graces" those who hold it with seemingly unlimited ability to do the most horrible, stupid things and then act like these things constitute something totally "other" than what they actually are.

That anyway, is one explanation for the reign of Nicolae Ceaucescu, the little dictator of Romania for 24 years and also for the "hold" that this movie about him may exert on viewers who choose to see this three-hour film that offers no narration, simply "found" footage and appropriate musical accompaniment from the archives of various events in the life of the dictator, his wife Elena (both are shown above, in winter sleigh attire) and their country during this increasingly stressful, down-sliding period.

To create his film in this odd manner was the choice of filmmaker Andre Ujică, shown at left, and a brave one it is. TrustMovies tackled Ujică’s opus via screener, parsing it out to himself in three sections of one hour each over three days. He can't say how he might have fared had he viewed it in a theater for three uninterrupted hours, but each passing hour left him eager to get back to this strange tale, which initially shows (after the opening episode that gives us Nicolae's and Elena's downfall) the man as almost a normal-seeming, Soviet-type apparatchik (only shorter of stature and with a bit of a liberal bent), until power (what else could it have been?) corrupted him absolutely.

The film is full of fascinating moments in time: pomp and ceremony, Romanian style; a visit from Charles De Gaulle; Czech Spring, about which the little premiere gives conflicting signals (as I interpret them, at least); his visit to Mao -- yow! (see below) and an embarrassing moment in U.S. history as President Jimmy Carter welcomes him -- with a marquee advertising Deep Throat prominent in the background! No dates are given so we must rely on popular culture, fashion and faces to fill us in, time-wise.

In the middle of all the pomp, there is a horrible flood (kind of reminds you of Bush and Katrina), then a scene of urban devastation (from a bomb? what?); then a funeral (whose? family? his mother?) followed by a hugely creepy scene of bear hunting. Finally, a living human being demurs aloud about our great premier but is shouted down. NC is promptly re-elected and what follows is a grand parade in China that rivals in scope and use of people the most lavish of Hollywood epics. And then the hair grays, the visage begins to crack and age.

Unrest, when it happens, happens fast, and we are back at the beginning as the husband and wife, arrested, argue and then refuse to answer. We've lived through one hell of an "autobio-graphy" -- a well-chosen word and title for the film, because it is made up entirely of official cinematography. Unlike any other docu-mentary I have seen, this one gets at truth via official hypocrisy (yup, that's Nixon, below) and calculated overkill and yet remains somehow un-ironic on one level and bursting with irony on another.

Shown at various festivals and as part of the new Romanian cinema last year, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu is a film I had despaired of ever obtaining a theatrical release. Now, thanks to a new distributor, The Film Desk, the documentary will be released this Friday, September 9, opening at the Elinor Bunin Munro at Lincoln Center, followed by a nationwide release in select cities.

History mystery: Göran Hugo Olsson’s fine THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975

Will the real Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis please stand up? I'm only asking because these two people I see from back in the day -- late 60s, early 70s -- look, sound and act little like the firebrands I recall from my own younger days. This "new" look at old icons is one of the great services performed by Swedish filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson (shown below) abetted nearly 44 years ago by Swedish journalist Ingrid Dahlberg, who filmed Mr. Carmichael and his mother Mabel in a sweet and pleasant interview in their home in 1967. This interview, which appeared on Swedish television that year -- and now appears in Olsson's new documentary THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 -- gives us a Stokely Carmichael that few Americans who were of adult age at that time will recognize.

This is also true of the scenes we see with Ms Davis, with Eldridge Cleaver and his wife Kathleen Cleaver, and even , if to a lesser extent, with Bobby Seale, founder of the Black Panther Party. Why, exactly, this should be so may be he difficult to deter-mine, but surely it had to do in part with the way these figures were portrayed by the U.S. media at the time: raised-fisted firebrands who were always advocating revolution. And armed revolution, at that. This is also true, no doubt, because the interviewers are not Americans. These Swedes brings a less judgmental viewpoint to bear upon their subjects. They are more inquiring, and they do not fall into the typical media game of serving us warmed over cliches (below) in place of investigation.

Not that Black Power (and its advocates) didn't include its share of angry rhetoric. But how much more there is here, with the Swedes at the helm. From the first, as they interviews a white Floridian coffee shop owner about his views that anyone can succeed here in the U.S.-- without bringing up the rather obvious racial barriers to blacks that existed at this time. They do mention something I had not thought of previously: It was not simply that blacks had to sit in the back of the bus (or give up any remaining seats, even there, to whites). They also had to pay the same fare as whites without getting full compensation for that fare. Leave it to foreigners to see the details Americans miss.

This film is history through an unusual lens. And it does not matter whether, at the time, you were were pro or con Black Power, you were still viewing it via the official American media eye. In the interview with Angela Davis -- this is worth the whole movie! -- Ms Davis, above, makes so tellingly clear why violence is part of the Black heritage in America, and why you cannot have a conversation about race and progress without this violence coming into the discussion.

One of the more interesting sections deals with a honcho from TV Guide (then the nation's most popular magazine: how times have changed!) who visits Sweden and decides, pretty much as a majority of one, that the country is anti-American -- because it only shows the negative aspects of America. You can imagine the same guy declaring that views of Hitler's Germany are anti-German because they concentrate only on the extermination of the Jews.

How Attica fits into this history is pertinent, as well, as are the thoughts and feelings of today's Blacks -- from Talib Kweli and Erykah Badu to Lewis Michaux (the latter has some terrific, pointed stuff to tell us). If the film seems to lose its focus as it proceeds, I think this is because we are getting less from Sweden and more from current American Blacks. This is not bad, mind you -- it brings modernity into the picture -- but it seems just a tad less interesting than some of the historical footage. In any case, it's good to be reminded just what constitutes racism and racists --  then and now -- and leave it to the Swedes to do this with some class and charity. And here we thought they were only good for Ingmar Bergman and  I Am Curious (Yellow)!)

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, from Sundance Selects, opens theatrically this Friday, September 9, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and the IFC Center, followed  by a VOD run beginning Wednesday,  September 14.

Mexican summer continues at AFA with Eugenio Polgovsky's THE INHERITORS; plus "GenMex"--Recent Films from Mexico

After a week of films from Mexican movie-maker Nicolás Pereda last July, New York City's Anthology Film Archives gets back in Mexican mode this Friday for its final two weeks of a special film initiative celebrating -- together with Cinema Tropical and the Mexican Cultural Institute -- the impressive re-emergence of Mexican cinema. Starting Friday, September 9, AFA will host a week's worth of screenings that constitute the New York theatrical premiere of a multi-award-winning documentary, THE INHERITORS (Los Herederos) directed by Eugenio Polgovsky (shown below).

Heralded by the program notes as "the most highly praised and awarded Mexican documentary in many years," the film does not disappoint. Señor Polgovsky is said to have spent two years filming the daily lives of these children and their parents in some of the poorest rural areas of Mexico, as they work, work, work -- picking peppers, tomatoes and green beans. If the movie doesn't sound like a walk in the park, neither is it drab nor boring nor even particularly repetitive -- which is surprising, given the nature of these lives and the work at hand.

Polgovsky eschews narration, giving us instead simply the ambient sounds: the kids -- high-spirited and full of life -- and the sound of their and their parents' labor. We're five minutes into the film before we even hear any real dialog (the first line's a winner: "Go find the dappled goat!")  Instead the filmmaker concentrates on village life -- several different villages are shot throughout -- where we see the aged, as well as the kids, hard at work at various activities.

These includes cane cutting, chicken feeding and even the construction of cement blocks -- which is as close as the movie and its denizens come to "industry." There are a lot of walking, traveling and carrying on view -- with the camera often placed behind those doing the walking.  The colors are true and pristine, and among the many indelible images is one of a baby with a scab on the side of its little nose, and another of a child barely bigger than that pot s/he is carried in (below).

In the middle of all this, we suddenly get... art!  A young boy is shown painting pieces of sculpture in bright, gorgeous colors that are unlike anything else we've seen in the movie. If there were narration here, I'd want to know more about these pieces, which I would guess are probably art works to be sold to tourists. But instead of telling, Polgovsky shows -- immersing us in this world like nothing we've quite seen before. By the end I think you'll be happy, as was I, to take immersion over explanation. If less detailed, it is somehow richer.

Music and dance engulf us toward the finale, and these are welcome, after all the work. Something else is present, too, and unless I am way off base or perhaps misread what I saw, this is a look of disdain from at least one of the parents and the children toward the director, as the workers, filmmaker and we viewers are all riding together in the back of a truck. (I am assuming that the director also doubled as cameraman, since no director of photography is listed on the film's IMDB site. On his own IMDB site, Señor Polgovsky is credited with eight counts as cinematographer but only three as director (he did the fine camerawork for Gael García Bernal's interesting directorial debut Déficit.)

This look from subject to artist speaks volumes about class and privilege, and it is to the filmmaker's credit that he included it in the finished film. For the filmmaker, as for us viewers, the film can be perceived as a number of things -- from an education to a kind of holiday. For its subjects, however, this is no film. This is life unchanging, and for all the cinematic poetry on view in this 90-minute movie, that fact has now been communicated via this single uncompromising look.

The Inheritors, from Icarus Films, open this Friday at AFA. Click here to see screening times and here for directions to the venue.

************

The final week of celebrating Mexican cinema offers up a number of the finer and more unusual films from new Mexican movie-makers, including a couple that TrustMovies has covered elsewhere. Below is the complete listing of films to be shown, together with description and screening times. Click on the links below to see TM's earlier coverage.

GENMEX: RECENT FILMS FROM MEXICO, September 16 – 22

Rigoberto Pérezcano
NORTHLESS / NORTEADO
2009, 95 minutes, 35mm.
“Cinema’s fascination with illegal border crossings between Mexico and the U.S. gets a totally fresh take in this delicately poised film. Focused on how life is lived precariously between desperate attempts to cross over, the story follows Oaxaca-born Andrés as he bides his time in Tijuana. He finds a little work at a convenience store and gets friendly with the two women who run it. As the relationships deepen and their individual stories emerge, the emotional costs of the ties that bind are explored with great sensitivity. The sincerity of the minimal story line is balanced by a liberating humor and breathtakingly beautiful images that give life and dignity to Andrés and his fellow travelers.” –NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS
–Friday, September 16 at 7:00 and Sunday, September 18 at 9:15.

Matías Meyer
THE CRAMP / EL CALAMBRE
2009, 90 minutes, 35mm.
Julien, a young French comedian, disembarks in Chacahua, a fishing community on Mexico’s pacific coast. His spiritual search, framed by stunning natural scenery, barely conceals his social failure. He is adrift in a world that is completely foreign to him. Then he meets Pablo, a local fisherman who will guide him towards spiritual healing. Relating to this patient, simple man helps Julien come to terms with himself. Based on a short story by celebrated Chinese writer GaoXingjian, Meyer’s second feature film is a contemplative meditation on anxiety and solitude.
–Friday, September 16 at 9:00 and Monday, September 19 at 7:00.

Yulene Olaizola
INTIMIDADES DE SHAKESPEARE Y VÍCTOR HUGO
2009, 83 minutes, 35mm.
“Dipping a toe into (early) Errol Morris docu waters, Yulene Olaizola sustains a strange, unsettling mood.” –VARIETY
Yulene Olaizola’s debut film is a thought-provoking portrait of two lonely and strangely intertwined friends. For years, Olaizola’s grandmother Rosa told stories of a handsome young lodger. Living under (and on top of) her roof in the 1980s, he painted strange pictures on the walls and played an importantrole in Rosa’s emotional life. But this picture of a pleasant, harmless and creative young man slowly gives way to a shocking end.
–Saturday, September 17 at 2:00 and Monday, September 19 at 9:00.

Jonás Cuarón
YEAR OF THE NAIL / AÑO UÑA
2007, 78 minutes, 35mm.
“The serious artistic drive to meld fine photography with cinema is married to acharming tale of young almostlove in Jonás Cuarón’s sweet and memorable debut. The project represents a year’s worth of photos Cuarón took of spontaneous events and day-to-day activities. The fictional narrative about 14-year-old Diego and visiting American college girl Molly gradually emerged out of organizing the photos into sequences, with all but one of the original subjects recording the soundtrack’s voiceover dialogue. … [A] thoughtful, tender but quite hip look at two young people with too much separating them for a match to ever be possible.” –Robert Koehler, VARIETY
–Saturday, September 17 at 4:00 and Thursday, September 22 at 6:45.

Rubén Imaz Castro
FAMILIA TORTUGA
2006, 139 minutes, 35mm.
The debut feature from writer-director Castro is an understated and sensitive drama about a family that gathers at their mother’s home on the anniversary of her death. They are overwhelmed with grief and a shared sentiment of haunting absence. At the center of it all is Uncle Manuel, a remarkable man who holds the clan together by doing all he can to help, which includes raising his brother’s children and assisting his trade unionist brother-in-law. Amid lost dreams, the family struggles to survive with one another, but most importantly, with themselves.
–Saturday, September 17 at 6:00 and Wednesday, September 21 at 8:30.

Enrique Rivero
PARQUE VÍA
2008, 86 minutes, 35mm.
Beto is the custodian of a house in Mexico City, left empty for several years, in which he used to work as a domestic helper. The solitude of the last ten years coupled with the monotony and routine of his job have led him to develop a pathological fear of the world outside, to the point of limiting his contacts to only two people: the owner of the house, for whom he has a feeling of deep gratitude and respect that is translated into obedience; and Lupe, a friend, a confidante, and a lover. News that the house is to go on sale causes a dilemma for Beto, who doesn’t know whether he should dare to set forth and live or seek a way of remaining in his confinement.
–Saturday, September 17 at 9:00 and Wednesday, September 21 at 6:30.

Andrés León Becker & Javier Solar
MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD / MÁS QUE A NADA EN EL MUNDO
2006, 90 minutes, 35mm.
Alicia, a seven-year-old girl, lives in an apartment with her mother. When the mother, after a sentimental setback, goes into a depression that makes her sleep for days on end, Alicia and her friend Lucía decide that an old man who lives next door is to blame; he has a gruesome aspect and is surely a vampire trying to possess her mother. So, Alicia decides to go into the neighbor’s apartment to put an end to the curse. Hailed by VARIETY as an “affecting feature debut”, this film by co-writer/director team Becker and Solar features a powerful performance by Elizabeth Cervantes in the role of the afflicted single mother.
–Sunday, September 18 at 1:30 and Tuesday, September 20 at 9:00.

Gerardo Naranjo
DRAMA/MEX
2007, 92 minutes, video.
Two interlaced stories unfold over the course of the same long, hot day in the once lush and now decadent resort town of Acapulco. The first involves the beautiful and cool Fernanda, who is forced to deal with the sudden emergence of the ex-lover, Chino. Her boyfriend, Gonzalo, must now compete with the intense sexual tension Fernanda and Chino share. The second story concerns Jamie, an office worker with hidden indiscretions, attempting suicide in a beach-front hotel until a precocious and equally dishonest teenage girl disrupts the plan. They will all converge in a stark and harrowing portrayal of moral ambiguity, in the debut feature by filmmaker Gerardo Naranjo, director of the recent Cannes favorite MISS BALA.
–Sunday, September 18 at 3:30 and Tuesday, September 20 at 7:00.

Julián Hernández
RAGING SUN, RAGING SKY / RABIOSO SOL, RABIOSO CIELO 
2008, 191 minutes, 35mm.
“One of the most consistent, revelatory cinematic visions anywhere in the world today.” –Michael Koresky, REVERSE SHOT
This is the third and final installment of a trilogy by Hernández, who has been described by Armond White as “Mexico’s finest, yet critically neglected, auteur.” An epic gay romance, the film is a passionate exploration of love, sex, and destiny that tells the story of Kieri and Ryo, two young men whoselove is set to a test in a mythical struggle in which loss and death are but inevitable phases in the journey towards happiness. Winner of the Teddy Award for Best Feature at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, Hernández’s film is a ravishing meditation on the power of desire.
–Sunday, September 18 at 5:30 and Thursday, September 22 at 8:30.

Mexican summer continues at AFA with Eugenio Polgovsky's THE INHERITORS; plus "GenMex"--Recent Films from Mexico

After a week of films from Mexican movie-maker Nicolás Pereda last July, New York City's Anthology Film Archives gets back in Mexican mode this Friday for its final two weeks of a special film initiative celebrating -- together with Cinema Tropical and the Mexican Cultural Institute -- the impressive re-emergence of Mexican cinema. Starting Friday, September 9, AFA will host a week's worth of screenings that constitute the New York theatrical premiere of a multi-award-winning documentary, THE INHERITORS (Los Herederos) directed by Eugenio Polgovsky (shown below).

Heralded by the program notes as "the most highly praised and awarded Mexican documentary in many years," the film does not disappoint. Señor Polgovsky is said to have spent two years filming the daily lives of these children and their parents in some of the poorest rural areas of Mexico, as they work, work, work -- picking peppers, tomatoes and green beans. If the movie doesn't sound like a walk in the park, neither is it drab nor boring nor even particularly repetitive -- which is surprising, given the nature of these lives and the work at hand.

Polgovsky eschews narration, giving us instead simply the ambient sounds: the kids -- high-spirited and full of life -- and the sound of their and their parents' labor. We're five minutes into the film before we even hear any real dialog (the first line's a winner: "Go find the dappled goat!")  Instead the filmmaker concentrates on village life -- several different villages are shot throughout -- where we see the aged, as well as the kids, hard at work at various activities.

These includes cane cutting, chicken feeding and even the construction of cement blocks -- which is as close as the movie and its denizens come to "industry." There are a lot of walking, traveling and carrying on view -- with the camera often placed behind those doing the walking.  The colors are true and pristine, and among the many indelible images is one of a baby with a scab on the side of its little nose, and another of a child barely bigger than that pot s/he is carried in (below).

In the middle of all this, we suddenly get... art!  A young boy is shown painting pieces of sculpture in bright, gorgeous colors that are unlike anything else we've seen in the movie. If there were narration here, I'd want to know more about these pieces, which I would guess are probably art works to be sold to tourists. But instead of telling, Polgovsky shows -- immersing us in this world like nothing we've quite seen before. By the end I think you'll be happy, as was I, to take immersion over explanation. If less detailed, it is somehow richer.

Music and dance engulf us toward the finale, and these are welcome, after all the work. Something else is present, too, and unless I am way off base or perhaps misread what I saw, this is a look of disdain from at least one of the parents and the children toward the director, as the workers, filmmaker and we viewers are all riding together in the back of a truck. (I am assuming that the director also doubled as cameraman, since no director of photography is listed on the film's IMDB site. On his own IMDB site, Señor Polgovsky is credited with eight counts as cinematographer but only three as director (he did the fine camerawork for Gael García Bernal's interesting directorial debut Déficit.)

This look from subject to artist speaks volumes about class and privilege, and it is to the filmmaker's credit that he included it in the finished film. For the filmmaker, as for us viewers, the film can be perceived as a number of things -- from an education to a kind of holiday. For its subjects, however, this is no film. This is life unchanging, and for all the cinematic poetry on view in this 90-minute movie, that fact has now been communicated via this single uncompromising look.

The Inheritors, from Icarus Films, open this Friday at AFA. Click here to see screening times and here for directions to the venue.

************

The final week of celebrating Mexican cinema offers up a number of the finer and more unusual films from new Mexican movie-makers, including a couple that TrustMovies has covered elsewhere. Below is the complete listing of films to be shown, together with description and screening times. Click on the links below to see TM's earlier coverage.

GENMEX: RECENT FILMS FROM MEXICO, September 16 – 22

Rigoberto Pérezcano
NORTHLESS / NORTEADO
2009, 95 minutes, 35mm.
“Cinema’s fascination with illegal border crossings between Mexico and the U.S. gets a totally fresh take in this delicately poised film. Focused on how life is lived precariously between desperate attempts to cross over, the story follows Oaxaca-born Andrés as he bides his time in Tijuana. He finds a little work at a convenience store and gets friendly with the two women who run it. As the relationships deepen and their individual stories emerge, the emotional costs of the ties that bind are explored with great sensitivity. The sincerity of the minimal story line is balanced by a liberating humor and breathtakingly beautiful images that give life and dignity to Andrés and his fellow travelers.” –NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS
–Friday, September 16 at 7:00 and Sunday, September 18 at 9:15.

Matías Meyer
THE CRAMP / EL CALAMBRE
2009, 90 minutes, 35mm.
Julien, a young French comedian, disembarks in Chacahua, a fishing community on Mexico’s pacific coast. His spiritual search, framed by stunning natural scenery, barely conceals his social failure. He is adrift in a world that is completely foreign to him. Then he meets Pablo, a local fisherman who will guide him towards spiritual healing. Relating to this patient, simple man helps Julien come to terms with himself. Based on a short story by celebrated Chinese writer GaoXingjian, Meyer’s second feature film is a contemplative meditation on anxiety and solitude.
–Friday, September 16 at 9:00 and Monday, September 19 at 7:00.

Yulene Olaizola
INTIMIDADES DE SHAKESPEARE Y VÍCTOR HUGO
2009, 83 minutes, 35mm.
“Dipping a toe into (early) Errol Morris docu waters, Yulene Olaizola sustains a strange, unsettling mood.” –VARIETY
Yulene Olaizola’s debut film is a thought-provoking portrait of two lonely and strangely intertwined friends. For years, Olaizola’s grandmother Rosa told stories of a handsome young lodger. Living under (and on top of) her roof in the 1980s, he painted strange pictures on the walls and played an importantrole in Rosa’s emotional life. But this picture of a pleasant, harmless and creative young man slowly gives way to a shocking end.
–Saturday, September 17 at 2:00 and Monday, September 19 at 9:00.

Jonás Cuarón
YEAR OF THE NAIL / AÑO UÑA
2007, 78 minutes, 35mm.
“The serious artistic drive to meld fine photography with cinema is married to acharming tale of young almostlove in Jonás Cuarón’s sweet and memorable debut. The project represents a year’s worth of photos Cuarón took of spontaneous events and day-to-day activities. The fictional narrative about 14-year-old Diego and visiting American college girl Molly gradually emerged out of organizing the photos into sequences, with all but one of the original subjects recording the soundtrack’s voiceover dialogue. … [A] thoughtful, tender but quite hip look at two young people with too much separating them for a match to ever be possible.” –Robert Koehler, VARIETY
–Saturday, September 17 at 4:00 and Thursday, September 22 at 6:45.

Rubén Imaz Castro
FAMILIA TORTUGA
2006, 139 minutes, 35mm.
The debut feature from writer-director Castro is an understated and sensitive drama about a family that gathers at their mother’s home on the anniversary of her death. They are overwhelmed with grief and a shared sentiment of haunting absence. At the center of it all is Uncle Manuel, a remarkable man who holds the clan together by doing all he can to help, which includes raising his brother’s children and assisting his trade unionist brother-in-law. Amid lost dreams, the family struggles to survive with one another, but most importantly, with themselves.
–Saturday, September 17 at 6:00 and Wednesday, September 21 at 8:30.

Enrique Rivero
PARQUE VÍA
2008, 86 minutes, 35mm.
Beto is the custodian of a house in Mexico City, left empty for several years, in which he used to work as a domestic helper. The solitude of the last ten years coupled with the monotony and routine of his job have led him to develop a pathological fear of the world outside, to the point of limiting his contacts to only two people: the owner of the house, for whom he has a feeling of deep gratitude and respect that is translated into obedience; and Lupe, a friend, a confidante, and a lover. News that the house is to go on sale causes a dilemma for Beto, who doesn’t know whether he should dare to set forth and live or seek a way of remaining in his confinement.
–Saturday, September 17 at 9:00 and Wednesday, September 21 at 6:30.

Andrés León Becker & Javier Solar
MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD / MÁS QUE A NADA EN EL MUNDO
2006, 90 minutes, 35mm.
Alicia, a seven-year-old girl, lives in an apartment with her mother. When the mother, after a sentimental setback, goes into a depression that makes her sleep for days on end, Alicia and her friend Lucía decide that an old man who lives next door is to blame; he has a gruesome aspect and is surely a vampire trying to possess her mother. So, Alicia decides to go into the neighbor’s apartment to put an end to the curse. Hailed by VARIETY as an “affecting feature debut”, this film by co-writer/director team Becker and Solar features a powerful performance by Elizabeth Cervantes in the role of the afflicted single mother.
–Sunday, September 18 at 1:30 and Tuesday, September 20 at 9:00.

Gerardo Naranjo
DRAMA/MEX
2007, 92 minutes, video.
Two interlaced stories unfold over the course of the same long, hot day in the once lush and now decadent resort town of Acapulco. The first involves the beautiful and cool Fernanda, who is forced to deal with the sudden emergence of the ex-lover, Chino. Her boyfriend, Gonzalo, must now compete with the intense sexual tension Fernanda and Chino share. The second story concerns Jamie, an office worker with hidden indiscretions, attempting suicide in a beach-front hotel until a precocious and equally dishonest teenage girl disrupts the plan. They will all converge in a stark and harrowing portrayal of moral ambiguity, in the debut feature by filmmaker Gerardo Naranjo, director of the recent Cannes favorite MISS BALA.
–Sunday, September 18 at 3:30 and Tuesday, September 20 at 7:00.

Julián Hernández
RAGING SUN, RAGING SKY / RABIOSO SOL, RABIOSO CIELO 
2008, 191 minutes, 35mm.
“One of the most consistent, revelatory cinematic visions anywhere in the world today.” –Michael Koresky, REVERSE SHOT
This is the third and final installment of a trilogy by Hernández, who has been described by Armond White as “Mexico’s finest, yet critically neglected, auteur.” An epic gay romance, the film is a passionate exploration of love, sex, and destiny that tells the story of Kieri and Ryo, two young men whoselove is set to a test in a mythical struggle in which loss and death are but inevitable phases in the journey towards happiness. Winner of the Teddy Award for Best Feature at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, Hernández’s film is a ravishing meditation on the power of desire.
–Sunday, September 18 at 5:30 and Thursday, September 22 at 8:30.

Family film "find" -- Bryan Michael Stoller's FIRST DOG harks back to kinder times

Normally TrustMovies wouldn't spend time watching straight-to-video* family films because there are just too many other important genres (and the films that inhabit them) to keep up with. That said, he's awfully glad he took a chance on FIRST DOG, a movie about America by Canadian filmmaker Bryan Michael Stoller (shown below) that comes down four-square in favor of the good stuff: adoption (of children and pets), doing the right thing, and a U.S. President who offers -- unlike both the current and immediately preceding resident of The White House -- something more than repeated lies to the American people. "Say one thing, do another" is not the operative position for the particular movie President shown here.

That President is played, in nice style -- with a winning combination of formality, decency and warmth -- by Eric Roberts (below), and although the film he's in, due no doubt to lack of a big budget, must cut corners on everything from extras to rehearsal time, still manages to tell its simple, even a bit simplistic tale well enough to hold the interest of kids from, say, 5 to 12 -- while offering enough of those eternal verities to hook their parents, too. The whole movie, in fact, appears to take place in a alternate universe in which we recognize the players -- Prez, First Lady, bodyguards and such -- yet the events (the opening of a school named after the President, the lack of security, the ability of our little-boy hero to outrun the secret service) hark back to a more gullible time when "innocence" trumped snark.

The tale told here is one of an unhappy orphan named Danny (Jean-Paul Howard, below) who stumbles upon the "lost" dog of the U.S. President and then spends the  rest of movie trying to get the dog back home.

At around the 30-minute mark, the film becomes a road movie with a number of relatively interesting characters introduced along the way, including a truck driver (played by Tommy "Tiny" Lister, below, right),

a group of country musicians, a kindly waitress, and a couple of oddballs (played by Paula Devicq, below and Tim Peyton, above, left)-- one seemingly helpful, the other not.

Even on its low budget, the technical aspects of the film are handled quite well, and the screenplay, though paint-by-numbers, is good enough to hit most of the bases. When violence is threatened, it's low-key and comedic rather than scary, and the life lessons learned by our little hero should only be remembered later on: "She told me I could trust her," the boy laments, "but I guess you can't go by what people say. It's what they do."

The film also features some nice songs written and sung by Dolly Parton, one of which, "Family of Friends" is a keeper. Full of coincidence and overall no great shakes, First Dog is still a nice surprise and an enjoyable experience. It takes you back to better time when lies were not sold as gospel and Presidents actually cared about the environment, humanity (the great lump of it, not just the rich) and even dogs.

Hitting many of the right notes as it bumps along, the film is, as we say, of a piece. Your younger kids will like it, and you yourself may feel the tug of a sad nostalgia while viewing. First Dog -- running time 97 minutes --  is available from Gaiam beginning this Tuesday, September 6, for sale. (Or you can rent it from the usual suspects, Netflix or Blockbuster.)

* I am evidently incorrect about this film going straight-to-video.  According to John Dhabolt of CoveringMovies.com (which is pretty much the source of tracking a film's theatrical-release history), First Dog received some theatrical play via the Harkins Theaters chain in the vicinity of Mesa, Arizona, during the first half of July 2011.

Alain Corneau's swan song, LOVE CRIME -- Kristin Scott Thomas, Ludivine Sagnier star

The corporation as psychotic personality has been picked over by documentaries and narrative films aplenty in the past few years, and god knows this corporate status deserves its lickings (particularly since our own Supreme Court has now gifted the corporation with a status higher than that of America's individuals: Where are those lame-brained tea-party protests when they're actually needed?). To the film canon that points up the corporation's flaws, we can now add LOVE CRIME, the new -- and sadly the last -- film from a fine French director Alain Corneau, shown below, who gave us the disparate delights of Fear and Trembling, All the Mornings of the World, and Fort Saganne.

The film, co-written by Corneau and Nathalie Carter, is also a somewhat clever murder mystery that features crack performances from its two leading ladies and a couple of other excellent ones from its subsidiary males. Kristin Scott Thomas (above, left, and below, right) plays the woman at the top of the French subsidiary of a huge multinational and Ludivine Sagnier (above, right, and below, left) is her unusual assistant, a young woman happy to give her boss all the credit, even when the ideas are her own. (The guys are represented by Patrick Mille, shown at bottom  who plays the source of both business and pleasure for Scott Thomas, and Guillaume Marquet, a business associate of Sagnier who would like to become something more.)

Performances are so good, and the plot is so interesting for awhile that we're hooked. Then, after the moment of truth as it were -- somewhat more than halfway into the film -- exactly what we expect to happen keeps happening, over and over until the finale. For those who enjoy a good mystery, this is very frustrating.

Intelligent viewers like to have their movies keep ahead of them, rather than a mile behind, and as this plot twist has already been used in a few mysteries (one of them by Agatha Christie!), that is unfortunately where we end up. There is a small surprise waiting at the end, but this is far too little too late. Still, the leading ladies (and their gentlemen) make this one worthwhile.

Love Crime, released via Sundance Selects, opened yesterday around town (mine, and maybe yours).

Photos are from the film itself, except that of M. Corneau, 

which comes courtesy of Abaca.

Richard Gabai's new genre-jumping thriller IN/SIGHT has a nice surprise up its sleeve

Full disclosure: Richard Gabai, the director of the film at hand, IN/SIGHT, is a cousin of my longtime companion, and I have known the movie-maker, though at quite a distance, for some years. I have also seen a few of his earlier films, none of which I was much taken with, though I could see where they fit into the family-film-fodder category by supplying necessary TV-level entertainment to the masses. (God, that sounds elitist! Well, so be it.) Mr. Gabai, has worked in the industry as an actor (The Wasp Woman [remake], After Midnight, Final Voyage), as a writer and director, and as a producer and executive producer (he helped bring about this year's excellent and woefully underseen Beautiful Boy).

Gabai, shown at left, has directed 17 films, in genres from high-school-sex-comedy (Virgin High) to family adventure (2009's 3-D Call of the Wild), and as he has worked, he appears to have been learning on-the-job. The IMDB ratings for his films have slowly climbed, from very low scores for his early work to noticeably higher for his more recent movies. Now, with his new film, he's turned his attention to providing something a little different in the para-psychology/thriller genre. In/Sight, from a screenplay by Aaron Ginzberg and Wade McIntyre, seems to me Gabai's best work as a director, and (with the exception of the exceptional Beautiful Boy), the best film he's been involved with in his career so far.

All of which is not to say that In/Sight is anything approaching a great movie. In fact, its first half is pretty mundane: standard, TV-level stuff, with our heroine, a hospital nurse portrayed by the quietly elegant Natalie Zea (above), appearing to be accidentally electro-shocked into the mind/spirit of her patient, a young woman (Angeline-Rose Troy, below) who's just been brutally and bloodily assaulted.

When the police pooh-pooh the visions our nurse begins to have, even though these "light shows" lead to some certifiable clues, she must take it upon herself to investigate the crime, finally with the help of one of the more kindly -- not to mention hunky -- detectives (Sean Patrick Flanery, below, right).

All this results in various suspects turning up -- from an ex-boyfriend (Thomas Ian Nichols, above, left) to a creepy neighbor (Christopher Lloyd, below)...

...to the victim's former therapist (an interesting role and a surprising choice of actor, Adam Baldwin, results in a winning combination).

Unfortunately, most of these guys exist only to act as annoying "red herrings." But there are other interesting performers on view: Veronica Cartwright, above, as our nurse's invalid mom, and the bizarre Max Perlich, below, as another detective who seems to have materialized out of a 30s film noir.

All this is just standard stuff until, during its second half, the movie delivers a knock-out punch that, upon reflection, makes uncanny sense and takes the film into an entirely other realm, proving that In/Sight actually has some insight -- plus a ferociously intelligent surprise up its sleeve. 

In/Sight, with a running time of 92 minutes, opens today for the Labor Day weekend, across much of the country. In New York City it'll be playing at the AMC Empire 25, To see all the various venues, click here, then scroll down to the bottom right and click on THEATERS.