An Israeli gem worth treasuring: Shemi Zarhin's family road trip, THE KIND WORDS

A trio of grown children get a surprise jolt about their parentage in one of this year's most joyous and enjoyable movies, the new film from Israeli writer/director Shemi Zarhin, who, a decade or so back, gave us the lovely Bonjour, Monsieur Sholmi. His latest work -- THE KIND WORDS -- is even better: one of the most beautifully acted family comedy-dramas I can recall in a long while, and one that always maintains its grip on reality, no matter how bizarre the situation appears to grow.

This is due to absolutely spot-on and first-rate dialog, and characterizations of the four family members -- two brothers, a sister and a brother-in-law -- that are so precisely attuned to the way siblings (along with that one slightly outsider) act and think and feel that the movie, at times, is often so specific and real that it will make you shiver. I can only assume that Mr. Zarhin, shown at right, is himself a sibling and perhaps from this kind of large family. If not, he is just about the most astute observer of this special sort of sibling behavior that one could possibly imagine.

He gets enormous help, it must be said, from his fine cast, who bounce off each other with the kind of grace and ease that seem to have come from decades of sibling competition, interaction and love. How this little group speaks, touches, watches and understands each other is so full of specificity, history and especially humor that near-constant delight is served up.

The cast includes as the three siblings (above, clockwise from top) the hunky/funny Roy Assaf (seen just last week as the weakling hero of Wedding Doll), Assaf Ben-Shimon (playing, and very well, the bisexual brother with a child living in Bulgaria), and the standout Rotem Zissman-Cohen as their angry, witty, frustrated sister. The smart and stable brother-in-law Ricky, played with infinite patience and caring by Tsahi Halevi, is shown at left, two photos above, while that sort-of father, whom we warm up to more and more as the film frolics along, is played by Sasson Gabai, below.

The story? Via a sudden revelation by their "father" followed by some astute investigation (all three of these kids are bright), the siblings discover that their paternity may lie elsewhere, perhaps in France. The movie takes us from Israel to Paris to Marseilles, from posh hotel to hospital, dance club, sauna, the home of a famous actress and a very unusual restaurant.

All along the way, our delightful quartet of kids -- plus their tag-along dad -- keeps us chuckling, smarting and hoping for some kind of closure for them all. How that closure finally comes is, I suspect, nothing like what you will expect -- or even imagine that you want. But filmmaker Zarhin is determined to make us consider and wonder and finally appreciate what our inner and most secret lives -- and those of our parents -- might actually be about.

Some secrets need to stay secret, in fact, and that "identity" we seek can as often be based on things outside our own body and mind (and control), so it is salutary to occasionally be reminded of this. Which is something that The Kind Words -- damned few of which are uttered throughout the movie, which is perhaps another of the filmmakers' points and is all to the good, so far as expert entertainment is concerned -- manages in spades.

The movie -- a delicious road trip that takes in themes of Jewish and Arab identity, GLBT concerns, history, religion, orthodoxy and so much more -- refuses to indulge us in any expected happy ending (it does not offer up an unhappy one, either), and it is all the better, smarter and special for this refusal.

From Strand Releasing, in Hebrew and French and English subtitles, and running a long but consistently enjoyable two hours, The Kind Words opens this Friday, June 24, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and in Los Angeles on July 1 at Laemmle's Royal and Town Center theaters. Here in South Florida the film opens on July 22 at Miami's Bill Cosford Cinema and at the Cinema Paradiso in Hollywood. Elsewhere? Absolutely. Click here and then scroll down to the task bar midway and click on Screenings.

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"family" films, comedy-dramas, family secrets, Israeli cinema, parentage and parenting, road trips, Shemi Zarhin, THE KIND WORDS,

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Werewolves, anyone? Genre clunker Adrián García Bogliano's LATE PHASES hits theaters

"A masterpiece of the werewolf genre," as its poster proclaims? Only if you're totally unfamiliar with the werewolf genre and have never seen The Howling, Dog Soldiers, An American Werewolf in London (or even its silly-fun follow-up, in Paris) and any number of other fine werewolf films, could you possibly be taken in by this trivial pursuit that seems about as arbitrary and as clunkily put together as a genre movie can be. Despite a fine lead performance from Nick Damici (two photos below), as a blind Viet Nam vet stuck into a retirement community on the edge of town by his uncaring son (Ethan Embry), LATE PHASES mostly sucks, playing fast and loose with the usual werewolf tropes and making too little sense on too many levels.

As directed by Spaniard Adrián García Bogliano (pictured at left), quite far afield from his more subtle and disturbing Here Comes  the Devil, this later movie has the director out of his element in more ways than mere locale. Forget that the carnage begins the very night that Damici's character moves into the community, and that he finds a very large wolf's nail embedded in a huge, scratched-out claw print in his wall (What? The people-in-charge of this community don't clean up the houses prior to renting them?), and that the town's police don't pay a lick of attention to all the deaths occurring here. Well, maybe they're involved? If only the movie had something more complex than gore and special effects on its tiny brain.

Actually, it does. And that thing is a father/son fallout that goes way back, and is even more clunkily handled than the rest of this sorry movie. As you might guess, I am a big werewolf fan, so I sat there during the screening, trying to make excuses for what was passing before my eyes until there were no more remaining.

Much is made of our blind man's sense of smell -- until it suddenly doesn't seem to matter any more. And although we see our werewolf almost from the second or third scene of the film, the movie appears to be mostly a mystery as to who, exactly, this werewolf is. We learn the answer too soon, which drains the little suspense that has built up.

Subsidiary characters exist only to move the movie along, though they are played by some enticing pros like Tom Noonan (below, right), Larry Fessenden and Tina Louise. And when we finally get the big-deal, human-to-werewolf transformation (in photo, bottom), it's far too little too late. The filmmaker and special effect maven -- Robert Kurtzman and crew -- do get points, however, for trying to make the wolf look something like the human it represents.

Finally, the film seems a super-clunky melding of worthless family-secrets drama and sub-par monster-horror. Barely releasable crap is my verdict.

Late Phases, from Dark Sky Films and running a too-long 95 minutes, opens today, Friday, November 21, in New York City at the IFC Center (once daily at 9:45pm) and maybe elsewhere, too.

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Adrián García Bogliano, barely releaseable crap, family secrets, LATE PHASES, werewolf movies,

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