Home-grown terrorism, 1960s-70s style: With AMERICAN PASTORAL, Ewan McGregor directs and stars in the latest Philip Roth adaptation; Woody Allen tackles the theme in his Amazon streaming series, CRISIS IN SIX SCENES

Given how life-and-time-changing were the rather large number of incidents of home-grown American terrorism back in the 1960 &70s -- as Civil Rights appeared so strongly on the national agenda, the Vietnam War raged, protests mounted, and bombings and other assorted acts occurred (I don't think we referred to them as "terrorism" back then; they were instead "violent protests" or assassinations) -- it seems odd how little our cultural landscape, then or now, reflected this.

Considering how many movies, books and TV shows covered the Manson family and its so-much-more sensational

crimes, this lack is more than a little noticeable. We've seen a few documentaries down the decades, and we had the pretty-good TV movie Katherine (which has, since then, had its title changed to 'The Radical'), the musical Hair, of course (but that offered protest than was non-violent), and a few novels that, mostly quite after-the-fact, addressed the issues that were then at hand and quite vital to the good old USA.

One of these was Philip Roth's American Pastoral, first published in 1997, of which we now have a movie version, also called AMERICAN PASTORAL and directed by and starring Ewan McGregor (shown at right), with a screenplay adapted by John Romano. The other currently-streaming-via- Amazon cultural artifact that tackles this time period and its discontents is -- of all things -- the latest endeavor by one, Woody Allen, and is titled CRISIS IN SIX SCENES. The two works, while covering similar territory, could hardly be more different.

This is not unexpected, of course, considering the oeuvre of Mr. Allen and Mr. Roth. But comparison of both these two new "entertainments" -- having seen them in the same week, as did TrustMovies -- proves rather striking and edifying. While neither work is entirely successful, both are eminently worth seeing, mulling over and enjoying for their various strong points, which are many. American Pastoral explores terrorism and its results darkly, while Crisis in Six Scenes gives us the light and quite funny/satiric side via the usual Woody witticisms/characterizations. Both make you think and ponder nonetheless. Seen together, they add up to a particularly tasty, nourishing and worth-digesting meal.

I have not read the Roth novel, and therefore can only go by what the movie version offers. (I have read several of Roth's early works and found them sometimes funny and well-written but awfully misogynistic.) The movie, it seems to me, shows that Mr. McGregor has real potential as a filmmaker -- even if the result he has given us here is remarkably flat. But wait: It's often that very flatness that keeps us glued to the enticing and engulfing plot.

Everything is straight up and straight out, from the early exposition/narration to the individual scenes that tell and show us what we need to know. The story, of the "perfect" American family -- Dad's a high school football hero, mom's a beauty queen, and their daughter, ah, there's the catch. She's a lovely little all-American blond named Merry, with a stutter, a keen intelligence and perhaps the kind of real and all-inclusive empathy that (we're being told of late) can prove unhealthy.

In any case, Merry turns into a protester and then into a "terrorist," and the remainder of the movie details the unraveling of this family in a succession of scenes that grows darker and more unsettling, partially because we never completely learn how and why the change (or maybe growth) in Merry happened. We do get a major clue, however, in the scene with the family around the television, as one of those Vietnamese monks of the time self-incinerates himself as the world watches. Merry's reaction here is so strong, so indelible (the fine little actress, Hannah Nordberg, above, right, nails this moment) that it brings the concept of empathy to searing life. Nothing is quite the same thereafter.

If Nordberg allows us inside her character -- she does so again, in a scene that skirts the Oedipal (or its female counterpart) -- most of the other actors do not. And this seems almost purposeful, as we skate along the surface and the plot details build. Jennifer Connelly (three photos above) is fine as the beautiful wife who finds her own way of coping (though Roth's misogyny is most apparent here), David Strathairn (above) impresses, as always, as the narrator, schoolmate, and Molly Parker (below) does, as well, as Merry's double-duty therapist.

Orange Is the New Black's amazing Uzo Aduba shows us a whole new side as our hero's assistant at the glove-making factory (is she Roth's idea of the "good negro"?) that he has taken over from his aging father (the very good Peter Riegert. below). And then there is Mr. McGregor. This actor has been just fine in film after film. Here, he is perfectly OK, but it is in and through him that the flatness of the film most shows up. He's the character we're able least to get inside: Utterly passive; he reacts to everything but rarely acts on his own. While this may have been Roth's and now McGregor's intention, it does leave a kind of hole in the movie.

And yet this very hole forces us to wonder and consider everything anew. American Pastoral may leave you unsatisfied in certain ways, but I suspect your will mull it over. And maybe over again. Is this the plight of the American father and man? To have all the expectations laid out in one neat, long row? And then to have them, like those famous dominoes, fall flat? What was America's responsibility in that very unjust Vietnamese war? And how exactly does an act of political violence assuage anything? (Dakota Fanning (below, right) plays the daughter Merry grown up, and she, too, is flat but still impressive, while leaving us longing for answers, of which there will be none. And rightly so. This character's empathy is far-ranging, eternal and clearly destructive to her and those around her.

From Lionsgate -- and supposedly running a more than two-hour time frame, which now seems to have now been cut down to around 105 minutes -- the movie opens nationwide this Friday, October 21. Here in South Florida it will play the AMC Aventura 24 in Miami, Regal's South Beach 18 in Miami Beach, and the Cinemark Palace 20, Boca Raton. Click here and then click on GET TICKETS to find the theater nearest you.

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The game-changing character in Mr. Allen's new series -- quite similar in intentions and even looks (if not at all similar in style and depiction) to American Pastoral's Merry -- is Lenny Dale, played by, of all people, Miley Cyrus (above, left), who is actually good -- charming, bright and alluring -- enough to attract another important character, the also bright-but-too-buttoned-down young businessman, Alan, played by the very good John Magaro (above, right).

It is into the upper-middle-class home of TV and novel writer, S. J. Munsinger (played by Mr. Allen, above, left) and his wife, Kay (the wonderful Elaine May, above, right), that the gun-toting Lennie breaks one late night, turning the Munsinger household upside down. On the run from the law for a number of "terrorist" acts, Lennie brings up those same themes of justice, retribution, rights and wrongs.

But this, being a Woody Allen creation, uses all these same themes for lighter entertainment. The series begins, however, with a montage of 60s events -- civil rights, Vietnam, etc -- that offers ample evidence of Lennie's claims, and so, even as we chuckle and chortle throughout these six episodes, with each one lasting around 22 minutes and giving us a little over two hours of fun and games, we are still consistently reminded of what -- out there and far away from this comfortable household -- is happening to others, thanks to American policy, both foreign and domestic.

If this sounds like an odd combination, it certainly is. Yet Allen pulls it off with his usual savoir faire. His S. J. Munsiger (note the syllable similarity to a certain J.D. Salinger -- which is used for a very funny situation late in the series), offers Mr. Allen in his typically nerdy, neurotic schlemiel mode (just older here). He is as funny as ever, and his ability to satirize the 60s/70s in terms of how events effected (usually not) the comfortable middle class is very much on target.

In his large supporting cast appear everyone from Joy Behar (above, center), as one of Mrs. Munsinger's book-club attendees, to famous French comic Gad Elmaleh as one of Kay's marriage- counseling clients. (Some of her advice to these clients is very funny, if not perhaps very typical). The break-in leads to consciousness-raising, romance, and some silly but funny derring-do (below) by Sidney and Kay -- all before the everything's-gonna-be-fine finish, which seems to gather together on screen maybe half of Westchester County.

From the ever more active Amazon Originals production group, Crisis in Six Scenes is streaming now and should provide copious laughs and not a little nostalgia for the senior set. Amazon Prime members can watch it free of charge. 

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1960s protest, AMERICAN PASTORAL, CRISIS IN SIX SCENES, dark America, Ewan McGregor, home-grown terrorism, novels into films, Philip Roth, satire, Woody Allen,

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Shear & Thom's WILD IN THE STREETS: this 1960s "instant classic" has aged quite well

When WILD IN THE STREETS hit cinemas back in 1968, no less a critic than the fine Renata Adler in The New York Times deemed the film a "kind of instant classic" -- you can read her entire review here -- and went on to praise it in terms that very few (if any) movies distributed by American International Pictures had ever earned. TrustMovies saw the film back in '68 and loved it, but when he viewed it again, maybe twenty years later, he felt that it didn't hold up so sturdily, after all. Well, here we are in 2016, with a certain con-man/liar with a very "loose" hold on reality running for President, and damned if the film doesn't resonate presciently -- and so entertainingly -- all over again.

Thanks to Olive Films' new Blu-ray and DVD release, those long-ago fans, as well as newcomers, can recall or find out what all the fuss was about. Some of that fuss centered on a hot new actor named Christopher Jones, above and below, who starred in the film as the pop singer-turned-business-magnate-turned-you'll-find-out who sets young America ablaze, as he sings to, then rounds up, his "troops" for a frontal and all-out assault on "aged" Americans (that would be anyone over, say, 30 or 35). Mr. Jones looked to be a sure-thing "star" and worthy successor to James Dean, but that star failed to rise. The actor was never again as well-cast and resonant as he was here, and after a few more films, for whatever reason(s), he fell off the grid.

As written by Robert Thom (from his short story) and directed by TV & film vet Barry Shear (Across 110th Street), this 97-minute movie barrels along -- with plot and incident aplenty, and a half-dozen good pop-rock songs that also feed the plot nicely -- at a speed rarely seen back in 1968. Today, the film seems much less speedy, though certainly not slow enough to bore. Even its editing (by Fred Feitshans and Eve Newman, both of whom were Oscar nominated for their work on the film), which looked amazingly fast and furious in its day, would probably need to be sped up a bit by our current standards.

Still the film's combo of politics (every bit as venal then as now), marketing (cornering the "youth" vote by lowering the voting age), drugs, sex (of more kinds that audiences were used to back in the day) and rock-and-roll -- all conceived around a fractured "family" tale that Brady Corbett's recent Childhood of a Leader might have learned from -- adds up to a remarkably entertaining and juicy look at how the USA can be manipulated for fun, profit and finally horror. And the filmmaker's clever use of documentary footage (as above) within their thrusting narrative works nicely, too.

What's missing is any hint of the income gap, the one per cent, and the rise of the corporations. But of course: This was well prior to Ronald Reagan's Presidential ascent and the beginning of our capitulation to wealth and power. But taken as an entertainment, the movie zings and sings. Its songs are fun, rhythmic and even have the melody that much of today's music has totally lost. The screenplay is wonderfully pointed and funny, and the movie's ironies are often a delight. (Watch for the little song about "campaign dinners" that a de-frocked politician -- played with relish, and then abandon, by Ed Begley -- chants toward movie's end.)

The cast also includes Shelley Winters (in foreground, two photos up), going all out to become one of the more memorable of movie "mothers"; Hal Holbrook (above), as the politician who thinks he is using Mr. Jones and his troops; Diane Varsi as a drug-addled hanger-on; and especially Richard Pryor (below and before we even knew who this guy was!) as a smart member of Jones' band.

The film is probably ripe for a remake, which, if it happens, should only provide as much timely fun and frolic as did this original -- available now from Olive Films, on both Blu-ray and DVD, for purchase and, I would hope, rental. (Netflix really ought to order this one -- now!)

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Barry Shear, cult classics, dystopian societies, films about rock stars, music, nostaliga, political movies, Robert Thom, satire, WILD IN THE STREETS,

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Todd Solondz is back with WIENER-DOG, his own brand of sequel to Welcome/Dollhouse

I'm not at all sure I agree with so many critics who claim that the movies of Todd Solondz are misanthropic. The guy has a dark view of humanity, all right, and of life as it's lived by so many of us on this maybe-soon-to-be-uninhabitable earth. Yet the feeling I am left with, time and again after viewing his films, is one of sadness more than anger or hatred at our "miserable selves." (That his films are leavened with a lot of humor, black as it often is, also adds to their enjoyment level.) I'd call Solondz an angry humanist.

The filmmaker's latest outing into the land of the lousy is WIENER-DOG, which doubles as a kind of sequel to his first real indie hit, Welcome to the Dollhouse, which, among other things, put actress Heather Matarazzo on the map. But Solondz being Solondz (the filmmaker is shown at right), the film is very different from almost any sequel you'll have seen because its star, and the "link" that joins each of its segments, is an adorable little dachshund, the wiener-dog of the title. Functioning as a kind of all-purpose object upon which the humans that surround it can heap whatever nonsense they like (think maybe Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar, but -- heresy, I know -- Wiener-dog is the better movie), this little dog is something else.

Yes, we do encounter a grown-up version of Dawn Wiener (the character played in the original by Ms Matarazzo), and here she is performed by none other than the new indie queen (though now somewhat mainstream), Greta Gerwig, who becomes, as Ms Gerwig always manages to do with each new role, this character to an absolute T.

But we only spend a little time with the new Dawn, as in fact we do with all the characters that act as satellites to our Wiener-dog, who moves from owner to owner -- the first of which we is Solondz's typical suburban family ripe for rot. In this case that includes mom (Julie Delpy, below), dad (Tracy Letts) and little son (a lovely job by Keaton Nigel Cooke, above). Entitled, self-serving, lying, hypocritical and seriously deluded, mom and dad manage to just about decimate their sickly son's little dog.

From its nuclear (holocaust) family through Dawn and a traveling Mariachi Band (shown at bottom), then to a pair of young marrieds with Down Syndrome, our Wiener moves from person to person, place to place. Solondz doesn't always let us see or even learn how these folk are connected, nor does he need to. By now we've seen enough movies to know the "connection" ropes. And he is a skilled enough filmmaker to have each scene grab us with immediacy, force and often fun.

The filmmaker even provides his 90-minute movie with its own short but smart intermission, during which there's not enough time to go get popcorn but at least we hear a terrific little song during the break. And then we're back to business as our Weenie rests in the hands of a NY film school professor and would-be screenwriter (played with delightful manic perseverance but noticeably declining gusto by Danny DeVito). Solondz uses this section to make sweet and nasty fun of independent film, auteurs, education, Hollywood and more -- and for the one sublimely hilarious scene alone, in which DeVito and the school's head interview a prospective student, this movie is worth seeing.

Then our dog is whisked away to the lap of Ellen Burstyn (above), doing another of her recently fine round-ups of aging matriarchs (House of Cards, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You), on whom her granddaughter (Zosia Mamet, below) pays a call with her artist boyfriend (Michael Shaw) in tow. From each new owner, Wiener gets a new name but soldiers on, as ever. How our doggie becomes immortalized is, as they say, one for the books. But not, I think, for PETA people.

The movie is dark, ugly, sad, hugely comic and full of wonderful performances -- as you'd expect from a cast this good. Crowd-pleasing it ain't, but Mr. Solondz knows exactly what he is doing. Long may he grow angry, hold up that mirror to our foibles, and keep on filming them.

From IFC Films and Amazon Studios, Wiener-dog hit theaters last weekend in New York and L.A. and will opens here and there around the country this coming Friday, July 1. In South Florida, you can see it in Miami at the Bill Cosford Cinema and Miami Beach Cinematheque. Then on Friday, July 8, it opens in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters.

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dark comedy, dog movies, film schools, films about film, Hollywood, movies about art, satire, Todd Solondz, WIENER-DOG,

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Fun with the fanged undead in David Rühm's chuckle-worthy THERAPY FOR A VAMPIRE

Genuine scares and originality are in such short supply these days regarding zombie and vampire movies that we mostly must rely on humorous riffs on these genres to bring us decent entertainment. Zombies don't lend themselves much to humor (though you might want to try the very funny, clever and low-budget Stalled), but vampires, being a lot more versatile than zombies, do occasionally provide some fun (witness last year's New Zealand mockdoc miracle, What We Do in the Shadows).

Now comes the latest bit of very funny nonsense regarding these particular undead, and it's a little ditty from Austria/Switzerland -- in German with English subtitles -- called THERAPY FOR A VAMPIRE. This particular Count (not Dracula, but one, Geza von Közsnöm) has been married now for some 500 years and is growing bored with this lengthy state of matrimony. Writer/director David Rühm, shown at right, has cobbled together a short, swift, full-of-laughs riff on many of the vampire themes and lore that we vamp-lovers have come to appreciate. His "take" on it all proves charming and refreshingly light on its feet.

The very idea of a vampire needing therapy due to marital problems is clever enough, and while Herr Rühm makes some fun out of Sigmund Freud's encounter with our Count (Karl Fisher -- above, left -- does a fine job as our famous "first shrink"), the most sustained laughter in the film comes from the way in which the filmmaker deals with vampire habits like flying, climbing walls, and not being able to reflect in mirrors.

The last of these characteristics is responsible for the appearance of our vampire Count's wife (Jeanette Hain, above, right) at the door of a talented young artist (Dominic Oley, above, left), whom she needs to paint her portrait (since she can't see herself in any of her mansion's many mirrors).

The Count, meanwhile (a lovely and humorous faux-Drac rendition by Tobias Moretti, above), has become smitten with the artist's girlfriend, Lucy (Cornelia Ivancan, below, left), who quite resembles his old girlfriend who, thousands of years ago, turned him into the bloodsucker he remains.

The rondelay in which these four indulge keeps the plot ticking, but it is how certain characters react to their newly acquired -- and then, oh, no! loss of -- vampire skills that makes the movie so much fun. These moments are as oddly "real" as they are enchanting and hilarious, and they'll keep that grin across your face for most of the movie's 87-minute running time.

The requisite blood and gore? Oh, it's there, all right, but it's done with short, sharp and relatively subtle bravura, so that we get the point while also getting the humour/satire implicit. Meanwhile, themes of identity, feminism and vampirism all get their due, too, and we finish the film with that satisfied smile still on our faces.

Therapy for a Vampire, from Music Box Films, opens this Friday, June 10, in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt and in New York City at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema, and then, in the weeks following, hits another 15 cities around the country. To see all currently scheduled playdates, click here and then click on THEATERS on the task bar midway down the screen.

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Austrian cinema, comedies, David Rühm, satire, the undead, THERAPY FOR A VAMPIRE, Vampire movies,

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Streaming "must"--technology vs society in the slightly futuristic Brit TV series BLACK MIRROR

Comparison has been made between our own, ancient television series, The Twilight Zone, and BLACK MIRROR, the relatively new (2011-14) hour-long British television series from Channel 4 that tackles the idea of our new technology and how it is affecting society. It does this via a half dozen stand-alone episodes that involve different characters, their employment and relationships with friends and family. And although it is "futuristic," it is only just so -- the technology and situations we see here are but a few steps away from what we are already experiencing. Yet Black Mirror is as au courant and subtle as The Twilight Zone was (often, at least) well ahead of its time and ham-fisted in its telling.

The creation of a fellow named Charlie Brooker, shown at left, the series (from the four out of six episodes I've so far seen) is extremely bright in terms of its smart, fast dialog and minimal exposition, even as its subject matter is exceedingly dark. Brooker both created the series and wrote seven of its (so far) nine installments, and his touch is light but definitive. The series is satirical in its way and often darkly humorous -- but with a gasp just behind the laugh so that it remains a genuinely serious look at the way we (almost) live now.

These first four episodes involve everything from the British Prime Minister (Rory Kinnear, front row center, above) and his staff coming up against a kidnapping of a member of the royal family (in which the ransom is a deal-breaking doozy) to a future in which proles run on treadmills (are they perhaps producing energy) for their daily bread, while aspiring to appear on a TV talent show all too much like the schlock with which we're already saddled. (That's Rupert Everett, below, right, as the smarmiest of the three "talent judges.")

The situations in these first two episodes are so alternately mind-blowing and -numbing that we're carried away by the plot machinations of the first and the bizarre environment of the second. Even so, Brooker's fine use of irony throughout, together with the excellent casts he has garnered, make the experience continuously riveting.

The two runner/contestants we come to know and care most about in episode two are played very well by Daniel Kaluuya (above) and Downton Abbey's Jessica Brown Findlay (below). Despite the futuristic time table, how each of these decent and quirky characters ends up is filled with the same shame exhibited by our current society.

Episode three involves a technology just the other side of Google Glass, in which any past experience can be visually/audially saved and replayed at the whim of its owner. This leads to a story of infidelity and recrimination that engulfs our non-hero, played with increasing agitation and anger by a very good Toby Kebbell (below, and seen using that technology).

The fourth in the series may be its most haunting and moving, as we learn how society has found a way in which to handle the loss of a loved one. This hour calls to mind the recent movie Her, but goes its own way and discovers, as is Mr. Brooker's wont, as many negatives as positives to this new "technology." Actors Hayley Atwell (below, left) and Domhnall Gleeson (below, right) bring to life their two memorable characters with grace and grit.

I have two episodes remaining to watch (I hope that Netflix gets hold of Black Mirror's famous Christmas special with Jon Hamm very soon, as well as the rest of Season Three), but I am in no hurry. For one thing, I don't want this experience to come to an end. Secondly, as none of the episodes connect to another in any ongoing way, there's no need to binge.

Mostly though, I wait between episodes because television this good deserves to be pondered and bounced around a bit in one's brain before proceeding. You can see the first six episode of Black Mirror now via Netflix streaming. 

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Black Comedy, BLACK MIRROR, British television, Charlie Brooker, irony, satire, sci-fi and fantasy, social commentary,

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