Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

This is a really unique documentary that kind of fell into the lap of Banksy, the notorious graffiti artist. A very amateur documentarian asks to film graffiti artists who are actually engaged in social commentary and gets caught up in the culture so much that he decides he is an artist as well. What is so remarkable is that the film becomes more about the videographer and his hours and hours of footage and what his art represents than the amazing art we see him trying to emulate.

Rabbit Hole (2010)

This play adaptation plunges viewers into parental grief. The acting is superb and not surprisingly, the dialogue is rich and layered.

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The Christians (1977)

 One of my recent interests has been church history. A long standing passion of mine is Christian theology, which is illuminated by church history. Documentarian Bamber Gascoigne produced this 13-part made-for-TV series on the history of Christians. Stylistically, it is marked by the era in which it is made (the 1970s), but the era also impacts the approach that Gascoigne takes in presenting the Christians. In recent decades we have seen the emergence of a rather vocal Christian right in the United States, a steep decline in the practice of Christianity in Europe, and the renewed popularity of atheism and interest in other world religions. This has led to Christianity being looked down upon by the popular culture (I just heard a man singing on the radio about how Christianity makes no sense to him, so he's picking hell - yes, it is ironic). When Gascoigne makes this 11 hour documentary, Christianity is still has a strong western presence and it is treated with respect.

The series begins in first century Jerusalem and follows the gradual geographic, cultural, political, and theological iterations over the next 20 centuries. Mr. Gascoigne narrates throughout and does a remarkable job presenting each major change in Christian culture by highlighting both the remnant architectural and artistic features from each era and the denominational representations from those changes (ie. the Amish are portrayed when speaking about Anabaptist history or Guatemalan Catholics are portrayed to show the colonial missions in Central and South America).

Because of its length, the series ensures that adequate depth is allocated since the breadth of the story is so great.

I highly rate this intricate telling of Christians' story. I would gladly watch the series several more times.

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Edvard Munch (1974)

A great skill was used to develop the film I just watched. It paints the portrait of celebrated and groundbreaking 19th century Norwegian artist Edvard Munch - famous for "The Scream." For three hours and forty minutes we survey scenes from Munch's life filmed as though it were a documentary where the characters are aware of the camera. Some characters are interviewed. Munch's diary is read as it was written, in the third person. And a narrator pronounces the chronology.

Beginning in a Protestant Christian home as a part of the middle class in Norway's capital city, Munch is surrounded by death, illness, and a social order that extorts and mistreats the lowest classes and their children. After losing his mother, he emerges into manhood and begins his rebellion with a group of bohemians who challenge every aspect of their culture. It is here that conflict arises between he and his father, but more strikingly it is where the great theme of his life's work begins: the threads that bond men and women together.

The series of failed relationships cast the learning and altogether rejected artist into a class all his own. He depicts the world in swirling colours, faces with pale and sickly complexions, and fades the sensory organs of his subjects where they meet their lovers.

Edvard Munch gains enormous popularity during his life while being lambasted by nearly all art critics across Europe. Pressing through all of this, Munch advances his new art form: visual psychology.

This is a masterpiece, unlike anything I have ever seen.

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Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Woody Allen's masterpiece! Here we get a sense of the struggle of man without any moral direction juxtaposed with a man searching for eternal answers (albeit comedically, and perhaps facetiously). A man is attracted to his wife's sister. Another sister laments her loneliness and inability to find success at the level of her sisters (in life and love). And finally, Hannah, who lives a virtuous life is being attacked on all fronts because of her virtue - poor thing!

Woody Allen plays Hannah's ex-husband who thinks he's dying and seeks an answer to life's great mystery: Is there life after death and if so, how should I live to best situate myself?

Quite an enjoyable film.

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Taking Woodstock (2009)

Ang Lee is remarkable in how diverse his projects are and this one pushes into remarkable territory. While he maintains the sensitivity that most of his films have, he captures americana during an era of transformation in a collision between rural and urban, the hippy and silent generations, and the peace that was necessary between all of the shifting tectonic plates of the 1960s.

Taking Woodstock takes the legendary summer concert to a personal level by focusing on the planners and more specifically, the family/town who hosts the hordes.

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Goya's Ghosts (2006)

Stacked with very fine actors and a compelling story, this film ultimately doesn't satisfy because of the multi-layered melodramatic threads in the fictional tale.

Francisco Goya, the famed political artist, is witness to the horrors of both the Catholic Inquisition and the invasion by Napoleonic forces into Spain. Caught in the midst of the worst kind of injustice is the daughter of one of Goya's patrons.

The film is not horrible, it just fails to bring much hope nor does it make the hopelessness palpable.

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Angels & Demons (2009)

This is Dan Brown, Ron Howard and Tom Hank's follow up story to the controversial title The Da Vinci Code that takes the viewer into another mystery at the heart of the Vatican. Full of outrageous clues and an insane plot, the film is a barrage of incoherent information, gruesome murders and fast camera movements. It's hard to know how the actors kept a straight face during the shoot.

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The Maiden Heist (2009)

The Maiden Heist is a fun old-timer flick that illuminates the power of art and elevates the common man. Three elderly art gallery guards scheme to keep three pieces of artwork that are being sold to a museum in Denmark because of rather absurd obsessions. Bumbling about, the veteran actors show moderate comedic timing, but excellent pathos.

A great commentary on love too.

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Brideshead Revisited (2008)

This film is based on a book that, again, must be a much better read than a cinematic experience. It is another restrained British period piece.

The opening lines of the film deliver a lot of promise that our atheist artist protagonist will undergo some transformation, but in reality he undergoes an infatuation and suffers the consequences. This young and impressionable middleclassman enters the world of the British upper crust - a very Catholic family living at Brideshead, a posh palace. There he is enchanted by the homosexual son and then by the lovely and confident daughter, but ultimately by the riches associated with the family.

The cinematography deserves some mention as it became a part of the story in the way it brought our attention to some of the small details, as a writer might describe a setting.

Because the characters are so literally detached from reality it makes it difficult to connect with them. A decent movie, but nothing to be infatuated with.

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Coco avant Chanel (2009)

In the ongoing tradition of French biopics, Coco Chanel gets her turn (and a second turn in a new film about her alleged liason with Igor Stravinsky).

The film tracks Coco's life during her relationship with a wealthy Étienne Balsan, from their encounter in a tavern, through their mutually beneficial time together to their break up. What we witness more than an evolution of clothing style is a solidification of her tragic independence.

While her style and influence in the world of women's fashion (with an emphasis on simplicity and comfort) is commendable and her early years as an abandoned child is lamentable, Ms. Chanel did not exhibit a terribly envious lifestyle.

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Basquiat (1996)

Jeffrey Wright is a fantastic actor and he holds up this fascinating film about 80's artist Jean Michel Basquiat.

Bordering on homelessness in NYC, a drug dependent Basquiat makes a name for himself through graffiti. He boldly enters the art scene by presenting himself to Andy Warhol and procuring a devoted agent. From rags to riches over night, he struggles to control his bad habits and maintain fame without bowing to it.

The film is director Julian Schnabel's first before making Before Night Falls and one of my all-time favorites, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Aside from all of these films being biographical, he brings a beautiful sense of the imagination and cinema clothing his subjects with a sense of self without giving over to straight narration.

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Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Lewis Carroll wrote this story to be made into a film by Tim Burton.

A victorian young woman named Alice is faced with duty when a rabbit distracts her for an instant. Next thing she knows, she is hurdling downwards into Wonderland and speaking with flowers, a dodo and a caterpillar named Absalom. She charms nearly everyone she meets and faces execution before ultimately being the champion.

This is not a children's movie. Burton brings an edginess to the story through darker artistic inspiration - the Queen of Hearts is beheading her subjects after all. The design is jaw dropping. All of the actors (voice and live action) draw you into their madness and desperation.

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Il Postino (1995)

The Postman is one of the gentlest and most beautiful films I have ever seen. Absolutely enjoyable and touching.

Mario, very simple Italian island peasant (played magnificently by the late Massimo Troisi) who isn't interested in fishing takes a low paying job at the post office. He has one delivery to the famous poet Pablo Neruda, a political exile from Chile. As the two become friends, Mario's life begins to take form and he gains much confidence and purpose. But Neruda is not left unaffected either.

The poetry in the film is superb as it actually comes from Neruda. I loved the film for its portrayal of innocence and the power of friendship. It also demonstrates the potency of poetry and beauty and its accessibility to everyone irregardless, of social standing.

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Hotel (2001)

This is the worst film I may have ever seen in my life. Its efforts to comment on its absurd self by mimicking itself produces a cycle of boredom and nausea for its viewers.

Film crew and cast descend upon a Venetian hotel. Plenty of chaos and ad lib lines are interrupted with occasional erotica and cannibalism. It makes no sense at all.

The only positive note I can add is that if this film got mass distribution on DVD, so should mine! I just need a few big names attached to it. . .

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Le Goût des Autres (2000)

A business man, an actress, a body guard, a waitress, a chauffeur, an artist, and a home decorator give us a sense of the uniqueness of man and womankind. How The Taste of Others causes us to question our own.

Though nothing earth shattering may happen in this film, we are drawn into the lives of several people who are connected in some way to prickly entrepreneur Jean-Jacques. Jean-Jacques' passion is awakened when he attends a play. He begins to realize that he has more depth than he previously assumed. The people around him try to help him understand what he should be interested in, but he struggles to define his own identity.

The film is French and so food, the arts and sex must be explored - though tastefully, and with great humour and pathos.

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Man on Wire (2008)

This documentary won an Academy Award earlier this year for it's excellent portrayal of a stunt artist and his greatest illegal act.

Phillippe Petit is a French tight rope walker who passionately tells the tale of his 1974 forty-five minute dance on a high wire between the World Trade Centre towers in New York city. Helping him tell the tale are the men and woman who help him set up the stunt.

The true story is often as tense as the wire Petit walks upon and it is told using a combination of old footage, current day interviews and animation/recreation of the events. It is a neat story of an event that didn't really change the world, but speaks of passion, art, and people's recognition of both of these.

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Junebug (2005)

I was blown away by Junebug. I'm so glad it didn't pass into film archives without my seeing it first (it came out when I first moved to Guatemala, so I hadn't really heard of it until recently).

Madeleine, a cultured art dealer, quickly marries charming George in Chicago. A few months later they visit George's family in North Carolina. The culture shock is unbelievable for it to be in the same country. George's brother and parents are suspicious of Madeleine, but his sister-in-law, a high school drop out and a mouth that won't stop, is completely infatuated with Madeleine's refinedness. As the family interacts, we discover what is most important to each one.

The editing and photography are core to the style of Junebug. The racy couple from Chicago is contrasted with the slow and simple Southern folk. The traditional taboos that keep people from talking in the conservative family both keep the family together and apart as we see the secret lives of each one and the relatively superficial interactions on both sides.

The film is glorious.

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Winter Passing (2005)

Think Garden State, but with a girl and less romance. Really, the similarities are many.

Zooey Deschanel acts her heart out as a depressed actress who faces her upbringing and her parents. Upon returning home for the first time in years, she finds her father has gone a bit loopy and has let a couple people move into the house. During her search for letters that her author father and author mother had written to each other, she begins to accept her lot and begins to live a little.

The supporting cast is terrific and the tone of the film (soundtrack, editing, and photography) really keeps it from going sideways. At some points the film slows, but the tension builds ever so slightly throughout making Winter Passing an enjoyable experience - and meaningful too. How often to we really think about the mental state of our parents when we were children?

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Full Frontal (2002)

Steven Soderbergh delivers a somewhat cryptic art film that only the most interested viewer would probably enjoy.

The focus is a group of people in the Los Angeles area who are connected to the film industry. When a marriage begins to fall apart, an interview between the hottest black actor begins, a job is lost, a play on the verge of a flop, an internet date getting primmed, and a birthday party scheduled for that night, everything blurs between reality and entertainment. 

I can't say that I was able to follow all of the ins and outs, so I'll probably watch the film again as I've thoroughly loved all of the other Soderbergh films I've watched in the past (Che, Traffic, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, The Good German, Bubble, Ocean's Eleven, etc.).

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