Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen, 2011 (9.0*)
Woody is back! This is a light romantic fantasy in the same vein as The Purple Rose of Cairo and Alice, which mixes reality with a fantasy world that obviously comes from the mind of the protagonist.

Owen Wilson is a young American, on a trip to Paris with his domineering fiance, Rachel MacAdams, whose right-wing parents are wealthy capitalists there for a business deal (naturally - why else would capitalists go anywhere but for some tax deductible reason, because the wealthy don't have to pay taxes since they can deduct everything from travel to meals by claiming they are 'for business purposes' - then the rest of us have to make up this shortfall).

Wilson is a screenwriter attempting to write a serious novel, while everyone urges him to do what he's successful at already. He seeks solitude at night by wandering around Paris alone. After midnight, magic happens, and he runs into people he assumes are in costume, but finds out that he's been transported in time to Paris of the 20's, first being found in the streets by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who introduce him to Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). He later meets Picasso, and his beautiful model, played by Marion Cotillard, a muse for all the famous artists of her era. Naturally, the two strike up a platonic romance.

Wilson's fantasy world is centered around creative artists who spent time in Paris: Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Luis Bunuel, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Salvador Dali ("I paint you, with your lips melting into the sand - and of course, a rhinoceros!" - hilariously played by Adrien Brody), Paul Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec are just a few of the famous artists who come alive for Owen Wilson on his post-midnight walks around Paris.

This film is superficially a light romantic comedy, but beneath all that is the underlying and beautiful idea that art not only is immortal, but will influence and inspire future generations of creative people. It also contains the protagonists desire to live in another era (don't we all?) he imagines is greater than his own (for Wilson, Paris in the 20's).

As an artist (painting and writing) this film reinforced my lifelong belief in the power of creativity. Most of the awards are for Allen's screenplay, which should be a favorite for an Oscar®. I would elevate this work above Woody's other output of the last 15 or so years.

Note: in the rating, PG-14, in the beginning, it is mentioned that "features smoking" - holy smoke, are we now warning people when there are cigarettes in films? what's next, "characters eating pork", or "loud noises emitted by fireworks", or "capitalist merchants overcharging for coffee"?

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Marwencol

Jeff Malmberg, 2010 (8.3*)
Marwencol is a documentary about the fantasy world of Mark Hogancamp. After leaving his local bar one night, Mark is beaten into a brain-damaging coma by five teenagers outside in the parking log. After coming out of his coma, he is on Medicaid and "the money runs out", so they tell him he is released, and is sent home with only partial brain functions. He has to relearn how to walk, eat, write, and think, with the help of his mother and friends. (He's divorced and was living alone)

In order for some spiritual as well as physical therapy, to help his shaking hands, Mark thinks he needs a hobby, so he builds a 1/6th scale World War II-era town in his backyard, which he dubs Marwencol.  Mark populates the with hobby dolls representing his friends and family and creates life-like photographs detailing the town's many relationships and dramas. Setting up scenarios like a miniature movie set, to illustrate an ongoing story (see photo at bottom), and then photographing the action helps Mark to recover coordination heal his psyche - he's still afraid of the outside world, now it represents possible danger. He only goes to work one day a week at a local restaurant-bar, and doesn't drink since the attack.

The town has American, British, and German troops all using it as a sort of neutral-zone r-and-r. There are also some blonde babes there, because Mark's ex-wife was a blonde of Eastern European descent. Mark has his own character, and there are five SS 'bad guys' that bother everyone and threaten the town. The conflicts in his psyche are played out in all the good soldiers in Marwencol trying to avoid the threatening SS. At one point, the women join the resistance and take up arms as well. There's even a character representing General George Patton. (see jeep photo below)

When Mark and his photographs are discovered, a prestigious New York gallery sets up an art show as Mark's creation is deemed art, forcing him to choose between the safety of his fantasy life in Marwencol, and keeping it private, and the real world that he's avoided since the attack, and sharing his own created world.

You won't see many stories this odd and this interesting, especially in documentaries. The biography of Crumb, about the underground comic artist, comes to mind, as well as American Splendor, a docudrama about another comic artist, that blends animation with real action, and includes the real people in the film alongside their life actor counterparts, with whom they sometimes converse, and sometimes comment about to the director.

15 awards out of 17 nominations

See more at marwencol.com

Mark Hogancamp setting up a scene in

Marwencol before photographing it

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Crumb

Terry Zwigoff, 1995 (8.5*)
Documentary biopic of legendary hippie cartoonist Robert Crumb, creator of Mr. Natural, Zippy Pinhead, among many others, and the women who all have giant butts and long legs. Crumb said this is from remembering lots of aunts as a kid, and since he was less than waist high to them, they all were out of proportion in his mind's eye, so he draws them from memory as they looked to him then.

Crumb's comic books were often passed around by the thousands at rock music festivals, to kill the time between bands, or during the ever present rain delays (did the government seed the skies above pop festivals?) He likely had the greatest word-of-mouth following in the history of graphic arts. He also did some famous rock album covers, the best being the one for Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis Joplin's first album, where he created a color cartoon for each song on the lp.

You don't have to be an aging hippie from the 60's like me to appreciate this documentary. It offers a truly rare biography of an influential artist during his times, something we'll never have regarding great artists of the past.

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Me and You and Everyone We Know

Miranda July, 2006 (8.7*)
Special Jury Prize, Sundance
Visual artist Miranda July made this film to publicize her museum quality artwork. In her story, an artist, played by herself, is working on a show in a local museum. This circular storyline rarely works, but it certainly works here, thanks to her honest artistry.

Along the way we get treated to a budding romance she has with a shoe salesman, wonderfully played by John Hawkes [note: now a best supporting actor nominee for 2010's Winter's Bone], and a hilarious internet romance struck up using chat by the museum's female director. This leads to one of the funniest scenes in recent films when a meeting takes place at a park bench.

This film epitomized the term small indie film. As such, it is an important statement by a female artist and budding film director. Miranda wrote, directed, and stars in this film which essentially makes it a one person work of art, and one which is about the artist herself. Usually this sort of exercise reeks of self-promotional egoism, yet somehow Miranda's self-deprecating and realistic viewpoint make this film an intimate and revealing look at how the creative process can give us a glimpse into the soul of the artist.

For me it is for more interesting than the facile laziness I feel when watching some of the films by John Cassavetes or even lesser Woody Allen vehicles. I hope she continues with her film career and perhaps turns the camera on external subjects next time, for she's a very talented filmmaker, and unlike any other.

This film won FOUR awards at Cannes: Critics Week Grand Prize, Un Certain Regard, Golden Camera, and the Young Critics Award. At Sundance, it won the Special Jury Prize for 'originality and vision'. Overall it won 18 awards out of 26 nominations, with 16 awards going to Miranda, most for director or film, but a couple for screenplay and ensemble cast.

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Manufactured Landscapes

Jennifer Baichwal, 2006 (8.4*)
Baichwal's visually riveting documentary follows photographer Edward Burtynsky around the world as he takes photographs of man-made landscapes of staggering immensity, from open pit mines to mountains of coal to seemingly miles long factories.

Though Burtynsky's individual photos are works of art, giant museum-sized prints with amazing detail, the landscapes they portray make a visual statement of how out-of-control civilization has threatened to become.

Perhaps the eeriest scenes to me are the giant tankers allowed to run aground in Bangladesh where workers break them up into giant slabs of iron for recycling. Think again where your recycled products end up, as we are shown mountains of recycled materials in China where workers in masks (due to toxins) basically pull out only a few metals, such as aluminum.

This is scary stuff to view, but something we need to deal with if civilization is to survive without turning our planet into a giant toxic refuse dump of unusable waste. The world of Wall-E is becoming a reality.

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American Splendor

Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini, 2003 (8.6*)
This is such an intimate portrait of a nobody going nowhere that it's hard not to like it's honest openness. It's a near documentary about comic author Harvey Pekar, wonderfully played by Paul Giamatti, whose story of a boring life of obscurity was illustrated by legendary underground comic artist Robert Crumb and titled "American Splendor".

The narrative follows Pekar as he begins to break out of his terminal dullness by writing an intended comic strip about it. Former Cleveland resident Crumb revisits and likes Pekar's writing and decides to illustrate the story. The film covers Pekar's rise from obscurity with the same matter-of-fact tone that Pekar's comic covered his routine life.

The film cleverly mixes some animation with live action, so flawlessly that it's an enhancement and not a distraction, as it reveals more about the title series. This received a "Un Certain Regard" award at Cannes for "mixed media use". The directors also wisely chose to include the real Harvey and his girlfriend Joyce Brabner (brilliantly under-played by Hope Davis in a Golden Globe nominated performance) in some scenes, which gives this a "reality within docudrama" moments, like the actors watching the real people react to a play in L.A. based on Pekar's comics about his life! You just don't find layers of reality piled up this deeply very often..

Very humorous and unusual, justifiably a film festival favorite.. a must-see for small indie film fans.

National Society of Film Critics Award, Best Feature; several awards for screenplay. Paul Giamatti received National Board of Review Award for "Breakthrough Performance by an Actor".
Awards page at IMDB

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Junebug

Phil Morrison, 2005 (7.8*)
This small indie film received high critical marks for its honest portrayal of a real family with believable problems in middle-class North Carolina. Embeth Davidtz plays an art dealer from Chicago who specializes in "outside" or primitive art, paintings done by self-taught individuals. She travels with her husband to his childhood home in NC to court an autistic artist, David Wark (Frank Hoyt Taylor), a reclusive who is pre-occupied with the Civil War, slaves, giant genitalia, and his own poetry, often inserted into his artwork. True to southern bigotry, he also refuses to deal "with Jews".

While there she meets the in-laws: the parents, realistically played by life-worn Scott Wilson and a domineering Celia Weston, brother-in-law Johnny (Ben McKenzie), a slacker who lives at home with his pregnant wife Ashley, brilliantly portrayed by Amy Adams, who won 13 international awards for supporting actress, and also garnered an Oscar® nomination for supporting.

As an artist, I'm always amazed at the "big city, big money" attraction to art that is merely different, not necessarily talented, sublime, or transcendent - this is no exception. This film, perhaps intentionally, exposes the superficiality of the art world, especially among the wealthy collectors who place high value on outrageous originality that has little else to elevate the works.

For me, the film has credible characters with real problems, maybe too much so, and failed to really deliver any revelation or catharsis. The ensemble acting is superb, and perhaps the film's major plus is its lack of judgment, allowing any real meaning to come from the viewer's own interpretation, especially concerning the paintings themselves.

Winner of 16 awards, mostly for Amy Adams: the awards page at IMDB

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Rivers and Tides

Thomas Riedelsheimer, 2003 (9.0*)
This is an amazing documentary that is not like any other because the artist Andy Goldsworthy is so unique. It's slow to get started but once you see how and why he does what he does it all makes intuitive sense. Its all about time and the ephemeral nature of living things. He uses natural media he finds in nature, rarely planning anything in advance. Only his rock sculptures last longer than the day he makes them. Most are temporary: ice sculptures that glow then melt in the sunlight, leaf 'snakes' held with thorns that he sends down a stream, or autumn leaves arranged from dark to light creating an artificial hole. He sometimes build 'rock piles like people use to mark trails worldwide', but they're big egg-shaped and carefully done with no mortar, yet they hold together as if made to stand in this shape like silent sentinels. He has designed a permanent wall in a sculpture garden, but let professional “wallers” build that. You don't have to be an artist to appreciate this movie. It also has several short films as a bonus. Goldsworthy has done so much of this that a film of all his outdoor artwork could actually last weeks! Inspiring...

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