Big Eyes (***1/2)

Tim Burton is the distinctive director of heavily art-directed films like Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland, and Sweeney Todd, but sometimes (Mars Attacks!, Corpse Bride) his kinetic/frenetic style can overwhelm substance. However, here he’s collaborated again with the writing team (Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski) responsible for Ed Wood, one of his best films. Both of them are about real people whose careers began in the 1950s, though Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), unlike Wood, is one of Burton’s most conventional lead characters. Only her paintings, and her story, were unconventional.

A divorcée struggling to make a living in beatnik-era San Francisco, Margaret met Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz), also an aspiring artist, and within a few years her paintings, most featuring children with oversized eyes, were widely seen and bringing in thousands of dollars. Only everyone thought that Walter painted them. His eventual unmasking is both funny and cathartic, making a satisfying ending that happens to also be a true story.


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viewed 1/7/15 7:30 pm at Ritz 5 and posted 1/8/15

Catfish (***1/4)

If you believe the story told in this documentary—and some people don’t— New Yorkers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman didn’t set out to make a feature, but just to document the friendship between Ariel’s photographer brother, Nev, and an eight-year-old girl in Michigan. We’ve all heard cautionary tales of grown men and children online, but this is nothing like that, although the anonymity afforded by the Internet is part of the story. It seems that the girl had sent Nev a painting of a photo of his that had been published. And it was good, not My Kid Could Paint That good, but really good. And so, as the movie tells it, Nev began to chat online with the girl, her mother, and her older sister, who seems attractive—and age-appropriate—to Nev. More surprising developments ensue, the details of which are best unknown to anyone planning to see the movie.

Besides the storyline, the film points to the effects of technology on moviemaking and ordinary lives. The filmmakers use portable video cameras to create something that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago. Unless the film is a complete fiction, Joost and the Schulmans wouldn’t have had any reason to document the early part of the story. Yet because Facebook leaves a trail, they're easily able to re-create the history that seemed too trivial to film at the time. Much of the early part of the movie is shots of computer screens, and probably this kind of thing will become trite, but seems novel now. Later, a GPS figures into the story, and cell phones are one key to the mystery that unfolds.

Yet the reason Catfish winds up being something more than a great yarn you could tell someone at a party—no movie needed—is the humanity behind the technology. There’s a point in which the film seems like it may be a little mean-spirited, and then it becomes almost sweet. And the way that happens is really the second big surprise. No doubt the movie is better if you know less about it. But even if I had known the big spoiler everyone’s taking pains not to reveal, the last half would have still been worth a look.

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viewed 9/15/10 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 9/16–26/10

Exit Through the Gift Shop (***1/4)

I was pretty lukewarm about seeing this because I’m not especially into art generally or graffiti art particularly, and was not familiar with the work of Banksy, whose work was the impetus for the film, if not its subject. Graffiti art, or street art, is sort of the (semi-)respectable version of graffiti. Its creators use not only spray paint, but stickers, stencils, and other materials that they combine into images placed on walls, streets, and other public places. This documentary came about when Thierry Guetta, a Los Angeles-based thrift shop owner, decided to make a movie about the street art movement and the UK-based Banksy, who keeps his identity secret and his face hidden, even here.

If the movie is to be believed, Banksy took a look at Guetta’s footage and decided he could do a better job, and that Guetta was a better subject than he was. So the film is partly about Banksy and the street art movement, but mostly about Guetta, who is French-born but perfectly embodies the American ideal of the self-created man. Guetta had obsessively documented his entire adult life on video, so footage of him was readily available. He’d been filming street artists, notably Shepard Fairey (creator of the Obama “Hope” poster), without intending anything in particular. He’s quite the character.

Banksy’s art, though often considered vandalism, is often clever and fun, and so is this movie. It strikes me that graffiti art is the visual equivalent of hip hop music, “sampling” existing images, or existing ideas, and placing them in new contexts. Banksy’s art, not intended as commercial product, has now made its way into exhibits and galleries. As with rap music 30 years ago, street culture has started to become high culture, and this movie is in part about this phenomenon, and about the very definition of art. But—not to fear— it’s also a down-to-earth, reasonably conventional documentary (with narration by actor Rhys Ifans) that tells a story. The conclusion is unexpected and kind of hilarious.

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viewed at Ritz 5 and reviewed 5/12/10

My Kid Could Paint That (***1/2)

Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story) set out to make a documentary about a four-year-old painter, Marla Olmstead, but, as the reporter who “discovered” her says in the film, the story is really about grown-ups. Above all, it’s about her parents, amazed as the abstract creations of a little girl in Birmingham, New York, fetch thousands of dollars from collectors around the world. (Mom worries about whether Marla will be negatively affected by her celebrity; Dad rather enjoys the ride.) It’s also about the people who consume art. Are they buying these paintings because they love them, because of the novelty, or both? Why does it matter if a little girl created them? And how, especially in the case of these non-representational works, does anyone know if they’re good?

And finally, the movie is about the filmmaker himself. After a 60 Minutes story casts a skeptical eye on whether the girl actually is actually much of a prodigy, Bar-Lev wonders, on camera, whether the story is about a child’s unexpected rise to fame or something more like “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and how his choices as a filmmaker will shape that perception. (The short film on the DVD expounds on these ideas further and is well worth a look.) I don’t know art, but I know I like this movie about it.

( See Exit Through the Gift Shop for another look at how perception creates art, or at least its value.)

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viewed 9/26–27/10 on DVD [Netflix rental] and reviewed 9/27/10

Cashback (***1/4)

Dumped insomniac Ben (Sean Biggerstaff), an aspiring artist, takes a job at a supermarket to fill the hours once spent sleeping or mooning over his ex. There, he meets the motley crew and fills the empty hours with imagination. In a lengthy segment that formed the Academy Award-nominated short version of this film, Ben imagines everyone frozen in place. Two male employees are stuck midway through a prank, the cashier is about to scan something, and the (female) customers become nude artists models. (It’s erotic, but not smutty.) The sequence is visually striking, like much of the movie, if slightly pretentious. It’s as if Ingmar Bergman had gotten ahold of the Employee of the Month script and reworked it, saving just the bits about the crazy coworkers and the thread of the competition for the night shift’s lone female. Although it’s very funny in parts—and indeed, funny in the ways that the Dane Cook-Jessica Simpson comedy strived to be but rarely was—it has an existentialist layer as well, with a little magical realism thrown in. The characters, especially Ben, are strong. British writer-director Sean Ellis is one to watch.

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reviewed 7/23/07

The Science of Sleep (***1/4)

 ? Writer-director Michel Gondry’s follow-up feature to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again uses bizarre, often-comical visuals to illustrate the psyche of its main character. In this case, he is a somewhat boyish aspiring graphic artist (Gael García Bernal) called Stéphane who has some trouble separating his dreams from his dull reality. Having just moved from Mexico to Paris to take what turns out to be a dud of a job, he finds both dreams and reality increasingly occupied by the girl next door in his apartment building, called Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Stéphanie embraces his quirky imagination, but will not actually embrace him.

+ As in Eternal Sunshine, Gondry, a noted video director, utilizes dazzling set designs. Stéphane dreams, or imagines, a television talk show in his mind with fancifully elaborate sets and absurd goings-on. Incorporating romantic desire and comedy without quite being a romantic comedy, Gondry’s Franglais-language film seems to depict the messiness of typical relationships, even if Bernal’s Stéphane is a far-from-typical character. At first he’s not sure if he likes Stéphanie’s friend better, and his attempts to woo her are awkward, if sincere. Gainsbourg is the kind of cute you don’t see in many Hollywood movies. Stringy-haired and not noticeably made up, she looks exactly as her down-to-earth character ought to.

- I suspect many people will tire of all the dream sequences and just want Gondry to just get on with the story. The story itself is fairly pedestrian, lacking the clever sci-fi element that made Eternal Sunshine my favorite movie of 2004.

= ***1/4 I found this movie largely charming and identified with Stéphane’s desire for the person who seems most to understand him. However, I think some people will either dislike Stéphane’s quasi-wimpy character or be annoyed with all the cross-cutting between the dream and fantasy sequences and the “regular” ones. Your reaction to Eternal Sunshine (if you saw it) is probably a good guide, except that this is not quite as good.

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Art School Confidential (**3/4)

The second collaboration of director Terry Zwigoff with graphic novelist Daniel Clowes spends its first third humorously skewering the art-world, its second exploring romantic longing, and its last being derailed by a silly serial-killer subplot.

This comedy-drama represents the second collaboration of director Terry Zwigoff with graphic novelist Daniel Clowes. The first, the funny and heartbreaking Ghost World, is one of my favorite movies. There’s a subplot about an art teacher that, in about 15 minutes of screen time, makes most of the points about the art world that this one does in about two hours. The main character (Max Minghella) here is not a quirky teenage girl, but a semi-normal teenage boy hoping to score with a quirky art-school girl as well as become a real artist. Not surprisingly, his drawings look a lot like those of Clowes, or of Ghost World’s Enid. Like Enid, Jerome finds his representational work shunned in favor of technically dodgy works deemed to be more “expressive.

The art-teacher was probably the most broadly comedic one in Ghost World, and the early parts of Art School Confidential aren’t that far from many Hollywood comedies. A friend introduces Jerome to the various “types” that populate the school (the credits include “bearded weirdo,” “future critic,” “angry lesbian,” and “vegan holy man”), not to mention the crazy, drunk “genius” (Jim Broadbent) who tells him art school’s a waste of time. Meanwhile, he’s smitten with a girl (Sophia Myles) he’s seen naked (as a model) but seems untouchable. Comedy gives way to pathos and, though the source is familiar, the way that romantic disappointment translates to broad despair is palpable. There is then a certain subplot that unexpectedly, and unfortunately, comes to the fore, something about a serial killer running amok on campus. This absurdist, absurd development overwhelms the story and brings it to an ending that I found clumsy and unsatisfying, though not enough to ruin the movie.

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