Joan Rivers: A piece of work

I saw Joan Rivers live once in the 80s, so even before watching this frank and revealing documentary I knew her live comedy included almost nonstop profanity of the most potty-mouthed kind. I usually have no respect for and don't enjoy comics who seem to depend on swearing and insults for their laughs, but I have to admit that Joan Rivers is also very funny. I used to watch her frequently in her heyday of frequent appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, both as guest and guest host (but naturally without all the profanity). What this documentary displays is her extreme dependence on her career of standing in front of people and hearing their laughter and applause, the only time she's truly happy, as she says in the film. She'll do anything in order to fill her calendar - calling her a workaholic is an understatement, and I was exhausted watching this 75-year-old woman dashing from place to place, always of course in full makeup that can't hide the extensive "work" she's had done on her face, her first act upon getting out of bed each day. She gave the directors full access over a year of her life, and they (Ricki Stern and Anna Sundberg) did an amazing job. If you enjoy this type of voyeuristic and fascinating documentary, I highly recommend the film.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The radiant child

Well, my first film at this year's Atlantic Film Festival turned out to be a winner. I don't know how wide a circulation this documentary will be getting, but if you have the chance to see it, I highly recommend not missing it, even if like me, you're not particularly involved with art or the art world. I had seen the earlier Julian Schnabel film simply called Basquiat, which isn't a documentary, and found it very compelling but now I really do prefer this one. We're lucky that the director, Tamra Davis, was a friend of Basquiat and filmed interviews and lots of other footage of him so that we get a rich picture of this amazingly talented, intelligent and sophisticated young man, who emerged from seemingly nowhere first as simply one of many graffiti artists in NYC and then became the darling of the art world and a close friend of Andy Warhol. Sadly, like many others he got involved in drugs and died of an overdose at the age of 27. I haven't heard why Davis waited till now, over 20 years later, to make this film, but she did a great job of putting it all together, including a wonderful jazz soundtrack that goes perfectly with the film.

The American

I've been away for a while at a month-long meditation retreat, so I may have missed some films during August and early September, but now it's the Atlantic Film Festival season as well as the start of the Fall/Winter generally more interesting films time of year, so you may be hearing from me more often. I went to see The American after having heard that a few people I know really disliked it. But the reviews I read continued to make it sound interesting and so I followed my gut instinct. I still don't feel quite as clear on some of what happened in the film as Roger Ebert did, but I do agree with his very favourable review of it. I especially applaud George Clooney's tour de force acting performance, which included very little dialogue. Briefly, the film is about a professional hit man (Clooney) who's either completely cool and in control or constantly nervous and on edge, or both. The setting is Italy, mainly a small town where he's working on a job of preparing a very specialized weapon for a client; all the arrangements are made by his boss/master, with whom he has very terse communications by phone. As described in the reviews, the film has very stark, minimalist and Zen-like feel to it. The scenery was compelling though not the green lushness one often associates with Italy but in general rather craggy hills with colourless villages built on them. I thought all the cinematography was also excellent. I didn't find it a terribly violent film, though of course because of the plot and characters, there are a few scenes of shootings. Anyway, this film is obviously not for everyone; it doesn't have a thought-provoking message but I found engrossing and haunting and a very interesting character study.

Inception

Whew! What a ride! This 2-1/2 hour film flew by, and though the plot and action can seem (and sound) complicated, if you really pay attention - not hard to do - it all hangs together and can be followed without confusion. The story takes place in a future where people can be put to sleep and hooked up in some bizarre way so that they share dreams. And the main character in the film has perfected a system where he and a group of fellow operators use this method to extract information from someone's mind, a form of corporate espionage; not only that, he also claims to a potential "employer" to be able to plant an idea into someone's mind in such a way that that person believes it's his own idea. So the film follows them as they attempt to carry this out. And yes, there are lots of action scenes: things blowing up, impossible gun battles, but because they're taking place in a dream with no attempt to make them seem possible, they didn't bore or bother me the way these kinds of scenes in traditional action movies usually do. As well as the story itself, it's about dreams and reality, what's real and what isn't, how can you tell the difference. These questions are somewhat similar to what's presented in the wonderful 2001 Richard Linklater film Waking Life, though Inception doesn't have the philosophical/spiritual feel of that one. Rather, this one has a much more cerebral feel, and so the pleasure and admiration I experienced were intellectual rather than emotional, and as well, I have great appreciation for Christopher Nolan's skill as a director. He has definitely lived up to my enjoyment of his previous films Memento and The Prestige. He also has directed two of the Batman films, most famously The Dark Knight. Though the only character that brought out some emotional or heartfelt connection was the main character's wife, played by Marion Cotillard, I still felt this was an excellent film.

The Messenger

As the only film about the Iraq war I was interested in seeing, for the most part it didn't disappoint. Actually, it's about a lot more than the Iraq war. Excellently acted by Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson (who won a well-deserved Oscar nomination for his role) and Samantha Morton, the basic story revolves around two soldiers whose job is to inform a family member of the death of their son, daughter, husband or wife. Watching this film was mesmerizing and heart-wrenching: people being overcome by emotions, as you'd expect, as well as the stoic following of the military rules of non-involvement (just being a messenger) by the two soldiers and the effect of that on them. So this film is really about the overall result of war and the military life in general to soldiers who've come home from fighting as well as their families. As one of the soldiers says "They should show the funerals on TV". There were a few drunken buddy scenes later in the film that didn't seem as real to me, but maybe they would to a man or a soldier.

Soul Power

This documentary was put together in 2008 using some of the many hours of film shot before and during the 1974 concert in Kinshasa, Zaire, around the big event of the heavyweight boxing championship between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. You might have seen some of the footage shot if you watched the 1996 documentary When We Were Kings that focused on the fight itself; this one focuses on the concert. If you like soul music I really recommend this DVD, both for the music and the dancing. There were African and American musicians and dancers, as well as a great Cuban group showcasing Celia Cruz -- all wonderful to watch and listen to: BB King, James Brown, The Spinners, Miriam Makeba and more.

The Secret in their Eyes

This film won Best Foreign Language Film at the recent Oscars; since I haven't seen any of the other contenders I can't offer my opinion on whether or not it deserved to win or compare it to the others. But I will say that I found it quite an interesting and compelling film, though I probably wouldn't rave about it quite as much as some film critics have. It's from Argentina and is a haunting mystery/thriller with political overtones and also includes personal/intimate life details of the various characters including unrequited love spanning many years. The cinematography is beautiful and an interesting style and the characters also kept my interest throughout. One thing I very much appreciated was the sense that in some way that I can't really explain the whole film was presented with a strong flavour of Argentina and would have been a very different film if it had been made in North America or Europe. I don't know if this film will ever come to Halifax (I'm on vacation in Berkeley, California) but I'm sure it will be available on DVD at some point.