This 2001 American-German documentary by Angela Christlieb and Stephen Kijak isn’t very popular among normal cinephiles (if such a term isn’t already an oxymoron) because it exhibits five of the most extreme and dysfunctional cinemaniacs in Manhattan, figures already somewhat legendary among patrons of the Walter Reade Theater, the Museum of Modern Art, Film Forum, and similar venues. Roberta Hill, a pack rat who saves ticket stubs and flyers, was banned from one of her haunts after assaulting an usher who tore her ticket in half, while Harvey Schwartz, who lives with his mother in the Bronx, memorizes the precise running times of everything he sees. The filmmakers aren’t exactly cruel, but they focus on compulsion rather than passion, which by implication tends to tarnish the more intellectual and scholarly members of the breed. 80 min. (JR) Read more
Eleven short films from around the world, responding in very different ways to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; the only ground rule is the length, stipulated as 11 minutes, 9 seconds, and one frame. The best films (by Iran’s Samira Makhmalbaf, the UK’s Ken Loach, Burkina Faso’s Idrissa Ouedraogo, and Japan’s Shohei Imamura) are likely to broaden many Americans’ perception of the attacks, while the most confused (by Egypt’s Youssef Chahine, France’s Claude Lelouch, and our own Sean Penn) still have the merit of showing fresh points of view. The others are by Israel’s Amos Gitai, Mexico’s Alejandro Gonzalez I Read more
I came, I saw, I sufferedthough so far I’ve been spared the 1998 documentary of the same title by the same filmmakers, Fenton Baily and Randy Barbato, as well as James St. James’s 1999 nonfiction book Disco Bloodbath: A Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland. This docudrama about flamboyant, drugged-out New York queens dissing one another focuses on the rise of Michael Alig (Macaulay Culkin) from protege of St. James (Seth Green, who sometimes seems to be lampooning Gary Indiana) to king of the clubbers, not to mention casual killer of a member of that bunch (Wilson Cruz). If this were witty, it might have qualified as a downtown version of All About Eve; if it were believable, I wouldn’t have come away feeling that the actors (including Dylan McDermott and Chloe Sevigny) were wasted. I’m so out of here, one character remarks when he can’t take any more. My sentiments exactly. 98 min. (JR) Read more
