SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
MY KID COULD PAINT THAT (Amir Bar-Lev) **1/2
Could have been something special in the hands of a talented documentarian -- maybe a look at the elusive nature of art; does it really matter if Marla is a fraud? -- but Bar-Lev is a stooge who stumbled upon a fascinating story and was content to sit on his good fortune. The responsibility of putting this story into context -- i.e. the talking head interviews -- is monopolized by two insufferable dolts (the reporter who broke Marla's story and the gallery owner who first sold her work) spouting platitudes so inane they sound (badly) scripted. Bar Lev's meager stabs at self-analysis -- e.g. the weak scene in which he shoots himself wondering if he's being unfair to his subjects (answer: no, he always lets them off too easy) and the more intriguing scene where he demurely confesses to Marla's parents he might not believe them, then lets them off too easy -- add a transparent coating of reflexivity. But this layer is useless since there's no sense Bar-Lev's presence has altered Marla's narrative in any appreciable way (Marla's parents claim she can't paint well when outsiders' cameras are around, but it's irrelevant since she also doesn't seem to paint well when the cameras are completely hidden).
All these problems aside, when Bar-Lev allows his candid, fly-on-the-wall footage of the Olmstead family to speak for itself (a significant chunk of the film) -- haunting sequences of an angelic four-year-old (an important artist, a marionette, or both) circled by media vultures, opportunists and questionable parents -- My Kid Could Paint That feels rich and unknowable. These are the sorts of images one might have shot in JonBenet Ramsey's house over a decade ago.
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (Fatih Akin) **1/2
JUNO (Jason Reitman) **
NOTHING IS PRIVATE (Alan Ball) 1/2
[Digital projection]
An unmitigated disaster on every level and flabbergasting in its misjudgment. Ball's pretensions are risible to the extreme (the last time I laughed so hard in a movie theater was Borat). His handling of racial conflict makes Crash look somewhat sensible by comparison; his exploration of burgeoning sexuality, mangling of tones, and pointless obsession with shock value, come off even worse.
GEORGE A. ROMERO'S DIARY OF THE DEAD (George A. Romero) ***
