Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953). Drawn from stories in the eighteenth century collection Ugetsu Monogatari, by Ueda Akinari, Kenji Mizoguchi’s film proceeds like a hazy dream that’s periodically jarred into wakefulness by jolts of pointed pragmatism. Set in the time when earning … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Ugetsu; Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic (Marina Zenovich, 2013). Richard Pryor had a life that was singularly amazing (deeply troubled childhood, an impact on the art of stand-up comedy like no other, and a personal life fraught with peril and bad decisions), so much so that it seems almost impossible to contain it within a single film. He couldn’t do it with the thinly fictionalized Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, and Marina Zenovich–inadvertently, no doubt–does her level best to prove that the documentary feature format similarly has no hope of containing the man’s unbalanced magnificence. She clicks through the … Continue reading Ozu, Polley, Sullivan, Tourneur, Zenovich
Coffee for Two 