Every now and then a film slips through the cracks, and these three documentaries (all about artists and the process of creating art) are—to various extents—worth pulling out of those cracks. [Yep, that’s what passes for an allegory these days.]
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”…The best of the three, but also one of the best films I’ve seen this year. A near-lock for my Top 20 best films of 2014. Why? It’s a documentary about a movie that never got made, farrrrrrr out there director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt to make a movie out of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic “Dune,” and the story is a hell of a lot more interesting than the “Dune” film that finally did get made, David Lynch’s notorious flop. Maybe Jodorowsky’s wild interpretation wouldn’t have been any better, but I would have loved to have seen it. Just listening to him talk about assembling the most eclectic cast imaginable (David Carradine as a hero, Orson Welles as a floating obese demigod, and Salvador Dali as the emperor of the universe) makes for a better sci-fi visual than just about anything we actually get to watch these days. Grade: A
“Tim’s Vermeer”…Can a regular guy (named Tim) paint like Johannes Vermeer? Maybe. And that’s the interesting question driving this documentary that explores how Vermeer was able to paint photo-realistic paintings that were centuries ahead of their time. Tim thinks he’s discovered his methods, and watching him try to prove it is about as exciting as watching somebody paint can get. Grade: B+
“Altman”…A documentary about the life and films of famed director Robert Altman. It does a very good job of going through his history and telling some interesting tales about his hits (The Player, Short Cuts, Mash, etc.) and misses (Popeye), but it doesn’t succeed in really getting inside his head. Why did Altman mess with form so much with his overlapping dialogue and drifting plots? The movie offers up some explanations, but we don’t get a real sense of how Altman truly thinks. Grade: B