My movie week

The Trip to Greece by Michael Winterbottom, on pay-per-view, (photo left) is the fourth and likely last of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan’s road movies, in which the two well-known British actors hire a car (usually a Land Rover) and hit an exotic European destination. Over several days they stop at bucolic locations and dine at five-star restaurants, all on a British newspaper’s expense account. Meanwhile we’re treated to breathtaking scenery and the usually great wit and story-telling of the two thespians, who joke, mock one another, and try to outdo each other’s impersonations of people like Brando and Hopkins while philosophizing about anything and everything. The shtick has worked up to now but somehow doesn’t catch hold with this flic. Maybe it’s because the boys are just too familiar with the Greek Myths – and the rest of us aren’t – and that a lot of the joking and chatter is too inside the actor’s studio, if you know what I mean. 

The Painter and The Thief (Toronto Hot Docs festival pay-per-view online) by Norwegian director Benjamin Ree certainly tells an interesting and counterintuitive story, and hence a great topic for a documentary. Barbora Kysilkova, a painter of extraordinary naturalistic images, finds two of her paintings stolen. Eventually the thief is found in the person of Karl-Bertil Nordland, an ex con and drug addict. They meet. And instead of fireworks they develop a warm relationship. It may seem antithetical, but it works though Kysilkova is still puzzled by why Nordland stole, something he has no recollection of. “I was wasted and that’s the truth.” The story may be startling but the filming plods along and doesn’t gel until perhaps the second half, about the time Kysilkova’s boyfriend confronts her about having a relationship with such a potentially dangerous figure.

The Booksellers by D. W. Young (Hot Docs festival online pay-per-view) (photo left) is a film for anyone who loves books. The documentary portrays the world of antiquarian booksellers, a rare and, yes, very eccentric, breed, who will go literally to the ends of the Earth to buy – sometimes mortgaging the house – an exceptionally rare volume. We’re treated to interviews with some of the great if unknown (to the public) ones, whose bookstores vary from their own apartments to exquisite libraries or multi-floor old world Manhattan stores. There are also cultural glitterati like wit Fran Lebowitz, long form journalist and author Susan Orlean and one of the original New Journalists Gay Talese. There are stories of Da Vinci’s The Codex Leicester, the most expensive book ever sold, handwritten Jorge Luis Borges’s manuscripts, of jeweled and polished books, even ones made of human skin. If it all seems too fussy and musty – it’s really not – the film explores the up and coming generational world of early hip hop zines and the increasing voices of women making inroads into the heavily male dominated profession. The flic also surveys the overall book industry, lamenting its diminishing role (New York had almost 500 bookstores in the 1950s and has 80 now) in a digital world. But not to despair. Lebowitz says she sees lots of millennials on the subway reading – hold on – paper books.

Life Itself (Netflix) is a 2018 film directed by Dan Fogelman, which I took a chance on and which proved surprisingly engrossing. The subject is small – a multigenerational family – but the story is sprawling, with certain repeated chronological incidents connecting various players over time in ways you don’t expect, a sure sign of first class directing. The central characters are the couple Will (Oscar Isaac) and Abby (Olivia Wilde), their daughter Dylan (Olivia Cooke) and the Gonzalez family. The movie focuses closely on character, intersecting relationships and, yes, the element of chance. It’s like a detective story, keeping you wondering what’s coming around the next corner in these people’s lives. The cast includes Antonio Banderas, Mandy Patinkin and Annette Bening.