Sleep Walk With Me - 2012 - 3 Stars

Actors:  Mike Birbiglia, Lauren Ambrose
Director:  Mike Birbiglia

Note:  Some Spoilers Ahead

Comedy used to be about exposing the foibles of the world around us, but as our culture has gotten more inwardly focused, so too has comedy.  It's not enough to just tell jokes for a living - a comedian has to have a personal narrative, he or she has to expose himself or herself to the world too.  Sleep Walk With Me is such a story - a struggling comedian deals with a flagging relationship and his sleepwalking problem.  It's an honest examination of how to not tell the truth to another human being - to instead expose it to everyone else but that person.  Such are our times, I suppose.

I wanted to give this less credit than I ultimately did - I felt it deflected the question of how success in comedy and lack of success in other parts of life may be correlated, even as the film centered around that thorny fulcrum.  The main character subsists as a result of his anxieties - it's left up to the audience to decide whether or not that's good for him.

Black Narcissus - 1947 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Deborah Kerr, Flora Robson
Director:  Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Location shoots have become more and more prevalent in the film world.  While ultimately that has helped films appear more 'real', it still calls into question their versimilitude - sure, you might be in India or Brazil or wherever, or you might make your movie look like the 1860s Old West, but everyone looks like they've just showered and their teeth are remarkably clean.  Without the imperfections of the set to focus on, other imperfections come into focus.  Black Narcissus is an incredible accomplishment of set design - while purportedly set at a remote Indian mountain castle, at the end (spoiler alert) it says it was shot at a London studio. While it never doesn't feel like a film set, the directors use every trick - light, camera, sound, etc. - to make this set feel lived in.  I imagine the effect is more real than if weaker directors had found an actual mountain castle to shoot at.

I'm pretty sure Black Narcissus is faithfully adapted from a book, and as such it lacks the narrative drive of more recent fare.  It's a movie where things unfold - while the conflicts that come to the fore by the end are being built, it's a gentle building.  The film can at times feel weightless and unimportant as a result, but I don't think it's either thing.

Jiro Dreams Of Sushi - 2011 - No Rating

Subject:  Sushi chef Jiro Ono and his award-winning restaurant
Director:  David Gelb

Note:  Minor spoilers ahead

Woody Allen's characters would watch and likely love his films.  Noah Baumbach's too.  John McClane, before he was beset by German thieves holding his wife hostage, would probably have enjoyed Die Hard.  Mr. Brown's favorite film would be Reservoir Dogs.  To me, whoever interviewed chef Jiro Ono left out the most interesting question - why would he consent to having a documentary made about himself and his restaurant?  Jiro is portrayed as a tireless worker - his then 5 year old son asked his mother catching Jiro napping at home: 'why is this strange man sleeping in our house?', about which Jiro laughs now.  It's hard to imagine him sitting down to watch this film, or indeed any film.  I suppose it's the same reason why anyone would - to get your life story out there.

As a documentary, Jiro... manages to raise questions about the universal problem of work/life balance while showing a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a high-end sushi restaurant operation.  Furthermore, it asserts the importance of techne - I don't know a better English word, as the word 'craft' has been corrupted  - the idea that by doing one thing over and over again, a person can continually improve at it.  However, he or she may not be able to express this improvement through words - it just is, through feeling and muscle memory.  It's a notion that's growing dimmer and dimmer in this data-driven society.