mobia-1

I'm neither Jewish nor gay but I found Roberta Cantow's documentary engrossing and psychologically compelling. It hits upon the AIDS epidemic, spiritual practice, cultural identity, and the burden of an idealized past. We follow Steve Stone, a gay man who's furniture building lover Flint parishes from AIDS during the 1980s. Steve feels compelled to keep his dead lover's memory alive by maintaining their exotically decorated home (which he eventually looses) and taking over Flint's custom furniture company. At the same time, he becomes involved in a tolerant synagogue through the influence of a Jewish relative. Steve's a funny guy, both exhibitionistic and philosophical and his seeming paradoxes keep the film fascinating. Cantow has crafted an artful portrait, using clever cut-aways and subtle audio editing.

An almost constant stream of surprises, "House of Last Things" is a bizarre delight from start to finish. It's never truly frightening but always quizzically intriguing. Though the quasi haunted house story makes "a kind" of sense by the end, I'm glad writer/director Bartlett left enough ambiguity intact to haunt until the next viewing (I've seen it twice now and appreciate all the cross referencing, time and space shifts and symbolic details - much care went into this). All the actors do a decent job, particularly the otherworldly little boy. Extremely impressive cinematography and transitions. Those looking for a straight genre exercise will most likely be frustrated by the oblique fragmented story however that is precisely the kind of film I love. Also, it isn't easy to make golf courses and yellow balloons threatening.

I'm very fond of films made from the late 1960s through the mid 1970s for their experimental attempts to get beyond genre conventions. I had fully expected "Alex in Wonderland" to be an overlooked psychedelic gem. While the film does have some amazing hallucinatory set-pieces (the most elaborate, a violent war in Hollywood with soldiers firing into a crowd while 2 men in top hats and tails dance on a flaming station wagon to the tune "Hooray for Hollywood"), most of the action is plodding. Donald Sutherland as Alex, goes off on many travels and tangents to entertain ideas for his next directorial effort. None of the episodic scenes build on each other and aside for gloriously lensed shots (by Laszló Kovács) of Sutherland in full hippie regalia walking introspectively in a variety of locations, there is little cumulative insight.