Cinemania (2002)

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

"(Movies are) better than sex", says the Marxist nerd. Desperate self-deception as a means of self-comfort? Don't ask me. I'm not a shrink.To speak of these misfits in terms of their incurable urge to shove their cowardly heads into the sand (read: their favourite cinemas) again and again, like a bunch of frightened ostriches in order to escape the "harsh reality" of everyday life, would still be a major understatement. These five characters make Robert Crumb's siblings look like Wall Street yuppies by comparison. The question begs itself: what would they do if films didn't exist? Books? Alcohol? Drugs? Kiddie porn? Stamp collections? In spite of his relative eloquence, the biggest loser of the bunch is undoubtedly Jack Angstreich (whose name quite fittingly means "rich with fear"): a typical "intellectual moron" (as Daniel J. Flynn calls all such bipeds in his book of the same title), although a more apt label would be "quasi-intellectual moron". I've always pitied the ignorant souls who learn all of their "history" and politics from Tinseltown movies and Continental Euro-trash cinema. Talk about a sound education! "I watch movies therefore I am an intellectual, a historian, and a very wise man." The poor schluck, he doesn't even realize that he'd been brainwashed by those 103,000 Leftist/Marxist propaganda films he'd subjected his long-suffering brain to in the course of his tragically sexless life. (But I guess that's the nature of the beast: like the lunatic who doesn't know he is insane. Brainwashing will do that to you.) I had to laugh out loud when Jack said this about a filmmaker/actor: "He was a Communist, but in a bad way." He said this with a straight face.Evidently, Jack hadn't spent much of his X-legged woodyallenesque existence outside of his NY: the cinema, the subway, and his depressing devoid-of-female-company flat. I'd suggest he visit North Korea or Cuba, to get a badly needed reality check; might shake him out of his self-imposed cowardly "intellectual" slumber. Isolation (or as Marx would call it: "alienation") breeds political extremism, among other things. Were it otherwise, he'd know that there's no such thing as being a Communist "in a good way." There are only two types of Marxists: the anti-social, semi-sociopathic Marxist who is aware of his own misanthropy (which is ironic of course because Leftists are meant to be do-gooders), the other type being the gullible Marxist who actually believes that Utopia (i.e. Heaven) can be achieved. Jack is a typical "couch philosopher": a species of wannabe intellectuals whose sense of reality becomes so warped due to the decades of close-to-zero physical participation in the real world, that they get lost in the thickets of (self-contradicting) theory, losing all focus in their thinking in the process.Jack hates Capitalism precisely because it forces competition within the human species, and if there is anything cowards/misfits hate it's having to compete in a world which tends to devour weaklings and lazy people. How stereotypically hypocritical: his comfortable 5-movies-a-day layabout existence would be far less likely in any Marxist dictatorship. He enjoys the fruits of other people's labour (unemployed; lives off the tons of money his aunt left him), while whining about the imperfect system. But I guess if Michael Antonioni told him that America stinks then it must be true...But let's leave this lonely man and his supposed "ex-girlfriends" - a lie he spreads on several occasions in this documentary to save face. (Nice try, but no cigar!) Roberta is possibly the most fun creature here. Slightly malicious, (un)intentionally amusing, OCD-afflicted, and somewhat insane, she comes off as a kind of female reincarnation of John Huston. (The facial resemblance is as hilarious as it is baffling.) She tried to choke an usher because the latter tore up her ticket. Nuff said.Eric is the one who comes closest to being a half-way normal, sensible human being. (Let's disregard Jack's half-baked semi-philosophical definition of "normal"; he'd love to be "normal" and he knows it.) He is also the only one in the bunch who seems to have common sense (something "intellectuals" generally detest). At one point he says: "Some of the foreign movies are called 'masterpieces' because they're not fun so people think they must be profound." Plus he watches videotaped films. Obviously he has a clearer head on his shoulders than his rather confused, manic-depressive, frantic-yet-lethargic, movie-devouring "buddies".Harvey is a rather likable, cheerful character. He'll watch anything, does not discriminate between Kubrick and Bert I. Gordon. He has an impressive collection of very rare LPs (movie soundtracks) but he does not have a turntable to play them on. You gotta love that...Bill is the ultimate nerd. He constantly gets the chills in the cinema, but not because it's cold there. It must be the fear of life that makes him shake like a leaf. He probably dreads the moment when the movie ends and the lights go on because that means he has to endure an entire 15 minutes until the next movie projection, when he can yet again immerse himself into a world in which HE is Alain Delon. He pretentiously "adores" Euro-trash cinema (if that's even possible), thinking naively that this will impress us (i.e. fool us) into thinking that he is a "movie buff intellectual" of some sort. Alas, there's an oxymoron right there: the species I just named does not even exist.Which brings me to the worrying, puzzling, and downright cretinous over-adoration of cinema and the rampant idolization of its low-IQ thespians and hyped-up, barely educated directors... They're just MOVIES, frcrissakes! People who think they will find all of the world's wisdom in moving pictures - made by greedy businessmen and overrated "artistes" - are just as sadly deluded as those self-loathing cult members who think that comets exist for the solitary purpose of collecting their useless, pathetic souls.For my extensive "Left-wing Propaganda In Cinema" list, email me.

We've seen these types of people before. I used to work at an old movie theater where one of these "cinemaniac" types was a regular customer. He would arrive very early between shows, waiting in the lobby and eat popcorn. Occasionally he would strike up a conversation and repeat a lot of the same stories like "you know, one of my best friends is William Shatner's personal secretary!" This man and the people documented in "Cinemania" are not people we want to pay much attention to. When we hear them, we may be amused by their quirkiness but eventually we just want to get away from them. We feel pity for them because they seem so oblivious. One minute of looking at these people and we know what their problem is. They need to get a life. Instead of investigating their inner demons, the filmmakers decide to show the attractive qualities of these characters which is that they all love films. These are not the typical film buffs who obsess over Star Trek or Lord of the Rings. These are the types that are obsessed with "art" films. Despite their obsessive compulsive behavior, it is nice to see Americans who are passionate about films by Wim Wenders, Jean Luc Godard, Tarkovsky, and Truffaut. Their taste in films is rare in this country. One of the characters, Roberta takes film culture so seriously that she feels it is an insult to serve popcorn and snacks at the theater. Eric calls a theater and asks if the film playing that day is being shown on a new 35-mm print because otherwise, he won't see it. Another guy has a business card with a title like "philosopher, French New Wave, Godard expert". At one point in the film, we see him writing a blurb for an online dating service and one of his other film geeks is critiquing it. Unfortunately, we know he's not being very objective. The problem I had with this documentary was that it seemed to be mocking these people to the point where it was disturbing. There's not much we learn about these people other then the fact that they all share a form of obsessive compulsive behavior. One of the most depressing scenes was when two friends were sitting in a messy apartment watching an old movie on the VCR. The scene runs too long and the camera zooms right into their faces to show off their twitches and creepy expressions. It seems as though the film was trying to be therapeutic to these characters. At times, there are bits of revelations that we hear. "I watch these old films of Greta Garbo because it's a better alternative to watching porn all the time". That was a positive sign but by the end we just get a hopeless feeling about them. They're living as if they were in a movie, stuck in fantasy and never able to get out. Maybe, that's good for them but this film didn't make me think so.

I have seen this film several times, and as a fellow New York City film buff find it very fascinating, especially some of the insights Jack has on the workings of the projection rooms. While I would consider it difficult to sit through more than 3 or 4 films in a week, these five people are seeing at least that many per day!!!Unfortunately, one obvious issue the film glosses over is just how these people can afford this lifestyle. Early on it is mentioned that while Jack is living off an inheritance and Bill is a freelance editor, the other three (Harvey, Roberta, and Eric) are living on disability. Now, I'm not exactly a right-wing Republican but surely it must occur to some, if not most, viewers that people receiving disability payments are supposed to be, you know, DISABLED, and not running around Manhattan attending movies all day. Maybe they are conning the system or maybe they really do have some non-obvious disability (besides O-C disorder) that prohibits them from working - the filmmakers make no attempt to find out.

This film was a favorite at the Seattle Film Festival. I went to a screening last night with rather high expectations, some of which were met and others, which well... were not.We follow six oddballs from the big apple whose lives center around thick film festival guides and meticulous prints of "La Dolce Vita". The beginning is a clever montage in which we are introduced to each one and are allowed to laugh at their idiosyncracies. One individual's eccentric voiceover is played while he's spreading half a jar of peanut butter onto a slice of wonderbread. All are extraordinarily unattractive and the nightmare of any suburban mother who's afraid that they're kid is watching too much television. I am beginning to the think the term "film buff" should be given a new meaning. They ride on a subways crowded with anxious people catching the train to work. They sit at the sides of the train, hearts pounding at the pure thought of someone may "stealing their special seat" at the 3:00 showing at MoMA. One even collects thousands of film records. The revelation? He doesn't even own a record player.The film stays a quirky, safe experience in the first half-hour. Then it becomes repetitive, disturbing, and not necessarily in a poignant matter. We step into their apartments and it's not surprising that they're all packrats (to say the VERY least). Many live with books (mostly related to film) stacked up to the ceilings, struggling daily to find their way out the door. Their social lives are exclusive to their `film society', which consists of spitting out film titles and waiting for ten second criticisms. Only one person is employed. The rest either live off someone else or a dead relatives royalties. The film became progressively more uncomfortable for me upon realizing that this, was, indeed a documentary… and that the hypocrisy of sitting in a theatre, laughing at an extreme version of myself became too much for me. Had the filmmakers not been there, I probably might have walked out. As playwright Edward Albee said: `The best art holds a mirror in front of your face and says, THIS IS WHO YOU ARE. NOW CHANGE.' I wish it could have applied to this movie the same way. It never strayed from being a caricature-driven freak show and very much resisted giving us a thorough investigation of who the psychology of these people. What the hell they get out of saving every ticket stub and soda cup from their childhood. Tell me why? Tell me how? Give me answers before the film comes to an end…And of course, as most films do… `Cinemania' came to end and left this viewer extremely irritated. Usually, I resist walking out of the theatre commenting on the film's quality. This time, when asked the question, I answered: `Self-conscious. But I'm sure they're thrilled that they're on screen. It's just too bad they don't understand how sad they are…' Which, I will admit… is a matter of opinion… and surely mine will be battered.For me, it was a montage of social loners and obsessive-compulsives in the Big Apple. A friend of mine was touched, humored and said it reminded him of… well, himself. What I failed to tell him was that it affected me the same way too. He just has a better sense of humor.Recommended for fans of `Trekkies', `The Cruise' and `Crumb'.RATING: 6/10