Enlighten Up

The path to enlightenment does not necessarily mean the road to an interesting movie. It's easy enough to pay lip service to peace and nirvana but more difficult to paste those concept onto images. In Kate Churchill's docu Enlighten Up she attempts to explain yoga. The only thing is that everybody, from American jocks to Indian gurus, have their own version of the definition.
Enlighten Up illustrates the different types of workout regimens associated with yoga that are available on the east and west coast. Then taking Asia by storm Kate and her subject Norman Allen, whose goal is to find some enlightenment in his own life, meet with masters of the art in yoga in India. Here the answers given by the sages approaches a kind of mysterious fulfillment given short shrift by their Western counterparts.
Enlighten Up works best when exploring the exact nature of each type of yoga workout, whether mind expansion through years of study or short term benefits for the body as is the American way. Asanas and namaste are just words and while Enlighten Up attempts to explain them in relation to the act of yoga the end result is likely to be as confusing as illuminating.
Kate spends part of the time in conflict with Norman but it's not clear how much of that is fodder for the camera. The tidbits of info gleamed from this docu are likely to be of interest more to beginners than adepts of yoga.

The Merry Gentleman

Michael Keaton plays a taciturn hitman and directs in this moody woman-in-peril drama that stars Kelly Macdonald. Keaton shows a steady directorial presence, occasionally veering into comedy but only as subtext so that the story maintains its chilly tone. The Merry Gentleman rolls into the Angelika downtown for a brief exclusive engagement.
Keaton's Frank Logan may be suicidal and this is balanced by an alcoholic detective with emotional issues who heads up the subsequent investigation (a convincing and intriguing Tom Bastounes). After shooting a victim in an office from the rooftop across the street Logan teeters on the edge of the roof. The will he or won't he jump moment jarringly is interrupted when Kate Frazier (Macdonald) happens to look up while exiting the building.
Kate has recently moved to the big city herself running from an abusive relationship with her policeman husband (a brief but explosive scene with Bobby Cannavale). The action takes place in Chicago but the setting feels like any large American metroplex. Macdonald uses her native accent and this gives the film a sense that people are from everywhere; constantly coming and going, maturing and passing.
Both the detective and Logan start showing up at Kate's apartment but because of the two men's demeanor you wonder who may pose the most viable threat to Katy. After the characters are established the film's drama faintly resembles one of those post-WWII films with Crawford or Stanwyck where they are being stalked. As mentioned Keaton helms the proceedings with a somber hand but never lets the action veer into melodrama. The title refers to Logan being a good Samaritan around the Christmas season even though he's followed Katy and stages an excuse to help her carry an evergreen tree. The rest of the story and case takes place over the next couple of months. The conclusion is satisfactory and not totally grim in keeping with the nature of the tale.

The Brothers Bloom

It's a sign of the times that The Brothers Bloom gets unceremoniously deposited in a single theater for a brief theatrical run while a heartless unfunny comedy like The Hangover makes box office dollars hand over fist. Yet that's the same story since year one of cinema. Both of the films I just mentioned to some extent represent a triumph of form over content but Bloom shows creative inventiveness in making a form that adjusts only to twist audience expectation.
The Brothers Bloom centers on the art of the con and could be on a short list of con game movies whether a couple of Mamet films or The Sting. But The Brothers Bloom actually recalls The Lady Eve with its combination of deception steeped in comic hi-jinx and for the most part pulls off the arduous task of being a witty screwball comedy.
TBB is the sophomore effort of Rian Johnson who gave us the film noir high school thriller Brick. Brothers Bloom doesn't quite come together with a worthy conclusion to what has come in the first two acts yet the overall impression is of a director to watch. Such is also the case with Richard Kelly whose Donnie Darko remains one of the best film debuts of the last twenty years only his follow-up Southland Tales found little love at the multiplex.
The Brothers Bloom stars Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody (in the movie called Stephen and Bloom) as orphaned brothers who developed their confidence schemes to overcome the emptiness in their lives due to being rejected by foster parent after foster parent. An opening flashback shows the brothers as pre-teens and even then they are hellions. There's also a one-legged kitty with an ad hoc kitty wheelchair that the feline uses to hobble by in one shot. It has nothing to do with anything else in the film yet would be perfectly in place in a Marx Brothers or even Francois Truffaut movie.
Rachel Weisz stars as Penelope Stamp an eccentric heiress and owns her screen time with a kind of lovable klutzy gusto that makes it hard for Bloom to actively con her. Costarring parts played by Robbie Coltrane and Maximilian Schell ratchet up the creep meter. Rinko Kikuchi as a soft spoken demolition expert has its own moments of levity.
Johnson likes to engage the audience in tricks and manages to make The Brothers Bloom zip by in a 60s hip fashion with its color coded heroes and enticing foreign locales.