Marie Caillou
Fear(s) of the Dark
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THE UNIVERSE OF KEITH HARING Equally a portrait of the artist and a portrait of a decade, this celebratory documentary makes the short, accelerated life of Keith Haring (1958–1990) inseparable from that short, accelerated period we know as ’80s New York. Haring arrived there, like his idol Andy Warhol, a small-town boy from Pennsylvania. He swiftly became an art-world star, known for vibrant, optimistic cartoons and murals — often executed graffiti-style in the subway stations and on sidewalks — and something of a gay icon. Madonna performed at his birthday party, in a dress covered with his scribbles. He painted a mostly nude Grace Jones, whom we see performing here — among many other period clips — at the famed Paradise Garage. Near decade’s close, Haring was commissioned to paint the Berlin Wall — a reminder of how that era was to end so abruptly. AIDS, of course, was its punctuation note. Haring was an activist before he fell ill, and he continued to create and lecture — with generous excerpts shown here — right up to the inevitable end. With family and other members of the Keith Haring Foundation interviewed here (plus Yoko Ono, Kenny Scharf and various scenesters), Universe is not a critical appraisal of Haring’s work or legacy. I lived in Manhattan during those years, and his youthful energy surely made the city a better place. Today, his art holds up less well on museum walls than as cheerful hospital murals — instruments of healing, Haring believed. Maybe that’s ironic, or maybe we just live in unhealthier times. (Music Hall) (Brian Miller)
ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO Ostensibly, this should be money-shot Kevin Smith: Pals make a porn to pay the bills and, in the process of gettin’ it on for the video cam, cum to realize their years-in-the-making friendship is really a love affair. Awwwww, how sweet. In other words, it’s quintessential Silent Bob, as hard-up meets hard-on in a movie that’s all heart once you get past the shit shot that’ll shock only those for whom Clerks II’s donkey show wasn’t oh-God-no enough. But from its few scatological asides to its inevitable boob shots, nothing about Zack and Miri feels terribly fresh, much less transgressive. Amiable and engaging in person and a filmmaker for whom comic and movie nerds so desperately want to root, Smith makes two kinds of movies: romantic comedies and bromantic comedies, with Chasing Amy — his one legitimately great movie — the crossover hybrid hit. They’re all decidedly conventional affairs, save for the detours into gross-out juvenilia that, the older Smith gets, seem less sincere and feel more like pandering to the audience that goes to his movies solely to walk out with a couple of lines they can quote to each other on the ride home. (Citywide) (Robert Wilonsky)
