Actor Michael Rapaport directs an equal part historical and personal look at the influential rap group A Tribe Called Quest. Given backstage access to their 2008 reunion tour, he captures the volatile relationship between founding members, Kamaal Ibn John Fareed, aka Q-Tip, and Malik Taylor, aka Phife Dawg. The duo has been friends since they could remember and the film reveals the same petty grievances and jealousies that have taken down so many musical groups.

Along with De La Soul, they were instrumental in the Native Tongues Posse, which brought a soulful, culturally conscious style to rap. The group stood out among the gangster rappers of the ’90s, dressed in Africa-inspired clothing. Q-Tip and Phife Dawg grew up in Queens in the hot bed of the rap explosion, wanting to become the next Run DMC. Once they met DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad and rapper Jarobi White, the Tribe was born. Part of what made them stick out was what they were sampling. It is said they were digging deeper into their parents’ record collection and finding gems that others wouldn’t even have thought of. This extended to jazz not just R&B.

To talk about the influence of the band and their problems, Rapaport brings together a who’s who list of rap artists, such as the Beastie Boys, Pharrell, Mos Def, Santigold, Monie Love, Pete Rock, Large Professor, De La Soul, The Jungle Brothers and Common. De La Soul’s Trugoy candidly says he wishes the Tribe would never get back together if they can’t come together peacefully. He believes it’s not fair to the fans to have them go out and not be 100% dedicated to the performance. The central problem seems to be ego. Q-Tip, the perfectionist, is accused of believing he is the group. Phife Dog, the slacker, is accused of being too sensitive and not dedicated enough, distracted by is love of sports. The truth, as it always is, seems to fall somewhere in the middle.

While they fight, they are all still friends… even when they hate each other. Phife Dog is a serious diabetic and his illness pays largely into the history of the group. During their most contentious time as a band, Phife Dawg was hospitalized after losing a great deal of weight due to his uncontrolled blood sugar. He admits that he is addicted to sweets. Jarobi, who left the band after their first album and went on to form his own restaurant, moved to Atlanta to cook for Phife Dawg. Despite their differences, Q-Tip agreed to their first reunion primarily because Phife Dawg needed the money. If you’d ever want a bunch of guys to be your friends, these guys seem like the ones who will truly have your back forever.

Named to numerous lists as one of the greatest rap groups ever, A Tribe Called Quest found a perfect balance between the slowed-down rhymes of Q-Tip and faster, harder edged lyrical playfulness of Phife Dawg. They are the yin and yang and the group wouldn’t be the same without it. Even if they never make another album, the ones they did make are classics that will stand the test of time. And as the hopeful mega-fan Rapaport points on at the end of the film, they still have one more album left on their original contract. So you never know.

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Along the Ardeche River in France, archeologists discovered a vast cave system that had been sealed off for tens of thousands of years. Inside they found pristine cave paintings that seem as if they were created yesterday. The drawings of animals display artistry and imagination. Multiple legs represent movement. One strange drawing shows a bison embracing a naked woman. What were our ancient ancestors thinking? Filmmaker Werner Herzog tries to delve into the question and what it means to us today.

Herzog, who seems fascinated with extreme locations as evident in his Antarctic doc ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, talks with scientists and scholars and discovers things the cave drawings have revealed, such as the lions of the time did not have manes, which was previously unknown. Since being sealed up nearly 25,000 years ago, skulls such as cave bears have been covered in calcification, making it resemble an ivory statute. We also learn something about the artistic intentions of the people. Herzog films in 3-D to try and capture how the ancient artists even used the contours of the walls in how they approached their paintings.

These being the oldest paintings in existence the French government has limited access to the cave to perverse it. The opening has been sealed off with a giant steel door. Carefully constructed walkways are the only access through the cave. There are animal remains there, but no human bones have been found. This doesn’t seem to be a place where people lived. It seems to have been a museum of sorts.

Limited in his access, Herzog and three crewmembers were given the ability to film with four cold-panel lights, powered from battery belts, and hand-held cameras. Herzog, who provides the voice over, proposes that their flickering lights across the walls might have been similar to the flickering torch lights upper Paleolithic Era humans had when they visited there. Evidence of them stoking their torches on the walls to rekindle the flame is there.

Carbon dating of some of the drawings dates them back 32,000 years and others 2,000 years after that. Just think about that. How much has happened in the past 2,000 years from today. Those who drew the original drawings were vastly different people than the ones that came after — just as we are vastly different from people who lived in Biblical times. In red palm prints on the walls, one individual stands out because he has a crooked pinkie finger. A bit of his identity has survived 32 millennia. Any of us will be lucky to simply to be remembered in three generations from now. There might be a record of us, but will a person 32 millennia from now be marveling at our crooked bones?

This is where Herzog brings the film back to us. His film and any other art is a form of communication not only to our contemporaries, but also to the future as long as it can survive. One scholar tells a story of an aborigine who sees a stone painting fading and is saddened. A Westerner is startled when the aborigine decides to repaint the painting. The Westerner asks him why he is painting and the aborigine says that it is not he who is doing it but the spirit of the original painter guiding his hand so that he can continue to speak. This is what Herzog is doing as well.

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Bill Cunningham is a man of integrity. Despite being a legendary photographer in the fashion world, he lives in a tiny, rent-controlled apartment in Carnegie Hall. His room is filled with file cabinets with decades of negatives and a bed. The bathroom is in the hall. For much of his work, he refused to take money, because he didn’t want anyone to own him or his work. He won’t even take a free glass of water at the events he covers. His work is his life and he won’t compromise that.

During the film, Cunningham celebrates his 80th birthday. He has been taking pictures of New Yorkers and what they wear for decades. The film features a who’s whos list of editors from the top fashion magazines who follow is work because he has a keen eye for catching trends that are growing out of the streets. In covering fashion shows, he has a keen eye for when a designer is copying something done before and has no qualms pointing it out. He loves fashion, which he describes as our armor to go out into the world.

Ironically, he does not dress to impress. Though he is an icon in haute couture circles, he owns few clothes. His signature item is a cheap blue smock that the trash men in Paris wear. It has enough pockets for his film and is cheap enough that he doesn’t feel bad when his camera wears out the front. When he first moved into Carnegie Hall’s artists’ apartments, he was a fledgling hat designer. He now seems embarrassed by his work. Maybe he was too practical or introverted to be the one on the other side of the camera.

When the fashion luminaries are asked about his personal life, they know little. One believes he must have come from money because no one else would live like he does. But in actuality he came from a modest background. He was lucky enough to create a job out of the thing he loves most in the world and has cleared all other distractions from his life. His family didn’t like him going into fashion, because it wasn’t manly enough. When asked if he’s ever had a romantic relationship, he replies, “Are you asking if I’m gay?’ It’s what his family feared. He’s elusive about answering, but he does admit that he hasn’t ever had a relationship, because he is married to his art.

His uncompromised stance on his art has allowed him to retain a great deal of control over the years. His spreads have his influence over every aspect. As seen in one sequence, it must be a frustrating job working as a layout artist with this perfectionist. Conversely, for Cunningham, it’s frustrating to create art about fashion when he’s working with a layout artist who he calls a lumberjack. He spends almost every day pedaling around New York City looking for uniquely dressed people. He is fearless in his pursuit, even stopping in traffic to get a shot. One thing he is not interested in is celebrity. He doesn’t care who the person is, only whether they are wearing something interesting. Once for Women’s Wear Daily he did a spread that compared average people wearing high fashion on the street to models that wore the same outfit on the runway. He was devastated when the editors changed his copy to make fun of the average people. That ended his long working relationship with the magazine.

He is a joyous man. You don’t have to like fashion or photography or New York culture to be inspired by Cunningham. To find something you love so much that you dedicate every day to it into your 80s is marvelous. Even when life throws him curve balls like getting evicted from his home because Carnegie Hall wants to put in more office space filled with telemarketers, he brushes it off easily. He is too happy and content to worry about that sort of thing. There is another picture waiting for him to take to worry about.

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Michael Jackson announced that he was going to do one last tour. Sadly he never got that far. The “This Is It” tour had just finished prepping when the King of Pop died. This documentary was culled from behind-the-scenes footage of the rehearsals. The film provides a compelling look at a dedicated performer working out his latest, and unexpectedly last, spectacle.

So what does the film say about Michael Jackson? He was a perfectionist, who was the artistic drive behind the epic show. He would rerun parts over and over until they were just right. While doing it, he comes off as patient and grateful of the people working with him. And in turn they seem happy to be working with and learning from him. But first and foremost, he is presented as an amazing performer. He knows music and what he wants. And he can certainly dance, keeping up with the back-up dancers that are half his age. If this is a 50-year-old drug addict, he’s on some amazing stuff.

Now to be fair, I doubted I’d see anything different. This film is intended to be a tribute to the man, not a hatchet job. But there was certainly enough footage to give this positive impression. They’re not stretching. Many of the sequences were long takes, so nothing is being edited. For the most part, this is the raw Michael Jackson.

The production value that was going into the show is also impressive. New elaborate videos had been produced to play on giant screens. One recreated his classic “Thriller” zombie dance with modern vfx. Interactive elements were planned to engage the audiences as ghosts flew over their heads. Another transports Michael into a classic noir with Humphrey Bogart. These sequences put on display the theatrical inclination the singer had. He certainly knew how to put on a show.

When it’s all said and done, the film has a sad cloud hanging over it. The footage doesn’t seem like it was really meant for a feature length concert doc, but footage taken for the intention of editing it into a five-minute promo. This carries home the notion of what was lost. This would have been a great tour. This would have been a comeback for Michael. But this rough around the edges doc is all we get. It’s not really enough, but it’s still a reminder of, outside of all the controversies, what really made Michael Jackson an icon.

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So what does the Bible say about homosexuality? The verse thrown out most often is Leviticus 20:13 — “If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.” An abomination that’s some strong language. But what else does the Bible call an abomination? Even before homosexuality, Leviticus 11:10-11 says, “But all in the seas or in the rivers that do not have fins and scales, all that move in the water or any living thing which is in the water, they are an abomination to you. They shall be an abomination to you; you shall not eat their flesh, but you shall regard their carcasses as an abomination.” Holy cow, stop the church retreat and clambake!

Director Daniel G. Karslake looks at the conflict between conservative Christians and the LGBT community. He does so by interviewing families of gay children, as well as clergy and religion professors. One of the interviewees is Dick Gephardt, the former Democratic House Majority Leader, who talks about the coming-out of his daughter Chrissy and how that played into his run for president. Gene Robinson is the first openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church. The film looks into the waves his nomination as bishop caused and the backlash he had to deal with.

But the film also deals with average families and how they reacted to their children coming out. An African American family talks about their daughter’s homosexuality with frank honesty on how they don’t agree with her lifestyle. Her father said he always hoped his daughter wouldn’t turn out a slut and his son a frag, but he laughs when she says he didn’t expect it to turn out the other way around. Both her parents have found ways to rationalize her homosexuality with their religious views in order to stay in contact with her. Her mother seems to have a particular problem imagining her daughter’s sex life. Really? What parent is comfortable imagining their children’s sex life whether they’re straight or gay?

A young man comes out in high school. When he tells his parents, they didn’t know how to react really. They bought books and consulted psychiatrists to see if they could fix him. They’re biggest worry was how others would treat their son. But the outspoken teen couldn’t hide his identity. Over time his parents embrace his activism and stand side by side with him as he pushes for equal rights.

A young woman goes off to college, the first place she is comfortable to embrace her homosexuality. She comes out to her mother in a letter. Her mother writes back that she doesn’t want to ever see her again, because the church told her so. The mother regrets this choice.

Some of the religious experts the film talks with take on the Bible verses against homosexuality directly. They claim that literalism vs. interpretation is where the problem lies. Translation plays a part as well. How can homosexuality and eating shellfish both be an abomination? Well upon the writing of the Old Testament, an abomination was anything that was against tradition. Others point to the story of Sodom and Gomorra as another example of God smiting homosexuals. Angels come to the door of a rich man and the rich man sends his guards to rape them. In context to the time, rape was common as a tool to humiliate one’s enemies. The biggest sin the rich man committed was not letting a stranger into his house as a guest, which was the tradition of the times.

In an animated sequence, the film looks at the science of homosexuality. One fact that stuck out was that the more boys a woman has the more likely future boys will be homosexual. Scientists believe this is the case because a woman’s immune system fights harder against the male baby as a foreign object and the more boys a woman has, the better her body gets at hitting the male child with female hormones.

The doc is both scholarly and emotional. The science and religious interpretation arguments are compelling, but those devoted to bigotry toward homosexuals will find ways to disregard them. It’s interesting when the film does on the street interviews with people who believe homosexuality is wrong because of Bible, but really don’t know what the Bible says about homosexuality. However, it’s the personal stories of families dealing with their feelings on homosexuality that is hard to toss aside.

The film clearly makes the point that what the Bible says is taken selectively. Homosexuality is still on the no-no list, but might not be forever just like eating shellfish or pork, seeing your wife’s menstrual flow, cutting the hair at the sides of your head or wearing mixed fabric trousers. Polyester-cotton blends should still be a sin, but you know traditions change.

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With so many prisoner confessions concerning the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. surfacing lately, it seemed a good time to check out Nick Broomfield’s 2002 documentary on the crimes. The explosive documentary argues that Death Row Records head Suge Knight orchestrated the hits. Broomfield talks to the rap mogul in prison. Broomfield is a ballsy guy.

If you don’t know Broomfield he’s a British filmmaker who makes documentaries like an investigative journalist. His AILEEN WUORNOS: THE SELLING OF A SERIAL KILLER shows how the subject of the fictional film MONSTER was manipulated by money-grubbing lowlifes to make money off her crimes. His HEIDI FLEISS: HOLLYWOOD MADAM tells the tale not of a notorious sex worker, but a naïve woman manipulated by others. His KURT & COURTNEY made the sensational claims that Courtney Love had something to do with the death of her husband Kurt Cobain.

While I wouldn’t say it about his thin KURT & COURTNEY argument, his other films, including this one, are solid investigations. He works gorilla style. It’s him with a mic and his cameraman Joan Churchill. The man isn’t afraid to ask the scary questions. He digs up compelling eyewitnesses and even someone claiming to have been involved. He often just shows up at places and says he has an interview with so and so. That’s how he got to talk to Suge Knight.

The premise he argues is that Knight hired a killer to shoot Tupac because the artist was owed millions in royalties and was looking to leave Death Row. Knight then hired someone to kill Biggie to make it look like the killings were part of some manufactured East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry. The killers could have been former or off-duty LAPD. The music producer had around 40 of them on his payroll. Broomfield at least proves that the Los Angeles police had little interest in interviewing the most obvious suspects. One detective working on the Tupac case resigned when he was urged by higher-ups to not go where his investigation was leading.

Now back to the Suge Knight interview. The large man is an intimidating figure. He has a rep for violence, issuing death threats on his website and the tale of him hanging Vanilla Ice over a balcony by the rapper’s feet. When Broomfield enters the prison, the warden seems subservient to the prisoner. Suge approaches Broomfield with two bodyguards in tow. Churchill was so scared of ambushing Knight that she refused to go on the shoot, so Broomfield had to hired a freelancer, who at one point was so scared he pointed the camera at the sky instead of Knight.

Broomfield has a knack for getting people to say things on camera that are shocking. Is it his disheveled appearance? Or his British accident? Or the naïve way he asks his questions? He gets people to say things that could conceivably in this case get them killed. That includes Broomfield.

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Before this film I had never heard of Joyce McKinney and her bizarre headline grabbing life. It’s a fitting statement of her bizarre story, one that grabs attention and fizzles out as the next sensational tale takes hold of the headlines of magazines and newspapers at the check-out line. It’s got it all — a former beauty queen, a Mormon missionary, violence and kinky sex.

Joyce McKinney was in search of that special guy her whole life. After living in L.A. for a stretch, she moved to Utah where she meets Kirk Anderson. For Joyce it was love at first sight. The problem for Kirk was that he was a Mormon and was expected to marry a nice Mormon girl. Not a former Miss Wyoming. Kirk up and left on his required mission without telling Joyce where he was going. She hired a private investigator to hunt him down, believing he had been kidnapped and brainwashed by a cult.

She located Kirk in England. Along with her devoted friend KJ May, she hired a pilot and a bodyguard to accompany them to the U.K. on a mission to free Kirk. With spy gear and a gun in their possession, they quickly lost their paid help and had to do it alone. What happened next is up for interpretation.

Joyce’s story is that she took Kirk to a cottage in the countryside where she made him all the foods that he loved and attempted to de-brainwash him. She gave him cinnamon oil massages. They had sex. When Kirk went impotent, Joyce consulted a Christian sexual manual that said she should tie him up so that he could relax and let go of his sexual hang ups. According to Joyce, they willingly went into town together where Kirk saw a headline that he was missing and decided to call his church to tell them he was okay. Joyce never saw him again.

Kirk claims that he was held a gunpoint and taken to the cottage against his will. There he was sexual assaulted. Joyce believes his story is just Mormon brainwashing again. Like she says, how can a woman rape a man? That’s like trying to shove a marshmallow into a parking meter. As a result she and KJ were arrested. The tabloids ran with the story, making her an instant celebrity attending movie openings in London. But when the attention got too hot and jail time loomed, she and KJ posed a deaf mutes, jumped bail and flew to Canada.

The British tabloids battled it out with conflicting takes on the story. Peter Tory, a reporter for The Daily Express, landed an interview with Joyce, telling her side of the story. She paints herself as the enduring romantic who will love Kirk until the end of time. She sees herself as the good girl who gave up her virginity to save the man she loved from a cult. Meanwhile, The Daily Mirror paints a different story. They dig up over a thousand modeling photos of Joyce, many nude and S&M style. Mirror photographer Kent Gavin found ads for her advertising as a call girl. But things are never cut and dry. Her former friend Steve Moskowitz said that she might have given oral, but no one had sex with her. I guess in Joyce’s mind that still made her the nice girl next door.

Then when the story seems over it takes another bizarre turn. Joyce once again finds herself in the tabloid headlines. But this time it’s Bernann McKinney, not that Joyce Bernann McKinney from the Mormon sex in chains scandal.

This film is very akin to Morris’ hilarious docs GATES OF HEAVEN and VERNON, FLORIDA with the biopic flavor of his MR. DEATH, another doc about a delusional person, thrown in as well. He has fun with the sensational story by superimposing some of the more salacious statements by his interviewees up on the screen. Moreover, he uses cutout style animation to liven Joyce’s tales up as well.

Tory describes Joyce in the film as barking mad. Director Errol Morris simply allows Joyce to back that claim up. She is a flamboyant and passionate personality. She has painted an image of herself in her head and no fact to the contrary will change that. When Kirk comes back to the States, she follows him. Some (like the police) call it stalking. She sees it as her undying devotion. She claims that Mormonism warped Kirk’s sex drive, but it seems that her own religious upbringing has warped her and she is simply projecting that onto Kirk. At one point in reference to Kirk, she says, “If you tell a lie long enough, you learn to believe it.”

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I became a fan of comedian Bill Hicks when I caught one of his old HBO specials on late at night. I wondered why I hadn’t heard of this angry hilarious and provocative performer before, so I went to the Internet and looked him up. Turns out he has a highly influential comedian of the early ‘90s who on the cusp of breaking into the big time in the U.S. died at the age of 32. Now British filmmakers Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas have brought his story to film in this innovative documentary that combines archive footage and animation to bring Hicks’ story to life.

Bill Hicks started his career as a comedian while in high school. He and his friend Dwight Slade snuck out of their houses to audition for the new comedy club in Houston, Texas. By the time he moved to L.A. after graduating, he was already a veteran. At 19, he was playing the famed Comedy Store and was getting meetings with agents to pitch comedy scripts. But for the eager artist success wasn’t coming fast enough and the City of Angels wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be, so he returned to Houston, where he made a name for himself not only as a comedian, but as a man living on the edge.

Upon returning to Houston, he took hallucinogenic mushrooms for the first time. This from a young man who had never drank before. He was determined to throw himself into life in order to push his comedy. His increasing use of drugs and alcohol made him bolder than ever, but it also made him erratic and he lost bookings. He might still be brilliant, but it wasn’t worth it. Eventually he realized that while drugs might have made him who he was they were also destroying him in the process. So in order to get away from bad influences, he moved to New York and got sober.

Hicks was never afraid to say the unpopular thing. He openly talked about his drug use and the positives he felt it brought to his life. He would joke about every news story on drugs being negative. The news reports that a man on LSD dies after jumping off a building thinking he can fly. Hicks would say, “Why blame the LSD when the guy’s an idiot. If he thought he could fly, why didn’t he start on the ground and take off from there to see how it would go first?”

Hicks’ early influence was Woody Allen, but one can see shades of Richard Pryor and George Carlin in his work. More recent similarities would be to call him Bill Mahr crossed with Denis Leary. In fact there are several YouTube videos that show off the striking similarities between Hicks and Leary. Some might say Leary “borrowed” heavily from Hicks, but the film doesn’t address the issue at all.

While Hicks struggled to get a foothold in the States, he flourished in the U.K. In England, he’d play to sold out arenas and then come back to the U.S. to play hole in the wall comedy clubs in the middle of nowhere. It’s interesting to note that the British audiences loved his edgy political humor, but when he came back to the States he had to go back to dick jokes to get a laugh. No wonder he was so disillusioned with his home country.

The film is presented in a photo animation technique similar to the wonderful doc THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE. Intercut with Hicks’ live performances, the style makes the film lively and engaging. By the end the repetitiveness of some stills and lack of early talking heads to orient the audience weigh on the viewer. That said, the approach sets this doc apart because we actually get to see Hicks breaking out of his bedroom window to start his destiny.

This is a film for the Hicks fan and for the novice. It’s a loving and often moving tribute to a lesser known comic genius. His story is retold by his family and friends who share their point of view of why he did what he did. It gives a personal touch to the story of a talented addict who was smart enough to know when enough was enough.

Smart was the cornerstone of everything he did. Bravery was the other. You might not like everything that he has to say and he never cared that you did. He was going to say it anyway. For him no other profession in the world paid someone to speak their mind so freely. So the only honest thing to do was to just say what he thought and not what we were told to think. No matter how ugly or unpopular it was. On occasion a rude and/or ignorant crowd member would hear directly what he thought of them. Once he was told by one attendee that as a Christian he didn’t like what Hicks had said. Hicks told him to forgive him.

My only question for a film about Bill Hicks is how do you market a film about a guy who advised all people in marketing to kill themselves?

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If you haven’t heard poetry slam before, stop reading this review and watch the trailer for this film. Now that you’ve got a taste, how could you not want to see this film? These kids are some of the brightest, competing against hundreds of other equally bright kids. And this documentary only chronicles the Louder than a Bomb poetry slam in Chicago. Think about how many kids like these are in the rest of the country. It gives you hope.

Directors Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel (nephew of Gene Siskel) followed a selection of competitors over the 2007-08 season. We watch as they prepare for the slam. We see their home lives, some are good and others have their challenges. We watch as they start in the quarterfinals and root for their success. But soon the competition becomes secondary to the human stories.

Nate Marshall is the son of two recovering drug addicts who found his voice in rhyme. He had a chance to play basketball, but chose to dedicate his time to working on his poetry and rap. At one point, he says he’d like to be a college professor… or a rap star… or maybe both. While he is a superior poet, he gains equal joy in helping his classmates raise their game to his level so they can see the view with him.

Nova Venerable is a tough kid. But there are reasons. Her estranged father created a huge burden on her; making her care for him and never showing her that he cared in the least. Meanwhile, her mother worked several jobs to make it possible for her and her little brother Cody, who suffers from a host of disorders, to stay with her full time. Nova hasn’t seen her father since she was 12 and now a senior she is still writing about him. She has had to grow up fast. She says she isn’t bitter, but we wonder. Poetry gives her tools to express herself without lashing out and a moment where she can escape.

Adam Gottlieb is a Jewish dynamite. His enthusiasm and positive energy just pours out of him when he is simply sitting in a chair. His goal in life is to make the world a better place and he lives that promise everyday. In Louder than a Bomb, he is like a rock star. It’s mainly because he is there to hear poetry and make friends with people who are different than him. Poet seems like the perfect career path for him.

The Steinmenauts are the slam team from the inner city school Steinmetz. The year prior they came into the competition for the first time as underdogs and shocked everyone by winning the whole competition. Lamar Jorden is their charismatic leader. Poetry flows out of his effortlessly. He performs it with great passion. But he says that his teammate Kevin Coval is better than him. Kevin, however, ponders every word he writes and struggles to produce one line while others have written volumes. With these talents, the team also has Jesus Lark, She’Kira McKnight and Big C, who are a force as a team.

As we get to know these kids, we start rooting for them. But we wonder about a competition that gives points Olympic-style to poetry. The organizers pick the judges on the street. So how fair is it really? These kids hang their dreams on this competition, which is judged at the whim of someone who might not know the difference between a metaphor and simile. And yet it doesn’t matter. At the start of the competition the organizers say the point is not the point but the poetry. At first we disregard it as a nice platitude and by the end we believe it as a truth.

These kids are great at what they do. There is one poem in the film that sticks out so powerfully. And the thing about that is that poem for you might be different than the one I’m thinking of. This film filled me with such joy. The adjectives simply flow from my mind. Uplifting. Powerful. Inspiring. Important.

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On April 8, 2000, Mark Hogancamp was in a bar, which was a common occurrence for him at the time. He says the wrong thing to a group of young men. They follow him outside and beat him in the head savagely. When he comes out of a coma, he remembers nothing of his old life. So in an effort to make sense of the new world he has been thrust into, he creates his own world in his backyard using 1/6th scale World War II soldiers and Barbies.

The world, Marwencol, Hogancamp creates is detailed and elaborate. There is an on-going story where Hogancamp casts himself as a bar owner/soldier in a Belgian town. For the entertainment of the boys, the women stage fake cat fights. The Nazis are always looming around trying to ruin the fun. Hogancamp creates characters in Marwencol based on people from his real life. A married neighbor who he crushes on is his girlfriend in the world. He can’t control the real world, but nothing happens in Marwencol that he doesn’t control.

Before the attack, Hogancamp was married and an alcoholic. He doesn’t remember being either. His physical recovery includes the disappearance of his desire to drink. In trying to find himself, he asks people what he was like before and he doesn’t like the man he is told about. Without the desire to drink, he simply avoids it. Fascinatingly, he has another desire before his attack that still remains. It says a great deal about the things that really drive us.

As Hogancamp develops his Marwencol stories, he takes photos of his nuanced set-ups. He is obsessed with authenticity, so he dresses up in WWII fatigues and walks down the street pulling a toy Jeep behind him in order to properly wear the tires. On one of these missions, he is approached by a photographer who he shares his snapshots with. The photographer is floored and helps set him up with an art magazine that leads to an art show.

But how will he react to the real world judging what is therapy to him? He talks about Marwencol as if it were real. Some people at home have been creeped out by how they are featured in Marwencol and how he talks about it. How will the art snobs of Greenwich Village react to him? He expects everyone there to be wearing feather boas. How will they react to his other personal secrets? Will he be able to be himself or will it make him want to hide? The biggest tragedy would be that the experience might destroy Marwencol for him.

This brilliant documentary was made by Jeff Malmberg, who certainly paid his dues as an editor on such disasters as Paris Hilton’s THE HOTTIE & THE NOTTIE. He does the right thing and simply lets Hogancamp tell his story. We sense that he really likes Hogancamp and means him no harm, because the fragile man is such a descent person. The care Malmberg puts into the film translates directly into how we see Hogancamp. His photographs of Marwencol are filled with such honest emotion that can’t be faked. That is what makes them art. It’s what makes what he is doing special.

His film would make a great double header with IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL: THE MYSTERY OF HENRY DARGER, a doc about a hermetic janitor who upon his death was discovered to be the author of a 15,000-page novel accompanied by bizarrely captivating paintings as big as 12 feet. Like Darger, Hogancamp does his art for himself. It is the way he makes sense of the world. Through his art, we get a glimpse of a human mind and soul. It’s a moving experience.

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