[Note from Steve: Every year in Montclair, NJ, during the first week of May, people in the tristate area can enjoy seeing mostly unreleased new films, meet directors, producers, and actors, and participate in Q&A discussions.  Here are the three movies from the Montclair Film Festival I chose to see this year.]

The Armor of Light.  Dir. Abigail Disney.  This documentary is the story of Rev. Rob Schenk, a preacher who fought and is fighting to cure the schizophrenia of evangelicals who think they can love their guns as much as Jesus Christ.  The movie is full of gun fanatics, as you can imagine, but it’s also full of conscientious Christians who are beginning to recognize this mental aberration.  I keyed in on another interesting point, though: Ronald Reagan, whose Sherman’s march through American politics left a number of political sins in his wake, was responsible for another, creating the incestuous marriage between born-agains and the NRA.  Documentaries are always learning experiences, and this was no exception.  Fascinating, and a A- (the minus is because control is much more than the moral issue presented in this film).

Time Out of Mind.  Dir. Oren Maneiman, and starring Richard Gere and Ben Vereen.  This narrative film is a ponderous, painful, and powerful look at homelessness in America in general and in NYC in particular (it’s not a big-city problem, to be sure).  Gere and Vereen and other actors take you into the world of the invisible homeless.  Gere plays a homeless man so down on his luck that he often forgets who he is.  If you think homelessness isn’t a problem, you should catch this film.  I give it a B+ and not an A- or better because it’s slow but still a great example of understated acting and how fiction can point its finger at significant and serious social problems.

Holbrook/Twain.  Dir. Scott Teems.  The title is a good summary: Hal Holbrook is Mark Twain, Mark Twain has become Hal Holbrook.  This documentary is filmed in black and white to underline the historical importance of both men as much as how the actor in his one-man show has brought Mark Twain to life.  Holbrook is 90+ now and still presents the show that started in 1954 (there was a brief hiatus when his beloved Dixie Carter passed away).  The film also presents a candid look at Holbrook’s relationship with his children and step-children (one of Dixie’s kids sat in the row in front of us).  This film should be seen by everyone who wants to experience two iconic American institutions.  Moreover, it is an insightful reminder that Twain was much more than the writer of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, classic novels that nowadays might be called YA or coming-of-age.  Twain was an acerbic critic of what he saw wrong with America and the world, and many of those comments resonate today.  I’d start out with Letters from the Earth, commentaries that relate to the subject of the first film reviewed above (I “discovered” them in the eighth grade, and these, and other commentaries like “The Silent Lie” considered in the film, rank right up there with Vonnegut’s Man Without a Country as great curmudgeonly criticism)—or go see Holbrook’s “Mark Twain Tonight.”  It’s always been on my must-see bucket list.  You guessed it: this documentary gets an A+.

In elibris libertas….  

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