Cinemania

Think you're a movie fanatic? Think again. You're likely nothing but the greenest amateur compared to the cinemaniacs profiled in Angela Christlieb and Stephen Kijak's funny and sad 2002 documentary. Jack, Eric, Harvey, Bill, and Roberta are all New Yorkers--for there are few other places in the world where a body can see five different movies a day every day, as they do--and they've reduced their lives to little more than going to films, planning their schedules to maximize their daily consumption of film, cataloguing their movie memorabilia, and memorizing, Rain Man-style, such arcana as the running times of every movie ever made. From its buoyant opening gambit of highlighting the cheerful and self-acknowledged absurdity of these obsessives, Christlieb and Kijak wind in closer, focusing on the dismal fact that their subjects have cut themselves off from real life in favor of reel life. One can only imagine--with snide glee--how Christopher Guest might run with this idea in one of his mockumentaries; still, this is a compulsively watchable film about compulsive film watchers. The DVD includes deleted scenes. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (M. Johanson)