While You Live, Shine (IndiePix Films)
The blues changed (saved?) Christopher King’s life when, at age 15, he found a case of 78-rpm records in an abandoned sharecropper shack. He found something deeply meaningful in those platters composed of tree resin—organic materials containing the sweat and soul of long-dead musicians. More recently, King discovered an ancient analog to the blues in a remote Greek mountain province—a melancholy yet joyous moan that sounds like the moment time began. King’s 2018 book, Lament From Epirus (with its Robert Crumb cover), recounted his odyssey. Paul Duane’s artful documentary, While You Live, Shine, follows the grumbling musicologist from his Virginia home (he finds contemporary American society plastic, lifeless and contemptible) to a Greek village where he appears at peace—fulfilled as part of an organic community that continues to live close to its ancient roots. While You Live, Shine is a meditation on music, culture, memory, regret, life and death.
Mystify Michael Hutchence (Shout! Factory)
This visually and sonically fascinating documentary identifies INXS’ Michael Hutchence (1960-’97) as a romantic rebel, well-versed in ’60s and ’70s rock and soul and well-read (Herman Hesse, Kahlil Gibran, Allen Ginsberg). The pressure of riding the top of the charts and the incessant touring got to him, but his downfall occurred from the subtle brain injury he received after being attacked by a maniac. Recollections and archival footage form a mosaic of his life.
Little Joe (Magnolia Home Entertainment)
A new breed of plant is genetically engineered to emit a mood-lifting scent (a happiness flower?). But created without proper testing, its viral-like, behavior-altering pollen causes unexpected consequences. Alice (Emily Beecham) plays the smug geneticist slow to recognize facts when they don’t conform to her theories. British director Jessica Hausner slowly builds intimations of disaster in a low-key elevation of dread. Little Joe dramatizes the pod-mentality, pain-avoidance and lotus-land mindset of contemporary society.
