Being and Formulating

Youth Knows No Pain

Youth Knows No Pain is an excellent documentary about the cosmetic surgery industry. The filmmaker is the daughter of a plastic surgeon and she presents an excellent balance of personal story, pertinent information, and interviews with people who want or have had cosmetic surgery. The interviewees are all fascinating.

Mercy

Mercy is an exceedingly predictable tale of a vain writer who falls for one of his critics. Scott Caan (who also wrote and directed) plays a womanizer who writes books about love meets woman who turns his life around. Despite the triteness of the story, Mercy still finds a way to be mostly engaging and entertaining.

Godspeed

Godspeed is a slow, predictable, poorly acted film about a faith healer who is kidnapped by the family of a woman he failed to cure.

World’s Greatest Dad

World’s Greatest Dad is a wonderfully black comedy about a father, played by Robin Williams, of an incredibly obnoxious teenage son. I have grown tired of Williams over the years, but he is stellar in this film. Writen and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, World’s Greatest Dad is relentlessly nasty, laugh-out loud funny, and strangely effecting.