Ray Pride

The title and the animated bird in its ads: "39 Pounds of Love"? The dread began. Sentimental goop alert! And yet, in seventy-four minutes distinctly lacking technical grace, Dani Menkin's generous, utterly unsentimental documentary is heartening from start to finish. It's a portrait of Ami Ankilewitz, a Texas-born Israeli 3-D animator who was expected to died from a rare form of MD before he was 6 years old. Almost thirty years later, weighing only thirty-nine pounds, the vital, hard-partying Ami takes a trip across the U.S. with the filmmakers and says of that earlier diagnosis, that doctor "didn't take into account that I have the soul of a Harley Davidson." His work, mostly a love letter to a woman he longs for, is completed with the use of a single finger. ("My Left Finger" it is.) "People think I am a doll, really... Oh my God! It talks! No way!" There are movies--documentaries--where you just don't want to be pummeled by a "perfect" subject, a setting for elemental creative Kismet. The emotions too true, the heart rubbed raw, feeling run amok. But after watching Ami, you will walk and feel guilty for not dancing into the next day.

"39 Pounds of Love" opens Friday at Landmark Century.

(2005-12-06)

Also by Ray Pride

It's a blunder-filled life
Harold Ramis' "The Ice Harvest," an exquisitely sleazy twenty-first century proto-noir, is deadpan, implacable, inexorable and downright cruel, a marvel of moviemaking, tautly paced, immaculately crafted
(2005-11-29)

Tip of the Week
Although Miramax sat on this one for almost half a decade, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 horror opus is one of the most dread-steeped, agonizing horrors of the past ten years
(2005-11-29)

Born to Rent
Chris Columbus says "Rent" is the movie he was born to make
(2005-11-21)

Tip of the Week
Wichita's a town some hundreds of miles south of Fargo, but Harold Ramis' latest, "Ice Harvest," is kissing-close to the Coen Bros.' "Fargo," and that's a good thing
(2005-11-21)

The one you're looking for
(2005-11-15)

Tip of the Week
(2005-11-15)

Splash Panel
(2005-11-08)

Catching a Buzz
(2005-11-08)

Tip of the Week
(2005-11-08)

Through the past, darkly
(2005-11-01)

Author Visit
(2005-11-01)

The Art of War
(2005-11-01)

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