This week is unprecedented in my many years of experience frequenting Triad cinemas.  There are five documentaries playing on screens at commercial, multiplex theaters.  I admit that I haven’t seen one of them, It Might Get Loud, a documentary about the electric guitar from the perspectives of The Edge, Jimmy Page, and Jack White.  And, I’ve already talked with you about two of them, Michael Moore’s Capitalism:  A Love Story and Chris Rock’s Good Hair, but that still leaves two docs, fresh to the Triad, for us to talk about.

I recommended Capitalism and Good Hair as worth your time and energy, but I can’t say as much for Michael Jackson’s This Is It.  This film consists of two hours of sometimes interesting but often repetitive rehearsal footage rushed into release.  Parts are engaging and Jackson does seem in fine form through most of the included footage, but overall This Is It doesn’t work because there isn’t enough context or narrative to keep the movie on track.  The few interviews and archival juxtapositions are just enough stand out and to make the viewer want something more.  Finally, but probably not surprisingly, Michael Jackson remains as much a mystery after seeing the film as before.

It is curious, though, perhaps because I saw This Is It as a double feature with The September Issue, how much Michael Jackson reminded me of Anna Wintour, the iconic editor of American Vogue.  Wow.  That’s not a connection I would have made under other circumstances.  Both of them are ciphers who wear dark sunglasses and masks beneath the shades, masks to hide authentic emotions while rendering them unknowable.  Both Jackson and Wintour exhibit a kind of brilliance and a dictatorial control over their creative domains, his music and hers fashion.  But despite some surface similarities between their subjects, the films are not linked.

The September Issue is half an hour shorter and much more consistently engaging than This Is It.  This film chronicles months of preparation that went into the production of the Vogue 2007 September issue, and what really drives the film is the contrast between editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and her creative director Grace Coddington, who is as accessible and authentic as her boss is not.  The interplay between the two and the way viewers contrast them as characters is what gives the film most of its drama.  The more we are distanced from Anna, the more we pull for Grace to get her photo spreads into the all-important September issue.

My recommendations:  see The September Issue and celebrate the week when five documentaries played on Triad screens.  We can only hope it becomes a trend and not an anomaly!