Quick doc check

RESURRECT DEAD: THE MYSTERY OF THE TOYNBEE TILES (2011) (C) - Probably best filed under "For Diehards Only." John Foy tags along with mystery chasers eager to figure out who placed bizarre tiles on streets all over the eastern United States and in South America (from Philly to Chile).

The basic tile message states: "Toynbee Tiles / in Kubrick's 2001 / Resurrect Dead / on planet Jupiter." Our main sleuth is Justin Duerr, who spent years tracing the mystery back to the early 1980s. The clues involve a caller to Larry King's old late-night radio show, a David Mamet play, and short-wave radio broadcasts.  We follow Duerr to Chile to hunt down No. 1 suspect Sevy Verna, who may have been using a pseudonym in Philadelphia, ground zero of the saga.

Whoever was placing the tiles was deeply paranoid, distrustful of the media and convinced that a Philadelphia member of the Knight-Ridder empire and other media titans were trying to kill him. The most coherent explanation we get for the tiles' main mantra is that a group in Philadelphia, echoing the ending of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," believed that a human being's molecules could be reassembled (taking a leap from the writings of early 20th century historian Arnold Toynbee) to start a colony of reanimated people on Jupiter. Or something like that.

Foy uses dekes and feints to keep us guessing; however, the result is a bunch of wheel-spinning that annoyingly delays the conclusion (a rather unsatisfying one at that). His Sherlock Holmes can't really carry a film on his own, and you'll be tempted to just Google "Toynbee Tiles" rather than sit through this laconic documentary. 

THE CATS OF MIRIKITANI (2006) (C+) - A slight curiosity from Linda Hattendorf, a New York filmmaker who found Tsutomu "Jimmy" Mirikitani living and creating art on the streets of lower Manhattan around the time of 9/11. Concerned for his health in the dangerous, dusty days following the attack on the twin towers, she takes him in to her home.

Mirikitani is a survivor of the West Coast internment camps, where he spent time as a young man during World War II. Most of his family would die back in Japan in the bombing of Hiroshima. One surviving relative crops up during the film. Hattendorf takes it upon herself to get Mirikitani back on his feet, with a roof over his head and Social Security benefits to keep him afloat.

None of this really sticks. Mirikitani, who claims to have once cooked for Jackson Pollack, goes on and on declaring himself an Artist. (One drawback: His art isn't very compelling. Much of it looks like it was scratched out by a high school art-class student; the more elaborate paintings, like those of tigers, wouldn't be out of place on black velvet.) Hattendorf talks to him as if he were a child.

Mirikitani sits around a lot and doesn't give the filmmaker much to work with. Hattendorf uses the 9/11 fallout to hammer home the imagery of America headed to war in a fervor of xenophobia. As gimmicks go, this one's pretty gimmicky. Overall, even at 74 minutes, the movie drags.

Occasionally we get glimmers of a good film. One cute scene shows him upset with worry after she stays out until midnight going to the movies. And the pet cats are adorable.

Hattendorf does manage to craft a decent climax. It's probably giving nothing away (it's hinted at throughout the film) to divulge that Mirikitani eventually travels back to California to visit the internment camp that he had been kept in. But even here the directors talents show signs of strain.