“(Untitled)” Review in Brief

This prickly satirical sketch from director Jonathan Parker (“Bartleby”; “The Californians”) and cowriter Catherine di Napoli takes aim at the easy target of New York’s contemporary-art scene. Adam Goldberg plays a swollen-headed composer of laughably abstract sound art who competes with his brother (Eion Bailey), a suc­cessful painter of corporate-decor dreck, for recognition from a foxy Chelsea gallerist (Marley Shelton). This is a film in which someone says, “I think I want what I want my work to say to go without saying.” Its momentum depends on deadpan deflations of pretense, so it needs a go-to guy for reaction shots. Goldberg is the man, in rather the same improbable way in which Crispin Glover moored Parker’s similarly wispy “Bartleby.” (Let’s take a moment to appreciate the filmmaker who cast Glover as a version of Melville’s recalcitrant scrivener.) As its title suggests, “(Untitled)” prefers to hover between amusement and annoyance, and accordingly it remains ensconced in brittle indie minimalism. The movie paints — or performs or installs or whatever — itself into a corner, and you see it coming. But it’s often funny, especially when viewed from the safe remove of feeling superior to its characters.

[h/t, sf]