Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (2023)

When someone helps to shift the direction of something, regardless of the milieu involved, there’s a natural inclination to want to celebrate that individual’s contributions. In the area of stand-up comedy, one of the names that frequently comes to mind is Albert Brooks (born Albert Einstein – really). In the 1970s, his inventiveness took comedy in a new direction, inspiring others to follow suit and forever changing the art form, and this new HBO documentary from Brooks’s lifelong friend, director Rob Reiner, is an apparently sincere attempt at paying tribute to the writer-actor-comedian-dire…