Spalding Gray holds court for another installment of art-house story hour in Gray's Anatomy. While Swimming To Cambodia and Monster In A Box dealt with the rarefied worlds of filmmaking and publishing, Gray's new movie offers his unique spin on the more universal experience of physical illness and the often desperate search for healing. Black-and-white interview segments featuring matter-of-fact accounts of horrific eye injuries open the film and create a sense of morbid curiosity. This no-nonsense approach to illness is quickly undermined by the appearance of Gray himself: Wild-eyed, red-faced, and lit like a ghost-story teller at a slumber party, he prepares to blow a case of blurred vision hilariously out of proportion and invites the audience to embrace its own worst fears of pain, disfigurement, and especially doctors. Gray's torturous journey from conventional medicine to alternative healing and back again makes for both an entertaining tall tale and a chilling commentary on the sorry state of health care in this country. As a storyteller, Gray is strongest and funniest when he's bringing his cast of over-the-top characters to life, from the bullies of his Rhode Island childhood to a Nordic Minnesotan practitioner of Native American rituals. Steven Soderbergh has the job of directing the action of a guy sitting in a chair talking, and he succumbs to the understandable temptation to go overboard on weird camera angles, dramatic lighting, and busy sets. Though often distracting, the special effects sometimes add to the story, as in a hysterical scene featuring a sweat lodge full of neurotic white people. Though clinically incorrect, Spalding Gray offers an emotionally accurate version of human anatomy: a giant, mapped-to-death brain perched atop the frightening uncharted territory of the body.