The Small Back Room - 1949 - 3 Stars

Actors: David Farrar, Kathleen Byron

Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

The Small Back Room is a strange film - I don't know whether it is a great bad movie or a bad great movie. A British film set during World War II, it concerns a disabled scientist involved in weapons development. I shall break down what is good or bad:

The Bad: The plot seems to go nowhere. The film wants us to care deeply about this main character, but we're not given very much to care about. Other characters just seem to drop in and out. The film has satirical targets, but it doesn't exactly hit those either. I may just not know enough about wartime Britain to understand what goes on here. I also think I am panning the film for not being Hollywoodized - it doesn't hit all the notes we would expect a film about a scientist to hit.

The Good: The film's camera work is extremely interesting. Scenes are staged in a way that shows someone put a lot of thought into how a film should look and sound. Stylistically, one wishes that films still employed this sort of look and feel.

I imagine this film caused an uproar in its day, but we live in a post-Strangelove world; political and military satire will never be shocking again.

Deconstructing Harry - 1996 - 4 Stars

Actors: Woody Allen, Kirstie Alley

Director: Woody Allen

I'm developing Stockholm Syndrome with Woody Allen films, I think. I was ready to declare a moratorium on Allen films for at least six months, now I can't wait for the next one to arrive.

Because Woody Allen films tend to cover the same themes in a very similar way, I don't need to pay attention to the plot of the film. I don't even need to pay attention to the dialogue, necessarily. I can instead focus on Allen's underrated quality as a director. Deconstructing Harry is not his best film, but it's one of his most inventive. It gets at what Allen's been kicking around his entire career - the relationship between a writer of 'fiction' and his art, and the way that one's life is altered when one becomes a fiction writer.

Note: Spoilers Ahead

Allen's character in Deconstructing Harry is totally unable to understand the world without the help of the fictions he is constantly creating. This is interesting in light of Allen's continued contention that his films are not autobiographical. It's especially interesting when we consider just how close Allen's films always skirt towards reality - e.g. casting his former love interests as failed lovers in his movies.

One thing that was quite effective was his use of jump-cutting during the film - it denotes the film as yet another 'telling'. We only see the parts the creator remembers, or wishes to remember. It's therefore just as false as the fictions of the Allen character. We never really know if it's Woody Allen, the writer/director, telling the story, or Harry, his surrogate.

Lastly, this is definitely the most depraved character I've seen Allen play. Allen's protagonists rarely say 'fuck' - this one says it all the time. Allen's protagonists are philandering, but they don't sleep with prostitutes. His protagonists are often charmingly narcissistic, this one is mind-bogglingly self-obsessed.

Detour - 1945 - 3½ Stars

Actors: Tom Neal, Ann Savage

Director: Edgar Ulmer

Film noir is always about poor choices - the wrong place, the wrong time, or the wrong woman. Sometimes all three. Detour is a tale about what can go wrong while hitchhiking - it's hard to tell whether it's a cautionary tale, or a Job-like rumination on fate. Whatever the case, Detour is an effective thriller, with fine touches. It's a shame they don't make psychological films like this very often anymore.

The unfortunate thing about the movie is that it has been poorly preserved - the dialogue will sometimes jump or fall out entirely. I suppose it's lucky that we have it at all.

Exit Through The Gift Shop - 2010 - 4 Stars

Director: Banksy

Subject: Street art

Documentary filmmaking is a tricky art. Do we want to tell a story more through images or more through interviews? What if something peripheral to the subject is more interesting than our intended subject? The Thin Blue Line and Grey Gardens are two classic documentaries that sprouted from a filmmaker's confidence to pursue a story tangential to their original subject. Exit Through The Gift Shop takes this notion even further, playing with the idea that the man behind the camera might be more interesting than those in front of it.

Given that both films are about art and authenticity, I was immediately reminded of F For Fake. Exit Through The Gift Shop goes down a similar rabbit hole, and its conclusion is similarly quixotic. Banksy warns us at the beginning that the film will surprise us, but even so, the execution of this trick is seamless.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - 2009 - 3½ Stars

Actors: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes

Director: Werner Herzog

I was pretty sure when I heard about this movie that it would be the greatest thing ever. Nicolas Cage gets a lot of flack from wags who criticize his choice of roles or the fact that he is seemingly unable to make a film in which he doesn't freak out. So what about making a movie where you know going in that he's going to freak out?

It's hard to know whether I would have forgiven the total absurdity of this film if Herzog were not the man behind the camera. Bad Lieutenant: PoCNO plays at times like the trashiest of genre pictures, and its being shot on a digital camera occasionally makes it look like a direct-to-DVD film. But if I know all that going in, how can I be disappointed?

Being There - 1980 - 2½ Stars

Actors: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine

Director: Hal Ashby

Hal Ashby's Being There apparently won an Oscar for something, but to me it sounds like two lowlife Hollywood producers changed the premise of this film by a tiny bit to make Weekend at Bernie's. Peter Sellers's Chance is a Kaspar Hauser-like figure who spends his days watching television and gardening. He's incapable of real human emotion and doesn't really listen to people. Set free from his master's house after his master's death, he falls in with an extremely wealthy family who confuse his misunderstandings with true wisdom. Soon, so do all sorts of powerful Washington D.C. types. Hijinks ensue.

While Sellers's performance as the blank and obsequious Chance is remarkable, the film repeats a very similar pattern - Chance is confronted with some awkward situation, he somehow pretends like he is paying attention, and the world continues around him. It's also 130 minutes long, interminable for what's essentially a single joke. The satire may or may not be strong, but it's rather passe now. Give me Peter Finch being mad as hell over this reserved idiocy.

Winter's Bone - 2010 - 4½ Stars

Actors: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes

Director: Debra Granik

Film and poverty rarely mix well. Something about the camera alters the suffering - even in a documentary, it can feel staged (Powaqqatsi). Directors tend to think poverty must be ennobling or somehow glamorous; since it is truly awful, there must be some sort of hidden benefit. Maybe a poor family can be actually be a rural quirkfest (What's Eating Gilbert Grape?). The film doesn't condescend to its characters' values, nor does it seem to modify them to fit our prejudices.

Winter's Bone manages to slip past all the pitfalls. The protagonist, Ree, does not have a heart of gold, she's not made better by her suffering, and she's not that much more knowledgeable than the people around her. The film succeeds by putting real characters around her - John Hawkes turns in a masterful performance as Ree's uncle. The world of Winter's Bone may or may not be real, but it sure as hell feels real, and that's all a film needs to do.

F For Fake - 1974 - 4½ Stars

Director: Orson Welles

Subject: Art forgery

As our main narrative delivery system shifts from novels and short stories to films and television, we have to reflect on what a tragedy this might be for artists who go unrecognized in their day. Books are a low-cost item that anyone can write - publishing may be difficult, but writing is easy. For a director or show runner to get his vision off the ground, aside from Primer-like home projects, he or she often has to promise backers that it will be profitable. The high barriers to entry have surely thwarted many geniuses whose names we will never know. One of the first casualties to the tyrannical film system was Orson Welles, who spent too much of his career slumming around Europe looking for money to finance films.

F For Fake is a bravura film by an incredibly self-assured artist. Delving into the history of a particular art forger with a propensity to lie, it continually doubles back on itself to consider what is true or false. Welles's narration of the film is by turns charming and vexing - we don't know whether we've wandered into his own private joke. Underneath all the banter is an interesting examination of truth and falsehood, and ultimately what we want to believe.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller - 1971 - 3 Stars

Actors: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie

Director: Robert Altman

The revisionist genre needs some serious revision. McCabe and Mrs. Miller is an alternate take on the Western - the characters are more low-key, a female is the dominant presence, and the West here depicted is devoid of honorable men. This would all be interesting if we had any investment in the main characters. Unfortunately, I never got invested. Altman's bossy and far-seeing Mrs. Miller is a film creation, not a 'real person', but Beatty's McCabe is a smaller-than-life figure, a dopey hustler; he's supposed to be 'like us'.

Altman films like to tackle about 17 subjects at once, and this one's no different - there's lots of religious symbolism, 1960's allegory, feminist rhetoric, and so on. I think Altman was a trailblazer in cinema, but besides Nashville, I've yet to see anything approaching a great film out of him. His characteristic huge casts too often mean we're switching places in the story just when we're beginning to empathize with a particular character. His stories are often grand, but his protagonists are not. Altman films can be a fun place to hang out, but they just never coalesce for me.

WALL-E - 2008 - 4 Stars

Director: Andrew Stanton

One of the advantages that children's films have over adult fare is that our natural BS detectors are turned either down or off. Pixar movies overwhelm knowing cynicism with unrelenting cleverness and sincerity. This time they get audiences to feel things for robots - it almost sounds like a bet between Pixar higher-ups. 'I bet you can't make an emotionally stirring film about robots.' 'Oh yeah?'

One of the disadvantages of children's film is that credible plot resolution isn't really needed - WALL-E paints a rather bleak picture that it steps back from as the film's plot moves forward, so much so that the film can be accused even of insincerity.

Talk To Her - 2002 - 4½ Stars

Actors: Javier Camara, Dario Grandinetti

Director: Pedro Almodovar

Some films begin with an interesting premise - a fascinating first 30 minutes - only to peter out by the end. The film's and viewer's energy have disappeared by its thudding conclusion. Others start slow and confusing but build towards a gripping climax. Talk To Her belongs to the latter category - any or all of our expectations of how this movie will proceed to its end are subverted.

One of film's most dangerous and interesting powers is its ability to get the viewer within the brain of its principal character(s). The camera appears objective but is actually quite subjective; when we eventually arise from our filmic slumber, we may realize that we have castigated a hero or sympathized with a monster.

The Killing - 1955 - 3½ Stars

Actors: Sterling Hayden, Vince Edwards

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Before the independent film world was established, directors had to come up through the Hollywood system. Talented directors were often compelled to make genre pictures until they could get the latitude to do things closer to the way they wanted to. I don't know if this is the case for The Killing, but it's certainly different from the director's later work.

It's also easy to say that the director's future genius is obvious in a picture like this - there's always one shot that indicates that this director 'really understands how film works.' In this case, it's a wonderful shot of men planning a heist under a direct and bright light - the way the faces emerge into the light from the darkness and move out again is very effective.

The film is a solid heist movie, although there is an excess of narration. The noir standard is for the protagonist to narrate the film - here it's a third party. Characters also put all sorts of ridiculous exposition in each other's mouths. These devices keep the film to a trim 83 minutes, but they're limiting.