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.