Spellbound - 1945 - 4 Stars

Actors: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

When I watch a film like Spellbound, it's easy to see why Hitchcock was thought of as an excellent populist director until the French New Wave came along. The plot of Spellbound is so terrifically stupid and so unbelievably hokey that it's almost embarrassing. Even Sigmund Freud would be ashamed to have his psychiatric work on display here. And yet, it still works.

Hitchcock's films are all a direct stab at the psyche of the viewer - he's looking to get in my head. Once he's in there, it doesn't really matter what the plot is, I'm so caught up in the tension. His protagonists are often posed with a very simple moral dilemma; the protagonist makes one choice, and their fate is spun out of that choice. In Spellbound, that choice is a simple lie, which compounds into further untruths.

Wordplay - 2006 - 3½ Stars

Subject: The New York Times Crossword Puzzle

Director: Patrick Creadon

I'm a sucker for documentaries about obsessive nerdy subcultures - I saw Spellbound, and both the Scrabble documentaries. I'm continually amazed at the participants' willingness to share with the camera, though I suppose if someone spends that much time on some pursuit, they are likely eager to talk to anyone about it.

Wordplay's strength is the celebrity gets - several public figures from all walks of life discuss the passion the NYT Crossword Puzzle inspires. Its weakness is the exploration of crossword competitions, which feature your garden-variety obsessives.

The Expendables - 2010 - 2½ Stars

Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham

Director: Sylvester Stallone

The Expendables is big, dumb Hollywood fun for people who still can't help watching Commando any time they see it on cable. Dolph Lundgren and Sylvester Stallone have a face-cragginess contest (Stallone wins). The plot is hilariously thin, cribbed from other, similar films. No worries - we are familiar enough with the tropes.

I've noticed this tendency in other action films, but could we please stop the trend of using an extremely blue filter during night scenes? Yes, it does give the film a ridiculously sleek look. It also makes everything in the film look CGI, whether or not it actually was. Although perhaps they did CGI the whole movie - if they'd used real scenery, we'd probably be able to see teeth marks from where Stallone, Eric Roberts, and Steve Austin chewed it.

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.