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.