Apres Vous... (Pierre Salvadori, 2003). Just a little French comedy, not something we'd usually feel especially compelled to go back and catch up with, but Daniel Auteuil is a household favorite. Look to something like The Girl on the Bridge or Cache to understand just how skillful he is as an actor; here he's an engaging enough presence getting to play it looser than usual. He plays a maitre d' who befriends and begins essentially mentoring a strange, withdrawn man he stops from hanging himself in the park. There's little reason for Auteuil's character to become enmeshed in this person's psychodrama so quickly and so thoroughly. That disinterest in justifying the details of the film's very premise strikes me as characteristically French, and, therefore, not all that troubling. The film occasionally flirts with escalation into full-on farce and probably would have been better if it had just given into that inclination. As it stands, it's a bit too soft and purposeless to be memorable.

Don't Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967). What ever could have inspired us to watch this? Bob Dylan as icon begins here as Pennebaker passively points his camera at the cantankerous troubadour's 1965 U.K. tour capturing an odd moment in time when teenage girls screamed outside of hotel windows and the world of pop music was driven to extraordinarily creative heights by the competition between budding artists. Dylan and Donovan square off with guitars and compositions of personal poetry in a hotel room and the mix of pride, envy and veiled one-upsmanship is fascinating. There are also reminders that, despite the tendency to embrace the artistry of these performers, it is in the end a business that they'll operating in. Pennebaker catches the callous machinations to get Dylan a higher fee and the crushing disappointment of a musician who's lost his place in The Animals with an intimacy that's entirely unexpected. It's groundbreaking work delivered with the plain power of unadorned observation.

This Film is Not Yet Rated (Kirby Dick, 2006). Forget what his political opponents say about Michael Moore. The real crime the lightning rod non-fiction film auteur has to answer for is the prolific infusion of cheap stunts into documentary films. Dick's film about the ratings system administered by the Motion Picture Association of American could have been pointed and fascinating. There's plenty to criticize, from the aggressive fear of dirty words and sexuality compared to the leniency allowed for violence to the seeming capability of big studios to get whatever ratings they want. Dick even secured solid filmmaker interviews--Kimberly Peirce's intelligent consideration of the challenges her film Boys Don't Cry faced with the ratings board and the amused unassailable logic of John Waters are particularly strong. But too much of the film gets mired in an attempt to determine the identities of the secretive figures who actually make those "PG-13 or R" judgment calls. It's perfectly fine to include the information, but Dick turns over about a third of his already fairly slight film to dull stakeouts and other unremarkable detective work. It's the equivalent of Dick filling the film with scenes of production office phone calls to potential interview subjects or visits to the library to look up information about The Hays Code. (As an aside, this unnecessary attempt to drag those raters out into the light did help me discover that I currently work with a student whose uncle is on that ratings board. Maybe I can give her a note to pass across the holiday dinner table explaining just how wrongheaded I find Beowulf's PG-13.)

The Lookout (Scott Frank, 2007). Right this second, I'm prepared to follow Joseph Gordon-Levitt a lot of places, such is the power of his crafty, charismatic acting in Brick (sorry jupiterjuniper, I have a feeling it raises your temperature just a bit every time I praise that film). Scott Frank making his directorial debut is somewhat enticing, as well, even if the longtime screenwriter's best work has emanated from his ability to respectfully transcribe excellent novels by Elmore Leonard. In this film, Gordon-Levitt plays a young man whose foolish high school bravado led to a car accident that left him with some mildly debilitating brain damage. He's basically functional, but prone to occasional inappropriate outbursts and moments in which his capability to perform simple tasks just drifts away from him. It's a naturally showy role that Gordon-Levitt plays with nice restraint. That same compliment can be paid to Franks handling of his mild potbolier (potsimmerer?) of a plot, with Gordon-Levitt's character getting pulled into a low-level bank heist. Frank skews away from sensationalizing the material, developing nicely unexpected truthful moments. Also, Jeff Daniels is in the film. This is almost always a good thing.

The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006). Even though Best Foreign Language Film is one of the most unpredictable categories at the annual Academy Awards, it was still a surprise when the excellent Pan's Labyrinth didn't win this past year. Of course, it may not have been for those who'd actually seen the victor, The Lives of Others, at that point. The debut feature from von Donnersmarck is a wonderfully constructed story that put the oppression of East Germany as the cold war was entering its final stretch into moving personal terms. Ulrich Muhe is exceptional as a Stasi officer charged with monitoring a playwright (the equally terrific Sebastian Koch) who is sympathetic to the socialist power structure. The intellects of these two men run in parallel paths as they confront the shifting world before them. The script by von Donnersmarck is a feat of expert narrative construction, precisely pulling together its plot elements and moving characters along their individual paths with careful consideration for the ways in which every decision carries a lasting impact, every small move has the possibility of changing a whole worldview. It's a wise, measured movie that finishes with a lovely coda punctuating by a perfect and moving last line.