Trouble the Water (Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, 2008). It would be easy to make a documentary about the devastation Hurricane Katrina brought to New Orleans and the equally disastrous governmental response that is grounded in apoplectic anger, especially since indignation seems to be the default starting point for many current non-fiction filmmakers. Deal and Lessin create something more delicate, more nuanced, more complicated, and, because of these qualities, far more fascinating. The hook of the film’s first half is on-the-scene camcorder footage taken by Ninth Ward resident Kimberly Rivers Roberts as her neighborhood and then her home floods during the storm. The extensive news footage if the time still isn’t adequate preparation for the first-hand view of nature marauding with Biblical wrath. Nor do the wide swatch of stories that have been extensively shared undercut those of Kimberly, her family and her neighbors, largely because Deal and Lessin have the wherewithal to stick with them throughout their trials. Their footage is frightening, but their attempts to rebuild their homes, their neighborhoods, their lives, their very belief in the possibility of something better for themselves is deeply moving. And when they repeatedly come up against a system that greets them, at best, with cruel indifference, it is quietly devastating. That they continuously, instinctively respond to these slights with graciousness and even gratitude towards the soldiers and civil servants charged with delivering the bad news simultaneously testifies to the resilience of the human spirit and the reason why the gross unfairness of our social systems doesn’t change.

To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955). Here’s Hitchcock in a workmanlike mode, cranking out an agreeable distraction that coasts somewhat on the panoramic views of European splendor, the everlasting charm of Cary Grant, and–perhaps most appealing to Hitchcock himself–the icy allure of Grace Kelly. The plot concerns a retired cat burglar trying to prove his innocence as a familiar batch of crimes begin taking place, and throws in a creaky May-December romance. It’s glossy and professional, as is expected from someone whose mastery of the form is widely revered, but it doesn’t reverberate. It’s there, it passes, you start thinking about how good Stranger on a Train is.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Peter Sollett, 2008). Sollett’s feature directorial debut was the richly empathetic Raising Victor Vargas, so it makes sense that the best moments of his follow-up cut through the din of overly busy, loose hipster comedy with nicely observant moments of how people struggle to connect with one another. As the title characters gradually become romantically entangled during a long ramble of a night in New York City, the film effectively captures the way that high emotions are worn right on the surface of people on the precipice of adulthood. It sometimes seems to be trying for an urban fable effect, but that doesn’t particularly work, mostly because much of the background business rarely develops beyond tomfoolery trying to build in laughs that don’t come.

The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh, 2009). One of the quick-and-dirty efforts Soderbergh intersperses into his filmography, Girlfriend was shot in the fall of 2008, assembled into a rough cut in time for the Sundance film festival in January and released in a variety of ways by May. The quick turnaround gives the film an enviable timeliness. There are discussions aplenty about living in a time of economic turmoil as every characters seems to be playing angles, trying to find ways to elevate their professional and fiscal stature, or casting aspersions of those who lack the same ambition. Soderbergh casts porn star Sasha Grey as an elite Manhattan call girl who approaches her profession with the same calculating business sense as the suit-and-tie finance mavens whose weekend getaways involve private plane flights to Vegas. There’s a loose plot, but it’s primarily there as something to hang ideas on, to show the ways the esteemed and the condemned parts of the social fabric are reflections of one another. As a film, it doesn’t really cohere enough to make it feel like much more than an intellectual experiment, but it’s also an experiment that’s consistently interesting to watch.

City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002). A movie that is so densely creative, rich with detailed character development and beautifully constructed that it’s actually startling when a closing credit asserts that it is based on a true story, and then a piece of old news footage provides evidence as to how closely the filmmakers tried to adhere to the actual events. Meirelles (with co-director Katia Lund) depicts the turf wars of the Brazilian underworld with a dynamic visual sense that never overwhelms the storytelling. Indeed, the storytelling is enhanced by these techniques in much the same way that Martin Scorsese’s visual reveries make the likes of Mean Streets and Goodfellas more vibrant and more grounded in equal measure. The film is riveting and a tremendous accomplishment.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)