Flash of Genius (Marc Abraham, 2008). Based on a New Yorker article, Marc Abraham’s directorial debut relates the story of Bob Kearns, a Detroit man whose invention of the intermittent windshield wiper was illegally appropriated by the big automakers. Dutifully tracing events from the early nineteen-sixties when Kearns drew his sizable family into the process of creating the device through the nineties when the court cases he pursued to get due credit finally reached their culmination, the film is serious, somber and sorely lacking in verve or any other enlivening spirit. It’s thankfully not overly pompous about its subject, but it also fails the capture the natural inspiration of its story. That’s in part because the characters feel constructed rather than lived in, even when the actors, led by a restrained Greg Kinnear, give it their sincere best.

Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, 2002). It’s very strange to watch this film after seeing Martin Scorsese’s remake, The Departed. It shares the same clear arc and many of the details were dutifully transferred into the American version, but the absence of Scorsese’s thrilling rhythms makes it seem as flat as a picture book. The script credited to Felix Chong and Alan Mak is a feat of plotting, but the profane poetry that won William Monahan a deserved Oscar for the later version also served to deepen the characters, make them far more memorable. Lau and Mak’s film has its own gun-metal satisfaction, but the film they inspired elevated the material to art.

Hannah Takes the Stairs (Joe Swanberg, 2007). I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about this movie with invoking the dreaded term “mumblecore,” but I just can’t find that route. Besides bearing all the understated markers of the sub-sub-genre, its got a little but of an all-star collection of mumblecore figures among the cast, including Mark Duplass (co-creator of The Puffy Chair and Baghead) and Andrew Bujalski (writer-director of Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation). The movie has a thin plot: Hannah, played by Greta Gerwig, flits from relationship to relationship, mundanely addicted to flirtations and the attention that comes with it. What it makes it so effective is how perfectly it captures a mood, that drifting feeling of uncertainty that accompanies a person’s early twenties, when the station-to-station certainty of higher education gives way to the stifling vastness of professional choices, when possibility itself feels like a sort of dead end. Gerwig plays off against this context, making her character’s most problematic, unlikely choices understandable, even, in an odd way, sort of endearing.

Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986). I avoided this film for so long. It’s not that I didn’t want to see it, and it’s certainly not that I thought it wasn’t important for me to see. Instead, the delay was caused by a simple fear. I was worried that the opportunity to judge it properly had passed me by, that by the time I finally got around to it–having missed it upon its initial release and never seeming to track in down in the years immediately thereafter–the impact would be blunted in highly damaging way. Turns out my fears were founded. In the backward cast shadow of all the films of Lynch’s that followed, those that emanated stylistically from this one, Blue Velvet seems a little sedate to me, its curdled darkness more quaint than creepy. I can see how it would have provoked a different reaction in 1986, the year of Top Gun and Crocodile Dundee, but now it feels distant, stiff and even a little wan to me. I honestly these shortcomings are more reflections of my own impediments to connecting with it than any problems built into the film itself. Honestly, Mr. Lynch, it’s not you, it’s me.

Plaza Suite (Arthur Hiller, 1971). An adaptation of a Neil Simon stage play, the original effort cast two actors–George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton in its initial run–as the members of three different couples, united only by their separated stays in a suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. The film version casts Walter Matthau in all three male parts, but recruits three different actresses to play against him. It’s an odd choice, especially considering that Matthau wasn’t exactly known as an actor who’d often inspire evocation of the familiar chameleon metaphor. That noted, he does acquit himself fairly well. He might not be fully convincing as a flamboyant, foppish Hollywood producer, but it’s still sort of fun to see him plop on an odd blond wig and give it a try. (What I wouldn’t give to see Scott’s version of that character.) That segment, plopped in the middle, is the weakest of the three, although Barbara Harris does nice work as the small-town girl he left behind, called up to his posh accommodations for the purposes of seduction. The first piece, following a couple edging towards the end of their marriage, is an especially strong piece of writing, although Stapleton, invited to reprise that particular stage role, hasn’t modulated her performance quite enough to suit the screen. Perhaps best of all is the final segment, involving a bride whose locked herself in the bathroom sending her parents into contortions of anger and anxiety just outside. For one thing, it’s the funniest of the three, a trademark bit of Simon farce. For another, it’s got the shrewd, seismic power of Lee Grant as the mother of the bride.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)