Blue Collar (Paul Schrader, 1978). Two years after the breakthrough success of Taxi Driver, which he scripted for Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader made his directorial debut with a film about struggling auto workers who battle their callous bosses, inept union heads and ultimately each other. As should probably be expected from Schrader, especially at this point in his career, the film is raw and potent, getting into the muscular, profane urgency of these men as they struggle to accept their lot in life, including the inherent betrayals of principle that come with any efforts at upward mobility, and the dangers that loom whenever they try to assert their own power. Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto give typically strong performances, and Richard Pryor demonstrates that he has a worthy cinematic legacy beyond the painful comedies that are more likely to get attention in the movie channel rotations.

Julia (Erick Zonca, 2009). The English language debut of the French director perhaps best known for the very fine The Dreamlife of Angels is a taut, grim drama starring Tilda Swinton as an unrepentant alcoholic who makes a clumsy attempt at a kidnapping plot. I mean it as a great compliment when I note that the film has a similar tone to and proclivity for tightening-noose plotting as the AMC series Breaking Bad. Even the worst choices made the characters are full understandable given the attentive development of their psychological underpinnings. As always, Swinton absolutely gives it her all, and, as if often the case for me, sometimes her all involves a shade too much intensity in the biggest scenes. This is especially true early on when she’s working to establish just how hard her character’s rock bottom is. When she can move on from that and is spending as much time collaborating with Zonca to keep the plot spinning as she is is wallowing in her character’s degradation, Swinton is quite spectacular.

Tyson (James Toback, 2009). It’s less a documentary and more of an extended interview with the former heavyweight champ interspersed with archival footage and flavored with the occasional arty composite shot. By training his camera on Mike Tyson and letting him tell his own story, largely without interruption and entirely without contrasting voices or rebuttals, Toback seems to be aiming for the sort of unvarnished accidental revelation that is the hallmark of Errol Morris’s approach. Instead, he’s mostly complicit in a self-created hagiography that allows Tyson to match his brief moments of contrition with vicious attacks on those who he feels have wronged him. This is easier to take when it’s Don King who’s the target of his ire, less so when it’s the woman he was convicted of raping. Toback makes a compelling case that Tyson’s rise and fall is the stuff of high drama, but by allowing Tyson to be the sole person providing context for his tumultuous life, Toback also demonstrates that he may not be the right director to tell this story.

Crazy Love (Dan Klores with Fisher Stevens, 2007). Considering it’s built around a truly horrific incident–a spurned lover hires a thug to throw lye in the face of the lovely young woman who’s moved on from him–this documentary is bizarrely, improbably entertaining. This is in part because Klores and Stevens handle the mounting improbabilities of the story so briskly, relaying the corkscrew twists with the sort of breathless incredulity usually reserved for the most fanciful fictions. Every new revelation comes across with a “can you believe this?” pop. The directors also meticulously tracks the lurid tabloid interest in the whole sordid affair, which got the couple major ink in New York newspapers and prime spots under studio lights across a wide range of daytime talk shows and afternoon news programs. It serves as a reminder that the media landscape may look ghastly now, but its driven by the same base instincts and craven pandering that’s always been a part of the American cultural palette.

The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949). Wyler is renowned for his skillful work with actors, famously guiding more performers to Oscar nominations and wins than any other director. That quality is in full evidence in this adaptation of Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s stage play, which was itself taken from a 1880 Henry James novel. Olivia de Haviland won her second Academy Award in the title role, a young woman whose prospects for marriage are dour, at least in the opinion of her father. He regards her as plain and uninteresting, a disappointingly wan reflection of her departed mother. When a potential suitor takes an interest, the father is certain that the gentlemen is more interested in her ample inheritance than any part of her beauty, mind or spirit. The film is deft and subtle in its portrayal of the situation, and de Haviland is indeed marvelous, calling upon a layered subtlety that is somewhat atypical for the era. Robert Richardson delivers shrewd, withering assessments as the father, downplaying the obvious imperiousness of the role in favor of a robust intellectualism. As the suitor, Montgomery Clift is just ambiguous enough about his character’s intentions to heighten the sense of uncertainty. The film poses an intriguing, perhaps unanswerable question: if happiness is predicated on a deception, does it really matter? Is contentment, a joyful satisfaction with life, reward enough, regardless of the shadows that may exist behind it?

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)