Buck (Cindy Meehl, 2011). Cindy Meehl’s measured, steadfast documentary focuses on Buck Brannaman, a renowned horseman who primarily makes his living traveling around the country and delivering ranch seminars intended to help people develop better relationships with their problem animals. Meehl was actually inspired to make the film after her own positive experience in one of those group training sessions. Her film, understandably then, comes across like the work a true believer, which is both its strength and weakness. It’s an intimate, compelling portrait of a man who’s found his way through significant personal hardship to create a professional life with an admirable foundation of understanding and kindness (most of Brannaman’s advice about dealing with horses could be applied to human relationships with sterling results), but the pieces that are left out are baldly noticeable, including a brother who took the same childhood journey and barely gets a mention. Still, the work overall has a warm-heated, gentle eloquence, perfectly befitting its subject.

The Miracle Worker (Arthur Penn, 1962). I believe Arthur Penn’s film adaptation of William Gibson’s stage play (and the teleplay for Playhouse 90 that preceded it) is typically dismissed as a late example of stodgy, restrained, self-consciously “important” Hollywood filmmaking that was swept away by the French New Wave inspired revolution that started to kick in before the end of the decade. I can understand that viewpoint, but I think it misses the real emotional power built into the story, the film and especially the two central performances. Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke played teacher Annie Sullivan and blind deaf-mute pupil Helen Keller, respectively, in the original Broadway stage production and Penn, also the stage production director, wisely asked them to reprise their roles. Bancroft and Duke bypass the maudlin and emphasize the sheer force of their characters, never seen better than in a famed scene involving Annie’s prolonged attempt to teach Helen basic table manners, a tour de force of physicality that is astounding to think of them continually reprising on stage in performances all week long. My cynicism may kick in occasionally when watching it–the blurry scenes of Annie’s childhood spring to mind–but I also can’t deny the emotional impact when the film reaches its famed conclusion as the farmhouse water pump.

My Night at Maud’s (Éric Rohmer, 1969). The fourth of Éric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, My Night at Maud’s features Jean-Louis Trintignant as a upstanding Catholic who encounters an old friend one night, a fellow who has followed a different, more hedonistic path. The two reacquaint themselves with one another, eventually leading to the a boozy night in an apartment belonging to Maud, played by Françoise Fabian. The film is sly, funny and takes great delight in its exuberant intellectualism. The film is difficult to pin down in all the best ways, demonstrated that the quietly intense debate of complicated ideas can lead to the greatest drama with little added adornment required.

An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951). This is the film that Gene Kelly was convinced would be forever viewed as his masterpiece (even as he was making Singin’ in the Rain, which seemed a comparative powder puff), and it’s not hard to see why. The musical tale of struggling painter Jerry Mulligan, played by Kelly, finding his way in the city of lights is rich and emotive in a way rare for films of the era, especially musicals, which tended to punt any moderate attempt at developing plausible characters or compelling storylines in the safe knowledge that the audience would be happy enough if they bounded from one lavish, ludicrous production number to the next. Kelly, screenwriter Alan Jay Lerner and director Vincente Minnelli (Kelly was effectively a co-director, though he wasn’t credited as such) wanted more, though, and they build the film with an attention to finding depth and wit that can stand up to the spectacle. They don’t always succeed (the ending is particularly pat), but the ambition is grand. And the film’s centerpiece, an extended ballet sequence developed with a keen sense of stagecraft, gives the work reason for being all on its own.

The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962). Luis Buñuel’s brilliantly bleak satire hinges on a simple absurdist premise: a group of upper crust individuals gather for a hoity-toity dinner party, complete with roaming wild animals for entertainment, only to gradually discover at the end of the night that they’re completely incapable of exiting the the music room where they’ve gathered. There’s no evident reason for this; they simply can’t cross the threshold of the wide, open doorway. Similarly, none of the observers outside can’t bring themselves to cross the iron gate at the front of the estate to go in and rescue them. Buñuel jubilantly tracks their shared breakdown into mental and social chaos as the days of odd confinement stretch on. Few of the characters emerge as crisp individuals, but that only enhances Buñuel’s themes of social isolation and stratification. In every respect, it’s an amazing, daring work.