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Michael Clayton ***
Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures ****
The Blues: Warming by the Devil's Fire **

Michael Clayton has an involving story and a great cast. It didn't strike me as a very cinematic film, which is the main reason I give it only three stars. It will come across just as well on your television as it will on the big screen. Well worth a rental, though. One word of warning: the male character who disrobes in the film is not played by George Clooney.

The Stanley Kubrick doc serves as a useful introduction to the director's oeuvre, and offers some particularly helpful insights into Eyes Wide Shut, probably the least understood film of all time. The doc also contains a lot of fascinating behind-the-scenes shots from most of Kubrick's films, including some brief samples of his on-the-set demeanor. (Apparently, The Shining was a stressful shoot for everyone.) This doc is included with the recently released DVD set of Kubrick's films.

I don't know how anyone, particularly a noted African-American director like Charles Burnett, could make a boring film about blues music, but Burnett's film is only livened by his choice of vintage blues clips which, thankfully, take up almost half of the running time.