Doc Watch: Moving Images

THE B-SIDE: ELSA DORFMAN'S PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY (B+) - This elegant examination of the life and work of large-scale Polaroid portraitist Elsa Dorfman is as much about the process as it is about the person. Documentary legend Errol Morris does his typical deep dive into a topic, and it can be fascinating at times.

Morris ("The Thin Blue Line," "The Fog of War") trains his camera on the elderly Dorfman as she shows off pictures from her flat files, and he delves into the contraptions she uses to produce large-format portraits, such as her standard 20x24 or even bigger pictures. She would always take two photos -- one for the subjects, one for her files -- and had a habit of writing captions on her copy, which helps Morris craft a narrative.

Dorfman, who worked in Boston and Harvard Square, is a simple woman with no deep insights into her process or the subjects she covered, which included Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan. (An answering-machine message from Ginsberg on his death bed is chilling.) She is not interested in looking into anyone's soul. She's not searching for deep truths or the very essence of the people sitting for her camera. She's not working on a higher plane, like the Chicago portrait photographer Yvette Dostatni or a celebrity photographer like Annie Liebovitz. She has simply snapped a lot of pictures of many people over the years.

But Morris beautifully captures this dying art. (A detailed explanation of Dorfman's work with Polaroid can be found here.) He is a filmmaker compelled to preserve the history of still pictures with his moving pictures, in several senses of the word.

JOAN DIDION: THE CENTER WILL NOT HOLD (B-minus) - Joan Didion, one of the pre-eminent chroniclers of life in the second half of the 20th century, gets a sympathetic profile from her nephew, the actor Griffin Dunne. The power of her excerpted writings here rescue this from being a trifling home movie.

Didion, now in her 80s, is an engaging (if seemingly forgetful) subject, though the glamour of her charmed life can get tedious at times. (She and her husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne hosted many New Hollywood types like Warren Beatty and Steven Spielberg at their Malibu home in the 1970s.) And the filmmaker injects himself into the proceedings too often. He also seems to dwell a bit much on the gloomy side of things -- the deaths of John Gregory Dunne and the couple's adopted daughter, Quintana, which inspired one of her more recent best-sellers, The Year of Magical Thinking.

Talking heads include stalwarts Calvin Trillin and Hilton Als of the New Yorker. Archival footage transports us to the heady '60s and '70s. Dunne uses the Ken Burns scan technique to linger over old photos, including the iconic image of Didion posing in front of a white Corvette Stingray. That talented writer is a fascinating figure, but you get the sense that her nephew came along just a little too late to fully engage her and craft a compelling biography.

THE REAGAN SHOW (C+) - Four filmmakers team up to comb through the footage shot by the Reagan White House, which chronicled the first modern TV presidency. This 74-minute overview feels like a lost opportunity.

We start with the premise that Reagan's team was inordinately obsessed with image and optics. That's not a revelation. Nothing surprising is exposed here.

The filmmakers traipse unimaginatively through the 1980s in chronological order, telling a rather shallow story of a shallow man. While we're reminded about the manipulative nature of the White House during that time, neither Reagan nor his wife and minions come off as nefarious here. If anything, the emphasis on his extended arms talks with Mikhail Gorbachev serve to reinforce the cowboy hagiography of the 41st president.

There are flashes from the past that resonate in the present -- reminding us both how quaint those times were and how devious and depraved the current administration is in the era of 24-hour news and Twitter. It's a depressing reminder of the beast that Reagan's handler birthed and the depths to which we've descended since. This film gets no credit for jogging loose such observations.

BONUS TRACKS
Jonathan Richman, a friend of Elsa Dorfman's, contributes two fine tunes to the soundtrack, starting with "Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild":



And from 2001, "Her Mystery Not of High Heels and Eyeshadow":