Motel (1989)

Christian Blackwood's free-wheeling documentary is actually a series of mini-films that suggest everything from Fred Wiseman to Raising Arizona. The first pitstop is The Silver Saddle, New Mexico, run by three redoubtable women. The most conventional of the sequences, it's still marked with expansive curiosity and grotesque humour. The guests at The Blue Mist - situated opposite the Arizona State Prison - are mostly wives of the inmates, and include a former guard, staying in the infamous room 22. Here a con on furlough chopped up his mother, before making the fundamental error of trying to sell the pieces to the local grocer. Then there's The Amargosa, complete with its own theatre, in a ghost town, pop. 4, and The Movie Manor, which backs on to a drive-in cinema. And why not?