Christian Blackwood’s wonderful offbeat documentary about a few motels in the American southwest and the people he finds there: the three hardened and resourceful divorcees who run the Silver Saddle in Santa Fe, New Mexico; the guests at the Blue Mist in Florence, Arizona, who visit friends and relatives incarcerated in the state prison across the way; and a couple who occupy an abandoned motel in Death Valley Junction, Californiaan artist and ballerina who performs, sometimes for imaginary audience members, in a refurbished opera house, and her devoted and sympathetic husband. Each segment is a fascinating slice of Americana, although the third is downright inspirational (1989). (JR)