Curiously, there's also no motion picture footage of Mies himself, although his daughter produced her own film about him in the late 1960s for the Knoll corporation, which manufactures his furniture designs. Or audio, even though he was interviewed by the BBC in the late 1950s.

Those are problems with Regular or Super, but not as big of one as the gas station framing device. Mies's story is the story of 20th century modern architecture in America, its rise in prominence after World War II, and its decline, which began in part, as a backlash against Mies's austere minimalism, and only accelerated after his death. (That his acolytes such as Johnson built many inferior buildings didn't help matters, either.) There's a great story here, but you have to fight the filmmakers to get to it.

"I don't want it to be interesting; I want it to be good!" Mies has been quoted as saying. Too bad the filmmakers sacrificed the latter and decided to get cute, instead of spending more time fleshing out the story.

Those who want the story of Mies told conventionally are advised to pick up his mid-1980s biography written by Franz Schulze. It's still the best single book written about the architect. But second only to seeing the buildings in person, is watching them beautifully filmed in Regular Or Super. Whatever its faults, the handsome cinematography is not one of them.