Cameraperson

Cameraperson turned out to be a very strange experience for me. When we discuss film, we talk about the fourth wall or refer to "the camera" as an autonomous object. The character that looks directly at us is 'breaking the fourth wall; the camera can be 'uncomfortably close.' but with Cameraperson, there's an odd fifth element - the actual human behind the camera. This isn't a film about cinematography, it's a film about Kirsten Johnson, and the knowledge that there's someone (or multiple people) intending to shoot these things is sometimes very odd.

An image that describes this duplicity comes from a shoot in Afghantistan. Johnson is shooting through a car window, and as she's wiping away dust from her side, the driver is also cleaning the window on the other side, and we see both hands moving across the screen, wiping the same places without touching. It's a profound duplicity that's fascinating, but at some points uneasy; sometimes watching the film it feels uncomfortable to remember that there's someone making a conscious decision to shoot this and not act. From the beginning that intentionality is apparent; in an early segment in Bosnia we see Johnson, shooting a shepherd with his herd from the ground, pluck away some dead grass that;s in the way of the shot.

As a memoir, the knowledge of Johnson behind the camera is essential, and the parts that hit home the most are when she gets personal. Not just the parts with her parents or her children, but when she interacts with the people she's shooting; a woman having an abortion who Johnson asserts, that, despite what she's saying, she is not a bad person, documentarians on the Bosnian war who carry their own demons from covering it, Afghan soldiers who stop to have watermelon with her, only to be called out, a family she stays with in rural Bosnia who affect her so much that she returns to the latter five years later to show them the footage. More detached moments shooting people seem a bit uncomfortably ethnographic; depiction without interaction, associating things that belong to others only as they occurred to her. It's a fuzzy line, since of course she did experience being in these places, but without the emotional element it almost seems disingenuous to include it as a memoir.

Cameraperson is also about the broadness of life and death, both obliquely (a toddler left alone with an axe wedged into a stump) or directly (scenes from a birth clinic in Nigeria). The first segment in the birth clinic is a relatively unremarkable delivery of a baby. As the midwife wipes off the infant, she and Johnson both notice that the baby is looking directly at the camera. "She knows," the midwife says.

Much later in the film, Johnson shoots another delivery, which goes less well. It appears to be breech. There’s blood on the floor. The baby isn’t crying as the midwife whisks him out of the room. In the other room, the baby gasps practically with its entire body, struggling to breathe. The midwife tries suction and other methods, and although the baby gets a few cries out, it’s clear that it can barely breathe.

“He needs oxygen,” the midwife explains, “but we don’t have oxygen here.” She leaves. The baby is still gasping for air, its milky eyes looking towards the camera. This baby is dying, and if the first baby knew it was being viewed, doesn’t this one? We’re not just watching an infant suffocate, we’re watching someone watching an infant suffocate. It’s an intentional choice by a real person, a person who we now know, and I can’t help but dwell on that moment. There's a speech by a Syrian professor earlier that pinpoints why some of these moments are so uneasy. He talks about the images of corpses of refugees, how showing them is a sensationalist and exploitative act that demeans who these people were.

Sometimes, I watch a movie with something that really disturbs me, and I get upset at the actual filmmaker for subjecting me to it. (The unrelenting child abuse and suicides in Farewell My Concubine, for example.) Until now it always seemed irrational, just an outlet to take off some of the emotional burden. But perhaps it’s less silly than I thought; there’s always a person behind the camera who chose to record this. There’s no real way I can rate Cameraperson; I had more of a realization than a reaction, but it’s definitely something unique and notable.

Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World

An ever-growing web of information permeating our lives in ways we never imagined seems like a great match for Herzog to play around in; the title comes from the first segment on the creation of the internet, when we learn that the very first message sent from one computer to another was “lo”, which is compared to the phrase “lo and behold.” The creation of the internet as an Event, something with an unexpected grandiose impact, puts it on the level of the big bang, and starting with that sets expectations for a thoughtful film with Herzog’s odd flair. Instead it’s just a quick moment in the first of many dalliances into facets of the internet, AI, and technological progress as a whole.

The film is broken up into ten parts which cover not just the internet, but technological progress, its effect on us, and our connection to it as a whole. The segments are often brief and only provide a shallow view on their subjects. Many of these topics are worth a feature documentary on their own, including cybersecurity, people who claim to be allergic to wireless radiation, and stories from so called greatest hacker Kevin Mitnick, but Herzog skims over all of them. The shortest is on what Herzog refers to as the “dark side of the web,” and despite the internet having endless sources of nastiness and causing all sorts of moral panics, he chooses to focus on just one family affected by a very straightforward invasion of privacy: an EMT posted images of their daughter’s corpse after a gruesome car accident, which were used to make sick memes and treated as a joke. Not to discount this family’s horrific experience, but with cyberbullying, trolls, and revenge porn all becoming hot button topics, it’s strange not to even touch on any of them. Even worse, their story is undercut by how they’re portrayed; the entire family sits in a rigidly arranged living room (even the rolls on the table are perfectly arranged), all wearing black with thousand yard stares, and the mother mentions that she believes the internet is the spirit of the antichrist. They are the entirety of this segment and it almost seems like Herzog is treating the topic as a joke.

Lo and Behold is disjointed, and completely loses focus by part VII, which brings Elon Musk and his mission to Mars into the mix, but I think the fundamental problem is deeper than the form or the depth of content. The problem is that Herzog likes thinking about the internet, but doesn’t seem to know that much about it, or at least is out of touch with it. He starts with the first internet message, but only mentions the creation of the World Wide Web in passing over an hour later, neglecting to explore how the idea of hyperlinks and websites become essential. It’s not exactly common knowledge that the web and internet aren’t actually interchangeable concepts, but if you’re talking about the history of the internet, isn’t it vital to explain how its structure works? Instead he moves on to a variety of topics, from computational theory on bandwidth to self driving cars and AI capable of learning, as if he thinks any sufficiently advanced technology is all ‘the internet’ like how your mom might think every video game console is ‘Nintendo’.

Except in this instance your mom wrote a book about gaming, spent three chapters the people who get motion captured for fighting games, went on a tangent about the rise of table tennis tournaments while discussing Atari, and wondered if the block building in Tetris is a critique of communism.

Weiner

Weiner (dir. Josh Kreigman & Elizabeth Steinberg) follows former congressman Anthony Weiner through his 2013 campaign for the mayor of New York City, an an attempt at redemption after resigning from congress due to a twitter sex scandal. The the film is just as much a profile of Weiner himself as of his 2013 mayoral campaign, but his wife, Huma Abedin, is just as interesting to watch. She may not be the main focus, but with the former congressman’s reputation marred by a sex scandal, she’s in the spotlight just as much as him. There are really two ways to look at Weiner:

1. The Humiliation of the Saint Huma Abedin by the Campaign of Anthony Weiner

“First Lady” gets a surprising about of scrutiny for a completely non-political position, and while Huma Abedin works in politics as Hilary Clinton’s right hand man, her prescence and image is what’s on trial. Weiner introduces footage of Weiner and Abedin at home, both when on campaign and mundanely, getting their baby ready, comparing tomato sauces. At first it’s a look at the reality of their domestic life as opposed to the idyllic one in Weiner’s early ads, but as the campaign goes on, we’re seeing the stress not just on their marriage, but on Huma as she becomes less of an person and ally and more of a symbol for Weiner’s campaign and the press.

After all, she’s not the one running for mayor, and though she’s involved in the logistics of his campaign, her role is The Wife. She has to be on point even more than him, but her body language shows her real feelings. She’s rarely interviewed in the film, but almost always on screen with him, showing the uncertainty and simmering anger that she’s not allowed to display. There’s regular debate as to whether Weiner’s behavior disqualifies him for public office, but Weiner never lets us forget that his actions are not victimless. And while the campaign uses her to prove that Weiner’s an upstanding dude who’s truly a better person, the press jumps on her as the symbol of Weiner’s sins. “Why does she stay,” a deeply personal question, is asked repeatedly, with answers ranging from “love is blind” to “emotional abuse” from people who have never met her. All she’s actually got to express herself is her body language, and even that is carefully analyzed when she’s in public. She suffers the fallout twice - as a wife, and as a Wife of Politician; doubly objectified. Even with all her political clout she’s still trapped in societal gender expectations.

2. Anthony Weiner - all passion, no impulse control

The film starts off introducing Wiener as a brash, sometimes abrasive congressman who’s powered by a genuine passion for policy that helps people. He makes C-SPAN a spectacle, which draws people to him; his passion for what’s right is the type of fire we want in someone representing our rights. And then he makes himself into the spectacle when his boner shot is accidentally posted on twitter and tries to deny it in the most ineffective way possible. He’s got a fast talking charm that gets him over with the people, obviously a fantastic asset for a politician. But what’s quite obvious is that he’s got no filter for it; he uses that same charm to hit on followers. The passion devolves into picking fights, shouting at pundits, and being defensive. He views himself as a victim, refusing to drop out of the mayoral race because it would feel like letting his “bullies” win.

The film doesn’t delve too far into making Weiner self-ruminate; the filmmakers are willing to let his difficulty with introspection speak for itself. At one point en route to a community meeting, when asked why he has trouble talking about his feelings, he asks the cameraman if there’s a word for the “fly on the wall” style where the fly talks to you. A the end of the film, as Weiner watches the disastrous final moments of his campaign on the news, he’s asked why he’s let all of this be filmed, and all he can do is shrug. The closest he gets to genuine introspection is a moment musing over whether politics can warp expectations and understanding of relationships. If the question for Huma is “Why do you stay,” the one for Weiner is “Why do you do this?” That question could refer to the politics, the yelling, the cheating, or the sexting, or all of the above. Is this pathological, an example of narcissism or sex addiction? Is it a fatal character flaw, a lack of control or inability to understand consequences? And the last question, which goes for all politicians: is there any altruism involved, or is it all about power and influence?

Of course, in both views, the press is a major player in; they’re the ones who document and analyze the couple’s behavior, promoting the endless scrutiny. Would things be radically different without the existence of social media? Did the same technology that made him popular with the general public lead to his downfall? And are the mainstream press reporting news, or just latching on to a salacious story involving a man with an unfortunate last name? Are the actual issues being lost in favor of prying into personal lives of politicians? Do they treat politicians like celebrities to the detriment of actual government?

Weiner brings up a lot of questions about politics, the press, and about people. Why does someone become a politician? Why are non-political scandals important? Why is “first X” an important figure? Why do people sext/cheat? Is sexting really cheating? What is the press meant for? Why do people stay with cheaters? The film has all the content, but it’s up to us to interpret it.

Swiss Army Man

Swiss Army Man’s been getting buzz since its premiere at Sundance in January; know as the “Daniel Radcliffe farting corpse movie,” it ended up with positive reviews, despite the initial walkouts. It’s almost entirely a two man show; Paul Dano is Hank, who is stuck on a desert island, ready to commit suicide. He’s stopped by the appearance of Manny (Radcliffe), the aforementioned farting corpse, and together they bond while trying to find their way home. The premise would actually make a pretty cool video game: teach your dead friend about life (and its joys) to unlock various abilities which are then used in puzzles to progress toward home. But the film is more than just an epic fart joke; it’s about why we bother to try at all, with a darkly comic lens. Life (and your body) is super gross, but there’s no reason to be ashamed of that, and there really is stuff worth sticking around for. Connections with other (gross) people make life worth it.

Frustratingly, it chooses to represent isolation in the weakest way possible: unrequited love. “Love” isn’t even applicable -- it’s infatuation to a creepy point. The Girl is the symbol of meaningful connection, and romance is apparently the backbone of life. While Hank eventually figures out that friendship is just as meaningful through his journey with Manny, a large majority of time is spent focusing on The Girl as the reason to be. The Girl that Hank’s pretty much stalking, considering he’s only seen her on the bus and yet knows her full name, regularly checks her instagram and has a creepshot of her as his phone home screen. It’s past time we stopped portraying petty male infatuatiomn as love; Paulette and the UPS guy from Legally Blonde had more interaction than Hank and Sarah, and Paulette could barely string two words together around him. Swiss Army Man eventually does acknowledge that Hank is being really creepy, but it’s sort of offhand, more of a funny background event. Hank’s entire view of life is based off of her. Exploring how his upbringing helped make him so insular would have been much more interesting; the snippets we get are heartbreaking and grossly funny. But instead ‘tfw no gf’ is used as shorthand for the most terrible loneliness.

Personally, I think that shorthand contributes to the Nice Guy dynamic; infatuation and making romance The Holy Goal is so normalized that without it, you must be Lonely and Miserable and Incomplete, so why can’t Girls understand that you need to be complete? You don’t have to know her or care about how she feels, because nobody deserves to feel Incomplete, and only a total jerk would actively deny happiness to someone else. Therefore, a Girl who won’t even go out with you once is being a total asshole to you!

It’s also disappointing because the directors (who also wrote the script) do seem to get the crushing isolation that causes (and is caused by) depression. Hank’s detachment from his father shows how a gap can become an impassible crevasse, and even the anecdote about his mother is the sort of small bullshit that somehow makes itself really meaningful in your life. We also assume that he has no friends (although it’s never explicitly stated) and that has a ton of impact on you, both growing up and as an adult. Hank’s issues that have lead him to suicide are about initiating relationships and opening up, and there’s so much more to that than romance. Hank was on a desert island before he ran away, and “deserted” doesn’t just mean The Girl isn’t there.

I suppose I wouldn’t be so sensitive if the suicidal state of mind weren’t portrayed so accurately (and with the appropriate amount of humor.) What stops Hank from hanging himself? Some random guy washes up on shore that he can at least talk to. Except when Hank goes to approach him, he forgets about the noose and almost dies anyway. The realization that the person who stopped him was actually a farting corpse? Back to plan S with a stronger noose. But wait -- the farts are useful! Farts saving his life is lowbrow as hell, but the dumbest things can get you out of that mindset. All the scatological humor fits perfectly with the absurdities of life, presented in a less morbid fashion. Just as the dumbest thing can develop into a hangup years later, the silliest thing may lift you up just enough to keep going on.

Trailers and the political hook: how a horror franchise did it better than a Hollywood thriller

When I saw Green Room a few months back, the trailers attached to it were mostly were generic slasher shit, but two stood out: the trailers for Jodie Foster’s "Money Monster", and "The Purge: Election Year". Both intend to comment on The State of America; Election Year’s main character is a senator running for president who wants to end the titular purge, and Money Monster is about a Jim Cramer analogue who is taken hostage on live television by a man whose life was ruined by faux-Cramer’s faulty stock tips. Watching them back to back, it seemed like The Purge: EY’s trailer did a much better job of selling its film, even though it’s part of a franchise, and Money Monster completely fell flat. Of course, with Money Monster released a month and a half ago and The Purge:EY on its second week, the actual films are available to judge, but let's look at these trailers anyway; whether we want to admit it or not, trailers have their own significance.

Rewatching them, it’s clear that while both trailers intend to use current events as a hook, The Purge: EY’s trailer shows a better understanding of allegory and the current zeitgeist than Money Monster’s. Both trailers are pretty damn heavy handed, with The Purge: EY cross cutting “Keep America Great” with violence while “America the Beautiful” plays, but while The Purge at least uses imagery to get its point across, Money Monster shows its antagonist spouting anti-Wall Street rhetoric (“I might be the one with the gun here, but I’m not the criminal; it’s people like [faux-Cramer]”) or a protagonist giving us exposition about his motivation.

The basic idea behind the Purge is that, for one night, all crime is legal to let off steam and get the base urges of humans out for the rest of the year. The senator’s opposition, besides the barbarism, is that we, as Americans, should be better than that, should be on moral standing with the global community. American exceptionalism runs deep on both political parties, but the senator’s use (“The soul of America is at stake”, “It is a night that is defining our country. The Purge has to come to an end.”) is reminiscent of liberals using more socialist countries (usually in western Europe), to implore for empathy and change. The supporters of the purge are associated with the evangelical religious; a pastor delivers a sermon exalting America and the purge, leading his disciples in a chant to “Purge and Purify!”.

 "Keep America Great" is reminiscent of the slogan for Trump’s campaign, which has focused entirely on hyperbolic vitriol, painting immigrants as rapists and advocating internment camps and jailing women for having abortions. In essence he wants to “make America great” by cleansing it, pointing to minorities, immigrants, and women as scapegoats. The Purge doesn’t target anyone in particular, but the senator argues it targets the poor, her supporters shown are all black, and the name suggests the forceful ejection of dead weight while giving the purgers visceral satisfaction,. That juxtaposes the Purge with the evangelical right, which has become a significant force in the Republican Party (though not necessarily to Trump), and the senator with minorities and the poor, both whom liberals claim to champion (and believe the GOP explicitly excludes.) I doubt The Purge: EY is intending to be Democrat or liberal, but it is clearly associating the Purge with the extremist views within the GOP and especially Trump and his followers; Trump has actively championed violence against protesters. The argument for the Purge are that it’s an American Tradition, and that it mitigates the inherent aggression in humans, which assumes that violence is normal and unavoidable. With Trump clinching the Republican nomination (barring some legal masterstroke from the GOP), it strikes a very current chord in the social and political zeitgeist.

Money Monster’s subject, the financial crisis, while still relevant, is a well tread road; it’s been almost five years since the Occupy movement began with Occupy Wall Street, so there’s an expectation that Money Monster will do something new with the material, especially with films like Margin Call and The Big Short preceding it. Money Monster racks up the stakes with the hostage situation premise, but the dialogue follows very easy beats, material that at this point can be distilled into Advice Dog/Scumbag Steve-type memes.

 That doesn’t mean there’s nothing left to say about the crisis (there’s always a way to put a new spin on something), but the trailer doesn’t hint at anything particularly unconventional. Of course, since these are just trailers, none of this may apply to the actual films. Trailers can be misleading, and a good trailer interests the viewer without giving much away. But they are an integral part of movie marketing, and how people decide what to see, so what a trailer chooses to show sends a message about what the film wants to be.

The Invitation

 

The Invitation (dir. Karyn Kusama) is a smart and expertly crafted psychological thriller that explores the long term effects of grief. After Will and his wife Eden split after the death of their child, Eden disappears for two years and abruptly returns with a new husband, David, and invites Will, his new girlfriend, and several of their friends to their house for a party. The situation is already awkward at best for Will; he and Eden used to live in this house, and she had cheated on him with David, and a collision with a coyote leaves him and his girlfriend Kira shaken, but its Eden and David’s new blissful personalities that truly rattles Will. They credit “The Invitation,” the program they attended for two years in Mexico, for their newfound happiness, and the happiness of their new roommate Sadie. Will’s instincts tell him that this “Invitation” is a cult that’s unhealthy at best, but he’s carrying so much emotional baggage that it’s almost impossible to know for sure.

That uncertainty is the main tension in the film; things do seem very “off” from the beginning, but Will is obviously not starting off in a good state of mind. He’s going to the house he used to share with his ex and his deceased son, seeing her and the man she cheated on him with. Kusama takes advantage of framing, sound design, and focus to unnerve; a simple trip up the stairs becomes ominous in slow motion, the lavish dinner party turns into a barrage of overwhelming voices and grotesque chewing. Although the house is huge, each room feels claustrophobic.

Will obviously has not moved on yet, but has the Invitation program helped Eden and David do so? Or does it just allow them to avoid the pain that Will is still stuck in? Is Sadie’s happy-go-lucky, sexually open approach a sign of inner peace, or of desperation? The situation seems fishy to Will, but the other partygoers are unconcerned; they admit that Sadie’s presence and Eden and David’s newfound bliss is strange, but they feel that weirdness is acceptable as long as they’re happy. When the couple insists on introducing “The Invitation” to them, they encourage Will to be “open-minded.”

Grief and depression are an uphill struggle to overcome, and hard for others to support or understand. Immediately after the loss, people can handle the initial devastation, but there’s a point where you’re supposed to be “over it”, and if you’re not, people will eventually lose sympathy, or just becomes frustrated with you. With the outside world side eyeing you and the sadness overwhelming you, it’s impossible not to wonder if something is wrong with you, and the program provides both an easy answer to that fear and a concrete method to overcoming that sadness. Does everyone else truly believe that Eden and David are happy, or are they just happy that the couple isn’t moping around anymore?

After a bit of lag during second act, the last act veers away from the psychological to a much more violent genre, and though it’s shocking, it’s not out of place. The entire film has been asking how to handle grief, and the last parts, the ending in particular, show the consequences of unprocessed pain.

2015 roundup [aka what I've been watching in these six months]

I'd like to blame the lack of updates on this blog on getting a much steadier job than I had before; it's undeniably a huge factor since I started the job maybe two weeks after my last post and whoops where did those updates go??? But to be honest, I wasn't as enthralled by what I watched as I've felt in previous years. I always hate when someone declares that it's a "bad year" for film (especially since you hear it Every. Single. Year.), but I wasn't quite feeling it the same way.

There were some standouts though, and even ones that I'm genuinely still enthusiastic about.

The best ones [that made me feel feelings]

• The Lobster (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos): I saw this at the New York Film Festival, and I'm still smiling about it. The best way I can explain it is that it's a dystopian love story written by aliens who have no understanding of 'love' but they've watched some romcoms and dystopia films and they're pretty sure they can fake it. With beautiful cinematography and brilliantly deadpan performances, it's more than a takedown of societal pressures to couple and become married; it pokes fun at the innate needs we have to bond with others and to have our freedom.
• Memorable moment - an early scene where Colin Farrell's character applies for the hotel and finds out that there is no bisexual option; he's forced to pick on the spot whether to be heterosexual or homosexual. It's a small moment, but it perfectly encapsulates the way we treat bisexuality, either just denying it exists, or demanding that they 'choose one already'.
• Spotlight (dir. Tom McCarthy): All the comparisons to All The President's Men are completely accurate; the gradual uncovering of the scope of the church scandal plays as suspense: how far does this go? And the emotional stakes are legitimate, not just for the victims, but for the journalists as well. As much as I love Mark Ruffalo, it's Liev Schrieber who really stood out to me. Maybe that's just because I too, am an atheist New Yorker...
• Ex Machina (dir. Alex Garland): An amazing use of AI and sci-fi tropes to explore gender stereotypes, particulary regarding women; Ex Machina comments on both the nature of sentient life and patriarchy; Oscar Isaac and Domnhall Gleeson play the Gross Bro and Nice Guy to Alicia Vikander's Girl of Interest, and all three of them are fantastic. Vikander in particular stands out though; she looks and moves like she's not quite out of the uncanny valley. Female androids in media are inevitably sexualized, and it's great to see a film that scrutinizes that.
• Chappie (dir. Neill Blomkamp) Speaking of sentient life....Chappie is 200% a mess, but I will maintain that many of its storylines ask interesting questions. Like Ex Machina, it is concerned with the possibility of sentient AI, but also about the responsibility of its creators. There's a ton going on, but the primary story is about how humans will shape new beings and the creation of morality in aritificial intelligence.
• World of Tomorrow (dir. Don Hertzfeldt): The first time I watched World of Tomorrow, a short where a little girl, Emily, is contacted by her future clone, I was devestated. I've watched it twice since then and it's just as beautiful and melancholy as the first time. It's interesting that this is Hertzfeldt's first digitally animated film, since it shows so much future technology that we (or we, as Emily Prime), can only understand in the abstract. Compare its representation of skewed reality with the breakdown of reality in Rejected; the world of tomorrow is not particularly comprehensible, but has its own beauty. Emily Prime is traveling outside of space-time, but not in a void. Instead, she and Emily-3 move through the dimension of memories, which can be exaggerated and vivid (like the saturated colors) or fuzzy and indistinct (like the memories of the dead).

Other standouts

• Mojave (dir. William Monahan): After reading Allison Willmore's piece on the tiredness of "manly malaise" as shown in Malick's Knight of Cups and Scorsese's Vinyl, (among others), I see it as an absurd parody of the troubled artist, mashed up with a western's revenge plot. Weird stuff goes on in both the desert and Hollywood, where the rules might not apply to you, and when a troubled director meets a mysterious desert guy, things get strange and silly. To paraphrase Ron Burgundy, things really get out of hand. There's a bunch of intellectual noodling, but little reason to take it all seriously. Plus, Oscar Isaac in a speedo and Garret Hedlund taking a shower, if that's your kind of thing (it should be.)
• The Assassin: So beautiful it barely mattered that I didn’t understand the plot. There’s an austerity that runs through the entire film; the performances are stolid without being stiff, as if every line, every movement is dictated by a strict tradition. Eye contact during conversations is rare; men stare straight ahead and women glance through a mirror. As someone who’s unfamiliar with the genre (and Chinese cinema in general), it provides a level of obfuscation that makes my lack of comprehension seem intentional (or at least understandable.)  The cinematography is as careful ans the performances; most of the camera movement is slow, relatively short pans, occasionally drifting behind curtains to veil the performers. There’s barely a musical store, mostly just a steady beat of a drum, thickening the air with tension
• Clouds Of Sils Maria: The best moments of Clouds focus on the craft of acting and slipping into a role and relate it to how identity can be defined by the outside world;  how hard it is to acknowledge that your self image might not represent who you are anymore, especially being a woman in an industry that judges on looks and aging. The jabs at Modern Hollywood and millennials, as well as the anxiety about The State Of Our Culture are pretty tired, but Kristen Stewart evens it out in a great performance, becoming the bridge between the two eras, supporting Juliette Binoche's character while understanding the values still present in modern pop culture.
• Mad Max: Fury Road: much more eloquent people than I have written tomes about this, so I'll just mention the highlights. The colors! The excess! Smashing the patriarchy to sweet war music provided by the war party and its flamethrower guitarist! (Also I guess Tom Hardy was there.)
• The Forbidden Room: "What did I just watch?" in the best way; it's the film equivalent of a matryoshka doll. Each story contains another story, clips of "lost" films of varying absurdity. Highlights include submariners who eat pancakes for the air bubbles, a song about an ass-obsessed Udo Kier, and poisonous skeleton women. When watching it I thought it went on just a bit too long, but it did teach me that I can acheive self-actualization by murdering my double (though only after she tells me a story).