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).