Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth has the rare power to force recollections of the past as well as anticipations of the future, all the while keeping its viewer completely grounded in the present, grounded in its stunning and symphonic display of human emotion. Indeed, Sorrentino pulls the rug out from under his audience on several occasions throughout the duration of the film’s runtime, dragging them down into the depths of dejection only to raise them back up, just as quickly, into the heights of pure laughter and joy. Watching this film is like being trapped in a game of pinball, only Sorrentino is the game player and his audience is the ball that he’s whacking in every which direction without the slightest bit of hesitation. It’s clear, however, that he’s doing this out of love; if anything, Youth is undoubtedly the director’s most tender and heartfelt film yet. And also his most accessible to date.

Part of this accessibility can be attributed to Sorrentino’s decision, as primarily an Italian-language director, to direct the film in English (a feat which he attempted once prior with his overlooked 2011 output, This Must Be the Place). This immediately increases the number of people that will be interested in seeing it worldwide. Nonetheless, the chief reason why mainstream audiences will be drawn to this film is because of the big-name stars attached to the cast, including Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano and Jane Fonda in an unforgettable cameo performance.

Much like a few of the other films in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Youth is relatively light on plot and focuses more on conversations between characters, uprooted emotions and recounted memories than a concrete narrative. With that being said, the general storyline follows our protagonist, retired composer Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine), during his stay at a spa resort in the Alps with his daughter, Lena (Rachel Weisz), as well as his longtime best friend, illustrious film director Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel).

While the cast does a wonderful job realizing their characters, the true star of the film is cinematographer Luca Bigazzi, who has worked on several of Sorrentino’s previous projects including the Academy Award winning, The Great Beauty. As he did with his previous work, Bigazzi seems to channel an aesthetic similar to that of Emmanuel Lubezki’s collaborations with the legendary director, Terrence Malick. Both Bigazzi and Lubezki place great emphasis on the visual composition of each scene, capturing an immense degree of detail through the movement of their ever-gliding cameras.

One particularly memorable example of Bigazzi’s skill can be found early in the film. During a dream sequence, Ballinger walks down a platform surrounded by a rising body of water as it slowly begins to engulf him. There are very few cinematographers that can place us smack-dab in the center of the world they’re shooting like Bigazzi and Lubezki, which is why I continue to enjoy their masterful work.

If there’s one area in which Youth falters a bit, it’s making the 118-minute runtime feel long. Youth would’ve benefited from removing a few unnecessary scenes from its later acts. Instead, the audience may find themselves completely enthralled by its beauty one minute, and then checking their wristwatches the next. Nevertheless, some excessive minutes doesn’t take away from the fact Youth is an enjoyable film with a varied soundtrack, gorgeous locations, spectacular visuals and a deeply philosophical screenplay.

Originally published on June 3rd, 2015 as part of our Cannes Film Festival coverage.

Gaspar Noé’s Love is anything but pornography. Pornography makes no attempt to delve into the psychology of the humans portrayed within; it contains actors as models, rather than actors as characters with any sort of depth. While Murphy (Karl Glusman), Elektra (Aomi Muyock) and Omi (Klara Kristin), the three chief characters, may not be the most complex individuals you’ll come across in the cinema this year, they still have hopes and dreams and aspirations, and undoubtedly transcend the notion of “the pornographic model” by a long shot.

Love has such a loosely constructed narrative that it’s difficult to summarize, but it essentially examines the mind and memories of its American protagonist Murphy, now married and with a child, as he reminisces on the greatest love affair of his life with French ex-girlfriend Elektra. What sparks this nostalgic exploration is a phone call from Elektra’s mother, letting Murphy know that she hasn’t heard from her daughter in months and wonders if he has any knowledge of her whereabouts.

The opening scene is a lengthy static shot of Murphy and Elektra engaged in an explicit, unsimulated sexual act. This directorial decision, which paves the way for the remainder of the film’s imagery, should inspire excitement from audiences, but does the excitement hold up for the rest of Love’s 135-minute runtime? Not quite, because at least half of the film turns out to be repetitive scenes of other sexually graphic acts, from different angles and in different positions, but dull and homogeneous in almost every other way.

It’s clear that Noé’s goal here is to expose his audience to such an immense degree of sexual imagery that it would begin to feel like a natural and comfortable thing to view in a non-pornographic film. Unfortunately, it has the opposite effect; desensitizing the viewer to the sex being portrayed, with excitement quickly fading into exhaustion midway through the second act. At least all of the sex scenes made the dialogue-heavy sequences—like the intense verbal matches between Murphy and Elektra, which effectively portray the bi-polar, love-hate nature of fiercely passionate relationships—that much more fascinating.

Unfortunately, these rare, existential moments in Love aren’t portrayed in enough detail, or given enough screen time, to really pack much of a punch. They come and go, forgotten among the sex scenes. The emotional peak of the film comes in the third act during a beautiful moment of vulnerability for Murphy. He sits weeping in a bathtub while holding his child, who is also weeping. This moment casts the protagonist in a state of pure nakedness more than any elongated scene of copulation. The female characters, on the other hand, are one-dimensional from start to finish and seem to exist merely as sexual objects for Murphy.

All of that said, Love, much like Noé’s previous two films, Enter the Void and Irreversible, is an impressive technical achievement. His cinematographer, Benoit Debie, experiments with longer takes, carefully framed static shots and a camera that hovers above its main characters for most of the film. The fragmented editing style works wonderfully with the non-linear narrative and transports the viewer from past to present smoothly and with meticulous pacing. However, technical greatness doesn’t constitute a great film, and the majority of Love feels like digging into what looks like a delicious cake, only to find more and more icing on the inside. It may be Noé’s tamest and most grounded film yet, but that is not necessarily what audiences want from him as a director. He’d likely find greater success returning to the psychedelic, hyper-violent shock cinema style that he’s known for. It is there that his niche audience will find satisfaction.

A version of this review was originally published as part of our coverage of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Debut filmmaker László Nemes’ Son of Saul is, by a fair margin, the best film that I saw at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. It follows our protagonist, Saul (portrayed with great nuance and facial acting skill by first time actor Géza Röhrig), over the course of two chaotic days in Auschwitz as the camp nears its liberation. Saul is what is known as a Sonderkommando, a prisoner marked with a red X on their back to signify that they’re responsible for helping dispose of the bodies of fellow Jews whose lives have been taken in the gas chambers. Saul’s motivation in the film is introduced when he spots the body of a young boy who he takes to be his son, and he spends the rest of the film in search of a rabbi who can assist him in providing the boy with a proper burial.

As one can imagine from only having read a summary of the film’s narrative, Son of Saul is a deeply dark and devastating experience. In total, it’s composed of what can’t be more than one or two dozen long takes. Nemes and his skilled cinematographer, Mátyás Erdély, already had me in tears within the first few lengthy shots. I cannot think of a film that better utilizes shallow focus; there is so much noise and movement and chaos within the first ten minutes of the film that one may not understand exactly what is going on, until a pile of still bodies sneaks into the corner of a frame, almost wholly out of focus, and suddenly the realization hits. That was when I first lost it.

It’s easy to tell that Nemes worked as an assistant to master filmmaker Bela Tarr, since Son of Saul’s atmosphere is reminiscent of the intense riot scene in Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies. Both filmmakers craft complex and extended one-shot scenes with as much, if not more, going on in the background as the foreground. Nonetheless, the way Erdély’s 35mm camera follows Saul throughout the camp, never breaking concentration on either his face or the back of his head, is more reminiscent of the legendary Alain Marcoen’s famous tracking shots (Rosetta, La Promesse, etc.) than Tarr’s cinematographers. Erdély is even smoother and more precise than Marcoen with the movement of his camera though, further allowing the audience to forget they are watching a film and experience full immersion. I can’t remember the last film I watched that was able to transport me into a frightening past the way Son of Saul is able to.

Another one of my favorite directorial decisions made by Nemes was his choice to avoid tapping into Saul’s mind or providing an inner dialogue. Rather, the camera hovers around his head constantly, always remaining external, his audience perpetually existing as flies on the walls of Auschwitz. Some viewers may have difficulty with this decision, as it makes it more difficult to understand the reasoning behind Saul’s actions, especially if the boy is not actually his son. Fortunately, the ending sheds some light on the significance of the role of children in the film, although admittedly, it was a denouement that caused a couple of my viewing companions to scratch their heads.

To me, however, it isn’t so much a confusing ending as it is a complex one (much like the entirety of the film), and a conclusion that I feel is attempting to make a commentary on how each generation is affected by the actions of the last. In order to assess the finale beyond that though, I will most certainly need to see the film another time or two. Until then, I can safely deem László Nemes as a novel name to look out for in the world of cinema, and I’m anxiously anticipating his next effort.

The 2015 Cannes Film Festival jury shocked everyone when they awarded Jacques Audiard the Palme d’Or for his social realist drama turned hyper-violent thriller, Dheepan. This decision was met with very mixed reactions on social media. People seemed to be confused about why a film that didn’t receive much buzz when it premiered during the festival was taking the top prize. Others were just surprisingly pleased. I fall into the latter category, as Dheepan is an extraordinary achievement on a number of levels: its concentration on the frightening reality of escaping one war zone for another, as well as its simultaneous micro-level commentary on French poverty and macro-level commentary on civil war in Sri Lanka (or simply civil war, in general).

Dheepan tells the story of its titular character and his attempt to rebuild his life after his wife and children were killed in Sri Lanka. He, a woman he meets at random, and an abandoned nine-year-old girl they found come together as a faux family in an attempt to escape the Sri Lankan civil war for a better life in France. Unfortunately, the area of France that they move into is dominated by gangs who use the territory for distribution of narcotics and other illegal activities. Dheepan is forced to sit back and watch as the environment he has brought his makeshift family unit into becomes more and more dangerous, and eventually he reaches his breaking point.

Although there are hints of Audiard’s fascination with international politics in his 2008 film, Un Prophete, Dheepan doesn’t feel like anything the director has done before. The biggest reason for this his choice to portray Sri Lankans in a French environment, rather than the French themselves as Audiard has primarily done in the past.

If one is going to discuss Dheepan, it’s difficult to do so without commenting on its explosive ending. The film retains great suspense throughout, as it implies the family’s eventually going to get mixed up in some sort of intense or violent encounter, but it’s hard to predict the final fifteen minutes. Those who have seen Un Prophete know that Audiard is capable of executing abrupt and graphic acts of violence in truly shocking ways, but he takes this idea to its extreme in Dheepan. No other film that I saw at Cannes this year affected me in such a visceral way.

That being said, it’s difficult to make up one’s mind on an ethical level about the penultimate sequence. In war there is often no clear “good” side, and knowing who to cheer for can be difficult. But somehow, Audiard convinces us to love the main character even when he is delusional or violent or straddling the line between protagonist and anti-hero. It’s a complex ending and one that will take repeat viewings to fully understand. But it’s not a perfect film. Dheepan nearly forgets about one of its characters in the third act and the ending feels a bit out-of-place despite being refreshing and uplifting. However, the minor flaws are completely overshadowed by everything that it does right. Dheepan fully deserves the enormous accolade it received and is sure to continue receiving as the rest of the world is exposed to it.

Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start to summer, with cookouts and camping trips feeling like a celebratory coming of good weather and good times. It also used to be the opening weekend for some of the biggest films of the year – Return of the Jedi, three Indiana Jones films, sequels in the Pirates of the Caribbean, Fast & Furious, X-Men, The Hangover series, even the ill-fated Godzilla all made their debuts at the end of May. But as the Hollywood blockbuster season has pushed sooner each year, some of the weekend’s cultural significance may be lost. With a rather slow 2015 Memorial Day box office, here’s hoping that you opted to spend the time with friends and family, outdoors for a chance. And while you’re re-remembering the difference between Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, check out the news you may have missed last week.

Cannes 2015 Ends with Surprise Award Winners, Lots of Sales

To the apparent surprise of many, Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan walked away with the highest prize of Cannes, the Palme d’or, while the Grand Jury Prize went to Holocaust drama Son of Saul. Other winners included Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, Hou Hsiao-hsien for Best Director, and a split on Best Actress between Rooney Mara and Emmanuelle Bercot. For the full list of winners and our own analysis on the Dheepan victory, check out our post from this weekend. On the market side of things, Alchemy purchased two of the most talked about films of the fest, 3-D Porno Love and The Lobster. Sony Pictures Classics, always active at Cannes, picked up Son of Saul and Dan Rather biopic starring Robert Redford Truth. Check out The Dissolve for a complete list of Cannes purchases.

Watch the Final Film Ever Shot on Fuji Filmstock

We’ve heard for the past few years that physical film was a dying product, with much of the industry choosing to shoot on easier-access and economical digital sources, and now the product of this concept has been realized. Over at Indiewire, you can watch the very last short film ever shot using Fuji film, which was discontinued in 2013. “Amends” is a story of two lovers whose relationship falters because of a digital technology. It is a poetic and ironic swansong for the near-obsolete medium.

Debut Date Set for The Wire Creator’s Next HBO Series

First reported by Variety, upcoming HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero, created by David Simon and directed by Paul Haggis, will premiere on Sunday, August 16. The series stars Oscar Isaac as a young mayor of Yonkers, New York, who is pressured to build low-income housing units in predominantly white communities during the tumultuous 1960s. Given the talent behind the camera, Show Me a Hero is sure to be a complete (if even a bit didactic) look at the intersection between race and politics. The six-part series will also star Winona Ryder, Catherine Keener and Alfred Molina.

Alicia Vikander’s Star on the Rise, In Talks for Bourne Sequel and Assassin’s Creed

Another of Ex Machina‘s stars is also set for more high-profile projects, as Alicia Vikander is now in talks for roles in two blockbusters. Reported first by Deadline, Vikander may be trading in James Ponsoldt’s The Circle for featured supporting roles in Paul Greengrass’s return to the Bourne franchise and hotly anticipated video game adaptation Assassin’s Creed, which already touts Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Not much is known about her potential role in the films, but they would potentially be a mainstream break for the young actress. Starring in a video game adaptation wouldn’t normally be newsworthy, but the game’s complicated world and historical period settings make it highly adaptable, with some wondering whether it’ll be the first successful crossover to the big screen.

Indie Box Office Update

In an underwhelming holiday weekend at the box office, Disney’s Tomorrowland led with a disappointing 33 million dollar opening, with decent sophomore returns for Pitch Perfect 2 (30.8 mil) and Mad Max: Fury Road (24.8 mil). The strongest per screen averages came from Blythe Danner vehicle I’ll See You in My Dreams ($97,050 per its 3 screens) and French drama In the Name of My Daughter ($20,069 per its 4 screens), both in their second weeks of limited release. The highest per screen average opening went to Japanese animated drama When Marnie Was There, with a $13,000 average among its two screens. The strangest result of the weekend, however, goes to The Age of Adaline, which made a strong $15 mil. in the 5th week of its release – nearly half of its $40 mil. gross to date. This isn’t always a surprising trend for smaller films, as they typically show up in more theaters across the country during their run, but considering that The Age of Adaline showed in nearly half of the theaters compared to its opening weekend, it’s a very strange anomaly.

Trailer of the Week: Knock Knock

Following his career resurgence in John Wick, Keanu Reeves is turning to the home invasion genre, though with a twist. Knock Knock co-stars Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas as a pair of women who work their way into Reeves’s house only to torment him in sexy and violent ways. This is also a bit of a comeback for director Eli Roth, whose last film The Green Inferno never got a theatrical release. Besides that, he hasn’t directed a film since Hostel: Part II in 2007, focusing more as the producer of films like The Sacrament and The Last Exorcism in recent years. Knock Knock premiered at Sundance and will (hopefully) be released in theaters later this year. Check out the trailer for this thriller below!

It’s been a tumultuous year at Cannes, and today’s surprising awards ceremony certainly made for a fitting ending to this year’s festivities. Festival head Thierry Fremaux got lots of criticism thrown at him for his picks this year, which went heavy on French films, but this year’s festival jury—headed by Joel and Ethan Coen—had lots of love for the French selections. Best Actor went to Vincent Lindon for The Measure Of a Man, and Emmanuelle Bercot got a shared Best Actress prize for her turn in Maiwenn’s Mon Roi.

But the biggest surprise came when Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan was announced as the winner of the Palme D’Or. Audiard is a fine director (many of us here are fans of A Prophet, which got him the Grand Prix back in 2009), but critics were mostly sour on Dheepan, criticizing it for a startling turn in the final act that didn’t work for most people. And people were shocked that the two critically adored films in this year’s competition, Todd Haynes’ Carol and Hou Hsaio-hsien’s The Assassin, didn’t wind up taking home the big prizes; Hsaio-hsien won Best Director (considering how much of the film was praised for its gorgeous visuals, this sounds pretty deserving), and Carol got a Best Actress prize for Rooney Mara. But with Carol receiving a nice, Oscar-friendly release date in December from Harvey Weinstein, and The Assassin already bought up for US distribution, this certainly won’t be the last we’ll hear of these two films.

The only predictable outcome this year was Son of Saul winning the Grand Prix, which people assumed would be taking home a prize after it screened to a strong reception. It’s an impressive win, considering this is director Laszlo Nemes’ first feature, and it should have a nice tour around the festival circuit for the rest of the year. Another slight shocker was Michel Franco winning Best Screenplay for Chronic, but that might only come as a shock to anyone who’s seen his previous films; he’s a filmmaker known more for his directorial skills, and it sounds like critics were baffled by his win.

Read on below for the full list of winners, and expect to see a good chunk of these films get some sort of release throughout 2015 and 2016. While we only got the chance to see a few films this year, including Jury Prize winner The Lobster, we’re eager to check all these winners out once they play closer to home. Until then, all we can do is wait until we do it all over again next May.

2015 Cannes Winners

Camera D’Or (Best First Feature): La Tierra Y La Sombra

Best Screenplay: Chronic

Best Actress: Rooney Mara, Carol; Emmanuelle Bercot, Mon Roi

Jury Prize: The Lobster

Best Actor: Vincent London, The Measure Of A Man

Best Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien, The Assassin

Grand Jury Prize: Son Of Saul

Palme D’Or: Dheepan

Did somebody say punks versus skinheads?

If you were to randomly select a group of individuals at the 2015 Cannes International Film Festival and ask them what the biggest Out of Competition surprise has been thus far, it’s almost guaranteed that at least half of them would answer Green Room without hesitation. The amount of buzz that this film has received on the grounds here has been incredible, and the best part is that it’s totally deserved. Nothing could have prepared me for the experience of watching this film. Nothing.

Green Room follows a punk band’s journey into an abyss of madness and violence after they accidentally witness a brutal murder committed at an isolated concert venue. Their neo-nazi hosts, of course, do not want to leave any witnesses, and after the punks lock themselves in the titular Green Room, all hell breaks loose. The ensemble cast do a wonderful albeit simple job in their equally minor roles; there aren’t really any “main characters” because director Jeremy Saulnier is not afraid to subvert clichés and kill off whoever at any time. The impressive cast includes Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Anton Yelchin, Patrick Stewart, and Mark Webber.

Ultimately, Green Room is an exploitation horror film disguised as a fast paced thriller, only it’s actually scarier and more stunning than most of the traditional horror films released lately. It’s exploitative in the sense that the gore is gratuitous in a very nasty way, but for me the violence was always more impressive and fascinating than disengaging. For those who appreciated Saulnier’s hard-edged film Blue Ruin last year, and for anyone who needed more convincing, Green Room is sure to grab attention and make a splash back home in the States.

When she passed away in 2011 at the mystically unlucky and considerably-too-young age of 27, musical artist Amy Winehouse left behind a huge following of admirers and fans. Her death was the sort that was all the more bitter in its feeling of inevitability. The singer/songwriter had struggled with alcoholism for many years, her visits to rehab made public by their obvious connection to her music and lyrics. But no matter how doomed she may have seemed, no one can deny the deep loss of a sincere and unique talent in the music world.

Now the acclaimed director of Senna and The Warrior, Asif Kapadia, has sliced together bits and pieces of footage of this deeply interesting women’s life into another of his deeply personal documentaries. Amy premiered at Cannes last week and has quickly become one of the most buzzed about films in competition this year. Already from the snippets put together in this first trailer the profound sadness of Amy Winehouse is deeply felt. Her rise to fame appears to be portrayed as something of a surprise occurrence to this highly artistic woman who only wanted to create the music she loved and got caught up (like so many have before her) in celebrity and expectation.

We know viewing this one will be a wrench in the heart, but Amy understood better than all of us what it means to go “back to black.”

Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant is quite an achievement when one takes into consideration that it is the work of a first time feature filmmaker. It’s more of a “slice of life” sort of movie than one with a clear and easy-to-summarize narrative, but it’s essentially a very good film concentrating on loss of innocence, scattered with moments of greatness that are usually brought to the surface by its strong technical aspects (from its stylized editing to its sporadic shifts in tone). On a level of storytelling, it excels in its subtleties; there’s a homoerotic undercurrent that runs throughout the duration of the film, and yet emotions are never spelled out, only implied. Cividino leaves his viewers to draw connections between certain images and sounds, and I respect a director who can throw exposition entirely out the window and show his audience things rather than tell them every last detail.

The performances are fine—there aren’t exactly any standout actors in the film, but I must compliment the three leads on their ability to make me feel like I knew their characters, like I spent my summers with them years ago. This can be attributed to the seemingly loose script; much of the dialogue felt improvised, but in a refreshing way and not a distracting one. All in all, Sleeping Giant is an impressive display of technical skills that also has a lot to say about the trials and tribulations of adolescence. Above all else though, it’s a beautiful exploration of mortality.

Director Jeremy Saulnier‘s second feature Blue Ruin, a stripped down revenge thriller, took the indie world by storm last year on its way to a nomination for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2015 Indie Spirit Awards. Wasting little time in assembling a follow-up, Saulnier is now in Cannes to debut his next color-related movie Green Room. Featuring a larger and more well-known cast than his previous film, including Patrick Stewart, Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots, Green Room held its Cannes Film Festival premiere over the weekend to a largely positive reception.

Green Room follows a group of punk rockers called The Ain’t Rights, who take an ill-advised gig in the backwoods of Oregon, only to stumble onto violent crime and in the middle of a confrontation with the local, violent, white-supremacist gang. Patrick Stewart plays the leader of the gang. Green Room also stars Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, Mark Webber, as well as Blue Ruin star Macon Blair.

Watch the first clip of Green Room below, in which an intimidating Eric Edelstein explains the difference between a bullet and a cartridge:

Whether you were enjoying the weather this weekend, binging on weekend streaming options, or wondering if you should be offended by Louis C.K.’s SNL monologue, we’ve got some of the news you may have missed while brunching. Here’s a few things you should know as we start a new week.

Cannes Watch 2015

Finishing up its first week, this year’s Cannes film festival has some people praising (Todd Haynes’ Carol), some people booing (Gus Van Sant’s The Sea of Trees), and of course the requisite mixed reviews (Natalie Portman’s directorial debut A Tale of Love and Darkness). The biggest sale of the festival thus far is for Tom Ford’s soon to be made second film Nocturnal Animals with Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams set to star. Selling for $20 million to Focus Features after he pitched it at the festival, the film is a “romantic tale of revenge and regret.” In addition to featuring in Paolo Sorrentino’s film Youth, debuting at Cannes, Jane Fonda was also the first honoree of the Women in Motion program and she had some rather spirited things to say about the pay divide in Hollywood among men and women:

“Of course it upsets me that women are still earning 30 cents per dollar less than a man earns doing exactly the same work,” she said in an interview a day prior to receiving the award. “It’s unacceptable and it must change and we talk about it and we must be active in trying to create gender equity in terms of pay…The fact is that most film directors are men, white men. Most major roles are male roles and (it’s) the reason that I’m excited about this award,” she said. “Women have to become part of the very heart of movie making.”

The End of an Era: Mad Men Series Finale

Matthew Weiner’s final seven episodes (after a year of waiting for season 7 to wrap up) have shaken things up in Don Draper’s universe, interestingly moving away from a focus on his advertising world and spending more time on the personal lives of Don and his associates. The iconic series wrapped up satisfyingly bringing its main character full circle into a new age—of advertising, of family dynamics, and of personal understanding. Long-time fans are sure to have many opinions on everyone’s favorite scoundrel and his long-winded journey, but one thing’s for sure, Mad Men—which began in 2007—is among those shows that ushered in what many consider to be a new golden age of narrative television. Its a show where characters have been allowed sincere depth and emotional complexity while living out their lives in the midst of a time capsule that has simultaneously transported viewers to a bygone era while reminding them of what has and has not changed since. It’s a prime example of the power of the small screen and will leave an hour-sized hole in the hearts of many people on Sunday evenings.

Pitch Perfect 2 Pushes Mad Max Off the Road

With its cult-like following flocking to theaters in its opening weekend, Pitch Perfect 2 managed to rake in more money than its first film made in its entire theatrical run. Bringing in an impressive $70.3 million in its first three days, those acapella singing ladies pushed Mad Max: Fury Road down to #2 with $44.4 million over the weekend. With all its buzz about being a “feminist film” and the ridiculous drama brought about by a wannabe men’s activist espousing the film’s brain-washing agenda, sounds like some of those music-loving Pitch Perfect fans may just mosy over to Mad Max next weekend for another dose of kick-ass women. A few of our writers get into all that kick-assery and more in Mad Max: Fury Road in tomorrow’s podcast.

Trailer of the Week: Crimson Peak

We’ve been following this one closely—it is Guillermo del Toro after all—but now we have an even more detailed and insanely creepy trailer to keep us on edge until the October 16 release date for this extra spooky haunted house (possessed house??) horror tale. Especially intriguing is how much more of Jessica Chastain’s deeply unsettling—and clearly protective, sister to Tom Hiddleston’s Sir Thomas Sharpe—we get to see. It’s been far too long since del Toro properly scared us (sorry The Strain, but no), as it has been almost ten years since Pan’s Labyrinth. We’re ready for more Guillermo, bring it on.

On this week’s extra-packed episode of the Way Too Indiecast, Bernard, CJ, and Dustin discuss the 2015 Cannes Film Festival lineup, which looks to break the mold and announce some new filmmakers into the fold as opposed to showcasing the same old faces. Then, inspired by the recent release of While We’re Young and the upcoming The Age of Adaline, the gang talk about the subject of aging in film and why we find it so endlessly fascinating. Also on the show, “Name 5” returns and the boys share their indie picks of the week. Enjoy, friends (while we’re young)!

Topics

• Indie Picks of the Week (2:12)
• Cannes 2015 Lineup (13:10)
• Name 5 (33:58)
• Aging in Film (39:04)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

2015 Cannes Lineup

While We’re Young review

Different Drum review

Kevin Chenault interview

Blue Jasmine review

Before Midnight review

112 Weddings review

Doug Block interview

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