It seems like we could say this every week, but Netflix has made its biggest acquisition yet. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the streaming service has purchased the rights for Will Smith vehicle, Bright. With David Ayer (End of Watch, Suicide Squad) attached to direct, the film is known to be a gritty cop movie and sci-fi/fantasy mash-up, with human Smith teaming up with orc Joel Edgerton to work a case involving a powerful wand. The film was written by Max Landis, so it is sure to be divisive, if nothing else. After a mega deal with international star Adam Sandler and a number of awards contenders and festival favorites, Netflix has now expanded their original film into the bigger budget action territory. We are probably a long ways away from the release of Bright, but it certainly shows that business is picking up for Netflix. They are showing off their deep pockets, which could keep growing if films like Bright become streaming successes.

Netflix

Victoria (Sebastian Schipper, 2015)

It’s easy to be especially cautious about films that have a unique and specific filmmaking hook—in the case of Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria, it’s the 140 minutes taking place in one shot, a single take. Whenever a gimmick like this is used, you have to wonder if there is anything deeper than the bravura filmmaking, that a competent and entertaining story will unfold, as well. Victoria is the perfect marriage of technical skill, unique filmmaking and rich narrative experience. The truest mark is that Victoria‘s kinetic storytelling would still be compelling without the presentation. It even becomes enhanced by it, as the character and narrative arcs change in real-time while taking cues in the beats of never cutting to something else. An invigorating, purely cinematic adventure, Victoria is now available to stream on Netflix. For a different take on the film, see our TIFF review.

Other titles new to Netflix this week:
The Blue Hour (Anucha Boonyawatana, 2015)
Flaked (Series, Season 1)
The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson, 2015)
Hateship Loveship (Liza Johnson, 2013)
The Returned (Series, Season 1)

Fandor

River of Grass (Kelly Reichardt, 1994)

With Kelly Reichardt’s debut film getting a limited re-release this weekend, Fandor allows a wider audience to check out the nearly unseen indie. Set in the southern Florida Everglades, the film is a mix of comedy and crime with many of the auteur’s narrative and thematic fingerprints. River of Grass debuted at the Sundance Film Festival alongside Clerks and Spanking the Monkey, two other debuts that launched the careers of major filmmakers, but it took Reichardt a little longer to catch on. If you are a fan of Reichardt’s work or ’90s indie film, River of Grass is a must watch. For more on the film, check out our full review.

Other titles new to Fandor this week:
Boyhood (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1952)
Forbidden Zone (Richard Elfman, 1980)
Les hautes solitudes (Philippe Garrel, 1974)
On the Way to School (Pascal Plisson, 2012)
Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay, 1999)

MUBI

Our Nixon (Penny Lane, 2013)

As we are fully in the presidential primary season, MUBI is offering an interesting look at one of the country’s most controversial presidents. Using only archival footage taken from video recorded by Nixon’s aides during the early years of his presidency, Our Nixon delves deep into his personal and political life, revealing perhaps a more complicated character than the one history has remembered. If you were captivated by the way Amy pushed the documentary form, Our Nixon works in a very similar way with a more relevant and tricky profile. And because all of the film’s footage comes from private sources, it has a much more intimate feeling—unique access for any government official, let alone a man who has become either reviled or a punchline over time. You can watch Our Nixon on MUBI until April 9.

Other titles new to MUBI this week:
A Band Called Death (Mark Christopher Covino & Jeff Howlett, 2012)
City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)
Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (José Padilha, 2010)
Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
Two Drifters (João Pedro Rodrigues, 2005)

iTunes & Video On-Demand

Macbeth (Justin Kurzel, 2015)

It may not have been the critical or awards favorite that it projected to be, but there weren’t many more striking films from 2015 than Macbeth. Cold and dark, the film challenges the viewer with difficult Shakespearean dialogue spoken in thick accents, never holding hands through the narrative. It’s the strong look and tone of the film, however, that is likely to captivate. Second-time filmmaker Justin Kurzel (The Snowtown Murders) shows an incredible amount of skill and confidence in making a film with a big cast completely uncompromising, unlike any Shakespeare adaptation you’ve ever seen. Michael Fassbender delivers a chilling performance as the title character, with Marion Cotillard, Paddy Considine, David Thewlis and others all doing great, austere work.

Other titles new to VOD this week:
Camino (Josh C. Waller, 2015)
Coming Home (Zhang Yimou, 2014)
Daddy’s Home (Sean Anders, 2015)
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (Francis Lawrence, 2015)
Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette, 1961)

It’s easy to look back over the past 12 months and try to find a common thread, a trend or recurring idea that can make sense of the mass of films unloaded for public viewing. Everyone loves a good narrative, and in a world where chaos reigns, it’s nice to see some order. Indeed, look at the list of our 20 films below and you can see similarities pop up all over: stories of struggles both internal and external, whether it’s fighting the patriarchy of the past, present and postapocalyptic future, facing down the most powerful institutions in the world or the narrative of history itself, escaping captors, making it through wars both sensical and nonsensical, trying to just pay the bills or unshackling oneself from the past. They all share a common bond of people trying their damnedest to succeed, overcome and survive.

But this theme doesn’t apply to every film here, nor does it apply to everything that came out in 2015. Our list also has films that melted our minds, dragged us through the mud, awed us with their grace, and entertained us with their pure, visceral delights. Summing up the year through a neatly packaged narrative is nice, but it’s also far from a true representation of what cinema brings. It’s a messy, chaotic world of movies, and when we put together a list like this the real unifying aspect is their high quality.

From the big, daunting universe of cinema in 2015, Way Too Indie is proud to present what we think are the 20 best films of the year.

Way Too Indie’s 20 Best Films of 2015

#20. Room

In Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, there are no limits to love. A film as simple as it is emotionally sweeping, there are few films released this year that evoked such a visceral emotional response from its audience. The film is an exhilarating thriller portraying a modern nightmare of captivity—a scenario that never ceases to grip the public’s attention when it pops up in the news—but is entirely focused on the will of the human spirit, and the ways we not only survive in such heinous situations but thrive. In the story of Ma (Brie Larson, a career-best performance), and the world she builds for her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay, also mesmerizing) within the walls of a tiny room, we are given an example of the purest sort of love. One of sacrifice, fierceness, and audacity. By seeing the universe through the eyes of a small child—a universe at first only four walls wide and then suddenly much, much larger—it’s impossible not to form a renewed appreciation for the simple things in life. But more than that, it’s impossible to walk away from Room and not find oneself profoundly introspective about what it means to actively live and actively love. [Ananda]

#19. Steve Jobs

Somehow, Steve Jobs became persona non grata this fall. Between the box office performance, the fatigue surrounding the subject matter and the behind the scenes issues exposed by the Sony leak, nothing seemed to go quite right for the film. Do not be mistaken, though: Steve Jobs should not be missed. It’s a biopic with an utterly unique structure and breakneck pace. Aaron Sorkin’s script commands the spotlight even more than Michael Fassbender’s stirring performance. The three-day approach proves effective as Sorkin intelligently navigates the inherent limitations, managing to capture the essence and scope of one highly influential man’s life. His conversations are verbally balletic, never ceasing to surprise in their wit, but never stooping to overly showy, self-serving writerly panache. Steve Jobs is a whirlwind of a film, exploding with thunderous brio and making its piercing impact with the ink-dipped arrowhead of a skilled writer’s pen. Its imperfections don’t change the fact that it’s a landmark in biographical filmmaking. [Byron]

#18. Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

In Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, Ronit Elkabetz stars as the title character, a woman seeking a divorce from her husband. It sounds simple enough, but the Amsalems are Israeli, and in Israel there is no such thing as a civil marriage; all marriages are granted by Orthodox rabbis in a religious ceremony. Ergo, all marriages must be dissolved the same way. That means the husband give his full consent for a marriage to be dissolved. If he doesn’t want it, she doesn’t get it, and Viviane’s husband doesn’t want a divorce. This turns the film into a fascinating courtroom drama, but not in the traditional sense; rather, it becomes a drama that takes place almost entirely in a courtroom, with the occasional scene occurring in an adjacent waiting room. This gives the film contrasting feelings of intimacy and claustrophobia. Elkabetz is superb as Amsalem, conveying the frustration of a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage and finds herself trapped again, this time in a system that stacks the deck against women and all but ignores them in the process. [Michael]

#17. Hard to Be a God

Rarely have I seen a film’s atmosphere so gorgeously and meticulously realized to the extent of Aleksei German’s final masterwork. Hard to Be a God follows a civilization of men and their out-of-sorts, peculiarly human god. They represent man as a whole, embodying his struggle through the early stages of primality. When do we leave behind beasts and garner the right to call ourselves men? More pressingly, do we ever, or have we been kidding ourselves for the last few thousand years? Hard to Be a God works so well chiefly because it cements itself into a primal world, one dominated by sludge, blood, and shit, so unbelievably well. Furthermore, in lieu of the film’s obvious rejection of sentiment, it is intriguing how it integrates the idea of God into its narrative. It doesn’t suggest that he doesn’t exist or has neglected us, but that he is struggling alongside us and, even more frightening, that he’s just as helpless. German’s magnum opus is a rattling, maddening three-hour journey into the depths of man’s darkest sensibilities. [Cameron]

#16. The Assassin

The moving image is rarely as entrancing as it is in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin, the Taiwanese master’s first film in over seven years. Expensive in its design, methodical in its every graceful move, the film penetrates the mind as swiftly and silently as Shu Qi’s Nie Yinniang disposes of her first target in the picture’s opening moments. Shot on film by Ping Bin Lee and designed by Huang Wen-Yin, Hou’s regular collaborators, The Assassin has a mise-en-scene that’s second to none this year. The subtle phenomenons of nature play a vital supporting role, one in which animals and flora are treated as sharing the same atmosphere with humans. More than any other film of the year, The Assassin shines the brightest light on the unique and boundless nature of its artform. It is spellbinding in every sense of the word. [Nik]

#15. Son of Saul

Son of Saul is a wonderful debut film of filmmaker Laszlo Nemes, which tells the story of Saul (Geza Rohrig), a prisoner and Sonderkommando member at Auschwitz who his searching for a rabbi so he can give his son’s body a proper burial. The film is incredible, from Rohrig’s outstanding performance to Nemes’ fantastic direction (all the more impressive considering it’s his first feature film). But I want to pay special attention to the work of cinematographer Matyas Erdely and the team behind the sound design of the film. Erdely beautifully shoots the film in a tight 4:3 frame, often putting Saul at the center and keeping the eye focused on his actions with most of the settings around him hard to fully take in visually. This is where the sound design is key, as it forces us to imagine the horrors around Saul. Together these elements create a truly unique experience adding up to one of the most powerful films to be released this year. [Ryan]

#14. The Forbidden Room

Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s sensational hodgepodge of silent-movie storylines are maniacally cut up into dozens of threads, then re-assembled by two drunk, blindfolded men with a brilliant sense of humor. The Forbidden Room is unlike anything you’ll ever see. Ever, not just in 2015. Studded with stars from all over the world, from the well-known like Charlotte Rampling, Roy Dupuis, and Geraldine Chaplin, to more local faces like Louis Negin and Gregory Hlady, the film is full of greedy volcanos, aswang bananas, catchy musical numbers, delusional doctors, scorned lovers, men breathing oxygen through flapjacks, and mustaches with a life of their own. Relentless with its pacing and editing, it’s not something that’s easily recommended (it broke the record for walk-outs when it screened at Sundance earlier in the year). But, it’s on here for a reason: through the unique structure and absurdist tone lies one of the most heartfelt odes to the wonders of cinematic storytelling. [Nik]

#13. The Look of Silence

The Look of Silence is every bit the masterpiece its companion piece, The Act of Killing, was. Joshua Oppenheimer returns to the residual horror of the Indonesian genocide, this time through the eyes of a victim. An optometrist named Adi Rukun confronts his brother’s killers under the pretense of testing their failing vision, and through his careful questioning the remorseless thought process of a monster is slowly dismantled. If there is any surreal sensibility left over from Oppenheimer’s last film it is in the shadow of death that haunts an eerily quiet land teeming with ghosts crying out in vain. The “silence” of the title is all around, both in the insightfully observed environment and the empty murmurings of men submerged in denial. The capacity human beings have to rationalize and normalize wickedness is on full display, and it’s mesmerizing in a terribly morbid way. Powerful, sobering and absolutely essential. [Byron]

#12. Inside Out

Inside Out is a tearjerker, which comes as no surprise—Pixar has been making us cry like babies for two decades. That’s sort of their whole deal. What makes this particular movie so special is how impossibly elaborate it is, conceptually. To represent one cognitive experience, visually, is a feat in itself. What Pixar’s done here is visually represent dozens and dozens of cognitive experiences and made them work in concert. It’s a tender, inventive, entertaining study on human emotion that speaks to the heart despite being so brainy. It’s also unique in that someone can watch it at five years old and then again at forty and have two wildly different and yet equally profound experiences. Next year, Pixar’s engaging sequel mode again with Finding Dory, but they took a big risk with an out-there movie like Inside Out and proved that there’s no shortage of new ideas coming out of the trailblazing East Bay studio. [Bernard]

#11. Mommy

Young Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan came into filmic fruition when he was only nineteen with the release of I Killed My Mother. Almost seven years and five films later, one of the youngest directors in the industry has created one of the most moving films of the 21st century. Despite its 2014 premiere at Cannes, the film did not receive a proper US release until January of 2015, meaning most people didn’t get a chance to experience its profundity until this year. Mommy focuses its narrative on the widow Diane (or “Die,” for short) and her difficult son, newly discharged from a behavioral rehabilitation facility and potentially suffering from a number of psychological disorders that cause him to have angry, violent outbursts. It’s shot in the unique 1:1 aspect ratio, which at first may seem like a peculiar decision, but once you’ve fallen deep into the emotional abyss of this heartbreaking tale, you’ll understand how a stylistic choice can transform into an emotive choice within a matter of seconds. [Eli]

#10. Phoenix

Christian Petzold’s Phoenix is perhaps the best film since the post-war era that deals with the holocaust, even though it’s not as interested in dealing directly with the images and happenings of the holocaust as that statement suggests. Instead, it’s about the scars of tragedy, and how great tragedy has the terrifying power to rob individuals of their identity. The film follows Nelly, a Jew from Berlin, as she returns to her home and her husband after living through the concentration camps. We never see flashbacks of what she went through. She tells us all through the expression stained onto her reconstructed face. Floating through the frame like a ghost, Nelly attempts to piece together her past, and Phoenix is a harrowing testament to how emancipation from tragic circumstance doesn’t erase the psychological wounds said tragedy has inflicted. It also deals with the idea that friends of those affected have absolutely no idea how to respond. How does one respond to such an atrocity? Though not technically a ghost story, Phoenix registers as an emotionally draining portrait of a wandering soul knocking on the door of a world from which she’s been exiled. [Cameron]

#9. Buzzard

Accurately describing Joel Potrykus’ Buzzard is a difficult task. The film doesn’t really fit into a specific genre, and the loose storytelling structure only complicates things on that end. Still, there’s something undeniably captivating about the tale of a millennial burnout that decides to rebel against his routine life. It’s not that the film is particularly relatable—Marty, the protagonist, is the embodiment of the worst society has to offer—but Buzzard takes viewers on a journey that gets far too real at times. Marty’s frustrations with his dead-end job, the boring people around him, and his way of living have the ability to cut very, very deep. From the beginning, Potrykus views a mundane subject with a bizarre lens, and Buzzard only gets weirder and weirder as it progresses. By the conclusion, it’s apparent just how effective the film is, despite its relatively low-key nature. Unlike any film you’ve seen this year, Buzzard is strangely comedic, unexpectedly dark, and certainly worth checking out. [Blair]

#8. Beasts of No Nation

Beasts of No Nation is a special convergence of extra-textual information. Being the first major fiction feature release from streaming outfit Netflix is a big deal, especially since they clearly had aspirations for awards with its purchase. More fitting, it is the first feature film from writer-director Cary Joji Fukunaga following his incredible breakout success with the first season of True Detective. Those already following Fukunaga’s career, however, know just how talented of a storyteller he is. Beasts of No Nation is his highest effort production, an absolutely beautiful film with often intense subject matter. The film studies the rise of young boy Agu (Abraham Attah) through a rebel group of fighters in an unnamed, nondescript African country. Through the eyes of Agu their war is truly unknowable—and the film purposefully makes no effort to help the audience understand what this group is really fighting for. This can be frustrating at times, but Fukunaga is persistent in his focus on tone and the specific actions of its main character. This creates a more ethereal movement, which is all the more frightening given the film’s horrendous nature. Along with Attah, who gives a fantastic and difficult performance for a young and inexperienced actor, Idris Elba’s towering role as the rebel group’s Commandant is among the most complex characters of the year. [Aaron]

#7. The Duke of Burgundy

Love is love, and few films express that statement as strongly as Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy. Starting out as a cutesy homage to the European erotica films of the ’70s (Jess Franco fans need to run, not walk, to this movie), Strickland explores the BDSM relationship between Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna), two women whose “roles” in the relationship don’t exactly match their true selves. With cinematography, production design, and a mood that feels lifted straight out of a dark fairy tale, Strickland’s dreamlike elements work together to heighten the universal truths at his film’s center. Here is a film that understands the work and compromise that comes with a relationship, the constant push and pull between selfishness and selflessness that can threaten to tear people apart, and it’s all shown through a hazy realm that leans more on the side of fantasy than reality. Yet Strickland puts emotions at the forefront, and by doing so lets the strength of Cynthia and Evelyn’s undeniable feelings for each other overshadow the luscious world they reside in. Love stories this original and beautifully realized are so rare, we should feel lucky we even have the chance to see them. [C.J.]

#6. Sicario

After directing a slew of extraordinary films who would have thought cinematic genius Denis Villeneuve’s latest effort would be his strongest and most politically resonant film to date? Well, maybe some, but it’s going to be a daunting task for Villeneuve to keep his streak of brilliance up for much longer; if he does, he’ll be reaching the unspeakable heights of consistency only names like Kubrick and Kieslowski have attained. Sicario concentrates on an FBI agent (Emily Blunt, in a gorgeously realized performance) who pulls herself into quite the plight when she accompanies a government task force on an enigma of a mission along the United States/Mexico border. To say any more about the plot and the manner in which it unfolds would be a disservice to a film with such an airtight narrative structure and masterful pacing. It’s a socioculturally relevant thrill-ride that you’ll have to experience for yourself, but its shocking and increasingly tense nature may be too extreme for some viewers. [Eli]

#5. It Follows

What can be said about It Follows that hasn’t already been said a million times before? It’s one of the greatest horror films to come along in years and a movie that works on multiple levels, with a new discovery being made upon each new viewing. A sexually transmitted monster has all the potential in the world to come across as cheesy, tacky, and otherwise ineffective, but director David Robert Mitchell approaches the subject matter with such a level of genuineness that it’s impossible not to take seriously. Featuring excellent, naturalistic performances from its young, often inexperienced cast, there’s a subtle nature to almost everything about It Follows. From the romance to the horror and even the humor, it’s all downplayed, which makes it all the more effective in the end. Many horror movies fall apart because their characters aren’t relatable, but in the It Follows universe, teenagers behave like teenagers—not like horror movie characters—and the film is all the more impressive because of that. From top to bottom, it’s easy to see why It Follows has been so well-received by audiences and critics alike, and its theatrical success serves as a beacon of hope for the future of independent horror. [Blair]

#4. Carol

There are so many exquisitely composed elements to Todd Haynes’ achingly beautiful new movie Carol that it becomes difficult to single out the aspects that make it so great. There is Phyllis Nagy’s delicate script, adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel The Price of Salt, which allows the film’s central romantic plot to unfold in a patient and deliberate way. There are the wonderfully ornate period sets and costumes, with bold red accents that jump off the screen thanks to Edward Lachman’s stunning cinematography. And, of course, there are the performances—not just from the always-excellent Cate Blanchett or Audrey Hepburn-esque Rooney Mara—but an earnest Sarah Paulson, a scorned Kyle Chandler, and a sleazy John Magaro, as well.

The first of Haynes’ six feature films in which he didn’t contribute to the script, Carol is the director’s most precise work to date—from its production details to the performances. While the filmmaker’s movies often focus on LGBT identity, the striking thing about the intimacy in Carol is its universality. Therese and Carol are more than women in a lesbian romance affected by the obstacles of a bygone era; they’re people stifled by the expectations placed on each of them.

As Blanchett stares across at Mara over a cocktail or a shop counter, you’ll want to lean in closer, too. The pair’s carefully chosen words tease out the affair. Watching them slowly go back-and-forth, with alluring smirks and guarded looks, is among the most entrancing pleasures in film this year, as is the sound of Cate Blanchett simply saying, “Therese.” [Zach]

#3. Ex Machina

The trio at the heart of filmmaker Alex Garland’s directorial debut, Ex Machina, represents an intricate blend of old and new. Invoking memories of past great fictional characters like Doctors Frankenstein and Moreau, Pinocchio’s creator Geppetto, and even Willie Wonka, is Nathan (Oscar Isaac), the inconceivably wealthy and immeasurably intelligent inventor of a fictional Google-like search engine. Representing the future is Ava (the spellbinding Alicia Vikander), an artificially intelligent robot created by Nathan. Caught between creator and creation is Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a whiz of a programmer whom Nathan recruits to test Ava’s believability as an AI, but a simple man nonetheless and the pivotal completing part of this most bizarre of love triangles. As Caleb studies Ava and gradually becomes taken by her, so too does Ava study, and fall for, Caleb. Watching them both is Nathan, whose motives for recruiting Caleb become cloudier as the days pass. What first presents itself as a futuristic drama laced with themes of morality and anchored by a peculiar alpha-male (Isaac is terrific as the genius recluse), gradually becomes a riveting psychological thriller that keeps the viewer captivated and drives to a bold ending. Sci-fi noir is alive and well and is not to be missed with Ex Machina. [Michael]

#2. Spotlight

Tom McCarthy has done the unthinkable. Just one year after directing the horrific flop The Cobbler, McCarthy turns in a film that not just rinses the bad taste out of our mouths from his previous effort, it puts him in the conversation for one of the best films of the year. Spotlight is a gripping newsroom drama based on the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal uncovered by the Boston Globe. Though despite the grim subject matter, watching Spotlight unfold is utterly entertaining. That’s because the film keeps its foot on the acceleration for the whole ride, providing plenty of energy and tension without wasting a single moment.

Spotlight is a well-oiled machine firing on all cylinders. Not only does the electrifying pace carry the neatly arranged script, but the ensemble cast puts on a clinic on how to act as a team. It also doesn’t hurt that the cast is comprised of A-listers like Stanley Tucci, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, and Rachel McAdams, each performing at the top of their game. Any one of them could have stolen the show by flexing their acting muscles; instead, they show discipline by working together, creating incredible chemistry and making the entire film better in the process. Without being exploitative (which would have been easy given the subject), Spotlight exceeds by focusing on the teamwork of its investigative journalism case. The film doesn’t just do a few things right, it does everything right, which is why Spotlight is one of the best procedurals in years. [Dustin]

#1. Mad Max: Fury Road

There are many things I expected from George Miller’s long-awaited next installment/reboot of his Mad Max series. I knew there would be explosions. I knew there would be cars embellished with crazy apocalyptic garnishments. I knew there would be a lot of sand. And I figured there would be a fair amount of zooming vehicles flipping and being walked on as though the laws of physics don’t apply in this futuristic world. I did not expect there to be larger themes than your garden variety hero tale. And I certainly did not expect the hero to not be Mad Max. Waiting 30 years to create the next vision of his gasoline-fueled future, Miller proves he has ungodly amounts of patience. Patience to ensure that technology would catch up with his vision, and patience to ensure that when he told his next story it would be to an audience who could fathom that even in a world of chaos, the significance of equality is fundamental to our humanity and worth fighting like hell for. Not everyone has embraced the surprising themes of Fury Road, but those tickled by just how exciting, fun, and road raging this action film is can’t help but admit that what raises it to perfection are the kick ass ladies leading the charge and the deeper issues they face. Mad Max: Fury Road closes with a quote from the future: “Where must we go…we who wander this Wasteland in search of our better selves?” Miller pushes us to consider our place and responsibility, no matter the wasteland we call home. And like his War Boys, his mouth shiny and chrome, Miller presents his film as though to say “Witness me!” Turns out an action film can be a visual extravaganza and hold itself up with a stiff backbone of ethics and morality. Witness the bar being raised. [Ananda]

As we are often reminded, there are so many great streaming services out there which cater to a variety of different interests. One particular site that hasn’t been mentioned in this weekend streaming series is SundanceNow Doc Club, which offers hundred of documentaries, including exclusives and hard-to-see films. One of the best attractions to their site are the collections they offer, including picks from guest curators like Anthony Bourdain, Dan Savage and Susan Sarandon, to collections by theme (“Black Lives on Film,” “Artists at Work”) and spotlights on documentary legends. This week features prolific documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, who picked 12 of his personal favorites. The collection includes recent Oscar-nominated 5 Broken Cameras, Wim Wenders’s dance doc Pina, classic European art doc The Sorrow and the Pity, Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, Errol Morris’s seminal crime doc The Thin Blue Line, and more. If you are crazy about documentaries or want to broaden your film watching horizons, you should sign up for a free trial at SundanceNow Doc Club now. For other documentary (and non-documentary) picks fresh on streaming services this week, check out the recommendations below.

Netflix

Phoenix (Christian Petzold, 2014)

You are likely to see Christian Petzold’s German drama Phoenix pop up at Way Too Indie a few times over the next few weeks, as it is one of our favorite films of the year. Nina Hoss turns in a phenomenal performance as a Holocaust survivor who undergoes major facial reconstructive surgery and returns home unrecognizable. She finds her husband, a sleazy night club musician, who uses her as a stand-in for his (thought to be dead) wife as a scheme to collect on her inheritance. Phoenix is riveting, expertly acted and directed, with one of the best endings of the year. The taught and tense dramatic thriller is also a unique post-WWII Holocaust story, which is refreshing for the stuffed genre. To get all the hype coming from awards season, you can now check out Phoenix on Netflix.

Other titles new to Netflix this week:
Dinosaur 13 (Todd Douglas Miller, 2014)
The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid, 2014)
Phineas and Ferb (series, Season 4)
The Ridiculous 6 (Frank Coraci, 2015)
Xenia (Panos H. Koutras, 2014)

Fandor

Almost There (Dan Rybicky & Aaron Wickenden, 2014)

You may remember a few weeks back when the weekend streaming feature included a story about a partnership between Fandor and documentary production stalwart Kartemquin Films. Among the fruits of that deal is Kartemquin’s most recent film, the unusual artist profile doc Almost There. In the film, filmmakers Rybicky and Wickenden befriend a lonely elderly man named Peter Anton, who happens to be a prolific, but completely undiscovered underground artist. For years, Anton has painted hundreds of photographs (many of which are self-portraits) and assembled these remarkable scrapbooks from his life history. As Anton lives in a decrepit house with little support, the filmmakers intercede in his life—but ultimately discover a secret that dynamically changes their relationship. Almost There begins as a rather standard, breezy artist bio-doc before changing into a very complicated and sad story.

Other titles new to Fandor this week:
The Element of Crime (Lars von Trier, 1984)
Fifi Howls from Happiness (Mitra Farahani, 2013)
The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin, 2015)
Stinking Heaven (Nathan Silver, 2015)
The Vanishing (George Sluzier, 1988)

MUBI

War Work (Michael Nyman, 2015)

Not long after releasing Paul Thomas Anderson’s music documentary Junun, MUBI has come back with their next streaming exclusive, though this one has decidedly less fanfare. Directed by composer Michael Nyman, War Work is a 65-minute avant-garde film that edits silent-era archive footage together with classical music. Though it doesn’t have much of a specific through-line, the film (as the title suggests) is mostly a montage of different individuals’ work during wartime—from plane makers to doll makers. War Work isn’t an educational or historical document, however, as the scope of footage used and Nyman’s editing give the piece a poetic and sometimes brutal point-of-view. The footage is coupled with eight pieces of music, which was played as live accompaniment for the film at a series of events in 2014. War Work won’t be for everyone, but its exclusive push from MUBI highlights the streaming service’s intent to bring a wide variety of films that you can’t see anywhere else, no matter how esoteric. If you want to see War Work, you have until January 10.

Other titles new to MUBI this week:
Abuse of Weakness (Catherine Breillat, 2013)
Le Joli Mai (Chris Marker & Pierre Lhomme, 1963)
Steamboat Bill Jr. (Buster Keaton & Charles Reisner, 1928)
The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira, 2010)
Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)

Video On-Demand

Ant-Man (Peyton Reed, 2015)

Of the two Marvel Studios films released this year, there is no doubt that Ant-Man had fewer expectations. It may also have been the more wholly satisfying film. In the film, ex-con Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is hired by scientist Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) to steal a prototype suit that allows its wearer to shink to the size of an ant while increasing strength. With a story and screenplay that passed through the hands of Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay and Paul Rudd, Ant-Man has a wonderful comedic voice and fun heist plot—director controversy be damned. Peyton Reed may not be the beloved cult figure, but he is an accomplished comedy director, and he brings a personal style to the smaller-scale superhero epic. Audience response and ticket sales were good enough for Marvel to announce an originally unplanned sequel and more Ant-Man ties within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Other titles new to VOD this week:
Dixieland (Hank Bedford, 2015)
One Eyed Girl (Nick Matthews, 2014)
Pawn Sacrifice (Edward Zwick, 2014)
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (Christopher Landon, 2015)
The Transporter Refueled (Camille Delamarre, 2015)

Another year, another collection of unforgettable films, and another collection of unforgettable moments. Our list of unforgettable films is still on its way, but like last year we feel compelled to single out some scenes from 2015 that bowled us over and stayed in our brains. Some of these scenes are moments we cherish from our favorites this year, and others are great highlights from films that might not have been able to squeeze into our top tens. But as varied as this list may be, everything on it is another reason why we still love watching movies (even if that means watching a lot of duds). Read on to see what we loved from this year, and be sure to let us know what moments or scenes you couldn’t forget.

45 Years – The Anniversary Party

I’m a little hesitant to go into much detail on the anniversary party scene of Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years, as it is the culminating scene of this fine film, but it without a doubt deserves recognition. By the time the characters and audience have arrived at this scene, so much emotional turmoil has been quietly digested. In a typical film, this would finally boil over, acting as the ultimate breaking point that the film was literally building to from the beginning. Here, however, it becomes a beautiful and very sad interplay between its celebrated couple. Charlotte Rampling is particularly stunning here, all the way up to the film’s final shot—she has gone through so much internal struggle that you almost want her to explode, but for the actress’ better judgment, she gives the scene so much more complexity when the cracks begin to show. [Aaron]

Arabian Nights: Volume 2 – The Desolate One – The Tears of the Judge

Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights trilogy is filled with highlights and lowlights, but of the many stories told over the trilogy’s combined ~6.5-hour runtime, this bravura 40-minute segment in Volume 2 is by far the best part of all three films. Taking place in an outdoor courtroom, a judge (Luisa Cruz) presides over a case involving apartment tenants selling furniture belonging to their landlord. The judge declares it to be a simple case of theft, but when she decides to probe further (“to share thoughts and moralities with you all,” she explains to the crowd watching the case) she triggers a convoluted blame game. The defendants argue that their landlord is a vile person, which leads to testimony saying he abuses 911 operators, and from there genies, cows and polygamy get thrown into the mix. This is blunt, on-the-nose political filmmaking of the best kind, with Gomes increasing the absurdity of the situation at an exponential rate with each new development. It’s smart, hilarious stuff, and the story’s bookending sequences—involving the judge’s daughter losing her virginity—adds the kind of sting that turns good satire into great satire. [C.J.]

Bone Tomahawk – Meal Prep

Bone Tomahawk opens with the image of someone getting their throat slit with a dull knife, a grisly scene that helps establish writer/director S. Craig Zahler’s preference for brutal, realistic violence. But that opening won’t prepare anyone for what comes much later (almost 90 minutes later, to be precise), well after Zahler’s film has settled into a pleasantly poky groove. Our four heroes, on a trip to save their friends and loved ones from cannibalistic cave dwellers, find themselves captured by their foes, and Zahler shows what happens when one person gets selected to be the next meal. It’s a horrifying sight that’ll have viewers covering their eyes and plugging their ears (God only knows what was used to create those sound effects), and Zahler puts splatter filmmakers like Eli Roth—who tried his hand at cannibal horror this year with The Green Inferno—to shame. Just remind yourself to watch this film on an empty stomach whenever you get the chance to see it. [C.J.]

Eastern Boys – Home Invasion

The opening minutes of Robin Campillo’s Eastern Boys shows middle-aged Daniel (Olivier Rabourdin) approaching young male prostitute Marek (Kirill Emelyanov) and propositioning him for sex. Marek agrees to meet Daniel at his apartment the next day, but Daniel has no idea what he’s in for once there’s a knock at his door. Instead, almost a dozen people come pouring into his apartment one at a time, all of them part of Marek’s gang run by the charismatic and intimidating Boss (Daniil Vorobyev). It’s a surreal sequence running just over 20 minutes in length, and it’s all the more fascinating by Daniel’s unorthodox reaction to the situation; he quietly lets Boss and his underlings steal everything out of his place, and when the boys start an impromptu dance party in his living room he joins in. It’s a remarkable experience watching it all unfold, with Campillo oscillating between the intensity of the scenario (culminating in an unexpected act of violence) and how alluring it is for Daniel to be surrounded by so many objects of his desire. The rest of Eastern Boys doesn’t maintain the same quality, but Campillo has created an undeniable mini-masterpiece with this one sequence. [C.J.]

Entertainment – The Heckler

Rick Alverson, who’s quickly established himself as a master of cringe humour, creates yet another masterpiece of discomfort with this scene in Entertainment. While doing a show at a tiny bar somewhere in the California desert, The Comedian (Gregg Turkington, aka Neil Hamburger) gets interrupted by what he thinks is a heckler (Amy Seimetz, making the most of her brief screentime). But Alverson shows what Turkington’s character didn’t see: that the heckler was getting harassed by a man at the bar, her outburst directed at the man beside her and not on stage. That doesn’t stop The Comedian from tearing into her, hurling a barrage of nasty (and funny) insults her way. The sequence works so well because of the way Alverson constructs it within the familiar framework of a drama or character study; take away the context behind Seimetz’s “heckling” and the scene can look like Turkington defiantly taking down a critic. Instead it’s something much uglier, going against expectations and turning the protagonist into a villain. Alverson’s films are never easy, but that’s what makes them great. [C.J.]

The Forbidden Room – “The Final Derriere”

A musical interlude about a man’s addiction to female rumps (and the bizarre method he chooses to overcome it) would be strange in most any film, but it even stands out in Guy Maddin’s wackadoodle masterpiece The Forbidden Room. In the scene, the great Udo Kier plays a man tormented by a whip-wielding “Master Passion” (a fine cameo by Geraldine Chaplin). The song is incredibly catchy, a mix of styles just like the film, with a bit of a Beach Boys sound, a bit of Queen’s theatrics, a bit new wave and even a bit heavy metal—but it is without a doubt a singular piece, telling a singular story. It’s also an incredibly catchy tune; I’ve been humming “a little more off the top, a little more off the top” since I first watched the film. This plays beautifully off how morbid and grotesque both the song’s content and Maddin’s images are, tapping into the absurdity that The Forbidden Room wears so well. [Aaron]

Girlhood – “Diamonds”

From the outset, Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood establishes the hard conditions of its main character Marieme (Karidja Touré). She’s doing poorly at school, stuck in an abusive situation with her family, and feeling alienated. It’s only when she meets a group of three outspoken girls who eventually befriend her that she starts to feel a sense that she belongs somewhere, and Sciamma beautifully shows the precise moment when Marieme finally embraces her new identity. The girls rent out a hotel room for the night, a means of escaping their problems, and Marieme watches as her new friends sing along to Rihanna’s “Diamonds” under a blue light. Marieme sits back watching before finally joining in on the fun, and Sciamma (who lets the song play out in its entirety) lights the scene to make all four girls look like they’re glowing. It’s a touching, celebratory moment, where Sciamma gives her characters the opportunity to break free from their lives and truly be themselves, even if it’s only for a moment. [C.J.]

Mad Max: Fury Road – The Bullet Farmer’s Final Charge

Pulling a cartridge from his mouth, the villainous leader of the Wasteland’s arms faction croons: “One angry shot…for Furiosa!” Decked out in a bullet belt headdress, perched atop a golden tank tread vehicle and literally armed to the teeth, he speeds into the night. Meanwhile, our tough band of defectors and escapees struggle to pull the stalled War Rig out of the mud, their ears perking up as distant shots ring out. In a film loaded with explosive, go-for-broke chase sequences and wildly eccentric displays, the Bullet Farmer’s solo charge might be my favorite combination of both elements. The character’s blind machine gun spray (perfectly accented by an impassioned appeal to the heavens and Verdi’s booming “Dies Irae”) is a gloriously mad affair. However, the sequence is grounded by a wordless interaction between Furiosa and Max in which Furiosa uses her comrade to stabilize her rifle, making a perfect shot and shattering the Farmer’s searchlight. The foggy atmosphere and deep blue day-for-night lighting only add to scene’s deliriously intoxicating effect. [Byron]

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation – Vienna Opera House

The Vienna Opera House sequence is the “Burj Khalifa moment” of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. It may not be as spectacularly white-knuckle or as death-defying in its stunt work, but for my money, it’s the biggest show-stopper in a thriller boasting several great candidates. Partially set to an emotionally stirring performance of “Nessun Dorma,” the scene offers intense hand-to-hand combat and a mysterious cat-and-mouse game. Christopher McQuarrie’s intricate direction closely details a number of moving pieces, Tom Cruise does a solid job of conveying his character’s conflicted feelings, and everything builds to an intelligent climax. It’s one of the best set pieces of the year. [Byron]

Mustang – The Soccer Game

More of a plot point than a specific scene, the events that lead to and come from the attendance of a soccer game really scores the special quality of Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s female-driven Mustang. Due to violent hooliganism, Turkish officials decide that all men will be barred from an upcoming match. This sparks soccer fan Lale to enlist her sisters (who don’t care too much for the sport) to sneak out from their small town and sheltered lives and take part. It’s really a minor part of the first act, a short sequence that could probably be the greater plot of another film, but it encapsulates the spirit of its characters so incredibly well. What’s more, it leads to a wonderful and surprising action from the girls’ aunt in what soon after becomes a very haunting and serious film. [Aaron]

Phoenix – “Speak Low”

There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the ending of Phoenix, Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss’ latest collaboration. For most of its runtime, Petzold’s film is a narratively straightforward and psychologically complex tale of disfigured Holocaust survivor Nelly (Hoss) trying to regain her old identity after receiving facial reconstruction surgery. But when Nelly finally accepts the reality of her situation and rises from the ashes, Petzold closes Nelly’s story with a breathtaking wallop. Without going into specifics (seriously, stop reading and go watch Phoenix already), Nelly sings the song “Speak Low,” and through her performance the story unravels and resolves itself in a way that inspires chills. It’s by far the best ending to any movie this year, and could easily go down as an all-timer. [C.J.]

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence – The Third Meeting with Death

Roy Andersson’s filmmaking style makes for easy inclusion in lists like this, as his work often takes on an episodic quality. Many of the funny, poignant or disturbing scenes in A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence could make the cut, but it’s the third in the film’s opening trilogy of scenes (marked as three meetings with death) the leaves the biggest impression. The first two scenes are brief bits of physical humor: a man who collapses while struggling to uncork a bottle and a woman on her death-bed desperately clutching a handbag. These are audacious and quite funny, but the third scene adds Andersson’s incredible dryness. To set the stage: a man has died while in line at a cafeteria. While three obnoxiously stiff officials wonder aloud what they should do with the body, the nearby cashier pipes in with a question: what should she do with the food he purchased? The matter-of-fact, monotone response, thought out way too meticulously, and the reaction of the gathered crowd of diners are wonderfully characteristic examples of Andersson’s odd look at human nature. [Aaron]

Steve Jobs – John Scully vs. Steve Jobs

A showcase of a writer at the height of his powers. this scene can be classified as a verbal set piece. Just moments before taking the stage to introduce the NeXT Computer, Jobs is challenged by Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), about the myths surrounding why Jobs was ousted. What follows is a bravura sequence seamlessly weaving between past and present at breakneck speed. Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue is sharper and more acidic than ever, and the sequence has dips and climaxes that are more potent than most action movies. For a scene that is essentially two men standing in a room and talking, it’s overwhelmingly energetic and the performances really help viewers invest in the words being spoken. [Byron]

Wild Tales – Pasternak

Anthology films are rarely as successful as Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales. The film’s six shorts are thematically linked, but I would argue their strongest connection is in tone, which is beautifully set by the film’s opening segment. Without giving too much away (because there is a brilliant twist in there), we open on an airplane where a man makes small talk with a beautiful woman across the aisle. They realize, through what seems like blind luck, that they have a common acquaintance—a failed composer who used the date the woman and studied under the man. You won’t believe what happens next. Once the scene ends, anyone watching Wild Tales is ready to know just how dark the film is willing to go, and just how creatively it can get there. Of all the films within the film, the opening is the most wildly enjoyable and the most successful in marrying the film’s themes with its point-of-view. Without this segment or its placement in the film, Wild Tales wouldn’t click so well as one of the best films of the year. [Aaron]

What else?

We’d be foolish not to give some sort of shout out to other terrific scenes throughout the year, like the hilarious funeral sequence in Li’l Quinquin, which had us doubled over from laughter; both the border crossing and night vision sequences in Sicario; the ending of Carol, which should get an emotional response out of even the coldest souls; the opening long take in Buzzard, a painfully funny experience much like Entertainment; the bonkers final act of Jauja; a scorching scene from The Fool where the town mayor lays into her corrupt staff; everything that happens at Mamie Claire’s house in Mistress America; the intense argument between Gerard Depardieu and Jacqueline Bissett in Welcome to New York; the tightrope sequence in The Walk, and much, much more.

Note: This is a review of an earlier cut of The Forbidden Room that screened at Sundance and Berlin. It has since been cut down by approximately ten minutes.

For Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson, film isn’t just a thing people make. It’s a living thing. A universe existing right next to ours, where time and space collapse into a giant stew of celluloid and pixels. There’s no describing The Forbidden Room, Guy Maddin’s latest film which he co-directed with Johnson. I can merely state facts about it, but to actually attempt to describe the experience of watching it? That’s a fool’s errand because the only way to know about The Forbidden Room is to experience it for yourself. Is it Guy Maddin’s best work to date? Probably. Is it a masterpiece? Definitely. Maddin, who’s known for having a progressive and spiritual perspective towards cinema, has made what might be the purest representation of his mindset on film to date.

How did The Forbidden Room get here? You could say it all started back at the invention of film itself (for dramatic purposes), or five years ago (for practical purposes). Maddin created an installation called Hauntings that had him researching abandoned projects by master filmmakers and re-creating scenes from these “lost” films. Eventually, Maddin’s interests turned from the figurative to the literal; he began looking (with Johnson) into real films that are forever lost, either destroyed or unintentionally abandoned. After researching these films, Maddin began remaking them, recruiting a cast of big, international arthouse names (Charlotte Rampling, Mathieu Amalric, Roy Dupuis, Ariane Labed, Udo Kier, Geraldine Chaplin, Maria de Medeiros and lots more) to come in and “channel” the spirits of these lost films, acting them out in a series of short film remakes. How do you remake something you haven’t seen? Watch The Forbidden Room and find out.

So what is The Forbidden Room about? Rather than go for an episodic structure, Maddin and Johnson link every story together through a nesting doll structure that goes so deep it makes a film like Inception look like a pop-up book. It all starts with an old man in a bathrobe (Louis Negin, who winds up in almost every “remake” in some sort of role) giving advice on how to take a bath. The camera then goes under the bath water, where it reveals a submarine full of trapped men. Their captain is missing, their cargo of blasting jelly can explode at any minute, and their oxygen supply is low, requiring them to suck on pancakes to try and get oxygen from the air pockets. Suddenly, a lumberjack (Dupuis) finds his way onto the submarine, and when the men ask how he got there, the film flashes back to tell his story: while chopping trees in the forest, he decides to rescue the beautiful Margot (Clara Furey) from The Red Wolves, described as “the most feared forest bandits in all of Holstein-Schleswig.” The lumberjack goes off to rescue Margot who then has a dream where she’s an amnesiac bar singer, a bar where an indescribable singer performs a song about a man (Kier) obsessed with grabbing asses, which transitions into a dreaming volcano, and then a newspaper article within the volcano’s dream, and then the inside of an x-ray of a pelvis, and then…

The amount of transitions, digressions and leveling up and down within storylines just goes on and on, to the point where trying to make heads or tails of anything loses its meaning. Everything co-exists and stands alone. High art and low art combine into one. Dreams, memories, fantasies and nightmares weave in and out of each other. Maddin and Johnson put the bulk of their efforts into the post-production process, taking the digitally shot footage and dousing it with every possible imperfection or antiquated method from both analog and digital eras: two-strip Technicolor, warped stock, burn marks, title cards, data moshing, colour dyes, and whatever else they could pull out from this cinematic stew they conjured up. And through all of this madness, Maddin and Johnson have created an exhaustive and hilarious masterwork. The sort of film where a hysterical title card like “The skull-faced man and his gang of Skeletal Insurance Defrauders” gets lost in the shuffle of the seemingly endless ideas thrown on-screen from start to end. It’s a film that has endless rewatch value because it’s impossible to remember every detail from it. It’s one of the most perfect collections of imperfections ever made. It is, quite simply, The Forbidden Room.

Originally published as part of our coverage for the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

From the looks of it, Guy Maddin’s been having a good year. Back in January, his 2007 “docu-fantasia” My Winnipeg received a DVD and Blu-Ray release on The Criterion Collection. Around the same time, he premiered his latest work The Forbidden Room with co-director Evan Johnson at Sundance to rave reviews from critics. And most recently, when the Toronto International Film Festival revealed their 2015 poll of Canada’s top ten films of all-time, My Winnipeg came in at number nine on the list. Since he started directing in the ‘80s, Maddin has gradually become one of Canada’s most distinct, celebrated and all-around best filmmakers working today. Maddin, who describes himself as a dilettante, specializes in the early years of film, specifically the silent era and the transitional years when talkies began to take over. His films are both an homage to that time period and something entirely new. While most people may look back and see these production methods as antiquated, Maddin’s films feel like an exploration of the artistic possibilities of a largely abandoned mode of filmmaking.

This summer, TIFF has been presenting the “Dreaming in Technicolor” series to celebrate Technicolor’s centenary, screening over two dozen classic films, and Guy Maddin will host a Technicolor Master Class on Douglas Sirk’s 1954 melodrama Magnificent Obsession on July 18^th. When asked about his own experiences watching Technicolor, Maddin quickly points out the importance of watching Technicolor on the big screen. “About ten years ago I saw The Wizard of Oz in a theatre,” he recalls. “I realized the experience…seeing something in Technicolor and on the big screen made a difference. I could actually see into the corners of the sets, stuff that was too tiny for me to see on a 25” living room television. You can see where the floor’s been polished, where the artifice got less intense, and a space for a production assistant whose job was to stand there with a mop in between takes so the munchkins’ footprints weren’t visible or something. You can sort of see there were limits to the seemingly infinite amount of art direction in Oz. I really liked that, it sort of gave the movie more breathing room. That’s more testimony to the transformative power of seeing Technicolor on the big screen as opposed to television.”

“My most recent experience was watching Black Narcissus at the Berlin Film Festival,” he says. “Seeing it on the big screen created a genre shift. I realized Black Narcissus is closer to being a comedy than a nun melodrama, that the very subtle differences in facial expressions were wildly recognizable. You could feel the horniness in this movie. The audience was laughing with the movie. It literally transformed the film from a drama to a comedy on the big screen. The big screen experience of Technicolor is what really excites me, and should excite visitors to Magnificent Obsession.”

Still from Magnificent Obsession

Part of why Maddin chose a Sirk film for his Master Class was for personal reasons. “Douglas Sirk is really important to me,” he explains. “When I first picked up a camera, I had the idea of ‘What should be the ultimate goal of a filmmaker?’ It occurred to me that the ideal film would be able to manipulate people into crying while laughing at the same time. This seemingly impossible, mutually exclusive display of emotions should be something to aim for as a filmmaker. I first experienced that really devastating double-pronged pair of emotions watching a Douglas Sirk film.”

That film was Written on the Wind, Sirk’s 1956 melodrama starring Rock Hudson, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone. “I became so wrapped up in Robert Stack’s tragic story, so overwhelmed with how unloved he felt, and yet I was laughing at the movie because there was so much Technicolor delight and lurid, oversaturated plot lines. It’s one thing for the colours to be more saturated than they are in nature, but with melodrama the storylines, the very humans themselves are more saturated than life. I found myself laughing at the entire proceedings but being wiped out as well, sobbing and laughing at the same time.”

Magnificent Obsession follows rich playboy Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson), whose selfish and careless attitude almost kills him when he crashes a speedboat while taking it for a joyride. He’s saved thanks to a resuscitator owned by the town’s renowned physician Dr. Phillips across the lake, but in a tragic coincidence Dr. Phillips dies from a heart attack at the same time. Merrick realizes the town despises him for “killing” their beloved doctor, including Phillips’ widow Helen (Jane Wyman), whom Merrick falls for. In his attempt to earn Helen’s forgiveness and love, Merrick winds up causing an accident that permanently blinds Helen, causing him to dedicate his life and fortune to find a way to cure Helen’s blindness (it just so happens that Merrick studied to be a surgeon before he dropped out to live the high life). The plot is absurd, but Sirk’s masterful direction puts characters’ emotions at the forefront, making it easy to get swept up in the melodrama.

Maddin explains why he chose Magnificent Obsession for his Master Class: “I remember reading an interview with Douglas Sirk where he remembers being presented with the script and just going ‘Oh god, what is this stuff? This stuff’s crazy!’ Sirk had directed theatre back in Germany, he knew his Euripides and he knew his Kleist, but he recognized in this insane and wildly implausible plot trajectory the basic elements of Euripidean drama. And he felt like the only chance he had for making this thing play was to play it dead serious. It’s the idea of someone taking this material and working at it as hard and seriously as possible, and letting people just surrender their retinas to the experience. Technicolor works really well with melodrama, and this was the most melodramatic title on the list, so it took me about a nanosecond to decide.”

The Technicolor process had its heyday between the 1930s and 1950s, before newer technology made filming in Technicolor less desirable. Technicolor started out in several forms before the three-strip process became the norm. The three-strip camera got its name because it would run three strips of film simultaneously through different coloured filters (red, green and blue), and by combining the three strips together it would create that vibrant, saturated Technicolor look. But Maddin doesn’t concern himself with learning about the why when it comes to Technicolor and cinema in general. “I like the ignorance and the wonder of it all,” he says. “I still like feeling like a child when I’m watching movies. I now know why faces used to be even more saturated on Sunday matinee movies because I know how print traffic moved around from television station to television station. But I used to like not knowing, and I felt that was just the way things were. My grandmother had one way of telling a bedtime story and my mother had another way, and Technicolor had one way of telling a story on television in black and white and another in theatres.” He brings up the Kafka parable Leopards in the Temple, where leopards break into a temple and ruin a ceremony so many times their behaviour eventually gets incorporated into the ceremony itself. “Reel changes, scratches, oversaturation and snowy transmissions are more leopards that I just incorporated into the viewing experience. I like not knowing why.”

Maddin’s own films tend to be in black and white, but when he brings in colour it usually emulates the two-strip Technicolor process (used in the 1920s before three-strip Technicolor took over), where two strips of film ran through a red and green filter. His 1992 film Careful emulated the two-strip look. “I really didn’t understand how colour worked yet,” he explains about his work on Careful. “I understand it better now, but I just didn’t want any accidental colour meanings to come through, so I wanted to rein them in. And by harkening back to the days of two-strip Technicolor, by painting everything on a set and having every single frame shot on a set, I was able to keep things artificial, which was my way of setting myself aside from the rest of Canadian cinema at the time. So there was a certain amount of calculation in it, and a desperate need to give my movies a chance by setting themselves apart, so two-strip Technicolor became a part of it.”

Still from The Forbidden Room

Maddin’s latest film, The Forbidden Room, also emulates the two-strip look. It’s a phantasmagorical epic from Maddin and co-director Evan Johnson that started from their fascination with lost films. Recruiting a group of international actors (including Udo Kier, Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling and Caroline Dhavernas, to name a few), Maddin and Johnson created spiritual remakes of these lost films, connecting them through a series of nested narratives that can go six or seven layers deep. The approach allows Maddin and Johnson to be as imaginative as possible, throwing in one absurd idea after another (a volcano’s dream, insurance defrauder skeletons, squid theft, bladder slapping) without letting up. It’s an exhaustive and hilarious film that might be Maddin’s best work yet.

Did he try to remake any lost Technicolor films while making The Forbidden Room (which is actually part of a larger, interactive project called Seances set to launch sometime this year)? “I decided that with all the lost films I was going to adapt that I wouldn’t worry about whether they were in black and white, colour, 3D, Odorama. I just decided that the cinema afterlife, the sort of limbo which the spirits of these lost films have inhabited, was colour blind. I made the aspect ratio a modern one, 16×9, without worrying about the original aspect ratios. I even made the movie colour blind in terms of nationality of performers. I had a bunch of Quebecois and French actors, and I used them as the mediums even though some of the lost movies were from Hollywood, Japan, China, Bolivia, Hungary…So I didn’t worry about whether the movie was originally in Technicolor.” Maddin mentioned that he remade The Three Stooges’ lost 1933 Technicolor film Hello Pop! with an all-female cast in Paris, but the original film ended up getting found.

And unlike some people who lament the loss of shooting and projecting on film, Maddin is far more optimistic about digital filmmaking. “People are far more open to the looks of films now. In the ‘80s people had really narrow tastes. The average public had to see something in 35mm colour, and it had to be that kind of 80s look of what passed for realistic colour. Now people watch America’s Funniest Home Videos, and they’ve gotten used to the lowest resolutions and snowiest transmissions. People are able to happily watch different kinds of schema, representations on film, and people have more access. I think viewers are more open-minded to different visuals and editing styles now. I like to think that anyone with a smartphone and some sort of editing software has the ability to make a movie now if they’re smart or clever or ambitious enough. We’re in this great era of democratization that’s going to produce more terrible movies, but it also just might produce the Rimbaud of the cinema, a young gifted flaming visionary, and I really hopeful that some kind of new vocabulary of cinema might come out of this super-democratization.”