The Top 10 Films of 2015: From Hostile NYC Microindies to the Vulnerable Cloud
Stinking Heaven: Set in the early 1990s at a home for recovering addicts, this film is yet another example that the New Hostility of American independent cinema—a black-comic negativity deriving from reality-TV disputes and the dismissive posturing of the gods of lo-fi, among other sources—has reached its apex. A mere 70 minutes long, Nathan Silver’s dispatch of a movie nonetheless manages to expose “clean living” as an oxymoronic premise, both in this corner of the tristate area and, by extension, the world at large.
The Wonders: A film that doesn’t feel scripted so much as whispered by the wind, Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders takes place on a tumbledown Tuscan farm, where a counterculture tyrant of a father clashes with his eldest daughter, who is dying to participate in a cheesy reality-show contest. It’s a sensitive story not only about girls growing up but also about a whole way of life as it’s starting to fade from view.