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Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, 2015

This documentary explores the questionable practices of the Church of Scientology through a mix of interviews with former members, archive footage, and information gleaned from government investigation and trial transcripts.

Almost all the way at the end of this film, someone asks one of the interview subjects a really important question: "So how is Scientology different from any other religion?". The question is really key because a lot of the basic facts regarding Scientology (belief in invisible/incorporeal beings, internal terminology, enforced hierarchies, and even behaviors like isolating people or physical abuse) are not at all exclusive to it.

This question about what makes Scientology different is what drives the film and it is ultimately what makes it so powerful and so damning. It would be incredibly easy to spend most of the documentary making fun of the beliefs of the church (and there are a few zingers, such as "So then why is Tom Cruise paying $1000 a session to have invisible aliens sucked out of his body?"), but if you're being honest, just about any religion could be mocked in this way.

As becomes really clear in the film, the problem isn't WHAT the Scientologists believe, it's how they go about practicing their religion and specifically the cruel, creepy, and abusive way they handle dissent from inside or outside their walls.

People who use their power/influence to harm others makes me incredibly angry, and what the documentary exposes is that doing such harm isn't just the act of a few radicals in the church--it's a practice that is built into the beliefs themselves. L. Ron Hubbard gives explicit directions about how to handle those who cross them, and the new generation of leadership in the church, specifically David Miscavige, really seem to lean into the controlling and exploitative elements.

I thought I had something of a grasp on the behavior of Scientologists, but, wow. What you see in the film goes way beyond. Men from the church spend years filming, stalking, and harassing the wife of a former member. (The smirking man filming her as she grows more and more upset is maybe the most punchable person I've seen in a movie lately). People are sent to the homes of former members' elderly parents. Since this documentary came out, Danny Masterson has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women who claimed that the church helped to shield him from investigations. Watching this film, those claims seem incredibly believable.

One of the grossest stories is about a young woman in the church who was given a makeover under the pretense that she was going to be an ambassador for the church. Unbeknownst to her, she was being groomed to be Tom Cruise's next girlfriend because he'd just broken up with Nicole Kidman. The line "her hair was cut and styled to Tom's preference" is just cringe-inducing.

I had also not realized the extent of the implications of the church's tax-exempt status. While most of what I've read about that legal battle talks about the money implications (because the church is worth billions of dollars). But what surprised me were the revelations about the other legal benefits of being recognized as a religion. The church can have people doing labor for $0.40 an hour and it's fine. They are totally able to dodge child labor and human trafficking laws. When they harass or stalk former members, it can fall under first amendment protections.

This movie made me all kinds of angry. And shame on all of the celebrities (especially Tom Cruise) who lend their high profile to furthering the abusive and exploitative practices of this group.

The Revenant, 2015

In the 1820s, tracker Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), accompanied by his teenage son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), guides a troop of fur trappers through dangerous territory. When most of the trappers are killed in an ambush by a group of Arikara people who are seeking a kidnapped Arikara woman, the survivors retreat into the snowy mountains. While scouting for food, Hugh is savagely mauled by a bear. Unwilling to put Hugh out of his misery, the leader (Domnhall Gleeson) leaves Hawk, a man named Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), and a young man named Jim (Will Poulter) to stay with Hugh through his last hours of life. But Fitzgerald has other ideas, and his actions set off a tragic series of events.

I am still turning over in my mind how successful I think this film was in terms of seeing its themes through to the end. But in this moment my main reaction is that this was an immersive, propulsive, and deeply moving cinematic experience. The film manages to be a story of betrayal and revenge intertwined with a wilderness survival thriller.

On the wilderness front, the film does a great job of showing the danger of the intimate (as in, getting too close to a bear) and of the wide open space. The camera alternates between zoomed in close ups and sweeping overhead views of the snow-covered terrain. The land is its own character, alternately a deadly enemy and a savior. The brutality of the bear attack sequence sets the tone, and everything sits on a razor's edge from then on out.

In terms of the human side of the story, I felt that it was very well-realized. Glass is a compelling lead, but the film is filled with interesting supporting characters, from the good-hearted Jim (whose fear overrides his compassion in a moment that he will regret for the rest of the film) to Hikuc (Arthur RedCloud), a displaced Pawnee man who is journeying south in search of more of his people. Fitzgerald is a weasel, but even in his cruelty and selfishness, what we learn about his past makes sense of his actions, despicable though they might be. This is a film with so many moving parts--an interlocking mix of motivations and intentions--but it all works somehow with multiple minor climaxes stacked on one another and leading to the final act.

I thought that the performances were very solid. DiCaprio is an actor who I sometimes struggle to see as his characters. This is nothing against him or his talent, but I often watch him in a film and become hyper aware that I am watching an actor acting. While this film was filled with actor moments, the strong presence of the wilderness and the raw physicality of the role meant that DiCaprio (and the rest of the cast) really disappeared into their characters for me.

There were a handful of small issues I had with the film. In a few scenes there was something about the sound balance that sounded off to me, and it was always when it sounded like the dialogue wasn't quite in sync with what was on screen. Maybe I just imagined this, but a few times something in the sound took me out of the film for a moment. I am also still thinking over how some of the themes resolved. And kind of adjacent to that, I'm thinking back on the use of indigenous people in the film, and particularly one use of them as an almost deus ex machina-type device. The film is very even-handed in the portrayal of different indigenous groups, but that one element felt a bit off to me. The most one-dimensional characters are the French fur-trappers.

This was a really compelling, thrilling film. The kind of movie that feels like it's only just beginning and you realize you're an hour in.

A brilliant film with zero flaws. Hitchcock's work is constantly being re-evaluated every 10 years or so, claiming one or other of his films to be the best. Rear Window is definitely in his top 5. Perhaps his most suspenseful film, the Master of Suspense let it all out here!

Honestly, when I saw it, I suspected a lot of studio-interference. Lots of "notes".

Interesting.
DiCaprio just turns me off so much that, even though I connected deeply with Innaritu's Birdman the year before, I could not even bring myself to watch sit through this at home.
Perhaps I need to re-think. I mean, I haven't hated everything DiCaprio's ever been in, I just always wished there was someone else playing his role.

Interesting.
DiCaprio just turns me off so much that, even though I connected deeply with Innaritu's Birdman the year before, I could not even bring myself to watch sit through this at home.
Perhaps I need to re-think. I mean, I haven't hated everything DiCaprio's ever been in, I just always wished there was someone else playing his role.

The Revenant is definitely worth watching. It's so much more than a frontier survival story.


And 2009's The Revenant is also pretty good. It's so much more than a dead guy surviving story.

I really love the bright, saturated color look. It seems to be a deliberate inversion of the high contrast black and white look of noir films (also favorites or mine) that were its immediate predecessors. Being so close to Stewart's character, you really relate to how desperate he is when the murderer comes after him.