Quote:
“In all chaos there is a cosmos. In all disorder a secret order.” Experimental theater director Evangeline (Molly Parker) says this to her troubled teenage star Madeline (Helena Howard) early on in Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline, and it’s a sentiment the movie both takes to heart and persistently questions. Decker’s film, the best thing I saw at Sundance this year, is built around tension and chaos: Its unruly scenes emerge out of disorder, out of chants and shrieks and fractured images, and always threaten to fade back into abstraction. The focus slips; the camera drifts. Whispers and wails intrude. A simple dialogue exchange might suddenly splinter into tight-angled close-ups of a face; a shot might disintegrate into a shimmering field of red. But one senses a method in this madness. The narrative might be shattered, but the film’s slipstream of emotion is powerful and inescapable.

As Madeline, the nineteen-year-old Howard — an explosively gifted performer — seizes your attention. She plays a precocious teen with what may or may not be mental issues (there are mentions of a psych ward stint, and glimpses of pill bottles and medical bracelets, but as with so much in this film, we’re never sure how much of what we’re seeing is real). Madeline’s talent is being both nurtured and exploited by Evangeline. Improvisational role-play exercises in rehearsal come too close for comfort to Madeline’s volatile relationship with her caring, fragile mother, Regina (Miranda July). The girl immerses herself in the part, then takes her work home: Acting exercises in one context become troubling behavior in another. Is she building a character, or is the character building her? At times Madeline pretends to be a cat, a pig, a sea turtle. She attacks her mother with an iron. (Was it a dream? A memory? A desire? A fear?) Mom observes her daughter with anticipation and fright; July cracks the most mysterious of smiles, perched between terror and bewilderment. A flash of pride can, in an instant, become a moment of deep humiliation.

Evangeline’s theater work is built around dance and poetic movement, and Decker and her cinematographer, Ashley Connor, shoot the bodies in motion with an eye toward sensuality and distortion. They do the same for reality, too. The camera constantly wanders among faces and gestures, as if overwhelmed by all the possibilities of where to go. For a viewer, it’s a curiously lovely feeling — that sense of being suspended between clarity and entropy.

Decker built the picture around Howard after seeing her at a teen performance contest in New Jersey. Much of what’s onscreen was developed out of improvisations with the young actress and others. But whereas directors like Mike Leigh use this form of collaboration to create self-contained works of immersive realism, Decker deconstructs the very nature of a closed work of art. Who is Evangeline to tell Madeline’s story, and who is Decker to make a movie around Howard? Slowly, Madeline realizes her power in Evangeline’s world. The latter brings her into her life — does she want to displace the girl’s mother? — and hesitant, haunted Madeline begins to seize control. And onscreen, Howard comes to dominate the frame more and more. Who’s telling this story? you might wonder, and therein lies the radical, breathtaking beauty of this film. Madeline’s Madeline is at once intoxicated by the world and deeply terrified of it. — Bilge Ebiri (The Village Voice)

	
Josephine Decker - (2018) Madeline's Madeline.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 33 min
Size: 	2.65 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x576 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 610 kb/s
BPP: 	0.255
Audio
#1:  	English 5.1ch AC-3 @ 448 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/C3B74173F5D5A46/Josephine_Decker_-_(2018)_Madeline’s_Madeline.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Josephine Decker – Madeline’s Madeline (2018) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Sandra Larson has always been fascinated by the entire sensory experience surrounding death: its touch, smell and look. As a child, she would search out dead animals and perform ritualistic burials. As a young woman, Sandra gets a job at Wallis Funeral Home, first as a general assistant, then progressing to study to become an embalmer. At the funeral home, she begins to take her fascination with death to the next level by becoming a necrophiliac. But she also begins her first ever relationship with Matt, a medical student, with who she is totally open about her necrophilia. He finds this aspect of her compelling. He becomes all consumed with her as she is consumed with dead people. The questions become how far he will take this fascination with her to understand fully what is going through her emotional being, how far she will allow him to go, and how far can her feelings for him extend as a live being.

Lynne Stopkewich - (1996) Kissed.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 15 min
Size: 	1.18 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	700x574 ~> 765x574
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 050 kb/s
BPP: 	0.204
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/53CD260D04978A9/Lynne_Stopkewich_-_(1996)_Kissed.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Lynne Stopkewich – Kissed (1996) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
“Richard, an isolated programmer who made millions with his company, meets a pretty girl in a café. The pretty girl is a drummer; she is also a stripper. Richard wants to live it up and after careful negotiations, takes Florence to Las Vegas for a weekend. He pays her 10,000 dollars and promises to adhere to her conditions, which include no kissing on the mouth, no penetration, and limits their time together to the hours between 10pm and 2am. “

The.Center.of.the.World.2001.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.x264-NTb.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 27 min
Size: 	7.51 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	11.6 Mb/s
BPP: 	0.233
Audio
#1:  	English 5.1ch E-AC-3 @ 640 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/CBB4D0A51D04B03/The.Center.of.the.World.2001.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.x264-NTb.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Wayne Wang – The Center of the World (2001) first appeared on Cinema of the World.