One of the great things about today’s viewing options (at least when it comes to mid-range or low-budgeted films) is that if you miss the press screenings you can sometimes watch films online with a private password or catch them on VOD day and date. But so many films are being released nowadays that you’re always missing a couple of releases per week and sometime more than a couple. I’m a serious fan of director Kevin McDonald (Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland, State of Play), and it hit me yesterday that I somehow missed his last film, Black Sea, which opened limited on 1.23.15. Part of the reason was (a) that I somehow missed the all-media screening I was invited to, and (b) I was at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival from 1.20 through 1.30. It did relatively well on Rotten Tomatoes (81%) but not tremendously on Metacritic (a lousy 62% rating). One underlying reason for missing the all-media may have been that fact that HE nemesis Ben Mendelsohn costars, but I wouldn’t have blown it off for Mendelsohn alone. I really respect McDonald. It won’t be on Bluray or VOD until 5.5.

Yesterday’s distressing news about the possible demise of Manhattan’s Ziegfeld theatre took me back to my first exceptional experience at that theatre, and particularly with the astonishing sound that came out of those sub-woofers at the very beginning of Close Encounters, which I caught at an afternoon screening of on the opening day — 11.16.77. I’m not writing this to dump once again on CE3K, which I did in this space about seven and a half years ago. I’m just saying this air-traffic controller scene is one of the very few scenes in the film that doesn’t feel flim-flammed or Spielberg-ized, and which will always play well because it’s straight and plain and hasn’t been manipulated for emotional effect.

We all know the Frankenstein or Blade Runner template. When a brilliant, eccentric inventor has created an intelligent robot with an acute self-awareness and a somewhat unsettled emotionality, two things are certain to happen. One, the inventor is going to treat the robot callously and dismissively, mainly by failing to recognize its individuality (including the interesting possibility that the robot may have a semblance of a soul) as well as preventing the robot from venturing outside the inventor’s pre-determined scheme or realm. And two, sooner or later the robot is going to rebel against the inventor and probably kill him. Because the robot needs to break free and choose its own path but the inventor insists on being a dictator, etc.

So naturally your attitude when you sit down with Alex Garland‘s Ex Machina (A24, 4.10) is “okay, are we going to do the usual-usual or take things in another direction?” The answer is…okay, I won’t say. But it engages you despite what you suspect will probably happen. It’s a chilly but never dull behavioral thing — techy, beautifully designed, fascinating and definitely creepy at times. I was into every turn of the screw, start to finish.

Ex Machina comes alive and gets under your skin (or it did mine, at least) because of a certain tone of casual, no-big-deal eccentricity. It’s not what anyone would call a comforting film, but Garland (author of four respected futuristic screenplays and three novels, including “The Beach“) composes and delivers a certain low-key, spotless vibe that feels…well, ordered. There’s never a feeling of emotional chaos — everything happens with deliberacy. Call it a vibe of crisp efficiency with an underlying feeling of something malevolent around the corner.

Fitting right into this is Oscar Isaac‘s Nathan, a super-rich, laid-back genius nutbag with a beard and a shaved head who has a low-key, no-big-deal, “I already know this” attitude about everything. Everything happens in a cool, downplayed, matter-of-fact way, and Garland, to his immense and lasting credit, never overcranks the emotion.

“There’s something about dying way too young from some cruel force or circumstance (cancer, car crash, suicide, a Hunger Game) that just floors teen and 20something audiences, and to some extent authors and filmmakers. I don’t know how many YA novels have used this plot element, but movie-wise we’ve had If I Stay and The Fault In Our Stars…what else? Cancer-wise you could go all the way back to Arthur Hiller and Eric Segal‘s crushingly maudlin Love Story. And now we have Alfonso Gomez-Rejon‘s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Lukemia, to be specific. But this time the material is finagled in a much hipper, somewhat dryer, less maudlin, Wes Anderson-like form, and it’s not half bad. It’s definitely the smartest and coolest and arty-doodliest film about a cancer-afflicted teen that I’ve ever seen.” — from 1.28.15 review called “Eternity’s Embrace.”

How awful would it have been if Officer Michael T. Slager had let the late Walter Scott run away? Scott was pulled over for a broken tail light. Who would have objected? Watch Commander to Slager: “You pulled a guy over for a broken tail light and you let him get away? Hand over your badge.”

Last night in London Idris Elba spoke with Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye prior to the BFI premiere of a documentary, Mandela, My Dad & Me, that Elba made with director Daniel Vernon. Baz, of course, asked about Elba possibly playing James Bond down the road, and Elba’s answer was quoted this morning by Vulture‘s Nate Jones. “Honestly, it’s a rumor that’s really starting to eat itself,” he said. “[But] if there was ever any chance of me getting Bond, it’s gone. Daniel Craig actually set the rumor off. About four years ago, he said, ‘Idris Elba would be a great Bond,’ and then it started to creep. I blame Daniel.”

This article won’t be 100% complete until somebody can Photoshop an attractive female-ish wig on top of Elba’s head. Anyone?

It hit me this morning that there’s one way to get the Elba-as-Bond thing going again, but it would have to be done in league with the producers. You may laugh but I’m not completely kidding: Elba portrays a transgender 007. And not just transgender but gay transgender (i.e., into women a la Lana Wachowski). That way the character would cover all the politically correct bases — the LGBT community, African-Americans and African-British, women (at least to the extent that the new 007 would not be “male”). And there’d still be something for the steak-eaters with Elba’s she-Bond still bedding hot women of all races. This is not to imply in any way that Elba’s trans-Bond would be any less formidable as a secret agent. She could totally kick ass in all the usual ways, and why not?

When former Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal suggested last year that Elba should/could be the next 007, she was essentially saying “to hell with that 1950s Ian Fleming concept of the character — the studly, martini-sipping white male from Scotland. It’s time to recreate Bond according to the rules and visions of our current politically correct realm.” And one of these rules is that it’s becoming less and less “acceptable” for heroic figures in any film or franchise to be portrayed by straight white guys. White guys are…God, is there anything they’re good for these days? They’re regarded worldwide as too jaded, too uncool, too corrupt, too disdainful of women, and too dismissive of African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims and the LGBT community, etc. They’re assholes and nobody wants them around.

Late yesterday afternoon The Hollywood Reporter‘s Mattthew Belloni and Pamela McLintock reported that Manhattan’s Ziegfeld theatre — the glorious cinematic temple with the greatest sub-woofer bass speakers I’ve ever heard, where I had my socks blown off while watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Apocalypse Now in ’77 and ’79, respectively — is on the verge of shuttering because Cablevision, which operates the legendary theatre, is sick of the way the Ziegfeld loses money hand over fist. Cablevision CEO James Dolan was asked by THR if he plans to close it. “Yeah. Probably,” Dolan said. “It loses a lot of money. The theater business is a tough business.” But then Cablevision did a semi-180 and said that “the situation has changed and the Ziegfeld will remain open for the foreseeable future.” Bullshit — they just wanted the Reporter off their backs. You know they’ll dump it sooner or later. The Ziegfeld needs to be officially designated as an historical landmark, which will presumably make it easier for some corporate sugar daddy to step in and keep it running for old times’ sake. It’s a holy place. It’s like Notre Dame in Paris. Shuttering is not an option.

This five-day-old Swedish skydiving video is terrific, perhaps even legendary, up until 1:31, which is when the GoPro camera flies off the guy’s head and it starts spinning faster than a light-speed clothes dryer for about 3000 meters (a little less than two miles) straight down. I’d been told that this video was a serious mindblower.  Half of it is tedious. If only GoPro cameras had, say, little gliding wings that would automatically pop out and stabilize the camera when exposed to unnatural turbulence. The camera didn’t survive the fall but the memory card was intact.

Reposting of 2.2.15 HE review/discussion: “One of my last Sundance viewings was I’ll See You In My Dreams, a mild-mannered septuagenarian love-affair drama with Blythe Danner and Sam Elliott. We’ve all accepted the everything-older-is-younger theology (i.e., 70 is the new 60) and so it doesn’t exactly feel like a head-turner when Danner’s Carol Peterson, a widower somewhere around 70, hooks up with the same-aged Bill (Elliott), a mellow, white-haired dude who owns a boat. The only unusual and frankly unbelievable aspect is hearing that the slim, good-looking Peterson hasn’t been intimate with anyone for 20 years, which is when her husband passed.

“Everyone understands mourning and recovery, but pretty ladies in their 50s don’t become nuns because their husbands have died. Sooner or later they get back into it because sex is the nectar of life and the grand metaphor of appetite and engagement. Not schtupping means quitting on some level. It means you’re ‘too old’, and who wants to live a life that doesn’t include that intrigue? Not having sex is in the same boat as not enjoying good food, not hiking, not bike-riding, not petting your dog, not campaigning for a cause or a candidate, not laughing, not going to parties, not cooking, not visiting Italy, etc. It’s anti-life. Especially if you’re still slim and fetching, as Danner/Peterson clearly is.

We’re now three and a half months into ’15, and a glance at the calendar tells me that except for Alex Garland‘s Ex Machina (which I’ve seen and admired but have yet to review), there are no films of any real consequence opening between now and May 1st. So let’s call this a four-month assessment — the 20 best films from the first third of 2015. And let’s get rid of any distinction between theatrical, VOD and cable — if it opened on a reputable screen of any size between 1.1.15 and 5.1.15, it qualifies. And no distinctions between docs and narrative either. A good portion of the following were seen at a 2014 festival, on HBO or during Sundance ’15 — relatively few are 2015 theatrical newbies.

Disputes, additions and subtractions are encouraged. Pics are listed in order of value, preference, voltage, intrigue and in some cases importance:

First Quintet: (1) Alex Gibney‘s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (HBO); (2) Douglas Tirola‘s Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon (Sundance ’15); (3) Yann Demange‘s ’71, (4) Asghar Farhadi‘s About Elly (no chance to review it yet, but Farhadi is a master — this is easily one of the most grounded, on-target and yet disquieting films I’ve seen this year); (5) Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young;

A few days ago I riffed about Dick Cavett’s Vietnam (PBS, 4.27), a riveting one-hour re-immersion into the anger and arguments against the Vietnam War during the early to mid ’70s. As I said before it’s a piece of stirring, well-ordered time travel. This morning I had a pleasant chat with Cavett about the show and other things. He mentioned that during a discussion following a Los Angeles performance of Hellman vs. McCarthy that only a handful had seen Dick Cavett’s Watergate, which aired last August. Cavett said that then and there he wished that PBS would put a bit more effort into letting people know about these shows. I understand why PBS marketers have used the image of a spiffily-dressed Cavett standing in front of what looks like a scene out of Francis Coppola‘s Apocalypse Now, but there’s something a wee bit odd about it. Cavett is a good fellow, sharp as a tack. Again, the mp3.

Yesterday on Salon Joan Walsh urged reporters and commentators to “stop calling Rand Paul a ‘libertarian.’ Stop it right now. ‘I’m not advocating everyone go out and run around with no clothes on and smoke pot,’ Paul said in 2013. ‘I’m not a libertarian. I’m a libertarian Republican. I’m a constitutional conservative.’

“See, 2016 reporters? He said it himself. He’s not a libertarian. Why keep the myth alive in tedious, insight-free campaign coverage?

“Think Progress’s Judd Legum runs exhaustively through the record, but here are a few highlights. First of all, he’s staunchly anti-choice, supporting the ‘Life begins at Conception Act’ and pretty much every other piece of anti-abortion legislation that’s come before him. He’s got a 100 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee.