Celebrate the Small Things 11-8-17

This post is part of Lexa Cain's bloghop, Celebrate the Small Things. Head on over there to join up!

So what am I celebrating this week?

I've had a horrible cold this week, and am starting to feel human again.  I even missed three days of films at the film festival, something I have never done before.  I must have been feeling truly rotten!

I did see two films though, once the cold had receded enough that I could climb out of bed.

The Killing of the Sacred Deer is an extremely odd film, but I expected that from the director of The Lobster.  The story is a kind of domestic horror that creeps up on you in kind of the same way Michael Haneke's Funny Games did.  But this is more absurd than horrific.  I felt like the filmmaking was brilliant, with the music often at odds with what was happening on screen, and the dialogue all being spoken in a way that was just slightly off naturalistic so the rhythm was unsettling.  A lot of the people around me seemed to have thought it ridiculous (listening to them on the way out), but while there were some aspects that were preposterous (Colin Farrell as a heart surgeon??) overall, I thought it was genius.

My Friend Dahmer is about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's high school years.  Based on a book by someone who grew up with him, it shows how Dahmer was an odd fish even as a teen, and how a group of kids befriended him in his senior year.  It shows the dysfunction of his homelife, with a mother who spent time in treatment for mental disorders and a father who couldn't cope.  The performances were universally excellent.  I didn't even recognise Anne Heche as Dahmer's mother even though I kept trying to place the voice.

I have a few more films over this final weekend, then it's back to real life next week.  What a bummer!

What are you celebrating this week?