We open on Super8 images of writer-director Hyatt’s childhood. Apart from the switch from film to video, what follows is little more than an extended home movie. Rather than experiment by eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner out of a McDonald’s bag, Hyatt made the personal sacrifice of swearing off all forms of digital interaction, save email and phone service. The one term that Hyatt permanently placed in my cinematic lexicography was “stoppage cues.” Movies have a finite running time. They end, you leave. The internet is designed to act as a vacuum to the brain; once attached, it sucks the user further and further down a black hole of killing time. Once powerful studio publicity hacks have been replaced with “brain hackers,” an elite corps whose job it is to make our smartphone interaction ever more addictive. There’s a lot to be learned here, but as a film, it makes a great research project. (2020) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.