The 5 Best Videos Of The Week

The 5 Best Videos Of The Week

Someone really let Billy Corgan direct his own 40-minute silent film, the thing he decided to do rather than making a bunch of actual music videos. I dare anyone not related to Corgan to sit through the entire thing. Just scrubbing through Pillbox so I could post about it was a painful experience. As a result, I can’t tell you exactly how pretentious the whole thing is. I can only tell you that it is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, very pretentious. This week’s picks — which are really the picks for the last two weeks, because Thanksgiving happened — are below.

5. Post Malone – “Rockstar” (Feat. 21 Savage) (Dir. Emil Nava)

There were a lot of traditionally good music videos in the last two weeks that I could’ve put in this spot — videos that don’t, for instance, have a blurry camera-effect thing going on for the entire time. But I am a man with a particular set of tastes, and if a rapper is going to get in a Takashi Miike-style bloody samurai-sword battle in a music video, well, then I am going to appreciate that effort.

4. Dead Cross – “Church Of The Motherfuckers” (Dir. Michael Panduro)

Lots of music videos appropriate horror-movie imagery or go for transgressive shock value. Very few actually achieve any sort of squirmy what the fuck reaction. This one does.

3. Alt-J – “Pleader” (Dir. Isaiah Seret)

I have no idea what the fuck is happening here, but it’s done with such grand cinematic style that it ends up being a powerful, oddly moving vision anyway.

2. BTS – “Mic Drop (Steve Aoki Remix)” (Dir. Kim Sung-wook)

I fell into a YouTube hole the other day after reading my colleague Chris DeVille’s piece on the K-pop boy band a few days ago. I’d been sleeping on them, and it turns out that I’ve been missing out on our prime current source of slick, over-the-top pop-video spectacle. I pledge to do better.

5. SSION – “Comeback” (Dir. Cody Critcheloe)

And speaking of slick, over-the-top pop-video spectacles! SSION mastermind Cody Critcheloe has been making strange mutations of those for years, and he’s been doing them in Kansas City, on indie budgets. It is an unalloyed delight to have him back at it.

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