Movies about actors: The good and the bad

There are a lot of movies about actors, which does make sense as actors make movies and they're obviously interested in an knowledgeable about their own craft and profession - some more successful than others. I thought Birdman was a terrific examination showing how actors work and develop a role and how they navigate the conflicts between the roles they are playing and the lives they lead, with the many entanglements and the confusion between love (and sex) on the stage and off. It was great to see how the characters rehearsed, changed elements as they worked - and at times we couldn't be sure when they were speaking lines and when they were speaking (and of course they are characters in a movie, so always speaking lines). Another good example - though it's more about the play in rehearsal than the actors themselves: Vanya on 42nd Street. A terrible example was the recent Argentine (?) film about a production of Twelfth Night, can't remember the name but found it so tedious and repetitious I bailed out. So what about The Clouds of Sils Maria (incomprehensible title) but Olivier Assayas?: well, Juliet Binoche improves any movie she's in, but this one had a lot of room for improvement. It's about La Binoche playing a great actress in mid to late career, who rose to fame in a play some 20 years back in which she was an office assistant who essentially displaces her 40-year-old boss. Now, she's asked to play the role of the boss in a revival, which causes her to ponder her youth and her career and leads to much angst about whether she should take the role at all. There's a lot of inside-the-industry stuff which is OK although doesn't seem esp. fresh: dodging the paparazzi, the politics of presenting awards, negotiations with directors and lawyers, most of all her own relationship with her personal assistant, played v well by Kristen Stewart - who perfectly captures the voice of her cohort, fast, clipped, on several phones at once all the time, really busy but about what - just a lot of crap really. The big downfall of the movie is that the ridiculously named play under consideration seems absolutely absurd - impossible to believe that the late playwright was a world-famous genius, that it would in any way be a career-making role, that the new production would attract any attention beyond a minuscule cult, that the Lindsey Lohan-type, played well against a very confusing and inconsistent script by Chole G Moretz, would be drawn to this role in any way, and incredibly stilted dialogue whenever the characters talk about the play - they sound like characters Woody Allen would create as a joke or send-up. On the upside, some beautiful photography of rustic Alpine scenery.