Right Effort, talking about effort. Sometimes feeling too exhausted by trying to be mindful, I think is because you may be trying to achieve too much. And by perhaps not seeing what is the appropriate type of mindfulness to be used in that particular situation. There's focused mindfulness and a broad awareness, and sometimes there's also mindfulness of the states of mind, mindfulness of the hindrances. Sometimes people have an idea of mindfulness that it is just mindfulness of the body, then because they can't be as mindful minutely as they can in retreat, they feel that they're not being mindful.
In daily living, we need a more broadened mindfulness to be able to not feel exhausted, because you may be trying to get the type of mindfulness that you're able to get in retreat, but you don't have the conditions for it in daily life. So you have to be content with a much more broad, open awareness, and not be focusing in too much. It's a bit like a camera lens. You may be trying to do the close-up all the time. This is exhausting, rather than having a broad panorama view at times. As I'm an artist, I like close-up sometimes, but if I do close-ups all the time it's very exhausting. So at times you have to let go of this focusing in and look at the mountains. At least that's what I do. Focusing in too much can be exhausting, so I try to understand the different types of mindfulness, what is appropriate at certain times, and what certain conditions you have. It's possible that you're just putting too much effort into a smaller focussed mindfulness.
A little story that may help you in this respect is of a young western monk who was with a Thai monk. They were really trying to be very mindful. They were walking along very mindfully, and they were keeping their eyes to the ground. And then they were standing still when the Thai teacher came along and pointed up at them. They couldn't understand, "Why is he pointing up at me?!" The Thai teacher pointed upwards again, and then the monk looked up and realized that they were standing under a dead tree with a big dead branch right above them. So it's quite important to have a broad awareness of what is actually going on around us at times. If we're too focused all the time we may be standing under a dead tree or a coconut tree, at least in Thailand that's the case! So at certain times we need to broaden out our awareness.
As far as watching a good movie and having mindfulness, I'm not sure whether that would be mindfulness. Whether we're mindful or not depends on what intention we're doing it for, sometimes it's easy to get swept away in pleasant things.