2015 was an
odd year.
I caught ~60
releases, but still felt a bit tuned out this year. Perhaps it’s just December,
a month where I’m always consumed with regret and shame over all the films I
missed. I’m only half kidding.
Still, I’ve
put together a top 20, and jotted down some of my thoughts on the year. I’ll do
the countdown first, and then the cranky, analytical, frankly skippable stuff
afterwards.
20. Love
& Mercy – A great cast and savvy attention to sound design allow this Brian
Wilson musician biopic to transcend the genre’s typical reverential history
lesson pitfalls. Paul Dano is great as young Brian, somewhat overshadowing the
serviceable John Cusack as washed-up Brian, while Elizabeth Banks and Paul
Giamatti are great is supporting roles.
19.
Marshland – True Detective’s Spanish nephew. Marshland is a 1980s-set noir, in
which a pair of anti-buddy cops attempt to solve a series of murders in rural
swamp country, uncovering the usual conspiracy, but also some personal secrets
of their own. Wallow in the offhand perfectionism of the period detail and immaculate
sense of place supplemented by occasional overhead “god’s-eye” cinematography.
18. The
Invitation – Two years after the death of their only son and subsequent
divorce, Will, along with his new girlfriend, is invited to a dinner party
hosted by his ex-wife Eden and her new husband, ostensibly to achieve some emotional
closure by commemorating their lost child. Several other close friends have
been invited, most of them somewhat out of touch with the hosts, who’ve been on
retreat in Mexico. It’s an awkward get-together, and the taciturn Will
increasingly suspects something is not right. This is a brooding low-budget
thriller that amplifies paranoia and social anxieties into a form of horror
that kept me guessing, but also relating. A hard combination to juggle. Director
Karyn Kusama disliked her Hollywood experience on the thoroughly mediocre Jennifer’s
Body, and returned to low-budget filmmaking in exchange for having her own way,
including a lot more diversity than the genre usual accommodates.
17.
Anomalisa – Charlie Kaufman’s previous film, Synecdoche New York, is one of my all-time
favorites, and was bound to be a tough act to follow. Anomalisa, a story about
a middle-aged motivational speaker having a one night stand while attending a
customer service convention in Ohio (“Try the Chili!”), lacks his previous film’s
existential ambition, but it’s still smarter, funnier and more original than
98% of cinema. Some immediate signs that this isn’t your typical midlife crisis
indie movie: all the characters are puppets and all of them except two are
voiced by the infuriatingly cordial-bland Tom Noonan.
16.
What We
Do in the Shadows – Doesn’t this sound insufferable: a reality-TV style film
about four New Zealand dudes living as roommates? But Taika Waititi (Boy) adds
a brilliant twist: they’re all vampires. The plot revolves around the
reluctantly accepted new addition Nick, who clashes with self-centered bon
vivant Deacon, 8000 year-old Petyr and a rival gang of werewolves. The
screenplay explores the premise thoroughly without wearing out its welcome, and
the silly but morbid skit-based comedy is sustained by performances that play
off each other effortlessly.
15.
The End
of the Tour – Yet another biopic on my list! I must be getting old. But this
highly focused, carefully modulated and relatively honest look at a brief
encounter, perhaps just short of friendship, between writers David Lipsky and
David Foster Wallace, highlights one of my favorite things: the sublime flow of
a good conversation. Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg both inhabit their
characters with grace and sincerity. Despite being framed around Wallace’s high
profile suicide, the drama is wisely low key, more interested in Wallace’s
fundamental humanity and need to express himself in everyday contemporary
terms, than in his much touted genius. This is a quiet film, but a very full
one. Its main shortcoming is that it isn’t as good as reading one of his books.
14. Wild Tales – 6 black comedic shorts from Argentina, themed around revenge in many shapes and sizes. Anthology films rarely work for me, but this one has a cohesive core without repeated itself and is ordered so that each tale overtops the previous. Lots of observations about topics as diverse as road rage, love, bureaucracy and the media. Revenge is a theme that cinema has done to death, but Wild Tales knows how to escalate things with just the right degree of cynical wit and gleeful absurdity.
13. The Last
Five Years – A relatively straightforward adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s not-so-straightforward musical, The Last Five Years spans the rise and fall of a relationship between
novelist Jamie (Jeremy Jordan, a bit out of his depth on the acting side) and
actress Cathy (Anna Kendrick, awesome as always). Their careers go in opposite
directions, with Jamie dealing with fame even more poorly than Cathy with
failure. The film’s uncompromisingly literary lyrics and holistic perspective
on the stages of relationships are paired well with an experimental structure:
Cathy’s story is told chronologically backwards, her songs alternating with
Jamie’s story as it unfolds chronologically forwards.
12.
Spotlight – A team of Boston investigative journalists gradually chip away at
the systemic nature of priests molesting children and high-ranking church
officials covering it up. Sure, this is ensemble Oscar-bait, but it is really,
really good ensemble Oscar-bait, saved from histrionics, heroics and
finger-wagging by Tom McCarthy’s (The Station Agent, The Visitor) borderline
obsessive desire not to sensationalize. In fact, by dialing down the dramatic, the
film managed to ratchet up the emotional impact, at least for jaded viewers
like me. Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Michael Keaton are all top notch.
Liev Schreiber is the best he’s ever been.
11.
Room –
Ma is a 22-year-old woman who has raised her 5-year-old son, Jack, in
captivity, locked in a small room somewhere in suburbia where she is kept by a kidnapper
named Nick. It’s an instantly creepy, troubling, stressful set-up, anchored by
a note-perfect Brie Larson (Short Term 12). The first half of the film would
have been fantastic alone, but it’s the second half that shows real maturity,
psychological insight and follow-through. This is really two great films, with
different genres and tones fitted together seamlessly.
10.
It
Follows – This year’s breakout cult horror film. Spoilers ahead. Jay’s older
boyfriend Hugh seems like a nice guy. Though he sometimes acts strange, they
eventually hook up in his car in an empty lot behind some abandoned buildings.
The romantic moment is shattered when, afterwards, he chloroforms her and ties
her up. But just when you think you’ve stumbled into some awful torture porn,
It Follows takes off in a really fascinating direction. Hugh isn’t a sadist; he
just wants Jay to understand the gravity of the STD he’s just given her: a creature
that can look like anyone will start following her. Slowly, implacably,
unstoppably. If it catches her, she will die in extreme pain. And then it will
return to hunting Hugh. Her only long-term survival plan is to pass it on to
someone else. It Follows is a scary atmospheric thriller and a thoughtful allegory
for teenage sexuality, surprisingly free from crass exploitation and cheap
payoffs.
9. Tangerine
–Tangerine has to be the year’s most surprising critical darling. Two take-no-prisoners
trash-talking transgender sex workers, Sin-Dee and Alexandra, meet up at Donut
Time on Christmas Eve, just after Sin-Dee is released from a 28 day prison
sentence. Alexandra accidentally lets slip that Sin-Dee’s pimp/boyfriend
Chester two-timed her with a cis-gender gal while she was in lock-up, and
Sin-Dee is off on a bloodthirsty but oddly hilarious vengeance quest. A
beleaguered Armenian taxi driver also gets involved. Shot on iPhones along the
Sunset Strip, this is a film full of energy, guts, genuine friendship and a
fresh comic voice. Much better than its po-faced East Coast indie darling
counterpart, Heaven Knows What, about homeless heroin addicts.
8.
Inside
Out – Do I need to talk about this? It’s a Pixar film. You already saw it.
Superb CG, story-telling, pacing, etc. They have a formula, but it works well,
especially tucked behind such a beautiful and actually riskily original façade:
personality traits controlling a teenage girl’s brain and exploring the
landscapes of her mind. It’s also brave enough to dispense with both romantic
subplots and villains. All “kids” movies should aspire to be this good.
7. Clouds of
Sils Maria – A crafty, sophisticated, multi-layered enigma in which Juliette
Binoche plays Maria, a middle-aged actress offered the role of the older woman
in a play about a May-December lesbian relationship. A few decades past, she’d
achieved her breakthrough to superstardom playing the younger woman, a role now
being offered to hot up-and-comer and tabloid regular Jo-Ann (Chloe
Grace-Moretz). Maria’s real life isn’t far from her art, as her relationship
with much younger personal assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart, winning all
kinds of awards!) is fraught with subterranean sexual tension and power
struggles. Director Olivier Assayas’s career has been uneven, but never
uninteresting, and this mesmerizing, ambiguous showcase of serious acting
talent and subtle psychological warfare is his best work yet.
6.
Embrace
of the Serpent – A German botanist in 1909 and an American in 1940 both embark
on similar quests for a rare legendary flower, capable of restoring dreams to
the dreamless, supposedly found deep in the Amazon. They are guided by
Karamakate, a shaman who doubts their ideologies and their intentions and who,
by 1940, is suffering from severe memory loss. The lopsided two timeframe
structure is a strange choice, but allows Colombian director Ciro Guerra to explore
the unpredictable long-term ramifications of cultural clashes, both violently
physical and dangerously mental. This is definitely a thinking man’s adventure
film, with beguiling mystery wisps blooming out in every direction as their
canoes take them deeper into a land feverishly rejecting its heart transplant. Shot
in dense, evocative black-and-white.
5. Ex
Machina – Caleb is a hotshot programmer who wins a chance to meet reclusive AI
genius Nathan, who lives in an inaccessible high-tech glacier-side bungalow. He
never quite finds his balance. Nathan immediately begins toying with him under
cover of a disingenuous friendship and saddles him with an unexpected challenge:
deliver a Turing test to Ava, a robot who looks, talks and possibly even thinks
like a human. Caleb finds himself emotionally involved, attracted to Ava’s
curiosity, intelligence and vulnerability, not to mention her sleek packaging,
while trying to maneuver out from under Nathan’s thumb. Meanwhile the
maestro is tortured by his visions of the coming future, a future he is
compelled to create, but his condescension and narcissism have left him even
more isolated than his imprisoned inventions. Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson and
Alicia Vikander are perfectly cast, and provide much-needed human stakes to
underpin the cerebral dialog. It isn’t often I would give these two awards to
the same film: best debate about technology and best dance scene.
4. Son of
Saul – Does the world need another Holocaust film? There’ve been a lot, and I
have to admit I go into them with a degree of skepticism. After all, what is
there left to say that a film is even capable of communicating? Son of Saul has
an answer, but it can’t be paraphrased. It has to be seen. This is a harrowing,
soul-crushing odyssey through the inner workings of a the world’s most heinous
machine, the concentration camp, seen from the perspective of a victim-employee
determined to provide a proper Jewish burial for a boy who may or may not be
his bastard son. The relentless over-the-shoulder long takes are technically
brilliant, but even more brilliant because they force us not to do what we long
to do: look away.
3.
Mad Max:
Fury Road – A glorious, nonstop post-apocalyptic desert car chase led by
one-armed mechanic/warrior Charlize Theron and subdued, inarticulate Tom Hardy.
The two, by necessity, learn to operate as a well-oiled machine as they attempt
to outrun the enraged mutant tyrant whose harem they’ve just stolen. Pursued by
an eccentric army of inventive vehicles of destruction, they leave a path of
carnage and mayhem behind them while bonding through body language and mutual
respect. Memorable action sequences and visual flourishes abound. The
stripped-down script is ruthlessly efficient. Nothing else this year approached
Mad Max in terms of adrenaline.
2. Gett: The
Trial of Viviane Amsalem – A protracted Jewish divorce case set largely in a
single nondescript white-washed room might not seem like a barrel of fun (it
isn’t), but as an intersection of great writing, directing and acting (the
astounding Ronit Elkabetz in all three cases, with some help from her friends),
you can’t find much better. Viviane and Shimon have been married for twenty
years. Viviane has been unhappy almost since day one, and longs to be free of him.
Shimon claims to still love her and points out that he has never hit her or
given her religious grounds for divorce, though it’s clear to everyone that he’s
awful to live with. In the course of two hours, their relationship is slit
open, dissected and left exposed until it starts to stink. Nobody, not the
lawyers, judges, witnesses or the couple themselves, seem to be able to do
anything about it. It is uncomfortable, but in the best sense: unbearably honest,
human and hard to resolve.
1. Sicario –
Following a raid on a suburban drug lab turned mass grave north of the
US-Mexico border, FBI SWAT agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is attached to a
clandestine joint operation to extradite a high ranking officer in the drug
syndicate responsible. Her glib but reticent new boss (Josh Brolin) and his ununiformed
partner (Benicio del Toro) immediately strike her as shady, but they reassure
her that their legally murky methods are fully sanctioned from above, and they
certainly prove quite effective. Kate gets embroiled deeper and deeper, fatally
unwilling to accept that she is being used as a pawn in a game played above her
pay grade and below the moral high-ground. Sicario is a series of linked set
pieces alternating white-knuckle tension and bursts of chilling violence. It’s
also a pessimistic exploration of border spaces, both national and ethical, and
what it costs us to cross them. But ultimately the winning combination is three
people at the top of their game: director Denis Villeneuve, cinematographer
Roger Deakins and actress Emily Blunt.
I never feel
like it’s been a great year until I have to bump films I really liked off my
top 20. Some of the titles that were edged off towards the end include:
Blind – A sightless
Swedish novelist wrestles with her sexual insecurities.
White God –
A gritty Hungarian parable in which a young girl is forced to abandon her pet
dog, who struggles to survive on the street before toughening up and leading a blood-soaked
(but also kind of adorable) canine revolution against humanity.
The Martian - A nearly ideal adaptation of a book into a movie, with some of my qualms about the source material (character development in particular) fixed by strong acting on Matt Damon's part, playing a resourceful astronaut stranded on Mars.
Beasts of No
Nation – Cary Fukunaga provides gorgeously lensed reasons why you don’t want to
be a child soldier in an African civil war, in case you had some doubts.
Court – An
Indian satire of the justice system, in which a street poet is arrested for
inciting a sewer worker to suicide (actually a workplace accident caused by
grossly inadequate safety equipment), and a deconstruction of the legal
thriller, showing the mindless bureaucracy, corruption and apathy under the
thin coating of law, procedure and middle-class morality.
General
thoughts on film in 2015:
Although I
often focus on the negative, I want to start out by saying how much I really
enjoyed so many movies from 2015! It was a triumphant year for middlebrow
offerings (Spotlight, The End of the Tour, Love & Mercy, Carol, Beasts of
No Nation) and fantastic acting, especially from actresses in roles actually
worthy of them (Sicario, Gett, Clouds of Sils Maria, Mad Max, Room, Phoenix,
Inside Out, Girlhood, Heaven Knows What). There were a lot of really original
and personal creative works (Anomalisa, The Duke of Burgundy, The Kindergarten
Teacher) and exciting debut/breakthrough directors.
For genre fans,
there was a little of everything. Some excellent sci-fi (Mad Max, Ex Machina,
The Martian, Inside Out), creepy horror (It Follows, The Invitation, Goodnight
Mommy) and even comedies that I actually found funny (Tangerine, What We Do in
the Shadows, Mistress America, Wild Tales), though be aware that my sense of
humor is highly suspect.
Meanwhile,
the studio franchise factories offered us an unprecedented number of marquee sequels
and reboots (Avengers, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, James Bond, Rocky, some
increasingly indistinguishable superhero stuff) setting box office records, but
rarely offering anything fresh or interesting. A couple exceptions were Mission
Impossible, with Rebecca Ferguson redeeming Rogue Nation’s fun but otherwise
formulaic entry, and Mad Max, which I’d never have predicted being my favorite
summer blockbuster so far this decade. I also have a bit of a crush on The Man
from UNCLE, with its appealing cast and 60s fashion sense.
On the flip
side, critics raved about many an art film from established auteurs (Hou’s The
Assassin, Alonso’s Jauja, German’s Hard to Be a God, Sissako’s Timbuktu) that
failed to connect with me.
The
Assassin, in particular, baffled me. One of Asia’s most influential directors
of the 80s and 90s decides to bring his high art sensibilities to the martial
arts genre and critics were quick to toast it as a masterpiece. I was truly
excited to see what would result! But what a painful theater-going experience:
pretty, but totally lifeless. Hou married the vacuity of navel-gazing
slow-cinema to the plotless confusion of bad kung fu, eschewing action,
character, historical context, thematic relevance and emotional depth in favor
of static tableaux shot through diaphanous curtains (cue thunderous critical
applause). After the festival screening in St. Louis, the audience poured into
nearby restaurants and bars discussing the disaster.
Hard to Be a
God, on the other hand, while long, slow, grim, brutal, muddy, rainy, ugly, unpleasant and
monochromatic, at least had a truly distinctive vision that I found itchingly
compelling though I wish more (or really, anything) had been done with its
sci-fi medieval plot adapted from a Strugatsky brother novel.
Jauja is
Argentine minimalist Lisandro Alonso’s most accessible film to date, but it is
still utterly impenetrable. A-list star Viggo Mortensen spends the entire film
looking as confused as I felt. He plays a Danish explorer lost in the Argentine
dessert while searching for his child. He hallucinates an encounter with an old
hermit who may be his daughter from the future. Then the film abruptly cuts to
a girl waking up in a mansion and wandering a forest in the present day. I’m
probably making it sound better than it is. For a superior 2015
colonial-explorer-hallucinating-in-the-Latin-American-wilderness art film, stick
with Embrace of the Serpent.
Update:
A few films I watched after already publishing this post: The Revenant (Mind-blowing visuals and high-grade Leo attached to a so-so script), The Hateful Eight (Talky, gory and stetched to the breaking point; I'm a fan!), Brooklyn (Feel-good immigration tale. Solid, but I'd rather see a more challenging film about modern immigrants who are ANYTHING other than Irish or Italian).
Among the
films that I missed or haven’t yet caught include 45 Years, Victoria,
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, Chiraq, Grangs
of Wasseypur, Bridge of Spies, 99 Homes and Youth. What do you recommend?
