I didn’t think this was an amazing year for film, but that might be tainted by the big summer releases (and the list of films I still haven’t seen, which includes ROOM, CAROL, and BRIDGE OF SPIES). I watched as stuff like AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, ANT-MAN, JURASSIC WORLD, FANTASTIC FOUR, TOMORROWLAND, TERMINATOR: GENISYS, TRAINWRECK, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION, and even INSIDE OUT managed to disappoint me, to various degrees, with only MAD MAX to hold onto in that key moviegoing season (the comedies, including TED 2, SPY, and VACATION, didn’t fare much better).
Still, there was stuff I saw, both in festivals and in general release, that managed to stick with me, including a few films that I will no doubt be revisiting many times as the years go by. Here’s my top 10 list, plus a few also-rans that, on another day, might’ve found their way into one of the ten slots:
10. THE LITTLE DEATH
I haven’t seen this film pop up on any other year-end lists, but it was easily my favorite romantic comedy in several years. The biggest reason is likely that it doesn’t focus on a will-they-won’t-they relationship between two young, attractive people that you know will end up together; Josh Lawson’s film is more concerned about the ways we sustain the relationships we already have, and the lengths we are willing to go through to make our partners happy. The narrative is built around several couples attempting to satisfy each other’s sexual curiosities and fetishes, always with disastrous results. Lawson plays a foot fetishist who tries to accommodate his wife’s rape fantasies, a house-husband can only get aroused when his wife is dosed with sleeping pills, etc. The film has two huge things going for it. The first is that it’s absolutely hilarious. Nearly every joke works, none of it feels like the cookie-cutter bullshit from Hollywood rom-coms, and there are a number of huge, memorable laugh moments that make me smile just thinking about them. The second is that, by focusing on older, settled people rather than sexyyoungthings, there’s an everyday, business-as-usual vibe that makes the various dips into sexual “perversion” all the more striking and hilarious. It’s plain as day that these unconventional forms of sexuality are completely foreign both to this environment and to these characters, and we understand the catharsis these people get by going to these extremes because their lives seem so plain and average otherwise. These are normal, adult people with stable relationships and lives making an effort to sustain said stability, which is something that mainstream comedies tend to overlook. I’ve been a fan of Lawson’s work as an actor for years, but this movie was savvy, clever, and hilarious enough to make me instantly onboard with whatever he ends up writing and directing next.
9. WHERE TO INVADE NEXT
I came of age in a time where the U.S. had taken an economic surplus and a decade of nearly conflict-free international relations, and blown it in as massive a way as I expect to see in my lifetime. While the conservatives in power were fucking everyone in the world, including us Americans, over in a big way, I took to guys like Michael Moore in a big way, looking at the facts and history that led us to that point without blindly subscribing to anyone’s particular notions on how the government (and the world) should be run. But this is my favorite work of Moore’s, both in printed and filmed form, and what I’d think would have the most impact on those not onboard with his populist, socialist leanings. By looking abroad, and interviewing citizens of foreign nations about the various aspects of their respective living situations that are almost unquestionably better than ours, he seems both more optimistic and pragmatic than ever. He lets the policies and lifestyles of the various nations highlight what we’re doing wrong here, rather than pointing his finger at ourselves and being the TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE version of himself. If anything, his attempts at jokiness and injecting his personality into the narrative is the film’s greatest flaw, and the only times where it feels contrived or forceful. The subjects, clearly average people of all walks of life from around the globe, are making his points better than he ever could with gags, animated sequences, or montages, and they provide a human face to abstract notions like laws and public policy that go a long way in letting us know what life in these other places is actually like. For once, I walked out of a Michael Moore film thinking not, “Fuck the government,” or “Fuck big business,” but rather, “What if we tried that!” and “We could do this!” I share Moore’s anger that the MPAA has slapped this (and, unbelievably, every film he has produced) with an R-rating; this is exactly the kind of thing that would’ve restored a big of my snowballing cynicism as a kid, and has the potential to make audience members just a little more open-minded and maybe even more optimistic for the future of our country.
8. TALE OF TALES
Grand, cinematic fantasy with little dialogue and a European bend that feels both refreshingly new and as traditional as the Brothers Grimm. I eventually took to GAME OF THRONES, and I diligently watch every new episode the night of its premiere, but I’ve always been a little turned off that it often can feel like a big-budgeted BBC drama, more heavily dependent on dialogue and backroom meetings than the dragons and high spectacle that bolster the marketing campaign. Not this, man. This is more baroque and abstract, told largely visually with the help of eye-popping costuming, sets, and shots that seem ripped right out of a storybook. The stories themselves are bizarre little tales that mix humor, tragedy, and horror willy nilly, and the elusive tone might be a little too much for American audiences weaned on the sincere grandness of LOTR and GOT. The recognizable faces, including Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, John C. Reilly, and Toby Jones, do effective work, but completely blend into the grander tapestry and never feel bigger than the story they are featured in. There’s violence and sex, to be sure, but nothing compared to your average THRONES ep, and nothing that could be construed as exploitative or even graphic. There aren’t too many fantasy films you can safely call “beautiful” or “elegant,” but both adjectives absolutely apply to this particular flick. Hope this builds a nice cult audience over time, because it deserves a spot in the smallish pantheon of grade-A cinematic fantasy films.
7. STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS
1. I never expected Boyega to go as goofy and uncertain as he did. I don’t think we’ve ever had a STAR WARS hero as much of a sweaty, muttering, confused flip-flopper, as quick to run away from danger as he is to jump headlong into it to break away from the First Order or to save his new buddy/possible love interest, Rey. 2. Oscar Isaac’s first words to Kylo Ren hit me like a bolt. This was the new trilogy, a world removed from the stagy, pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue of the prequels. It felt immediate, human, and cool…you know, like STAR WARS. 3. Female Jedi. “She’s good at too many things!” Fuck off. Who ever said that about Ender, or Bruce Wayne, or JESUS? 4. Thank you, J.J., for giving us Han Solo back. We missed him. A lot. And that was him, no question. 5. Kylo Ren is what we all wanted young Anakin to be, confused, conflicted, but nonetheless badder than shit and totally evil. I’ve heard complaints that he’s not as scary as Darth Vader, and even that he’s weaker because “he lost to a girl.” Well, I’m over the moon that they didn’t regurgitate “the baddest brother in the galaxy,” and that the new villain has a real arc and personality to go along with his tragic backstory. 6. That shot when Kylo holds the saber next to Rey’s head, and you see the crackling from within the blade. Like with the transporter shots in STAR TREK, this is J.J. filling in the blanks of imagery we’ve all been familiar with since childhood, and doing it justice. 7. Rey deactivates the Falcon’s engines and backflips, giving Finn his clear shot at the pursuing Tie Fighter. Bliss. 8. The new Stormtroopers have a weapon that can actually deflect a lightsaber. About fucking time. 9. “That’s not how the Force works!!” 10. A better tag than any Marvel movie to date that still serves as a perfect, complete ending for the story in question. Man, Rian’s gonna make that movie his bitch.
Let’s just hope they aren’t quite as similar in terms of narrative as the OT from here on out…
6. WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
Some of my favorite comedies of all time have jokes that fail to land, sometimes spectacularly. This is a comedy where every single joke made me laugh. As Forrest said, “That’s all I got to say about that.”
5. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
What a rarity: a big-budget tentpole that lets its visuals do the talking. So many of these franchise flicks are overly concerned with world-building and sequel-hinting, to the point of alienating the architects of the franchise to begin with (*cough*AVENGERS*cough*). Here’s one where you could make a very convincing argument that none of the previous films have even happened, or that the protagonist is not actually the same guy from the first three movies. Hell, I almost agree with the notion that Furiosa is actually the star of this story (though I still feel you are seeing her primarily from Max’s perspective). It’s a “guy movie” that celebrates women, where the women are the most complete, well-rounded characters, and where an all-female tribe, straight-up called “The Vulvani”, is portrayed as the cavalry. We worried for years whether Hardy would be able to do justice to the role that made Mel Gibson famous, but in vain; Hardy’s take is a world apart from Mel’s anti-heroism, and the actor completely makes the role his own. He mumbles his dialogue, shoots at innocents, and has got crazy written all over him. Miller had the actor who played the villain in the first MAD MAX come back to play the villain again, 36 years later, and he’s even scarier and more menacing than he was as the Toecutter. We actually get a glimpse into the inner life of one of those evil slaves we’ve seen working for the various MAD MAX bad guys, and see the tragedy and humor in his sad, doomed, irradiated soul. Miller has the balls to have Max’s big solo action beat occur OFF-CAMERA, and to have him donate blood to Furiosa as his big romantic gesture instead of a kiss or, worse, a promise to stay behind with her. This isn’t quite the injection-of-crack for me that it is for many others, who are saying it’ll be a travesty if it doesn’t win Best Picture and other such hyperbolic nonsense, but it is the ideal example for this kind of decades-later sequel, and the template for what a big-budget, R-rated action tentpole could and should be.
4. LOVE & MERCY
Madness is as dependable a narrative device as any, since the times of Shakespeare, but losing one’s mind is such a subjective, personal experience that it’s near-impossible to portray it without shortchanging the experience to satisfy the plot (anyone can list a number of films where a character “snaps out of it” at the perfect moment). By splitting the narrative between when Brian Wilson started to lose his marbles and when he finally started to get his shit back together, you get to see the before, during, and after of his struggles with mental illness, and Bill Pohlad does a phenomenal job of putting you in the musician’s shoes during all of it. The scenes of young Wilson testing his mental and emotional boundaries while making PET SOUNDS and SMILE are among the best portrayals of an artist creating something on camera I’ve ever seen, and the marvelous soundscape helps us emphathize with his precise, controlling, and thoroughly controversial production methods.
3. EX MACHINA
Could you really create a functional A.I. by mapping everyone’s Google searches? Could the creation of the first sentient robot be an artistic undertaking made by a mad, limitlessly resourceful genius in isolation rather than a corporation? What is the point of making a humanoid android, anyway? What drove Oscar Isaac’s Nathan to start drinking like Dan Harmon at Oktoberfest? Why did Ava leave Caleb locked up in there? Was she scared of him blowing up her spot once she tried to blend into the human world? Did she ever genuinely care about his feelings? Which one of these characters, if any, is the bad guy? And, of course, the big enchilada: is there any possible way of knowing, for certain, whether an artificial being is actually feeling human emotions or simply emulating them so perfectly that we can’t tell the difference? I love that a movie can make me ask so many questions while still providing me with a complete, satisfying experience, and Alex Garland has made me an instant fan of him as a director with his ability to get these lofty ideas out through humor, A+ acting, and a pitch-perfect sense of mise-en-scene. Truly glad this one got the distribution and attention that it rightfully deserved.
2. TOO LATE
It’s not often that I’m as wowed by a film’s technical artistry as I am invested in the story. Tarantino, P.T.A., and the Coens usually pull it off, but the last time I remember feeling that way was GRAVITY. Dennis Hauck’s TOO LATE was that film for me this year. Holy shit, what a joy it was to watch this movie unfold in five unbroken takes as two concurrent thoughts ran through my head: “How the fuck did they pull this off?!” and “What the fuck’s going on, and how is our hero involved?” By the time I saw them, many of the plot points and narrative twists of RESERVOIR DOGS, PULP FICTION, and JACKIE BROWN had been long ruined, so I never got to experience that feeling of putting the puzzle pieces together while seeing those movies fresh. Here, I was beaming like an idiot as the five chapters revealed each missing tidbit of the story, and the way all the interlocking plot points converge managed to be simultaneously satisfying, tragic, funny, and fucking cool. John Hawkes’ Sampson is cool in the way THE LONG GOODBYE’s Marlowe was cool, all shaggy resilience, jaded exhaustion, and subtle, rock-steady integrity. He’s just as unlikely a private eye as Gould was, and just as mindblowingly original and perfect a creation. But I could not begin to fathom how Hauck managed to intertwine the long takes with the story so seamlessly, to the point where even long lulls and transitions feel totally relevant and pertinent to the plot. The decision not to break the shots does a lot to evoke the decidedly L.A. vibe, where getting from place to place takes a while and where everyone’s bubble takes a good, strong poke to burst. The cinematography and sheer technical ambition are so overwhelmingly awesome that it’s easy to blow this off as a case of “style over substance,” but that’s dismissing the top-notch writing and acting on display. This movie worked for me on all levels, and I was just as emotionally involved in the various tangents of the narrative as I was mindblown by how Hauck and his D.P. pulled these five tirelessly rehearsed, immaculately executed shots off. I can’t wait to see this again, and for everyone in the country to get a shot at seeing this delightful gem of a California noir with perhaps my favorite John Hawkes performance I’ve seen to date.
1. THE HATEFUL EIGHT
This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me or regularly reads my stuff; I’m something of a Tarantino junkie, and only DEATH PROOF and DJANGO UNCHAINED wouldn’t top my best of lists from their respective years. But this one was something special, even for QT. My favorite film of his has always been RESERVOIR DOGS, and his homage to bottle episodes of shows like THE VIRGINIAN and GUNSMOKE manages to come the closest of any film since then to matching its tension and venom, but presented in as grandiose a manner as any of his films. I knew the machinations of the plot and much of the dialogue, if not the final chapter (which was heavily revised after the script leaked), but I had no idea of what it would actually feel like to sit in Minnie’s Haberdashery for the better part of three hours watching these guys (and one lady) face off, and it still managed to make me feel tense and excited even knowing how it would all end up going down. We knew when we heard the cast list that the performances would be terrific, but special shout-outs go to Walton Goggins, whom (along with Amber Tamblyn and James Remar) I was rather sure would get recast between the live-read and production, and Kurt Russell, another unsurprising fave if you know me at all. I consider myself rather well-versed in the Russell repertoire, but I’ve never seen him hit quite the same notes as when John Ruth talks about and reads the Lincoln Letter. I never thought I’d actually feel bad for Snake Plissken in a movie, but when he admits how affected he was by the letter, those beautiful blue eyes got to me in a big way. I love Tarantino’s new ending, which adds more emphasis to Russell’s role and feels more complete than the original one, which I enjoyed for completely different reasons. Watching Mr. Blonde and Mr. Orange navigate each other once again made my RES DOGS love tingle all over, and my god, what a joy it is to see Jennifer Jason Leigh (who Bruce Campbell once referred to as “an acting machine”) getting all this attention again. This is a perfect example of why she’s such a prize. I’m finally seeing this movie in 70mm tonight, and I’m counting the minutes ’til I can hear the rest of Ennio Morricone’s score and see all of Robert Richardson’s cold-as-ice 70mm cinematography. It’s really hard to compare Tarantino’s best films against one another, but there is no doubt that this latest masterpiece earns a spot on that list.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
FURIOUS 7
I’ve grown to love this series, and this one had the biggest stunts, the craziest cast (welcome, Kurt!), and the best villain yet in the form of Jason Statham’s Shaw. For once, they have someone who can believably face off against Vin Diesel’s Dom and not get his face smashed in and/or join his side. Paul Walker’s homage at the end plays a little heavy on multiple viewings, but I still find myself touched at how much love they give the actor in Brian’s sendoff. You didn’t see that in the endings of THE CROW or HUNGER GAMES.
BONE TOMAHAWK
Because this list still doesn’t have enough Kurt Russell on it. While I still lament that the film didn’t quite have the budget to satisfy my bloodlust (man, if you introduce some dynamite, we better see it explode!), perhaps I should be more impressed that S. Craig Mahler was able to get a story this large-scaled on the screen so fully realized and so perfectly cast, top-to-bottom (why, hello there, Sean Young and Alan Frog!). Some of these moments had my Beyond Fest audience, certainly not the most squeamish bunch, howling in disgust, and the movie feels so much like a legit western that it really knocks your socks off when things start getting really grisly. I think HATEFUL EIGHT sort of shuffled this one under the rug a bit, but it’s even more of a traditional western than that film, and deserves to be seen by western fans, horror aficionados, and Russell fans alike.
ANOMALISA
If I’d only seen this once, I would’ve undoubtedly put it on the proper list, but the second viewing didn’t quite hold me under the same spell as it did the first time. The jokes about the humdrum nature of Michael Stone’s life, and his ingratiating interactions with everyone besides Lisa, didn’t make my sides split quite as hard, and the low-key nature of the story didn’t have the same grip on me as the first time around. But I still adore Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s masterful stop-motion animated black comedy, both for the brilliant animation and the decision to keep it low-key, intimate, and human despite the limitlessness of the format. Lisa singing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is as poignant of a moment as I saw onscreen this year, and I’ve never seen sadness and beauty exist side-by-side so effortlessly in a Kaufman film before. It’s amazing that Kaufman’s made Tom Noonan one of his go-to actors, and those line-readings are going to make us chuckle even when we watch this years from now. I’m glad to see Leigh getting attention for this role, which is so soft and sweet that I couldn’t recognize her voice the first time around, but Thewlis also deserves love for how much bedraggled middle-age angst he injects into Michael. I could not decide whether Stone feels genuine kinship with Lisa, or if he was just praying on her because of his own unsatisfying romantic life, and I can’t imagine it’s easy to get that kind of ambiguity across in a voice performance, which Thewlis does excellently. After SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, I thought Kaufman had gotten a little too esoteric for my tastes, but this has restored my excitement for his weirdo, one-of-a-kind work in a big way.
