Visit my Best Movies of 2015 for my list of the year’s best films, complete with images, trailers and my comments on each movie – as well as their availability to rent on DVD and to stream. My top ten movies for 2015 are:
Ex Machina
Wild Tales
Leviathan
Brooklyn
Youth
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Creed
Spotlight
Phoenix
The Martian
The other best films of the year are: The End of the Tour, Love & Mercy, The Big Short, Corn Island, Mustang, I’ll See You in My Dreams, ’71, The Look of Silence and The Grief of Others.
I’m saving space for these promising 2015 films that I haven’t seen yet: The Revenant, Joy, The Hateful Eight and 45 Years.
Donna Reed in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE – the second best wife ever
Happy Anniversary to The Wife, also known as Lisa The Love of My Life!
We shared some of my favorite movie experiences this year.
She accompanied me to Noir City for a delicious double feature: Woman on the Run and Born to Be Bad.
She hosted our friends at the funniest Cinequest movie, at a packed California Theatre screening of the hilarious Wild Tales.
And she took me (all her idea) for my first visit to the Los Gatos Theatre. The movie was the James Bond flick Spectre. I loved the intimate and classy 30-seat theater with its black leather couches and ottomans! (Movie okay; theater fantastic.)
She tolerated my spending huge chunks of time at Cinequest, the San Francisco International Film Festival, Noir City, the SF Jewish Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival. As part of our vacation in Spain, she even tagged along to the Sevilla European Film Fest screening of Mustang.
And, of course, she teases me for “the Romanian abortion movie”, “the Icelandic penis movie” and “the Ukrainian deaf movie”.
She’s the biggest fan and supporter of this blog, and I appreciate her and love her. Happy Anniversary, Honey!
This blog exists because I’m an evangelist for outstanding films that may be overlooked by people who will appreciate them. You don’t need ME to tell you that The Big Short, Creed, Spotlight and The Martian are good movies. What’s important to me is that you don’t miss the less well-known gems:
The unforgettable coming of age dramedy Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. It’s available streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play and now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox.
The extraordinary Russian drama Leviathan, a searing indictment of society in post-Soviet Russia. Leviathan is available streaming on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.
The hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales. It’s available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.
The gentle, thoughtful and altogether fresh dramedy I’ll See You In My Dreams with Blythe Danner, available to stream from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Phoenix from Germany – a riveting psychodrama with a wowzer ending. It is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, YouTube and Google Play.
The brilliant psychological drama 99 Homes, available on DVD early in 2016.
The delightful family centric Meet the Patels – a documentary funnier than most comedies.
Rebecca Hall, Jason Bateman and Joel Edgerton in THE GIFT
Talk about overlooked – one of the year’s very best films, the exquisite and lyrical Georgian drama Corn Island, didn’t even get a US release. Neither did some other wonderful films that I saw at Cinequest: the narrative feature The Hamsters and the documentaries Aspie Seeks Love, Meet the Hitlers and Sweden’s Coolest National Team. Here’s hoping that I can tell you where to see them soon.
I love original approaches to cinema, and here are some from 2015 that work especially well:
Tangerine: This raucous and raunchy high energy comedy was shot on an iPhone. This is not a gimmick. The intimacy and urgency of this character-driven movie is a good fit with the iPhone. There really isn’t any call for helicopter shots or the like. The richness of the colors has been enhanced in post-production, so the iPhone cinematography isn’t any distraction at all. (See the shot above.)
Unfriended: This low-budget, high quality horror flick is about teenagers convening over social media. The ENTIRE MOVIE is comprised of their web cam screen shots. It works.
The Tribe: Although the The Tribe comes from Ukraine, we’re not going to hear any Ukrainian. Nor will we see any English subtitles. It’s set in a residential high school for the deaf, and the entire movie is in sign language. It’s novel for the hearing to experience an entire movie in which we hear only the sound of ambient noises – footsteps, creaking doors and the like – and we know that these sounds are NOT heard by the movie characters.
Wild Tales: This Argentine dark, dark comedy is one of my favorite movies of 2015. One key to its success is that it is an anthology. In a very wise move, writer-director Damián Szifron resisted any impulse to stretch one of the stories into a feature-length movie. Each of the stories is just the right length to extract every laugh and pack a punch.
Creed: Director Ryan Coogler and cinematographer Maryse Alberti have combined for the most impressive boxing scene since Raging Bull. The three-minute rounds are photographed as uninterrupted action (no cuts are apparent) from WITHIN the ring. We feel like we’re in the ring with the fighters – right at shoulder-level.
Victoria: The German indie thriller is filmed in one shot. One 138 minute shot. And this is reputedly a barn-burner of a thriller, not My Dinner With Andre. Victoria was in theaters for about a minute this year, and I haven’t seen it yet, which really annoys me. It’s available to stream on Amazon and iTunes, so I’ve downloaded it and hope to catch up to it over the Holidays.
There’s been a glimmer of feminism in many of the year’s best films. The most overtly feminist is Mustang, a fierce assault on the patriarchy of a traditional culture. But Brooklyn and Carolshare a feminist point of view. It’s no coincidence that the character that revolts in Ex Machinahas a female form. Ex Machina, Mustang and Brooklyn are are on my Best Movies of 2015.
Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie loved by critics (especially the female ones), is a rock ’em, sock’em action movie where women characters flee for their safety from male atrocities and then exact their revenge.
Testament of Youth is a biopic of the pioneering woman who leads a social movement. And from the 19th Century, there was the proto-feminist bodice ripper Far from the Madding Crowd. Chi-raq, Spike Lee’s modern inner city version of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, also has women taking charge of their society.
All of these movies are primarily about women and have female leads.
Even the protagonist’s love interest (usually a thankless and peripheral role) in Creed is accomplished and only interested in embracing the title character on her own terms.
What does this mean? Not that Hollywood is now the paradigm of gender equity. Just that there were some high quality movies this year, some women-centered, with a welcome perspective.
The Movie Gourmet doesn’t watch many horror movies, but 2015 featured some that were unusually inventive, scary and non-gory. It’s great to see young filmmakers bringing some intelligence and surprise (not just shockers) to this genre.
It Follows: Writer-director David Robert Mitchell has created a very scary horror film with an excellent soundtrack and a minimum of makeup, special effects and hardly any blood. 19-year-old Jay (Maika Monroe) has sex with a guy who then tells her that he has passed on to her a kind of supernatural infection – a monster will follow her and kill her if she doesn’t pass it on to someone else. The monster shambles along at zombie speed and takes the form of a different human being each time. It Follows is available on DVD from both Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
Unfriended: It’s the one-year anniversary of a teenage girl’s suicide, and her bullying peers convene via webcams on social media – but their computers are hijacked by an Unknown Force who starts wreaking revenge. Here’s a new one: the entire movie is compiled of the characters’ screenshots. Unfriended is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.
The House on Pine Street: So here’s the thing with every movie ghost story – either the ghost is real or the protagonist is crazy enough to hallucinate one. The beauty of The House on Pine Street is that the story is right down the middle – ya just don’t know until the end when the story takes us definitively in one direction – and then suddenly lurches right back to the other extreme. I saw The House on Pine Street at Cinequest, and it’s now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Deenis O’Keefe and Ann Sheridan in WOMAN ON THE RUN
My favorite movie-going experiences in 2015:
San Francisco’s Noir City film fest, with the double feature Woman on the Run and Born to Be Bad.
Cinequest, especially seeing the raucously funny Wild Tales with The Wife and friends at a packed California Theatre and seeing the exquisite and lyrical Georgian drama Corn Island on the recommendation of international film programmer Charlie Cockey.
Turner Classic Movies’ Summer of Darkness, program of film noir, which allowed me to discover two new noir favorites: 99 River Street and Witness to Murder.
The wonderful surprise of the very funny and family centric documentary Meet the Patels at a Camera Cinema Club, complete with a Skype interview with the Patel family itself.
A particularly strong program at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where I saw The End of the Tour, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, The Look of Silence, Listen to Me Marlon, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead and Very Semi-serious.
The Wife taking me to a luxurious screening of Spectre at the Los Gatos Theater with its black leather sofas and ottomans.
Happening to be in Spain during the first weekend of the Sevilla European Film Festival, and getting to catch Mustang with The Wife and my niece Maeve.
How many of the original cast members of Star Wars can you identify in the photo above? Everybody is going to get Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill. Scroll down for the others.
From left, they are Harrison Ford (Han Solo), David Prowse, (Darth Vader), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Kenny Baker (R2-D2), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker). Anthony Daniels played C3PO. All seven are still alive; Kenny Baker, born in 1934, is the oldest.
My movie taste is pretty much in line with critical consensus, but there are some instances where I think other folks are WRONG. Here are four movies that are getting year-end recognition, but not from me.
Mad Max: Fury Road: Some of my favorite critics, Manohla Dargis and Christy Lemire, have even named Mad Max to the #1 spot on their lists. It’s 120 minutes long, of which at least 105 minutes are chase scenes that are really mobile battles. They are remarkable battles, but they are just battles. Writer-director George Miller has produced an adrenaline-filled thrill ride with some unique elements. But there just really isn’t anything exceptional – characters, dialogue, plot, setting – besides the action. I enjoyed Mad Max, but I don’t rate it as a great movie – I sure wasn’t thinking about it the day after I saw it.
Inside Out: I’m a huge Pixar admirer, and I usually walk out of a Pixar movie THRILLED. That didn’t happen with Inside Out, a smart and entertaining movie, but one that got more attention from my head than my heart.
The Clouds of Sils Maria: Man, what a disappointment! Somehow The Clouds of Sils Maria lets us lose interest in the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche and wastes a performance by Kristen Stewart that made her the first American actress to win a César (the French Oscar). Sometimes confusing as well as boring, it’s just a muddled mess.
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck: An odd case of too much insight. I liked the talking heads that told the story of Cobain’s life before Nirvana. But Cobain’s own thoughts, feelings and artistic impulses as revealed through his journal and scribblings did not serve to elevate him. In fact, it made him LESS interesting.
You don’t need to wait until December to see my list of top 2015 films because, beginning in late March, I keep a running list – Best of 2015 – So Far. By the end of the calendar year, I will have a Top Ten plus another 8-18 or so. I’ll publish my official year end list on December 31, but here’s a sneak preview of my Best Movies of 2015 (I’ve removed the “- So Far”).
Four of the movies on the list are in theaters right now: Brooklyn, Spotlight, Creed and The Martian. Eight films on my list are ALREADY available to stream or rent on DVD. Throughout the Holidays, I’ve been featuring these in my weekly Movies to See Right Now posts.
I haven’t yet seen these movies, which I believe will be candidates for my final list: The Big Short, Carol, The Danish Girl, 45 Years, Youth, The Revenant, The Hateful Eight and Room. When I see them, I’ll revise my list accordingly.
