Less than a week into 2016, and already my thoughts on the year past are coming into view. Personally, it was an up year, if only because 2013 and 2014 sucked so goddamn much. In terms of this here dog and pony operation, it was a mixed bag, as per usual. In my eyes, the highs weren’t quite as high as in years past, and the lows were pretty harshly low, but still, surprisingly, not quite as bad as they could have been.
Plenty of big offerings came and went for me, despite plenty of money and fanfare from all sides: Jurassic World, Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars 7, and plenty of others caused a shitstorm of praise and whatnot, while I just didn’t care and found quite a bit of fault. Worse for me, there were a handful of films I was really looking forward to that just fell flat for me: Child 44 boasted a sweet ensemble cast (Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Joel Kinnaman, and m’lady Noomi Rapace) and some help from Scott Free, but the picture just didn’t work, lurching about aimlessly from scene to scene with no real sense of purpose; Legend showcased the aforementioned Hardy’s skills and somehow did the improbable and gave Emily Browning some fucking personality, but limped along into boring territory; and In the Heart of the Sea was so misguidedly executed that you’ve gotta wonder if Ron Howard had a stroke or something during production.
But then there were some pleasant surprises as well: Brooklyn took me by surprise with its simple storyline, solid Nick Hornby script, and an affecting performance from Saoirse Ronan; Sleeping with Other People exposed me to future Miss Cleo Pick director Leslye Headland and her quality way with words and relationships; and Magic Mike XXL showed me that a movie populated almost entirely by shirtless meatheads put there for the ogling enjoyment of the female/gay viewing public could still be entertaining and even enjoyable for someone not at all interested in the beefcake slices.
In terms of documentaries, a pair stood out to me: Amy gave us some in-depth insight into the rise and much-too-soon loss of Amy Winehouse, showing everything in a very frank manner that surprisingly leaves pedestals at home; and The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? gave me a shiver of Jodorowsky’s Dunes past by showing me a movie that was derailed while still mostly in its inception phase but sounded so badass and ambitious that I want it made now for the sake of it.
At this point, I feel it necessary to point out some foundational things regarding the pool from which I am drawing for this entire roundup. I am considering films officially released in the US in 2015; this includes those released in limited capacity or on the festival circuit prior to 1/1/15 and then increased to full release thereafter (think American Sniper and Cake and 99 Homes). Sadly, though, this pushes some out, including The Revenant and Anomalisa, which are hitting full release here in 2016, despite limited, Oscar-qualifying releases earlier in December. Not only are theatrical releases included, but so are straight-to-DVD and -VOD releases. All told, thanks to my missing a few for any number of reasons, my pool comes to 203 this year, quite a few less than last year’s ridiculousness (somewhere around 278, I think), but still a robust set to pick from, eh? Here’s the list, for any interested.
Before I get to the films, I wanna kinda make my own mini-Oscars for acting, just to highlight some strong performances from the past year.
On the male side, the nominees are: Tobey Maguire as Bobby Fischer in Pawn Sacrifice, Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger in Black Mass, Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl, Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy, Tom Hardy as twin brothers Reggie and Ronnie Kray in Legend, and Michael Shannon as both Rick Carver in 99 Homes and Mr. Green in The Night Before (it’s my list, I’ll do what I want!). Y’know, I think I’ve gotta give it to Redmayne here, if for nothing else than the fact that I saw his character’s mind working throughout the film through nothing more than his posture, affectations, and eye settings. It was a phenomenal turn, one that basically made me forget about the absolute dreck that he smeared over Jupiter Ascending. Shit, that alone would probably be enough…
On the female side, we’ve got: Rinko Kikuchi as Kumiko in Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, Cate Blanchett as Carol Aird in Carol, Rooney Mara as Therese Belivet in Carol, Alicia Vikander as Gerde Wegener in The Danish Girl, Brie Larson as Ma in Room, and Jennifer Lawrence as Joy Mangano in Joy. (A special shoutout to Dakota Johnson for her exceptional work in giving her character some sense of humanity in Fifty Shades.) The winner, in my eyes, is Mara, whose turn as a slightly mousy department store clerk who falls for Blanchett’s soon-to-be-divorcee Carol really shined, even in the presence of Blanchett’s own brightness. It was a tough call, though, much tougher than with the men, as all of these ladies did a spectacular job.
And now for the tougher calls, trying to rank the ten best and worst films of the year. The short lists weren’t all that hard to put together, but ranking them and separating some (dis)honorable mentions took some time, lemme tell ya.
In order to end on a high note, let’s start off with the Worst, shall we?
A couple dishonorable mentions:
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 was a damn joke of a sequel to a damn joke of a movie. If it weren’t for a coworker riffing it with me, it might have pissed me off more, but instead it’s just a piece of boring garbage. Paranormal Activity: Ghost Dimension took a franchise that was already floundering and ripped out whatever good could have been salvaged therefrom by making no sense and fucking showing the hitherto invisible ghosts. Way to go, assholes!
Now let’s do this:
10) The Wedding Ringer/Hot Pursuit – And we start the countdown with a tie. The first in the pairing pissed me off way back in 2014 by having its shitty trailer played in front of nearly every movie for almost the whole of ’14. Then it came out in all its entirely unfunny and annoying shame. My hatred of Josh Gad was cemented with Pixels, but its grave was dug to near-full depth in The Wedding Ringer. And the usually at-least-somewhat-funny Kevin Hart didn’t help anything at all. It was a loud, obnoxious “comedy” that never once made me laugh (any hope of that was lost thanks to the trailer) but made me angry on many occasions. A similar situation drags down Hot Pursuit, which had one main joke: We’re pairing an annoying Latina stereotype who only yells with a milquetoast, short, tightly-wound policewoman. Insert badly-written, redundant, and annoying hijinks. Much like Wedding Ringer, Hot Pursuit has one conceit and executes it very poorly. It’s one thing to not be funny, but these two films were frustratingly infuriating.
9) Unfriended – Let’s take found footage horror movies, which almost exclusively suck, and transpose it onto webcams communicating through Skype. Y’know, on second thought, let’s fucking not. This was a loud, obnoxious, poorly-done mess of a movie populated by terrible characters (they’re both terribly written and terrible people) who can’t die fast enough, even with a runtime less than 90 minutes. It’s like a more annoying version of Smiley, complete with digital artifacting and ending jump-scare courtesy of Blumhouse’s dumbass notions of horror.
8) War Room – The fastest-growing segment of the exploitation market? Christsploitation. Basically, make a low-budget, poorly-written and -acted, half-conceived bit of a movie, insert references to Jesus and God to any degree, then market it to those who lap up any mention of Our Lord and Saviour. Instant profit. Past successes like God’s Not Dead and Heaven Is for Real gave way this year to things like 90 Minutes in Heaven, Little Boy, Do You Believe?, and, the worst of the bunch, War Room. This picture tells us that if we clean out our closets and just pray our problems away, God will just fix everything for us. Yup. Oh, and there’s something about a double-dutch tournament. And it goes on for over two fucking hours! Praise the Lord!
7) Hot Tub Time Machine 2 – Another terrifyingly unnecessary sequel, this one drops John Cusack (one of the few truly redeeming factors from the original) and has so little going on plotwise that its characters constantly just stop and make fun of each other for minutes on end. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this stone-faced while watching an absurd comedy before. With no jokes and poor riff sessions just popping up to pad out the runtime, this was a terribly unfunny comedy that frustrated me plenty. What a waste of time, money, and relatively talented actors.
6) Point Break – I’ve already said my piece against this worthless bit of remake garbage. Allow me to reiterate that it exemplifies everything that is wrong with filmmaking today, including the use/creation of music.
5) Jem and the Holograms – Let’s take a generic, believe-in-yourself narrative, add generic music, remove any character from the characters, and slap in an inexplicable robot and scavenger hunt subplot. Oh, and then let’s shoehorn in a connection to an ’80s franchise tangentially related to it so as to tap into this generation’s rampant nostalgia. What do you get from this? A boring, crappy, hard-to-sit-through movie.
4) Pan – Wow. I know we all really needed to know how Peter Pan came into being, but this is something else. Hugh Jackman is trying way too hard, especially relative to his fellow castmates, but is ultimately stuck in a different movie. At various points a jukebox musical wants to manifest itself in the midst of our Peter Pan prequel, but it never fully materializes (thank fucking Christ). Whimsy and imagination are replaced by generic and clumsy plot points and overly-mugging characters, everything dragging toward a conclusion we all know far too well, thus underlining how much bullshit unnecessary prequels pile on top of us.
3) Strange Magic – Honestly, when I saw this movie early on in the year, I thought for sure it was gonna top this list. I mean, this thing was pretty much worse than Legends of Oz, which was hitherto the worst animated film I’d ever seen in theatres. The animation isn’t all that bad, really, but the models they used therewith are ugly, gang-beating the audience in the Uncanny Valley. The characters have sparse characterizations at best. The songs are just tossed in pell-mell, barely relating to anything, all genres and time periods represented for no reason, and they’re all butchered to within inches of their lives. Say what you will about Episode I and everything, but this film really should leave George Lucas hanging his head in shame, regardless of his innocent intentions.
2) Human Centipede III: The Final Sequence – Like Strange Magic, after seeing this fucking dreck, I had no idea anything would unseat it on this list. Frankly, it may actually be the worst film of the year, but #1 just angered me more. This one may be the most annoying film ever made, and that was likely the point. Every bit of it, from the prison warden noshing on dried clitorides to everybody yelling about everything for no reason, the script reeks of attempted revulsion. This was made to gross you out and/or offend you somehow. It only succeeded for me by offending my sense of general cinematic enjoyment. At no point did I ever remotely like anything I saw, and even the huge centipede at the end (there’s no spoilers there, it’s in the fucking title, people) was a letdown of mythical proportions, especially considering it appears for maybe a grand total of a minute or so. Fuck everything about this movie. Speaking of which…
1) Vacation – As much as Human Centipede 3 was a massive piece of shit, the Vacation remake/reboot/whateverthefucktheywannacallit pissed me off to no end. It’s not funny. It makes bad meta-style references to the fact that it’s a retread. It’s painfully unfunny. It wastes a cameo from m’lady Elizabeth Gillies. It’s excruciatingly not funny. It reeks of cashing in on the past without putting in any effort of its own. Did I mention it’s unable to elicit laughter? It’s actually negatively funny, producing angry responses instead of laughter. Whoever thought it proper to greelight this insult to everything good that has ever existed has a special place in Hell waiting for him/her/whateverthefuck.
But from the depths of the Inferno we climb the mountain of Purgatorio toward the Empyrean. Our honorable mentions: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. surprised me a little by being eminently enjoyable, bringing some luster back to Guy Ritchie (I don’t think he’s deserved a lot of his criticism, but, hey) and resurrecting the old-style cool spy flick. A Walk in the Woods is a delightful romp through, obviously, the woods with a smartass Robert Redford. Sold. And the Spongebob sequel was a massive delight, culminating in one of the most unexpected endings I have ever seen.
And we rise…
10) Avengers: Age of Ultron – It’s a tough road when you have to follow up not only 2012’s original team-up film but also the intervening Marvel offerings, but this film succeeded pretty damn well. It’s a spectacular visual feast, with performances that hold up and a script that doesn’t shit the bed, no matter how easy it would have been for it to do so. Oh, and James Spader as a megalomanaical android. Fantastic.
9) Kingsman: The Secret Service – Seeing the trailers and poster for this, I was immediately put off, foreseeing an obnoxious “new take” on the Bond-style spy adventure featuring generic young folk. Then I saw it, admittedly with the go-ahead from my boy, VDubb. He was right to nod, as this was a thoroughly entertaining flick. From the badass opening, featuring the best cinematic use of “Money for Nothing” I’ve yet seen, to a church shootout to the dulcet tones of “Freebird” to the decidedly bloody and cheesy ending, this was a treat through and through. For once, I actually look forward to seeing a franchise here, so long as the spirit of this original holds true.
8) Straight Outta Compton – I honestly don’t remember the heyday of N.W.A., but I did live through the wake thereof, and I feel I’m a better person for it, generally speaking. This film does a fantastic job of showing the greatness and importance of the group’s work without fully fellating them (though there are some times where the line is walked pretty drunkenly), all the while highlighting what got them into such rarefied air in the first place: their banging tunes, yo! Probably the best biopic I’ve seen in a while.
7) Trainwreck – Judd Apatow has always injected a decent amount of pathos into his R-rated comedies, and that has helped elevate them above their crude brethren. Such is the case here, as Amy Schumer takes center stage as a commitophobe who meets someone she might be willing to settle down with. The mixture of strong humor and genuine emotion is nearly flawless here, ensuring those who see it will remember it far more fondly than, say, Hell and Back.
6) Love & Mercy – Save for a crappy made-for-TV movie a while ago, the travails of Brian Wilson have been oddly absent from the cinematic landscape. Here comes a film that nails it too well for its own good. Both Paul Dano and John Cusack do a great job as Wilson, though Dano takes the taco for me. (Seriously, that kid has got to get some hardware sooner or later or I’m gonna start flippin’ some tables!) Paul Giamatti is at his slimiest, and Elizabeth Banks holds her own. What pushes through, though, is the genius and instability that Wilson had and the music that was created in spite of it (and likely because of it). It’s rare to see everyone stick around for the credits, not just the old folks, but it happened here for good reason, to see the real Wilson perform the title song. (It also happened after Spotlight, mostly because the impact of the preceding was still settling into the audience’s brains.) And, much like Straight Outta Compton, Wilson’s dick remains pretty much unsucked, his talent and unevenness instead allowed to speak for themselves.
5) Sicario – Denis Villeneuve grabbed and erotically choked my attention in late 2013 with Prisoners, and I’ve been looking forward to more from him ever since. He did not disappoint here, bringing in another talented ensemble cast (m’lady Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Benicio del Toro) for a trip to the US/Mexico border, highlighting the escalating violence and instability resulting from the drug trade and the highly ineffective “War on Drugs”. No one in the movie comes out with clean hands, and no viewing eye comes out without feeling at least a little dirty. It’s powerful and affecting in such a straightforward and gritty way that’s so lacking these days. No flinching, no blinking, and everyone’s the better for it.
4) Room – Speaking of powerful and affecting, Room will likely hit you in the throat at some point. Showing the complexity of both life and the roadblocks therein (all sizes, kids), this movie might hold back a bit more than Sicario, but it packs a similar wallop, just in a different form and in a different direction. I’ve not seen the number of layers of something this movie shows in quite some time, and I’m not likely to see it for a while hence. I can’t say much more than that, really, it’s just a really well-done, emotionally powerful film, straight up.
3) Inside Out – I honestly thought I would hate this film based on the trailers. It looked too kiddy, too bright, too fluffy, too cartoonish to have any heft or impact to it. Leave it to Pixar to prove me so incredibly wrong. I could say a lot about this film, but it’s the message that underlines the importance of complexity and down notes that got me the most. It was a message I didn’t expect from a family movie these days, what with the mollycoddling and condescension so prevalent in that genre, but it was so simply and effectively communicated here that I was left nearly speechless when it set in near the end. Sure, Up made us all cry in the first few minutes, but the overall message didn’t fully resonate with me. Inside Out, though, got to me with seemingly minimal effort, a pernicious ninja I never saw coming or going.
2) The Hateful Eight – Tarantino’s back with a fucking vengeance. This is over two-and-a-half hours of QT dialogue, with relatively little action or plot to speak of, and it works so goddamn well. Sam Jackson shines as a former cavalry officer, Bruce Dern is a delight as a racist former Confederate, Kurt Russell is an amusing bounty hunter with a phenomenal ‘stache, and I was trying real hard not to smile at just about every line Walton Goggins drawled at us. It’s obscene, it’s gritty, it’s dirty, and it’s nearly claustrophobic. It surpasses the hell out of Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds in my eyes (and both of those are on my shelf right now), and hearkens back to the glory days of Tarantino.
1) And the belt goes to The Martian. Ridley Scott has made up for both Prometheus and The Counselor with this opus, which is basically about two hours of astronaut Matt Damn smarting off and surviving on a harsh Martian nothing. The cinematography is back to Scott’s usual greatness, the performances are all solid, the script is smart and quick, and the entertainment factor is through the roof. Everything clicks, and I was never bored for a second. As much as I gravitate toward Hateful Eight like a fanboy moth to the Tarantino candle, I found myself more entertained and with more of a sense of enjoyment with The Martian, even with some stressful family issues clouding things at the time. I can’t wait to add it to my collection in the next couple weeks.
So there you have 2015 from my perspective. 2016’s off to an intriguing start with The Revenant, and I hope it’s got enough bright spots throughout to keep away the inner darkness.
Agree with these lists? Disagree? Did I miss something worthy? Let me know, kids. For now, though, I’m off to dip into some booze and relax with some Big Trouble. Deuces.
Allusions of Grandeur 