December 31, 2015--This has been an unusually strong, eclectic and wildly unpredictable year for film and such a strong year (coming halfway through the second decade of the newest century no less) deserves a new way of thinking. After toying with various titles and various methods, I began to notice patterns in my favorite films of the year. For every film about a particular subject or of a particular category or genre or in a certain style, there seemed to be another title for comparison and contrast of equal or greater value.
So: This makes any sort of ranking even more arbitrary than usual. As a result, I’m throwing out the traditional “top 10 list with an Eleventh Place alphabetical tie” and going instead with my favorite film of the year, followed in 10 categorical but correlative entries (more or less alphabetically) which show the ways in which each film expands on or compliments another. There is further the Best Documentaries list (also “categorized”), because non-fiction deserves its own champion to avoid being overtaken by the dominance of narrative fiction. Enjoy!
So: This makes any sort of ranking even more arbitrary than usual. As a result, I’m throwing out the traditional “top 10 list with an Eleventh Place alphabetical tie” and going instead with my favorite film of the year, followed in 10 categorical but correlative entries (more or less alphabetically) which show the ways in which each film expands on or compliments another. There is further the Best Documentaries list (also “categorized”), because non-fiction deserves its own champion to avoid being overtaken by the dominance of narrative fiction. Enjoy!
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The Top 10: |
1. Room / Mad Max: Fury Road |
“UN-BREAKABLE / They alive, dammit! / It’s a miracle! / UN-BREAKABLE / They alive, dammit! (But females are strong as hell…)”, say the opening lines of the theme song to Tina Fey’s recent Netflix debut sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. This could be the unofficial motto for the year. There’s been a lot of talk about feminism and gender fluidity and gender politics this year in both headlines and cinema pieces. This is very relevant to my pick for the year’s best film. No other film affected me as deeply or powerfully on two separate viewings as Lenny Abrahamson’s Room (coming off the million-miles different Frank last year), Emma Donaghue’s startling adaptation of her own novel about a young woman (a stunning Brie Larson) raising her 5-year-old son (astonishing virtual newcomer Jacob Tremblay) in captivity in a large garden shed behind the house of the man (Deadwood’s Sean Bridgers) who kidnapped and raped her years earlier. The story of how, in the wake of her son’s birthday, the young woman must help him escape and, ultimately, survive in the outside world, opening up the possibilities around him in the process, is a brilliantly effective and involving one. Two moments in this film made me cry my eyes out, and with good and un-manipulated reason, on all three viewings. The film is a testament to the power of the imagination, the perseverance of the human spirit, and, ultimately, the fortitude of a mother’s love (like no film of its ilk since Lars von Trier’s heartbreaking Dancer in the Dark some 15 years ago).
Furthermore, all of these qualities are embodied in the film’s equally strong corollary. Australian master George Miller (Babe: Pig in the City, The Witches of Eastwick, Happy Feet) is a visual dynamo who returns to an original world of his own devising for a fourth (and career-best) installment that sees his earlier efforts (and most other action films) and raises them ten fold. A sustained two-hour chase sequence that barely stops to talk let alone breathe, with Tom Hardy taking on the masked role of Mad Max and Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa, a conscientious objector turned feminist coyote who must save the pregnant captives in her charge from her own boss, the disgusting water-hoarding Immortan Joe. Miller throws everything at the wall, plus the kitchen sink, and it works startlingly well as a collage of inspired lunacy … as well as female agency and empowerment. |
2. The Hateful Eight / Chi-Raq |
Two stunning, kitchen sink portrayals of race relations in America through the lens of two of our most brilliant but controversial filmmakers (who hate each other, and yet have more in common than just their love of Samuel L. Jackson), updating old forms to fairly modern terms in the process: Quentin Tarantino’s violent, bloody, gloriously cinematic yet claustrophobic revisionist Western set in a post-Civil War America of still-simmering racial tensions in which a diverse group of killers and outlaws, War heroes and villains are snowed in at a remote mountain outpost where (perhaps) nobody is exactly what they appear to be;
and Spike Lee’s angry, sad, violent adaptation of Aristophanes’ 411 B.C. satirical Greek tragedy in which a gang member’s girlfriend seeks to create peace and harmony through a sex strike. |
3. Amy / Love & Mercy / Straight Outta Compton / The End of the Tour |
Not one, not two, nor three, but (in fact) four powerful portraits of artists in crisis: I don’t often include documentaries in my best of list because they usually merit a different playing field, but Asif Kapidia’s shattering study (in her own words, no less) of the life and tragic death of rising pop star Amy Winehouse left me in tears, and so cannot be denied, revealing a nation in mourning that saw the warning signs coming, and did nothing;
Bill Pohsad and co-writer Oren Moverman created a portrait of the no less tortured (but more psychologically than pharmacologically) Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys (featuring Paul Dano and John Cusack in the time-shifting role) appeared to be insane to several concerned friends and family members in his youth, and spent much of his adult life under the power of a svengali of a doctor, only to flourish once out from under; rap group N.W.A. may not have faced issues of addiction or mental illness, but their epic life story is stunningly rendered by F. Gary Gray in blockbuster biopic fashion as they navigate a racial flashpoint in America and contend with a duplicitous manager (Paul Giamatti was the go-to svengali sleaze-ball in musical biopics this year; also appeared in Love & Mercy); and transitioning from music biopics to authorial portraits, James Ponsoldt’s smart, sensitive, verbally acute portrait of the mutual admiration society, as well as the culture of egotism and self-loathing which grow up around and within writers, often all at once, like a snake eating its own tail, following troubled author David Foster Wallace and his last pre-suicide book tour through the eyes of a Rolling Stone interviewer and admirer. |
4. Anomalisa / Inside Out |
Two powerful animated portraits of what it means to be human for two very different audiences: Charlie Kaufman’s stunning and moving stop-motion puppet film about a depressed customer service expert (David Thewlis) who attends and speaks at a Cincinnati convention where everyone sounds the same (Tom Noonan, in multiple voice roles) only to stumble across the awkward, self-conscious yet unique voice of a lovely young woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh);
and Pete Docter’s startlingly powerful Pixar story about a depressed young girl moved by her family from one town to another, the emotions this brings up, and the efforts of those emotions (within her) to bring her out of her depression, learning a bit about themselves along the way. |
5. The Big Short / 99 Homes |
Two very different-styled visions of the housing crisis of 2008, its cause, and aftermath: Adam McKay’s powerful, angry, bitterly funny swing of the wicked blade of satire on a group of insiders and outsiders in the financial sector in the year’s leading up to the burst of the housing bubble, and how they foresaw it and cashed in (including a possibly autistic Christian Bale, a bitter and angry Steve Carell, a sad and resigned Brad Pitt, and narrated by a Jordan Belfort-esque, greasy slimeball played by Ryan Gosling);
and Ramin Bahrani’s dark, riveting but no less angry Oliver Stone-esque vision through the eyes of a Gordon Gekko-ish real estate developer (a stunning Michael Shannon) who now evicts delinquent renters from properties, and the similarly-victimized single father he employs. |
6. Brooklyn / Carol |
Two very different portraits of the difficulties of outsiders in 1950s America: John Crowley’s adaptation of Colm Toibin’s 2009 novel about a young, fresh-off-the-boat Irish immigrant trying to navigate professional and personal waters in the New York City borough of the title;
and Todd Haynes’ lush Patricia Highsmith snapshot of a forbidden lesbian relationship between a near-divorced mother and a newly attracted shopgirl and the complications which ensue. |
7. The Martian / The Revenant / Son of Saul |
A couple of survivalist tales: Ridley Scott’s immensely entertaining epic blockbuster dramedy about a NASA botanist left for dead on the Red Planet and the efforts of scientists, bureaucrats and devoted team members to retrieve him;
and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s post-Best Picture-winning epic – an all together different sort of survivalist spectacle, with Leonardo DiCaprio roughing it as Hugh Glass, a 19th century fur trapper in the Louisiana Purchase, left for dead by his team who must fight back from the brink of death to gain revenge on his duplicitous partners (led by a rotten Tom Hardy). and László Nemes’ critically-acclaimed Hungarian Holocaust drama about a Jewish prisoner (Géza Röhrig) who is forced to help his captors execute fellow prisoners (one is a bit reminded of Tim Blake Nelson’s bleak 2001 drama The Grey Zone, about the Jewish kommando unit forced to usher people into the gas chambers under the watchful eyes of their Nazi captors). The plot, as it were, concerns the prisoner’s desire to properly bury a young boy and seeking out of a rabbi to help perform the task. Shot with a remarkable focus and vision from the main character’s perspective, both tunnel-visioned and expansive, it’s a stunning work to rival the best depictions of the idea that “War is hell.” |
8. Spotlight / Bridge of Spies |
Two powerful tales of American stoicism and fierce focus during shameful times in our nation’s history: Tom McCarthy’s fly-on-the-wall vision of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team’s expose of an international sex abuse cover-up by Catholic clergy in the early 21st century;
and Steven Spielberg’s humanitarian take on the story of an insurance lawyer defending a British-born Soviet spy during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, freeing multiple Prisoners of War in the process. |
9. Steve Jobs / Joy |
Two portraits of visionary inventors and business-owners who revolutionized their respective fields and dealt with personal demons behind the scenes: Danny Boyle’s masterful rendering of Apple co-founder and iPod/iPhone/iMac innovator Steve Jobs, based on a torrent of words by Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and featuring a fiercely focused Michael Fassbender;
and David O. Russell’s messy but charming fractured fairy tale vision of humble-roots single mom turned Miracle Mop-inventor and QVC super-seller Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence). |
10. Wild Tales / Macbeth / 45 Years |
“Marriage is hell,” or so they say, and these films showed it: Argentinian filmmaker (and Pedro Almodovar acolyte) Damian Szifron’s Oscar-nominated anthology, a pitch-black satire of cultural mores and revenge culminating in the most darkly hilarious and doomed wedding party you’ve ever seen;
Justin Kurzel’s blood-red vision of “the Scottish Play,” adapting Shakespeare to a bloody civil-war-ravaged battlefield and showing the power-thirsty king-on-the-rise (Michael Fassbender) and his Machiavellian wife in mourning (Marion Cotillard) to be the ultimate power couple; and Andrew Haigh’s short, slight portrait of a slowly opening fissure in a nearly half-century-long marriage, and how long-held secrets contribute to its erosion. |
Best Documentaries
Best of Enemies / Where to Invade Next |
Two great snapshots of how we got here and why. Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon’s powerful look back at the 1968 Democratic National Convention through the eyes of the historic and controversial 10-night televised debates between effete liberal author Gore Vidal and effete conservative firebrand William F. Buckley, Jr., without which there would be no Daily Show, Colbert Report, Fox News, you name it...
and Liberal firebrand Michael Moore travels the world seeking the best ideas from other countries of how to change up the American Standard Operating Procedure for the betterment of our way of life. His sobering balance of deadpan satire, sarcasm and deathly seriousness is in full effect. |
Red Army |
by Gabe Polsky, a powerfully-gripping portrait of the elite Soviet hockey team of the 1980s and 90s raised out of the Cold War-era army and recruited into the NFL, where friendships became rivalries and brotherhood was shattered.
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Hitchcock/Truffaut / Listen to Me, Marlon / An Honest Liar |
A few portraits of creative icons giving insight into their processes and the personal struggles which shaped them: one, Kent Jones’ snapshot of the influential nature of the book Hitchcock/Truffaut, bringing to life the hundreds of hours of interviews the great French director did with the Master of Suspense, interspersing them with Hitchcock’s biggest modern disciples...
Steven Riley’s stunning and hypnotic vision of Marlon Brando’s life story, in his own words... and Tyler Measom’s and Justin Weinstein’s portrait of “the Amazing” James Randi, magician and magic debunker. |
The Hunting Ground |
Kirby Dick’s angering expose’ of the cottage industry of rape on college and university campuses in the United States, and even more disturbingly, the sweeping of said rape under the rug.
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Janis: Little Girl Blue / Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck |
Of course, Asif Kapidia’s Amy is above but this was a great year for musical biopics in both dramatized and documentary fashion and here’s a couple more, both similarly dealing with the too-often suffered trope of addiction: Amy Berg’s moving portrait of folk singer turned rock icon Janis Joplin’s rise and fall...
and Brett Morgen’s innovative and visually overloaded study (in his own words, similar to Amy) of Nirvana front-man and tragic partner of Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain. |