2015 in Film

My Favorite Films of 2015

Here are the nine films that impressed, moved and delighted me the most from 2015, with the caveat that there are several promising films that I missed or were not released near me (among them, Bridge of Spies, The Forbidden Room, Arabian Nights).

1. The Assassin (directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien) - A bewildering, enchanting work of art from a master filmmaker. Some have found it just too damn slow and opaque, which is a fair response, but for me it was hypnotic - largely through its sheer visual beauty, but also because of Hou's rigorous, uncommon storytelling. For all of its lush visual textures, and its ornate, obsessively detailed recreation of a 9th century China poised between history and myth, the approach to plot and character is radically minimalistic. Every action holds great weight and meaning.

It's also one of the few movies that made me gasp out loud in the theater (multiple times) simply from how gorgeous it is. It's not just surface prettiness, either, there is genuine wonder and sublimity in it.

2. Mad Max: Fury Road (directed by George Miller) - I've seen it six times already. Safe to say I'm obsessed. As brilliant as The Road Warrior is, this is the film George Miller was born to make. It is a mind-boggling achievement, with madly ambitious action sequences and stunt work, and a wholly immersive and detailed creation of a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. The technical perfection of this thing is insane, and it's terribly exciting. And for all its bombastic spectacle, the way it builds theme and character through incremental details is just beautiful storytelling.

3. Inside Out (directed by Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen) - Pixar strikes again! Inside Out deserves to be ranked alongside WALL-E and Toy Story as one of their greatest achievements. I am amazed at what they've managed to pull off here, a story that functions on so many levels - a tearjerking coming-of-age / family drama, a brightly colored and hilarious adventure, and an illustrative exploration of the complicated relationship between our emotions, our personalities, and how we process and respond to the world around us, told in a way accessible to kids but engaging to adults. And it is packed with witty and casually wise grace notes ("these facts and opinions look so similar!").

4. What We Do in the Shadows (directed by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement) - Funniest movie of the year. An undead This is Spinal Tap with a Kiwi spin. The characters are lovably pathetic, the jokes are constant, and the film is irresistibly good-natured fun even when it gets bloody.

5. Carol (directed by Todd Haynes) - A restrained but quietly passionate romantic drama based on a Patricia Highsmith novel from the 1950s, unusual at the time for its frank and nuanced portrayal of a gay romance and its hopeful ending. I have not read the book but the film feels as evocative and subtle as a good novel, though it is entirely cinematic in its telling - beautifully recreating an era, communicating chemistry and connection through glances and body language, expressing through swooning music cues and visuals what the characters cannot through words. Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett are both perfect, as an uncertain but luminous young woman and a recently divorced mother whose glamour hides a vulnerable spirit.

6. Timbuktu (directed by Abderrahmane Sissako) - Less a classically structured narrative and more a collection of vignettes forming a panoramic study of a community - Timbuktu, Mali during a brief occupation by Islamic extremist group Ansar Dine, who imposed sharia law on the locals. Sissako's film eases you into the rhythm of day-to-day life in Timbuktu - music and soccer, family life, women working outdoors alongside men - so that the uneasy presence of the jihadists, and the inevitable violence of enforced sharia law and the cruel absurdity of its rules, are all the more clearly a violation of this vibrant community. It is a film in love with the beauty of Mali and its people, mostly Sunni Muslims, and horrified at the violence done to them. Yet even the jihadists are recognizably human, comically so at points. One young, unenthused jihadist stars in a propaganda video, but to the frustration of his director is an utterly abysmal actor; these young men with machine guns smoke cigarettes and discuss their favorite soccer stars in casual moments, even though they have banned smoking and sport from the community. They are entirely human, which makes their actions all the more disturbing.

7. Phoenix (directed by Christian Petzold) - A German-Jewish concentration camp survivor, after facial reconstruction surgery that leaves her uncannily similar-but-different to her former self, returns to ruinous post-war Berlin to reunite with the boyfriend who may have betrayed her to the Nazis and no longer recognizes her. Where the story unspools from there I will not reveal, but Phoenix has the kind of movie plot that requires but greatly rewards a suspension of disbelief. It's Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo recontextualized as an allegory for the painful reconstruction of the German and Jewish identity after the war, and builds to an astonishing final scene. Nina Hoss's performance was the best of the year to my eyes, a mostly silent, subtle portrayal of despair and delusion, revelation and rebirth.

8. The Duke of Burgundy (directed by Peter Strickland) - Such a curious object of a film. Centers around a seemingly outré sexual relationship, but has no nudity and very little actual sex - anyone in search of titillation will probably be disappointed. It builds a stylized and hermetic world around its characters, taking a great delight in all the little retro and esoteric details, almost like a sapphic Wes Anderson. It is beautifully directed, unfolding like a dream and structured in repetitions. Each repetition peels away another layer, revealing new aspects of the characters and their relationship - with the most surprising reveal being just how relatable and mundane they are for all the tongue-in-cheek exotic trappings. Like Eyes Wide Shut, this is a romantic fever dream that goes to surreal lengths to make simple observations of the natural problems that can arise in a relationship. The Duke of Burgundy is too specific and strange a film to have more than a small, self-selected audience, one I'm glad to be a part of. It is witty, unexpectedly funny and insightful.

9. The Look of Silence (directed by Joshua Oppenheimer) - A documentary exploring the modern-day aftermath of the Indonesian Genocide of 1965 - 66, where an estimated million people accused of communism were killed by their neighbors, often in unusually barbaric ways. The men behind the massacre still hold political power in Indonesia and are treated as war heroes, brave eradicators of the godless communists, while the extent of the violence has been swept under the rug. The Look of Silence follows Adi, a young father whose older brother was killed in the massacre, as he interviews the families of the victims and the killers. It is a deeply disquieting and disturbing film, not only for the barbarity of the violence (one senile old man casually mentions that he and many others drank the blood of their victims to "keep from going insane"), but for the prevalence of delusions, repression and distorted language in how everyone attempts to justify and live with their past (a dreadful illustration of how the winners have the privilege of writing history). Yet Adi is a beacon of hope: pursuing the truth with level-headed, unwavering persistence. 

Honorable Mentions (other films I really liked, in alphabetical order): 

• Blackhat (Michael Mann)
• Creed (Ryan Coogler)
• Crimson Peak (Guillermo del Toro)
• Ex Machina (Alex Garland)
• It Follows (David Robert Mitchell)
• Mistress America (Noah Baumbach)
• Spotlight (Tom McCarthy)
• Tangerine (Sean Baker)
• Wild Tales (Damian Szifron)

And, just because it's fun to be mean occasionally…

MY LEAST FAVORITE FILMS OF 2015 

(with the note that I've avoided most of the movies I knew I would hate, so these probably aren't the actual worst of the year)

• The Cobbler (directed by Tom McCarthy) - Well, except for this one, which absolutely has to be one of the worst of the year. On one hand, it's an Adam Sandler comedy, so its awfulness may not come as a surprise - but it's directed by Tom McCarthy, the talent behind charming films like The Station Agent and Win Win, and this year's very good (and Best Picture nominated) Spotlight, a drastic turnaround which might be the biggest-ever gap in quality between two subsequent films in any director's career. I don't know what happened to McCarthy during the making of this film, but wow it's a disaster. Not even bad in the standard Sandler comedy way, meaning lazy and juvenile; it keeps finding new and unique ways to be repugnant, with a bafflingly ill-conceived plot line that turns outright creepy before going off the deep end with an ending that is jaw-dropping in the worst way.

• Pan (directed by Joe Wright) - Everything I hate about Hollywood's "modernized" fantasy blockbusters in one nauseating package. Unceremoniously stuffs Peter Pan and the Neverland crew into a preordained "Hero's Journey" / Chosen One narrative that fundamentally misunderstands the appeal of J.M. Barrie's original vision of the character. Is full of ugly and unimaginative CGI that is so weightless that none of the loud, flashy action has any impact. Also here: obnoxious anachronisms, like the orphaned slaves of Neverland singing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in unison, all while mining fairy dust (what) for the villainous Blackbeard, who snorts it like cocaine to stay eternally young (WHAT). Directed by Joe Wright, who also made the lovely Pride & Prejudice adaptation with Keira Knightley and hopefully will return to making good movies after this.

• The Danish Girl (directed by Tom Hooper) - The true story of Lili Elbe, a Danish artist in the 1920s who was the first recipient of gender reassignment surgery. Except it's not really the true story, but like many other manipulative Hollywood bio-movies, is largely fabricated and sanitized. Here is a film entirely devoid of insight of any kind - sociological, historical, psychological, sexual - it is pretty looking but totally vapid. Eddie Redmayne's Oscar nominated (WHAT) performance is terrible, consisting entirely of effete and weepy mannerisms with no depth or subtlety (although it's not the worst Redmayne performance of the year, see here if you want a hilarious glimpse at that). I liked The King's Speech, but between this and his obnoxious, tone-deaf adaptation of Les Miserables I think I'll skip whatever Tom Hooper comes out with next.

• Kingsman: The Secret Service (directed by Matthew Vaughn) - A parody / homage to James Bond that is too witlessly violent and soulless to be fun at all. Not poorly made, but made me feel queasy and grouchy by the time it was over, though it might be the new favorite movie of certain teenage boys and violent sociopaths.

• The Boy Next Door (directed by Rob Cohen) - Calling this a "least favorite" is not exactly accurate - don't misunderstand, this is a terrible terrible movie, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is every bit as trashy and unintentionally funny as movies like this should be. An "erotic" "thriller" about J. Lo and her young stalker, who before he goes all Fatal Attraction buys her a "First Edition" of Homer's Iliad that he bought at a garage sale (WHAT). Also has the greatest, and the most inexplicably, hilariously violent, use of an epi-pen in cinematic history. Worth a watch if you want a good laugh.