My Top 10 Films of 2015

2015 was a particularly strange year for movies. Critics and fanboys lost their minds for George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” a movie I thought was laudable as a piece of action filmmaking, but certainly not a new standard for the genre. Likewise, the year’s end brought in a wave of earnest prestige pictures that are sure to be forgotten once the awards campaigns have come to an end--*cough* I’m looking at you “Spotlight.” When looking back at my personal top-10 of last year, I find a strange mix of films that range wildly in genre, size and scope.

10 – Steve Jobs – Aaron Sorkin returns to familiar territory with his screenplay about Macintosh maestro Steve Jobs. For some, this might have come too close to the tone and characterizations depicted in his admittedly stronger screenplay for David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” but Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jeff Daniels and Seth Rogan internalize Sorkin’s dense, walk-and-talk dialogue confidently and Danny Boyle’s serviceable direction showcases this oddly-structured biopic with a sense of urgency.

09 – Tangerine – Sean Baker’s micro-budget indie, shot entirely on a modified iPhone5, is one of the most vital films to come out of the festival circuit in years. This comedy chronicles a wacky night of misadventure between two transgendered prostitutes who work out of a janky donut hut on Hollywood Boulevard. Though the situations and setting of this very-specific world might sound like the usual set-up for a naval-gazing cautionary tale, Baker injects immediacy and levity into the film and refuses to let the characters feel sorry for themselves.

08 – The Martian – This has to be on my list on the basis of that it's the least problematic Ridley Scott movie since 2000’s “Gladiator.” Matt Damon carries this “Call of the Wild” on Mars story with a good sense of comedic timing and relatability. Along with the 70s disco soundtrack, it’s the optimistic celebration of intelligence and science found in Drew Goddard’s adapted screenplay that culminates into an idiosyncratic and likeable sensibility--not often found in much of Scott’s recent work.

07 – Dope – Three nerds who attend a high-school in south-central Los Angeles are on the run from both the police and the gangs, when one of them accidentally gets the group involved in a drug ring while fumbling to impress a girl. This teen comedy/heist-movie highbred is full of contagious energy and an adventurous spirit towards the well-worn tropes it gladly subverts. The familiar teen-movie themes of trying to fit in are translated into interesting discussions of racial identity and class, as this movie depicts the difficulties of wanting to excel and stand-out within  urban communities.

06 – Room – Lenny Abrahamson’s “Room” explores the human condition and the power of childhood imagination through the dark tale of a women who fights for her son’s safety and innocents while forced to raise him within the woodshed of a deranged kidnapper. Abrahamson explores this enclosed space like a science fiction reality, slowly revealing to the audience more devastating truths as we learn the finer details through the perspective of Jacob Tremblay’s child protagonist. Brie Larson also gives a heartbreaking performance as the young mother.

05 – It Follows – This tribute to 80s minimalist horror takes the absurd premise of an evil entity that follows a person after he or she has slept with the last carrier of the curse and shoots it with such competency and atmosphere that the viewer is forced to think about the deeper connotations of its fantasy rules. The film’s soundtrack and the artful use of subject camera infuses every scene with palpable terror.

4 – Sicario – Speaking of subtly brooding thrillers, Denis Villeneuve’s boarder-noir “Sicario” stretches the movie’s narrative tightrope as much as it can and holds the tension in place for it's entire run-time as we descend into the film's criminal hell-scape. Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benecio Del Toro all give career-best performances and Roger Deakin’s cinematography brings him back to the southwest desolation of 2007’s “No Country for Old Men.”

3 – Ex Machina – Alex Garland’s directorial debut delivers on the promise of his visionary screenwriting on projects such as “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine.” Here he explores the psychology and philosophic ramifications of developing artificial intelligence with a minimal chamber thriller starring Oscar Isaac as a lonely, billionaire tech-genius and Domhnall Gleeson as an unassuming coder, tasked with testing the self-awareness of the world’s first living machine,  who's played wonderfully by Alicia Vikander.

2 – Inside Out – Pixar has a history of breaking hearts with their tender family fare, but it’s difficult to be prepared for just how genuine and vulnerable “Inside Out” is. The mechanics of the narrative, following the anthropomorphized emotions within the mind of a 12 year old girl, are surprisingly complicated and multifaceted, but “Up” writer/director Peat Doctor never loses sight of the raw, emotional core of his story within a story. More importantly, this film reminds us that big-budget Hollywood product can be thoughtful and nuanced and doesn't need to pander to the lowest common denominator to have a wide appeal.

1 – The Tribe – I saw this Ukrainian drama within the first few months of 2015 and knew by its end that it was unlikely that I would see a better film within the remainder of the year. Miroslav Slaboshpitsky depicts a boarding-school for the deaf as a lawless wasteland, where survival of fittest is the only sense of order established between groups of unsupervised teenagers. It’s difficult to describe the power of the wordless apocalyptic world Slaboshpitsky creates, but it’s the nervous tension generated between the shock of what we are seeing and the deliberate patience in which it’s shot that makes for one of the most vital pieces of visceral cinema of 2015.

Honorable Mentions:

Creed, Beasts of No Nation, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Big Short, Mad Max: Fury Road, What We Do In The Shadows,  Kingsmen: The Secret Service and Carol 

Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2016

Listen to more discussion about the best and worst films of the year on this episode of the Jabber and the Drone podcast.

It Follows review

               David Robert Mitchell’s supernatural stalker film “It Follows” evokes the tropes and trappings of many culturally recognizable horror movies, but does so in a way that showcases his unique filmic point of view and pays homage without succumbing to lazy fanboy pastiche. Not unlike recent independent horror films such as Ti West’s “House of the Devil” or Adam Winegard’s “You’re Next,” viewers of a certain age will be reminded of the babysitter slashers of the late 70s and early 80s--particularly John Carpenter’s genre-defining “Halloween”—but here, the message about teenage sexuality is treated with more complexity and compassion than the Reagan-era morality massacres.

               Jay Height (Maika Monrow) is a high-school girl secretly dating an older guy (Jake Weary), who after rushing them out of a movie theater seduces her into a passionate parked car encounter.  Their bliss quickly turns to dread once he informs her that their union will enact a curse in the form of a shapeshifting, immortal entity that will follow her until she either dies or passes it on to someone else. After the two making a run for it, Jay’s dropped off back home, still stunned from a complete sense of bodily betrayal and with the new emotional and psychological burden of convincing her younger sister (Lili Sepe) and her friends (Keir Gilchrest, Olivia Luccardi) of the ghostly presence that’s on its way to kill her.

                Clearly this movie wants us to think about the consequences of hasty hanky-panky, but to call it a simple condemnation or cautionary tale would also be underplaying the greater depth of this discussion. Jay as a young female protagonist is faced with a sexual reality that follows her after an encounter she was tricked into participating. The trauma of this event is so impossible to describe that she is left without many she can comfortably confide in besides her peer’s, two of whom volunteer themselves to relieve her of the curse. Once her body becomes a plot point her relation to every male character is loaded with difficult consequences and choices to make.  Many will probably read an STD metaphor in all of this and that’s a valid enough interpretation, but we should also consider the drastic differences in sexual power and vulnerability expressed in the gender dynamics of these teenage characters, especially given the noticeable and purposeful lack of parental or adult representation in the film.

                Beyond the layers of interesting subtext to sift through, this film also delivers the goods as an effective horror thriller. Mitchell manipulates the audience with lingering establishing shots and subverts the use of subjective camera with Hitchcockian delight. The artful lighting and blocking of each scene also keeps things stylish and moody without divorcing the film from a realistic and tangible atmosphere, but it isn’t so tethered to reality that it forgets to enjoy being a movie. This is best expressed in the synthy score by electronic artist Disasterpeice, who soaks each creeping build-up in horror movie nostalgia, bringing to mind the Casio background music of John Carpenter and the dreamy scores of Italian director Dario Argento’s band The Goblins.

                Occasionally, Mitchell feels the need to pay off the mystery and defuse the building tension with clumsy attack scenes. Minor special-effect moments don’t work quite as well as the film deserves and somewhat demystifies the overall ambiance. The potential for more disorientation and deeper scares are available but these elements are diluted by more character interactions and metaphorical allusions—a respectable, if somewhat lamentable creative choice.

              “It Follows” celebrates its throwback appeal to the teen-driven drive-in classics, but it also has something to say about its characters and its target demographic: Sex isn’t simple for anyone, especially teenagers, and it can’t be treated as a curse to hide from everyone or a game to play with just anyone. David Robert Mitchell does a wonderful job exploring the lasting effects our formative experiences have on the rest of our lives.

Grade: A-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2015