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.

Steve Jobs review

Writer Aaron Sorkin (“The West Wing”) and director Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting”) have teamed up to tell the story of Apple CEO and proto-Ted-Talker “Steve Jobs.” Given the success Sorkin had with his previous techie biopic “The Social Network,” in which he won an Oscar for his adapted screenplay about the creator of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, his connection to this project makes a lot of sense. Perhaps it’s not the boldest or the most unconventional move for the writer to make at this point in his career, but you can always guarantee that if Sorkin is going to tread water he’ll do so with the grace and agility of an Olympic swimmer.

Like David Fincher, who was considered an edgier genre auteur at the time he agreed to direct “The Social Network,” Boyle’s involvement with this subject matter exists a little farther outside of his comfort zone. His hyper-kinetic visual choices and the psychologically subjective character portraits that have generally defined his style are sheathed to service a very dialogue-centric screenplay, where characters often say everything they’re thinking and feeling before the camera has time to imply it.

The structure of this movie is the most interesting thing about it. Each act of the film takes place during a different launch of Apple technology; starting with the Macintosh 128k in 1984, the NeXT in 88 and finally the iMac in 1998, that helped pull the company out of dire straits after failing to compete with Microsoft for a significant stint of time. Each of these launches play out like separate one-act stage performances where Steve Jobs, played fantastically by the enigmatic Michael Fassbender, is forced to deal with the stresses of his life and consequences of his career achievements, only moments before he’s supposed to unveil his company’s latest gamble. Each time, we are introduced to the same set of personalities that circle Jobs’ world.

Like his Zuckerberg, Sorkin’s take on Steve Jobs is that of a man who is haunted by own hubris, leaving a pile of smoldering bridges behind him as he blazes down the path of his own ambition. In repeating the same beats, revealing these moments of frustration before every new unveiling, the movie is instantly charged with a sense of nervous anticipation. 

All the actors are working hard for supper here, delivering the hyper-verbose Sorkinese dialogue like they don’t have time to get it wrong. Seth Rogen plays the humble but frustrated Apple Co-creator and engineer Steve Wozniac, who wants, and cannot get, a measly shout-out for his team’s Apple II contributions. Michael Stuhlbarg plays an approval-starved engineer who tried to stand in for Steve’s conscience and Kate Winslet plays a type-A work-wife named Joanna Hoffman, who’s desperately trying to keep the world from crumbling under her boss’s feet, even as he stomps through people’s sensitives in defiance.  Jeff Daniels steps in as a financier who also doubles as a father-figure for the so-called genius, all while, at the same time, Jobs carries on an arms-length relationship with his daughter, whom he initially refused to call his own.

Believe it or not, the bigger of a jerk the character of “Steve Jobs” is, the more interesting he is to watch. The movie only stumbles when it tries to humanize him too much, including a final ten minutes that tries to cowardly soften the blow of the two hours of shrewd and uncompromising self-assurance exhibited before it. The moments of dramatic weight come from a tension that exists between the high-stakes of Jobs’ vision to see his products perform well and the emotionally drained lives around the character that are begging for the same level of attention. This unfortunate cop-out of an epilogue is somewhat destabilizing, but not a big enough knock on the film to ruin it completely. 

Everything we see here—the writing, the directing and the performances—should be expected from the high level of talent involved and perhaps the fact that the movie doesn’t exceed expectations makes it feel as though it’s less accomplished. That notion is a mirage based on the unfair reality that this project was released after “The Social Network,” but a silver metal is nothing to be ashamed of.

Grade: B+

Originally Printed in the Idaho State Journal/Oct-2015