Top 10 Films of 2015
More stories from Seth Montpelier
Photo Courtesy of IMDB.
- Spotlight: Tom McCarthy’s biopic about the brave team of journalists at the Boston Globe that take on the scandals of the Catholic church could have been easily self-righteous or exploitive. Instead, this film is understated (with less of a thriller’s tone than one of disillusionment and disappointment.) In Boston, the church is an enormous force and the group of journalists are advised to back off, which makes the end achievement so much more powerful. This is also an actor’s movie with everyone—Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d’Arcy James, and Billy Crudup—giving equally strong and important performances. This is a film that not only addresses an urgent issue, but also has more than good intentions to offer.
- Anomalisa: Charlie Kaufman fans have waited seven years for a follow-up to the mind-bending epic Synecdoche, New York. He’s returned with his most accessible film yet: an R-rated stop-motion about a customer service advice author who cannot make a real human connection. Leave it to a creative mind like Kaufman to take a form with endless possibilities and use it to create a mundane setting: a nice hotel. Michael [David Thewlis] hears literally the same voice for everyone [Tom Noonan] until he meets Lisa [Jennifer Jason Leigh]. A quirky and kind fan makes him think his crisis has ended, even if he can allow the feeling only for a moment. Funny, tender, and glum, this is Kaufman in a completely new light.
- Diary of a Teenage Girl: Taking place in 1976 San Francisco, Marielle Heller’s debut tells the story of 15-year-old Minnie [an excellent breakthrough performance by Bel Powley] who begins an affair with her mother’s boyfriend. She documents her new feelings of maturity and empowerment on a tape recorder. The film succeeds because there is no judgement in its telling. Smart, endearing, and very funny, this is what teenage-films should aspire to.
- Love and Mercy: A Brian Wilson biopic that gives the Beach Boys-genius the proper telling the TV movies never could: being able to balance accuracy and art. It might be the most honest music film ever. Mr. Wilson seems to think so. Paul Dano and John Cusack play Brian Wilson at his Pet Sounds peak and his years oppressed by Dr. Eugene Landy, respectively. Both give knockout performances: Dano playing a genius struggling to convey his mind and Cusack playing an odd, blunted shell. The best music bio in years, it has what Straight Outta Compton seemed to be searching for: focus and total honesty. By objectively showing two points in a chaotic life instead of trying to cram all of it in, Love and Mercy belongs with the best of biography films.
- The Hateful Eight: Tarantino’s Western mystery features a great ensemble—particularly Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samuel L. Jackson, and Walton Goggins—and his talent that is always overshadowed by the blood and guts [which there is also plenty of]: tension. Almost the entire film takes place in a stagecoach rest stop in the Reconstruction-era. The first half is almost entirely this signature tension. The allies are never as they seem and the casualties are always a surprise. Leigh is the real standout, a captured criminal awaiting execution. One might be taken aback when she is violently struck, but she is fearless and strong—probably the strongest one [and most despicable].
- Sicario: Emily Blunt gives the performance of the year as the brave DEA agent who tries to remain clean, even when her peers are compromised. Benicio Del Toro plays the agent that is done playing by the rules, only concerned with vengeance. The images of cartel violence are hard to watch, but provide this action-thriller with the honesty and brains most others lack.
- The Revenant: Alejandro Inarritu is the best director this year—only a year after winning an Oscar for best director [Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)]—with his revenge Western about a fur trapper who is brutally attacked by a bear and then left for dead by someone in his pack who kills his son and creates the story of a hero for himself. Much of the pain seen in DiCaprio is real: the film was shot in the vicious Canadian wilderness. Intense and merciless, this feature shows revenge as the best cause for survival.
- The Big Short: Adam McKay takes a break from [very funny] screwball comedies to tell a story that provokes fury: the collapse of the economy in 2008. Told with wicked wit from Ryan Gosling, the film follows the men who saw the bubble on the verge of popping and decided to bet against their own economy. This being another ensemble film—Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Gosling, Steve Carell, Melissa Leo, Finn Wittrock, John Magaro, Hamish Linklater, and Jeremy Strong—gives a film about greed and manipulation the humor that might make the film too hard to watch without.
- Steve Jobs: Michael Fassbender and Aaron Sorkin provide what 2013’s Jobs couldn’t: edge. A film that shows Steve Jobs as manipulative, vindictive, egotistical, and cruel. Taking place before three different product launches over 15 years, the film shows Jobs at his rise, at his nadir, and at his comeback, with him having the same mindset at each one. Seth Rogen also makes a great performance as Steve Wozniak, the mind behind Apple who is rarely bitter, despite often being the one played. The real Woz has stated the film felt like real memories, although others portrayed haven’t been so positive.
- The Look of Silence: Joshua Oppenheimer’s companion piece to his 2012 documentary The Act of Killing, which was about the soldiers who executed accused communists in the Indonesian genocide that live normal lives, never receiving punishment. While the first film tried to bring out remorse [of which they had disturbingly little] in the murderers and bring them to accept their sins, the second film follows the victims’ families confronting the soldiers, trying to make sense of it all. Like its predecessor, the film is haunting and harrowing, a film that’s important for everyone to see.
