The Usual Choices
Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg)
Carol (Todd Haynes)
Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
The Revenant (Alejandro G. Inarritu)
Room (Lenny Abrahamson)
Spotlight (Tom McCarthy)
But how about...
Eye in the Sky (Gavin Hood)
Genuinely scary. The film details how military drone strikes in hostile territory work, and how the chain of command doesn't. There is no characterisation as such; these are decent, ordinary people attempting to carry out the most inhumane of duties and eventually make the most impossible of decisions - who lives & who dies & when they die. The tension inherent in this horrific absurdity takes hold within the first 15 minutes and keeps squeezing. While there is a couple of cliches (most glaring: the Brits dither while the Yanks are damn-the-torpedoes), the emotional focus is on the poor young screen-soldiers who actually have to push the button to make death happen. A must-watch for new recruits, this shows how politics and the military are an oil & water mix.
...and what about...
Sicario (Denis Villeneuve)
This is a horror movie impersonating a gangster film...and an absolute journey into drug-trade hell. I admit that I wasn't overly optimistic prior to watching this: I was sure it was going to be an ultra-violent, gun-obsessed, no good guys / no bad guys / just guys, typical American crime drama. I was right on all counts but it still grabbed hold and threw me. Shocking, riveting and repellent, this film makes a convincing case for the immediate legalisation of all drugs. The performances given by Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin and Daniel Kaluuya show people who are frightened and frightening, and beyond law. I will never understand how this exceptional example of action-filmmaking was totally ignored by all the major awards groups in 2015. Never.
...not to mention...
The Daughter (Simon Stone)
A superb family-relationship drama which just happens to come from Australia. Based on Ibsen's play The Wild Duck, there are high quality performances from all involved, particularly from Odessa Young as the teenager and Ewen Leslie who plays her father. Somehow the director manages to establish tension from the get-go even when there's not much (seemingly) going on and his choices in structure and design are fresh: I particularly admire the unusual audio-doesn't-always-match-the-visuals editing. The film never overtly goes for Arty but becomes Art right in front of you...but you are too wrapped up in these people's lives to really notice. This is exceptional cinematic storytelling and a preview of a talented debut filmmaker's career-to-be (I hope).
...and one personal unmentionable...
Tomorrowland (Brad Bird)
This film tries to do to science & technology what the Harry Potter franchise did to the supernatural...but blows it big time. OMG this is awful: just so many debilitating features including a convoluted plot (focussed on saving the world, natch) & a group of uninspiring child actors & virtually no humour (not even attempted or failed) & some very violent scenes which are supposed to mesh with the schmaltzy cuddly ones & a preachy coda & George "how do I have a career" Clooney as the big name headliner.
But wait...I'm not done...there's more: it's a mashed serving of warm fuzzies & group hugs + Field of Dreams meets Son of Rambow + Jules Verne / HG Wells sci-fi + a doomsday cult as if led by a stomach-stapled Bond villain + the last twenty minutes of A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Only the visuals impress, but nowadays, isn't that pretty much expected? One of the most disappointing films in recent memory.
My Top 10 Films of 2015
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| "Psst. Bob. You need to fire your makeup artist. Your face looks like a cowpat." |
#02 A Sicario (Villeneuve)
#03 A Truth (Vanderbilt)
#04 A The Daughter (Stone)
#05 A Carol (Haynes)
#06 A- Mr Holmes (Condon)
#06 A- Room (Abrahamson)
#07 A- Bridge of Spies (Spielberg)
#08 A- Steve Jobs (Boyle)
#09 A- The Revenant (Inarritu)
#10 A- Danny Collins (Fogelman)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 A- The Big Short (McKay)
#12 A- Brooklyn (Crowley)
#13 B+ The Witch (Eggers)
#14 B+ 45 Years (Haigh)
#15 B+ Ex Machina (Garland)
#16 B+ Suffragette (Gavron)
#17 B+ 99 Homes (Bahrani)
#18 B+ Mississippi Grind (Boden; Fleck)
#19 B+ Spotlight (McCarthy)
#20 B+ Southpaw (Fuqua)
#21 B+ The Martian (Scott)
#22 B+ Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon)
#23 B+ The Visit (Shyamalan)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B Far from the Madding Crowd [this lead actress beats the 1967 version; this supporting male cast doesn't]
> B The Hateful Eight [Quentin overdoes the Tarantino-isms]
> B Slow West [downbeat Western road'n'quest movie lifted by some strong acting]
> B Sunset Song [Scottish pastoral movie with brutal men, strong women and cute cottages]
> B Hello, My Name is Doris [fairly predictable, but still a sweet little story about loneliness]
> B Trumbo [for Film History students...but watch at least two Hollywood Ten documentaries first]
> B Mad Max: Fury Road [excitingly shot, but don't they just run the same gauntlet twice?]
> B Creed [the connection to the Rocky franchise is its weakest feature...oh, and the obligatory romance]
> B- Into the Forest [I dunno...if the civilized world ended, I reckon I'd be more traumatized than they are]
> B- Ant-Man [okay superhero film, but the only memorable stuff is the size jokes]
> B- Crimson Peak [aka The Turn-of-the-Screw Kids Grow Up]
> B- High-Rise [interesting fable, but one which is so bleak in spirit that the hero eats his dog...opening scene]
> B- Star Wars: The Force Awakens [I've been told that this has rebooted the franchise...yay...I guess...]
> B- Spectre [Bond #24: the usual ingredients, but this time the martini has been stirred]
> C Youth [an overly-arty film about Art, Desire and Sweet'n'Sad Old Age]
> C Me and Earl and the Dying Girl [the only believable character in the group is Death and he's a right bugger]
> C The Dressmaker [can't make up its mind what it wants to be, so becomes a nothing]
> D Fantastic 4 [their names may be Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny, but they are not the Fantastic Four]
> E Tomorrowland [A Personal Unmentionable]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 2015 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
Beasts of No Nation (Fukunaga); Black Mass (Cooper); Blackhat (Mann); Bone Tomahawk (Zahler); The Boy (Macneill); Child 44 (Espinosa); The Danish Girl (Hooper); Dark Places (Paquet-Brenner); The Devil’s Candy (Byrne); The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Heller); Emelie (Thelin); The End of the Tour (Ponsoldt); Everest (Kormakur); Experimenter (Almereyda); The Forbidden Room (Maddin; Johnson); The Gift (Edgerton); Green Room (Saulnier); How Heavy This Hammer (Radwanski); Joy (Russell); Knight of Cups (Malick); The Lady in the Van (Hytner); Legend (Helgeland); The Lobster (Lanthimos); London Road (Norris); Maggie’s Plan (Miller); The Man Who Knew Infinity (Brown); McFarland USA (Caro); Miles Ahead (Cheadle); Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (McQuarrie); Mistress America (Baumbach); Remember (Egoyan); Straight Outta Compton (Gray); Trainwreck (Apatow); The Walk (Zemickis); A Walk in the Woods (Kwapis); Z for Zachariah (Zobel)
Best Performances of 2015
Cate Blanchett in Carol
Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant
Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs
Brie Larson in Room
Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies
Jacob Tremblay in Room
Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl
But how about...
Al Pacino in Danny Collins
Playing an aged rockstar doesn't immediately seem to be sensible casting for Al (and as soon as he opens his mouth to sing, you know that he is three or so levels below Leonard Cohen in the croak-stakes). However, the guy shines in this...sick of singing the same stuff over and over to an increasingly nostalgic audience, Danny the Rock God decides to hole up in a small hotel to write new material. Along the way he connects with a long-lost son, a granddaughter and a nice lady his age who is not a drugged-up groupie. Al has never been so purely likeable (well...except in Frankie & Johnny), communicating his self-discovery of a frittered-away life and his fresh need for family, friendship and self-respect. While the movie's wonderful John Lennon soundtrack contributes grit & emotional class, Al adds the warmth.
...and what about...
Ian McKellen in Mr Holmes
While I acknowledge the modern pizzazz that Robert Downey Jr and Benedict Cumberbatch have contributed to the character, Ian McKellen's twist on the great detective earns my devotion: Sherlock Holmes as feeble geriatric, tapering his final days down by struggling with memories (or are they fiction?) and personal regret (is a life lived alone still well-lived?). Ian is marvellous as this literary icon as flesh and blood man, befriending his housekeeper and her fatherless son, trying to keep at bay the fog of dementia whilst solving his last mysterious case. The relationship between the old man and inquisitive boy is beautifully developed without the slightest dip into sticky sentiment and Ian communicates the frustrations and precariousness of old age with a universal touch.
...not to mention...
Robert Redford in Truth
I don't know who said it, but: "Integrity. If you can fake that, you've got it made" (sounds like Groucho Marx, right?). Robert plays TV news journalist Dan Rather in a film about what the term "news" should and actually does mean. To an Aussie like myself, Dan Rather joins Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite as great broadcast journalists who I never actually witnessed in action. These men were flagbearers for Integrity: you believed what they told you. Robert Redford is cut from similar cloth: you trust him, just like you trusted Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart. Robert is able to take a role such as this, with its easy-to-scoff-at-in-these-cynical-times moral foundation and make the character project as a regular, decent guy who is incorruptible. Now tell me...can you name any other actors who could do that with such apparent ease and impact? Actors who are still around, that is.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Judy Davis & Hugo Weaving in The Dressmaker
Judy and Hugo are two of Australia's greatest actors; both have created memorable characters in local & international and highly-commercial & defiantly-indie movies. But that doesn't mean that they are flawless and beyond human foibles. These performances prove that: both are of the Charles Laughton / silent John Barrymore / Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace / chew-up-the-furniture ilk. Hugo plays a country town crossdressing police officer who is even more exaggerated and cartoonish than the guy he played in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. And Judy goes for the rangy old broad with a big mouth, cantankerous to the max, channeling her inner Shirley MacLaine to embarrassing effect. Both should have been vigorously reined in rather than left to their own professional flourishes. Whoops.
My 10 Favourite Performances of 2015
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| Find your ideal hotel: Trivago. |
#02 Cate Blanchett & Rooney Mara in Carol
#03 Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years
#04 Odessa Young in The Daughter
#05 Ian McKellen in Mr Holmes
#06 Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs
#07 Cate Blanchett in Truth
#08 Robert Redford in Truth
#09 Al Pacino in Danny Collins
#10 Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Michael Shannon in 99 Homes
#12 Emily Blunt in Sicario
#13 Benicio del Toro in Sicario
#14 Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies
#15 Carey Mulligan in Suffragette
#16 Saoirse Ronan in Brooklyn
#17 Oona Laurence in Southpaw
#18 Anya Taylor-Joy in The Witch
#19 Ben Mendelsohn & Ryan Reynolds in Mississippi Grind
#20 Sally Field in Hello, My Name is Doris
#21 Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant
#22 Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina
#23 Ed Oxenbould in The Visit
#24 Michael B. Jordan in Creed
#25 Carey Mulligan in Far From the Madding Crowd
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Kate Winslet in Steve Jobs [was she even in it?]
> Matt Damon in The Martian [just does his patented nice guy bit]
> Bryan Cranston in Trumbo [if you watch the Trumbo documentary, you'll understand why not]
> Sylvester Stallone in Creed [just another slowed-down Brando impersonation, just like the other six times]
> Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight [a terrific actor in a role that keeps him in the background]
> Rachel McAdams in Spotlight [a potentially-terrific actress in a role that keeps her in the background]
> Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hateful Eight [an unsurprising performance from a specialist in strange]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 2015 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Eye in the Sky (Gavin Hood)
SILVER: Sicario (Denis Villeneuve)
BRONZE: Truth (James Vanderbilt)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Ian McKellen (Mr Holmes)
SILVER: Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs)
BRONZE: Al Pacino (Danny Collins)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Charlotte Rampling (45 Years)
SILVER: Cate Blanchett (Truth)
BRONZE: Charlize Theron (Mad Max: Fury Road)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Robert Redford (Truth)
SILVER: Michael Shannon (99 Homes)
BRONZE: Benicio del Toro (Sicario)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina)
SILVER: Jessica Chastain (Crimson Peak)
BRONZE: Helen Mirren (Trumbo)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Jacob Tremblay & Brie Larson (Room)
SILVER: Cate Blanchett & Rooney Mara (Carol)
BRONZE: Ben Mendelsohn & Ryan Reynolds (Mississippi Grind)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Odessa Young (The Daughter)
SILVER: Oona Laurence (Southpaw)
BRONZE: Ed Oxenbould (The Visit)
The Alternate Razzies for 2015 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
Tomorrowland (Brad Bird)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Hugo Weaving (The Dressmaker)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Judy Davis (The Dressmaker)
