01 February 2016

Best of 2015


It has hit me the past few months as I sit in movie theaters and grumble through the countless previews before the main feature: Why do they keep making the same movie over and over? It's all been done before and done to death. The other day, the previews included a cute Disney animated feature with a small child teaming up with a wise old man; Disney, again, CGI'ing the hell out of what used to be a simple classic ("The Jungle Book"); and, goodness, another Terence Malick wank, conveyed in mystical whispers.

It's time to play against type, looking past the tried-and-true filmmakers and instead seeking out fresh storytellers and actors, venturing outside the old comfort zone. Whom did I gravitate toward in 2015? Women, many of them newcomers, including a Persian lesbian, '50s bisexuals, military rats, disaffected teens discovering empowerment, and a couple of wisecracking transgender hookers. I rose from my 50-something, persnickety, Midwest suburban-bred, hetero easy chair and stretched my legs. I sauntered into a new life cycle, clearing out some old clutter.

I shrugged at a lot of my go-to guys from the past. I loved every movie Noah Baumbach made before 2015, but I thought "While We're Young" (starring Ben Stiller, ho-hum) was only pretty good, and "Mistress America," his parlor-room farce with younger gal-pal Greta Gerwig (my former It Girl), was embarrassing. The newspaper drama "Spotlight" was solid but not transformative. I couldn't bear the thought of spending two-and-a-half hours with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's slog of a western, "The Revenant," even though he topped last year's list with "Birdman." I skipped Guy Maddin's latest fever dream altogether. I'm looking forward to the coming Coen Brothers romp but won't raise my hopes too high. Do they or Wes Anderson or David O. Russell or Michael Winterbottom or Francois Ozon or (forgive me) Jim Jarmusch really have any insight left to reveal to me? And as for quirky or cutting edge artists, I'll take Sean Baker ("Tangerine") or (holy crap!) Kornel Mundruczo ("White God").

It's a new crew that I'm connecting with. I cried during "Room," "Girlhood," "Diary of a Teenage Girl" and "Carol." I sat in awe at the confidence on display in "Appropriate Behavior" by Iranian-American Desiree Akhavan and the military comedy "Zero Motivation" from Israel's Talya Lavie. And coming-of-age stories (a genre that somehow never gets stale) don't get more "I Am Woman" than "Diary of a Teenage Girl" (U.S.), "Girlhood" (France) and "Mustang" (Turkey). It wasn't long ago that Sofia Coppola and Nicole Holofcener and maybe a few others were wandering lonely in a vast desert, or Kathryn Bigelow was slumming as the token mainstream darling. No more. The old-boys network is finally breaking down.

That said, it was not a deep year for film, and I decided to limit my list to a lean, deserving ten titles, as opposed to previous years when I was shoehorning gems into a Top 15 or 20. Granted, many of my runner-ups (and my documentary and guilty-pleasure choices) were more in line with my white-male-elder experience, but in my Top 10, seven are clearly about women, and six were directed, written and/or co-written by women.

OK, bully for me, oh so enlightened. Or maybe just condescending. Depends on your perspective. The bottom line is, we're shaking up the lineup a bit and requiring the old guard to earn our continued loyalty. As a legendary geezer, Bob Dylan (whose recent albums never achieved heavy rotation), once succinctly put it, "It used to go like that; now it goes like this."

The world turns. The ground shifts. We adjust. Here are the best films of 2015.

THE TOP TEN


1. Diary of a Teenage Girl - This luscious period piece revives that '70s feel of the teen-angst wail, taking a creepy concept and converting it into a meditation on longing, loneliness and self-realization. A feminist howl. (Including the best screenplay, by Marielle Heller.)

2. Appropriate Behavior - A stunningly assured debut from Persian-American writer/director/star Desiree Akhavan, a smarter, tougher "Annie Hall" for the post-gender age.

3. Room - A perfect two-act play, centered around mother and son, about the wonders of the world and the horrors committed by some of the people in it. The most touching film of the year.

4. Tangerine - A dizzying day-in-the-life of transgender prostitutes on the sunwashed streets of L.A. on Christmas Eve, an odyssey that never lets up, like "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" on mescaline. (Including the best director, Sean Baker, shooting on an iPhone.)

5. Timbuktu - A harrowing tale of ordinary life under the yoke of religious fundamentalism. An extended long-distance tracking shot of the hero trekking across a stream is an indelible image.

6. Girlhood - Restless teenagers running in a pack. Captivating visuals. A narrative primal scream. A rhapsody in blue.

7. White God - An epic saga and a truly wild ride, a riveting amalgam of at least a dozen other movies. The biggest surprise of the year.

8. Carol - Elegant, tender and lyrical, Todd Haynes elevates an ordinary crush into a languid tone poem, subtly rooting his story with the wallflower rather than the alpha female. Written by Phyllis Nagy, adapting a Patricia Highsmith novel.

9. Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck - A mesmerizing pastiche that examines the mind and heart of a tortured artist for the ages.

10. Wild Tales - From Argentina, six vignettes that are funny, clever, and exhilarating -- one of my favorite experiences in a movie theater in 2015.

BONUS TRACK
Zero Motivation - Technically a late December 2014 release in New York (but a film festival regular into 2015), this deadpan slacker farce is relentlessly funny ("Stripes" meets "Sgt. Bilko," from the Midwestern AARP perspective) and deceptively haunting. It could easily drop into the top five.



JUST MISSED THE LIST

 


 

MORE TOP DOCS

 


TOP PERFORMANCES

 

  • Rooney Mara in "Carol"
  • Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, an inseparable team, in "Room"
  • Kristen Wiig in "Welcome to Me," "Diary of a Teenage Girl," and "Nasty Baby"
  • Big-eyed Bel Powley in "Diary of a Teenage Girl"
  • Paul Dano in "Love & Mercy" 
  • Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor romping through "Tangerine" 

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME

(Good films where we just didn't click)


GUILTY PLEASURES

 



THE DUDS


COMING ATTRACTIONS

(Wish I'd seen these)

  • 45 Years
  • In Jackson Heights
  • James White

Stay tuned for reports on those last three titles once I catch up with them -- and plenty more -- as we forge ahead into 2016 . . . 
   
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