Top 50 for 2015 Part 1: 50–41
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I’m doing this differently than I have the last several years, although even in those I’ve not had much in the way of consistency in how things are done. As always, this is not some kind of attempt at an objective “Best Films of 2015,” these are my personal 50 favorite films of the year. Since it’s my personal favorites list, films in consideration were those that I could have legitimately seen in 2015 in the States (theatrical/festival screening, VOD, cable, DVD/Blu-ray) which received its first official screening or release in the States during 2015 and that I actually watched during the 2015 calendar year. If I didn’t see it between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2015, it’s not eligible for my list. Them, as the man said, is the rules. For a complete list of films in consideration for my 2015 recap, see this sidebar. And now, on with the show:
50. The Case of Hana & Alice (Japan, dir. Shunji Iwai)
Japanese director Shunji Iwai has had an odd career. After making a series of singular films in the 1990s and early 2000s, he made an exceptionally strange English-language film — 2011's excellent, low-key serial killer horror/drama VAMPIRE — and seemingly disappeared. He returned this year with yet another major curveball. Iwai’s first animated feature is a prequel to his 2004 film HANA AND ALICE, showing how that film’s two young characters first met and became friends. This being a film by Iwai, it’s hardly as simple as that. As in his other work, Iwai exhibits a willingness to take unexpected detours and patiently observe his characters. The unique rotoscoped animation style is delightful, lending the characters an impressive depth of heightened expression without tipping too much into cartoonishness. This is a funny, sweet, carefully observed story about two young women that happens to be animated.
49. Deathgasm (New Zealand, dir. Jason Lei Howden): Vimeo, Amazon
2014 saw an excellent new entry into the canon of New Zealand horror comedies with Gerard Johnston’s HOUSEBOUND, and 2015 brought two more. One of these is Jason Lei Howden’s DEATHGASM, a loud, fast, goofy, and gory heavy metal horror movie with plenty of loud music and blunt humor. In other words, it’s pretty much exactly what you would imagine a heavy metal horror movie from New Zealand would be. The cast is great, the music is perfect, and there are fountains of gore. Just a hell of a good time and a must-see for horror, metal, and/or New Zealand.
48. The Big Short (USA, dir. Adam McKay)
This is the funniest movie about a seriously depressing subject of the year. Adam McKay has previously been best known for helming Will Ferrell vehicles like TALLADEGA NIGHTS, STEP BROTHERS, and the ANCHORMAN movies, but the direction he takes here was actually hinted at in his 2010 action/comedy THE OTHER GUYS. That film ends with a series of infographics detailing economic inequality in the United States. He also directed a short as part of the wetheconomy project, “The Unbelievably Sweet Alpacas,” in which My Little Pony-style cartoon characters explain “yawning divide in wealth distribution” in their world to help viewers understand the same thing happening in the real world.
THE BIG SHORT is basically the logical endpoint of McKay’s interest in using entertainment and comedy to educate the public on economic realities. Adapting Michael Lewis’s book about the 2008 housing crash in the United States, McKay makes some great casting choices (Ryan Gosling is especially notable as a soulless douchebag very much unlike anything he’s played before) and uses quick celebrity cameos to help describe seemingly imposing concepts (like Margot Robbie in a bubble bath explaining what a “sub-prime” mortgage is). It’s fast, dense, funny, and more than a little infuriating. In other words, exactly what it should be.
47. Shaun the Sheep Movie (UK, dir. Mark Burton &
Richard Starzak): Amazon, iTunes, Google
Wallace and Gromit may be the characters who really made Aardman Studios’s reputation, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Shaun the Sheep. Twenty years after his first appearance in the Wallace and Gromit short “A Close Shave,” Shaun and his woolly friends finally got their own feature film, and it’s spectacular. Carrying over the same wordless approach of the shorts and series, as well as the incredible handmade look of the Shaun the Sheep world, Aardman has made a sweet, hilarious comic adventure for all ages. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the film’s theme song is a perfect, undeniable power pop gem that totally encapsulates the light, warm tone of the movie.
46. Amour Fou (Austria, dir. Jessica Hausner): Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Google
This was a pretty incredible year for period pieces that felt like film crews didn’t just carefully replicate the look of different times and places but somehow actually transported filmmaking equipment to those times and just let the cameras roll. In AMOUR FOU, Jessica Hausner (director of the brilliantly restrained 2004 “horror” film HOTEL) turns her attention to Germany in the early 19th century. Poet Heinrich von Kleist (Christian Frieden) has decided that a shared suicide with his cousin Marie would be the most beautiful and romantic death. When she declines his offer, he tries his luck with Henriette Vogel (Birte Schnoeink), a married musician who suffers from unexplained physical ailments and seems a little more amenable to the idea than Marie. What follows is a subdued comedy of errors, handsomely shot, staged and costumed in a way that makes its period seem utterly convincing. That alone would make AMOUR FOU worth watching, but Hausner has created something very different than the typical period piece drama or farce. This is a highly subdued (and unique) black comedy quite unlike anything else out there.
45. Entertainment (USA, dir. Rick Alverson): Amazon, iTunes, Google
Rick Alverson’s previous feature, 2012’s THE COMEDY, took Tim Heidecker out of the world of his absurdist Adult Swim series TIM AND ERIC AWESOME SHOW, GREAT JOB! and transplanted a “character” suggested by Heidecker’s approach to comedy (surreal, oblivious, cruel) into a realistic series of interactions with actual humans. For his follow-up, Alverson borrows more of the “cosmic horror as comedy” used so effectively by AWESOME SHOW while taking a similar approach to Gregg Turkington’s notoriously unpleasant performance art “stand-up” act Neil Hamburger. The titular Comedian (Turkington) drifts from one depressing low-rent gig to another, all of them seemingly out in some vast, endless desert. He stands in front of disgusted and indifferent audiences, spitting out his gruesome jokes (typical example: “What’s the worst part of being gang-raped by Crosby, Stills, and Nash? No Young.”) and viciously calling out hecklers. In between, he sits in faceless motel rooms and leaves voice mail messages for his daughter, who either refuses to talk to him or doesn’t even exist. Alverson uses the desert and the tiny clubs and motel rooms effectively as a sort of terrifying limbo that gives the film the feel of something closer to David Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY than anything resembling comedy, especially in the nightmarish final act. I laughed during ENTERTAINMENT, but I didn’t feel good about it afterward, which I think is exactly what Alverson and Turkington wanted.
44. White God (Hungary, dir. Kornél Mundruczó): Netflix, Amazon
I’ve seen a lot of people writing about WHITE GOD in the context of international “arthouse” cinema. While that’s a perfectly valid way to look at it (especially given the way the film was released in the States, playing independent “art” theaters), I think a more accurate view is to think of WHITE GOD as more of an artful update of classic “killer animal” movies from the 70s and 80s. If this was an English-language movie, it could have comfortably played your local cineplex in an auditorium next door to, say, THE GIFT. Just because it’s in Hungarian doesn’t mean it’s not populist entertainment, and I think that’s the level on which it is best appreciated. The performances by the main dogs in this movie are flat-out amazing, and the scenes of dogs causing mayhem are impressively staged.
43. Jauja (Argentina, dir. Lisandro Alonso): Netflix, iTunes, Google
One of the most perversely enjoyable things about Lisandro Alonso’s gorgeous JAUJA is how the director purposely denies the viewer the wide vistas the film’s locations promise. Presented in a rough 4:3 frame with rounded corners, JAUJA is an undeniably beautiful film, and the fact that there is so much more outside the frame gives it a frustrating, tantalizing quality matched by its dreamlike approach to narrative. At some undetermined point in the past, Gunnar (Viggo Mortensen) and his daughter Ingeborg (Viilbjørk Malling Agger) have traveled to an unspoiled land from Denmark. They are being escorted to a village by an army detail, and one night Ingeborg flees their camp with a young soldier. Gunnar sets off across the unfamiliar plains to find her, and that is basically the entire story.
Long passages of JAUJA pass with no dialogue, and only two pieces of music punctuate the silence. Gunnar’s search becomes stranger as he ventures further afield, his frantic search placed in stark contrast to the serene landscape of this unknown country. JAUJA is hypnotic and quietly surreal, a film that deceptively lulls the audience into its spell and refuses to provide answers to its mysteries.
42. Spotlight (USA, dir. Tom McCarthy)
Like Adam McKay’s THE BIG SHORT, Tom McCarthy’s SPOTLIGHT is a film about some exceptionally infuriating events that took place largely in the recent past. Unlike McKay, though, McCarthy’s approach to dramatizing the events leading to the landmark Boston Globe publication of pieces that brought to light the systemic cover-up of child molestation in the Catholic Church is to show the process of journalism in a decidedly unglamorous manner. There’s no big moment of catharsis here, just a group of dedicated professionals doing the work: cold approaches to houses of potentially hostile interviewees, lots of time poring through books and making notes, hours and days and weeks of quiet, solitary investigation. Spreadsheets. On paper, this sounds pretty dull, but the cast makes their characters’ determination infectious, and their revelations feel like genuine surprises even if you know how this story goes. Like the characters, McCarthy just does the work and tells the story, and it’s brilliant.
41. Spring (USA, dir. Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead): Amazon, iTunes, Google
Benson & Moorhead’s follow-up to RESOLUTION is a vastly different beast in terms of tone and scope, although it expands a bit on their sense of humor (gleefully on full display in “Bonestorm,” their segment in V/H/S: VIRAL) while retaining the thoughtful focus on character that defined their debut. Some of the digital effects are wonky enough to be distracting, but thankfully the film is compelling enough to mostly smooth over such rough edges. That’s mostly due to Lou Taylor Pucci and Nadia Hilker, who both give solid performances and have a great, easy chemistry together. Funny, smart, and romantic, which are three things horror movies almost never are simultaneously.
2015 Recap:
Part 1: Favorite Restorations & Reissues, Five Favorite Independent Genre Films
