Top 50 for 2015 Part 3: 30–21
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30. Der Samurai (Germany, dir. Till Kleinert): Vimeo, Amazon
Till Kleinert’s debut feature DER SAMURAI is deceptively slight, running a little over 70 minutes. But Kleinert makes expert use of that time, jamming it full of psychosexual weirdness and capping things off with a shot that’s frankly one of the most astonishing I’ve seen in any film this year. Small-town cop Jakob (Michael Dierks) has recently been trying to prevent a wolf from bothering the townsfolk by hanging bags of raw meat out in the surrounding forest. He takes care of his senile grandmother and doesn’t command much respect, but it’s a living. Things get weird when he finds a man (Pit Bukowski, all grinning wild energy) wearing a long white slip and carefully applying lipstick in an abandoned house in the woods. “The Samurai” takes his sword and sets off on a rampage across the town while Jakob tries to prevent as much destruction as possible during a long, bizarre night. DER SAMURAI takes stylistic cues from David Lynch and John Waters, with a hint of Park Chan-wook, and typical of first features Kleinert is willing to take big risks that mostly pay off in creating a unique vision and tone. The film repeatedly sets up expectations only to gleefully confound them, and it leaves the viewer with plenty to chew on afterward.
29. Two Step (USA, dir. Alex R. Johnson): Netflix, Vimeo, Amazon
When his grandmother dies, orphaned college drop-out James (Skyy Moore) is left alone and in charge of her small estate. He lives in her home, adrift and friendless, until one night he ventures out and meets dance instructor Dot (Beth Broderick) at a bar and tentatively begins opening up to her. Meanwhile, small-time crook Webb (James Landry Hébert) finds himself in danger of being forced out of town if he can’t come up with the money he owes Duane (Jason Douglas). When Webb stumbles across James while trying to pull a phone scam on James’s dead grandmother, he realizes he may have the solution to his problems.
TWO STEP is a low-key crime drama that spends a lot of time with its characters, thoroughly establishing their lives and relationships with each other and the motivations for their actions. The performances are all great, especially Beth Broderick as Dot and James Landry Hébert as Webb. Broderick gives Dot a warm, weary grace and Hébert invests Webb with a crackling nervous energy. It’s not flashy, but this kind of finely detailed little crime movie is a rare thing, and TWO STEP is an excellent example of the form.
28. Cop Car (USA, dir. Jon Watts): Amazon
COP CAR, like TWO STEP, got some well-deserved comparisons to the Coen Brothers, but both films are considerably warmer and looser than any of the Coens’ films. Both films are about characters who end up in danger when they arbitrarily cross paths with the wrong person, but in COP CAR the characters in danger are a pair of endearingly goofy little kids. While out playing in a field, Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Hays Welford) stumble upon a seemingly abandoned cop car with the keys still in it. When Sheriff Kretzer (Kevin Bacon), a local cop involved in some decidedly illegal activity, returns to find the car missing, he begins a desperate search for the car and a cover-up of his actions. COP CAR follows the boys and the sheriff in parallel action, the boys acting believably childlike — they think and act like real kids — and Kretzer trying to keep a lid on a potentially explosive situation. It’s smart, tense, and very funny.
27. Lost River (USA. dir. Ryan Gosling)
Struggling single mother Billie (Christina Hendricks) lives on the outskirts of a desolate town with her two sons, barely able to keep their crumbling house. Her older son Bones (Iain De Caestecker) scavenges the ruins of the city looking for metal to sell, but one day he barely escapes Bully (Matt Smith), a local tough on whose turn Bones was trespassing. Billie takes a job doing grand guignol shows in a surreal nightclub run by creepy banker Dave (Ben Mendelsohn), who holds the mortgage to the house. Bones and his friend Rat (Saoirse Ronan) try to avoid Bully’s wrath and find a possible way to lift the curse that seems to be destroying their town in the flooded remains of the nearby town where Rat’s grandmother (Barbara Steele) lived as a girl.
LOST RIVER is very obviously a directorial debut. It’s an exercise in which its writer/director pays direct homage to his influences and indulges in his obsessions, but since most of those influences and obsessions align very closely with my own, I enjoyed the film quite a bit. There are some real problems with it, but it looks incredible (no surprise, since the cinematographer on it was Benoît Debie) and features many striking images, the cast is great (especially Christina Hendricks), and the soundtrack by Johnny Jewel is fantastic. Honestly, I think the only reason this film has received such a critical hammering is probably that its writer/director happens to be a successful and well-liked actor. It’s not hard to imagine young cinephiles seeing this movie and having their minds completely blown and being led to the works to which Gosling pays tribute. Any film that might lead some kid watching great cinema they might not have discovered sooner otherwise is a worthwhile one. Hopefully Gosling gets another shot at directing, because LOST RIVER shows a lot of promise.
26. Magic Mike XXL (USA, dir. Gregory Jacobs): Amazon, iTunes, Google
If the first MAGIC MIKE was a drama that happened to take place in the world of “male entertainers,” MAGIC MIKE XXL is a “male entertainer” movie that happens to have some light drama thrown in to give its hilarious, insanely fun dance sequences a little breathing room. Although actually, the opening of the film gives the viewer maybe a little too much breathing room. MAGIC MIKE XXL feels like it takes forever to get started, but once it’s up and running for its second half, it’s all payoff. And what a payoff! Channing Tatum is top billed, but Joe Manganiello and (especially) Jada Pinkett Smith steal the show. Other than Pinkett Smith, the most impressive addition to the cast this time around is Stephen “Twitch” Boss, veteran of the STEP UP films and a longtime fixture on SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE. Boss is a spectacular dancer, and has one amazing solo dance and shares the climactic final dance number with Tatum. This is just about the most fun you can legally have at the movies.
25. The Lobster (Ireland, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
Yorgos Lanthimos gained a huge amount of international attention for his surreal 2010 black comedy DOGTOOTH, but his 2011 follow-up feature ALPS was so thoroughly bizarre that it barely managed a release in the States at all. His latest feature is his first English-language film, and retains his bent toward the absurd but aims at much more accessible territory than his previous two films. THE LOBSTER follows newly single David (Colin Farrell) as he is sent to The Hotel to find a new partner. At The Hotel, he has 45 days to find a partner or be turned into an animal of his choosing (he wants to be a lobster, hence the title), although he can earn extra days by hunting and capturing single people (“Loners”) who live in the forests surrounding The Hotel. When it appears he will not make the goal, David learns that the life of the Loners is just as brutal as that of The Hotel. Farrell is excellent in an understated lead performance, and the great cast includes Rachel Weisz, Léa Seydoux, John C. Reilly, Ben Whishaw, Michael Smiley, Olivia Colman, and Angeliki Papoulia (who starred in DOGTOOTH and ALPS). THE LOBSTER retains the bleak outlook on human behavior of Lanthimos’s previous features but is probably his funniest film yet.
24. Crimson Peak (USA, dir. Guillermo del Toro)
Seriously, if CRIMSON PEAK was just two hours of footage of its insane central set, it would probably be one of my favorite movies of the year. Huge, incredibly ornate, and strategically rotten, its floors and walls oozing blood-red mud, Allerdale Hall is one of the most ridiculously ambitious and fantastically beautiful haunted mansions in film history. Some viewers complained that the story del Toro told in this film was too hemmed in by gothic traditions, but that’s entirely the point. CRIMSON PEAK is a gothic horror romance with the sex and violence pushed to the fore instead of discreetly left off-screen, its scenes of vicious stabbings and blunt force trauma set against intricately detailed period costuming (Jessica Chastain’s blue dress deserves a Best Supporting Actress nomination alone) and overheated melodramatic acting. Maybe my one serious complaint about the film is that this last aspect isn’t quite as outrageous as it should have been, except for Jessica Chastain’s gleefully demonic performance. That’s still a pretty minor gripe, all things considered. The people in this movie are almost an afterthought anyway; the real star of the show is that glorious haunted house.
23. Tu Dors Nicole (Canada, dir. Stéphane Lafleur): Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Google
Nicole (Julianne Côté) is out of school and back at her parents’ house for the summer. They’re away, so she has the run of the place. She takes a job at a thrift store and spends aimless afternoons with her friend Véronique (Catherine St-Laurent) and spends money she doesn’t have with her new credit card. Her uneventful summer is crashed when her older brother Rémi (Marc-André Grondin) decides to use the house as a practice and recording space for his band, and Nicole and Véronique are drawn into their orbit.
TU DORS NICOLE has the formless, easy charm of a classic “hangout” movie, along with some hints of Noah Baumbach (the black & white cinematography isn’t the only thing here reminiscent of FRANCES HA) and a few surreal touches that give it a unique flavor. The grainy cinematography may signal “artful drama,” but there’s nothing super important going on here and the stakes are relatively low. The film catches Nicole and Véronique at a very specific point in their lives after school but before the major responsibilities of adulthood really kick in. It’s a testatment to Julianne Côté’s performance that despite the viewer’s occasion frustration with Nicole having endless possibilities ahead but no strong feelings about what to do with them, she remains an endearing character.
22. The End of the Tour (USA, dir. James Ponsoldt): Amazon, iTunes, Google
James Ponsoldt’s THE SPECTACULAR NOW was one of my favorite films of 2013, mostly thanks to Miles Teller’s unexpectedly fantastic performance as a good-hearted kid with serious problems relating to the world. His latest feature, THE END OF THE TOUR, features Jason Segel in what is easily a career-best performance as author David Foster Wallace. Wallace was a capital-G Genius, but one who constantly struggled against the weight of what his gift meant and how to exist in the same world as his titanic literary reputation. It’s a performance that makes the film, along with the chemistry between Segel and Jesse Eisenberg as Rolling Stone interviewer and author David Lipsky, starstruck and deeply jealous of Wallace’s success. Their interplay forms the backbone of the film, but it’s filled out with inspired touches like Joan Cusack’s Patty, nervous and uncertain what she’s gotten herself into as Wallace’s chauffeur around Minneapolis. It’s funny, smart, and deeply sad, ending on an absolutely perfect note of bittersweetness.
21. The Assassin (Taiwan, dir. Hsiao-Hsien Hou)
THE ASSASSIN is one of several amazing period piece films that were released in 2015. Unlike some of the others, though, this is a much more serene time and place. Director Hsiao-Hsien Hou recreates the profound stillness of seventh-century China, frequently placing his characters against vast backdrops of incredible natural beauty. The film takes cues from wuxia cinema with its physics-defying martial arts, but it places those characters in a world that feels totally real in all other respects. This goes for both the world in which the film takes place and for the elaborate politics which define the action of the story and the relationships between the characters, the finer points of which may be impenetrable to anyone without a working knowledge of Chinese history (I’m talking about myself here). However, its overarching themes and character motivations are familiar and compelling regardless.
THE ASSASSIN is presented in a 1.37:1 aspect ratio, and is also one of several films this year to play with this facet of the cinematic form including Xavier Dolan’s MOMMY, Lisandro Alonso’s JAUJA, and Pedro Costa’s HORSE MONEY. Like JAUJA, the frame perversely denies the viewer access to the wider vistas of its gorgeous locations; like HORSE MONEY, the square frame is used expertly for striking compositions; and like MOMMY, there is one scene in which the frame is expanded to a wider ratio to emphasize a key moment in the story. There’s no question that even among those films, THE ASSASSIN is exceedingly beautiful. Its highly unusual take on some very familiar territory brings to mind Haofeng Xu’s 2011 film THE SWORD IDENTITY, another “martial arts” film that takes an entirely unique approach to the genre and one of my favorite films of the last five years. Any other year, THE ASSASSIN would have been even higher on my list. The fact that a movie this awesome was (even only just) nudged out of my Top 20 is a testament to just how good we had it this year at the movies.
2015 Recap:
Part 1: Favorite Restorations & Reissues, Five Favorite Independent Genre Films
