The Year in Film: Top Tens and Runners Up, With Mickey Reece and Danny Marroquin
Mickey Reece is the 33-year-old writer and director of the upcoming film ‘Broadcast’. He was born and raised in Oklahoma
MY (VERY PERSONAL) TOP 10
- IT FOLLOWS
I probably don’t watch as many horror films as I should. Not that I mind them, but more times than not the directors don’t usually have film critics in mind when fabricating their spooky fables. Which is both admirable and neglectful. This particular picture had something about it that I can’t necessarily articulate using words like “indie” or “mumblecore.” The score was likely reminiscent of when the genre hit its stride (in the 1980s) and the premise was…Well, a horror movie premise. The sheer atmosphere alone was incredible and what kept me on the edge of my seat, so to speak. Reminds me of those scenes in Boys Don’t Cry when Hilary Swank and Chloe Sevigny are making out in a field surrounded by darkness. It opens with our heroine taking a dip in her dirty, above-ground pool with a shitty TV just outside of it. The set could have been lifted straight out of a Harmony Korine film. Where are the adults in this movie? Who cares? We don’t need them. Classic film references and iconic imagery aside, I will admit I also got locked into the characters and their silly motivations. I don’t think David Robert Mitchell had scaring us in mind but rather to focus on creating an unsettling world for these teens to inhabit, and present it to the audience as if it’s how they would behave if this unbelievable story was believable.
2. STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON
As an ardent fan of hood movies (my favorite being Menace 2 Society) this was probably the most entertaining movie of the year to me. My brother, who is ten years older, had filled me in on the music and stories of N.W.A. before I even amounted to double digits. Many years later I found myself listening to them as a teenager when I was able to better understand the lyrics. Many years later this movie was made and I can’t thank the folks who did it enough. Nostalgia aside: acting, writing, directing were all superb.
3. LOVE AND MERCY
Another music biopic. Not sure what’s gotten into me. Just love Brian Wilson.
4. INSIDE OUT
Without a doubt the best and most imaginative screenplay this year. I haven’t gotten this lost in the actual writing of a movie since Adaptation. Which reminds me I need to see Anomalisa.
5. THE END OF THE TOUR
I did not expect to like this movie. I thought I had probably seen it before in the 90s. And in fact I had, but it was not on a screen. I’ve met these characters before in real life and I was not nearly as fascinated by them. Jason Segel will be robbed for Best Supporting Actor, BTW.
6. STEVE JOBS
Not sure how well this movie will age but I loved Michael Fassbender’s performance. Artistry and technique firing on all cylinders. Kate Winslet reminded me of my ex-wife. I liked her, too.
7. THE HATEFUL EIGHT
Took me a bit to warm up to this one. Should’ve sat in the back of the theater so I could better grasp the big picture. That’s a metaphor as I would never actually sit in the back of a movie theater.
8. WELCOME TO ME
Kristen Wiig is hilarious and while the acting and direction of this movie were subpar, it was a very original screenplay written way outside of the box.
9. SPOTLIGHT
Without getting too topical here: I thought this was the most well-directed movie of the year. The tone was neither overly dramatic nor preachy, nor did it take the issue of Catholic priests escaping the consequences of molesting children lightly. Only the facts. While Civil Rights is an important topic, you won’t see anyone depicting public sympathy at the Oscars for Spotlight like the supporters of Selma displayed during John Legend’s performance of ‘Glory’ last year. It’s not a spectacle because Tom McCarthy took this material serious enough to leave the musical numbers and over-the-top theatrical acting on the cutting room floor. Both completely different issues and completely different movies, I’m aware. Important in their own right, Selma was a poorly directed film of powerful subject matter that will not hold up to classics of its kind like Malcolm X, while Spotlight will go down in cinematic history with the likes of All The President’s Men.
10. YOUTH
Paolo Sorrentino, the master of composition, is back in his best work since IIl Divo. Bravo!
RUNNERS UP:
Sicario
Creed
The Revenant
Joy
A Deadly Adoption
MISSED:
Carol
Concussion
The Martian
The Danish Girl
Grandma
Danny Marroquin is a film reviewer at The Red Dirt Report and an educator. He has collaborated with Mickey Reece on the films: Walrus, Mickey and Me, Tarsus and Suedehead
- JOY
With faux horror, junior filmmakers (like Mark Duplass) enjoy referring to the time David O. Russell cursed out Lily Tomlin with shocking language. This is their proof that the system is rigged in favor of “the assholes.” Well, here is a more quiet and subtle treatment from the wildman of the same Philadelphia working class life plumbed in the hits Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. This story about the inventor of the miracle mop completes Russell’s Trilogy of the Heart. I didn’t think Russell was a genius until I saw this one. The comedy from chaotic situations worked. Jennifer Lawrence gives her most layered performance yet. Scene: She, the world’s biggest star, plays a bone modest woman petrified by TV cameras who learns how to act during this scene, and then nails it. American Sniper Bradley Cooper: A quietly dedicated QVC TV producer who likes his stove pipe suits. The film has a thesis too, by way of Cooper’s speech about the glory of Old Hollywood: That they made the ordinary extraordinary.
So does Russell. Beyond the quotidian his visual gambles include a fairy tale vibe, meta soap opera scenes, and a voice-over from the departed. With a simpler script than Hustle, these elements usher his directorial manicness into a new realm of moving maturity and inventive wisdom. One careful subplot discovers a new thing between Joy and her ex-husband Tony (Edgar Ramirez), cinema’s most functional divorced couple. Gritty squabbles are followed by acts of kindness, trust, and binding friendship, elements that are a tough sell to bottom-line movie producers looking for the next franchise. From the bootstraps, Russell found his franchise in his own backyard — and these films tend to get actors to the Oscars.
2. THE HATEFUL EIGHT
The Hateful Eight surprised me with the depth of its anger. The Civil War has ended, and 8 truly miserable, borderline cartoon characters enter a room colder and more tortuous than Dante’s inferno. The whodunnit plot is crafty. The reveal before the intermission is gross and insane — designed, racially and sexually, to get under The Man’s skin. Which is to say QT is inspired in the true maverick way that once launched Reservoir Dogs and a thousand films thereafter. Here we see a weirdness that’s Quentin’s alone, as well as a sincere exhaustion about America’s original sin, slavery — signaled by a crucifix in the opening sequence — and ever present around us today.
3. CAROL
Todd Haynes is a director who wears his postmodernity loudly (Far From Heaven and the fun I’m Not There). But this movie’s frustrated romantic soul resides in Rooney Mara’s headlight eyes and a restrained and interesting, cram-characters-into-corners filming style (using 16mm; lush and melancholy in theaters). The feelings between Carol and Therese as secret lovers in the 1950s are simple and deep. A classic story of a connection that unfairly must exist and discover the profuseness of its passions, be it love or photography, on the outskirts and to societal disapproval.
4. QUEEN OF EARTH
The misanthropic filmmaker Alex Ross Perry (pictured above) has crafted a vintage, terror vibe that feels visually like the most current movie made this year. Elisabeth Moss (above) is pushed to troubling psychic boundaries that Perry imagines, paradoxically, by sticking with the surfaces of the wretched faces and watery images — shot with more empathy than you might think. Because the fierce passion of the filming trumps explanations. The beauty and fury of the women, and how their descent matches the shadows of nature, unforgettable. Grade A hipster composer soundtrack, too.
5. STEVE JOBS
Aaron Sorkin gambles on a crazy scripting idea and the result is inspired and rooted in fine family feeling. Michael Fassbender, Jeff Daniels and Kate Winslet are all perfect.
6. STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON
Jason Mitchell as Easy E and director F. Gary Gray’s effortless epic-making eye are the stars here. Compton, like black America today, is painted personally by Gray as a cultural hotbed and a war zone. Paul Giamatti really had a money year playing odd outsider witnesses to musical landmarks, here and in Love & Mercy
7. SPOTLIGHT
This justly praised film weaves a slow and soon all-encompassing feeling of horror In uncovering shockingly epidemic numbers of child molestation cases in the Catholic church. Michael Keaton and Liev Schreiber are rock solid. Excellence in casting when Rachel McAdams interviews the victims. Excellence in direction where Stanley Tucci and Mark Ruffalo discuss difficult legal issues, keeping the camera in one place. Here Tom McCarthy trusts the audience can follow the drama — unlike the reactionary and awkward real life tale The Big Short, which literally writes out definitions for an audience it assumes is a room full of illiterate Dude Bros. If Adam McKay predicts and stops the next global economic catastrophe I’ll be less annoyed with his Attention Deficit Disorder filmmaking.
8. THE END OF THE TOUR
A preservation miracle for remembering the time Rolling Stone almost wrote up a novelist and cute girls read Primary Colors by the pair. In seriousness, this is a quiet and poignant road trip movie about would-be friends, writers forever separated by fame and notoriety. Both actors, Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Segel play their parts to a nimble T. The End of the Tour remains most remarkable for introducing David Foster Wallace’s key themes to a new generation awash in deceptive pleasures and technologies.
9. BRIDGE OF SPIES
On YouTube check out Martin Scorsese’s DGA interview with Spielberg to further see that the director’s visual talents are as strong as the story of James B. Donovan, who navigated a tricky Cold War terrain with ethical rigor and secretly held humanity to release American hostages from Russia. Chatty and efficient script by The Coen Brothers.
10. IRRATIONAL MAN
Woody Allen puts his darker ideas into motion amid a quaint collegiate setting of self-satisfied millennials who inherit their parents’ rare modernist art. Joaquin Phoenix, as a disenchanted professor, play Russian Roulette in front of them. The dark gag is extended to the professor’s plot to realize Justice in an overheard conversation. This is played out with a sneaky sophistication that — via the professor’s area of study — alludes to the moral blind spots within the mystic German philosophies floating around before WWII. An elevator scene sticks in the mind as ghostly still, grimly funny, fierce, and sad, as if hearing the artist sigh. Woody is a surviving master.
RUNNERS UP:
YOUTH
LOVE AND MERCY
SICARIO
DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS
TRUMBO
MISSED:
CREED
THE DANISH GIRL
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
INSIDE OUT
DIGGING FOR FIRE
