[full disclosure: I haven't seen every movie that came out in 2015. My apologies to Shaun the Sheep]
Purposeful Omissions: Fast & Furious 7, Avengers 2, Terminator Genisys, Jurassic World, Mission: Impossible 5, The Gift
Honorable Mentions: Trainwreck, Straight Outta Compton, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Cartel Land
10. While We're Young
This movie made my soul cringe. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play an aging childless couple, trying to figure out where they fit in society. Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried play twenty-somethings hell-bent on making art while living wild and free. Both couples are deeply flawed, and somehow both couples act as a mirror to me, the not-so-young creative-type laden heavy with both dreams and regrets. People act foolishly when they pretend to be young, or pretend to be wise, or pretend to be anything other than what they really are, and this movie showcases that foolishness to hilarious and traumatizing effect. I didn't know whether to laugh or sob. Sadly, the conclusion of this film doesn't tie everything together tidily but the journey there was strong enough to merit a spot on this list. Writer-director Noah Baumbach's dry wit prevails again.
9. Dope
This is a loose film. The script is not tight. Things happen that aren't obviously motivated. Characters make odd choices. Even the genre label falls somewhere between bildungsroman, heist, fish-out-of-water, and probably a few more I'm forgetting. That being said, it was an original, forward-thinking, highly-stylized genre movie featuring a cast of interesting and relatable characters. The basic plot is three nerd-ish high school friends need to figure out how to sell a lot of drugs in order to get a girl, get into college, and not be killed. Classic high school antics, I know. But the whole thing has an amazing 80s hip-hop vibe, despite taking place today (and even having a whole subplot devoted to bitcoins). The setting, the costumes, the music, and the performances worked together wonderfully, even when the story elements and pacing were a bit off. Plus A$AP Rocky has acting chops, who knew?
8. Me and Earl and The Dying Girl
I know this movie has some shmaltz in it and I don't care, I had a great time with this one. The misfit kids who swede their own versions of classic foreign and arthouse cinema are always going to be okay in my book. Most of this movie feels like a cross between Wes Anderson and Phil Lord & Chris Miller- careful compositions and absurd situations. This sort of kids-dealing-with-death coming-of-age concept isn't altogether original so in a movie like this you really have to nail the execution. Well, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon nailed it. The core cast is pretty green behind the ears (as evidenced by their unpolished, rambling Q&A answers I heard after the movie's LA premiere) but they all did a great job and the supporting players were excellent. Having Brian Eno do the score never hurts either.
7. Inside Out
In today's Hollywood landscape I can't help but give points to a film simply for being an original property. This year gave us Fast & Furious 7, Mission Impossible 5, Terminator 5, Jurassic Park 4, and Marvel Cinematic Universe films 11 and 12. Not to say I didn't like a lot of those films; sequels and reboots and boardgame adaptations can (and do) make for great movies. But yeah, I was impressed by the sheer originality and maturity of Inside Out. It's not my favorite Pixar movie by a long-shot, but it might be the most unique. The world inside a girl's mind is a complex and beautiful place, at times alternating between jolly and terrifying. The abstract journey of Bing-Bong is museum-worthy art in my humble opinion. The movie is not without its problems (the protagonist is very upset by some first-world issues, for example) but overall it's an impressive endeavor and a thoughtful semi-experimental film. Not necessarily a winner for children (this ain't Cars) but that just adds to my fondness of it.
6. The Martian
This is Ridley Scott's biggest movie. Take a second and consider that. The 77-year old director who made Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, and more made his most profitable movie this year. That's insane! This movie is not quite as good as some of those I just listed, but it is the only PG-13 one of the bunch so I guess that helped it a lot. This movie stuck pretty close to the beloved sci-fi novel it's based on, but not to a fault. In all honesty, the movie was probably a little better than the book because the visual spectacle was handled with aplomb. It pleased fanboys and newcomers. Matt Damon made a great stranded astronaut-hero, and my one negative note is the casting of Kristen Wiig and Donald Glover (???). Also Jessica Chastain and Kate Mara and Michael Peña were under-utilized, but I actually agree with that choice; if anything I'd like to spend even more time alone with Damon on the red planet. He's dreamy.
5. It Follows
The concept is simple enough: if you have sex with someone who is afflicted, they pass the affliction unto you and it follows you until it kills you. The affliction is manifested as a walking (never running) human of indiscriminate age, sex, and relation to the victim. It can only be seen by the afflicted (and the audience, of course). Throughout this movie the audience learns to never trust a walking human in the background, because more often than not that human is the awful eponymous "it." My ass was on the edge of the seat, my knuckles were clenched and white, and my eyes ceaselessly searched each frame for the monster. Even though the actual scenes of violence were ultimately underwhelming, the pure unbridled tension that existed throughout the movie made it successful. The protagonists' clueless attempts to mitigate the monster were a clever touch as well, and the soundtrack still gives me chills. And they said original horror was dead.
4. Finders Keepers
Making a documentary must be a very anxiety-inducing endeavor. The characters you follow have to be pretty darn compelling for the movie to work, and you won't really know if they are interesting until you start shooting them. With that in mind, these filmmakers struck gold. The stranger-than-fiction premise hooks you right away: a man buys an abandoned storage shed and finds a human foot inside of it. Intrigued already, right? That sounds like the beginning of a mystery movie, but it's actually more of an intimate character study. Finders Keepers is about the embroiled legal (and moral) battle between a shameless glory-seeker who finds a foot and the self-destructive amputee who wants it back, with a healthy sprinkling of their eccentric families and friends who weigh in along the way. This is it folks; a true slice of Americana. There is a bizarre sense of the universal to be found in this very peculiar story. This is an A-grade documentary all the way through.
3. Kingsman: The Secret Service
I love having fun in a theater. There's a childlike innocence to really getting onboard with a movie in a dark room full of perfect strangers, and I feel like I don't get to experience that emotion too often anymore. Kingsman did it for me. I guffawed openly. There's a real beauty to a successful parody, wherein a movie can poke fun at a genre but still be a worthy entry itself (Cabin in the Woods and Shaun of the Dead are the only others that come to mind). Spy movies have gotten either grim or campy (or both) lately, and those routes kind of suck. Even though it had its tongue firmly planted in its cheek, Kingsman managed to be a fun, funny, high-octane action movie. I would buy this lunchbox! Colin Firth in a scene with The Raid-level of violence and Samuel L. Jackson as a flamboyant supervillain can only add positively to a film like this. And as a wise man once told me, "it's always the old white guy" so keep your eye on Michael Caine. Does a movie like this need spoiler alerts?
2. Mad Max: Fury Road
Let me start off by voicing a contrarian opinion: I think Mad Max: Fury Road is over-rated. It is sitting at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes with over 300 reviews counted. The plot insomuch as one exists is weak. The characters are thin, and their decisions are mostly kinda dumb. Max is an empty shell of a protagonist, almost wholly lacking in motivations and even dialogue. Okay, whew, I got that out of my system. Now for the rebuttal: Fury Road is f*cking awesome. It is balls-to-the-wall insanity on a level not often (or maybe ever) reached in cinema. The monster-truck dystopia with an army of spray-paint-huffing fundamentalists is so gorgeously realized that it's hard to find fault in other aspects of the movie, because why are you looking at other aspects of the movie?! How, even?? There's a blind mutant playing a freaking flame-throwing guitar, and you're worrying about character development? You're nitpicking the script while the kid from About A Boy enters a raging electrical storm, screaming something about Valhalla? That's completely missing the point of this lovely day- I mean film. Charlize Theron is great. Tom Hardy, in his own mute way, is great. This movie somehow manages to appeal to the intelligentsia and frat boys alike. It is a miracle made of explosions, and I'll gladly kneel at the altar. The Holy Boom. Praise thee.
1. Ex Machina
I wasn't sure how I felt about Ex Machina when I first left the theater; it was definitely not what I was expecting. It was a small movie, almost more of a play really. From the posters and the trailers and the Tinder-based marketing scheme, I had expected something bigger. It was only later, once I had come to terms with the fact that the movie wholly takes place inside a mostly-empty compound in the middle of nowhere that I could start to assess just how wonderful it is. Two of my favorite character actors and a rising star get to chew scenery for two hours while talking technology, intelligence, and ethics. Some of my favorite topics! Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson aren't superstars quite yet, but soon enough they will be. They co-star in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and then Isaac is the big bad next year in X-Men: Apocalypse. These guys are going to be huge, and I can't think of any two actors at the moment who deserve it more. Gleeson is the personification of every guy who might end up in this situation: curious, naive, and unable to not fall in love with Alicia Vikander, even if she is a robot. Isaac is like a drunken, philosophizing version of the scientist from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Vikander is perfect as the metallic yet somehow soft and warm and inviting Ava. She came out of nowhere, but her 2015 (Ex Machina, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Danish Girl) shows just how capable she is in big roles.
This movie is clearly more of a contained story than a harbinger of real things to come, but I still enjoy catching a glimpse into this possible near-future. Movies like Her, Frank & Robot, and Ex Machina are clearly sci-fi... but just barely. It will be mighty interesting in 25 years to look back on movies like this and see how close or far off they were from reality. In the meantime, filmmakers like Alex Garland (who also wrote 28 Days Later and Sunshine) will have to keep terrifying us with these twisted and fascinating possibilities.
