Best Films of 2015 (That I Saw)

As usual, there are a ton of movies I missed. It’s a combination of living in the midwest (films start at the edges and work their way in and by February I’m usually playing catchup) and straight-up not having the time to luxuriate and go to the movies. For the first time since Kill Bill I neglected to see a Tarantino movie in theaters and this makes me very sad. We also missed out on Anomalisa after some babysitter miscommunication. These things happen. I’ll see them in a couple months when they’re out on DVD and that’s all that matters, but in my head, I’ll still feel a pang of sadness that they couldn’t be considered for the little year end list I effectively make for myself to process the year. 2015 was not a banner year for film or music, but like any other year, it’s a big pain narrowing down my favorite pieces into at Top Ten. They can’t all be 2007 or 2013 (this is only drawing from recent memory, certainly someone has pegged the absolute best year for movies ever) but the beautiful thing about cinema is that you will always have at least ten must see movies. Maybe only one or two of them will end up IMDB Top 250 worthy but all of them are going to be thought provoking, entertaining, and if you’re lucky, they’ll leave you a little rattled and/or rattle around inside your head for days/weeks/months/years to come.

And because I couldn't limit it to just ten, I even have honorable mentions (amazingly, in no particular order): Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Undid the horrors of the prequels in one fell swoop. Made me feel like a boy again. I was 9 years old when the original trilogy was re-released on VHS. I didn't really know anything about Star Wars. From what I can remember, my dad checked them out at Blockbuster and I spent the next 7 hours in the basement having my child's mind fully obliterated with absolute joy. I got the tapes a few months later at Christmas. Along with action figures, Boba Fett's ship, a land speeder, and the much coveted Millenium Falcon. To crib from Inside Out, these are core memories. One of the reasons The Force Awakens works so well is it's basically just A New Hope with a fresh coat of paint. It's everything you loved about Star Wars as a child made new again. That sentimentality is practically a cliche in re Star Wars, and while I expected a torrent of nostalgia to come rushing in when the score hit and the words started crawling up the screen, the actual rush of glee I felt was something unparalleled. The sort of joy a new and great Star Wars movie brought my heart is truly unspeakable. I can try to translate it here, but words fail to capture that pure and simple YES YES YES YES YES. You probably know what I'm talking about.

Brooklyn
Nick Hornby, once a touchstone author for "lads" and "blokes" has become an excellent writer of female characters in his most recent screenplays (An Education, Wild, and this one here) and novels (Juliet, Naked and Funny Girl). On top of his excellent script is beautiful and world-beating performance from Saoirse Ronan, a breakout directorial work from John Crowley, and a beautifully decorated immigrant story that is quite delightful but still packs some dramatic heft.

It Follows Seriously inventive (and seriously scary) horror filmmaking that feels both throwback and fresh and owns the year's best score. I'm not really a horror guy, but sign me up for whatever David Robert Mitchell does for the rest of his career.

Mistress America

It's weird how good this was considering how bad While We're Young was. Good on you, Noah Baumbach! It's a sweet little screwball comedy and further confirmation that Greta Gerwig should be in everything.

The Martian

An excellent and entertaining adaptation of an excellent and entertaining novel.

The Gift

A singularly creepy cautionary tale about why it is important to BE NICE TO PEOPLE IN HIGH SCHOOL. The levels of menace Joel Edgerton layers into this film as both the director and antagonist are off the damn charts.

Inside Out
Like Up, Inside Out is mostly made to make grown ups sad. I laughed, I cried, I cried some more, ok I cried a lot. It's a beautiful film full of pretty colors and heavy truths, but I did feel that Pixar got a little heavy handed with the feels button. You know what I mean? There are certainly plenty of brilliant gags to add some levity to the aforementioned HEAVY TRUTHS but holy shit, this movie is so deliberate in the way it runs you through the emotional wringer it's borderline sadistic. And yet, the fact that Pixar decided to make a film about the complexities of child psychology is daring as hell and I'm tipping my hat regardless.

Love & Mercy
I hate biopics. Well, mostly. There's one in a prominent spot on this list, but I get into my hate of by the book biopics in that entry. Mostly, I just can't stand the bullet point effect. Love & Mercy definitely has traces of your Walk the Lines and your Capotes (notably, the whole John Cusack Brian-Wilson-Under-the-Control-Of-an-Insane-Psychologist-Quack part, although both Elizabeth Banks and Paul Giamatti turn in top-of-their-game performances) but it also has these brilliant sequences where an absolutely locked in Paul Dano conducts a flock of studio musicians into transcribing the insanity in his head and making Pet Sounds. Those sequences married my inner music lover/movie lover and were pure ecstatic joy.

10. Ex Machina

Directed by Alex Garland

Alex Garland’s dark (and darkly comic) take on artificial intelligence subverts the evil robot genre by twisting it into a taut psychological thriller. The plot and questions of humanity are all well and good, but the performances from Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander, and Domhnall Gleeson are what elevate this into a truly compelling piece of science fiction. Mostly though, it’s Alex Garland’s tone and use of an everyman character thrown into a bizarre situation that makes this film so unsettling and relatable.

9. Dope

Directed by Rick Famuyiwa

Dope is a perfect little gem of a film that got absolutely buried in 2015. That’s madness, absolute madness. The plot is simple: Malcolm (a self-professed “geek” obsessed with 90s hip hop, and, well, 90s culture in general) gets a shitload of drugs put in his backpack and in order to make things right lest he lose his shot at going to college, has to sell the drugs on the dark web. The resulting action is wholly madcap and wildly entertaining. The absolute dearth of young talent at work here is tremendous. With his turn as Malcolm, Shameik Moore should have a golden ticket in Hollywood. The sweetness, vulnerability, and humor he brings to a character in a whirlwind of awful situations is masterful, and if you don’t have chills when he delivers the film’s capstone thesis statement in the form of a college essay, you clearly have no blood in your veins. His best friends Diggy and Jib--played by Kiersey Clemons and Tony Revolori--anchor Malcolm, are the bulk of the film’s comic relief, and get all of the movie’s best lines.

8. Mad Max: Fury Road

Directed by George Miller

There were parts of this movie where I looked over at Jenny with a crazed, giddy look on my face to illustrate how much fun I was having watching this movie. I was also looking at her to make sure she wasn’t going to make me leave because the movie was so violent and strange but she enjoyed it too! Honestly, in terms of pure entertainment and spectacle, they just don’t make movies like this anymore, and seeing one, up on the big screen, full of so much insanity and badassery, it almost brought a tear to my eye.

7. American Ultra

Directed by Nima Nourizadeh

American Ultra is one of 2015’s best hidden gems. It did poorly both critically and at the box office, but if you can get past the thrown shade there’s a really sweet story buried in a mess of stoner comedy and ultraviolence. Sure, the story of a stoner who is actually a CIA trained killing machine, is wholly far fetched, but the wackiness coupled with some really insane action sequences is a treat. And sure there are lots of explosions and shootouts and some cartoonish power struggles but this is a cartoonish movie, and it’s a cartoonish movie with a surprising amount of heart. The relationship between Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart is genuinely sweet and you really care about them. You want them to make it through unscathed. And that emotional center is what makes all the goofiness and just truly insane violence work. I read it as a metaphor for the hurdles that come with sustaining a loving, long term relationship, which might not have been the film’s intent but it worked for me in regard to locking me into the story. I’m also a huge fan of Adventureland so seeing Eisenberg and Stewart together again was a treat, and Stewart is doing a tremendous job (this year especially, between fantastic turns here and in The Clouds of Sils Maria) shedding the negative effects of Twilight.

6. Clouds of Sils Maria

Directed by Oliver Assayas

Like one of my favorite albums of 2015 (Hop Along’s Painted Shut), I was hipped to Clouds of SIls Maria by a fantasy football podcast. This is what my life is like now. Regardless, this is a remarkable film that was quietly and unceremoniously thrust onto DVD after a lengthy trip on the festival circuit. It’s baffling that two of the year’s best performances--from Juliette Binoche as an actress and Kristen Stewart as her intrepid assistant--are remarkable. It’s pretty heady and arty, but totally captivating as well. And did I mention Juliette Binoche turns in the year’s best performance? Goddamn is she good or what?

5. What We Do in the Shadows

Directed by Taika Waititi

I don’t think I laughed harder this year then when I was laughing during this film’s hour and a half run time. It’s a rare thing to craft a comedy with sustained laughs. Usually--from a viewer’s perspective--you get a lot of big laughs out of the way up front and then you course correct and settle in for an hour and ten minutes of chuckling. When I was watching What We Do in the Shadows I thought I was going to die. There were a few spots where I couldn’t breathe I was laughing so hard. I ended up with bruises on my left knee because I was slapping it so hard and my wedding band is made out of very tough tungsten.

4. The Big Short

Directed by Adam McKay

Adam McKay makes funny movies but I’d never once considered him a great director. Hell, I never considered him a good director, especially after the aimless Anchorman 2. And yet here I am, believing that Adam McKay should walk away with the Oscar for Best Director. Not only does he balance the severe horrors of the financial collapse of 2008 with side-splitting humor, but he takes source material that should be much drier and somber and turns it into highly entertaining gold like a goddamn alchemist. It’s cinematic wizardry. Both my wife and mother said, “That sounds boring” when I told them what it was about and I had to be all, “no no no no, they actually make it really easy to follow, and man oh man it’s gonna make you PISSED by the end.” The most elegant thing McKay does with The Big Short is that he structures the film like the financial collapse itself. It’s a riotous blast, everyone is having a good time, and then the bottom drops out and you feel the hurt of an entire nation (less those wretched villains of Wall Street with their golden parachutes and bailout bonus checks) shorted out of homes and jobs and pensions as the people responsible go unpunished. This is basically a brilliantly constructed 2008 Financial Collapse for Dummies, from the guy who made Anchorman 2 . It certainly sounds dubious on paper, but it’s one of the year’s best and most important films. Note: On this list, I only referred to one filmmaker’s work as elegant, and it was the GUY WHO DIRECTED THE ATROCITY THAT WAS ANCHORMAN 2. WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN PEOPLE! Note: According to the IMDB trivia page for this film, The Big Short author Michael Lewis agreed to let Adam McKay make the film if McCay made Anchorman 2. I don't know how to feel about this. Sort of like an ouroboros I guess?

3. Phoenix

Directed by Christian Petzold

Simply outstanding, moody, absolutely captivating filmmaking. The plot is a bit outlandish, but I bit because it's not a history of holocaust survivors directly after World War II, but an examination of the loss of identity that comes with being treated as less than a human being, and the guilty nation to which this character returns. The guilty nation that would rather put the ugliness and shame out of mind and move on. Set against the backdrop of Berlin reduced to rubble, it’s a high-premise yarn about a woman whose face has been destroyed in a concentration camp and reconstructed as a strangers. She desperately tries piecing her life back together, but betrayal on the part of her husband makes that impossible. And yet, rather than seek revenge, she goes along with a plot to pretend to be his dead wife so he can cash in her inheritance. Like I said, it’s high premise, a bit lurid, and absolutely one of the most haunting films of the year. Phoenix is a taut bit of suspense that knots up until it unravels into a final scene that left me breathless and dumbstruck in my seat. It’s not going to blow you away, there’s no big twist, but the subtlety of the sequence is almost effortlessly brilliant and the sort of devastating that sticks with you for days/weeks/months/years.

2. The End of the Tour

Directed by James Ponsoldt

I don’t know how one could make it through Infinite Jest and not feel in some way connected to its author. You figure the haters aren’t going to make it past the first fifty pages. That book broke me open. It changed me. And that’s a high falootin statement to make about a book, but it’s true. That book’s foray into American sadness helped me better understand my own life. I can’t think of another book that has had a more profound effect on me. I can feel your eyes rolling but it’s true. It made me a believer in the change great books can trigger in a person, and now I’m a librarian. The End of the Tour chronicles a journalist's travels with David Foster Wallace over the last dates of the Infinite Jest book tour. I noted my disdain of traditional biopics earlier in this list, and The End of the Tour works for me because it’s not the greatest hits of a life. It’s a small, self-contained handful of days that shine a light on Wallace’s complicated genius. You can tell (through Jason Segal’s excellent performance) that he genuinely wants to be a “regular guy,” but you also get the impression that he knows it’s impossible. The film avoids putting him on a godlike pedestal by illustrating the flaws and shortcomings of being that brainy. It strips the poetry out of the trouble genius suicide and shows you a man trying his best to fit into the world.

1.Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Jesse Andrew’s novel is without question the best book I have read in the last five years. I deeply related to the protagonist, I cried, I laughed so hard I hurt myself. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s adaptation is the sort of adaptation you dream of as a booklover. “Man, I hope they do this great story justice” you think to yourself when you see that they’re making a movie of your favorite book. And to not only be satisfied, but to have your already high opinion of the story elevated, well, that’s almost too much to ask for. And when you get it, holy shit.

When the movie ended, I knew it was going to be my favorite film of the year. “By a country mile,” I said to myself in this conversation I was having in my head. The year is over and though I didn’t see as many films as I would have liked (partly because I live in Kansas and a lot of the great films from 2015 won’t get here until next Spring, and partly because I have a young child and cinema intake is limited to what is on Netflix or what I can bring home from the library because going to the damn movies requires an amount of planning and foresight comparable to the invasion of Normandy). But I don’t think it would have mattered because nothing can touch how deeply moved I was by this film. Once again, I got lost in the story and when the heartbreak hits, when the dying girl dies even though you know she is going to die, I cried and cried and cried and I like to think that if you don’t cry at the climactic sequence where Greg Gaines shows Rachel the movie he made for her, you are a cyborg incapable of true emotion.

Ok, that’s not true. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but holy shit. That scene, scored by Brian Eno’s “The Big Ship,” (also used in the final sequence of The End of the Tour, strangely) and running what feels like an eternity, was absolutely devastating and beautiful and one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. Greg Gaines is a tricky character because he seems lovable and quirky at first, and then you realize how selfish and self-absorbed he is, but you also see that he’s genuinely a nice guy. But he can’t get over his hangups about what people think of him, and he can’t even refer to Earl as his goddamn friend (he refers to him as his coworker). I’ve already written three paragraphs about this film and I haven’t even touched on the brilliant send ups to classic cinema that made my film school heart explode. Those are in the book, but the cinematic realization of Werner Herzog jokes is glorious. But honestly, as awesome and wonderful as that stuff is, it’s just for decoration. It’s really fun and unique decoration, but it’s only to create a background for this deceptively profound story to operate in.

My Favorite Films of 2014

The trouble with living in the Midwest is that by year’s end I haven’t had a chance to see everything  I wanted to see from the year prior. Films trickle inward from the coasts, and even then their presentation is often dubious. For instance, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice was a prime example of why I wait to put together my list and I missed it because I think it was only open for about a week. My 19 year old self would have been there opening night, but my 29 year old with three or four different hoops to jump through in order to see a movie, it takes a real above and beyond effort to see everything I want to see. An effort I frankly just don’t have anymore. I see the films eventually. I put them on hold at the library or they pop up on Netflix, but they don’t make the list! What a shame!

The year end list is important to me for some reason. I love putting it together the week of the Oscars. It’s a ritual, undertaken merely to exercise the film loving muscle in my body that I’ve been honing since I was 16 or 17 and saw Mulholland Drive. Checked out from the library. From there I became obsessed. I spent whole summers holed up in my basement bedroom watching stacks of films. Submitting to an entire history of a medium. I had strict rule: Watch, at the very least, a film a day. I usually squeezed in two or three a day in addition to working 16 hours a week at AMC where I squeezed in movies after shifts, 11AM matinees on days off, and saw some films in a piecemeal fashion during ushering shifts. It is that good and pure obsession that I am trying to pay homage to. 

15. Neighbors

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

Obligatory new dad pick. The plot’s a little goofy, but the characters—new parents desperately trying to salvage the cool people they once were—are great and full of heart. That’s actually par for the course for Stoller, whose The Five-Year Engagement and Forgetting Sarah Marshall get to be silly, raunchy, and moving all at once. It’s a delicate craft. Sure the gags are great, but the scene where Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne’s characters are trying to have sex and their baby keeps turning around in her bouncy chair to stare at them and the characters having to abandon the act via the weirdness was one of the truest things I saw all year.

14. The One I Love

Directed by Christopher McDowell

Caveat emptor: Watching this film with your significant other is going to lead to a heavy conversation about your relationship. I don’t want to spoil anything, because watching this film unfold is a treat (as are the performances of Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss), but if you’re on shaky ground with the special man or woman in your life this incisive look at marriage might tip you one way or the other.

13. Jodorowsky’s Dune

Directed by Frank Pavich

I finally put myself up to watching The Holy Mountain this year. How I made it through film school without seeing Jodorowsky’s infamous masterpiece is beyond me. Rosie had gone to bed early and I had a couple hours to kill, pulled the trigger, and sat rapt soaking in one of the weirdest artistic statements I’ve ever experienced. It’s a brilliant and evocative piece of art that belongs in a museum. I also read Dune this year, primarily because this documentary had come out and I wanted to imagine the novels setting with a Jodorowskian palate. It was magnificent. David Lynch’s adaptation is dogshit, and really, it’s not his fault. It was the 80s and he tried. The studio interfered, but some of those effects are inexcusable and it’s all so cheesy and incomprehensible you wish they’d just abandoned it all together. Jodorowsky’s Dune plays like salt in the wound. Look upon that gorgeous and fucked up concept art and weep. Oh, what could have been! Fortunately, the film isn’t merely a glimpse of a great film we the people were deprived of, but a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a madman.

12. 22 Jump Street

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

21 Jump Street looked funny enough, but only when looking up The Lego Movie did I put together the pieces that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were the masterminds behind the tragically short-lived MTV cartoon Clone High. A show I watched religiously the ½ season it was on. A show that cemented the groundwork of what would become my adult sense of humor. Which is to say, a well-timed dolphin squeak will basically have me hyperventilating on the floor. These guys, Jesus Christ. I can’t even. We watched 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street back to back and I was sore the next day. From the clever usage of professional man meat Channing Tatum to the constant tongue-and-cheek lampoonery of sequels to that goddamn “Suns Out, Guns Out” tank top, 22 Jump Street is not only the year’s funniest film, but one of the funniest films I have ever seen. If Lord and Miller don’t already have the keys to the comedy kingdom (which, based on the success and overall wonderfulness of The Lego Movie, they probably do) this needs to be arranged.

11. Birdman: or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

This one was sort of a perfect storm of “Things that are right up my alley.” Here’s a list within the list of why I loved Birdman: One, I love all of Iñárritu’s films. Two, I love Raymond Carver. Three, I love me a good behind-the-scenes showbiz movie. Four, the acting is amazing (though I’d say despite all of the praise Michael Keaton is getting he is upstaged by Edward Norton and Emma Stone). Five, it’s a technical marvel that plays with the form of cinema in a unique and, most importantly, fun way. Six, it’s incredibly heady but also incredibly funny which makes for a deep richness. Seven, did I mention Emma Stone is amazing? She delivers a monologue midway through the film that is such a showstopper the director should have cued the film to burn on screen before correcting it. Eight, it was an experience that left me rapt in my oversized chair in the squeaky, overpriced cinema suites chairs at AMC and it’s so rare to go to the movies these days and have an actual Experience it’s worth noting here.

10. Guardians of the Galaxy

Directed by James Gunn

James Gunn may be known for peddling filth as a part of the Troma Entertainment cadre, but the way he has you both weeping and IDing with Star Lord in the first five minutes of the movie is nothing short of masterful. From there, Chris Pratt and a terrific supporting cast deliver what is easily the best, most entertaining and most emotionally satisfying Marvel movie yet.

9. Only Lovers Left Alive

Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Without a doubt, Only Lovers Left Alive was the coolest film of 2014. It was the sort of cool that only Jim Jarmusch can deliver as probably the coolest director in the business. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton are electric as a pair of vampires living out their eternal days (or nights, I suppose) in a languid way typically associated people living in opium dens. Jarmusch cleverly sets the scene in the dying city of Detroit against the town’s rock and roll history and it’s just a marvelous film to let wash over you with its gorgeous visuals and incredible score.

8. Frank

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson

I think a lot of why I loved this movie is tied to when I watched it. I’d just had surgery, I was zonked out on hydrocodone and feeling incredibly strange. I instinctually picked Frank to watch off the Netflix queue and something about the combination of all those things made it a movie that has really stuck with me. It’s a beautiful and brutal depantsing of the kind of social media fueld hype machine that makes music so insufferable these days. Domhnall Gleeson is excellent as the obnoxious, talentless, tweeting weasel that infiltrates Frank’s band and the scorn he draws from the rest of the group is a source of great humor. Michael Fassbender wears a big paper mache head for most of the film but that doesn’t make his turn as a brilliant, mentally ill musician any less stirring. It’s a poignant look at the Daniel Johnstons of the world and the suffering that leads to that great, weird, outsider art we all love so much.  

7. Calvary

Directed by John Michael McDonagh

The films of John Michael Mcdonagh’s more famous brother Martin (2008’s In Bruges and 2012’s Seven Psychopaths) always make my year end list, so I’m not surprised that talent flows freely in the family McDonagh. Anchored by Brendan Gleeson’s tremendous performance of a good priest in a small seaside town spending a week getting his affairs in order before he is to be murdered on a beach to atone for the sins of the Catholic Church. It sounds bleak, and while there is certainly a storm cloud hanging over this film, there is a fair bit of humor and heart to balance out this magnificent character drama. 

6. Snowpiercer

Directed by Bong Joon-ho

Sometimes it’s the weird ones that really stick with you, and boy oh boy, is Snowpiercer a weird one. It’s also probably the most fun I had watching a movie last year. It also features Tilda Swinton’s best performance in a year where A.) Tilda Swinton was in almost every single movie and B.) Tilda Swinton straight-up killed it in every single movie she was in (See Also: Only Lovers Left Alive, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Zero Theorem being her other three films this year, each one featuring a totally different side of this phenomenal woman). In Snowpiercer, she’s the one keeping a ragtag group of peasant people (led by Chris Evans, in fine form here) from fighting their way through the titular train’s class system to the engine room where they plan to take control of humanity’s last salvation in the frozen and environmentally devastated remains of Earth. God bless this new wave of Korean directors bringing their insane, inventive flourishes to English language cinema.

5. Interstellar

Directed by Christopher Nolan

I’ll be honest, that this film’s central heartbeat centers around a father-daughter relationship rather than a father-son relationship is what made Interstellar so deeply resonant with me. It would have still been a fine modern space exploration epic if they’d gone the father-son route as scripted. I’m biased, with my own baby girl and all, but it’s more heartbreaking that way and I was weepy numerous times during the film’s span. It’s master stylist Christopher Nolan’s most emotionally devasting work to date in addition to being his most technologically marvelous. It’s a wondrous film to behold, and while it’s a bit all over the place prone to switch genres or throw wild metaphysical stuff your way at the drop of a hat, the not-knowing-what-the-hell-is-gonna-happen-next was a big reason I was so thoroughly entertained and moved.

4. Ida

Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski

A beautiful, transcendent, amazingly photographed film about uncovering uncovering the horrors of one of humanity’s darkest hours. Holocaust films come and go, but the  hushed and heartbreaking journey of young nun-in-training Anna discovering her Jewish heritage (and her birth name and the fate of her family) on the cusp of taking her vows tells a side of the atrocity that we haven’t really seen before. Frames of this film are burned into my brain, courtesy of the striking black-and-white cinematography of Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, always leaving the subjects low in the frame and leaving a great deal of negative space to symbolize any number of things. The weight of history, the room to ascend to grace and acceptance, a setting where the world is threatening to completely overtake its characters. It’s austere and incredible work, punctuated by any number of times the camera comes to rest on Agata Trzebuchowska’s eyes that cut right through the celluloid and into your soul. Maybe I’m biased, having spent film school writing papers about the quietly devastating films of Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, and Seijun Suzuki, but on the strength of Ida I think Pawel Pawlikowski has earned a seat amongst those greats and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

3. The Battered Bastards of Baseball

Directed by Chapman Way and Maclain Way

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Ken Burns’ 10+ hour long Baseball series. It’s a very informative series on the whole history of the game. It’s also stuffy and full of blowhards like George Will who will talk your ear off about the purity of the Great Game of Ball. The Battered Bastards of Baseball is a magnificent counterpoint to the Burns series, in that the legends it touts are dudes you have never heard of. Dudes with outlandish facial hair and unsavory lifestyles. It’s a look at baseball outside the establishment, and this chronicle of the short-lived Portland Mavericks cuts to the heart of what baseball really is: A childrens’ game played by grown-ass men for the sheer fun of it all.

2. Whiplash

Directed by Damien Chazelle

How Damien Chazelle didn’t garner a nod for Best Director escapes me, because there was no film better helmed in 2014 than Whiplash. The tension Chazelle builds in this student-becomes-the-master piece is so tight and so thick it’s almost unbearable to watch at times. When the whole thing crescendos with the undisputable best scene of the last year, it’s electric. Whiplash is bound to be a lasting parable of the price of greatness.

1. Boyhood

Directed by Richard Linklater

While it sure is nice to see a salt of the earth guy like Richard Linklater garnering so much praise for his most recent effort, it’s nicer that 2014 produced a film everyone could agree on. Not only did Linklater quash any notion that the film (shot over 12 years) would be a gimmick, but said “gimmick” only ended up making for a transcendent filmgoing experience unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The closest thing I can think of is Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series or Linklater’s own Before…, but where those films pick up a number of years after the last, watching Ellar Coltrane grow up in the span of three hours is magical. 

My Favorite Films of 2013

Because I feel guilty about not using my film degree, every Oscar Night I compile my ten favorite movies seen in a given year. Options tend to be a bit limited in KC, and art house stuff tends to come around these parts late in the cycle, but ultimately I feel like I saw everything I wanted to see. Also, because I absolutely cannot resist making lists and ranking the things I love. It seriously cannot be helped.

10. The Spectacular Now

Directed by James Ponsoldt

God bless the new bildungsroman trend of not shying away from the uglier aspects of youth. I’ve already been charmed by Shailene Woodley’s effortlessly natural charm a couple times, but Miles Teller’s ability to make you root for his more alcoholic/jerkier Lloyd Dobbler was a tiny triumph.

9. Short Term Twelve

Directed by Destin Cretton 

Jenny worked in a group home when we started dating, and to this day she says it was the hardest job she ever had. It was definitely the only job she ever brought home with her, and she gave a thumbs up to this soulful depiction of an aspect of our society that tends to go unnoticed. Also, can Brie Larson just be America’s Sweetheart already?

8. Captain Phillips

Directed by Paul Greengrass

What could have easily been a piece of rah rah American propaganda ended up being a deft study on the greater global conundrums. Well, subtly. On the surface though this is a masterpiece of tension.

7. Gravity

Directed by Alfonso Cuaron

You can be dumbstruck by the technical marvels of Gravity all day long, but the greatest feat Cuaron pulled off was making Sandra Bullock palatable. Even writing that I felt a little bad. Ms. Bullock is America’s sweetheart, but I can’t help but feel like there are a handful of other actresses who could have made this film an emotional achievement on par with the film’s technical mastery. Still, Gravity is an experience on every level and as much shit talking as I’ve done on Ms. Bullock, I was desperately rooting for her to get the hell out of outer space safe and sound.

6. Nebraska

Directed by Alexander Payne 

A fine display of decay and dreams unfulfilled that avoids being a downer by being knee-slappingly hilarious. Though Bruce Dern is getting all the praise for his method performance as a really old guy, Will Forte should get more credit for finally finding the perfect balance between his affability and silliness. This was probably my favorite screenplay of the year because of how well these characters are constructed, especially Dern’s perpetually out of it Woody Grant, by what is left unsaid.

5. Upstream Color

Directed by Shane Carruth

 

The most elegant film about human connectedness I’ve seen in years. Also the most elegant film about pigs and parasites I’ve ever seen. Shane Carruth is a wizard holding the keys to the future of science fiction in his hands. Upstream Color is the product of a true auteur (Carruth composed the film’s riveting score in addition to serving as cinmatographer and editor), which seems rare these days and is utterly commendable. Especially since this film feels like a pure reflection of his soul.

4. 12 Years a Slave

Directed by Steve McQueen

 

While 12 Years a Slave is sure to achieve Roots like status in American History classes across America (as it should), the real power of the film not from the greater conflict of the slave trade, but of the magnified struggle of a free man sold into slavery who effectively loses his entire identity (all handled with supreme gravitas by Chiwetel Ejofor who, let’s face it, is never not outstanding). The film’s bulging vein of injustice is prodded expertly by Michael Fassbender’s complexly sadistic plantation owner and Steve McQueen does that thing where I think all of America’s great tragedies should be handled by outsiders. 12 Years a Slave was spoken about in the same manner as eating ones vegetables. Something was difficult but knew was good for us, and while I expected to be moved and moved to anger, I didn’t expect the film to be this visceral. From the extended hanging sequence to every scene involving Lupita Nyong’o’s tragic Patsey, 12 Years a Slave is the film about America’s darkest days that we deserve.

3. Before Midnight

Directed by Richard Linklater

Francois Truffaut is one of my favorite filmmakers and his Antoine Doinel series is something very near and dear to my heart. The films chronicle the character Antoine Doinel (played by Jean-Pierre Leaud) from childhood to middle age and as the character grows with the actor, Truffaut’s films achieve a real, undeniable truth. Richard Linklater has done something very similar with the third installment of his Jesse and Celine series. In Before Sunrise we saw their raw romance blossom out of happenstance. In Before Sunset we saw them grapple with the idea of going for it in earnest. In Before Midnight we see what comes after you go all in on true love and attempt to sustain a long-form relationship. The way Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy’s Jesse and Celine go at each other in this one is brutal and exhausting. There is a sense of investment with these characters, and watching their relationship teeter on the precipice of destruction is deeply affecting. The hotel room argument scene is one of the most legendary scenes of 2013 cinema and it’s barely watchable. In the theater, I sat clutching Jenny’s hand as these two people ripped into each other, seemed to bring it down a notch and come back together before slowly digging back into the fight. It was too true. And though it was quite uncomfortable, and I enjoyed it throughly.

2. Her

Directed by Spike Jonze

This beautiful, beautiful film stirred emotions inside me that haven’t been stirred since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which to this day is my touchstone for the complexity and difficulty of human relationships. Spike Jonze took a “man falls in love with Siri” concept everyone probably laughed at and turned it into a powerful love story that less about our obsessive love affair with technology and more about the things we all do to feel complete. It’s also hysterical, and I don’t know if I laughed harder at any film this year.

1. Inside Llewyn Davis

Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen

I can’t help but feel like the Coen Brothers’ latest film was sadly misunderstood. Relegated to mere best cinematography and best sound mixing nominations (that it won’t win) it feels like half the people that saw this film loved it and half didn’t get it or thought that it was slight. All of this is totally fine though, and a testament to the tenacity of the Coens who do whatever they goddamn please, whenever they goddamn please. And this is one of their little, thinky films a la A Serious Man or Barton Fink. It’s not a blockbuster, and neither is the film’s protagonist who, despite just not being able to hack it as a folk singer, soldiers on anyway. Llewyn Davis is an asshole. He’s depressed, a moocher, and yet through all the negative you really can’t help but feel sorry for him because he is tragically doomed. I didn’t think it was going to be my favorite film of the year when the lights came up in the theater, but I knew it had struck a chord (speaking of chords, the soundtrack is a triumph in its own right and the whole “Please Mr. Kennedy” recording session scene was one of the most joyous and enjoyable scenes of 2013). Weeks later I was driving home from work, still thinking about Inside Llewyn Davis. Months later I’m still processing this unassuming examination of the breaking point of the human spirit.