You hear “cinema is dead” constantly. You also hear that movies are exclusively focused on superheroes and teen dystopias, and anyone wanting anything else has turned to the “golden age of television.” To which we say: bullshit.
It’s not that there aren’t problems with cinema right now, but anyone who says that there aren’t enough good movies didn’t see enough movies or was seeing the wrong ones. From the multiplex to the arthouse, from hugely expensive blockbusters to micro-budget indies shot with tools you probably have in your pocket, there’s an enormous breadth and depth of great film in 2015.
We’ve been celebrating the year in film for a few weeks now, and as we reach the midpoint, it felt like the right time to unveil our list of the Finest Films Of 2015. Last year, for the first time, we conducted a poll of Playlist writers and staffers, collating their top tens (10 points for first place, 9 for second etc, plus a bonus point for every list a film was on) into a grand group Top 20.
Last year saw “Under The Skin” as our runaway winner, with “Birdman,” “Gone Girl,” “Foxcatcher” and “Nightcrawler” also making the Top 10. This year, we’d wager that our final list is a more interesting, surprising and, frankly, better line-up. How did it unfold? Take a look below.
A quick note about our year-end coverage: We, like you and everyone else, haven’t seen “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” yet. J.J. Abrams’ Mystery Box remains firmly closed until the week of release. As such, like the National Board of Review or the New York Film Critics Circle or any number of voting groups that are forced to make their decisions without seeing it, ‘The Force Awakens’ won’t be appearing on the bulk of these lists for now. Once it’s been reviewed, we’ll be discussing in the film full and will indicate where it would have featured on these best-of lists retroactively. Other late December releases such as “Joy,” “The Revenant” and “The Hateful Eight,” have already been seen by at least one staffer, and though they aren’t featured here, those films will likely pop up in individual staff lists we’ll be running later this month.
Click here for our complete coverage of the Most effective of 2015
10. “Son Of Saul”
The list of first-time filmmakers who’ve played in competition at Cannes is a short one, and the list of those that won prizes is even smaller. That László Nemes’ debut “Son Of Saul” won the Grand Prize on the Croisette certainly marks it out for attention, but those who haven’t seen it yet (it opens finally in the U.S. next week) probably aren’t yet prepared for the gut-punch power and masterful filmmaking on display from the Hungarian director (a former assistant to Bela Tarr). The tremendous Geza Rohrig plays an Auschwitz Sonderkommando, a Jewish prisoner forced into aiding the Nazis in the concentration camps, who discovers what he believes is the body of his estranged child in the gas chambers and sets out to give him a proper burial. Filmmakers have been grappling with the horrors of the Holocaust for 70 years now, but few such films have been as powerful as Nemes’, who uses long, Lubezkian takes and astonishing sound design to throw you into a vision of the camps that take on an almost heightened level of nightmarishness, while never letting you forget that there is nothing even remotely heightened about it. Even if you’ve seen “Schindler’s List” or “Shoah,” this filmmaker makes you feel as if you’re bearing witness to those unprecedented atrocities, and thus makes sure that you’ll never, ever forget what happened.
9. “Brooklyn”
Brimming with charm, John Crowley’s “Brooklyn” is an earnestly sweet tale that never feels cloying or manipulative. It’s an old-school story told in an old-school way: Saoirse Ronan plays Eilis, a young Irish woman who leaves her small town for New York, where she finds a new home and a new love with an Italian man (a sigh-inducing Emory Cohen) in her new neighborhood. “Brooklyn” is simple, never deviating from its central characters or introducing obstacles into their path for obstacles’ sake. The wide range of emotions felt by Ronan’s Eilis feels earned within the film, and the actress’s blue eyes clearly communicate each of her thoughts. She has previously wowed us in films like “Hanna” and “Atonement,” but her work here feels like a new level of adult achievement. Shot by Yves Bélanger, it’s a golden look at 1950s Ireland and New York City, filled with François Séguin’s perfect production design and Odile Dicks-Mireaux’s gorgeous costumes. But the film isn’t all sweetness and light; Eilis’s early days in New York are dominated by loneliness and isolation, and the event that sends her back to Ireland sent us into tears. However, it’s impossible to leave “Brooklyn” feeling anything but joy, as well as the desire to immediately see it again.
8. “Spotlight”
Tom McCarthy has been producing relatively solid dramedies for a handful of years. But this year, we got a peek at a couple of new sides of the director. The first was the godawful Adam Sandler fiasco “The Cobbler” (which occupies a spot on our Worst Of The Year list). But the second was this incredibly sure-footed and rigorous take on the Boston Globe team that broke the news of the sexual abuse scandal and cover up in the early aughts. McCarthy snagged an impressive cast for the gig (Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber), all of whom are in top form and none of whom dominate the film, which is just how it should be. “Spotlight” is the definition of an ensemble film —it’s a story of teamwork and trust and one of the finest depictions of journalism since “All The President’s Men” (a connection that has been made repeatedly, but happens to be true). Despite being as exacting as it is, “Spotlight” manages keep the plot moving and maintains some of the sharpest tension of the year. It’s a film of moral quandaries and ethical obligations, where the city of Boston stands as one of the most compelling characters. It’s easy to imagine “Spotlight” in the hands of a different director, prone to overstuffing the film with melodrama and exploitation of this tragedy. Fortunately, we got McCarthy’s: it’s a deeply affecting, satisfying film and an impressive technical achievement.
7. “Room”
Nothing about director Lenny Abrahamson‘s previous work could have prepared us for the emotionally visceral gut punch of “Room.” Based on a best-selling novel by Emma Donoghue, who also adapted her book for the screen, this picture is about Jack (Jacob Tremblay), a loving, energetic, and imaginative 5-year-old boy who spent his entire life imprisoned in a ten-feet-by-ten-feet room with his mother (Brie Larson). In order to raise Jack in this horrific environment with any semblance of normalcy, Ma makes him believe that the room is the only place that exists in the world and that all the people and places he sees on TV are in a different galaxy. All of the information we get about Ma and Jack’s predicament builds up to one of the most pulse-pounding, nail-biting, any other review buzzword cliché-generating sequences we’ve seen in a long time. Even though the thriller elements are laid to rest about halfway through “Room,” there’s still a tremendously engaging emotional journey ahead, where Abrahamson smartly avoids every trap for conventional melodramatics that the basic story elements would seem to lay out for him. The performances from everyone involved are extraordinary, especially for a story that’s ripe for hysterical dramatics. Tremblay carries the entire emotional weight of the picture with an exceptional display of natural empathy and energy, and Larson’s more than his match. The premise suggested a film that could have been almost impossibly bleak if Abrahamson put a foot wrong: instead, it’s deeply human.
6. “Inside Out”
The last few sequel-heavy years aside, Pixar has built up such a reputation for brilliance that when the studio makes a film deemed only ‘pretty good,’ as with the currently-in-theaters “The Good Dinosaur,” you can feel disproportionately disappointed. But that certainly wasn’t the reaction to “Inside Out,” released earlier this year and which is certainly Pixar’s most ambitious film and easily one of its best. Set inside the head of young Riley, whose emotional turmoil after moving to San Francisco sends the personifications of Joy (Amy Poehler) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) into the deepest recesses of her mind, it’s a remarkably mature yet accessible look at what makes us tick and which grapples with an elusive truth —sadness isn’t just unavoidable, it’s necessary— that so-called grown-up movies would cross the street to avoid. But this being from Pixar, and in particular from “Up” director Pete Docter, it’s also a total, well, joy —bright, exciting, funny (was anything funnier this year than the film’s closing credits? Or the gum commercial? Or the ‘abstract thought’ section? or (repeats ad infinitum)… “Inside Out” is fleet-footed, light of touch, beautifully voiced and impossibly touching. The bar’s been raised once again.
5. “45 Years”
Between his tremendous breakthrough with “Weekend” and his gorgeous work helming much of HBO series “Looking,” we’ve had our eyes on British director Andrew Haigh for a while. But no one was prepared for “45 Years,” a serious step up for the director and one of the very most effective relationship movies in a very long time. The film focuses on the run-up to the titular wedding anniversary of an elderly, seemingly happy married couple (Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay), and the fractures that appear when the body of his ex-girlfriend, who died in a mountaineering accident and has been frozen in the ice for half a century, is discovered. It’s perhaps a contrived set-up (based on David Constantine’s short story), but that’s the last thing in Haigh’s film that’s anything less than utterly truthful, particularly when it comes to performances from the two leads that come close to being the very best roles of their 50 year careers. European in style without being austere (it’s a textured, tendered film, even funny in places), beautifully lensed throughout, it’s perhaps above and beyond anything else a ghost story about how the past can haunt and change us long after the fact, how time shifts and changes us, and how unearthed secrets can make you reevaluate everything in your life. [Read our review]
4. “Carol”
Given the commensurate lack of buzz, it’s possible you missed the boat on the exquisite-ness of Todd Haynes’ superb HBO mini-series “Mildred Pierce.” But lets not be nags: everyone’s on board the Haynes train this year, and that’s just gravy for all of us. Haynes’ delicate, nearly-note-perfect “Carol” is a swooning, romantic picture that makes you feel the grace notes of trembling desire in between words and between the eventually requited kisses and passionate moments. It is a movie about the unspoken moments of desire, the subtle gestures, the furtive glances, and the batted-eyelashes we have to decode when falling in love, but are too deep in a place of vulnerability to play our hand. Immaculately crafted, tremendously acted and rendered with consummate care and control, “Carol” is about the inexpressible, and the aching yearns of early, unformed loves and all the fragility it entails. It’s a directing masterclass, its two leads Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara deliver tour-de-force performances of restraint, and its score and cinematography (by Carter Burwell and Ed Lachman respectively) gorgeously underscore all the pangs of implicit heartache with musical dolor and frosty visual reflection. With this impeccably made movie, Haynes, perhaps belatedly, is crystallized as one of America’s greatest living directors.
3. “The Duke Of Burgundy”
Nothing in our poll of contributor voting surprised us as much as the strength of support for “The Duke Of Burgundy.” We figured it might make the list somewhere, given our rave review, but we didn’t imagine that an experimental art film about a sadomasochistic couple would appear on more lists than any film bar our winner, much less make the final top three. But then again, it is fucking brilliant. A significant step up for director Peter Strickland even from his excellent last movie “Berberian Sound Studio,” it is, like three of our top five, a relationship movie, in this case set in a world seemingly without men and focusing on the relationship between Evelyn (Chiarra D’Anna) and Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), two lepidopterologists (scientists studying butterflies) who are deeply in love but are increasingly strained by Evelyn’s highly submissive sexual tastes. Which might make it sound intimidating and unrelatable, but one of the film’s many pleasures is the way that it makes a seemingly extreme situation utterly relatable and deeply moving. Strip away its gorgeous design and more expressionistic elements, and you’ll find a deceptively sly, sexy and playful picture, an impossibly tender love story beautifully performed by its two leads, and which tackles universal truths in the most specific way imaginable.
2. “Sicario”
Denis Villeneuve cements his status as one of the most exciting working filmmakers with his furious, visceral thriller “Sicario.” Following the grim one-two punch of his gloomy, arresting “Prisoners” and his whatsit of a doppelganger flick “Enemy,” “Sicario” emerges as Villeneuve’s most assured and distressing work to date. A tale of inexorable moral compromise unfolding along the godless Cartel city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, “Sicario” is ultimately the story of Kate Mercer, a driven and resolutely unsentimental FBI agent who finds herself repeatedly thwarted by her male superiors when she agrees to enter this Southwestern heart of darkness. Villeneuve has an almost eerie ability to stage set pieces of prolonged, heart-stopping tension —as he does in a bullet-ridden showdown set at the U.S./Mexico border— and his work here with Roger Deakins, who also gave “Prisoners” its dark, glistening patina, is some of the ideal work either has ever done. Emily Blunt is a force of raw, elemental pain as Kate, Josh Brolin is wonderfully slimy as her annoyingly laid-back supervisor, and rising star Jon Bernthal has a scene with Kate in a motel room that ranks as one of the most terrifying we’ve seen all year. But it’s Benicio del Toro, as a man whose soul is all but a bygone thing, who quietly steals the show here. His Alejandro is a man of no allegiances, who, with his pointed goatee and predatory body movements, appears to be more wolf than man. “Sicario” follows Alejandro’s grim, precise footsteps: it’s coiled like a snake, with a bite just as deadly. more…
1. “Mad Max: Fury Road”
The Playlist’s 2015 pick for the greatest film of 2015 didn’t dominate to the extent that “Under The Skin” did last year, but from very early on in the voting process, it was clear what was going to come top. And what else could it be? Uniting everyone from highbrow cinephiles to explosion-happy genre fans (the film featured on all but two of the seventeen lists submitted), George Miller’s fourth movie in his post-apocalyptic franchise was an absolute wonder, literally the greatest action movie in decades, and a classic even before the title character (Tom Hardy) has had his mask removed. Stripping down to the absolute basics —it’s a chase movie in the same way that Buster Keaton’s “The General” is a chase movie— barely ever stopping to catch a breath while building a fascinating world through side-details and establishing complex characters through action, the director gifted us all with an adrenaline shot of pure, unfiltered cinema. One that returned grace and beauty to the summer blockbuster. One that wasn’t afraid to get weird, like the blue-tinged section in the mudlands that feels almost like a Tarkovsky movie. One that stealthily put a woman at the heart of a testosterone-filled, gas-guzzling actioner. One crafted at a level that suggested that 95% of movies simply aren’t trying hard enough. Miller’s already started talking about potential further ‘Max’ movies, but there’s part of us that wants him to let it alone, because returning with something as utterly perfect as “Fury Road” is a big, big task.
