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| Artwork by Olivia Steva |
Great films are the kind of films that make great film making look easy. The kind of film that can awaken a love of the medium within someone. The kind of film that someone can watch and think "That was amazing! I want to do that." and sets them down a path that might lead them to do the same for someone else. They can entertain, they can inform, they can inspire, they have been a dominant pop-cultural force for nearly a century, and I'm here to tell you what I thought the best examples of the form were this year.
First up, the runners up, in no particular order...
Honorable Mentions
- Ant-Man: Marvel Studios, the current kings of the Hollywood blockbuster had the guts to go smaller, more intimate, and more enjoyable with a really good little movie that was one of the highlights of a pretty underwhelming summer movie season.
- Batkid Begins: Where most documentaries focus on the systemic unsolvable problems of the world, Batkid Begins is a clarion call for optimism. It's sweet, it's effective, it's a neat little movie.
- Cinderella: After deconstructing the Disney fairy tale with Frozen and nearly ripping it to shreds with Maleficent, Disney decides to reconstruct their signature story with a near-flawless rendition of the archetypal Disney fairy tale.
- Jessica Jones: To say that Jessica Jones is the best individual work under the Marvel banner is to undersell just how good it is. Even if you don't care about Marvel, even if you've never cared about Marvel, you should still watch Jessica Jones.
- In The Heart of the Sea: Ron Howard continues to be a great technical powerhouse, but In The Heart of the Sea is too self-serious to work as a morality play, and too simplistic and shallow to be a huge, sweeping epic.
- The Water Diviner: Russel Crowe turns out to be really good at directing war scenes, but he's less good at artsy, show-offy would-be top-tier director stuff. With practice I can see him being a very good technical guy, but for now he should probably stick to acting
- Straight Outta Compton: For about the first hour or so, Straight Outta Compton is a fierce, powerful force of film making that almost becomes this year's Selma, then, as soon as NWA breaks up, it devolves into this year's Imitation Game and becomes a paint-by-numbers Oscar bait biopic. Just for the record this is probably in the honorable mentions for the worst list too.
- Steve Jobs: It is by no means a definitive account of the real Steve Jobs' career, it's not even that accurate of one. Depending on who you ask it's either defacing the trees to draw attention to the forest of Jobs' ego, or it amounts to spitting on Jobs' immaculately designed grave, but it is still a great character study about the drive to success, and an amazing actor's show case for the assembled cast.
The Archivis' Top Ten Best Films of 2015
#10) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Written by Jesse Andrews
Pretentious? Maybe. Aimed almost exclusively at wannabe auteur hipsters? Definitely. Still a sweet little movie despite that? Absolutely. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a moving portrait of adolescent angst filtered through the lense of an ongoing Millennial yearning for the late 20th Century, but it's also a sweet little romance story with enough genuine heart to make up for being yet another feature-length tribute to Wes Anderson.
#9) Max Directed by Boaz Yakin, Written by Boaz Yakin and Sheldon Lettich
Pretentious? Maybe. Aimed almost exclusively at wannabe auteur hipsters? Definitely. Still a sweet little movie despite that? Absolutely. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a moving portrait of adolescent angst filtered through the lense of an ongoing Millennial yearning for the late 20th Century, but it's also a sweet little romance story with enough genuine heart to make up for being yet another feature-length tribute to Wes Anderson.
#9) Max Directed by Boaz Yakin, Written by Boaz Yakin and Sheldon Lettich
Wait, come back! I'm being serious. A family movie about a dog coming down with PTSD after serving in Afghanistan is one of the best films of the year. Not only is Max a masterful work of emotional heart-string pulling pulled off with such success that it's enough to make you think director Boaz Yakin might have sacrificed a goat to the gods of film making, it's also a better film about veterans adjusting to civilian life than American Sniper could ever hope to be. It proudly wears its gushing heart on its sleeve, and I would have respected it for that level of earnestness anyways, but it also being an incredibly well executed version of exactly what it wants to be gets it a spot on this list.
#8) Crimson Peak Directed by Guillermo del Toro, Written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins
This comes with the same caveat as Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro's last film, if you can't get behind a film that actively embraces convention, then you won't be able to enjoy it, but if you can get behind it, you'll absolutely love it. Crimson Peak takes the same loving approach that Pacific Rim took to kaiju movies and applies it to Gothic romance, creating a film that swoons with every shot. It's the cinematic equivalent of a haunted house, but in the same way that The Avengers is a fireworks display and the same way that Gravity is a roller coaster. It's a haunted house designed by a mad genius architect with an insanely talented interior decorator hell bent on making the best haunted house possible.
This comes with the same caveat as Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro's last film, if you can't get behind a film that actively embraces convention, then you won't be able to enjoy it, but if you can get behind it, you'll absolutely love it. Crimson Peak takes the same loving approach that Pacific Rim took to kaiju movies and applies it to Gothic romance, creating a film that swoons with every shot. It's the cinematic equivalent of a haunted house, but in the same way that The Avengers is a fireworks display and the same way that Gravity is a roller coaster. It's a haunted house designed by a mad genius architect with an insanely talented interior decorator hell bent on making the best haunted house possible.
#7) The Big Short Directed by Adam McKay, Written by Adam McKay and Charles Randolph
The Big Short is a tour de force of film making, an amazing acting showcase for Christian Bale and Steve Carrell (he will be up for Best Actor again, and this time he'll deserve it), and a powerful polemic on the vices of unrestrained capitalism and greed for the sake of greed. Part docudrama and part economic history lesson, you're unlikely to see anything quite like it in theaters this year. Seriously, go see it, Star Wars is going to be hopelessly crowded for the first two weeks anyways.
The Big Short is a tour de force of film making, an amazing acting showcase for Christian Bale and Steve Carrell (he will be up for Best Actor again, and this time he'll deserve it), and a powerful polemic on the vices of unrestrained capitalism and greed for the sake of greed. Part docudrama and part economic history lesson, you're unlikely to see anything quite like it in theaters this year. Seriously, go see it, Star Wars is going to be hopelessly crowded for the first two weeks anyways.
#6) Vacation Directed and Written by John Francis Daley and Johnathan M. Goldstien
I know I'm in the minority on this one, but I don't care. It's my list, and if I think that a decades later nostalgia cash-in sequel deserves to be on it, I'm going to back it up. I say that Vacation is a lot funnier and a lot smarter than most critics gave it credit for. It's a consistently hard hitting and occasionally brilliant satire of Hollywood over-reliance on established brands, that also works as an elevation of the same. It's such a good time, you'll be whistling zip-a-dee-do-dah out your ass.
#5) Kingsman: The Secret Service Directed by Matthew Vaughn, Written by Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman
Nobody saw this coming, did they? Matthew Vaughn continues to be a pop-cinema genius, and Kingsman was easily 2015's surprise jem. It's bursting with manic half-mad energy, it has some of the best fight choreography and cinematography I've seen in a long time, Vaughn and frequent co-writer Jane Goldman's script is a consistently hilarious spoof of golden age James Bond while still being a better James Bond movie than the actual Bond movie we got this year. It kicked a lot of ass, in every sense of the term.
Nobody saw this coming, did they? Matthew Vaughn continues to be a pop-cinema genius, and Kingsman was easily 2015's surprise jem. It's bursting with manic half-mad energy, it has some of the best fight choreography and cinematography I've seen in a long time, Vaughn and frequent co-writer Jane Goldman's script is a consistently hilarious spoof of golden age James Bond while still being a better James Bond movie than the actual Bond movie we got this year. It kicked a lot of ass, in every sense of the term.
#4) Inside Out Directed by Pete Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen, Written by Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen, and Josh Cooley
It feels so good to see Pixar hit one out of the park again. Not only is Inside Out their best movie since Up, not only is it one of the best family films of the young century so far, it's a shockingly in depth exploration of how people deal with emotional turmoil, one that's better at it than most grown-up movies on the subject. It feels like the last few movies were Pixar working through it's own awkward adolescence, seeing everyone else in theatrical animation catch up to them and sulking over not being the biggest fish in the pond anymore, and Inside Out is them coming to terms with the change.
#3) The Martian Directed by Ridley Scott, Written by Drew Goddard
It's been so long since one of the great American film makers actually made a great film that I was wondering whether he had forgotten how, but living legend Ridley Scott has redeemed himself with a top-notch thriller, a cracking good adventure story, and a love letter to NASA that puts Interstellar and Tomorrowland's heavy handed message mongering to shame. It's nice to see Ridley Scott get back in the game, and since he's following this with a Prometheus sequel, it probably won't happen again for a while.
It's been so long since one of the great American film makers actually made a great film that I was wondering whether he had forgotten how, but living legend Ridley Scott has redeemed himself with a top-notch thriller, a cracking good adventure story, and a love letter to NASA that puts Interstellar and Tomorrowland's heavy handed message mongering to shame. It's nice to see Ridley Scott get back in the game, and since he's following this with a Prometheus sequel, it probably won't happen again for a while.
#2) Mad Max: Fury Road Directed by George Miller, Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, and Nico Lathouris
This is probably the only time that a decades later relaunch of an 80s genre franchise is not only the best in the series, it's a genuinely great film in its own right. Fury Road is a lean, tight, gloriously over the top hard-R action film of the type that we rarely see in the blockbuster scene, and it's also bitingly intelligent work of dystopic sci-fi that leaves The Hunger Games and it's legion of imitators behind in the dust as it rides away in a tricked out ATV while shredding a flame throwing electric guitar and shouting "Witness me!". It was a real toss up between this and my number one pick, but...
This is probably the only time that a decades later relaunch of an 80s genre franchise is not only the best in the series, it's a genuinely great film in its own right. Fury Road is a lean, tight, gloriously over the top hard-R action film of the type that we rarely see in the blockbuster scene, and it's also bitingly intelligent work of dystopic sci-fi that leaves The Hunger Games and it's legion of imitators behind in the dust as it rides away in a tricked out ATV while shredding a flame throwing electric guitar and shouting "Witness me!". It was a real toss up between this and my number one pick, but...
#1) Ex Machina Directed and Written by Alex Garland
...this was still my favorite. I thought long and hard about this list, but as soon as I saw this movie, I knew it would be number one. Ex_Machina is brainy, big idea sci-fi of the best possible kind; deliberately paced and structured, beautifully shot and arranged, forcefully well acted, and comes with a powerful and intelligent script that will have audiences thinking about it for years to come. Christopher whom? Terry what's-his-face? Forget them. This guy, Alex Garland, he will become the new Stanley Kubrick, and his directorial debut is easily the best film of 2015.
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