So here we are, smack dab in the middle of the dog days of summer (and if you don’t get that little saying, try lying out on the sidewalk in 100-degree heat for 15 minutes or so, like Fido does, and see if a light bulb doesn’t go off). The dogs are often howling in movie theaters too—at times it seems as though August has replaced January in the hearts of moviegoers as the dumping ground for pictures not really worthy of our attention (or a serious investment in the marketing department). Movies like Pixels and Fantastic Four have their perverse fascination—just how bad can they possibly be? Both were greeted with reviews so scathing and unyielding in their acidity that studio heads can only pray nothing in October, November or December will be perceived as worse, and I have to admit a certain curiosity. But that curiosity is fortunately not so strong as to encourage me to pay full admission prices to find out for myself, an act which I fear would only be interpreted by the studios as a vote of confidence that they're just giving the public what it wants. (That’s what Redbox and discount movie houses are for.)
And even that August dumping ground rap seems not particularly
applicable when you look at what’s out there this month. F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton, the docudrama
retelling of the origins of the pioneering gangsta rap group N.W.A., and Guy
Ritchie’s retooling of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., both of which are getting good-to-very good
reviews, make their debuts this weekend, and if we’re smart we’ll get out
there and catch Diary of a Teenage Girl, Goodnight Mommy, Phoenix,
Best of Enemies, The End of the Tour, The Gift, Tangerine, Listen To Me Marlon, She's Funny That Way, Mateo and The Shaun the Sheep Movie, all
either already in theaters or scheduled to appear in August, before they
disappear down the swirling drain of audience indifference to make room for
Oscar bait season. Los Angeles residents also have a week with the digital
restoration of Rene Clement’s 1952 classic Forbidden Games to look forward to
before August folds its tent. See? Plenty of reasons to get into a movie
theater when it’s hellishly hot and let someone else pay for the air
conditioning.
And with pictures like Black Mass, Sicario, Stonewall, The Walk, Steve Jobs, Bridge of Spies, Crimson Peak, Spectre, The Hunger Games: Mockingkjay Part 2, Snowden, The Hateful Eight and that low-budget space opera everyone
seems to be aflutter about just waiting in the wings, it still seems a bit
early to pronounce judgment on whether or not 2015 has been a “good” movie
year.
But I’ll go ahead and say that it’s certainly had some
better-than-good movies in it so far, and, dare I say, some of them might not
even be on the wide-ranging radar screens of the box-office or the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. While I have your hearts and minds, let me
run down a quick list of the best things I’ve seen in 2015. I’ll keep it to
movies that were actually released to theaters or streaming systems in 2015,
and not revival stuff or old favorites. And keep in mind that though I see a
lot of movies, I’m not privy to advanced screenings or other critic-type
privileges, so there’s a lot of stuff I have yet to catch up on myself. (Again,
thank you, Redbox, Netflix and the Regency North Hollywood discount house!)
Here then, in ascending order, are 20 titles I've seen so far this year that made experiencing movies seem
like a blessing and not just a ticket to get my ears and eyes pulverized.
A Poem is a Naked Person (Les Blank) I’m not sure if the appearance, after 45 years of exile, of Blank’s
free-form documentary on Leon Russell (his first feature-length film) amounts to the discovery of a major work, as some have claimed, but it’s certainly a fascinating look at
Russell’s creative process and the wild peripheral Southern (and Southern
country-rock) culture surrounding it and a must for Blank completists.
Ant-Man (Peyton Reed) A superhero movie that, at its best,
seems almost tossed off, loose and light, refreshingly unconcerned with the end
of the world. It takes its protagonist’s shrunken perspective to heart and
grabs us with a wittily rendered story in which the stakes are apocalyptic only
if the thought of being run over by a toy train set gives you nightmares.
Spy (Paul Feig) Probably the year’s best flat-out laugh
generator, with Melissa McCarthy getting her mojo back (playing all those
different personas in the espionage game is a plus) and Rose Byrne stepping out
as a comic actress who can, and does, go
toe-to-toe with her costar in winning the audience over.
Tig (Kristina Goolsby, Ashley York) Comedian Tig Notaro
fashioned a life of loss and a diagnosis of cancer into a groundbreaking moment
of comedy and a pivotal point for her own life, and this intimate documentary
tells her story in a way that is, much like her onstage work, neither maudlin
nor deadpan dismissive, but instead inclusive and invigorating. (Available now
on Netflix Streaming)
Kingsman: The Secret Service (Matthew Vaughn) This vividly,
hilariously violent shagging of the legacy of British stiff-upper-lip espionage
(pop culture division) is a riot and a tonic. It’s also a high-water mark for
director Vaughn, who made the first Kick-Ass,
star Colin Firth, and maybe even for super-creepy-villain Samuel L. Jackson.
The Salt of the Earth (Juliano Ribiero Salgado, Wim Wenders)
Beautifully rendered chronicle of photographer Sebastiao Salgado’s 40-year
career across the continents. Wenders and his co-director (Salgado’s son)
capture with rigor and sensitivity the quality not only of Salgado’s visual
intuition and sense of observation but also the humanity that eventually
transformed him as an artist.
The Ocean of Helena Lee (Jim Akin) From my review of this gorgeous
and ethereal paean to a girl’s summer of discovery: “There’s
real tension here between being set loose and aimless in a sun-splashed
paradise to contemplate the world, the idle idyll of summer, and the vast
indifference with which these days of heaven seem to be enveloped… This is a
movie that is, at its heart, very European in its storytelling temperament—that
is to say, it rather proudly stands outside the sort of narrative behavior one
usually encounters in a movie populated with and made by native Southern Californians.” (The Ocean of Helena Lee is available on Blu-ray and DVD and on
iTunes, all through Shootist Films.)
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (Alex Gibney)
A fearless, maddening, illuminating documentary that throws enough light on the
inner workings of Scientology, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and the strange
biography of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, to make you shiver in broad daylight.
I’ll See You In My Dreams (Brett Haley) From my review: “(Haley’s)
storytelling becomes even more confident as the
movie goes along, and he guides us through the sorts of developments and
possibly disabling narrative traps that have been mishandled so frequently
since the cringe-inducing likes of Terms
of Endearment. His touch is confident, so disarmingly light and marked with
such ease that by the time (the movie) arrives at its overwhelming and
beautifully modulated final shot, the whole thing seems even more like a minor
miracle.”
Love and Mercy (Bill Pohlad) This bifurcated look at the life and
legacy of Brian Wilson, split between his Pet
Sounds years and the devastated path of Wilson’s middle age under the
scurrilous influence of Dr. Eugene Landy, looked on paper like a recipe for
disaster. But against all odds, Pohlad’s disquieted, elliptical visual style and the
miraculous coexistence of Paul Dano and John Cusack’s portrayals of Wilson,
which makes sense immediately upon seeing them juxtaposed on screen, coalesce into one of the most original screen biographies ever made.
Tomorrowland (Brad Bird)
Here’s a movie that has some deadly serious things
to say about our pop culture’s romance/infatuation/obsession with all things
dystopian, and does so with Bird’s customary deftness, visual invention and
spirit of confrontation. The director’s ability to conjure access to both the grandeur of classic
sci-fi and the swift grace and sharp wit of his animated features is at a peak
here.
The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle) The story
of the Angulo Brothers, held virtual prisoners in a Lower East Side Manhattan
apartment for their entire lives by their alcoholic father, who learned of
the outside world only through exposure to violent movies on DVD, is probably
the most unlikely of harrowing, inspirational tales you’ll ever see. Moselle’s
touch guides the narrative away from exploitation and fully toward illuminated
empathy.
Ex Machina (Alex Garland) There will arrive a moment in human
history when we’ll find ourselves staring into the eyes of a replicant, unable
to scan the difference between man and artificial intelligence. Garland stages
that moment, graced by sharp, original work from actors Alicia Vikander, Oscar
Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson, with a surfeit of cool style, razor-laced comedy
and an escalating, eerily apt paranoia regarding the seductive powers of the
ghost in the machine.
Wild Tales (Damian Szifron) An electrifying black comedy anthology
consisting of six stories constructed around themes of revenge and how that
singular emotional impulse can often escalate out of control, far beyond its
original intent, or perhaps to its own morbidly logical ends. The movie is tipped
in the sort of poison that inspires ferocious, convulsive laughter to accompany
the portraits of crumbling societal pretense and bureaucratic black holes in
which the characters find themselves ensnared.
Inside Out (Pete Docter) Alongside The Incredibles and the Toy
Story trilogy now sits another Pixar masterpiece. It’s a supreme act of
narrative empathy, not to even mention the biological and emotional sort that
gives the movie its unique heart, built around the psychological development of
an 11-year-old girl as seen and felt from the inside. The girl’s individual temperaments
are personified by a host of brilliant voiceover talent, of which Amy Poehler (Joy)
and Phyllis Smith (Sadness) are standouts among a cast of standouts.
Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller) From my review: "Part of the joy of the movie
comes from recognizing the degree to which its chaos is precisely modulated,
our eyes being offered exactly what we need to see. Yet the movie never plays like
a control freak’s vacuum-packed vision... It’s like an epic summing up of
everything that has ever compelled Miller to put images on film. Essentially
one long, extended chase, Fury Road
is so dynamically, startlingly choreographed that you begin to feel as though
Miller himself is possessed by the glorious promise of unchecked propulsion."
An Honest Liar (Tyler Measom, Justin Weinstein) The movie of
the year for me so far. It’s an engrossing and moving documentary about the
life of magician/skeptic James “The Amazing” Randi, who has dedicated his life
(he’s currently 87 years old) to
exposing tricksters claiming to possess actual psychic powers. Randi has long
held that, aside from the credulousness of those rubes (like you and me?) who
seem so desperate to believe, even the most intelligent person can be fooled.
What turns An Honest Liar from merely
interesting to deeply fascinating is seeing, courtesy of a truly unexpected
development in Randi’s own life, just how thoroughly his maxim proves true.
(You can see it now on Netflix Streaming.)
BEST MOVIE EXPERIENCE OF 2015 SO
FAR:
The Apu
Trilogy (Satyajit Ray), comprised of Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1957) and
The World of Apu (1959). The last
time I saw these movies was about 35 years ago, on rickety, well-worn
16mm—seeing them again, having grown-up in the manner (if not the
circumstances) of Apu in the interim, makes me feel like I was experiencing these
luminous treasures for the first time. Ray’s remarkable achievement is in
telling the story of Apu, who begins life well after the first film has gotten
under way, completely absent any pandering sentiment, through the prism of a
world represented for its beauty as well as its unforgiving harshness and
indifference, and then expanding the vision of the world’s possibilities so we
might understand them in the way Apu does, each tiny revelation absorbed or
ignored organically, without the telltale signposts of assigned significance.
For every moment of joy along the way, there is also the pain of loss and the
struggle of everyday existence, of survival, all of which is rendered with such
observational confidence, such almost offhanded grace, that the movies feel
more lived in than simply seen.
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