**for
my official Top 10 Favorite Movies list for 2015, click here**
Continuing
with our final look-back at the movies of 2015, and after a hiatus from doing
this last year, I am back to provide a little bit of added color to my Top 10
list with some of my own personal awards to remember the best, worst,
quirkiest, and most memorable stuff I had the fortune of witnessing over the
course of watching the roughly 5 dozen films that currently sit on my “Seen”
list. All awards are of my own
design. I expect to receive full credit
and funding from the Academy any day now.
Oh,
and a great big spoiler blanker from here on out. Last warning.
The
Anti-Twilight Award for Best Vampire Film-
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
For
too long, the existence of Twilight has hung over the world of the sexily
undead like the carcass of a massive, sparkly albatross. No more, for the Iranians have arrived to
remind us in the West of how a REAL vampire gets down to business. Despite lacking the pure physical presence of
the classic Vlad Draculs, Sheila Vand is a stunning anchor for this combination
horror/love story. It ends up feeling
oddly appropriate (and maybe even a bit subversive?) that, even as a vampire,
she drapes herself in the full-body dress that restrictive regimes like those
in Iran have made so infamous. The
single, all-black form seems to suck in all light around it, giving the
character her own unique way of striking terror into the hearts of both her
victims and the audience.
The
Laverne Cox Award for Best Unexpected Trans-Related Side Story-
Predestination
Predestination
Predestination was a tightly-written and
wickedly clever bit of sci-fi madness, second only to Ex Machina in that
particular genre this year. But I more
or less expected that going in. What I
was wholly unprepared for was a sudden deviation from the main plot in the
second act when a new character walks in unannounced, and begins to tell us the
whole story of how he, designated as female at birth, eventually (for several very specific reasons I won't detail here) had to transition to being a man. How this
ties into the larger plot of the movie I won’t dare spoil, but I will say that
the real miracle isn’t that what amounts to a short-film-within-a-film ends up being surprisingly moving and emotionally touching, but that
the switch from it out of the realm of time-traveling sci-fi is handled so
flawlessly that, at first, you don’t even realized you’ve been detoured into a
whole other film.
For
a while, it looked like this one would go to Tomorrowland, easily the weakest Brad Bird vehicle so far when
compared to The Iron Giant and the
incredible work he’s done with Pixar.
However, the film did have a few scenes or moments of real poetry, plus
an absolutely perfect ending to a shaky story that at least made the film worth
seeing, if only once. It was a misfire,
but a creatively interesting one.
Queen of the Desert, on the other,
disappoints in how utterly unremarkable it is on every conceivable level. Nothing about is actively bad- there are no
offensive historical errors or stereotypes on display, the acting is fine, and
it’s competently made- but given how hugely underappreciated Gertrude Bell is,
and how much rich material there is in her life to make a Grade A masterpiece
out of, the film being this boring is arguably worse than if it had been
straight-up awful. Even the camerawork
is surprisingly unnoticeable, especially given Werner Herzog’s legendary
propensity for being so extremely devoted to getting the perfect shot, he
actually advocates getting arrested if that’s what it takes. What a bummer.
The
Happy Feet Award for Best, Most Bodacious Dance Number-
Oscar Isaac (Ex Machina)
Oscar Isaac (Ex Machina)
We
all thought we loved Ex Machina for
its brilliant and multi-layered story, sleek visuals, stunning effects,
jaw-dropping ending, and breakout performances by Oscar Isaac, Domhnall
Gleeson, and a fantastic Alicia Vikander.
But we were wrong. We loved it
for the scene where Oscar Isaac breaks out his moves and makes every dancer
who’d spent a lifetime training weep in utter shame at their lack of grace and
craft. Simply marvelous.
The
Alpha and Omega Award for Most Ubiquitous Screen Presence-
Domhnall Gleeson
Domhnall Gleeson
Every
now and then, for no particular reason, an actor or actress will have a year
where they make the jump from being occasionally recognizable from a few early
bit roles to suddenly being everywhere, and even for casual moviegoers there is
no escaping them. This year that person
was Domhnall Gleeson, who had lead or significant side roles in 4 major
big-screen movies. Even more amazingly,
all of them either directly made my Top 10 list (Brooklyn and Ex Machina)
or eked out an Honorable Mention (Star
Wars: Episode VII and The
Revenant), making him the most-represented actor in any such list I’ve yet
made.
Only
time will tell if this is just a flash in the pan or if he will be part of the
next generation of great screen actors, but given how he’s impressed so far
(plus the fact that he’s the son of the legendary Brendan Gleeson), I’m willing
to bet money it’ll be the latter.
Chi-Raq and The Big Short are both great, remarkable movies (hence why both
cracked my Top 5), and a big part of what makes them such a joy to watch are
the two cheeky, wisecracking, all-knowing narrators that guide us through the
scenes of destruction and depravity each film makes us bear witness to.
Samuel
Jackson always seems to be playing the same character in all his films, but
damn, he does it so well I just can’t help but love it anyway. We all love it. As Dolmedes, he slips in between the lines of
racial division to deliver a potent mix of jokes, wisecracks, polemic
admonitions, and lyrical wisdom, which, in addition to a stellar lead
performance by Teyonah Parris, ends up being the glue that holds together the film’s many
disparate parts.
Ryan
Gosling, on the other hand, I think has always been a bit underrated by people
(possible because his name and face bear a close resemblance to the
significantly less-talented Ryan Reynolds).
He might not be nearly as crass or as fascinatingly horrible as Leonardo
DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfourt, but his curious blend of smarts, slime, and
quasi-racist humor are their own fascinating sideshow, even though its
surrounded by an entire class of top-level actors doing what they do best.
The
Wrench-Your-Heart-Out Award for Most Moving Death Scene-
Still The Water
Still The Water
Still The Water is, in a sense, a very
Japanese film in how minimalist it keeps its scenes and overall story. This is no better displayed than right around
the middle, when the long-suffering mother of the main character passes away,
surrounded by her family and seemingly half the town. It seems to drag on for ages; she grows
weaker with each passing minute, but she can’t quite let go just yet, and
eventually she asks the women of the town to sing to help her soul along. It’s agonizing, painful, and uncomfortable to
watch, and in that sense perfectly conveys the deep sadness of having to wait
and watch for the end of a loved one.
The
Cloning Award for Strangest Duplication of Character Design and Story Role-
Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World) and Evangeline Lilly (Ant-Man)
Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World) and Evangeline Lilly (Ant-Man)
Alright,
someone needs to fess up. One of you copied
the other. We all know it happened, now
just tell us who the guilty party is. I
mean, forcing two great actresses into side roles where they struggle with
poorly-explained emotional issues and get a romance shoe-horned in in the most
awkward way possible is bad enough, but then you go and do THIS?
Seriously,
look at them! Blink and they are
one!
The
Pacific Rim Award for Most Mind-Fuckingly Insane Action Sequence-
Colin Firth and the Westboro Baptist Church (Kingsman: The Secret Service) WARNING: VIDEO VERY NSFW
Colin Firth and the Westboro Baptist Church (Kingsman: The Secret Service) WARNING: VIDEO VERY NSFW
Jesus
Christ, what the hell. This scene. Holy shit.
As
part of their efforts to thwart the bad guy’s plan to use mind control
technology to destroy the world, the Kingsmen send Colin Firth to investigate a
famously racist and homophobic church (okay, it’s not CALLED the Westboro
Baptist Church, but who do they think they’re kidding?) where they believe he
will test it. Lo and behold, he does,
and Colin Firth the trained world-class assassin is caught up in it. What results is one of the most spectacular,
mind-numbing, excruciatingly brutal bloodbaths I have ever seen. The madness needed to think up every step and
every way in which Firth slaughters a room full of the worst of humanity AND to
see it through to completion boggled my mind.
What has been seen cannot be unseen.
The
Screw High School Award for Best Use of Pomp and Circumstance- Kingsman: The Secret Service (VIDEO ALSO NSFW)
After
the Westboro Massacre (see above), I thought I had seen the ballsiest,
nuttiest, dare-you-not-to-laugh-at-this thing I would see all year. I was wrong.
At
the very end of the movie, as the action climax in the villain’s bunker comes
to a head, the day is saved when the good guys are able to reverse-engineer the
chips in the necks of the villain’s army and allies (which include, we learn,
almost every world leader INCLUDING Barack Obama), causing them to quite
literally blow the head off of every single bad guy around the entire globe,
leaving the mastermind of the whole affair alone and defenseless (sort
of).
For
reasons I am too emotionally well-balanced to fathom, the filmmakers chose to
depict this sequence of events by having each head blow up in a cloud of
multi-colored smoke, and each set or group of exploding noggins goes off in
time to the strains of that infamous high school graduation classic, Pomp and
Circumstance. And it is glorious.
The
Loony Tunes Award for Most Absurd Situational Survival Feats-
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant)
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant)
I
liked The Revenant a lot. It was
gorgeous to look at, it was terrifying seeing the lengths to which Leonardo
DiCaprio was forced to push himself in his (hopefully no longer futile) quest
for Oscar gold, and the scenery made me really, really, really want to go to
Canada. But let’s be honest, as
well-made as the endeavor was, the things the main character survives get
pretty ridiculous by the end, to the point where I almost felt it would have
made more sense to replace Tom Hardy with a roadrunner.
The
Homer Award for Most Lyrical Script-
Chi-Raq
Chi-Raq
A
really, really good screenplay (or script) is incredibly hard to write. How much harder must it be to use a storyline
that’s thousands of years old, update all the language to make it sound like a
fit in the 21st century, have almost the whole damn thing rhyme, and
STILL get actors who can make it sound natural as breathing? That is the task Spike Lee set out to
accomplish with Chi-Raq, and he succeeded
marvelously. I adore the language of
this film, every broken-meter bit of it.
This is the rare film I plan to watch again with subtitles just to make
sure I can savor every sentence (and to catch all the inside jokes and
literature references I missed the first time around).
The
Step Aside, Katniss Award for Best Breakout Female Action Hero-
Rey (Daisy Ridley, Star Wars: Episode VII) AND Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron, Mad Max: Fury Road)
Rey (Daisy Ridley, Star Wars: Episode VII) AND Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron, Mad Max: Fury Road)
Slowly
but surely, we are getting more hard evidence to counter the pig-headed notion
of the Studio Ancients that action/fantasy/sci-fi/blockbuster franchises
starring woman can’t be smart, fun, or financially successful. The
Hunger Games franchise alone proved this, but truth be told I never found
the films to be that great, especially since they (like David Russell) tended
to criminally underuse the long-ignored talents of a certain J-Law.
Thankfully,
along came these two ladies this year to push things forward a bit. Rey and Furiosa were fun, interesting, and
emotionally complex characters, grounding both of their respective films and
providing the bulk of the narrative heft to each, which was particularly
welcome given the previously male-dominated nature of their respective
franchises. Plus, they’re both badass as
all shit. More of this please,
2016. I want more.
The
Star Wars Prequels Award for Biggest Missed Opportunity-
The ending of Victoria
The ending of Victoria
There
was a very specific moment in Victoria-
a German film that, unlike Birdman,
actually WAS done in a single, exhilarating take- when I firmly expected and
wanted it to end, a point that would have made the ending ambiguous and given
the story a wonderfully dreamlike quality. It’s a sign of how strong I found the first
half of the film to be that, if it had ended there, it would have easily soared
into a spot on my Top 10.
But
it doesn’t end there. Instead, it goes
on. And on. And on.
And on. And it soon becomes clear
that it’s doing this just for the sake of “completing” its story, to provide
full closure to each character and everything that happens, even though it was
never necessary to do so. The result is
a second half that drags way too much and, sadly, spoiled a lot of the goodwill
I had for it up to that point. This
doesn’t in any diminish how impressive of an accomplishment the film and its
performances are- it’s a remarkable movie either way and absolutely worth
seeing- but it does, in my view, hold it back from the greatness it could have
achieved.
The
LOTR Award for Best Translation from Book to Film-
Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Translating
the prose of a great novel to the screen is always a challenge, since much of
what makes a book powerful is antithetical to what a movie needs to achieve the
same effect. And for all the films that
pull it off, there are just as many, if not more, than fail in the translation
as are lesser works as a result. This
year, I found Brooklyn to be the best
adaptation because the filmmakers clearly understood that the core of the story’s
power comes in its straightforward and unvarnished presentation of the main
character the world she inhabits, and a profound understanding of the
sacrificial nature of life, and knew exactly how to bring that same sense
across in movie form, which made it not only the best book adaptation of the
year, but also one of the best movies of 2015 overall.
The
Whiplash Award for Worst Turnaround Following an Oscar Win-
Eddie Redmayne (A bulging sack of impotent rage, Jupiter Ascending)
Eddie Redmayne (A bulging sack of impotent rage, Jupiter Ascending)
Oh
Eddie Redmayne. Clearly you won gold for
the wrong film. Eddie’s
somewhat-overblown Oscar moment was almost immediately followed by the general
release of what many consider to be one of the biggest, most bloated, and most
disappointing bombs of 2015, an original sci-fi work by the Wachowski’s that
failed spectacularly at the box office and may have further damaged the
prospects of future original sci-fi works for some time as a result. And the glorious crowning moment of this
failure was every single time Redmayne opened his quivering lips to deliver
some of the most deliciously over-wrought dialogue since the glory of Jeremy
Irons in Dungeons and Dragons. Shine on, you crazy diamond.
And
finally, my 4-Star club, for all the films I saw this year that, whether or not
I officially reviewed them, I consider to be worth a 4 out of 4 star
rating.
4-Star Club:
Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
Amy
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
45 Years
Crimson Peak
Brooklyn
Room
And
there you have it! Coming up next, a
quick celebration of the best in film scores AND, at long last, my picks for
who should win gold out of this year’s particularly controversial slate of
Oscar nominees. Til then.
-Noah Franc
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