Top 20 Movies of 2015

Here is my "Top 20 Movies of 2015" list. This list is as of the date this entry was posted and has probably changed if you are reading this much later. There were a lot of similar themes in movies this year. Solo survival, investigative dramas, strong female characters, and Domhnall Gleeson everywhere. It wasn't the strongest year for cinema, but it was a good year. As always, this is only my opinion.

#20 Fort Tilden - From the moment I saw the trailer, I could tell that Fort Tilden was my kind of movie. It's not as good as I was hoping it would be, but it has a great sense of humor. Not only that, but it also provides a decent look at some of the traits of the millennial generation. The best way to describe the style of this movie is Romy & Michele's High School Reunion meets Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. This could be the start of successful acting careers for stars Bridley Elliott and Clare McNulty. Top it off with some great indie music and you have a pretty fun flick here. It won the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW in 2014.

#19 Cooties - I couldn't not put this movie on my list somewhere because it made me laugh more than any other movie this year, except for the film in the #4 spot. Yes, it's not the most polished movie, but this movie generated some big belly laughs from both me and Bethany. Most of our laughs came from Leigh Whannell's character, but Rainn Wilson, Elijah Wood, and Jack McBrayer are also funny. Cooties is almost like a reversal of Elijah Wood's The Faculty back in 1998. Now, he's the teacher fighting a bunch of elementary school kids who have turned into zombies. It's pretty crazy and falls pretty flat in its third act, but it is a hoot.

#18 Joy - Joy is the best movie that could have been made about a story that really isn't all that fascinating. It revolves around Joy Mangano, the woman who invented the Miracle Mop and created an empire around the home shopping arena. No one else could have done this movie so well besides David O. Russell. Here, he uses some of the same names he's used before who all have fine performances, but don't excel like that have in the past. Jennifer Lawrence does a pretty good job though.

#17 GETT: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem - Apparently GETT is the third film in a trilogy about the unhappy marriage between Viviane Amsalem and her husband Shimon. However, you don't need to have seen the other films in order to appreciate this one. I haven't seen them. This movie takes place entirely in a religious court building and tells the tale of how difficult it is for wives to divorce their husbands in Israel. It's rich with dialogue, acting, and camera angles. It was submitted as Israel's official Academy Award selection last year, but failed to get a nomination. That's a shame.

#16 Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Where to start? I liked The Force Awakens a lot, but it's not a masterpiece to me. For me, it's like... really, really good fan fiction. The action is some of the best yet, the audio is the best of the year, and the acting is some of the best in the whole Star Wars series. So, what's the problem? Well, I miss George Lucas. No, really. I am one of the few who seemed to enjoy the prequels. I miss the numerous planets and creatures and ships. I don't think Force Awakens has enough. I won't dive into the fact that this movie takes a lot of the same ideas from A New Hope because there are about a thousand articles that already do that. And after seeing the movie twice now, I have to admit that there are some slow scenes. The originals and prequels don't feel slow because there's always at least something to look at. The Force Awakens is the first time where I wish I could skip a couple scenes. That said, it's still an entertaining ride that will satisfy the majority of Star Wars fans. Oh, and Domhnall Gleeson fans.

#15 The Hateful Eight - The Hateful Eight is a call back to Quentin Tarantino's dialogue heavy, big cast old days. This movie feels very much like Reservoir Dogs for me if it were a western. Kurt Russell plays a bounty hunter on his way to turning in a fugitive played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Joining them are some other Tarantino regulars, as well as some newbies. Robert Richardson served as Director of Photography again and does some of his best work. Tarantino also used Ennio Morricone again to compose the score, who also did good work in Django Unchained. If the 70mm version is playing near you, I recommended going out to see it.

#14 Spotlight - Spotlight is a movie about the Boston Globe team and its investigation into the widespread child abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the Boston area around 2002. With a top-notch ensemble cast including Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, and Stanley Tucci, Spotlight will be an Oscar contender. It was co-written and directed by Thomas McCarthy (who I've met) who has done brilliant films like The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win. 2014 must have been an off-year for him with the not-so-great Million Dollar Arm and The Cobbler, but I think he has completely made up for it here in 2015.

#13 Slow West - Writer and director John Maclean's first film is a humble and satisfying one. Slow West is actually a pretty slow movie, yes. However, it leads up to one of the best shot Western shootouts I have seen in a long time. The movie was shot in New Zealand. It's nice to know that there are still places on this planet that look like that. Michael Fassbender has a great performance alongside Kodi Smit-McPhee, who plays a young man traveling to America in the old west days to be with the woman he loves.

#12 Bridge of Spies - I'm a sucker for Spielberg. I feel like I say that every time I put one of his movies on my list. He has such a great ability to take any topic and churn out a truly entertaining movie for me. Bridge of Spies reunites him with Tom Hanks who plays James B. Donovan. Donovan was a lawyer during the years of the Cold War who was assigned to defend a Soviet spy by the name of Rudolf Abel. Of course, that creates some problems for Donovan and his family since people didn't take to kindly to communist spies back then. But you'll find a surprising amount of heart in this movie that was also written by the Coen Brothers. Still, it feels more Spielberg than Coen for this one.

#11 A Hard Day - No movie will have you on the edge of your seat longer than A Hard Day. The movie is so tense that you are constantly worried for the main character. The movie is about a homicide detective who accidentally hits a man while driving from his mother's funeral where he has been drinking a little bit. Not wanting to lose his job and go to jail, he decides to hide the body in his mother's coffin. The next day, he gets a phone call from someone saying they saw what he did and wants the dead body. When the man digs up his own mother's grave, he finds that the body has bullet holes in it. That plot was enough for me to see this South Korean action drama and it should be enough for you.

#10 Mad Max: Fury Road - Named best film of the year by National Board of Review, Fury Road took Mad Max to a new level that it needed to go to. Out of all the trilogies and remakes and sequels we got this year, this is the best. Kudos to director and co-writer George Miller for keeping the series fresh and exciting. Are the action scenes over the top? Yes, but I know the movie would not have been as fun without them. Tom Hardy had one of the best years and I look forward to seeing him continue to play this character.

#9 The Gift - The Gift exists on this list mainly because of its huge surprise ending. The ending here is on par with other great ones like Oldboy, The Usual Suspects, and Se7en. It's twisted, but oh so perfect. Joel Edgerton wrote, produced, co-starred in this movie that is his feature debut as a director. Has he found his new calling? Jason Bateman plays a serious role here, which is nice to see from the guy. But still, it's all about that ending. Man. Check it out.

#8 The Big Short - It's hard for me to believe that this was made by the same guy that did Anchorman and Talladega Nights. Yet, The Big Short is lined with great subtle humor and a storytelling technique so obscure that it's also not surprising that this came out of Adam McKay. The movie follows the few men who predicted the credit and housing bubble collapse of 2007/2008. It will make you pay attention, it will upset you a bit, and it will hopefully teach you something. I was very impacted by the collapse and it's nice to know how it sort of came to be. This film probably has my favorite ensemble cast of the year with Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt.

#7 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl - This movie is for fans of film and has a good story to go along with it. Taking a page from Be Kind Rewind, Me and Earl's main characters make cheap imitations of popular movies that they like. Eventually, they are asked to make a video for a fellow classmate who is dying of cancer. It breaks the typical cliches you get with these sorts of coming-of-age films and battles the topic of dealing with cancer. All of the young actors and old actors perform well. It's also nice to get a pretty legit book-to-screen translation on this film since both were written by Jesse Andrews. The editing is also pretty impressive from David Trachtenberg.

#6 Ex Machina - This is the better Domhnall Gleeson/Oscar Isaac sci-fi movie that came out this year. Ex Machina blows Star Wars out of the... blue milk... with its creative premise and haunting setting. Gleeson plays a computer programmer invited by his company's boss to test out an artificial intelligence robot that he has designed. This is writer and director Alex Garland's first film and it's the kind where you can tell that he is going to go places. He's already planning on doing a movie with Natalie Portman called Annihilation, which would be based off of Jeff VanderMeer's novel. Gleeson, Isaac, and Alicia Vikander are all great in this movie.

#5 Brooklyn - I was surprised by how much I liked Brooklyn. It is essentially a romantic drama that takes place in the 1950s, but is is so well-shot, so well-performed, and so beautifully written. That writing cred belongs to Nick Hornby who has been a good author focusing on doing more screenwriting. Last year's Wild was scripted by him, which was based on a memoir. Brooklyn is based on a novel written by Colm Tóibín. Saoirse Ronan stars as Ellis and has one of the best female performances of the year. And I guess so does Domhnall Gleeson.

#4 What We Do in the Shadows - A vampire mockumentary. That's all What We Do in the Shadows is and it is brilliant. This is easily the funniest film of the year. It's brought to us by the same people that made the hit show Flight of the Conchords. Do yourself a favor and see this film now!

#3 The Martian - I didn't want to like this movie. Maybe it's Matt Damon's tendency to overact, or Ridley Scott's lackluster recent films, or too many space films, but I couldn't help loving this thing. I've seen it a few times now and I can tell it's one of those movies that I can watch whenever and over and over again. I think what I like most is the pacing. It's slow, but all of the puzzles that Mark Watney has to work through really makes the movie speed up. A lot of people are comparing this to Interstellar, but I don't think that's fair.

#2 The Revenant - Producer, writer, and director Alejandro González Iñárritu is proving himself to be one of my favorite filmmakers. I love Birdman, Babel, and 21 Grams. The Revenant is his most approachable movie yet. The true story of frontiersman Hugh Glass is a fascinating American tale, but a movie about his life wouldn't be all that grand. His story was fictionalized in a Michael Punke's novel of the same name, which added a lot. Mark L. Smith and Iñárritu wrote the screenplay, which is based in part on the novel, and they made it even more exciting. I love what they did with everything. The cinematography by Academy Award winner Emmanuel Lubezki is gorgeous. Like, Bob Ross painting gorgeous. Since this is an Iñárritu movie, it has some long takes, and they are some of his most complicated yet. The original score was composed by Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto in collaboration with The National's Bryce Dessner and German electronic musician Alva Noto. It is one of the best of the year. As for the acting, definitely best of the year for me. Leonardo DiCaprio certainly has a strong shot at the Oscar. Tom Hardy might even have outperformed him with his amazing accent and the overall ruthlessness of his character. Oh, and yet another Domhnall Gleeson movie. I watched this at midnight and expected to want to fall asleep during it, but on the contrary, I didn't want the movie to end.

Here it is, the moment you've all been waiting for...





#1 - Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 - Sike!

#1 It Follows - I'm surprised by this one, too, guys. I watched a lot of the Oscar buzzworthy films released in December expecting something to knock It Follows out of my #1 spot, but nothing could quite do it. It Follows has just about everything I look for in a film, but the most important thing is it has a completely original concept that is unique and simple at the same time. Here's the deal: a phantom is passed on from person to person after sex. Stay with me. This phantom will follow you until it either kills you or gets passed on to your next sexual partner. Still there? If the person you passed the phantom on to is killed by the phantom, then it'll go back down the line and come after you again. You're gone now, aren't you? Hello? Hello? It Follows was wonderfully shot on a $2 million budget and features a bunch of actors that you haven't heard of. I think what attracts me to this movie is the lingering and ever-present death that could be around any corner. Also, it has sort of the same effect that horde zombies have in that It is slow, but hard to defeat and will not give up. Hopefully you can bring yourself around to check this movie out and let me know what you think.

Runners-up: The Walk, He Named Me Malala, Paddington, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Inside Out, While We're Young, Love & Mercy, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Trainwreck.

Movies I didn't see that received good reviews: Shaun the Sheep Movie, Carol, The Danish Girl, Room, Timbuktu, Amy, Sicario, About Elly, Tangerine, Creed, Anomalisa, Straight Outta Compton, 99 Homes, Son of Saul, Youth, Beasts of No Nation, Steve Jobs, White God, The Lobster.

Past lists:
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005