In 2015,
Cuba and the United States resumed diplomatic relations;
Volkswagen admitted to widespread cheating of emission testing;
“Hello” by Adele became the first song to record over one million digital copies in a week;
Saturday Night Live celebrated its 40th anniversary;
Charlie Sheen confirmed he was HIV positive;
In Obergefell v. Hodges, the United States Supreme Court held that homosexual couples have a right to marry;
Dylan Roof attacked Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina;
Subway spokesman Jared Fogle pled guilty to possession of child pornography and having sex with a minor;
Comedian Bill Cosby was charged with aggravated indecent assault;
Former Olympic decathlete Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner;
The WWE released Hulk Hogan after tapes of him making racists comments were released;
Princess Charlotte of Cambridge was born;
While Mario Cuomo, Lesley Gore, Leonard Nimoy, Anthony Mason, Terry Pratchett, Percy Sledge, Ben E. King, B.B. King, Christopher Lee, Dusty Rhodes, Ron Moody, James Horner, Dick Van Patten, Roger Rees, Omar Sharif, E.L. Doctorow, Roddy Piper, Yvonne Craig, Wes Craven, Oliver Sacks, Dean Jones, Yogi Berra, Moses Malone, Jackie Collins, Maureen O’Hara, Flip Saunders, Fred Thompson, Scott Wieland, Haskell Wexler, Lemmy, Natalie Cole, and Wayne Rogers died. The following is a list of my top ten films released in 2015:
10) Youth
Both in the twilight of their careers, composer Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) and filmmaker Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) vacation together in a luxury resort. The Queen of England requests Fred perform his most famous piece at her husband’s upcoming birthday, but he turns down the opportunity because the song reminds him of his ill wife. Their long relationship is fractured and messy, but possesses the kind of tender affection which can only come from a lifetime spent together.
Mick works with a group of writers developing one last magnificent film for his frequent star and muse Brenda Morel (Jane Fonda). Fred’s daughter and assistant, Lena (Rachel Weisz) has a crisis when her husband (Mick’s son) leaves her for a younger pop star, Paloma Faith.
Among the other guests: an overweight former soccer star, Miss Universe, and frustrated actor Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano). Tree became very famous and made a lot of money playing a robot in a series of action films, but he’s afraid of being remembered for a product he thinks is inferior.
Fonda is excellent as the pragmatist Morel, who, despite years of friendship, is willing to tell Mick the harsh, bitter truth. Fonda’s too brief performance brilliantly plays on her legacy and our long memory of her. As Ballinger and Boyle navigate the murky waters of their closing years, Paulo Sorrentino’s film becomes a poignant rumination on the fragility of life and the fleeting years of utility.
9) Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs is one of a handful of titans in the Information Revolution, who have come to represent the 21st century in the same way Thomas Edison, John Rockefeller, and Henry Ford represented the Industrial Revolution. Many praise him as a genius, while others deride him as a cold-hearted opportunist. He was infamously fired from his own company because of his unwillingness to compromise, only to return and bring Apple to unprecedented heights. His epic failures and even larger success are the epitome of the American Hero.
Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant script uses three of his product launches (Macintosh, NeXT, and the iMac G3) to dramatize Jobs’s incredible life. Basing it around the launches was a masterstroke. The rush of a deadline, the pressure to perform, and Jobs’s demanding standards produce a rich dramatic atmosphere.
Between this and The Social Network, Sorkin has become the unofficial chronicler of the Internet Age. The casting was impeccable. I loved Rogen as Steve Wozniak, Jobs’s partner / second banana. Kate Winslett was endearing as Joanna Hoffman, his work wife and confidante. Jeff Daniels has gotten better with age, carrying himself with a gravitas not present in his early performances. His work as Jobs’s reluctant foil, John Sculley, keeps the film from becoming too one-sided.
The film excels because of the outstanding, central performance of Michael Fassbender. While the difficulty in portraying an iconic figure cannot be overstated, he managed to avoid caricature or mimicry. Danny Boyle’s film did a fantastic job evoking our recent history and documenting a vanishing species, an enigmatic and mysterious public figure in a world where privacy is increasingly a relic of the past.
8) Spotlight
In 2001, Marty Baron (Liev Schrieber) was hired as the editor of The Boston Globe. During one of his initial staff meetings, he suggested the paper’s investigative team, Spotlight, look into allegations the Roman Catholic leadership in Boston knew about the activities of pedophile priest John Geoghan and covered them up. The team’s meticulous research revealed the highest members of church leadership had been actively covering up the activity of nearly one hundred pedophile priests for years.
In heavily Catholic Boston, their attempts to expose the truth were met with strong resistance. The cast, including Schreiber, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, and Stanley Tucci are excellent.
The film is not an indictment of the Catholic Church, although it certainly exposes it as callous and unChristian in its treatment of its most helpless parishioners. Rather the film is an important reminder that institutions (even religious ones) have one purpose: to stay alive. No institution is moral or immoral; their only guiding principle is self-preservation. To drive this point home, the film goes out of its way to demonstrate The Boston Globe’s own self-protective instincts. One of the chief investigators on the Spotlight team, Robby Robinson (Keaton) received a tip about thirty pedophile priests twenty years earlier, but failed to follow-up.
Last year, Tom McCarthy directed the Adam Sandler vehicle The Cobbler, a film labeled by many among the worst of the year. To follow it up with such a resounding success, is an amazing achievement.
Composed entirely of audio recordings Marlon Brando made at various points in his life (many never heard by the public), this documentary glimpses into the mind and philosophy of an incredibly complicated and transcendent talent, one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century whose approach to his craft fundamentally changed what audiences expect from movies.
Riley’s father (Kyle Maclachlan) takes a job in California, uprooting his family from their Minnesota home. Missing her friends and feeling awkward at her new school, 11-year-old Riley struggles with the move.
Inside Riley’s head, her five primary emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling), struggle to maintain a sense of normalcy.
This is a beautiful film about growing up, and the value of emotions. Since watching it, I’ve often found myself using the ideas of this movie to manage my own emotions, becoming, I hope, a more well-rounded person in the process.
The encounter with Riley’s almost forgotten imaginary friend, Bing Bong (Richard Kind), is among the most poignant film moments of the year.
The casting, particularly of the five emotions, was phenomenal. Lewis Black has spent his career associating himself with righteous indignation and Amy Poehler has received deserved praise for her effervescent performance, but the star of the movie is Phyllis Smith who created the most lovable sad sack since Eyeore.
This ambitious film ranks among Pixar’s very best.
After the suicide of David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel), David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) reflects on the time he interviewed the author during a book tour for his seminal novel, Infinite Jest. I love Wallace’s challenging and ridiculously long novel. It’s a bizarre work about tennis prodigies, a dysfunctional family, the trappings of television, a Canadian separatist group, and a group of terrorists who travel in wheelchairs.
This film provides a rare, unfiltered insight into the mind of a genius. The rambling, intellectual conversations about fame, art, women, love, expectation, depression, alcoholism, and abuse feel like a 21st century update of another of my favorite films, My Dinner with Andre.
I knew I would like the film because I find Wallace fascinating, but I loved it more than I could have anticipated.
4) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann) is a typical awkward high school student. His carefully cultivated anonymity is shattered when a former kindergarten friend, Rachel Kushner (Olivia Cooke) is diagnosed with leukemia and his parents (Nick Offerman and Connie Britton) force him to visit. Neither of them relish the awkward encounter, but slowly forge a strong bond. Greg begins visiting her regularly, along with his only other friend, Earl (RJ Cyler). Eventually the pair trust Rachel enough to share their secret hobby: making short parodies of famous arthouse films. As their friendship deepens and her condition worsens, the pair make a film dedicated to Rachel.
The adult cast is uniformly excellent. Since his star making turn in Parks and Recreation, I don’t think Nick Offerman’s been in a project I haven’t liked. John Berenthal gives a nuanced performance in what could have been a stock role of inspirational, unconventional teacher. Molly Shannon steals the few scenes she’s in as Rachel’s odd and clearly sexually frustrated mother.
Similar to The Fault in Our Stars, this film demonstrates what happens when real world issues intersect with the bubble of high school life in America. While Fault featured highly literate, confident young people, this film focuses on the awkwardness and unease of youth. The end is a little too saccharine, but it’s mostly earned.
3) Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Thirty years after the events in Return of the Jedi, not much has changed. The First Order, a splinter group from the evil empire, is terrorizing the galaxy. Leia still leads the resistance. Han has returned to smuggling. C-3PO is still annoying. Both sides are desperately searching for Luke Skywalker, the last surviving Jedi.
After one of his trainees went berserk, Luke went into a self-imposed exile. The Resistance has located a map to his location and send their best pilot, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) to retrieve it. The First Order, led by Vader disciple Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) arrives as he receives the map; Poe places the map in his droid, BB-8, just before he’s captured. In the desert, BB-8 befriends scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley); while a disgruntled storm trooper FN-2187 (nicknamed Finn) (John Boyega), helps Poe escape back to Jakku to locate BB-8.
The first act capably introduces a new crop of characters to carry the series forward through a third trilogy, but when Han and Chewie show up at the beginning of the second act, the film kicks into another gear. In many ways, it feels more like a remake than a sequel.
There are callbacks to every film in the original trilogy: a major confrontation on a catwalk, a Yoda stand-in (Lupita Nyongo’s Maz Kanata), a semi-dream sequence in a cave, a massive weapon designed to destroy planets. There’s even a subtle reference to Ford’s role as Indiana Jones.
My experience watching the film with a packed house undoubtedly influenced my impression of the film. Every time a returning character appeared, there was a loud cheer and applause, reminding me the Star Wars films are one of the last vestiges of a dying breed of cultural event films.
I have a few minor complaints, the great Max von Sydow was wasted, there was no need to introduce Captain Phasma in this film, there were too many cameos given to JJ Abrams’s friends. However, I loved the movie, I loved the nostalgia, and I loved the new characters. It was a fantastic experience and feels like a well-deserved victory lap for Harrison Ford. The best thing: for the first time in thirty years, we don’t know what happens next. The prequels are often trashed and ridiculed, but the main problem with those films was we knew where we were headed, barreling to the day when Anakin would find his destiny as Darth Vader. This film ends as Rey approaches the long hidden master Jedi Luke and asks him to rejoin the fight against his former student. We don’t know his answer. We don’t know Rey’s or Finn’s heritage, although we suspect it will be important. We don’t know much about the leader of the First Order, Supreme Leader Snoke. Until the still unnamed Episode VIII arrives in 2017, we get to engage in every fanboy’s favorite pastime, rampant speculation and formulation of elaborate theories.
2) Room
When Joy (Brie Larson) was seventeen, a stranger kidnapped her and imprisoned her in a garden shed in his backyard. Seven years later, Joy still lives in the small room with her son Jack (Jacob Tremblay), the product of repeated rape by her unnamed captor, whom she calls Old Nick.
Just after Jack’s 5th birthday, Joy concocts an escape plan. Jack will play dead and, when Old Nick takes his body outside, run for help. The plan works and the pair are released from their imprisonment, but find adjusting to life in the outside world difficult. Joy’s parents have long ago divorced and her mother (Joan Allen) is with another man, while her father (William H. Macy) is emotionally distant and unsupportive.
Based on the novel by Emma Donoghue, the story is sensational and the performances of Larson and Tremblay are heartbreaking. Their chemistry and skill make the reality of imprisonment in “Room” a harrowing experience. This simple film is among my favorite of 2015 because of the deep resonance of its emotions. It’s a call to appreciate the life we’ve been given and never give up hope.
God is a sadistic man living in Brussels with his wife and ten-year-old daughter, Ea. He doesn’t allow his family to leave their tiny apartment and created mankind so he could amuse himself by torturing them. To thwart her father, Ea sends a message to everyone with a cell phone telling them the exact date and time of their death.
This creates a fascinating thought experiment. How do people respond when they know the exact length of their remaining life? Would they shirk responsibilities? Would they abandon relationships? Would they interact differently with people they knew would die before them? Yet the pre-knowldge of death is only a portion of the overall story in this film. Inspired by her brother Jesus, Ea escapes from the apartment and attempts to write a Brand New Testament to help humanity escape from the tyrannical rule of her father and recruits apostles to spread her message: a woman with one arm; a murderer; a man despondent over his impending death; a man who obsesses over a previous love; an elderly woman in a loveless relationship; a sickly, possible transgender boy. She encourages these people living in the shadows and gives them hope, happiness, and purpose. But is she really just manipulating them the way she complains God has done in the past? Is manipulating someone into a happy existence any different from manipulating them into a miserable one?
Van Dormael’s work is not for everyone. It’s disjointed, dense, and often uncomfortable. He doesn’t film narrative as much as ideas and his work asks important questions about God and faith, questions most organized religions would rather ignore by labeling them heretical. His approach to the question of evil and suffering is no less profound for taking a lighthearted approach. In the end, I found it invigorating, challenging, and beautiful (even the bizarre scene of love between a forlorn wife and a gorilla).