20. Steve Jobs
What does hold this lower down the list is (in my humble opinion, of course) Michael Fassbender's lacking lead performance (tell me again why he isn't being nominated for Macbeth anywhere, where he gives a magnificent performance) and just my overall lack of interest in the source material. Steve Jobs' life; is it really that worth retelling again and again and again? These major reservations aside it's a splendidly directed film, with crisp dialogue and pacing and a very good sense of when and where to insert bits and pieces of information, background and style.
19. Paper Towns
Perhaps the two films on this list which have gotten more negative publicity than positive. Still I stand by it. It's far from flawless filmmaking and yes, it is a bit lacking in terms of its supporting cast, but I thought in comparison to the recent trash of The Fault in Our Stars and strings upon strings of inane pseudo-teen films, both these films captured so well just teenagers being their teenaged selves. A bit awkward, hit-and-miss in their funniness, but so realistic in these aspects. It also contains Cara Delevigne in a star making performance.
18. Black Mass
Kind of the opposite of Steve Jobs in some ways. The film as a film itself is rather straightforwardly directed, almost documentary-style with its framing narrative and just the way the sense of Boston is captured with the camera. There's little in the way of directorial innovation but the acting in this film is what makes it superlative. Depp gives a magnificent comeback performance as Whitey Bulger, Joel Edgerton is not far behind as the hot-headed John Connolly, and the likes of Peter Sarasgaard, Rory Cochrane, Jesse Plemons, and especially Julianne Nicholson are excellent too in making this one excellent ensemble, though not quite the best of the year...
17. The Man From U.N.C.L.E
This was just a purely entertaining watch. I thought it made for an excellent time at the cinema because it was so acutely self-aware of what sort of a romp it was going to be, and just milked the whole spy parody trope for all it was worth. Henry Cavill's starting to become a bit underrated as an actor I feel and demonstrated some delicious comic chops here, and Elizabeth Debicki was one snidely scene-chewing presence of the finest sort. There's not much to the plot or really, to the performances, and you could argue it to be purely aesthetic, soulless filmmaking; but oh well, it's fun and great for what it is.
16. Love & Mercy
There's been a surprising amount of love for Paul Dano's performance as young Brian Wilson in this biopic of his life, but there's so much more to the film than just that. It's an understatedly daring move to cast two actors to play such a well-known pop culture figure and segue the narrative in and out of specific spots of time involving them, but it's done so well here by director Bill Pohlad. Dano is fantastic, Cusack is very good too and grows with every re-watch, and if Paul Giamatti is a bit OTT the fabulous Elizabeth Banks makes up for it with quite possibly the most luminous performance of 2015. The unorthodox, yet faithful approach to recreating the creative processes of Wilson + the Beach Boys more than makes up for some of the more jumbled elements of the film like the handling of Eugene Landy.
15. 45 Years
I have to confess, re-watching this very, very recently pushed this film down the list considerably. I still think Tom Courtenay gives a terrific performance but a re-watch did open my eyes up to some of the more caricatured elements to his portrayal of bumbling grief. Nevertheless this is an excellently understated motion picture which through the quietest possible depiction of a shattering marriage, evoked a sort of 21st Century Ordinary People feel.
14. Inside Out
Not much to say about this besides it being yet another solid entry into the Pixar cannon. It's both moving and funny, it hits the right moments in the right places, the script is well-written, and the voice performances were all uniformly good with Richard Kind being particularly good. The low ranking of this list is merely due to how good the next 13 films are. Hold on, folks.
13. Far From the Madding Crowd
There's a gaping black hole of non-charisma, talent and appeal in this film that is Tom Sturridge's infamously poor portrayal of Sergeant Troy. Does it saddle the film down? Not really. Thomas Vinterberg's direction is assured enough with the great performances of the other three central players to place the focus on them and find some very clever ways to get around Sturridge's lacklustre quality of characterization--not since Barry Lyndon has a poor casting choice been so splendidly navigated around with such style. As an adaptation of one of my favourite novels it's far from flawless in terms of fidelity to the text, but in terms of capturing the mood and passion of the source material it's terrific. Alas, though, one will never know what compelled Bathsheba Everdeen to choose a complete mophead like Sturridge's Troy over the dashing Matthias Schoenaerts and the gentlemanly Michael Sheen.
12. Beasts of No Nation
In one of the finest displays of the mentor-protégé cinematic dynamic in recent years, Cary Fukunaga crafts a haunting tale of innocence lost from the eyes of Agu (Abraham Attah) by the horrific actions of a militia led by Idris Elba in a terrifyingly good and just plain terrifying performance as the Commandant. The ending's perhaps a bit rushed and some of the montage scenes go on too long but it's largely one of the most important films of 2015, regardless of your subjective views on it. It paints a visceral, unforgettable portrait of bleak darkness that makes for one oddly compelling journey.
11. Sicario
One of the best thrillers of its sort in recent years, Sicario pulsates with tension and violence from the very start and never really lets go of you. Even a potential sex scene soon becomes ladled with violence of the most disturbing sort. Emily Blunt's badass leading turn has become perhaps the most underrated piece of female acting work in 2015; the prim and propriety of The Devil Wears Prada and The Young Victoria has been eschewed by a sort of blend of her battlegirl image in The Edge of Tomorrow and her more sensitive work in The Adjustment Bureau. Benicio del Toro's compellingly savage and yet oddly sympathetic portrayal of a hitman also just happens to be my win for 2015 Supporting. Go figure.
10. Bridge of Spies
Speilberg does it again. A 140-plus minutes biography which somehow feels so brisk and yet so informative (at least until the last 10 minutes of the film or so) is carried well as just a straightforward cold war thriller by Tom Hank's excellent adaptation of the 'aw shucks' Jimmy Stewart routine to the role of James Donovan, and the interesting story behind the film. What makes it all the more exceptional is an excellent script co-written by the Coen Brothers which always adds in just a modicum of humour to blend in with the thrills, and of course Mark Rylance's magnificent supporting performance which, though brief in screentime, is very large in impact.
9. The End of the Tour
Essentially just a film about two guys talking on tour, this sort of biographical look at David Foster Wallace (a brilliant work of character creation by Jason Segel--who would've thought he had it in him?) through the eyes of Rolling Stones journalist Dave Lipsky (played excellently by Jesse Eisenberg) is a great example of how films about writing don't always have to just centre their conversations about writing, and that films about personal interviews can also develop genuinely captivating relationships. You feel like you've really been drawn into the lives of two people just by their conversations alone, even though they're often relating about things outside of themselves, which is testament to the excellent performances. It's hard to explain how it's so intelligent a film and yet so without pretense about it, but it certainly does that.
8. Mr Holmes
Mr Holmes has its flaws, mostly minor though (i.e. Laura Linney's accent) and the storytelling structure gets a bit muddled at certain points, but none of this detracts from the fact that, overall, this is a very finely made film which depicts an elderly Sherlock Holmes, haunted by his past and searching amidst his waning memory for the clues to solve an unresolved case. Like The End of the Tour it's deceptively complex, and all the better for it. For more detail about Ian McKellen's great performance: http://actorvsactor.blogspot.com/2015/07/head-to-head-sherlock-holmes-part-2.html
7. Ex Machina
The most talked about thing in this film is Alicia Vikander, and rightly so. Her performance is one of cool, calculated manipulation that's just so good it ensnares you into her trap, even when her intentions become so palatably clear. But there's so much more to the film than just her. The sci-fi stuff is not only cool but also fairly realistic, Domnhall Gleeson and Oscar Issac are also very good at playing off Vikander's steely performance with their depictions of the opposite spectrums of masculinity, and it probably hits more intellectual heights than any film this year through its dialogue and direction. I hope to see more work from Alex Garland.
6. Mad Max: Fury Road
Just a rollicking good ride from start to finish...actually I take that back. Mad Max; Fury Road is ultimate cinematic satisfaction on an aesthetic and adrenaline-based scale, but it's also a film chock full of great supporting turns and a most unique leading man in the form of Tom Hardy's Max, both emulating and putting a twist on Mel Gibson's classic portrayal of the character. It's getting of accolades all over the place now is very much well-deserved and I must say I may well be commiting cinematic blasphemy by placing it so low on this list, but whatever. It's a must-see.
5. Spectre
Just about the perfect Bond film is how I'd nicely surmise Spectre. For more detail: http://actorvsactor.blogspot.hk/2015/11/why-spectre-is-perfect-bond-film.html
4. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
I'll do a more thorough review soon (hopefully one without, and one with, spoilers) but The Force Awakens sent more chills down my spine than any motion picture of 2015. A lot of it may have been down to nostalgia, or possibly even just the joy of seeing more Star Wars on screen that didn't suck. But that would be putting down The Force Awakens unfairly. Yes, it's effectively a re-make of A New Hope. Yes, it is thus fairly predictable in some parts. Yes, some of the dialogue is a bit dodgy and some characters extraneous. Overall though, it has clever tricks up its sleeves, a surprising amount of emotional depth and dark edges, some fantastic setpieces and a perfect blend of loyalty to the old characters, and very well-drawn characterisations of the new ones. Overall probably the most fun I had at the cinema all year.
3. The Martian
Matt Damon's turn in The Martian is phenomenal and, with Ian McKellen all but out of the Oscar race, I'll be rooting for Mr Damon to win come awards season if he is rightfully nominated. Each beat of the film whether comical, dark, or a blend of the both, is so impeccably dealt with; as one of the consummate everymen of 21st Century cinema, Damon performs each reactive moment to Mark Watney's predicament on Mars perfectly, whether it be a snarky aside to the camera, or an emotional, poignant delivery of a message to teammates. And the performance isn't even where the brilliance of the film ends. The direction of Ridley Scott is just superb, successfully conveying not only the survivor story of the man but also seamlessly blending it into the greater picture of the ongoings on Earth, where the rest of the cast--most notably Sean Bean, Jeff Daniels, Donald Glover, and especially Chiwetel Ejiofor--do so much with their expositionary roles. A truly phenomenal film.
2. Brooklyn
Much like The Martian, Brooklyn's trump card is in its lead Saoirse Ronan's lead performance, but there's also so much more to the film. John Crowley's direction and Nick Hornby's screenplay (one of my favourite authors by the way) convey such a specific sense of place and time in both 20th Century Brooklyn and Ireland, and the film flows along so well at a leisurely place through good times and the bad, giving it all a feel of a very beautiful, but still very realistic, vision of a slice of life in Ellis Lacey's life. At it's heart it's 'just' a love story--but such a wonderfully realised one through the medium of film. No other film this year perhaps had to make such leaps of tonal change over the course of the film, but of course it, and Ronan, were all well up to the task.
1. Carol
I've done two pieces on Carol already here: http://actorvsactor.blogspot.hk/2015/12/the-facilitating-dynamics-of-todd.html and http://actorvsactor.blogspot.hk/2015/12/the-facilitating-dynamics-of-todd_4.html. Anything else to say? Not really. Words alone cannot convey the joy and the pure bliss it was to revel in Carol. There were no good parts or bad parts. Not even happy or sad parts. Instead each part of the film was a piece in the greater whole of a masterpiece all so beautifully put together.
None of the contents of these clips belong to me, but rather the channels of the original YouTube users/the film companies
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