The Top 10 films of 2015

Victoria was one of the year's most unique films but did it land on my Top 10?

List time part 2!!! After sifting through what felt a seismic ton of films to get here (I had quite the busy year so Fred’s Top 10 film catch up binge was a little longer this year) it’s finally time to count them down. I tried to resist it for a while but I will no more, 2015 was a good year for film. While it did not have the “awards depth” of previous years, 2015 was a year that if you looked, even for just a second you would unearth quite a number of unique and fascinating films. The theme of the films on this list is diversity, in all aspects. This list features both a film that was shot on super 70mm and one that was shot using an IPhone. It features many a film that was shot using frenetic cuts and one that featured no cuts at all. 2015 was a year with protagonists of all shapes and sizes, not only throughout its smaller samplings, but within its two best blockbusters as well. Even with its slow start and sparse awards bait, 2015 had a celebrated film for almost everyone, and it was a difficult task picking its ten best films.

The usual caveat applies: I have (despite no lack of trying) not seen every film in 2015 including a few that have snuck into others top 10s the biggest of which being The Revenant which does not screen in Vancouver until early January. Now that everything is out of the way lets get down to business! I present to you my picks for the very best films of 2015:

Honorable Mentions:

Steve Jobs, The Martian, Brooklyn, Amy, It Follows, Wild Tales, Chi-Raq, Sicario

The List:

10. Tangerine

 

Who could have imagined that the most kinetic film of 2015 would be shot on an IPhone? Yet Tangerine, a film about the wild adventures of two transgendered prostitutes, pulled it off in the most fascinating fashion imaginable. Tangerine felt so uniquely personal and moved with an energy that was like nothing else in 2015. The film never held back in its portrait of its main characters and created many beautiful, flawed, and energetic figures whose personalities and dilemmas lit up the screen. It also brought forth a unique perspective to the silver screen, giving voice to a group within the Transgendered community whose stories are never told, let alone with such energy or detail. When talking about the film year of 2015 its hard to ignore the beautifully vibrant Tangerine.

9. Star Wars: The Force Awakens

While not a masterpiece, Star Wars: The Force Awakens hit all the right notes for the fans of the original Star Wars films. The Force Awakens was unafraid just to be a big, nostalgic, unsubtle space opera. It felt as if the filmmakers understood exactly what made the original trilogy so special. The Force Awakens also provided a wonderful set up for future films in the franchise using the old characters and set pieces to set up new and lovable characters for the future of the franchise. Overall though what made The Force Awakens such a delight was just how enthralling of a viewing experience it was from beginning to finish. I had more fun in Star Wars The Force Awakens then any other film viewing experience I’ve seen this year and that is worth more to me then any minor quibble I may have.

8. Victoria

There have been a few films recently that have simulated being a shot in a single take, but Victoria is the only film to actually pull it off for real. I am a huge sucker for tracking shots to begin with and Victoria uses its style to extraordinary effect. Once the introductions are through Victoria is one of the most thrilling films to come out in 2015. The dynamic and somewhat restricting nature of the tracking shot made for one of the most exciting experiences of the year. Victoria is film that used its camera work the most to its advantage creating one of the most extraordinary film experiences in 2015.

7. Carol

The most beautiful love story of 2015 was Todd Haynes’ Carol. Gorgeously shot, and beautifully sensual the romance between Carol and Therese felt so sweet and real. Both Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara shine bright here acting the hell out of both the pleasures and the pains of their secret relationship. The film overall strikes the perfect balance of a slow build romance and a stark melancholy when facing the realities of a lesbian relationship in the 50s.  Oh and did I mention how pretty it is? Haynes relishes in every frame, making even the most melancholic sequences absolutely stunning. Carol is just a beautiful film in every aspect, a timeless yet complicated love story and one of the best films of 2015.

6. Inside Out

Pixar is back! Not only did Inside Out represent Pixar’s return to quality it was one of the studio’s most stunning efforts to date. Strikingly emotional and wonderfully funny Pixar’s take on the emotions of a little girl going through a tough growth period was beautiful and fascinating. It’s one of Pixar’s most adult films to date, grown me and women (myself included) were weeping throughout many of the films best emotional moments. It’s great to see Pixar to use its best traits, specifically their originality and emotional sensibility, to create something truly stunning again.

5. Ex Machina

The annual small but great Sci-Fi film, Ex Machina was as smart as any film to come out over the last several years. A film about the love, fear, and misunderstanding of a man made AI who starts to gain her own conscious, Ex Machina explored both the consequences and responsibilities of creating a new conscious. It also introduced me Alicia Vikander who delivered one of the single best performances of the year as the AI Ava, creating one of the more fascinating characters to pop off the screen in 2015. Thrilling and surprisingly poignant Ex Machina was yet another example of how great smart Sci-Fi can be.

4. Creed

If you had told me around this time last year that a Rocky sequel/spinoff would be the film in 2015 that would make me cry the most I may have called insane; but thanks to the power of Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan that ended up being the case. Creed was a Rocky film through and through, but by switching the perspective and focusing more on its characters Creed transformed into something truly special. Coogler also found a new and unique way to shoot the fights themselves giving all of them a vibrancy that had been missing in the past. I would be remiss not to mention the performance of Sylvester Stallone who after all these years proved that when asked to do so he could deliver a great performance. All of those elements manage to blend perfectly enough to actually bring me to tears when the perfectly timed Rocky theme kicked in for the first time. Creed is the kick that the Rocky franchise needed, and the first of the sequels to strike the same balance that made the original such a success.

3. Spotlight

The best journalism film since All the President’s Men Spotlight was an exhilarating examination of the investigation of the Catholic Priests in Boston in the early 2000s. Perfectly paced, Spotlight kept the focus on the Boston Globe for the better creating a lean film that never wore out its welcome and never felt like it was using its source material to manipulate its audience. It also helps that Spotlight has an extraordinary ensemble cast all of whom deliver subtle, naturalistic performances (well maybe save for Ruffalo who is a little showier) that elevates the film to a whole new level. Spotlight is jut a great film in all aspects, a super energetic drama, and one of the best films of 2015.

2. Mad Max Fury Road

A marvel of imaginative action filmmaking Mad Max Fury Road was film that wowed me in 2015. Fury Road stomped on the gas pedal and never let go creating one of the most adrenaline fueled, edge of your seat action films of all time. But with Fury Road George Miller did not just create great action but a deep and complete world as well. With Fury Road Miller has mastered how to create a deep world and deep characters without having to pause. He almost entirely used backgrounds, expressions and actions to develop the proceedings with truly stunning results. All those elements along with some truly great performances made Mad Max Fury Road not only one of 2015’s best films but one of the all time greatest action films as well.

1. The Hateful Eight

When Tarantino is at his very best there are few filmmakers that are better. While both Spotlight and Fury Road are great films for me The Hateful Eight was just on another level. The Hateful Eight was a filmmaker at the height of his powers. The Hateful Eight itself is a masterwork of sheer confidence. The film is just a brilliant thriller its dialogue sparkles, its tension is off the charts, and the explosion of action near its end is brilliantly executed. But more then anything else The Hateful Eight is 2015’s most challenging film. It reverses the western genre to create a claustrophobic atmosphere and creates a discomfort in the way it plays with social conventions and ideas. Tarantino does not let the audience fully sit back and enjoy the chaos ensuing (although it can be very enjoyable) making some of the proceedings deeply uncomfortable and thought provoking. Overall what puts The Hateful Eight over the top is just how much I am still thinking about it. This is a film I can’t wait to see again and again (which sounds morbid I know). The Hateful Eight is another Tarantino masterpiece and is the best film of 2015.

That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?

The Hateful Eight Review: Eight men walk into a haberdashery…

 Kurt Russel and Samuel L. Jackson in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight

The roll continues. Quentin Tarantino’s loud knock on the door of cinematic greatness continues to ring loud and clear. With The Hateful Eight Tarantino continues his streak of great films that begun with Inglorious Bastards, and strays further and further away from the lull (well at least in the opinion of someone who is not the biggest fan of Kill Bill) he saw in the late 90s and early 00s. The Hateful Eight is a film that takes everything that Tarantino has learned since his initial film Reservoir Dogs and stuffs it into a haberdashery, literally. The Hateful Eight is a thriller masterclass from beginning to finish, a beautiful genre reversal and a film that is even staunchly political. Do not be fooled by its reduced scope, The Hateful Eight is just as great, if not better, then his two proceeding films.

While his last two pictures were grand and sweeping western types, The Hateful Eight returns to Tarantino’s smaller routs and resembles Reservoir Dogs more then any of his other motion pictures. Sure it is shot in beautiful 70mm, features a score from Ennio Morricone, and has both an overture and a 12-minute intermission (at least at the 70mm screenings, the regular digital screenings that hit theaters on January 1^st are said to have cut the intermission as well as some of the longer scenic shots) but that’s where the similarities to old westerns end. The majority of The Hateful Eight takes place either in a tiny stage coach or in Millie’s Haberdashery, the opposite of the sprawling settings of the epic western that The Hateful Eight is an aesthetic pastiche of.

The whole plot of the Hateful Eight can almost be explained by its title. Eight characters are locked in a haberdashery and chaos, driven primary from the hateful nature of its characters, ensue. The main thrust of the film are the four characters that enter the haberdashery midway through its runtime. John Ruth (Kurt Russel), a bounty hunter who insists on taking his bounty alive, must transport his latest prisoner, the mysteriously sadistic Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to Red Rock to be hanged. Along the way he runs into a fellow bounty hunter, the vengeful Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and the dopey soon to be sheriff of Red Rock Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) both of whom have each lost their respective transports in a terrible blizzard. The four stop at Millie’s Haberdashery after the blizzard becomes too much to bear to meet up with the other four main characters, a British Hangman Oswaldo Mobary (Tim Roth), a mysterious unknown Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a Mexican assistant to Millie Senior Bob (Demian Bichir), and an old confederate soldier General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern). Safe to say chaos ensues.

The Hateful Eight is the talkiest Tarantino film in a long while. The first half of the film is essentially all talk with characters jaw jacking on the way to and within the haberdashery. As such the film takes on a deliberate pace, especially in its pre-intermission half, which for viewers who are not a fan of Tarantino’s dialogue could be extraneous. I on the other hand am the biggest fan of Tarantino when he is at his talkiest, and as such The Hateful Eight is an utter delight. Tarantino’s dialogue still pops off of the screen in the best possible way, and to me is the star of the film. There seems to be such care taken in every word coming out of the characters’ mouths and Tarantino’s dialogue has gotten more theatrical then ever (fitting for a film that could have probably been a play). After two sweeping historical “westerns,” especially following Django which had the least amount of dialogue since Kill Bill Part 1, it’s nice to see a Quentin Tarantino film where a lot of the action is just characters talking.

That being said when the signature Tarantino craziness does ensue it comes with a vengeance. The second half of The Hateful Eight is absolutely insane, taking twists and turns that are both unexpected and thrilling. The deliberate and very tense first half makes way to an ultraviolent frenzy, the explosion following a build up of energy. The film’s structure reminded me a lot of an extended version bar sequence in Inglorious Bastards, tension builds slow and steadily through his dialogue, before exploding in sequences that are brutal and unforgiving. The second half of The Hateful Eight sees some of the most violet sequences in all of Tarantino as the entire situation within Millie’s Haberdashery goes horridly awry. It’s thrilling and unpredictable, leaving me at the edge of my seat and taking my breath away with every action taken.

Tarantino has been able to create wonderful dialogue and tension in a small room since his debut, what makes The Hateful Eight stand out from its comparable partner Reservoir Dogs is all the things he has learned since then. The first is characterization, if there was one issue with Reservoir Dogs is that it seems as though there is no real since of depth in its characters. The Hateful Eight is exactly the opposite, Tarantino manages to play a beautiful game of being able to flesh out each of the characters while never killing the energy of the plot. These are not generic people talking in a haberdashery, every one of the characters has a motivation and an arc of sorts, and while all of them are not as fleshed out as say Sam Jackson’s character, every character has a certain depth that makes every one of them, and the film itself, a lot more interesting.

The Hateful Eight is also surprisingly political. Tarantino is not particularly known for breaking into this sphere, Django is virtually the only film that has ventured into that direction, but it’s hard not to see parts of this film not being influenced by current political events. Tarantino’s best use of politics is through the way he manages to use uncomfortable societal topics to his advantage. The first and perhaps most prevalent case of this is the only primary female character in the film Daisy who is vile but also one who gets slapped around a lot by some of the males in the film. It’s hard to remember another woman character in film that is treated the way Daisy is in The Hateful Eight. She is treated basically as one of the men, which is very interesting because it means she gets subjected to the same amount of violence as the men do throughout the film. There are numerous scenes of her being violently hit and slapped around and I remember, in particular, the uncomfortable laugh in my screening the first time she got hit; the reaction itself is one of the more visceral reactions of shock and discomfort that I have ever witnessed in a theater. Daisy is of course not defenseless and commits various acts of vitriol as well, but it is a reminder where we are at in terms of women and violence. Tarantino doe a masterful job of challenging the audience by putting them in an unusually uncomfortable spot in this regard and it is incredibly effective.

The same can be said for many of the characters in this film. Sam Jackson’s character who is probably the closest thing anyone comes to a “hero” in the storyline is the most fascinating figure in this regard. He is the only main character in the film who is African American, and has to deal with issues of racism in a variety of different ways (especially from the confederates who find themselves in the haberdashery). It’s a character who should be easy to care about but the insanity he is willing to go for revenge makes the character more and more troubling from the “hero” perspective, and even when the character is right Tarantino pushes the lengths that the character is willing to go. It is a fascinating play on both the lengths to which people will go for a sense of justice as well as the fear that some circles share of extreme violence amongst people (particularly men) of color

The cast, per the course for almost every Tarantino film, is superb with its mix of familiar names and relative unknowns. Samuel L. Jackson is phenomenal here delivering his most high energy performance perhaps since Pulp Fiction over two decades ago. Kurt Russel does a good John Wayne with a much more brutal edge. Jennifer Jason Leigh is also fantastic with wonderful facial expressions that tell a world of a story on their own. There is also quite the wonderful cameo that I won’t spoil. All I say is when you see the name in the opening credits, you’ll understand.

Despite being trapped in a single room for the film’s majority the 70mm format still helps in various ways. Tarantino has said his goal was to create a since of claustrophobia inside the haberdashery using the format, and for the most part he succeeds. The screen often times will show the majority of the haberdashery encapsulating the small size of the building in which everyone is locked. The amount of detail in every shot is also fascinating. Because of the size of the room characters that are not focused on in any good scene are on the periphery either watching, poring drinks, or simply attending to their own business. This may not seem like a big deal in theory but it really adds to the overall atmosphere of the film. Tarantino does not leave the film without some spectacular exterior shots though. When the snowy outdoors is pondered by the camera the results are spectacular. I highly recommend that if your city is showing it that you make an effort to go see the 70mm screenings as it captures the full picture of what Tarantino is going for in The Hateful Eight. The score is also great as Ennio Morricone returns to write a score that sounds like an old western with a wickedly dark twist.

The Hateful Eight is yet another home run for Tarantino. A masterclass in suspense and a great genre reversal, The Hateful Eight shows many of the aspects of Tarantino’s game which he has polished across his last several films. The film is not for everyone, the usual ultraviolence and profanity have this time been joined by a sense of dark discomfort, but those who can stomach it are in for a treat. The Hateful Eight continues Tarantino’s march towards greatness and is the best film of 2015.

Grade: A+

-Frederick Cholowski