For me, the Academy Awards marks the end of the movie year. It took me a while to see everything in my watchlist, but there's just enough time left to present my list of the best movies of 2023.
My Top 10 Movies of 2023
1. Oppenheimer
It should be a history lesson or another by the numbers biopic, but in the hands of Christopher Nolan, who is proving himself to be a master filmmaker, this is a rare blend of entertainment and art and is the best movie of 2023.
2. Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese made one of the best movies of [insert whatever year] to the surprise of no one. The skill at work once again proves he is a master and his depiction of the terrible crimes against the Osage makes for a difficult but powerful film.
3. Barbie
The Barbie movie didn't have to be sharp satire about gender issues with emotional character arc for Barbie and Ken, but is and it also tremendous fun and a genuinely great movie.
4. Past Lives
A gentle and moving story about relationships and more importantly connections.
5. American Fiction
A very smart comedy and fun satire grounded by a relatable family story.
6. Bottoms
Absurd. Ridiculous. Hilarious. This manages to be both a parody of high school/teen movies but also a good high school teen movie. The leads have great chemistry and are very good (maybe even too good) at playing teenagers.
7. The Taste of Things
From France. This is a gentle and lovely film about the joy of cooking, the joy of friends, the joy of lovers, the joy of life.
8. Godzilla Minus One
Maybe the best Godzilla movie ever? The human characters are great and Godzilla is scary, probably the scariest he's ever been.
9. You Hurt My Feelings
Nicole Holofcener's great comedy about an author who accidentally finds out what her husband thinks of her latest book. The characters and their problems feel realistic even though they come across as silly too.
10. Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part One
The action is great, of course, especially the climax on a runaway train and of the very high quality we've come to expect from Tom Cruise and these movies.
I was skeptical, more than skeptical actually, about a sequel to Top Gun thirty-six years later. Even though I enjoy the original very much, and am a big Tom Cruise fan, I was flat out dismissive after seeing the trailer. I was wrong. Very, very wrong. Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel that no one asked for, is not just a fantastic, entertaining summer action movie, it is a masterfully crafted, exciting, and fun movie that every big budget action movie should strive to be like. If it was released in the 1980’s or 90’s this might be just another action movie, but in 2022, Tom Cruise, as star and producer, and director Joseph Kosinski have created a dazzling technical achievement, a thrilling entertainment, and something truly special.
After his program testing experimental supersonic jets is shut down in favor of a drone program, Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is called back to the Navy’s elite pilot training program known as Top Gun. However, Maverick won’t just be teaching young pilots, he will be training them for an almost impossible mission deep in enemy territory. Like the first Top Gun movie, the “enemy” is never specified or seen up close. Like the first Top Gun, this film can be seen as patriotic Navy propaganda or an elaborate recruitment video. However, like the first movie, Top Gun: Maverick is neither political nor mindless. It is a thrill ride with enough sense to allow room for characters to grow and even emotions to build.
This older version of Maverick is a more mature character, deeply informed by the tragedy in his past, the death of his best friend and F-14 Tomcat partner, Goose (played by Anthony Edwards in Top Gun). Maverick is concerned with the safety of his students, but not his own. It is interesting to note that in Top Gun, characters are referred to almost exclusively by their call signs. Before watching the sequel I could not have guessed Maverick's real name. In Top Gun: Maverick, he is called Pete more than a few times. In the training scenes and in the air, Tom Cruise shows us Maverick. In the scenes on the ground, in scenes showing concern and vulnerability, Cruise lets us see Pete Mitchell. I’m a huge fan of Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible movies, but this movie's Oscar nominated screenplay allows for character driven acting that we haven’t seen from Cruise in a while.
Jennifer Connolly plays Penny, a divorced mother and owner of a bar in Fighterown, USA, the location in San Diego of the Top Gun training facility. She is also an old flame of Maverick. They reconnect in a pretty amusing scene of him violating her bar policy and having to pay for everyone’s drinks. But there are other scenes where Connolly gets to play a mature character, not just a trophy. These more intimate scenes I enjoyed as much as the rest of the movie.
The other important relationship for Maverick is with Bradley Bradshaw, callsign Rooster, who is Goose’s son and also a Top Gun pilot. I’ve been no fan of Miles Teller, but he does a fine job as Rooster, the cautious flyer with a chip on his shoulder. Maverick pulled strings to set back Rooster’s career as a Navy pilot to keep him safe. Now, Maverick must decide on sending Rooster on a mission with slim chance for survival. Visually, Teller is essentially cosplaying Anthony Edwards as Goose; his entrance is played on the right side of parody. Character-wise Teller and the screenplay avoid the pitfalls of this kind of character; he never comes across as whiny or over burdened, nor is he simply a rehash of Goose. I would have liked more time with the other new pilots (Hangman played by Glen Powell and Phoenix played by Monica Barbaro) but, as is, they are all the movie needs.
Maverick’s biggest supporter, and the reason he still has a Navy career, is his old rival turned friend, Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer), now an admiral and commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Iceman is suffering from throat cancer, similar to what Kilmer experienced recently in real life, so he and Maverick communicate via text messages. Kilmer has only one scene where he and Cruise meet face to face and it, like so much of the movie, avoids pitfalls even though it plays out how you might expect. It is a wonderful and emotional character focused scene.
Top Gun: Maverick received 6 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Original Song for “Hold My Hand” by Lady Gaga and Bloodpop, Visual Effects, Sound, and Editing. Curiously absent is a nomination for the outstanding cinematography by Claudio Miranda. It is not just that there are great landscapes captured from the air by zooming jets. New techniques were developed to mount the IMAX quality cameras to the jets and Miranda worked with Sony to develop cameras that would fit inside the F-18s. This thrilling point of view footage combined with the excellent and rightfully nominated sound design really make you feel like you are in the jets, flying at supersonic speeds, trying not to blackout as the jets and pilots are pushed to their limits. Cruise made it well known that this movie used real jets and real G-forces and not only did I feel that in the theater, I even felt it watching at home on my regular TV with a regular sound set up. The cinematography and sound and editing and visual effects do more than just create thrills; they effectively convey the danger facing the pilots, which enhances the drama, which in turn adds another layer of substance.
The references to the first Top Gun are more than just pandering winks and nods. Miles Teller plays “Great Balls of Fire” on a bar piano just like Anthony Edwards did in Top Gun, but this segues to a flashback to the first movie that builds drama while also functioning as exposition. The ending feels contrived but action movies, like horror movies, don’t have to be realistic, they just have to be good and Top Gun: Maverick is the best of the best.
Nominees: Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison, Jerry Bruckheimer, producers
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Screenplay: Ehren Kruger and Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie; story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks; based on characters created by Jim Cash & Jack Epps Jr.
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connolly, Miles Teller, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Val Kilmer
Production Companies: Paramount Pictures, Skydance, TC Productions, Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer Films
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: May 27th, 2022
Total Nominations: 6, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Adapted Screenplay-Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Christopher McQuarrie, Peter Craig, Justin Marks; Editing-Eddie Hamilton; Original Song-Lady Gaga, BloodPop for "Hold My Hand"; Sound-Mark Weingarten, James Mather, Al Nelson, Chris Burdon, Mark Taylor; Visual Effects-Ryan Tudhope, Seth Hill, Bryan Litson, Scott R. Fisher
Promising Young Woman is the rare kind of movie that
remains engrossing and even exciting in its more uncomfortable moments, of
which there are many. Revenge movies are intertwined with, and can’t help but
exploit, violence in one way or another: tragic violence leads to righteous
violence. As the premise for an action movie, they are usually pretty
entertaining. For the icky and loathsome rape/revenge subgenre, the result,
more often than not, is usually grim and joyless. However, the debut film from
writer-director Emerald Fennell is a different kind of revenge movie; in fact,
it is a different kind of movie all around. To describe this film as simply a
revenge picture, or a dark comedy, or a social issue movie, or a thriller would
be a disservice. It is all those things and more, much more. Just like its main character, Promising Young Woman plays with expectations to great effect. This is is easily one of the best films of 2020.
Carey Mulligan gives an absolutely incredible performance as
Cassie, a 30-year-old medical school dropout with a peculiar hobby. On certain
nights she dons a completely out of character outfit, goes out to a club or
bar, and pretends to be falling down drunk. Without fail, a man will offer to
take her home… or back to their place. Once they are alone and the man begins
to take advantage of the nearly passed out Cassie, she reveals that she is not
drunk at all. They have been caught, and what she does next is not what you might
expect.
The movie becomes something really special when
the revenge plot kicks in. A chance meeting with someone from her medical
school days spurs Cassie to give certain people from her past their overdue
comeuppance for an ignored crime. The film reveals slowly, piece by piece, the
events in Cassie’s past that set her on her current path. Fennell’s screenplay
spares us flashbacks or exposition dumps. Cassie becomes more and
more layered with each bit of information revealed and Mulligan’s performance
becomes more complex and interesting as well. Cassie goes to some dark places
and does unlikeable things, but Mulligan always holds our interest if not our
sympathy. As smart as I think Fennell’s screenplay and direction are, I also
think that Promising Young Woman does not work without Carey Mulligan. Her
Best Actress Oscar nomination is well deserved.
Cassie’s revenge targets are numbered, literally, with roman
numerals. You might be reminded of The Bride’s list of revenge targets in Quentin
Tarantino’s Kill Bill or The Bride’s list of revenge targets in François
Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black. While those women only had murder on
their minds, Cassie’s revenge for her targets is far less violent, but far more
devastating. Cassie’s goal is not what you would expect from decades of
movies in which a woman is wronged or abused, toughens up, then has a
physically violent revenge. What happens in Promising Young Woman is so
much more interesting and, in many ways, more disturbing.
Promising Young Woman’s valid commentary on rape culture
and those that participate in it or look the other way and society’s attitudes
towards the abuse of women is so interwoven into the story that the film never
feels didactic. Even in its darkest moments, Promising Young Woman is
never dour or grim or dreadful. There are great moments of tension and unease and it has difficult scenes and difficult characters, but the film itself is
not difficult to watch. As Roger Ebert would say, “no good movie is depressing.”
There are moments of comedy, both light and dark, that break some of the tension
and offer some relief but they also enhance the tone of the scenes. It is a
delicate balance but well executed. The shifts from light to dark,
comedy to drama, are stealthy and believable thanks to Fennell’s deft
direction. Her sharp and clever screenplay takes turns and then turns again and
every turn is challenging and intriguing. Fennell's Oscar nominations for Best
Director and Original Screenplay are very well deserved. It is impressive and
wonderful that everything in Promising Young Woman works as well as it
does. I wish more movies were this daring and inventive.
Nominees: Ben Browning, Ashley Fox, Emerald Fennell, Josey McNamara, producers
Director: Emerald Fennell
Screenplay: Emerald Fennell
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Allison Brie
Production Companies: FilmNation Entertainment, LuckyChap Entertainment
Distributor: Focus Features
Release Date: December 25th, 2020
Total Nominations: 5, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Actress-Carey Mulligan; Director-Emerald Fennell; Original Screenplay-Emerald Fennell; Editing-Frédéric Thoraval
Things aren’t stated directly in the mafia. They use codes
and euphemisms but everyone involved understands clearly. So, when mob hitman
Frank Sheeran is told by his boss and longtime friend, Russell Bufalino, “It’s
what it is” about Frank’s other longtime friend and mentor, Jimmy Hoffa, his
heart crumbles. Those words signal a
point of no return for everyone involved and set into motion the final hour of
Martin Scorsese’s I Heard You Paint Houses, or, The Irishman. It
is also the most poignant and compelling hour of filmmaking of any film I saw
from 2019. The proceeding two and a half hours, also excellently done, bring
the total runtime to 3hours 29minutes. This is Scorsese’s longest film, and,
also, one of the best films in the career of one of, if not the,
greatest living film directors.
We learn from an elderly Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro),
narrating his life story from a nursing home, that a “house painter” is mafia
code for a hit man. De Niro’s narration is quiet and full of reflection and
regret. He isn’t narrating so much as confessing. He tells an unseen listener
about a road trip he and Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) took with their wives to
attend a wedding, but the real reason for the road trip was “business.” The
story of the road trip acts a spring board to flashback to the 1950’s when Frank
went from a union truck driver looking to make extra money to a “house painter”
to bodyguard and friend of Teamsters Union president, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino).
The screenplay, adapted by Steve Zaillian from the book I
Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, allows the characters to build
their personalities and inner lives through small moments like conversations in
cars or restaurants. The back and forth between the actors bring the characters
and the movie to life. There are several scenes that are as tense as they are
entertaining, especially Hoffa’s meeting with a rival in the teamsters, who
arrives late and wearing shorts. It’s the kind of scene that Scorsese
specializes in.
De Niro gives one of his best and most “Robert DeNiro”
performances. Narration aside, he says as little as he can with as few words as
he can, even then stammering over phrases. Emotion is just below the surface of
a quiet, stony exterior. Joe Pesci comes out of retirement to give one of his
best and most unexpected performances. Unlike the hot head tough guy characters
he is most famous for, Pesci as Bufalino is a calm tough guy. He never has an
outburst or raises his voice but his aura is no less intimidating. Here, Pesci
tries to mediates potentially violent situations. He asks an agitated Hoffa if
there’s “another reason” for his actions in such a calm and inoffensive tone
you get the feeling that Pesci’s version of Bufalino would have been a good
therapist or marriage counselor. Al Pacino is over the top as Jimmy Hoffa but
his acting style works because the real-life Hoffa was an outspoken,
flamboyant, larger than life personality (Jack Nicholson’s performance as Hoffa
in Danny DeVito’s film, Hoffa, is among his most ostentatious). Harvey Keitel, who starred in Scorsese’s first film has a small part as the mafia boss,
Angelo Bruno. He sits like a king in his restaurant booth exuding a cool but threatening
presence.
The digital de-aging of the actors to make them look up to
30 years younger than their actual ages works well enough; it helps that their
ages are never specified. As an effect, the de-aging is far from convincing but
not very distracting, except for one shot where young Joe Pesci’s face appears
to be floating over his body. The overall effect, however, is no different than
dying their hair darker. However, the performances do feel richer for having
the same actors in the same roles throughout the film.
Films like Mean Streets, Goodfellas, and Casino
(featuring Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci) have made Scorsese synonymous
with the modern gangster picture. Each of those films glamorized the criminal
life to a certain extent to show its insidious appeal. There is not a bit of glamour
to be found in The Irishman. There is no luxury or appeal to Frank’s
lifestyle. When not carrying out hits or driving a truck across the country, he
acts as a go-between for Hoffa and the mob bosses trying to diffuse potentially
dangerous situations.
The Irishman is an epic film. It sprawls not over
picturesque landscapes but a life in crime. It feels episodic, any complete
life story would, but it flows smoothly. The doo-wop song “In the Still of the Night” by The Five Satins opens the film and plays more like a dirge than a pop
song. It sets the tone for the film perfectly. The brilliant score by Robbie Robertson
feels like it grew out of the film’s contemplative, somber tone. This story
explores what it means to survive a life of crime and what it leaves a person
with. Frank entered the criminal world to make more money to take care of his
family, but there are tellingly few scenes of Frank with his family. What was
it all for?
This is a long movie and it feels like a long movie—I won’t
argue that—but it is also thoroughly engrossing. I was completely immersed in
these lives and this world without ever wanting to be a part of them. The first
two-thirds of the film builds up emotions so subtly that you are taken by
surprise and overwhelmed when those emotions come into play in the final act.
When Frank and Bufalino go to prison, the film doesn’t jump over their
sentence, we stay with them. Scorsese knows that the real power of this story
is to stay with Frank as an old man instead of using a montage or epilogue
cards. This biopic of Frank Sheeren is a sad, tragic movie, but it is so well
executed cinematically and emotionally that it is a joy to watch. I was
reminded of a quote from the great critic Roger Ebert, “No great movie is
depressing. All bad movies are depressing”
Nominees: Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, Emma
Tillinger Koskoff
Director: Martin
Scorsese
Screenplay: Steven
Zaillian, based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt
Cast: Robert De
Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci
Production
Companies: TriBeCa Productions, Sikelia Productions, Winkler Films
Distributor: Netflix
Release Date: November
1st, 2019
Total Nominations:10,
including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Director-Martin
Scorsese; Supporting Actor-Al Pacino; Supporting Actor-Joe Pesci; Adapted
Screenplay-Steven Zaillian; Cinematography-Rodrigo Prieto; Costume Design-Christopher
Peterson, Sandy Powell; Production Design-Bob Shaw, Regina Graves; Film Editing-Thelma
Schoonmaker; Visual Effects-Pablo Helman, Leandro Estebecorena, Nelson
Sepulveda, Stephane Grabli
The 91st Academy Awards for films released in 2018 was held on February 24th, 2019 and will be remembered as the year that the Academy tried to change things up to reach a larger audience. In order to boost ratings (even though the Oscars are the highest rated non-sports event on TV), the Academy and Oscars telecast producers proposed ideas such as cutting out performances by the Original Song nominees, giving out awards during commercial breaks, and, most notoriously, adding the category of Best Popular Film. After massive backlash from people in the film industry and Oscar fans, all of these decisions were rolled back. Actor-comedian Kevin Hart was set to host, but he and the Academy caught heat for Hart's years old homophobic jokes on Twitter. The Academy wanted Hart to formally apologize, Hart refused, and dropped out as the host. So, the Oscars would air without a host for the first time since 1989. The final hiccup for the telecast happened when, after announcing that all of the Original Song nominees would perform, Kendrick Lamar announced just days before the ceremony that he would not be performing "All the Stars" from Black Panther.
The ceremony itself was no more or less eventful than previous ceremonies with hosts (excluding the year the wrong movie was read for Best Picture). Queen (with Adam Lambert singing) opened the show, presenters had mostly amusing banter, and, of course, eye-catching gowns and dresses. Alfonso Cuaron won his second Oscar for Best Director and, as a fan and Latin/Hispanic person, his award had a special meaning for me. In 2013 (Cuaron's Gravity), 2014 (Inarritu's Birdman), 2015 (Inarritu's The Revenant), 2017 (Del Toro's The Shape of Water), and now 2019 (Cuaron's Roma) the winner of the Best Director award has been a Mexican filmmaker. Glenn Close was the odds-on favorite to take home Best Actress, but The Favourite's Olivia Colman took home the award and no doubt upset the ballots of people trying to win their Oscar pools. My ballot was thrown off too, but I was very happy she won. Spike Lee finally won an Oscar for his work on BlacKkKlansman's adapted screenplay. Samuel L. Jackson, who presented Lee with the award, was almost as excited as Spike Lee, who jumped and hugged his friend.
Samuel L. Jackson's reaction to Green Book winning Best Original Screenplay could not have been more radically different; he stuttered over the names of the winners as he did a double take in disbelief. This was the reaction had by everyone at my Oscar party when Green Book won Best Picture. After a progressive step forward last year with the unconventional The Shape of Water as Best Picture, the Academy took a giant leap backwards by giving Best Picture to a mediocre, bland, conventional, and unchallenging movie like Green Book. Green Book will now have the distinction of joining Crash and The Greatest Show on Earth as one of the worst films to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. If ever there was a year that made the case for going back to just five Best Picture nominees, this was that year. Of the eight nominees, there were five solid, quality pictures (Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, The Favourite, Roma, and A Star is Born) and three that belonged nowhere near any conversation about the best movies of the year (Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book, Vice). Of those five quality pictures, there is one for me that stands out as the actual best picture of 2018.
Long before the fourth version of A Star is Born hit theaters, critics were singing its praises and raving about it non-stop. This always makes me skeptical about a movie. By the time a regular filmgoer like me gets to see the movie, will it be hyped out? Were the critics suffering from a bad case of festival fever (liking a movie too much because you saw it before anyone else)? In the case of La La Land: yes. A Star is Born, however, completely justifies the praise it has received. No other movie in 2018, not even Roma, affected me quite like the characters and pathos in Bradley Cooper's A Star is Born. I have no doubt that this was a passion project for Cooper; you can tell that care and thought went into every scene. While I'm happy Alfonso Cuaron won Best Cinematography for his excellent work in Roma, I would have given that award to Matthew Libatique for A Star is Born. Consider the image of Jackson performing "Pretty Woman" while extremely drunk. The camera sways slightly, but the angle is canted so we see him from below, cast in shadow and harsh stage lights, while the rest of the musicians wait anxiously for him to play the opening riff. The image of Cooper, head tilted down, wearing a cowboy hat and suit accompanied by his badass distorted electric guitar should be a very cool image. Instead this is one of the most tense moments in the movie. From the choice of angle and the lighting, you feel that he may fall flat to the floor (and on top of you) at any moment. It is thoughtful cinematic touches like this that work on a subconscious level that set Cooper's A Star is Born apart from not only its predecessors, but, for me, every other film in 2018.
January is the time to catch up on all the movies that were released at the very end of the last year to qualify for the Academy Awards. Now that it is February, I've (mostly) caught up. This year, the Academy nominated nine films for Best Picture of 2016, but there were 10 movies from last year that I found exceptionally entertaining. 10. Hell or High Water
Hell or High Water is a modern day western about a
pair of bank robbers and the lawman pursuing them. This movie has great
cinematography of the Texas plains, great performances, and a screenplay that
divides our sympathies between both cops and robbers. It doesn’t reinvent or shake
up the genre, but it doesn’t need to, it’s executed extremely well.
Released in the first half of 2016, The Witch is the story
of an isolated family living in colonial America being menaced by seemingly
supernatural events. I recommended this film a lot during Shocktober at the
video store and wrote about it for 13 Nights of Shocktober 2016.
In New Zealand, a delinquent young boy, Ricky, is sent to
live with a kind woman named Bella, and her husband, Hec, a gruff, grumpy outdoorsman (played by Sam Neill). After Bella dies suddenly, Ricky is scheduled to go back into the state foster system, but he and Hec go on the run and live in the
wilderness while evading the authorities. This is a wonderful, sweet, and
charming movie with a broad, offbeat sense of humor. Written and directed
by Taika Waititi, who co-wrote and directed the hilarious What We Do In the Shadows, it delivers a fun story that is heartwarming without being saccharine.
I wasn’t planning on seeing this Disney animated movie, but
I’m very glad I did. Judy Hopps, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, is the first rabbit to be accepted into
the Zootopia police force, but she feels underused, stuck on menial traffic duties. She ends
up teaming up with a fox conman (confox?) voiced by Jason Bateman to solve a
missing persons case that uncovers something more sinister. Zootopia ends up
being a film noir that deals with race and gender issues while being a great buddy cop movie. It is also about a young
woman that is living on her own for the first time in the big city and has to
work 10 times harder to prove everyone’s underestimations of her wrong.
Writer-director John Carney, who brought us Once, one of the
best films of the last decade with equally fantastic music, has created another
non-musical musical set in Ireland and it is an absolute joy. Sing Street is a sincere tribute to 80s
new wave music, a genre much looked down on. We follow Conor, who is dealing
with his parent’s divorce and starting a new school run by a cruel, petty
priest whose discipline is actually bullying. Conor wants to impress the pretty
and mysterious Raphina, so he tells her that he’s in a band and asks her to be in
their music video. When she accepts, he actually has to form a band, write songs, and make a video.
The songs they make are genuinely good and their music videos are amusingly
amateurish, but accurately capture the style of professional videos of the era. This movie never laughs at its characters or
their ambitions. This is a wonderful coming of age film without a
single cynical frame.
We’ve been lucky enough to have had some excellent science
fiction films recently (Interstellar in 2014, and The Martian in 2015 come to mind), and
Arrival is among them. Mysterious alien spacecrafts appear at different
locations all over the world and a renowned linguist, played by Amy Adams, is brought
in by the government to try to communicate with the alien beings. Adams
turns in a great performance (entirely deserving of an Oscar nomination that she did
not receive) that grounds the entire film in genuine emotion even as it moves
into heady sci-fi territory. Even though Arrival does not go out of its way to
simplify or explain itself, it never becomes inaccessible and only becomes more
intriguing and entertaining as the story unfolds.
1. Four-Way Tie There were four movies I saw last year that I found so completely wonderful and well-made from beginning to end that I couldn't place them in an order. So, here is my four-way tie for the best movie of 2016.
Annette Bening is at the center of this ensemble comedy-drama that is the freshest coming of age film I’ve seen in quite some time.
Bening plays a single mother of a 15-year-old son living in Southern California
in 1979. She isn’t exactly a hippie parent, but she is certainly
nontraditional and open to whatever may be the best way to raise her son. She enlists the help of the motley group of misfits (Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning, Billy
Crudup) that lives with them. Each helps in their own way to raise Bening’s son and together form
a makeshift family. Each role is well written and well-acted. Director Mike
Mills throws in some stylistic touches that not only evoke the era, but also reflects what
the characters are experiencing. The best thing about 20th Century Women is that the characters in this movie don’t just feel
like people, they feel like people I know.
This is not a traditional, by-the-numbers biopic, recreating
people and events that we are familiar with as a pageant. Jackie is something far more special and affecting. It is an
intimate and emotional glimpse of a woman dealing with tragedy and grief while
the public watches. The assassination of JFK was a
national tragedy, but it was also a personal tragedy for Jacqueline Kennedy and
her family.
While watching Jackie I felt as though this could have been
a traditional biopic; it certainly starts that way. Not long after the
murder of her husband, Jackie agrees to an exclusive interview, but tells
the reporter that this will be her version of the story. However, the
approach director Pablo Larrain takes to tell her story, with flashbacks and close ups and the haunting
score by Mica Levi, makes this an unconventional movie that avoids biopic clichés. Natalie Portman has the difficult task of portraying the enigmatic First Lady with the
unique and distinct voice. Portman more than meets the challenge and is
entirely deserving of her Oscar nomination for Best Actress (and she would have my
vote). She shows us a woman that at all times projected a persona, both
publicly and privately. But more than that, she humanizes a chapter in American
history and captures the personal side of a public story.
To those people that think costume period pieces or films of
Jane Austen books are dull, stuffy, or boring, I suggest they see the
incredibly funny and lively Love & Friendship. Based on the early Jane
Austen novella, Lady Susan, the story
follows the duplicitous Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale), recently widowed, who
moves in with her in-laws and begins a hunt for a wealthy husband. Her teenage daughter, after running away from her boarding school, joins her mother at the
country estate. This complicates Lady Susan’s plans. Despite her scheming and
plotting, Lady Susan remains a likeable character. Beckinsale is
able to play Lady Susan as though she unintentionally has good intentions.
Writer-director Whit Stillman understands the text, the
subtext, the period, the characters, and the humor of the source material
resulting in a Jane Austen adaptation that feels fresh and offbeat. In short,
he is a perfect match for Austen. This film seems to have made critics realize
that Stillman’s previous “comedies of manners” are actually modern day Jane
Austen stories. I must admit I’m not usually a fan of Kate Beckinsale, mostly because
of her choice of films (more Underworld
sequels?), but with the right material and the right director (Stillman—see The Last Days of Disco for further
proof) she can be an outstanding actress indeed. It may come as a surprise to
some, but, yes, Jane Austen is very funny.
If The Nice Guys feels like a throwback to the kind of action-comedies that Hollywood seems to have
stopped making, it is likely because it was written and directed by Shane Black
who wrote Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. He’s written
and directed the best Marvel movie so far, Iron Man 3, and the underseen but exceptional
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Now he brings us
a thoroughly funny and excellently crafted modern film noir. The setting is Southern
California in the 1970s and we meet Russell Crowe as a tough guy for hire seeking to improve himself. He reluctantly teams up with Ryan Gosling, a private
detective that isn’t quite inept, but is certainly comical, to find a missing
young woman. The case, of course, uncovers something far more sinister and complex.
Crowe and Gosling are wonderful as mismatched partners and
have great chemistry together. Each turns in their most dynamic
performance in years. Crowe excels at playing a tough guy that is actually,
well, a nice guy. Gosling shows off his comedic talents, both verbal and
physical (one of his best moments is his reaction to finding an open bar). They
run into gangsters, shootouts, conspiracy theories and more. The action scenes
are well done and pretty violent. The danger these characters find themselves
in is real—innocent bystanders are killed by stray bullets—but this is not a
dark or cynical movie. The
Nice Guys evokes the 1970s while avoiding clichés like packing the soundtrack
with hit songs from the era, and the costumes and hairstyles are believable on the
cast members. This is a smart movie with a sharp sense of humor that I can't recommend enough.
January is a month to play movie catch up since it is the time when studios slowly expand the release of the prestige films that had a small release at the end of December. January is also the month when the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences announces their nominations for Best Picture of 2015. They only nominated 8 movies, but I found 10 movies that I think were among the best released last year. A few hundred movies were released in theaters in 2015 and I managed to see about 65 of them, either in theaters or at home on DVD. Here are some of my favorites:
This is the first film directed Stephen Spielberg since 2004's The Terminal that I have liked from
beginning to end. (I enjoyed Lincoln, but it had
few too many dull, superfluous scenes.) In Bridge,Tom Hanks plays an American lawyer that
is essentially drafted into defending a captured Soviet spy, played wonderfully low-key
by Mark Rylance, in the American courts and then tasked with negotiating a
trade with the Soviets for captured U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers.
Hanks is sent to East Berlin with no instructions other than: make the trade.
The bureaucrats and spies he encounters range from suspicious to bizarre. Bridge of Spies takes a true story to
which we know the outcome, but not the details, and makes it exciting. Most of
the action in this movie comes from people talking in rooms, sizing each other
up trying to find out what the other person knows with revealing as little as
possible of what they know, and those scenes are all interesting, well-crafted,
and suspenseful. Bridge of Spies is also Spielberg and Hank's first film together since The Terminal, leading me to believe that they bring out the best in each other. 9. The Walk
Robert Zemeckis’sThe Walk, based on the same book as the 2008 documentary Man on Wire, is the dramatization of the incredible-but-true story of Phillipe Petit, who, along with the help of a band of accomplices, walked on a high wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Joseph Gordon Levitt’s energy and enthusiasm as Phillipe Petit flow through every scene of The Walk leading up to the momentous and spectacular walk itself high above New York City. This is a very well-made, entertaining, and exciting film with great visual moments that I regret not seeing on the big screen, but is still quite impressive on a TV screen.
The horror comedy What We Do in the Shadows is probably
the most delightful comedy I’ve seen in quite some time. It is a
mockumentary following a group of misfit vampires and flatmates as they prepare for the
biggest social event of the underworld, The Unholy Masquerade. These vampires
are easy to relate to and very funny. The gags and set pieces are clever, often putting twist on the vampire tropes we all know. One especially hilarious scene has the vampires fumbling to hypnotize a pair of
police officers so that they won't notice the house is covered in blood. What We Do in the Shadows co-stars Jemaine
Clement and Taika Waititi, who also co-wrote and directed. Clement and Waititi both
worked on the short lived, but hilarious HBO series Flight of the Conchords, which co-stared Clement, and they bring
the same sensibilities and comedic style to What
We Do In the Shadows. Released early in 2015, I picked this movie for last year’s 13 Nights of Shocktober and wrote, “When I make my Best of 2015 list, I know this movie will be included” and I meant it. Rather than repeat myself here; you can read full review in my Shocktober post.
Like Bridge of Spies
and The Walk, Spotlight is a dramatization of a true story to which we know the
outcome, but not the details. It is written and directed in a way that builds
suspense and places us with the characters who know what they feel must happen
but are unsure of how, or if, they will succeed. Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo,
Rachel McAdams, and Brian d’Arcy James play the team of Boston Globe reporters
who, urged by the new editor-in-chief played by Liev Schrieber, investigate
allegations of abusive priests and a cover-up by the Boston archdiocese. They face
resistance from the church and the community, but uncover far more than just a case or two
of an unfortunate scandal. I’m not surprised that Spotlight was well-acted, though I was surprised that
it was directed by Tom McCarthy, whose last film was the Adam Sandler bomb The Cobbler. I was also surprised at how
interested it made me in a chase for documents in courthouse and newspaper
basements. The real stars of Spotlight
are the devastating facts, statistics, and testimonials that were uncovered,
but it is not a book report. It does not trade its characters for
exposition. Every character, major and minor, feels like a real person, which
is good because they are actually real people and this story really happened.
I know I’m in for a treat when Melissa McCarthy and
writer-director Paul Feig work together. Their two previous films were
the hilarious Bridesmaids and The Heat, both of which were favorites
of mine. In Spy, McCarthy plays a CIA analyst who is great at her job, but unhappy being on the sidelines, monitoring and assisting the
resident super-spy, played with equal parts smugness and cluelessness by Jude
Law. After a nuclear weapon goes missing and the identities of all the active CIA
field agents are compromised, McCarthy is sent into the field to observe and report on
the movements of an arms dealer played by Rose Byrne. However, instead of just
observing, she gets right into the action. McCarthy holds
her own in the action scenes which, though they are quite violent, never forget
to be comedic. Action star Jason Statham does a great job lampooning the
archetype of a macho action star in a minor, but very funny, role as an
overconfident, obnoxious spy gone rogue. Spy really lets McCarthy shine with broad comedy and low-key
comedic moments. Feig is smart enough to keep putting McCarthy in situations in which
she is out of place without ever making fun of her. McCarthy has proven herself
again and again adept at verbal and physical comedy, but also as someone that
needs to be reined in either by a good script or director, with Feig she has
both.
Over the past several years Tom Cruise has shown a terrific
knack for finding directors that are the right creative match his projects,
especially for the Mission: Impossible
movies. Mission: Impossible - Ghost
Protocol was one of my favorite movies of 2011 and I’ve only grown to love
it more since then. I still think Ghost
Protocol is the best of the series, but RogueNation is a very, very close second. RogueNation is written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie who also
directed Cruise in the underappreciated, but excellent, action film JackReacher.
McQuarrie and Cruise are a great match and I hope they continue to make movies
together. The action set pieces are amazing. In addition to Cruise hanging off
the side of a plane as it takes off, there is an incredible and thrilling car
chase followed immediately by a motorcycle chase, among other similar scenes which are all
very well done. But RogueNation is not just a series of action
pieces strung together. The script treats every character, new and returning,
as importantly as the action and each is played by more-than-capable actors
who turn those characters into believable people that are very good at what
they do. As with GhostProtocol, I like RogueNation more with
each viewing.
Dope is a smart
comedy about a teenager who feels out of place in his neighborhood and
school in the rough Inglewood area of Los Angeles, but then finds himself
even more lost among the criminal underworld when he is forced to dispose of a
large stash drugs hidden in his backpack by a local drug dealer.
There are also a few other criminal factions that want the
stash and very funny, but dangerous, situations ensue. The main character of Dope, Malcolm, is an intelligent black nerd
obsessed with 90s music and fashion with aspirations to attend Harvard. He is played with incredible comic timing by Shameik Moore. Dope works as more than just a teen comedy because it constantly
makes you aware that despite the comedy Malcolm and his friends are in real and
immediate danger. I can still relate to these characters because Dope builds them so incredibly well and good
characters are always relatable.
I remember when the trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road was released on the internet and everyone I knew
was bursting with excitement and anticipation. The movie itself actually lived
up to, if not surpassed, the expectations of that trailer. George Miller had
already done the impossible in giving us an incredible sequel (The Road Warrior) that not only improves upon the original film (Mad Max),
but is arguably one of the best sequels ever made. Now, Miller may well have
topped himself again with Mad Max: Fury
Road. I admit that I was skeptical about a new MadMax movie, even when
I saw the trailer, but I can’t deny that is was one of the best films of 2015. Fury Road is everything an action film
should be and, most impressively, it is an action film for adults. The plot is
simple but the characters are solid and well-played. Tom Hardy plays Max, but the real star and main character is Charlize Theron as Imperator
Furiosa, who is smuggling a group of women away from the monstrous and
tyrannical tribal leader Immortan Joe. The film is essentially a long, explosive
action-packed chase as Immortan Joe and his War Boys chase down Max,
Furiosa, and the women). Max may not be the center of the action, but his role as the mostly silent stranger that happens upon a group of people
in need of help is in keeping with the rest of the Mad Max series. There are some CGI effects, but a large majority of the effects
in Fury Road are practical and
mind-blowingly impressive (that guitar that shoots flames is not CGI, it’s
real). Fury Road is a fun, full-bore
action thriller at its best.
I wasn’t planning on seeing this Pixar movie; the premise
seemed a bit too odd and the trailer didn’t make the story clear, but I saw it
any way and was profoundly affected. Five emotions (Joy, Sadness, Disgust,
Fear, and Anger) run 11-year-old Riley’s mind from a control center influencing
how she interacts with situations and people around her. Riley and the emotions
have to deal with their biggest challenge yet when Riley and her parents move
across the country to San Francisco. Joy, who normally runs the show, and Sadness are accidently,
and quite literally, thrown out of the control room along with the core memories
that make up Riley's personality, leaving Riley with only Disgust, Fear, and Anger,
not the best trio to be running a mind. Joy has to gather up the core memories to get them back to the control room while keeping Sadness from touching them and
making them sad memories. Joy and Sadness are lost in the cleverly familiar
architecture of Riley’s mind as imagined by the filmmakers and they find
their way into Riley’s subconscious, her dream center, and her memory banks.
The pathos overflows when Joy encounters Bing Bong, Riley’s forgotten imaginary
friend voiced to perfection by Richard Kind. The problems Riley has with moving
to a strange town where she doesn’t know anyone are not unique to her, but from
inside her mind we see and feel how that is the biggest and most troubling
thing that’s ever happened to her. Inside
Out knows that Joy running things all the time is not the answer, neither
is Sadness always a bad thing; you need both for a healthy mind and you also
need Fear, Disgust, and Anger. I’ve only seen Inside Out once, technically. A few weeks ago, I was on a plane from New
York to Austin and the person sitting in the row in front of me was watching Inside Out on her laptop computer. I
stopped reading my book and started watching the movie on her computer through
the space between the seats. She had headphones on and I couldn’t hear a sound, but in my memory was every line, every voice, every music cue, and sound effect,
and I had to try very hard not to cry at certain scenes. Pixar, not always, but
more often than not manages to deliver quality cinema, and, sometimes, (Toy Story 3, Ratatouille, Up, and now Inside Out) a truly profound and moving
piece of art.
When I first saw Love
& Mercy back in late July I knew I had just seen the best movie of
2015. I went back to the theater and saw it again the next week. The life of
Beach Boys co-founder and songwriter Brian Wilson is given something better and
more meaningful than the typical biopic treatment. This is not just a rise and
fall story or look at a specific time in the subject’s life; it is somewhere in
between. Paul Dano plays Wilson in the mid to late 1960s as he is just becoming
a creative force musically while also beginning to slip slowly into mental illness.
John Cusack plays Wilson in the mid 1980s when he is overmedicated and manipulated by Dr. Landy (Paul Giamatti), Wilson’s psychiatrist and
self-appointed guru, dietician, producer, etc. This was the best and most
effective dramatization of a true story in 2015. I didn’t know much about Brian
Wilson’s life, other than that he had mental problems and allegedly spent a few
years in bed in the 70s (it was more like three, Cusacks’s Wilson says). I knew
that Wilson ended up alright and was able to finally complete his masterpiece
Smile in 2004, but I didn’t know how or when Wilson emerged back into healthy,
functional life. The person largely responsible for Wilson’s reemergence is Melinda
Ledbetter, played by Elizabeth Banks, who meets Wilson at a Cadillac dealership
in 1985 and eventually becomes his wife. Through Melinda's eyes, we grow suspicious of the ever-present Dr. Landy and his unconventional (and unethical) methods. My
stomach turned up in knots during the scenes of Wilson being abused by Landy in
the 80s and by his father in the 60s.
Love
& Mercy cuts between Melinda and Wilson’s budding relationship
in the 80s and Wilson in the 60s challenging himself as a musician and
an artist during the creation of the album Pet Sounds, one of my absolute
favorite albums ever. We see Dano dropping bobby pins on piano strings to
create the rattling effect for "Caroline, No", recording barking dogs, and instructing
someone on how to play the bicycle horn while the rest of the band sits around
the booth and Mike Love grows listless and frustrated. I’ve never seen
recording studio sessions portrayed as accurately as in Love & Mercy; it’s very exciting for the people working and
incredibly boring for those that aren’t, but have to be in the booth (I have experience being one of the bored people in the booth during a musician
friend’s recording session). My favorite scene in the movie, aside from the
final scene, is of Wilson and Love collaborating on "Good Vibrations," from its beginning as a piano riff Wilson can’t get out of his head, to the studio where Love gets
very agitated by Wilson’s obsession with a few seconds of cello strings. Paul
Dano is the kind of actor who I always find sticks out in every movie, but here he really disappears into the Brian Wilson of the
60s in that amazing way that goes beyond impersonation and mimicry to really portray
the person. Cusack is incredible at convincingly portraying the Wilson of the
80s as someone that really “survived" the 60s and is still in need of help.
Neither actor tries to imitate the other because Love & Mercy understands that Wilson was two
different people during those two different decades. In addition to being the
best biopic of recent memory, Love & Mercy is also my favorite kind of movie, a love story. Melinda’s love is
exactly what Wilson’s wounded, battered, and fragile soul needed to finally
become a third, complete Brian Wilson.
