BEST MOVIES OF 2015 - what are they?

[Chris Knipp]

What are the best movies of 2015?

Documentaries
Last year my list of good documentaries overflowed. It included, favorites at the top:

The Overnighters
Point and Shoot
The Internet's Own Boy
Seymour: An Introduction
Llyn Foulkes One Man Band
Citizenfour
Happy Valley
Life Itself
Tales of the Grim Sleeper
Last of the Unjust
Particle Fever
Jodorovsky's Dune
The Missing Picture
12 O'Clock Boys
The Kill Team
Rich Hill
Finding Vivian Meier
Red Army
and
National Gallery

Here is list of of best documentaries so far from three staff members of Playlist. (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/the-20-best-documentaries-of-2015-so-far-20150618?page=1) I have not seen all of them. Some I would definitely include, others not; I consciously avoided watching several that I could have seen screeners of because I didn't like the topics or the directors' previous work (Meru, The Look of Silence, The Sale of the Earth).


Amy
Best of Enemies
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Cartel Land
Dreamcatcher
Scientology [Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief]
The Hunting Ground
Iris
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
The Life And Mind Of Mark DeFriest
Listen To Me Marlon
The Look of Silence
Meru
An OPen Secret
The Pearl Button
A Poem Is a Naked Person
The Salt of the Earth
The Seven Five
(T)error
Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop
We Come As Friends
Western

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/dchwp.jpg
The Wolfpack

Honorable Mentions included

Tales of the Grim Sleeper
The Wolfpack

I'd consider The Wolfpack one of the year's best, for sure.
I'd also consider including, if they qualify:

1971
Last Days in Vietnam (but NYC realese was 2014)
The Wrecking Crew (2008, but NYC release March 2015)
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (2014; US theatrical Feb. 2015)
What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015)
Dior and I (2015)

Coming:
Where to Invade Next (Michael Moore)[

There is another Nina Simone doc this year; I have not seen it yet.

[Chris Knipp]

What are the best US-released feature films of the year 2015 so far (August)?

Well, I have no idea. But as a starting point, here is a month-by-month list of "best" US releases compiled by the Guardian, which I've augmented (there are major gaps - maybe it's a UK list?). Click on the title below for brief descriptions of each film. I'll highlight the ones I will want to remember at year's end.

Guardian film: The best films of 2015 (so far) (http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2015/may/06/the-best-films-of-2015-so-far)

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/KEVIN.jpg
ADÈLE HAENEL AND KÉVIN AZAÏS IN LOVE AT FIRST FIGHT/LES COMBATANTS


January
A Most Violent Year JC Chandor
Girlhood (Céline Sciamma)
Paddington Paul King
The Duke of Burgundy Peter Strickland
Timbuktu Abderrahmane Sissako

February
'71 - Yann Demange
Eastern Boys - Robin Campillo
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem - Ronit Elkabetz, Shlomi Elkabetz
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water Paul Tibbitt
Kingsman: The Secret Service Matthew Vaughn
What We Do in the Shadows Jemaine Clement amd Taika Waititi
Wild Tales Damián Szifron
Maps to the Stars David Cronenberg

March
Buzzard Joel Potrykus
It Follows David Robert Mitchell
Home Tim Johnson
While We’re Young Noah Baumbach
White God Kornél Mundruczó

April
Furious 7 James Wan
Clouds of Sils Maria Olivier Assayas
Ex Machina Alex Garland
Unfriended Levan Gabriadze

May
Avengers: Age of Ultron Joss Whedon
Far from the Madding Crowd Thomas Vinterberg
Heaven Knows What (Safdies)
In the Name of My Daughter (L'homme qu'on aimait trop) André Téchiné
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared Felix Herngren
Mad Max: Fury Road George Miller
Slow West John Maclean
Tu dors Nicole - Stéphane Lafleur
Heaven Knows What Joshua and Ben Safdie

June
Dope - Rick Famuyiwa
Love & Mercy Bill Pohlad
Inside Out Pete Docter
The Wolfpack Crystal Moselle
Eden Mia Hansen-Løve

July
Amy Asif Kapadia
Court (Tamhane) 68
Tangerine Sean S. Baker
The End of the Tour James Ponsoldt
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Christopher McQuarrie

August
The Gift Joel Edgerton
The Diary of a Teenage Girl Marielle Heller
Mistress America Noah Baumbach
Tom at the Farm Xavier Dolan

September
Breathe/ Respire - Mélanie Laurent


Some of these that have come in for praise I don't even like, such as Maps to the Stars, It Follows, While We're Young, White God, and Clouds of Sils Maria, the repulsive Unfriended. I didn't like The Gift well enough to write a review; but I see people are liking it. Ex Machina is in the self-important category. I have missed some -- Sponge Bob, 100-Year-Old Man, What We Do in the Shadows, can't even remember hearing of the poorly-received animation, Home. Tom at the Farm has not come to Northern California - yet, anyway, or was shown in one Landmark Theatre for one day. NYC 13th of Aug. when Holden of the Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/movies/review-in-tom-at-the-farm-psychosexual-games-down-at-the-farm.html?_r=0) made it a Critics Pick.

I rate Timbuktu very highly. I love this film. The Wolfpack made a big impression on me. I can see listing A Most Violent Year and Wild Tales. Not such favorites of mine, but I can see Mad Max and Inside Out are going to be top-rated for the year. Maybe Amy and The End of the Tour are going to look pretty darn good at year's end.

To the Best Foreign list I want to add the May-June US released French film Thomas Cailley's Love at First Fight (Les Combattants). It is coming out on US DVD (Strand) next month; I just re-watched it and I found even more depth, originality, and charm in it the second time through. US critics have missed something - a lot, actually - given that its Metacritic rating is only 63 while its AlloCiné French press score is a whopping 4.1. My review. (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2977)

[Chris Knipp]

D'Angelo's in-progress 2015 top ten list plus.

Here we go with Mike D'Angelo again. But I like his Cannes and Toronto Tweet reviews and precise 1-100 numerical ratings and rankings of films. Besides that he pursues his constantly changing best-of-the-year list assiduously (and openly
-- on his website) throughout the year. Here is his Ten Best of 2015 as of the fifth of September preceded by their numerical rating.

83 Sicario (Denis Villeneuve)-US wide release 18 September ff.
82-Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo)-NYFF
80-Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
77-The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin)-NYFF
76-Carol (Todd Haynes)-NYFF
75-The Witch: A New England Folktale (Robert Eggers)
70-Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven)
69-My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin)-NYFF
68-The Overnight (Patrick Brice)
67-Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier)
Doubtless others will arrive to push some down the rank or eliminate them. He already has a few dozen other movies ranked below this temporary top ten, here (http://www.panix.com/~dangelo/2015.html), and he warns that he dates them all by the year in which they premiered, so it doesn't correspond to the US-release list.

That was then. Here is his list as of October 19:
Sicario (Denis Villeneuve)
Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo)
Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin)
Carol (Todd Haynes)
The Witch: A New England Folktale (Robert Eggers)
Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson)
The Martian (Ridley Scott)
Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven)
My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin)
His next 25 (I won't give the numerical ratings, but they're ranked by them and they go down from 66 to 56. In his system 55-65 is B-, "recommended with strong reservations."). NYFF ones are marked and ones I've reviewed are marked CK.

Inside Out (Pete Docter)-CK
James White (Josh Mond)
Rams (Grímur Hákonarson)
Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg)-CK
Dope (Rick Famuyiwa)-CK
The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos)-NYFF
Yakuza Apocalypse (Takashi Miike)
3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets (Marc Silver)
Youth (Paolo Sorrentino)--[WISH IT WERE IN NYFF]
Cobain: Montage of Heck (Brett Morgen)--JUST MISSED SEEING -- CALIF.
Tangerine (Sean Baker)-CK
Son of Saul (László Nemes)--NYFF Film Comment Selects, will be screened
Invention (Mark Lewis)
Amy (Asif Kapadia)-CK
The Nightmare (Rodney Ascher)
The Measure of a Man (Stéphane Brizé)--NYFF
Mississippi Grind (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck)
Our Little Sister (Kore-eda Hirokazu)
Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story (Michael Almereyda)--NYFF
Irrational Man (Woody Allen)-CK
Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)-NYFF
Louder Than Bombs (Joachim Trier)--WISH THIS WERE IN THE NYFF
Advantageous (Jennifer Phang)
Mistress America (Noah Baumbach)-CK
The D Train (Jarrad Paul & Andrew Mogel)

[Chris Knipp]

New best features (English language).

These (seen in NYC lately or coming in the NYFF) are likely entries for the English language Best Features list:

99 Homes
Mississippi Grind
Sicario

Sicario is a shoe-in, Mississippi Grind is growing on me. There's hope the NYFF English language features coming soon will add more, Carol, Brooklyn, Maggie's Plan, Bridge of Spies, Miles Ahead, Steve Jobs. A lot of people like Tangerine. I did like it visually. I was disappointed in Experimenter. I'm considering The Walk (English and French).

[Chris Knipp]

As per my comment to cinemabon, THE MARTIAN needs to go up in the year's best somwhwere, and D'Angelo has put it in the #8 plast in his top ten, displacing Saulnier's THE GREEN ROOM. I would put SON OF SAUL (Nemes) up there, since it was my #2 after CAROL at the NYFF. He has also put ANIMALISA up in his top ten; I haven't seen it, nor have I seen THE GREEN ROOM, MUSTANG or THE WITCH. Not sure I'd put MY GOLDEN DAYS up there; I'd perhaps put Brizé's THE MEASURE OF A MAN higher than he does. I can't decide, to ber honest. The London fog has addled my brain this morning.

But the point is, THE MARTIAN has an assured high place, along with CAROL and SICARIO.

[Johann]

This thread reminds me of how many films I've missed while in Harper's gulag. ha ha

I made a pledge to go Supernova on movies. Stand back...

[Chris Knipp]

I hope you get to see the good ones. I'm lucky with the Lincoln Center and San Francisco Film Society events I attend each year, which are key ones in my film schedule. But I haven't been able to see those three I mentioned and many more.

[Chris Knipp]

Back in NYC for the weekend (6-9 Nov. 2015) only. THEEB, the Qatar/Jordan co-production omitted from ND/NF press screenings in March, came out in NYC yesterday 6 Nov. 2015 and I will be able to review it soon. Today I saw another new release yesterday, Tom McCarthy's SPOTLIGHT, a stylistically drab, dramatically quality film that is one of the year's best and most significant. It's a newspaper investigation story as nerdy and griping as ZODIAC. I will soon review it.

[Chris Knipp]

Current local to do list is ROOM, with Brie Larson. Others I have mentioned I don't know how I will see JAMES WHITE at present. Surprise discovery: the director of ROOM is Lenny Abrahamson, who previously made FRANK, which I hated.

[Chris Knipp]

Once more. Mike D'Angelo's latest 2015 Top Ten:
83- Sicario (Denis Villeneuve)
82-Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo)
80-Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
77-The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin)
76-Carol (Todd Haynes)
75-The Witch: A New England Folktale (Robert Eggers)
73-Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson)
72-The Martian (Ridley Scott)
70-Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven)
69-My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin)
It was:
83 Sicario (Denis Villeneuve)-US wide release 18 September ff.
82-Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo)-NYFF
80-Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
77-The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin)-NYFF
76-Carol (Todd Haynes)-NYFF
75-The Witch: A New England Folktale (Robert Eggers)
70-Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven)
69-My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin)-NYFF
68-The Overnight (Patrick Brice)
67-Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier) In other words, ANOMALISA has come in with Desplechin's MY GOLDEN DAYS, and THE OVERNIGHT and GREEN ROOM are gone from top rating. GREEN ROOM has been pushed down by OUR LOVED ONES (Anne Émond), EVOLUTION(Lucile Hadzihalilovic), and BONE TOMAHAWK (S. Craig Zahler). He gets to see these things. I have not seen any of those, nor yet seen THE WITCH. I saw (unfortunately - D'Angelo wisely eschews watching any trailers) the preview of THE WITCH yesterday (Nov. 19) before seeing Abrahamson's ROOM, and it looks spectacular, though however magnificent the examples, horror movies are hard for me to like. For me, it will have to match GOODNIGHT, MOMMY (US release Sept. 11; I saw it in New Directors/New Films in March), now the Austrian Best Foreign Oscar entry and a superb horror film that does not have to carry the weight of period sets and costumes as THE WITCH does.

ANOMALISA is Charlie Kaufman (with Duke Johnson, whoever he is) and comes out Dec. 30. It has a Metacritic rating of 98! MUSTANG is Turkish with a plot related to THE VIRGIN SUICIDES; it came out in NYC today (Nov. 20). (I don't understand why it's the French entry to the Best Foreign Oscar competition, since it's Turkish.) It may come to the Bay Area in two weeks, or, I'll see it in NYC. Another one to watch for, that I'll see a preview of next month, is 45 YEARS (Andrew Haigh), with Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. Release date Dec. 23rd.

I think it makes some sense to rate SICARIO and CAROL very high this year. I love Hong Sang-soo but it may be somewhat idiosyncratic of D'A. to put it up there. I can't respond to THE NEW MAD MAX that much. I also think THE FORBIDDEN ROOM is masterful work, but I'm less inclined to put it that high because Guy Madden has never been to my taste. As for MY GOLDEN DAYS by Desplechin, I'd like to watch it again. The frame-tale disconcerted me. As for ranking anything by Hadzihalilovic that high, even if I could spell or pronounce her name, judging by how strange and off-putting her 2004 INNOCENCE was, I'd be very doubtful. It goes with how crazy D'A. was about Peter Strickland's 2014 lesbian sex fantasy THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY. Well done, but I just could not relate.

I have now reviewed THE ROOM (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4067-ROOM-(Lenny-Abrahamson-2015)&p=34115#post34115). It is impressively acted and a memorable experience, at core. As movie I think it is pretty flawed because the second half is not as strong as the first. However I would recommend it to serious moviegoers.

All of this consideration of Mike D'Angelo's top ten list is for several reasons, first just the fanatically precise way he rates films, second the fact that he keeps a running list of his favorites, which I'd like to do eventually. I'm not there yet, mainly because I don't know as well how I rate films till down to the wire. But it is essential that, as new films become available for the year, you readjust your priorities. And of course you have to keep adjusting it till the end of the year, because unless you get to pre-view everything, you probably won't be able to see some of the best ones till the end of December, or maybe later.

[Johann]

Considering that I saw all of 9 movies in theatres this year (and wrote only about 4) I'm woefully unqualified to say what were the best movies this year. Mad Max: Fury Road blew me away. I'm very grateful you see so many films Chris. Who needs members when we've got the Ultimate movie-viewing/reviewing machine? LOL

[Chris Knipp]

If you want to see somebody who better fits that title look up Mike D'Angelo's personal website, The Man Who Viewed Too Much (http://www.panix.com/~dangelo/). He lists and rates and often reviews everything he sees and his attendance of Sundance, Cannes and Toronto puts him ahead of my by a considerable margin. This is why I follow him.. I hope to catch up on some of his top recommendations such as JAMES WHITE and MUSTANG either here or during the holidays back east.

It's a shame that THE DISSOLVE, (https://thedissolve.com/) a good onlilne movie review, folded in July after only two years -- due to which, D'Angelo did not get to send bulletins on his Toronto viewings, which was a loss. (THE DISSOLVE's content from its lifetime up to July is still accessible however.) D'Angelo's daily festival bulletins have been his best writing.

[Johann]

Will check out Mike's website. He's my kind of people.

Believe it or not I will be attempting to make a film in 2016. I always said I wouldn't. But with Harper's annihilation I'm feeling particularly primed to make a movie. I have a small crew, a modest budget and a camera with a Zeiss lens. I hope to have it finished in 6 months' time. Wish me luck. :)

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, good luck!

[Chris Knipp]

National Film Board of Review lists. (These are definitely not my lists -- I haven't seen The Hateful Eight or Beasts of No Nation yet, for one thing -- but I like a lot of these titles and people. Son of Saul is an excellent Best Foreign choice and Amy is a good and predictable Best Documentary choice; some of the other choices are more predictable than discerning but such is the nature of committee selections.)

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/mdmxfr.jpg


Best Film: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Director: Ridley Scott – The Martian
Best Actor: Matt Damon – The Martian
Best Actress: Brie Larson – Room
Best Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone – Creed
Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Jason Leigh – The Hateful Eight
Best Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino – The Hateful Eight
Best Adapted Screenplay: Drew Goddard – The Martian
Best Animated Feature: Inside Out
Breakthrough Performance: Abraham Attah – Beasts of No Nation & Jacob Tremblay – Room
Best Directorial Debut: Jonas Carpignano – Mediterranea
Best Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul
Best Documentary: Amy
William K. Everson Film History Award: Cecilia De Mille Presley
Best Ensemble: The Big Short
Spotlight Award: Sicario, for Outstanding Collaborative Vision
NBR Freedom of Expression Award: Beasts of No Nation & Mustang

Top Films
Bridge of Spies
Creed
The Hateful Eight
Inside Out
Spotlight
The Martian
Room
Sicario
Straight Outta Compton

Top 5 Foreign Language Films
Goodnight Mommy
Mediterranea
Phoenix
The Second Mother
The Tribe

Top 5 Documentaries
Best of Enemies
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
The Diplomat
Listen to Me Marlon
The Look of Silence

Top 10 Independent Films
’71
45 Years
Cop Car
Ex Machina
Grandma
It Follows
James White
Mississippi Grind
Welcome to Me
While We’re Young

[Chris Knipp]

Chris Knipp's working random best lists in alphabetical order of the year's movies I've most liked. (I'm adding some I'd forgotten after reading other lists and more as I watch them.)

In English

99 Homes (Ramin Bahrani)
Carol (Todd Haynes)
Dope ( Rick Famuyiwa)
Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg)
The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin)
Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
The Martian (Ridley Scott)
Mississippi Grind (Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden)
Riot Club, The (Lone Scherfig)
Sicario (Denis Villeneuve)
Spotlight (Tom McCarthy)
Tangerine (Sean Baker)
Youth (Paolo Sorrentino - coming)
The Walk (Robert Zemeckis)

Foreign

'71 (Yann Demange)
Amour Fou (Jessica Haussner 2014)
Court (Chaitanya Tamhane)
Eastern Boys (Robin Campillo)
Fool, The/Durak (Yuriy Bykov)
Girlhood/Bande de filles (Céline Sciamma)
Goodnight, Mommy/Ich seh, ich seh (Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala)
Kindergarten Teacher, The/Haganenet (Nadav Lapid)
L'il Quinquin (Bruno Dumont)
Love at First Fight/Les combattants (Thomas Cailley)
Son of Saul/Saul fia (László Nemes)
Theeb (Naji Abu Nowar)
Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako)
Wild Tales/Relatos salvajes (Damián Szifron)

End-of-the-year releases that might make these lists when I see them:

45 Years (Andrew Haigh)
Anomalisa (Duke Johnson, Charlie Kaufman)
Beasts of No Nation (Cary Joji Fukunaga)
Big Short, The (Adam McKay)
Hateful Eight, The (Quentin Tarantino)
James White (Josh Mond)
Joy (David O. Russell)
Macbeth (Justin Kurzel)
Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven - NYC release 20 Nov.)
Revenant, The (Alejandro G. Iñárritu)


Best unreleased in US

Dheepan (Jacques Audiard 2014)
Great Man, The/Le grand homme (Sarah Leonor 2014) (ND/NF)
Microbe and Gasoline/Microbe et Gasoil (Michel Gondry) (NYFF)
My Golden Days/Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse (Arnaud Desplechin) (NYFF) (2016 release USA)
Right Now, Wrong Then/지금은맞고그때는틀리다 (Hong Sang-soo)(NYFF)
Two Friends/Les deux amis (Louis Garrel)(Paris)

Documentaries

1971 (Johanna Hamilton)
Amy (Asif Kapadia)
Ballet 422 (Jodi Lee Lipes)
Best of Enemies (Robert Gordon, Morgan Neville)
Dior and I (Frédéric Tcheng)
Black Panthers, The: Vanguard of the Revolution (Stanley Nelson)
Dreamcatcher (Kim Longinotto)
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (Alex Gibney)
Iraq Odyssey (Samir)
Iris (Albert Maysles)
Listen To Me Marlon (Stevan Riley)
Meru ( Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi)
The Pearl Button/El botón de nácar (Patricio Guzmán)
A Poem Is a Naked Person (Les Blank, rerelease)
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (Alex Gibney)
Tab Hunter Confidential (Jeffrey Schwarz)
Tales of the Grim Sleeper (Nick Broonfield)
We Come As Friends (Hubert Sauper)
Western ( Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross)
What Happened, Miss Simone? (Liz Garbus)
Where to Invade Next (Michael Moore- coming)
The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle)
The Wrecking Crew (rerelease March 2015)


Also good:

Inside Out (Pete Doctor)
Stanford Prison Experiment, The (Kyle Patrick Alvarez)
Welcome to New York (Abel Ferrara)

[Chris Knipp]

NY Times critics' lists.

What I notice here is that they all list The Big Short, which sounds fun to me (Brad Pitt, Christian Bale), and which I look forward to seeing. I may skip In Jackson Heights (three+ hours more from Fred Wiseman; I find his products hit-or-miss). Other title I still have to see: Anomalisa. P.s.: Having seen The Big Short now, I find its inclusion in these best lists silly and absurd. I can't see including Diary of a Teenage Girl. There is no disputing tastes.

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/hhass.jpg
The Assassin

Manohla Dargis:

1. “The Assassin” and “Mad Max: Fury Road” (tie)
2. Luminous Intimacy: The Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler All praise and many deep-felt thanks to the New York Film Festival for programming this sublime dual retrospective. (Read the review.)
3. “Bridge of Spies”
4. “Carol”
5. “In Jackson Heights”
6. “The Martian”
7. “The Kindergarten Teacher”
8. “The Diary of a Teenage Girl”
9. “The Big Short”
10. “Sixty Six”

A.O. Scott:

1. “Timbuktu”(Abderrahmane Sissako)
2. “Inside Out” (Pete Docter)
3. “Spotlight” (Tom McCarthy)
“The Big Short” (Adam McKay)
4. “Heart of a Dog”(Laurie Anderson)
5. “Carol” (Todd Haynes)
“Anomalisa” (Charlie Kaufman/Duke Johnson) (Read the review of “Carol.”)
6. “Taxi”(Jafar Panahi)
7. “Out 1: Noli Me Tangere”(Jacques Rivette)
8. “Mad Max: Fury Road”(George Miller)
9. “Creed”(Ryan Coogler)
10. “Results” (Andrew Bujalski)
“Welcome to Me” (Shira Piven)
11. “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” (Stanley Nelson)
“What Happened, Miss Simone?” (Liz Garbus)
12. “The Kindergarten Teacher” (Nadav Lapid)
13. “Girlhood” (Céline Sciamma)
“The Diary of a Teenage Girl” (Marielle Heller)
14. “Grandma” (Paul Weitz)
“Tangerine” (Sean Baker)
15. “The End of the Tour”(James Ponsoldt)


Stephen Holden:

1. “Carol”
2. “The Big Short”
3. “Spotlight”
4. “The Fool”
5. “The Diary of a Teenage Girl”
6. “The Look of Silence”
7. “Truth”
8. “45 Years”
9. “Tangerine”
10. “Brooklyn”

Runners-up
“Son of Saul”
“Li’l Quinquin”
“Timbuktu”
“Love & Mercy”
“Clouds of Sils Maria”
“Wild Tales”
“The Salt of the Earth”
“Inside Out”

[Chris Knipp]

Indiewire?

The current Criticwire or is it Indiewire poll list (from "65 critics') is too silly and off the wall to list here, but I like some of the comments/dissents. Notably Richard Brody's. He thinks Abel Ferrara's Welcome to New York ought to be included; it's not having theatrical release shouldn't be an obstacle. He says
"Clouds of Sils Maria" is a work of stultifying mediocrity rendered downright awful by its banalization of grand subjects and themes; it seems to have been made for the sole purpose of placing high on such a list. Bravo! That is so utterly true. And he amusingly calls Mad Max: Fury Road "virtuous and respectable." It is extremely well done, but is it necessary? And says "It Follows and The Duke of Burgundy don't belong anywhere new the top of the heap" (where they are on this list). Hear, hear! I agree with this too. I con't understand why Mike D'Angelo has such a passion for Tu dors Nicole, but I certainly agree on his dissent from praise of the overrated Ex Macchina. All the dissents are much more intelligent than the list. Lists like this are like any committee effort. And this isn't even a very good committee. A gigantic list really may show the world's opinion. Sophisticated systems can work. I trust Metacritic to show us what US critics think about individual movies, most of the time, for what that's worth.

[Chris Knipp]

Film Comment's lists (the Film Society of Lincoln Center).

Film Comment’s Top 10 Films Released in 2015:
1. Carol Todd Haynes, U.S.
2. The Assassin Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan
3. Mad Max: Fury Road George Miller, U.S.
4. Clouds of Sils Maria Olivier Assayas, France
5. Arabian Nights Miguel Gomes, Portugal
6. Timbuktu Abderrahmane Sissako, Mauritania/France
7. Spotlight Tom McCarthy, U.S.
8. Phoenix Christian Petzold, Germany
9. Inside Out Pete Docter & Ronnie del Carmen, U.S.
10. The Look of Silence Joshua Oppenheimer, Denmark/Indonesia

The rankings of other films making strong showings during the awards season are John Crowley’s Brooklyn (#18), Frederick Wiseman’s In Jackson Heights (#13), and Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies (#20). Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin (#2) was the cover subject of Film Comment magazine’s September/October issue, and László Nemes’s Son of Saul (#14) was the cover subject of the November/December issue.

Film Comment’s survey also ranks films that have screened and made notable appearances at festivals throughout the year, but remain without U.S. distribution at press time.

Film Comment’s Top 10 Unreleased Films of 2015:
1. Right Now, Wrong Then Hong Sangsoo, South Korea
2. Chevalier Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece
3. The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers Ben Rivers, U.K.
4. The Academy of Muses José Luis Guerín, Spain
5. Don’t Blink – Robert Frank Laura Israel, U.S.
6. Cosmos Andrzej Zulawski, Poland
7. Journey to the Shore Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan
8. Happy Hour Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan
9. Lost and Beautiful Pietro Marcello, Italy
10. Minotaur Nicolas Pereda, Mexico

[Chris Knipp]

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/45cr.jpg
Rampling in 45 Years

45 Years.

I've now seen 45 Years (Andrew Haigh 2015). It comes out officially in the US next Wed. Dec. 23rd (Aug. in the UK). I'll be writing a review. At first my reaction was "Is that all?" "All"? Actually it is a huge and wonderful film. But it has to sneak up on you. It's so subtle, so many details are quietly buried. It's so intelligent, so well-written, about such important stuff, and acted by such superb actors, Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, it establishes itself as surely one of the year's best. I can't understand how anybody's list of English language films could leave it off. The Guardian crew showered it with raves four months ago, and Peter Bradshaw changed his 4/5 stars at Berlin to five out of five stars on seeing it at home -- obviously. It also impresses about the filmmaker as being such a logical extension of Haigh's feature debut, Weekend, that it reveals his consistency and seriousness. 45 Years is a completely logical continuation even though Weekend is a gay love story about young men that lasts only a few days at the start of their relationship and 45 Years comes, well, 45 years into a straight relationship. It is still looking bravely and fearlessly into the life together of two people. Bradshaw mentions Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage -- an obvious analogy -- and also refers to Brief Encounter, saying it puts both characters in the female role. Michael Haneke is also mentioned, and Caché. I myself thought of Julia Loktev's The Loneliest Planet, because of certain analogies of theme and setting. In a joint interview Courtenay said he read the screenplay on his iPhone -- and Rampling interrupted, "He is a modern man, you see!" and laughed and he added "I couldn't put it down." Like The Loneliest Planet it's from a short story, in this case David Constantine's "In Another Country."

[Chris Knipp]

Dave Erlich's 2015 countdown of 25 best films.

Watch his super-cut video (both "a blast" and "a catastrophic waste of time" to make, he says), with its witty juxtapositions of music and image and his interesting, eclectic choices. Never mind the choices so much, though I'm glad to be informed of World of Tomrrow and The Mend, and reminded of A Pigeon San on a Branch. . . and Anomalisa (not seen yet), and Tokyo Tribe (which is amazing, but I'd forgotten it) -- the main thing is the great images he culls from all of them and how well he puts them together. Here's the video: https://vimeo.com/148026900. . . and here's the list:
1-Carol – Todd Haynes
2-World of Tomorrow – Don Hertzfeldt
3-Phoenix – Christian Petzold
4-The Look of Silence – Joshua Oppenheimer
5-A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence – Roy Andersson
6-The Duke of Burgundy – Peter Strickland
7-Eden – Mia Hansen-Løve
8-Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter – David Zellner
9-Mistress America – Noah Baumbach
10-Mad Max: Fury Road – George Miller
11-Clouds of Sils Maria – Olivier Assayas
12-Magic Mike XXL – Gregory Jacobs
13-Tokyo Tribe – Shion Sono
14-Anomalisa – Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson
15-Listen to Me Marlon – Stevan Riley
16-Black Coal, Thin Ice – Diao Yinan
17-Heaven Knows What – Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie
18-The Hateful Eight – Quentin Tarantino
19-The Mend – John Magary
20-James White – Josh Mond
21-The Forbidden Room – Guy Maddin
22-Junun – Paul Thomas Anderson
23-Mustang – Deniz Gamze Ergüven
24-Tangerine – Sean Baker
25-Girlhood – Céline Sciamma Some of these are on a lot of best lists, and I think worthy ones are Carol, Pooenix, The Hateful Eight, James White, The Forbidden Room, Mustang, Tangerine, Girlhood and from what they say Anomalisa. And that's a ten best list right there.

[Chris Knipp]

Vulture's (http://www.vulture.com/2015/12/10-best-movies-of-2015.html) The 10 Best Movie Performances of 2015:



1. Brie Larson, Room
Every time you see her, you forget you’ve seen her before — she’s that good.

2. Steve Carell, The Big Short
The (edgy) moral center, his hedge-funder is the picture of a man at odds with his own instincts.

3. Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
She pronounces it Ser-sha, and you better learn it.

4. Blythe Danner, See You in My Dreams
We knew her range and depth from theater, but it has taken this long to see her transcendent soul onscreen.

5. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Z for Zachariah
No one saw this postapocalyptic chamber piece, but his performance — a cauldron of rage and fear — is a major one.

6. Michael Shannon, 99 Homes
As a predatory Florida realtor, he shows how a man can channel his demons with society-destroying efficiency.

7. Jason Mitchell, Straight Outta Compton
His volatile Eazy-E is the movie’s least homogenized character, the hunger for status turning every scene he’s in into a nail-biter.

8. Cynthia Nixon, James White
Her final intense, intimate scenes with Christopher Abbott as her son define rage against the dying of the light.

9. Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
The third phase of JJL’s career kicks into high, surreal gear with her cackling demon, wearing her battered face as a badge of honor.

10. John Slattery, Spotlight
The least-sung performance on this list, it’s a quiet, beautifully judged portrait of an editor who’d rather be doing anything than what he’s compelled to do.

[Chris Knipp]

For the Golden Globes I started a separate thread, because awards go beyond the mere speculation about what the best films are. But their concept is that The Revenant is the best film, and The Martian is a comedy, and the best of those. (I watched it without knowing it was supposed to be a comedy.) It's okay with me that Son of Saul made best foreign film in the Golden Globes. It is a remarkable and powerful film and an extraordinary debut.

To choose Steve Jobs as the best written over The Hateful Eight is a typical injustice. QT recently said he would never win an award. That's fine I guess; he's in a class by himself.

It was known that Inside Out was considered the exceptional animation of the year.

I was just reading Emily Nussbaum on "Empire" and "Mozart in the Jungle." But I never heard of "Robot." I'm surprised that Oscar Isaac is gaining fame in TV and that Christian Slater is too. I don't know about some of the other shows. I have been watching Jon Hamm in "Mad Men" for years now. He is one of a kind. It's interesting that Gael García Bernal won a prize for TV, because he got his start in telenovelas as a child actor in Mexico.

[Johann]

The Golden Globes are utterly meaningless to me. And with Lady Goofball winning an award, that meaninglessness is IRONCLAD.

[Chris Knipp]

They are uninspiring, but I also find them informative as I explained, especially in the matter of TV, which I don't follow much.

[Johann]

Ricky Gervais is the perfect host for that show. He's got a cutting streak like I do. He skewers those "celebs" just the way they should be, and he doesn't care if you like it or not. My kind of guy...

[Chris Knipp]

Where have you seen him? I know he's well known for such roles but I'm not familiar with him.

[Johann]

I think he's a stand-up comedian? I haven't seen him in anything. I first saw him host the Golden Globes a while ago and loved it. His dressing down of Bruce Willis was amazing. He's ideal to host awards shows. That should be his permanent gig.

[Chris Knipp]

The AV Club's list (http://www.avclub.com/article/20-best-films-2015-229810) of the 20 best movies of 2015.

It's original, and the individual homages are by their talented team of 30- and 40-something writers. I have not seen Approaching the Elephant, Crimson Paek, or Hard to Be a God. I like that Phoenix is second. I detect Mike D'Angelo's influence in the high place of It Follows and Duke of Burgundy. Sicario has also long been at the top of his list. I am not happy when I read the phrase "another Pixar masterpiece." Time to see if Armond White has made a list?




Every year is a good year for movies, provided you’re willing to wander a little off the beaten path. But in 2015, it was hard to go more than a few steps without hitting something major, something essential. More even than usual, the year’s best films took different shapes, sizes, and routes to eyeballs. Multiplexes were unusually rich with adventurous big-budget movies, as Hollywood handed the keys to the castle to real artists. At the same time, fine smaller films from all over the globe made their way from festivals to theaters and on to streaming platforms, where any viewer with a working web connection could get a taste of something different. What the 20 films below have in common, beyond the strong impression they made on our ballot-filing critics, is a general habit of saying something significant about the here and now, even when transporting audiences to a subatomic there; a fantastically reproduced then; and a lawless, post-apocalyptic later.

20. James White

Christopher Abbott and Cynthia Nixon are equally riveting as a son and mother attempting to cope with both the death of their father/husband and an increasingly dire cancer prognosis in Josh Mond’s piercingly intimate indie debut. With his handheld camerawork creating persistent close-up proximity to his characters, Mond roots his film in the frightened anger of James, a young man who’d be spiraling out of control if not for his profound connection to his mom. The impending end to their co-dependent relationship heralds a terrifying future for the young man, whose inner turmoil manifests itself in a series of violent outbursts. Highlighted by a wrenching bathroom scene involving fantasies of things that will never come to pass, James White is a spellbinding saga of someone forced, through loss, to face his true self. [Nick Schager]

19. Mustang

One by one, the five sisters in Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang see the conservative guardians of their rural Turkish village try to crush their spirits, by controlling what they wear, limiting where they can go, and marrying them off as soon as possible. Yet the girls keep rebelling in whatever way they can for as long as they can—by sneaking out, defying punishments, and covering for each other. The intimacy of Mustang’s framing and the casual realism of its young actresses creates a feeling of connection that keeps the film from becoming some dour drama about patriarchal cruelty. Although the situation’s grounded in a specific setting and a handful of memorable characters, like nearly all films about confinement, it can also be read as pure metaphor: a paean to indomitable, untamable adolescence. [Noel Murray]

18. The Martian

The Martian is not a difficult film. It’s a crowd pleaser, full of popular comedic actors; upbeat disco hits; patriotic-but-not-jingoistic optimism; and peans to the popular religion of people who consider themselves too smart for religion: science. It comes by its snappy sensibilities honestly, with a script by Buffy The Vampire Slayer alum (and, therefore, witty repartee specialist) Drew Goddard and direction by Ridley Scott, who has already proven many times over that he can direct the hell out of a sci-fi adventure. Scott’s finesse with the genre is most evident in the action scenes, where humor momentarily gives way to edge-of-your-seat tension in the endless blackness of space. It’s not quite a comedy—no matter what the Golden Globes say—but it is the funniest movie about facing certain death alone on an alien planet you’ll see this year. [Katie Rife]

17. Approaching The Elephant

Every democracy has its growing pains, but wish special luck to one that puts voting rights in the hands of those barely old enough to tie their own shoes. Exhibiting an observational objectivity that might make Frederick Wiseman proud, first-time filmmaker Amanda Rose Wilder documents the first (and, as it turned out, second to last) academic year of the Teddy McArdle Free School, where classes were voluntary and the rules were decided upon by teachers and preteen pupils alike. There’s both drama and a good deal of savage comedy in the faculty’s weary attempts to stay true to their educational experiment, especially once the rowdy grade-schoolers they’ve empowered begin abusing their liberties. Beyond the car-crash fascination of it all, Approaching The Elephant has a lot to say about squaring big theories against harsh realities; plenty of ideals get tested, even if the students never do. [A.A. Dowd]

16. The Forbidden Room

A hilarious and edifying intervention against “slow cinema,” The Forbidden Room is filled to the brim with stories, which keep rudely tumbling over top of each other like monkeys in a barrel. In compiling a tribute to lost films of the silent era, Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson simultaneously satirize and sanctify their source material: Their pitch-perfect pastiches of early 20th century melodramas are exactly as ridiculous, grandiloquent, and perverse as any cinephile could hope (or dream). A gallery of louche art-house movie stars, from Geraldine Chaplin to Mathieu Amalric, helps put the whole thing over the top, where it stays, hovering, for two hours—more than enough time to get from the bowels of a stranded submarine to the peak of a sweltering volcano and all points in between. [Adam Nayman]

15. Crimson Peak

Unsuccessfully marketed as a horror movie, this lush, florid Gothic romance represents the high-water mark for director Guillermo Del Toro’s gifts as a pure stylist. A simple Bluebeard fable expressed through extravagant set and costume designs, ingenious effects, insect imagery, and boldly deployed colors, Crimson Peak lets its subtexts and metaphors grow wild, until they overwhelm the movie like creeping vine. Mia Wasikowska, whose Pre-Raphaelite features have made the go-to star for 19th century literary adaptations and Gothic pastiches, plays an American writer who marries a dissolute English aristocrat (Tom Hiddleston) who shares the decrepit family estate with his creepy sister (Jessica Chastain). While Del Toro’s tendency to place sweeping visual imagination over narrative originality may not be for everyone (our own Katie Rife wasn’t too hot on the film when she reviewed it), it’s still hard to deny that few films released this year took over the space of the screen with as much confidence as Crimson Peak. Like fine licorice, this is an exquisite experience for those who might already have a taste for it. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

14. 45 Years

Can you ever really know another person, even one you’ve shared a life with for four and a half decades? Writer-director Andrew Haigh (Weekend) turns the run-up to a wedding anniversary into an awful awakening, as one half of a seemingly content couple comes to recognize the third party—the ghost of an old romance—that’s haunted their marriage from the start. 45 Years shatters the comfy fantasy of happily growing old together, even as stars Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, in two of the year’s most quietly devastating performances, sketch a whole lifetime of cohabitation in their scenes together. “Drama” is the word most will use to describe this wounding work, but for a certain portion of the audience, it will provoke more dread, more horror than anything in, say, It Follows. [A.A. Dowd]

13. Hard To Be A God

One of the filthiest-looking films ever made, this staggeringly realized, nearly three-hour Russian sci-fi nightmare plunges viewers into the day-to-day life of a backwater planet stuck in the Middle Ages. Earth scientist Anton (Leonard Yarmolnik), who has lived for years among the locals as a nobleman named Don Rumata, becomes involved in a power struggle against the forces conspiring to keep the people ignorant and superstitious, but viewers would be excused for mentally checking out of the plot early on, given how it’s overwhelmed by director Aleksei German’s grotesque, deranged, Hieronymus Bosch-like vision of a world of cruelty, suffering, and shit. “This isn’t Earth,” declares a narrator at the start of the movie, but of course the point is that it is Earth, or perhaps just one particular country with a long history of purges, repressions, and political strongmen. A unique, immersive, unsettling experience, Hard To Be A God was the career-long passion project of the late German, who died when it was in the late stages of post-production. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

12. Bridge Of Spies

Can all historical procedurals be directed by Steven Spielberg? He can apply his talent any number of places, and should, but with Lincoln and now Bridge Of Spies, he’s made the transformation of potentially dust-dry grandfather-ready material into crackling, beautifully made entertainment something of a late-career hallmark. Though it’s anchored with a few instant-classic suspense sequences, much of this film about the exchange of a Soviet spy for some American soldiers, brokered by non-spy lawyer Tom Hanks, is quietly talky. It’s helped enormously in this regard by the hired hands of the Coen brothers, who lend the film’s dialogue the deadpan, sometimes accidental wit of impenetrable bureaucracy. But as with Lincoln, the director assembles each scene with such verve that the ebb and flow of negotiation becomes as compelling as the more cloak-and-dagger material. Add this to the increasingly crowded field of Spielberg’s best. [Jesse Hassenger]

11. Inside Out

Top-tier Pixar films nearly always take simple, hooky ideas in unexpected directions, but rarely has the studio pulled a bait-and-switch quite as sublime as the one in Inside Out. Thanks in large part to Amy Poehler’s ingratiating, trustworthy voice, it takes a while for audiences to catch on that her character “Joy”—the movie’s designated tour guide through one pre-teen girl’s anthropomorphic emotions—may not be as savvy as she seems about what her human host Riley actually needs. Want to know why watching Inside Out devastates so many parents? It has a lot to do with the idea that children’s “core” memories and personality traits are no more permanent than their baby teeth. Take that rather sophisticated theme, add in the magnificent candy-colored design of Riley’s headscape and some assured visual storytelling—rendering white-knuckle action sequences as melancholy poetry—and the result is another Pixar masterpiece. [Noel Murray]

10. Anomalisa

It was a depressing day for fans of warped genius when the plug got pulled on Charlie Kaufman’s proposed followup to Synecdoche, New York: a satire of internet culture called Frank Or Francis. Happily, though, that failure led to the improbable existence of Anomalisa, a stop-motion adaptation (co-directed with animator Duke Johnson) of a theater piece Kaufman had written, which was originally more or less audio-only. Reconceived for the screen, this melancholy yet often riotously funny tale of a customer-service guru (voice of David Thewlis) who travels to Cincinnati for a lecture and meets a highly unusual woman (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh) is vintage Kaufman, and uses its puppets in ways that even those familiar with the source material couldn’t possibly anticipate. Anomalisa doesn’t open until the 30th, and most cities won’t get it until January, so for right now, the less said about it, the better. But its third major cast member is Tom Noonan, and discovering the nature of his role ranks among the year’s greatest pleasures. [Mike D’Angelo]

9. Brooklyn

Director John Crowley and screenwriter Nick Hornby bring deep emotional incisiveness to their adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s acclaimed 2009 novel, about a young Irish woman (Saoirse Ronan) who emigrates to New York City, falls in love, and then has her new circumstances upended by a tragedy. Led by Ronan’s magnetic performance, it’s a film of sharp, authentic details regarding the immigrant experience (and communities), the ups and downs of blossoming love, and the conflict between individual desire and familial expectations and obligations. Crafted so that all of its characters boast a complexity of personality and motivation, Brooklyn delivers melodrama enlivened by an understanding of the way in which circumstances, setting, and private hopes and dreams are constantly shaping, and re-shaping, one’s path through life. It’s a heartstring-tugging depiction of the push-pull between the staid comfort of the past and the thrilling unknown of the future. [Nick Schager]

8. Carol

From the moment their eyes meet across the busy department store, shopgirl Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) is helplessly enthralled by Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett), the elegant housewife who drifts into her life on a cloud of perfume and melancholy. The infatuation is infectious: Carol, like its namesake, is pure seduction, a midcentury love story whose every element—from its carefully arranged period detail to its gorgeously grainy 16mm cinematography to the unforgettable swell of Carter Burwell’s score—seems calibrated to allure. The first time Todd Haynes transported audiences back to the 1950s, he did so using a time machine called homage, in his expert Douglas Sirk imitation Far From Heaven. Here, the writer-director evokes a beautiful but stifling past without film-geek parentheses, letting two world-class actresses breath modern life into a Patricia Highsmith classic. It’s love at first sight, Haynes style. [A.A. Dowd]

7. The Assassin

There’s an old line from D.W. Griffith about how what movies have lost is “the wind in the trees.” Well, look no further than The Assassin, which not only offers its share of swaying foliage—8th century China being a naturalist’s paradise—but also connects philosophically to this idea of cinema as exquisite ephemera. Casting his characters in shadows and shooting through thin scrims and brocaded curtains, Hou Hsiao-Hsien keeps his mise-en-scène mysterious, in contrast to the story, which is fairy-tale simple: A beautiful royal returns to the kingdom she was sent away from as a child, equipped with a special set of skills and bent on vengeance. Sold by its North American distributors as an action epic but purely an auteur work, The Assassin offers up more memorable images than any other movie released this year. [Adam Nayman]

6. Sicario

Making an intense, nerve-wracking thriller rooted in ugly realpolitik isn’t easy. Convincing the money people that said thriller absolutely requires a female lead is even harder. What makes Sicario truly remarkable, though, is the way that it deliberately, perversely diminishes ace FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) over the course of the narrative, after she volunteers to join an inter-agency task force seeking to root out the head of a Mexican cartel. As Kate and her partner (Daniel Kaluuya) get repeatedly stonewalled by an alleged “DOD advisor” (Josh Brolin) who’s probably really C.I.A, and try to comprehend the presence of a rogue enforcer (Benicio Del Toro), it becomes increasingly clear how little chance even a scrupulously ethical and fearlessly determined individual has of challenging righteous zeal that’s curdled into institutional corruption. Taylor Sheridan’s script pulls few punches, and it’s magnificently served by director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners), who sustains a nearly unbearable level of tension for the duration. [Mike D’Angelo]

5. The Look Of Silence

Many directors make films that are moving, or thought-provoking. Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentaries are both of these things, but they’re also something far more rare: They’re actually, historically important. This year Oppenheimer followed up his Oscar-nominated documentary The Act Of Killing with The Look Of Silence, a companion piece which also explores the aftermath of the genocide of more than a million people in 1960s Indonesia, this time from the perspective of the victims. Optometrist Adi was born after the massacre that killed his older brother, but has been carrying the burden of his death his entire life. In an unprecedented act of courage, Adi agrees to confront the men who murdered his brother—all of whom still hold power in their village—in an attempt to understand what really happened. It’s powerful, unbelievable stuff, as village leaders look Adi in the eye and warn him that if he keeps asking questions, the killings may start again. (These aren’t idle threats, either; much of the film’s Indonesian crew chose to remain anonymous, for fear of reprisals.) If The Act Of Killing was a sobering reminder that history is written by the victors, The Look Of Silence is an elegy for the forgotten. [Katie Rife]

4. The Duke Of Burgundy

At first glance, Peter Strickland’s misleadingly titled romance—it’s named after a butterfly, and takes place in an alternate universe devoid of men—appears to be a riff on European softcore films from the 1970s. Gradually, however, the master/servant relationship between Cynthia (Borgen’s Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) takes on unexpected dimensions, as it becomes clear who’s really in charge and who’s struggling mightily to meet her lover’s needs. For all its surface-level kinkiness (including a hilarious conversation with the vendor of a custom-made “human toilet”), The Duke Of Burgundy is less concerned with sex per se than with the inherent difficulties involved in sharing your life with another person, which sometimes requires a sincere effort to share their interests even when you’re not especially interested. It’s not every film that can achieve overpowering emotional catharsis using water sports as a metaphor. [Mike D’Angelo]

3. It Follows

Nostalgia is one appeal of a retro-tinged horror film; dread is what some of the more powerful horror films produce. In his brilliant second feature, writer-director David Robert Mitchell summons both at once, conjuring a slow fade from summer (beaches, frozen yogurt) into fall (rustling leaves, back to school) removed from a specific time period—and then unleashing upon it a malevolent force that approaches slowly but will never stop, and can appear in seemingly any guise. Mitchell’s steady camerawork, beautiful ambiguities (like whose form the force is assuming and whether that form has any connection to its victims), and sense of humor make for a surprisingly rewatchable horror movie—and a relevant one, too. Because the force’s attachment spreads through sex, It Follows has been tagged as a metaphor for STDs. Those overtones are there for its young characters, but the movie goes deeper than that: It’s about fear of adulthood and, eventually, death—the malevolent force coming for all of us, no matter how slowly. [Jesse Hassenger]

2. Phoenix

A modern masterpiece of suspense capped off by one of the greatest endings in recent memory, German director Christian Petzold’s complexly shaded noir thriller takes an unbelievable pulp premise and underplays it. Disfigured in a concentration camp, Jewish nightclub singer Nelly (Nina Hoss) returns to post-war Berlin after receiving reconstructive surgery, only to have her gentile husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), fail to recognize her; taking Nelly for a stranger who bears a passing resemblance to the wife he’s long presumed dead, Johnny promises her a cut in a scheme to cash in on her own inheritance. Avoiding theatrics in favor of unspoken nuances and perfectly timed cuts, Petzold spins a web of paranoia, performance, and repressed emotion, with the figure of fellow Holocaust survivor Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) adding an even deeper layer of tragedy. Nearly perfect in its economy and driven by two superb lead performances, Phoenix manages to be both an engrossingly suspenseful genre piece and a disquieting commentary on identity and the aftermath of the Holocaust—all in just over 90 minutes. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

1. Mad Max: Fury Road

Have we all died and gone to Valhalla? This is a movie—a grand, impossible blockbuster—that shouldn’t even exist. George Miller, an Aussie genre veteran in his 70s, somehow shook $150 million from Hollywood’s pockets, then spent it crashing cars in the desert to realize the demolition derby of his wildest dreams, the Mad Max movie he’s been working toward since the very start. Fury Road bucks just about every trend in big-budget franchise filmmaking: It’s a self-contained joy ride through its creator’s limitless imagination, an art movie stretched across the canvas of an IMAX screen. And beneath its layers upon layers of awe-inspiring imagery—a blitzkrieg of practical effects, whipped up into a two-hour car chase—beats the heart of a surprisingly subversive entertainment, one that dares to put its mythic hero (Tom Hardy, a fine substitute for Mad Mel) into the passenger seat, while a metal-armed Charlize Theron leads the charge against misogyny incarnate. That this super-charged passion project made it to screens fully intact, like some spectacle from another universe, is cause to keep grinning, with or without a mouth sprayed in a glorious shade of chrome. [A.A. Dowd]

[Chris Knipp]

Here it is. I'm delighted he mentions Güeros -- a great film nobody has remembered. Who else remembers Black Souls or Queen and Country? La Sapienza or Horse Money? Or would think of preferring A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence to Anomalisa? This is why we need Armond White.


The Eleventh Annual Better-Than List by ARMOND WHITE

National Review (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429435/movies-2015-best-and-worst)

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/guer.jpg
Tenoch Huerta, Sebastián Aguirre in Güeros

January 8, 2016 4:00 AM @3XCHAIR The year’s best films verses the overrated worst In 2015 more movies were released than ever (an average of a dozen a week). And while many of them offended one’s sense of truth, beauty, and politics, mainstream media (both conservative and liberal) promoted them nonetheless — as if only newness mattered, and not quality. Commerce smothered art in 2015, disguised as movie love. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t still excellent, satisfying films — the best, Queen and Country, released in early January by British master filmmaker John Boorman, remained unsurpassed. You could still have a good time going to movies in 2015, but it required discernment, personal taste, and political rigor. Thus, this year’s Better-Than List reminds filmgoers that in cinema as in politics, quality and integrity are more important than popularity. It’s never too late to vote for the better movies.

Queen and Country > The Force Awakens
The visionary Boorman’s memoir/swan song recalls the roots of family, citizenship, and morality, all conveyed in cinematic mythology. The Disneyfied Star Wars replaced pop mythology with fascist marketing, deceiving viewers who are ignorant of the difference.

Güeros > The Hateful Eight
Alonso Ruizpalacios’s mixed-race Mexico City college students search for their ethnic and cultural roots in the style of Sixties New Wave cinema, superior to Quentin Tarantino’s pointless mashup of spaghetti westerns and blaxploitation movies. By exploiting American racism, QT promotes it.

The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet > The Revenant
Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s coming-of-age fable expresses an outsider’s affection for 20th-century Americana, while Alejandro González Iñárritu reduces the history of the American West to savagery — and Obama-era self-deprecation.

Love at First Fight > The Martian
France’s Thomas Cailley updates the service comedy — social experiment in the military viewed as Millennial screwball romance — but ultrahack Ridley Scott minimizes NASA space exploration as Matt Damon’s solipsism in outer space.

Creed > Straight Outta Compton
Ryan Coogler reenergizes pop ethnography and Sylvester Stallone’s bootstrap boxing franchise, reasserting that All Lives Matter because all are connected. But F. Gary Gray’s bio-pic about the hip-hop group N.W.A. panders to current social cynicism and valorizes hip-hop culture’s most noxious historical episode.

The Green Inferno and Knock Knock > Mad Max: Fury Road
Eli Roth’s two-fer made him the year’s wittiest political filmmaker, reviving low-grade genres as social satire — the opposite of George Miller’s craven, violent, utterly mindless spectacular.

The Stanford Prison Experiment > The Big Short and Spotlight
Kyle Patrick Alvarez experiments with the power dynamics of masculinity, while Adam McKay and Tom McCarthy both ignore race and gender components in films that celebrate white professional-class privilege (via stock-market arrogance and anti-Catholic journalism). Alvarez’s compelling, watchable actors contrast with McKay & McCarthy’s miserably dull all-celeb casts.

Black Souls > Black Mass
An authentic Mafia critique from Italy’s Francesco Munzi surpasses Scott Cooper and Johnny Depp’s mob-monster Whitey Bulger film. The crime movie Scorsese cannot make vs. the movie Scorsese has made ad nauseam. “

Macbeth > The Force Awakens*
Justin Kurzel uses Shakespeare to envision a metaphor for modern political nihilism, a moving, classical reminder of what has been lost to Star Wars infantilism. * Yes, Star Wars again. Its menace is no phantom.

In the Name of My Daughter > Carol
André Téchiné’s family saga goes beyond modish sexual transgression through deep insight into class ambition. Todd Haynes’s dull lesbian melodrama endorses the cliché of 1950s repression (while still favoring the dominant bourgeoisie) to make today’s political correctness seem “smart.”

Sicario > Bridge of Spies
Denis Villeneuve explores the moral parameters of the U.S. drug wars while Steven Spielberg plays moral-equivalency games with Cold War history. Visionary boldness vs. visionary smugness.

Horse Money > Timbuktu and Arabian Nights
Portugal’s Pedro Costa owns up to colonial debt in an emotional, visually arresting art film. He humanizes the personal cost of Europe’s immigrant debacle, while Mauritania’s Abderrahmane Sissako, in Timbuktu, panders to jihadist clichés and liberal guilt. Meanwhile, Miguel Gomes’s trilogy, Arabian Nights, reveals Portugal’s (Europe’s) capitulation to G8 and ISIL narratives.

La Sapienza > Ex Machina
Expat American Eugène Green’s Western-heritage drama, delighting in the ethics of classical architecture, perfectly contrasts with Alex Garland’s juvenile rehash of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Adult sophistication vs. teenage sci-fi misogyny.

Appropriate Behavior > Trainwreck
Desiree Akhaven’s bisexual-identity farce (the year’s most original comedy) was ignored by mainstream-media acclaim for Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer’s hetero-skank privilege.

The New Girlfriend > The Danish Girl
François Ozon spiritually redeems sexual dysfunction, but Tom Hooper settles for a ghoulish, politically correct tearjerker. Compassion vs. freakdom.

Joy > Steve Jobs
David O. Russell puts a human face on capitalism in a bio-pic that’s really an American social comedy — the opposite of Danny Boyle’s babbly hagiography, which deifies and sentimentalizes corporate fascism.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence > Anomalisa
In several powerful tableaux, Sweden’s Roy Andersson connects personal anxiety to historical anxiety, while Charlie Kaufman pampers faux existentialism with zombie puppets.

Furious 7 > It Follows
James Wan’s populist sequel in the Fast & Furious franchise celebrates E Pluribus Unum brotherhood, but David Robert Mitchell’s Detroit-set ruin porn and scaredy-pants narcissism result in the year’s crummiest thriller.

— Armond White, a film critic who writes about movies for National Review Online, received the American Book Awards’ Anti-Censorship Award. He is the author of The Resistance: Ten Years of Pop Culture That Shook the World and the forthcoming What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about the Movies.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429435/movies-2015-best-and-worst

[Johann]

I think the best movie of 2015 was Donald Trump Vs. the Republican party.
Awesome Entertainment!

[Chris Knipp]

Raw brutal truth in that.

[Chris Knipp]

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/ry.jpg

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson)

I'm finishing up watching this on Netflix streaming. Released (very limited) in the US 3 June 2015. The Swedish director Roy Andersson is unique. The only other film of his I've seen so far is You the Living, watched at the Metropolitan Cinema on the Via del Corso in Rome (it had been in the Rome Film Festival), dubbed in Italian. It was a fittingly nutty introduction. But though I don't know Swedish I enjoy the singsong intonations of Swedish in the actual sound track this time, with subtitles. I'm struck by how beautiful his images are in this one and how highly wrought his setups are. Scenes are very elaborately, precisely, lovingly staged. despite being drab, sad, ironic, deadpan Beckettian humor. In June at release time in NYC A.O. Scott of the NYTimes said
[Andersson] has perfected a style and sensibility of dry, sad, philosophically inflected humor that deserves its own special name. Sketch tragedy, maybe. Mortal slapstick. Self-hating humanism. He is a brilliant joker and a crusader against frivolity. There is unity, enough Scott notes, "to prevent Pigeon from scattering into YouTube-ready fragments," but it is in short scenes and you can pick it up or put it down at any point and come back to it later, perfect for casual Netflix viewing. Add one more to my Best Foreign Films of the Year list for 2015. Andersson has a special vision and is a distinctive craftsman.

[oscar jubis]

I've watch several 2015 films recently, some I have re-watched (99 Homes feels like a very important and very accessible film to me. It provides an education and it's entertaining. I have issues with the Argentine film Wild Tales which is surprisingly consistent for an anthology film. It's very entertaining and professional but these aspects cast doubt on the sincerity of any commentary or societal critique it might be aiming for. On the other hand, I find that Tangerine earns its subtext, so to speak. It doesn't feel exploitative to me or condescending to its characters. I will watch Gueros soon, a film Armond White thinks it's better than The Hateful 8 which I decided not to watch.I will also make time to re-watch Horse Money sooner or later. I love Hou's The Assassin, just simply love love love to look at this movie. One movie that I re-watched and liked a little less than before is Ex-Machina. Hard to be a God is baroque, grotesque, magical, and hard to watch from beginning to end. The mise-en-scene is a depraved version of Josef von Sternberg's overloaded staging.

[oscar jubis]

Is there another thread for the best films of 2015? The lists in these pages make no mention of Spike Lee's Chi-Rak. I am surprised because it seems to have been released in 2015 in LA and NY at least, so it qualifies. I think it's a unique, powerful, sensual, funny film. I notice that several outstanding critics such as Ms. Dargis really appreciate it. It's one film of 2015 I wish more people had seen.It is certainly a more indispensable film than Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales), another 2015 film I watched recently. Maybe Chi-Rak is not one of my top ten favorites, but I like it enough to be upset at the small audience relative to its achievement.
PD I am considering watching The Hateful 8 because Jennifer Jason Leigh is in it. But first I'm going to watch The End of the Tour.

[Chris Knipp]

Not mentioned because I didn't think it was very good. I reported on it in my Dec. 2015-Jan. 2016 New York Movie Journal (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3229) as follows. Below are some of the negative ones of the mixed reviews it got listed on Metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/movie/chi-raq/critic-reviews) (overall though, a very positive 77%).

http://www.chrisknipp.com/links/chi-raq.jpg

CHI-RAQ (Spike Lee 2015). It's okay to say as Ignatiy Vishnevetsky does on AV Club (http://www.avclub.com/review/spike-lees-chi-raq-fumble-worth-making-229075) that this adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata to black women withholding sex to get guns out of the ghetto of Chicago was "a fumble worth making," but it's still thoroughly misguided, repetitious and boring. Samuel L. Jackson is brought in to give the story a ceremonial flavor. John Cusack as the ghetto pastor delivers a sermon against the NRA. There are occasional unmemorable musical numbers, and most of the dialogue is rhymed. But why is so little use made of hip hop flavor, and why didn't Lee stick to New York, which he knows, and avoid Chicago, which he hasn't a clue about? Teyonah Parris, Nick Cannon, Wesley Snipes, Angela Bassett, and Jennifer Hudson also work hard but are wasted. Full of contemporary references, though. And yes, Spike Lee cares. Opened 4 DEc. 2015. At Angelika Film Center 21 Dec. 2015.

60
New York Daily News Stephen Whitty Dec 2, 2015
Jackson is terrific, of course, although he's the spice here, not the main meal. As Lysistrata, Teyonah Parris is a fierce, finger-snapping leader while, as her man Chi-Raq, a cast-against-type Nick Cannon, is surprisingly tough and moody. Read full review
60
Screen International John Hazelton Nov 23, 2015
Though it sometimes recalls the irresistibly energetic, genre-bending feel of Lee’s best films – Do The Right Thing in particular – it lacks the assurance and unifying thrust that made those features work so well. Read full review
58
The Playlist Rodrigo Perez Nov 30, 2015
While its ambition does show a director still aspiring for great heights, its patchy execution only partly restores the faith. Read full review
50
The New Yorker Anthony Lane Dec 17, 2015
The topic is so grave, and the corralling of ancient Greek comedy so audacious, that you long for Chi-Raq to succeed. Sad to report, it’s an awkward affair, stringing out its tearful scenes of mourning, and going wildly astray with its lurches into farce. Read full review
50
San Francisco Chronicle David Lewis Dec 3, 2015
In the end, Chi-Raq is a positive movie that wants to jolt us into doing something about the very real emergency in Chicago. Along the way, the execution of the narrative gets muddled, but there’s no denying that this risk-taking film has a pulse. A strong pulse. Read full review
50
The A.V. Club Ignatiy Vishnevetsky Dec 2, 2015
Chi-Raq, Lee’s modernized take on "Lysistrata," is mostly bad art; it’s about an hour too long, sometimes leadenly unfunny, and set in Chicago, a place the Brooklynite director has no feel for. Read full review

[oscar jubis]

I think a metacritic of 77 is too low. This is a very good and important film. Spike Lee's best film since 25th Hour. Your de-facto strategy again: to quote the extreme reviews that support your opinion. Who are these people you quote?

[oscar jubis]

I continue to gradually catch up with films I missed back in 2015. I became a fan of David Cronenberg in the late 1980s and only then developed an appreciation of his filmography in the horror genre. I don't want to say that Cronenberg is underrated but he is clearly not as famous as Tarantino and Spike, for instance. Is it that a segment of the audience who take movies seriously, who watch foreign and indie films, find his films too distasteful? I finally watched his MAPS TO THE STARS and I feel compelled to tell you things to convince you that it was a very unpleasant experience and that it's always exhilarating to watch anything directed by such a master of mise-en-scene and cinematography. It's also interesting to contrast MAPS TO THE STARS with another film by a master who is also being laceratingly critical of "Hollywood": David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE, a more expansive narrative that elicits a more diverse range of emotions. I found MAPS TO THE STARS brilliant but unpleasant and unvarying in tone.

[Chris Knipp]

The Fly was excellent, with Jeff Goldblum. Then Dead Ringers, remarkable, followed by Naked Lunch a trippy tour de force even a William Burroughs fan could enjoy, eXistEnz (also totally trippy) - he was on a roll. This was his best period. Didn't like Crash that much but it appealed to the intellectual literary types. I'm afraid I ignored M. Butterfly, but it wasn't really him, was it, just a stage play adaptation?

I reviewed Maps to the Stars of course; it was in the 2014 NYFF. (I think a poor choice on their part.) Here (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2845). As well as being unpleasant, I don't think it's a success. I love Cosmopolis (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3334-COSMOPOLIS-(David-Cronenberg-2012)&p=28364#post28364) and hope you remember that. It is one of the most faithful adaptations of a book (and an interesting one, by Don DeLillo) that I've ever seen on screen. Beautifully done and an example of Robert Pattinson's seriousness as an actor in choosing interesting roles and directors.