The 15 Best Films of 2015

15) Dope
Written & Directed By: Rick Famuyiwa
Starring: Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, & Kiersey Clemons.
STARS: 3 out of 4

Brief Description: Dope is the journey of Malcolm (Moore) and his two friends Jib (Revolori) and Diggy (Clemons) and their struggle of getting out of the slums of Los Angeles. The three high school kids are extremely bright and are looking to escape their circumstances by getting into college, until a bag of cocaine comes into their possession. Dope is all about the labels the world places upon you and what you can do escape those labels and be the person you want to become. While the tone does vary wildly between drama and humor, the performances of the cast, the amazing 90's hip hop soundtrack (plus the handful of original songs created for this film by Pharrell, and the performances of all the young actors make this film worth watching, As of this writing you can stream Dope for free on Netflix, and you should do.

14) Sisters
Directed By: Jason Moore
Starring: Tina Fey & Amy Poehler
STARS: 3 out of 4

Brief Description: No film made me laugh as much in 2015 as Sisters did. I laughed harder at Trainwreck, but more consistency at Sisters. (The other big comedy of 2015 was Spy, and that movie was chuckle-worthy at best). I was dragged to see this movie thanks to my friends being big babies and not wanting to see The Force Awakens on its opening day weekend, but I'm glad I was dragged. The movie is non-stop laughs, and Fey and Poehler are a delight as always (well, except Baby Mama, but that's another story). The film brings in a lot of current and former SNL alums, some of television's funniest people, and gives Ike Barinholtz his break-through performance. If you like to laugh, check out Sisters.

How Bridge of Spies Shows The Ending Stages of Steven Spielberg's Career

When all is said and done, Steven Spielberg might be known as America's greatest director of all time. Classics such as Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, and E.T.: The Extraterrestrial are some of the greatest films ever and near and dear to many people's hearts. Spielberg has shown a great knack for story structure and story telling, and he's had the opportunity to be great over several genres. Yet as he comes off his 32rd directorial motion picture and as he enters his fifth decade of movie making, I am not so sure Spielberg should be making movies anymore, and each new movie he makes tarnishes his legacy that much more. It doesn't diminish his past accomplishments, but it does diminish the way people like me think of him and respect him. That's why I watch a good film like Bridge of Spies and not ever want to see another Steven Spielberg movie again.

As a millennial, Spielberg isn't making movies for me anymore. He's making movies for my 60 year old parents and Oscar voters. I'm sure some of that has to do with Spielberg's age (he turned 69 last December), yet 70 year old George Miller just made Mad Max: Fury Road so that can't be all of it. I just think Spielberg lost whatever edge he had to begin with, and isn't in the same creative mind space that he has occupied for the last 40 years. His last five films have been: Bridge of Spies, Lincoln, War Horse, The Adventures of Tintin, and Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. His last good movie was 2005's Munich- which is now over a decade old. Bridge of Spies, Lincoln, and War Horse are films meant for an elderly generation, and Tintin and Crystal Skull are films that 30-years-ago Spielberg would have made classics, yet fell flat (really flat with Crystal Skull). Whatever sense of adventure he had that made films like Raiders and Jurassic Park great is completely gone, and whatever eye he had for drama seems to appeal to a generation that's dying out. I don't mean to be ageist when it comes to film making- people like my parents and grandparents need to be able to enjoy films- but if you can't appeal to younger moviegoers as well then those films will be lost by the wayside.

Where Does The Danish Girl Fall On The King's Speech Spectrum?

Last year I wrote about The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything and where it fell on The King’s Speech Spectrum. The King’s Speech Spectrum is a ratings spectrum for prestige British period piece movies about extraordinary events or people that seemingly only get made to win Academy Awards. On the lower end of the spectrum is the spectrum’s name sake, The King’s Speech. It is a dull, uninteresting movie that appeals solely to the elderly and those who remember the events depicted in the film. On the high end of the spectrum is The Imitation Game, a well-made period piece that’s engaging for people of all ages and creates themes and messages that are still applicable to current times.

The Danish Girl is a 2015 film directed by Tom Hooper and stars Eddie Redmayne (two key figures to force The Danish Girl to fit on the spectrum) and Alicia Vikander. It follows the relationship between the painter Einar Wegener (Redmayne) and his wife Gerda (Vikander) as Einar goes through a transgender exploration which will eventually lead him to be the first person to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

Extremely Well Made and Incredibly Boring: My Review of The Revenant

I struggle with The Revenant. Not in the sense that it was a purposefully tough movie to watch, but I struggle with it in the sense of trying to respect it on a rational level while despising it on an emotional level. Now I fully admit that I wanted to dislike the movie coming into it, but there are plenty of movies that I’ve only watched solely because they were nominated for Oscars and the quality of the film made me change my mind. Unfortunately, The Revenant was not one of those films. 

But that being said, my feeling of the film and your feeling of this film from watching the trailers won’t be changed by seeing the film. To me, the film looked like a journey that I did not want to experience, and I was correct in my assumption. I know people who couldn’t wait to see this film, and it’s one of their all-time favorites. Ultimately, it will not matter what I write in the rest of this review, because how you feel going into the film based upon the trailers and TV spots you’ve seen is basically how you will feel coming out.

Nonetheless, you cannot deny the masterful and technical achievement it took to get this picture made despite what your opinions of the film are. I do not think that having an arduous shoot is a good enough reason to give a film Academy Awards, but there are a plethora of aspects to this film that are technical masterpieces and worth studying in film classrooms for decades to come. Yet it is extremely difficult to respect something you dislike so much.

Brooklyn: The Most Charming Film of 2015

Maybe because I saw Brooklyn immediately after watching the incredibly dark and somewhat boring The Revenant and Room, or maybe because Brooklyn is just a great film that stands on its own in its own right, but I really enjoyed this film. Brooklyn is a romantic tale starring Saoirse (rhymes with inertia) Ronan as an Irish immigrant coming to America in the early 1950's. A girl with lots of potential, but no promise, Ronan's Ellis hops on a boat to find a better life for herself in New York City. She gets a job at a local retail store and eats up meeting a nice and incredibly charming Italian boy played by Emory Cohen. The two meet and fall in love. There's not a whole not to the story itself, but it's the execution that makes it so exquisite.

Part of the charm of Brooklyn is that there's very little that goes wrong. Normally tension and drama are necessary for a story to work, but the lack of it in Brooklyn that makes it so endearing and watchable. You see Ellis grow stronger as she comes into her own in The Big City, and you see how that affects her relationship not only with Cohen's Tony, but with her housemates. Ellis lives in a boarding house, and the scenes where Ellis and her housemates (most notably the banter between the characters played by Emily Bett Rickards and Eve Macklin and the Den Mother played by Mary O'Driscoll) eat dinner are some of the best parts of the film. Brooklyn is a film about living and enjoying your life, and by having these characters grow and charm their way into your hearts, you'll love it from not giving you the normal melodrama you'd expect from a romantic movie.

Brooklyn is what Nicholas Sparks adaptions should aspire to become; romantic without feeling cheesy or forced. A film where you root for the main characters to get together and where you know the main characters will get there without being forced to watch unnecessary obstacles. There most certainly are obstacles to Ellis's and Tony's relationship, that's the entire third act of the film, but it feels earnest and earned in Brooklyn.

Ultimately, Brooklyn is a film that will just make you happy. It's pleasant and enjoyable, and I'm glad it got nominated for Best Picture. The original intent of expanding the Best Picture nominees was so that great tent pole films like The Dark Knight wouldn't get snubbed. Ironically, the big tent pole film of 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road, probably would have gotten a Best Picture nomination no matter what and it's the smaller Brooklyn that ended up being the beneficiary of The Dark Knight Rule. Brooklyn is the reason that I love being an Oscar competitionist. It's the type of film I wouldn't have probably seen normally, and I film I would strongly recommend to all.

WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT BROOKLYN? LET US KNOW ON OUR FACEBOOK WALL!

________________________________

If you would like to comment on this post, please visit our Facebook page

My Review of The Martian and How It Helped Resurrect Ridley Scott's Career

“I’m pretty much fucked.”

This is the first line in Andy Weir’s 2011 novel The Martian, but it might as well have been the words uttered by director Ridley Scott after his 2014 film Exodus: Gods and Kings was released. Exodus did end up making its money back (assuming the marketing budget wasn’t astronomical- which it might have been) but it’s 27% on Rotten Tomatoes (RT) was just another film in the laundry list of terrible Ridley Scott films that he’s made within the past 15 years. Ridley Scott will be remembered as an all-time great director thanks to Bladerunner, Alien, and Gladiator, but since the release of 2001’s Black Hawk Down, Scott has made a lot of terrible films including 2013’s The Counselor (35% on RT), 2010’s Robin Hood (43% on RT), 2008’s Body of Lies (54% on RT), 2005’s Kingdom of Heaven (39% on RT), 2006’s A Good Year (25% on RT), and 2012’s Prometheus (which I don’t care what RT says about this one, this was a huge disappointment among all Ridley Scott fans and fans of the Alien franchise). Certainly Scott has made some good films including 2003’s Matchstick Men and 2007’s American Gangster, but the perception on Ridley Scott as recently as the summer of 2015 was that this was a man who seemingly forgot how to direct.

Black Mass Hole: How Scott Cooper's Vision of the Whitey Bulger Story Ruined the Film

James J. “Whitey” Bulger is one of the most notorious gangsters in American history. He is responsible for at least 19 murders plus extortion, racketeering, and drug trafficking. With Steve Flemmi and Kevin Weeks by his side, Bulger and The Winter Hill Gang terrorized South Boston for decades. The actual events of Whitey Bulger's life are so damn interesting that a Hollywood version of his life should have given us a better movie than the final product of Black Mass.

Black Mass is directed by Scott Cooper. The film uses the same techniques that Cooper has used on Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace, his first two feature films, and Cooper's fingerprints are very much on all three of his movies. All three films are methodically paced, bleak-looking, character-driven, and frankly often times outright boring. I actually enjoyed Out of the Furance, but I understand its 53% Rotten Tomatoes score. Crazy Heart, despite being an excellent showcase for Jeff Bridges' talent, is a dull and meandering film. Black Mass pulls a little bit from both of Cooper's previous films as this is an excellent showcase for Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger but moves with a sense of purpose from scene to scene. All three of Cooper's films are extremely character-driven, often times to the story's detriment. That was the case here with Black Mass as this story deserves an action-packed, fast pace script. There was no reason Black Mass couldn't be this generation's Goodfellas- interesting characters that were fun to be with that, while still being plot driven, never lost sight of its characters. Unfortunately, I'll have to "settle" for this generation's actual version of the Whitey Bulger story- The Departed.

The Best Movie of the Summer is Dope

Grantland's Mark Harris is an avid spokesperson for "prestige" films (my words, not his)- films focusing on story-telling and characters and art versus big budget epic blockbusters that would rather replace CGI with its script in order to rake in massive amounts of dough. While I do share Harris' love of a good prestige film, I also can't say I share Harris' dislike of big budget actions films as well. I love a good summer movie when it's done well. Most recently we received The Dark Knight, Edge of Tomorrow, and Mad Max: Fury Road thanks to Hollywood's love of capitalizing on the summer season and I don't want to live in a world without those films. The summer of 2015 hasn't given us a shortage of money-making epics leading off with Furious 7, bouncing to Avengers: Age of Ultron, and now leading the pack (and the world) is Jurassic World. But in a season where Hollywood (mainly Universal Studios) is looking at its pile of money like its Scrooge McDuck about to nose dive into a pile of gold coins, the winner of the summer season is a little Indie that could. Well, winner is a relative term. Jurassic World and Chris Pratt are obviously the true winner, but in terms of quality film making, Dope is the best film you'll see this summer.

Dope is a film written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa- a man who's credits before this looks like a grocery list. It premiered at Sundance, and thanks to Open Road films, Dope was released domestically as counter-programming to the big budget action flicks. Considering Open Road bought the film for a little over 3 million and it's already grossed over 14, it was money well spent. And I personally thank Open Road (and Sony) to give me ability to watch a film this good.

Dope follows around high school seniors Malcolm (Shameik Moore) and his two best friends Jib (Tony Revolori aka the young Indian boy from The Grand Budapest Hotel) and Diggy (Kiersey Clemons)- self-proclaimed Black nerds who love 90's hip-hop and live in the poorest of poor neighbors in Southern California. All three are smart and Malcom has realistic ambitions of attending Harvard and getting out of the ghetto. These three do everything together: they play in a rock band called Awreeo (pronounced "Oreo"), they hit on girls together, they study together, and they get beat up together.

Jurassic World Movie Review: It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Jurassic World
Directed By: Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, & Vincent D'Onofrio
STARS: 3 out of 4

If you were pumped to see Jurassic World based upon the trailers, then you are going to love this movie. It delivers on everything it promises and then some. You have Chris Pratt doing an incredible Harrison Ford impression and being the bona fide action star / movie star that he is, you get to see Pratt riding around on a motorcycle with velociraptors, and you have the newly created Indominus Rex wrecking havoc among the Jurassic World theme park. It's the quintessential summer blockbuster. You get explosions, chase scenes, and CGI dinosaurs.

I can also see little kids growing up loving this movie the way I loved Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park as a kid. Like most little boys my age, I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up. I had dinosaur toys, dinosaur books, dinosaur clothes, and I even tried to read the Michael Crichton books the Spielberg movies were based upon. If you have a young kid seeing Jurassic World today, I can imagine that kid having the same sense of wonder, imagination, and amazement seeing Jurassic World as I had seeing Jurassic Park.

Should You See It? Reviewing 5 of the Biggest Documentaries of 2015

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (HBO)
Directed By: Andrew Jarecki
Release Date: February 8, 2015
Should You See It?: Absolutely

Brief Description: The Jinx is a six part documentary true-crime series regarding the infamous real estate mogul Robert Durst. While it is, obviously, not technically a movie, it is a compelling documentary that works better as a limited event show rather than a movie. It seems that many documentaries don't work as a one-and-a-half / two hour film and work better as either a short film or a TV show, yet are forced to package itself as a full-length movie in order to maximize profits. The most obvious example that comes to mind is the epic 1994 film Hoop Dreams- which follows the lives two black basketball players from the inner city of Chicago through all four years of their high school career. The film is great, but it's too long (its run time is 170 minutes). It should have been a TV series limited event, but based upon the viewing habits of Americans 20 years ago, it was a documentary film. The Jinx would be too compact as a full length documentary, but is perfect as a six episode event.

The Jinx is a fantastic series because it follows around a compelling sociopath- Robert Durst. The access that Andrew Jarecki was able to get (multiple one-on-one interviews) is incredible and you're both horrified at the actions of this man that you're watching, but you just can't help but be glued to your TV screen because of how charming Durst is. You learn about the three murders Durst was accused of committing and Andrew Jarecki has an incredible sense of storytelling. I know Jarecki has been criticized for messing with the timeline of events, but he did so because he's a master of story and plot. We like to assume documentaries should just be events as they occur, analogous to the news, but we expect the same arc and tropes in our documentaries as we do in our feature films, and Jarecki knows this and used this to his advantage to create one of the best documentaries of the year.