2015 as deep as it gets

I’m certain never to see as many films released in a single year as the one just past, since I plan to revert to a more retrospective and thematic approach to my viewing and reviewing.  Once I’ve finished this round-up, I’ll post a listing of my hundred best films of 2015, in comparison to the Top100 Metacritic ratings.  Here I’ll group films by oddly similar MC ratings, though I will discriminate by my own opinion. 

There are films that arrive with a buzz or vibe -- or directorial track record -- that makes me avoid all reviews, so I can approach them with fresh and wondering eyes.  This was the case with two quiet mindblowers that have finally arrived on DVD, both of which would definitely reward repeat viewings.  For both, I recommend an initial innocent screening, to find out for yourself what is going on before the camera, behind the masks, beneath the surface, beyond what you can see.  Each will leave you with more questions than answers, enlarging in your mind long after the end credits roll.  Unless impervious to their respective appeals, you will find each achingly human, discovering humor in misery and a glimpse of spirit in the mundane.

45 Years (MC-94, FC #23, MC #8, NFX) denotes the anniversary that a comfortable British couple living in rural Norfolk is about to celebrate.  They are played by two old reliables, Charlotte Rampling and Tim Courtenay, who’ve done a lot more than survived since the Sixties, which period is evoked by music cues throughout.  The two leads alone are worth the price of admission, but that’s not all.  Andrew Haigh’s writing and direction is subtle but tight, everything is connected, and you have to stay sharp to see anything happen at all.  It takes an extraordinary gift to make the ordinary profound, and to insert a sense of suspense into the everyday.  Under a quiet surface secrets come to light, obsessions are unleashed, that shake the marriage to its foundation.  I am loathe to reveal any of what happens (or doesn’t) since it unfolds to an ending that many will see differently, or even find befuddling.  It seemed clear to me, but was not the end I wished for, which only made it seem more true to life.  Anyway – see it, and then we can talk.  And I mean that literally, since I think this would be a terrific selection for the Cinema Salon film club, supposing that screenings and discussions may resume with the reopening of the Clark auditorium in November.

Anomalisa (MC-92, FC #12, MC #7, NFX) would also yield an animated discussion, if possibly less suited to the demographic of the film club.  You really need some attraction to the depressive humor and twisted worldview of Charlie Kaufman to get into the spirit of this film, which is even weirder than usual.  The fascinating and explanatory backstory to the film is revealed in an exemplary DVD extra, but I advise you to find your way into its weirdnesses without a guide.  I’ll go so far as to divulge that the story began as a three-person audio play with sound effects and music, but I won’t tell who the three voices were (and are), or how they’re embodied in puppet animation (with co-direction by Duke Johnson).  Suffice to say that the character Lisa is an anomaly in several ways, making for a mordantly moving romantic tragicomedy, as well as a bizarre look at what it’s like “Being Charlie Kaufman.”  This is another film that makes the ordinary strange, and the strange ordinary, to brilliant effect.  (For more detail without giving away too much, see Dana Stevens.)

I was strangely resistant to watching Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (MC-91, FC #30, NFX), even though I am a longtime fan of Jafar Panahi.  The first film he made after Iranian authorities put him under house arrest and forbade him from making any more was This is Not a Film.  To me it lived down to its title, and I thought the critical acclaim represented political rather than aesthetic judgment.  So I expected this latest to be another dutiful exercise in support of free speech.  Not at all -- Taxi is fantastic.  Fascinating, thought-provoking, witty and winning, it could have been called Everything is a Film.  Panahi is driving a cab around Teheran, with a camera mounted on the dashboard, and picking up characters for sequential vignettes.  We’re never quite sure, and neither are some of the characters, who might be a real passenger and who might be playacting.  Each is a telling episode, however, and somehow in 82 minutes the film adds up to a lot, from a genial portrait of Panahi himself to a miniature retrospective of his film career (and other Iranian Neorealist masterpieces), from a disquisition on the ubiquity of video recording devices to a sly satire on fundamentalist censorship.  Characters range from a DVD bootlegger to a bleeding accident victim trying to record his last will and testament via cellphone camera on the way to the hospital; from two bickering old ladies carrying goldfish in a bowl to Panahi’s ten-year-old niece (or should that be “niece”?), cute as button and sharp as a tack, making a film herself and debating documentary with her uncle.  It’s a hoot, as well as a mindbender, and courageous as hell .

Two very intimate films about a woman’s health issues received similar critical acclaim.  In Blind (MC-83, NFX), a Norwegian woman is losing her sight and maybe her mind.  In Eskil Vogt’s direction, it’s not clear what we’re seeing, whether it’s her surroundings or inside her head, what’s real or what’s imagined.  In her effort to keep her inner sight alive through memory, the woman writes her husband and some neighbors into a series of sexual and romantic fantasies.  Moody and mysterious in a Nordic vein, this film engages both the eye and the intellect.

In James White (MC-83, NFX), Cynthia Nixon plays the title character’s mother, who is dying of cancer.  She offers as strong a portrayal of a woman dying as Emma Thompson in Wit (a role Nixon herself played on stage), but the film bears the deep personal imprint of writer-director Josh Mond.  His eponymous surrogate is played by Christopher Abbott, but you get the feeling he’s acting out scenes directly from the filmmaker’s life, as he copes with the end of his mother’s life and the deferred beginning of his own.  The film offers no excuses for his self-pity and bad behavior, as it captures a world of Manhattan literati with immediacy of insight.  Short, intense, and pitch-dark, the film packs a wallop, though hard to watch.

Two totally different indie takes on the horror genre wound up with identical Metacritic ratings but diametrically opposed reactions from me.  The Witch (MC-83, NFX) is officially a 2016 release though it won acclaim at Sundance in 2015.  Ultimately marketed as a scarefest, this first film from writer-director Robert Eggers has more than chills in mind, as signaled by its opening title card, “A New England Folktale,” and its source material in the writings of Cotton Mather.  At the opening, a stubbornly independent man is being expelled with his family from Plymouth Plantation in 1630.  The gates of the compound close behind them as they set out into the wilderness, in search of a solitary homestead at the edge of the woods.  The film is effective at establishing period and place, and the acting seems convincingly historical, and histrionic as well.  Scary creatures live in the dark woods at the edge of civilization, and demonic forces infiltrate the family.  Eggers exploits some genre shocks, but develops a disturbing mood and a folkloric sense of the uncanny.

With It Follows (MC-83, FC #22, MC #14, NFX), I couldn’t follow either the film or the critical consensus.  If you do choose to watch this -- if the idea of a topical update on the neighborhood teen scarefest of Halloween appeals to you -- then it won’t be because of anything I have to say about this half-clever, totally-fake remake.

Another dissent to enter in passing.  I’m not going to buck the critical consensus on Son of Saul (MC-89, FC #14, MC #12, NFX), but simply register my own inability to watch it.  Maybe my worldview is too fragile to face up to such an intimate portrayal of existence in a Nazi extermination camp, or maybe my cinematic appreciation is too narrow to encompass this film’s predetermined minimalist approach.  There are very few films I do not finish once I start, especially those that come with raves from critics I trust, but there was no way I was making it to the end of this one.

From around the world comes a quartet of well-regarded foreign films.  Coming Home (MC-81, NFX) represents a homecoming for Zhang Yimou -- after his swerve into government-sponsored spectacle -- and a reunion with his muse, Gong Li.  Rather than swordplay and martial arts, he delivers a family melodrama in historical context, in a vein similar to my favorite of his films, To Live.  During the Cultural Revolution, a longtime prisoner escapes and tries to return home, where a daughter he barely knows betrays him to the authorities, to curry favor for her dance career.  A few years later, he is finally released and returns home, but now his wife (Gong Li) no longer recognizes him.  Undaunted, he does everything he can to restore her memory.  Well-acted Sirkian melodrama with an overlay of political parable, Coming Home satisfies on several levels.

Theeb (MC-80, NFX) is rather like Lawrence of Arabia from an Arab perspective.  First-time Jordanian writer-director Naji Abu Nowar centers his story on a Bedouin child who gets caught up in the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule during WWI.  His style echoes the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, but it is the performance of Jacir Eid in the title role that really warrants attention for this folkloric tale, which visits four desert water wells, symbolic sites of anarchistic conflict among tribes, rebels, bandits, and imperial authorities.  In the rendering of landscapes as well as faces, Theeb warranted its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

As did the Turkish entry Mustang (MC-83, NFX).  Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut is reminiscent of Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, but highly distinctive in its portrayal of five endearing teen sisters who are imprisoned at home when their emerging sexuality threatens social norms.  A minor indiscretion on the last day of school lands the orphaned girls in lockdown, to be married off in short order by their gruff uncle and kindly but old-fashioned grandmother.  Lively and funny, despite the girls’ outrageous fate, this spirited film is as much a celebration of sisterhood as a condemnation of patriarchy.

More teen girls in Breathe (MC-78, NFX), one shy, awkward, and asthmatic; one sexy, mean, and crazy; each beautiful in her own way.  This French film is likewise directed by a young woman, Mélanie Laurent, and marked by extremely winning performances from young actresses.  When the brash newcomer at school befriends the less social girl, their bond becomes too tight to survive.  This depth of intimacy is risky all around, such suffocation is bound to end in betrayal and damage, in this inside view of the throes of teenage angst.

Dropping down a bit in critical consensus, we attend to Black Mass (MC-68, NFX), which in my viewing turned out to be considerably better than expected, and certainly better than the title portended.  Though it’s not saying all that much from my perspective, I liked this film better than Scorsese’s The Departed, and found Johnny Depp much more believable than Jack Nicholson in impersonating Whitey Bulger.  Even preferred the feel for the city of Boston in Scott Cooper’s film.  And the cast is top-notch all the way, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Whitey’s politician brother, Joel Edgerton as his FBI contact, and other welcome faces turning up in even the smallest roles.  Truly chilling, because it sticks so close to the facts while going easy on the gore, and because the prosthetics that make Depp almost totally unrecognizable read as the scary mask that Bulger himself would put on.  Joe Berlinger’s documentary Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger (MC-71, NFX) makes a worthy companion piece.  If you haven’t had it up to here with gangster films, then this one is worth seeing.

Pawn Sacrifice (MC-65, NFX) comes in under the radar, but I was quite taken with Tobey Maguire’s portrayal of chess prodigy Bobby Fischer.  Edward Zwick’s docudrama is definitely not rendered superfluous by the recent Liz Garbus documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World.  The supporting cast is generally excellent (notably Liev Schreiber as Boris Spassky), the mindset of a chess master is plausibly rendered, and biographical incidents are detailed that prefigure Fischer’s unbalanced mental state, without attempting to solve the enigma of his personality, or the correlation between his abilities and disabilities.  This film also renders the Cold War environment that turned him into a celebrity - our tarnished knight against the dominant Russians - and a maniac.  On the whole, it’s better than expected.

Truth (MC-66, NFX) makes an instructive contrast to the far-superior Spotlight, starting with the respective titles.  One abstract and inexplicit; the other both specific (the story of the Globe’s “Spotlight” investigative team) and metaphoric.  One with very little sense of place or psychological complexity; the other truly evocative of locale and mixed motives.  One sees journalism as competition, the other as calling.  One goes for hero worship (or demolishment), the other celebrates the heroism of humble effort.  One follows Hollywood formulae, while the other demonstrates an actual commitment to the complications of truth.  Both, however, have excellent casts conveying a realistic picture of how the so-called mainstream media works, or how it did before being overridden by the Internet.  Cate Blanchett plays the “60 Minutes” producer who during the 2004 election broke the story of Bush’s Air National Guard “service” during Vietnam, only to be drowned out by attacks on the veracity of a few documents, with all the people involved (except Bush) losing their jobs.  Robert Redford is actually plausible as Dan Rather, as are other good actors in lesser roles.  But the writing is hackneyed and the direction pedestrian, and a film that started out with my interest and involvement, ended with me scoffing out loud.  Cate gives Mary Mapes a bit more dimension than is derived from latter’s own book, but the script does her no favors.

Here are several films enhanced by their starring actresses, but not enough to make them must-sees.

Reliable supporting actress Patricia Clarkson gets the lead in Learning to Drive (MC-59, NFX), playing a Manhattan literary lioness whose husband has left her for a younger woman.  To visit her daughter upstate, she needs to learn to drive, and Ben Kingsley is her turbaned Sikh instructor.  The film feints toward romantic comedy but then goes elsewhere, with a feminine viewpoint that I found appealing, from director Isabel Coixet on down. 

Sarah Silverman shows some real acting chops in I Smile Back (MC-59, NFX), but Adam Salky’s film does not break new ground in the “diary of a mad housewife” genre.  Silverman lives in a nice suburban house, with a nice suburban husband, and two nice suburban children, but she’s depressed and self-destructive, addicted to booze, coke, and illicit sex.  Despite the familiarity of the story, Silverman reveals layers of truth deeper than the film can contain.

Looking for more Bel Powley after Diary of a Teenage Girl, I stumbled upon A Royal Night Out (MC-58, NFX), a fictionalized adventure of British princesses out on the streets of London through the night of VE Day in 1945, celebrating with the common folk.  Powley is fun as “P2” – Margaret -- but of course Princess Elizabeth is the lead, played by Sarah Gadon.  Rupert Everett and Emily Watson are the King and Queen, still rehearsing his speech, good fun for Anglophiles all round.  Jack Reynor plays a disillusioned airman and fantasy consort for Elizabeth, in a thankless role that nonetheless suggests he will soon be a major star, as well as heart-throb.  While watching the film, it pleased me to imagine what my mother was doing that very night, in the uniform of a British Wren.

Jennifer Lawrence is reason enough to watch Joy (MC-56, NFX), but this time around David O. Russell and the rest of the gang from American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook do not keep up with her.  The film seems hamstrung by its source material, the autobiography of a woman who invented a mop and marketed it on TV, with a wacky persistence that built her an entrepreneurial empire.  So we watch dysfunctional family humor morph into celebration of plucky business success with a hint of romantic comedy, adding up to not much at all.

Al Pacino, Annette Bening, and Christopher Plummer are reasons enough to watch Danny Collins (MC-58, NFX), but Dan Fogelberg’s film will not tell you anything you don’t already know -- mainly about the decadent lifestyle of aging sell-out rock stars, and their need for redemption through caring, by the miraculous intervention of a voice from the past.  The old pros, however, make it almost worthwhile.  The only reason I put it on my Netflix queue was I’d just re-watched Pacino at the start of his stardom in The Godfather, and wanted a glimpse of where he is now.  Still able to hold the screen.

Addendum:  To complete my survey of the Top 100 films of 2015, here are several more highly-regarded films (all on Netflix streaming) that I could not bear to watch all the way through.  It took only ten minutes to decide that Hard to Be a God (MC-90, FC #11, NFX) was not for me; Aleksei German’s mash-up of Tarkovsky mixes medieval and sci-fi tropes into an unintelligible and indigestible porridge.  Took even less time to rule out Pedro Costa’s Horse Money (MC-84, FC #15, NFX). 

I actually made it into the fourth episode of Gangs of Wasseypur (MC-89, NFX), a Bollywood homage to The Godfather, which was released in theaters for a marathon screening, but on Netflix as tv episodes; I planned to make it all the way through until I saw there were eight episodes instead of six, of this energetic but super-violent multigenerational gangster saga set in a remote Indian city. 

I watched half of Guy Maddin’s Forbidden Room (MC-83, FC #33, NFX) with a smile fixed on my face, while he played wildly with silent movie and avant-garde film conventions, but it definitely wore out my patience, and I was content to skip the rest. 

Last but definitely not least, I gave a try to the first of Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights trilogy (MC-80, FC #5, NFX), which is quite different from anything you might expect, self-indulgent but engaging.  Of the little bit I’ve seen so far (and I do expect to watch more), it’s mostly a metaphoric documentary about Portugal under the regime of EU-mandated austerity.  Definitely for a specialized taste, but not without merit.