Ridley Scott is a master of directing science fiction. He is a visual filmmaker who knows how to make each of the worlds that are in his films look unique. He also knows that the best science fiction films work as a commentary on the nature of mankind. In
The Martian, Scott finds the story of a astronaut who is stranded on Mars after a massive dust storm causes the rest of the crew to evacuate the planet.
Although the film is definitely science fiction, a lot of the elements in it are presented in a way that makes it seem like we are watching a classic survival story. We see Damon's character, Mark Watney, have to perform several scientific set ups in order to survive for a couple of years before the back up space shuttle can arrive. The story also covers the efforts by NASA back on planet earth as they try to come up with a way to get Watney home.
Besides Scott, the other great detail with this movie is the script by Drew Goddard (
The Cabin in the Woods) and the performance by Matt Damon. Damon adds a very funny and human touch to the film. It is usually something one doesn't see much in Scott's movies but it is a welcome change here and the result is one of Ridley Scott's best films to date.
#7
In making The Revenant, Alejandro G. Inarritu has made what maybe his most enjoyable and complete film yet to date. It's odd, because on the surface, this film seems like it would be a chore to sit through, given that Inarritu is a director that does not seem to mind showing us human suffering at all. But in tapping into the story of Hugh Glass, Inarritu shows us a story about the primal nature of humans, nature and ultimately, revenge.
The story starts with Glass and his son accompanying a group of fur hunters on a hunting trip deep into the American wilderness of the 1820's, where they are attacked by Indians. As Glass leads the group away from the Indians, he is viciously attacked by a bear. As the group leaves him behind so they can make it home, they leave Glass behind with his son and a fellow hunter, John Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is not keen on staying behind with Glass so he attempts to kill him. When Glass's son sees Fitzgerald doing this, he tries to stop it but is killed by Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald then leaves Glass behind to die. Needless to say, Glass manages to survive and begins a long, bloody quest in order to exact his revenge against Fitzgerald.
The acting in something like this is key and thankfully DiCaprio does a great job with the role. In fact he barely speaks at all due to the bear attack his character suffers. DiCaprio is very good at showing us the physicality of what Glass has to go through just to get back to health after surviving the bear attack. And Tom Hardy shows what a great actor he is. As Fitzgerald, Hardy gives us a personality to the part that in another actor's hands, could have been very one note. But it is not, and with Inarritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki giving us some amazing scenery, this film is one that stays with you long after you watch it.
#6
For years, I have always said that Adam McKay was the heir apparent to Harold Ramis. I said this mostly because I noticed a certain anger about social issues that always seems to seep into McKay's films in the same way that it did in Ramis's films. Anchorman 2 could be seen as a commentary on the media and the over saturation of the news. The Other Guys makes fun of the financial institutions amid the story of two regular cops. But with The Big Short, McKay gets serious about his social commentary and as a result, he has made the best film of his career.
The story starts off in 2005. Michael Burry (Christian Bale) is a hedge fund manager who notices a ton of problems with the way the housing market is set up with a system of bad loans. So against the advice of everyone around him, he uses his hedge fund and bets against the housing market at a time when it was suppose to be "rock solid." This attracts the attention of a host of other investors, like Jarred Vennett (Ryan Gosling), a Wall Street trader who sees opportunity in the housing market crashing. It also gets a look at by Mark Baum (Steve Carrell), another hedge fund manager, who travels down to Florida and witnesses first hand how bad the housing market has gotten. Two younger investors Charlie Geller and Jamie Shipley think this could be the break they are looking for in order to get into Wall Street. They get the help of a retired banker, Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), to set them up with the deal.
Through these characters, McKay shows us how that even though these guys knew the housing market was going to crash, the system was set up by the big banks all along. The film is full of anger not at just the banks for screwing the American people over, but with the whole business culture at large. "This is why I quit!" Rickert tells Geller and Shipley in one scene. "All this business does is reduce people to ones and zeros." McKay knows that at the heart of this film it is us, the average people who matter and he never really takes his eyes off of that. In the end, the investors did win and make some big money out of the deal, but in reality, McKay asks us, did anyone really win?
#5
Is man letting technology get too much control over our lives? A question that has been asked in many a science fiction film. But as the years go by, we are starting to see technology (phones, computers, etc.) become more and more prevalent in our society. Alex Garland must have noticed this and came up with Ex Machina. A sci-fi film that is also part social commentary and part thriller.
Caleb Smith (Domhall Gleeson) is a programmer for a major tech company who wins a sweepstakes to spend one week visit at the home of Nathan Bateman, the mysterious CEO of the software company Caleb works for. Once Caleb arrives at the huge home, he realizes that Nathan has him there for other purposes. He has built an artificial intelligence robot named Ava. Nathan wants Caleb to administer a Turning test on Ava, which is a way to determine an AI's ability to appear human.
What happens soon after becomes a cat and mouse game between the three main characters. Does Nathan have Caleb there for some other nefarious purpose? Is Caleb used as a pawn by Ava as a way to get rid of Nathan? Is Ava pitting Caleb again Nathan as a means of escaping into society?
This story is very effective at keeping the audience guessing as to the true intent of what all the characters are up to. It also works as a social commentary in some surprising ways. Garland asks us that if robots eventually make it out into society undetected, would we even care after awhile?
Garland is very effective with his writing here. Plus he gets great performances out of all his actors. Especially from Alicia Vakander, who performance as the AI Ava announces her as a major talent arriving on the scene. The last shot of her in the film is a simple image, but it is one that is scary and in an odd way, says what is happening in our society.
#4
Every now and then, you get a film that surprises you. It Follows is probably the most memorable horror film I have seen in a very long time. It doesn't feel gimmicky. It has characters that feel like normal teenagers. The tone of the film feels very similar to the great horror films of directors like John Carpenter and Wes Craven. It takes place in the real world but it has stylistic touches to it that show that it takes place in a unique cinematic world. There is very few films like this one out in the cinemas now.
The story follows Jay, a Michigan college student, as she goes on a date to the movies with Hugh. In the theater, Hugh freaks out. He sees the appearance of a woman staring at him. He asks Jay if she sees the woman and she does not. They soon leave the theater. Later on, the two of them go on another date and the night ends with the two of them in Hugh's car having sex. After they are done, Hugh knocks out Jay with chloroform. He ties Jay up to a wheelchair. With Jay asks what is going on, she now sees the woman that Jay saw earlier in the theater walking towards her now. The monster, Hugh tells her, can take on the form of any person and it is passed on to other people through sex. If Jay does not pass the curse on to someone else, she will be murdered.
The monster itself is frightening. Since it takes on the form of different people, we the audience are always left in suspense as to if people in the background are the monster or if they are just simply walking by the characters. The film also has the benefit in having Maika Monroe in the lead role as Jay. She is going to be a fantastic actress. Here she possesses the quality that Jaime Lee Curtis had in Halloween: Smart but vulnerable. Tough but sensitive to how the monster affects her and to her friends around her. Couple that with a great 80's synth score by Disasterpeace and you have a film that stays with you long after it is over. Just like any great horror film should do.
#3
Spotlight is an excellent film about the Boston Globe investigation team and the efforts they had to take in order to make sure that their stories about the Catholic Church and their cover ups on the sex scandal that many of the priests in Boston were involved with over the years. The film works as a thriller, a drama, and as a political piece about the media and it's job on reporting important events. But above all else, the film is a love letter to the newspaper and how that even though newspapers maybe going out of style in the age of the internet, the newspaper is still a relevant and vital part of our society.
The story starts in 2001. New editor of the Boston Globe, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) has just arrived at the newspaper. He learns about the paper's "Spotlight" unit, which is comprised of a small team of reporters whose investigations into stories can sometimes take up to a year to publish. The team is headed by Walter Robinson (Michael Keaton) and is the oldest continuous operating newspaper investigative unit in America.
Baron gets ahold of a column about a priest who was sexually abusing boys in his church and the lawyer who says that the Arch Bishop of Boston knew about it and did nothing to stop the priest. Baron wants Robinson and his team to investigate it further. What starts out as a look at a few priests that may have been abusing young boys turns into something that can only be described as an epidemic. The rest of the film is about how the team not only has to try and get some witnesses to talk to them, but also how they have to navigate the political and social waters that the scandal of this magnitude could bring.
Director Tom McCarthy is very smart with his directing. He does not do any crazy camera tricks nor does he go to any sort of story telling gimmicks. Like the reporters in the film, we follow along the story with them as they learn various pieces of information. We feel their heartbreak as they have to listen to details from each of the victims and how the church did nothing to help those victims out. Like All The President's Men, it shows us the investigation side in great detail. But the filmmakers know that it is ultimately the human side of the scandal that we will remember the most.
#2
For the second year in a row, Director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners) has made a excellent film. Sicario is a film that grabs you and never lets you go. Rarely have I seen a film that was able to keep the level of tension high and carry it out throughout the movie. Sicario is one of those movies. It also has a wonderful story that for a good chunk of the film, you have no clue where it is going to go.
The set up of the film is very simple. Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) is an agent for the FBI who goes along on a raid of a house that has suspected drug kidnappers in it. When they raid the house, they find dozens of corpses hidden within the walls of the house. They also find an IED explosive that goes off and kills a couple of agents as well. Angry at the lack of progress the agency is making against the war on drugs, Macer is given the opportunity to join a Delta Force task force that is comprised of agents from several government agencies. Included in this group is Alejandro Gallick (Benicio Del Toro), a mysterious man from Mexico whose real intentions are kept from Macer and the audience.
The group's mission is to then go over the Mexican border and bring back one of the men who maybe responsible for the killing of the FBI agents. This leads to one of the best scenes in the film. When the group has the prisoner in their possession, they return to the border and sure enough, trouble is waiting for them. This leads to one of the most tense scenes in the film, as the group experiences people from all fronts coming towards them as they try to take back the prisoner.
I will not reveal anymore of the story. It goes into many unexpected directions. Benicio Del Toro gives one of his best performances ever in this film. His character is scary to watch at times. Emily Blunt once again proves that not only is she a great actress but she is also a great action star as well. She more than holds her own here.
Do yourself a favor and go into this movie as cold as you can. The surprises and the turns that the story takes is some of the best storytelling that you will see this year.
#1
Film is a visual medium. While plays and novels rely on the written word, film is a medium that allows it's makers to create whole imaginary worlds. Film has survived for so many years because of this. It allows us to go to other places that might not be real yet. Planets. Cities. The past. The future. Wherever you imagination wants to go, film can more than likely take you there.
It is this reasoning that I think Mad Max: Fury Road is the best film of 2015. It is the brilliant work of it's visionary director, George Miller, who is able to transport us into a world that is very creative and alive. It has been said that Miller didn't even have a script for the film for a long time. He created a series a storyboards that was the template for the film. It is a very odd way to start on a film but it works beautifully here.
I think you see the great vision Miller has for the film in two different moments during the film. The first is the location of The Citadel, the main stronghold for the film's main villain, Immortan Joe. We see that the location has three huge rock clusters and that Joe and his followers live on top of these clusters, while everyone else has to live way down below them. This is a very cruel but effective analogy. It is none more apparent than in the scene where Joe pulls a lever and gives out the water to the masses below him. We see the giant waterfall activate and people come running to it with bedpans, buckets and whatever than can just to get a little bit of water. It is a crazy scene to watch but it says a lot about the character of Immortan Joe and the power he has over the people at the Citadel.
The other moment is when Max, Furiosa, and the wives of Immortan Joe are driving the gasoline rig that they have stolen from Joe towards a nearby canyon. From behind the rig, Joe and his followers are right on the rig's tail. Furiosa notices however another group coming up the the side of the rig. This is the gang from Gas Town, a nearby town from the Citadel. Within this gang, we notice the leader of Gas Town is among them. His name is the People Eater. Miller does a very clever thing here. We see the huge rig that the People Eater is riding in and it says more about the character than any line of dialogue ever could. On top of this rig, we see that instead of a standard junk car that we see on all the other vehicles, we see a Mercedes Benz body attached to the top of it. We see that this character is a man that prides himself above all the other gangs. We hear him talk later on in the film about how chasing the rig Max has stolen has costed them a lot of money. With the way we see him dress and the ride that he has, this is a character that cares only for money and money alone.
While the attention to detail is amazing, the action scenes themselves help make the movie great. The whole story is essentially one long chase film. But it is never boring and more importantly, we are never lost throughout the action scenes. This is a credit to Miller and cinematographer John Seale. They keep the action front and center on the screen. They make sure that each important moment lasts. Films lately have been going for more style and visual flavor over coherence. But not here. We know what happens and how it is important to the story at hand.
It's amazing to think. Usually when a film franchise gets four films deep into a series, it gets complacent. Producers and studios know that money has to be made and so usually they just repeat what the other films have done. But to see George Miller, who is 70 years old, not go the popular route, To come up with a daring new idea and to make that idea instead of repeating what the other films did, that is a site to behold. Fury Road is a film that has great action and wonderful storytelling that will be remembered for years to come.
- Hash
