Doug's Favorite Movies of 2015

Mad Max: Fury Road
Inside Out
The Martian
Amy
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
The Big Short
Kingsman: The Secret Service
What We Do in the Shadows

The Hateful Eight

Lots to admire about this 70mm print. It's beautifully filmed; you can practically see every snowflake in dazzling detail. Sam Jackson is great here, and is so much more memorable than the "Avengers" movies or "Kingsman." Walton Goggins and Jennifer Jason Leigh are also captivating, as they bite into this three-hour Mexican standoff. But as fun as it was to watch, I’m not sure if it was ABOUT anything. There doesn’t seem to be a point or a theme. Revenge? Redemption? Violence is bad? The old west was terrible? Women had it rough? My favorite of Tarantino’s is still Kill Bill, in which the themes of revenge and motherhood are so strong.

The Big Short

If you told me that Adam McKay, SNL writer and director of numerous Will Ferrell comedies, would make one of the most biting, interesting, and incendiary movies of the year, I probably wouldn’t believe you. But here you have it: a comedy/tragedy, happily missing traditional narrative structure, featuring multiple protagonists, no real good guys, scheming, wheeling, and dealing to bet against the U.S. economy. There are frequent laughs as the ensemble breaks down the fourth wall to explain banking things to the audience. But it’s not like they’re heroes, right? They’re kind of scumbags. So, it’s morally very confusing, but also brilliant. Because the filmmakers know that most of us don’t understand these banking terms and this jargon. But the characters in the movie do, and they take advantage of this superior knowledge to make fools out of everybody for their own financial gain. The experience of watching it is light, breezy and funny. But the ride home is a little different, when we start to realize how much we all lost during the housing crisis. Purely original and creative filmmaking by everyone involved, this is guaranteed to garner a best picture nomination.

Revenant

I have never been crazy about Alejandro Iñárritu. I have found most of his movies to be irritating, self-indulgent, and derivative. I didn’t like Birdman. So I’m not a fan to begin with. While there are beautifully directed sequences, it just felt like a Terrence Malick rip-off to me. The New World meets John Ford. The acting is strong especially from Leonardo DiCaprio, who absolutely delivers, with full commitment, to his role as a tracker, surviving and bent on revenge. The moving camera is amazing. But this movie is histrionic and it lacks subtlety. It’s just not that entertaining. I found myself making wise-cracks in my head about the “bombast” of it all. I kind of wish Terrence Malik had actually directed it. It might’ve had some more quiet and interesting moments.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

** SPOILERS INCOMING! **

Volumes and volumes and volumes could be written about this. I don’t really know where to begin. Suffice it to say, I loved watching it, but felt let down at the end by the unanswered questions. I felt like the filmmakers were jerking the audience around a little bit by omitting key details to create suspense. A small example: the giant Sith lord was revealed to be a hologram. Then why did he have to be giant? Why couldn’t he have been the same size as the other holograms in the series? This kind of misdirection permeates throughout the movie, and after a while it gets frustrating.

It’s clearly Rey’s story, and Daisy Ridley is a revelation. It’s too bad the filmmakers leave much of her back-story off screen. Star Wars taught us more about Luke Skywalker in 30 minutes than this movie teaches us about Rey in two hours. Director Abrams is known for his TVish cliffhangers and ambiguities. I think he uses them as a crutch. It’s time to answer some questions, JJ.

The release of this movie has people in the media pissing on the prequels. The bad acting. The dumb stories. Jar-Jar. But there were positives to the prequels that people forget: Lucas never let you forget that you were in a galaxy far far away. The different planets and the different worlds were always foreign and beautiful. Giant, otherworldly buildings, waterfalls, oceans, and ships flying by painted the backgrounds in a way that the current movie does not. In The Force Awakens, efforts to set the scene were meager, and settings often just look like a field somewhere in England.

My other problem: How the hell do you make a Star Wars movie without R2-D2 in it?? The hero of the WHOLE SERIES as far as I’m concerned. Anyway, I could go on and on. I plan on seeing it again, and a lot of people say that the second viewing is better. I’m happy that Star Wars is back, but the jury is still out on JJ Abrams and the gimmickry of this particular chapter.