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. 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


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)


ADÈLE HAENEL AND KÉVIN AZAÏS IN LOVE AT FIRST FIBHT/LES COMBATTANTS

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 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.

[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, 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. 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. 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, 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.)

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