It’s movie time! Once again, I’ve ranked every movie I watched this year, from worst to best. This year marks the fewest movies I’ve watched in a year since I started doing this list. Two years ago everything lined up (a month of paternity leave where I didn’t have to get up as early, lots of really good movies, plus the usual summer movie binge) and I was able to watch 95 movies. This year there weren’t nearly as many good movies, and it turns out that 5 kids was the tipping point for me. Now that we have a foster son living with us, plus the other four, it turns out I am exhausted every night, and don’t watch nearly as many movies. Go figure. Without further ado, the list:
38. Chappie First Neill Blomkamp made District 9, which was a great sci-fi movie that had some interesting social commentary about life in South Africa. Then he made Elysium, a decent sci-fi movie that had some mildly interesting social commentary. And now he has made Chappie. A bad sci-fi film that thinks it is interesting, and is just stupid. The lead actors are the people from the South African group Die Antwoord. They kidnap a robot that has become self-aware, and teach it to do bad things. It’s all just really stupid, the acting is bad, and it feels like the leftover ideas from the director’s first two movies. Blomkamp appears to be on the M. Night Shyamalan career path, where his first movie is his best and each successive film gets a little bit worse. Maybe his next film will be a sci-fi movie about plants that attack people. Let’s hope not.
37. The Salt of the Earth Salt of the Earth is a documentary by Wim Wenders about the life and work of photographer Sebastiao Salgado. It got good reviews, and some of the photographs looked very interesting, but I realized after half an hour that I just couldn’t sit through an entire movie where people talked about photographs. If you enjoy watching slide shows of other people’s vacations, then this might be just the movie for you.
36. American Ultra Jesse Eisenberg plays a stoner who is a actually a trained assassin. Kristen Stewart plays his girlfriend. Lots of people play the bad guys that get killed when the agency tries to “deactivate” him. How many movies are there now that have a character that thinks they are an ordinary person, and then they get put in a situation where they suddenly they have the ability to break people’s necks and shoot accurately while driving a moving vehicle? It started with the Jason Bourne series (A new installment this summer! Better than the last one because it actually has Jason Bourne in it!) and I think American Ultra is it’s low point. Pretty soon there will be more of these types of movies than ones where a family member of Liam Neeson’s gets kidnapped and he has to go on a revenge rampage.
35. God’s Pocket This was one of the last movies that Phillip Seymour Hoffman appeared in, which is too bad, because it’s not very good. Hoffman’s stepson get killed in an accident at work, but his wife suspects that there’s more to the story, and tries to get him to look into what really happened. It’s got a good cast, but it is a joyless movie that isn’t particularly interesting. If you want to watch a better final tribute to Hoffman, watch A Most Wanted Man from 2014. It was another of his last movies, but he’s great, and so is the movie.
34. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day I saw this with my kids last summer on one of those days where you can get a ticket for $1. To say I went in with low expectations would be an understatement. The fact that I mildly enjoyed it, and all of my kids liked it, makes it a huge success in my book.
33. The Babadook I’m not a big fan of horror movies, mainly because most of them fall into one of two categories - gruesome slasher movies, which I hate, or movies that aren’t really that scary. This fits into the latter category. The Babadook is a character in a children’s book that comes alive and torments a child and his family. It’s a low budget movie that got good reviews, but I just didn’t find it that suspenseful or scary.
32. Top Five Chris Rock plays a comedian that used to be on top, but has lost his edge while trying to become a serious actor. Rosario Dawson plays a NY Times reporter that spends a day interviewing him and trying to figure out what happened to his career. It has some amusing parts, but overall it’s pretty mediocre. But, since it relates to a topic throughout the movie, my personal top 5: 1) Rakim 2) Run DMC 3) Public Enemy 4) Beastie Boys 5) Boogie Down Productions.
31. Jurassic World In the trailers for Jurassic World, it looks pretty stupid - just a big budget, summer action movie meant to capitalize on nostalgia from the earlier movies and make a quick buck. But then everyone was going to see it, and a bunch of people told me it was good. So I took my 11 year-old son to see it, and well...my initial impression was pretty much right. My son liked it a lot, and I realized he is probably the target audience. Plenty of other people seemed to like it too, so I’m sure there will be a Jurassic Planet or something along those lines. Maybe this time if we build an island with dinosaurs on it, they won’t get out and eat everyone like they did the last 4 times……
29/30. The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1 and 2 This franchise is a great example of why you shouldn’t try to stretch one book into multiple movies just to milk the cash cow. I actually really enjoyed the first two movies in the Hunger Game series, enough that I went and read all the books. The third book was my least favorite, so naturally they decided to stretch it into 2 movies. Eventually you get tired of hearing Katniss give inspirational speeches, and the last two movies just felt like a slog. About halfway through Part 2 I realized I already knew what happened from the books, and I was getting really bored, so I just stopped watching.
28. Dear Zachary This is, quite simply the saddest movie ever made. I am not using hyperbole when I say that - I truly cannot think of a more depressing film. It’s a documentary, made by a guy who wanted to tell the story of his best friend, who was murdered by his ex-girlfriend. He starts out making the movie for Zachary, who is the infant son of his slain friend. The first half of the movie is mostly friends and family talking about the friend, and some of the memories they have of him. That alone doesn’t exactly sound like a stroll in the park, but the second half of the movie takes an even darker turn, and leaves you sad and furious at the same time. It’s well made, but I doubt anyone has ever watched this movie twice.
27. The Beat that my Heart Skipped This is actually a slightly older French movie that I was interested in because it’s directed by Jacques Audiard, the director of The Prophet, which was terrific. The main character is a petty thug that makes money as an enforcer for his aging, criminal father. A chance encounter helps remind him that he once had great potential as a musician, like his concert-pianist mother, and he is torn as he is pulled between his musical interests and a life of crime. It doesn’t reach the heights of A Prophet, or even Rust and Bone, another of Audiard’s earlier films, but it is still interesting.
26. The Good Lie Based on a true story about Sudanese siblings who survive their village being massacred, and then eventually immigrate to the US. The siblings end up getting separated, and have a hard time adjusting to life in America. Along the way, they meet Reese Witherspoon, who helps them assimilate into American life. You might not be surprised to learn that Witherspoon’s character is reluctant to help at first, but learns some valuable life lessons along the way. There are some cheesy moments, but overall it is a touching story of survival and resilience. I watched this movie mainly because I had just read a book about the Sudanese civil war, called What is the What, by Dave Eggers. Like the siblings in the movie, the main character in the book overcomes incredible sadness in escaping the atrocities of the war in order to survive. It’s depressing, but it’s also a great read.
25. Rosewater In Rosewater, Gael Garcia Bernal plays Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-born journalist for Newsweek, who travels to Iran to visit family and cover the presidential election. When the president is re-elected in a clearly rigged vote, he covers the protests, and ends up getting arrested and thrown in prison. It’s a true story directed by John Stewart, who became interested in the story when it turned out that a satirical appearance Bahari made on The Daily Show was used as evidence by his captors that he was really an American spy.
24. Southpaw Jake Gyllenhall plays a world-champion boxer, whose life is shattered when his wife is shot and killed during an altercation with a rival. Gyllenhall eventually loses everything - his house, his money, even his daughter. But since it is a boxing movie, he decides that he is going to train for a comeback fight against his old rival. At this point, every boxing movie seems to follow more or less the same storyline, so there was nothing particularly exciting or fresh about this one. Gyllenhall, who has become an excellent actor, goes all-in on the role, and that makes it watchable, but otherwise I think I’ve seen all the boxing movies I need to for a while. That’s why you won’t see Creed on this year’s list, even though it was nominated for best picture.
23. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl This isn’t a particularly original idea - it’s basically Be Kind, Rewind meets The Fault in Our Stars. A goofy high school kid that makes home-movie remakes of real films befriends a classmate that is dying of cancer. It’s predictable for sure, but with good characters and some humor, even predictable can be entertaining.
22. Leviathan In most years, this would be the most depressing movie of the year. Thanks to Dear Zachary, it won’t take that title, but it will still leave you feeling hollowed out inside. It’s a Russian movie (nominated for best foreign film) set on a coastal town, where the corrupt mayor is scheming to demolish a man named Kolya’s home so he can acquire the land for himself. Kolya decides to fight back, contacting a friend of his that is a lawyer in Moscow to help him dig up dirt on the mayor. At every turn the movie leaves you feeling more and more helpless in the face of corruption, and there is no happy ending that wraps everything up. I will admit that this was a hard movie to watch, but it is also a powerful statement by a Russian director about corruption and life in Putin’s Russia. Not the most enjoyable, but one of the most interesting movies of the year.
21. While We’re Young I was skeptical about this movie, because it’s directed by Noah Baumbach, the same guy that directed Greenberg a horribly depressing, unpleasant movie. But I actually really enjoyed this. Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts play a middle-aged couple in Brooklyn who feel stagnant as many of their friends are having kids and settling into a different stage of life. They end up meeting a younger, carefree couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried), and start spending a lot of time with them. Everything about the movie feels like it could be set in Portland. None of the characters are particularly likeable, but you at least are rooting for Stiller and Watts to figure things out.
20. Jimi: All is by My Side This movie was a flop in the theaters, even though it’s actually pretty interesting. It’s a biopic about Jimi Hendrix as he first burst on the rock ‘n roll scene. Hendrix is played convincingly by Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000 from Outkast), and unlike many biopics, it doesn’t try to portray Hendrix as a saint - just a talented, unique, musician with plenty of demons that he wrestles with. So why was it a flop? Probably because the movie wasn’t able to use any of Hendrix’s actual music. So while the music sounds like something Hendrix would play when he’s onstage or riffing with his band, there’s no actual Purple Haze or All Along the Watchtower or any of the songs that made Hendrix so great. I’m guessing they weren’t able to get music rights because the movie isn’t a totally flattering portrayal - Hendrix uses drugs, beats up his girlfriend, and comes off as a talented but flawed individual. So which is better? To show a whitewashed version of Hendrix and not use the real music, or to show something closer to the truth without any of the actual songs that made him great? Tough to say, but the movie is still worth a watch.
19. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night Just when you think that every possible take on the vampire genre has been made, along comes this - a black and white Iranian movie about a hijab-wearing vampire girl. That may not sound like the makings of a blockbuster, but it might have been the most stylish movie that I watched all year.
18. What We Do in the Shadows Another foreign vampire film! Shadows is a mockumentary-style movie that spoofs the vampire genre. Jermaine Clement (one of the guys from Flight of the Conchords) plays Vladislav, a civilized vampire that lives in a flat in New Zealand with a couple other vampires. It’s a pretty silly movie that looks at the day to day life of the vampires as they try to deal with problems like how to keep a house clean when one of your roommates has just slaughtered someone and feasted on their blood. It’s not necessarily laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s amusing throughout.
17. Gone Girl Having read the book before seeing the movie, I had a pretty good idea what to expect going in. The story is a bit trashy, but the book is certainly a page turner. A beautiful woman with a handsome husband disappears. The national media latches on to the story, and everyone wants to figure out what happened to her. At first there is a lot of sympathy for the husband (Ben Affleck), but eventually more and more evidence turns up that seems to indicate Affleck might have had something to do with the disappearance. Or is the disappearance a setup, like the husband seems to think? Normally having Ben Affleck in a movie is not something that makes it better, but the casting for pretty much every character, including Affleck, is spot on.
16. Avengers: Age of Ultron Here is a list of all the superhero movies that have come out in the last year or so: Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spiderman 2, X-Men Apocalypse, Antman, Batman vs. Superman, Deadpool, Captain America: Civil War. I don’t like the X-Men movies. I don’t care for the more recent Spiderman movies. The new Superman movies aren’t very good either. I don’t know why Batman and Superman are even fighting, and I know I don’t want to see Ben Affleck play Batman. I have no interest in seeing Deadpool - too profane, too violent. But I have always enjoyed the Avengers movies. Whether it is Captain America, Iron Man, or all of the Avengers together, I have a soft spot for the humor and action of the characters in the Marvel universe. At times this one borders on having too many characters, and the plot feels a little too similar to the last Avengers movie, but it’s still a great time. Like the James Bond movies, it’s a solid franchise, you know it’s going to be fun, and you probably have a decent idea before you go whether or not you will like it. I’ll see Civil War in the first couple of weeks after school gets out, and you could probably cut and paste this review. No surprises, but The Avengers movies are usually a lot of fun.
15. Spectre The most recent James Bond movie is exactly what you would expect. Good action, some good chase and fight scenes, a few nifty gadgets, and a fun bad guy, this time played by Christopher Waltz. I think Daniel Craig has been my favorite James Bond, and I’m sorry to hear this will be his last one. Nothing groundbreaking here, but if you like Bond movies, this is a good one.
14. 10 Cloverfield Lane The movie starts with a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) getting in a car accident. The next thing she knows she is chained to a bed in an underground bunker. When she comes to, she meets a character played by John Goodman, who has either rescued or captured her and brought her to the bunker. Goodman tells her that the world outside is ending, and that he has saved her by bringing her to safety. It turns out there is another man that has made his way to the bunker, and he confirms Goodman’s story. The rest of the movie is slow but suspenseful, as Winstead and the viewers try to figure out if the world outside really has ended, or if Goodman is just crazy. The movie is sort of a companion to Cloverfield, a found footage movie that came out in 2008. I enjoyed this more than the original, mainly because of Goodman, who is at his best. Well, his best besides Walter in The Big Lebowski, that is.
13. Tangerines Set in Georgia (the country), Tangerines is the story of two older men that have stayed behind in the Georgian countryside to harvest one last crop of tangerines, even as everyone else has fled due to the encroaching war. A skirmish right outside the door of their farms leaves a Georgian soldier and a Chechen mercenary both badly injured and near death. The older men decide to try to save the soldiers and nurse them back to health, while trying to keep them from killing each other as they get healthy. Nominated for Best Foreign Film last year, this is an excellent movie.
12. It Follows One of two horror movies that I watched this year, It Follows is almost an all-time great scary movie. After a scary first scene, we learn what the movie is about: a high school girl sleeps with a guy she has gone out with a couple times, and the next thing she knows, she is tied up in a parking garage, and he’s explaining what has just happened - someone passed the curse to me when I slept with them, and now I’ve passed it to you. The only way you can get rid of it is to pass it on to someone else. Wherever you go, it will follow you. No one else can see it, and it can take on any form, but it will always be following you until you pass it on. There are some great scenes in It Follows. It really has a great “look” for any movie, let alone a horror movie. Some of the scenes that were supposed to be scary didn’t really work for me, but others gave me chills. If you like scary movies it is definitely worth checking out.
11. Room In this Best Picture nominee, Brie Larson plays a woman trapped in a single room with her young son. As we get to know the two of them, we gradually learn how and why they are trapped. To say much more about the movie would ruin the enjoyment of watching the story unfold, so I won’t say more, other than Larson is excellent, and the movie is very good.
10. ‘71 You’ve probably never heard of ‘71, but it is really good. Set in Belfast in 1971, Jack O’Connell plays a British soldier that is left behind during a deadly street riot. He’s injured, and has to find his way out of Belfast, while people on both sides are looking for him. It’s a tight, action-packed movie, and I can’t say enough good things about O’Connell. I think he’s a couple of big roles away from being considered one of the best actors alive. Most people know him from playing the lead in Unbroken, and he is excellent in that role. But watch this, and Starred Up (#15 on my list last year), and you’ll see the physical and character transformations he is capable of, and you realize that he has the potential to be a true star.
9. Spy As I typed the name of this movie, I realized that this was one of the only true comedy movie that I watched all year. How did that happen? I love a good comedy! Where have all the good comedies gone? The Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen movies seem to have worn out their welcome. Will Farrell is past his prime. Steve Carrell mostly does serious roles now. For now Melissa McCarthy and Paul Feig, who directed Spy, seem to be some of the only ones making really funny movies. Spy isn’t anything unique, but it is a spy movie with McCarthy forced into the lead role when a case goes wrong, and it’s pretty hilarious. McCarthy has a true gift for physical comedy, and Feig seems to be the one director that knows how to use her well. Here’s hoping that the Ghostbusters remake this summer, directed by Feig and starring McCarthy and Kristen Wiig (another one of my favorites), is one of my top comedies next year, and not another Ghostbusters 2.
8. The Big Short Who would have thought that a story about the 2008 collapse of the housing market and subsequent economic recession would make a Best Picture nominee movie? In part because of a fantastic cast (Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, Brad Pitt), and partly because it’s adapted from a book by Michael Lewis, who does a great job of making complex subjects interesting and readable, this really is an interesting film, even though it is mostly about sub-prime mortgages. The movie does an excellent job of explaining why the housing bubble came about (in a word - greed), and why it inevitably burst. The protagonists play a small group of investors and hedge-fund managers who realized what was going on and bet everything that the system would eventually collapse. They were right of course, and one of the legitimate criticisms of Lewis’ story is that it portrays these four as heroes, when really they were just getting rich on the banks’ stupidity and greed that caused millions of Americans to lose their homes and their savings.
7. Love and Mercy Love and Mercy tells the story of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, split between two periods of his life. Young Brian Wilson is played by Paul Dano during the making of the album Pet Sounds, as Wilson tries to take the Beach Boys in a different direction from the surfer persona the group is known for. John Cusack plays the older Brian Wilson, who is drugged out and struggling with life. It’s a great movie, and gave me a new appreciation for the Beach Boys music.
6. Ex Machina When Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) wins a competition at work to spend a week with his boss (Oscar Isaac) at his mountain compound to help test a project the boss has been working on, it seems too good to be true. When Caleb arrives, it turns out his job is to interact with Ava (Alicia Vikander), a robot housed in the body of a beautiful woman, to see just how “human” she is. All three actors are excellent, and as the week goes on, it becomes clear that all three of them have different ideas about what is going on, and it is not clear just who is being manipulated. The movie does a great job of keeping the viewer in the dark about what is happening, and the tension gradually escalates as the movie progresses.
5. Sicario Emily Blount plays an FBI agent that is recruited to join an elite team fighting the drug war along the US - Mexico border. Josh Brolin leads the team, along with Benicio Del Toro, whose role on the team isn’t exactly clear. One review I read called this the Apocalypse Now of the drug war. While it certainly isn’t that good, there are some similarities. It is certainly the best movie I’ve seen about the drug war, with top notch acting, and some surprises along the way. The last act is intense, but a bit of a letdown for me after a terrific buildup. An underrated movie that should have been nominated for Best Picture.
4. The Revenant One of my favorite genres of books and movies is the wilderness survival story. Especially when they are true, I love hearing about how a person’s will to live can help them to survive in extreme conditions - whether it is in the desert, lost at sea, in Antarctica, or exploring the American West. And the Revenant is quite the survival tale. When Leo DiCaprio is attacked by a grizzly bear, then buried alive and left for dead by his companions, he embarks on an epic quest of survival and revenge. This movie won Oscars for Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Cinematography, all of which were well deserved. It was the most beautifully shot movie of the year, with gorgeous views of the wintery Canadian landscape. The bear attack scene is not one you will soon forget. I really enjoyed this movie, but my only complaint is that for a movie that made a big deal about being based on a true story, I just didn’t find it believable that he could have survived what they showed in the film. The scenes in the water were the most egregious to me - anyone who has ended up in a river during the winter knows that it is so cold that you don’t just hop out and shiver a little and warm up - there is no way a human being could survive the cold that Leo’s character endures, let alone a person that has been half-eaten by a grizzly bear and left for dead. This is where I need to do a better job of just switching off my brain and enjoying the ride, because it is a truly memorable film, even if it does exaggerate the conditions in which Leo’s character is forced to survive. I feel sort of the same way about this that I felt about Gravity two years ago. There are some flaws, but it is so incredible to watch that it makes up for the flaws.
3. The Martian I haven’t talked to anyone yet that didn’t like this movie. It’s a faithful adaptation of a book by the same name that I read last summer. The book is great, and so is the film. Matt Damon’s character has been left for dead on Mars. When NASA realizes that he isn’t dead, they have to help figure out how he is going to stay alive, and how they are going to bring him back. With a name like The Martian it sounds like a sci-fi film, but really it is a science movie set on Mars. There are no aliens or scary creatures or anything like that, just astronauts trying to figure out how to survive in space. Damon’s character is great - brilliant, funny, and has an incredible will to live. One of the few truly excellent movies of the year.
2. Spotlight The most recent movie I saw on this list, and one of the best. Spotlight is the true story of the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe, and their work uncovering the story of sexual abuse by priests in Boston. The movie works on several levels - it works as investigative piece, following the journalists as they track down leads, interview people, and uncover the story. The actors playing the reporters - Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, and Liev Schrieber - all are great, and watching them work is fascinating. The movie also works as an expose of just how widespread and awful the problem of sexual abuse was in the Catholic church. I guess I had read some of the stories, but I don’t think I realized the scope of the issue, how high up it went, how frequent it was, and how many people helped keep the story from getting out. As a Christian, and also someone that has devoted much of my life to helping children that have been abused, it was heartbreaking. But one of the things that made the movie so good was that it didn’t sugar coat anything, but it also didn’t fall into the trap of playing on the viewer’s emotions, like a lot of movies do. It was just an excellent, important, movie.
1. Star Wars - The Force Awakens If you know me at all, was there any doubt what would be at the top of the list this year? I tried to keep my expectations low, but that didn’t work. By the time this came out, I had been counting down the days until it’s release. JJ Abrams is my new hero. The man behind Lost (one of my all-time favorite TV shows) first rejuvenated the Star Trek franchise, and now saved my favorite movie franchise. I really couldn’t have imagined this being much better if you are a fan of the Star Wars universe. The movie did away with midichlorians, excessive CGI, Jar Jar, and all of the other stuff that nearly ruined the franchise. In their place were new, interesting bad guys, a much grittier, dirtier feel, and a couple of fantastic leads in Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega), not to mention important roles played by Luke, Leiah, and Han Solo. It had some great light saber battles, some great space chase scenes, and lots of characters that would look at home in Mos Eisley, not George Lucas’ laptop. I watched this opening weekend with my sons, and it was the most fun I’ve had at a movie in the last 5 years. I’m not sure how I’m going to wait until December 2017 when Episode VIII comes out. It’s directed by Rian Johnson, the guy that directed Looper, which I loved, so to say that I have high hopes is an understatement. Hopefully the spinoff movie coming out this winter (Rogue One) will be fun too.
A few older movies I watched this year:
Napoleon Dynamite I never get tired of this movie. I watched it with Caleb last year, and Blake this year. Blake’s 11, and wasn’t quite old enough to appreciate it. Vote for Pedro.
Tommy Boy On the other hand, when we watched Tommy Boy, he laughed so hard he cried. Long live Chris Farley.
The Magnificent 7 One of my all-time favorite Westerns. Yul Brenner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach, James Coburn. They’re doing a remake of this due out in September, and I don’t have a good feeling about it.
Major League Caleb and I watched the original Major League last summer. One of my favorite sports movies ever.
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