Though there were few genuine classics, 2015 offered plenty of variety at the movies — from smart biopics, war movies and dark crime dramas to stirring science-fiction, the usual superhero blockbusters and the first Star Wars film in a decade. This list is based only on cinema releases in South Africa in 2015 — films not yet released (such as Hateful Eight) and those that will probably never be released to local screens (such as the excellent Slow West and Ex Machina) are excluded from consideration.
Steve Jobs
Perhaps Ashton Kutcher’s Jobs turned people off movies about Steve Jobs forever, but the Aaron Sorkin-scripted Steve Jobs has struggled to find an audience at the box office. That’s a pity, because the film’s fierce, caustic verbal jousting is every bit as entertaining as Sorkin’s writing in The Social Network and Newsroom. Michael Fassbender, though he looks nothing like the real Steve Jobs, provides a commanding performance as the Apple founder at his most ruthless, paranoid and short-tempered.
He has excellent support from an ensemble cast that includes Seth Rogen, Kate Winslet and Jeff Daniels. Danny Boyle’s direction is workman-like and the film takes serious liberties with the truth, but Steve Jobs is nonetheless a briskly entertaining and smartly structured dissection of the motivations driving an arrogant, emotionally stunted genius. (Starts in South Africa on 25 December.)
A Most Violent Year
Ignited by scorching performances from Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, director JC Chandor’s slow-burning epic has the moral knottiness and thematic heft of New York crime greats like Serpico and The Godfather. Though it seldom explodes into violence, it manages to sustain an air of suffocating tension throughout its running time.
Mission Impossible — Rogue Nation
It’s been nearly 20 years since the eternally youthful Tom Cruise first played secret agent Ethan Hunt, yet the Mission Impossible franchise has only got better with each new film. The latest film is confident entertainment, with excellent pacing and nimble, graceful action sequences. Christopher McQuarrie, who also directed Cruise in Jack Reacher, keeps the tone light and playful without copping out into silliness. He and Cruise also serve up some of the best set pieces of the year. Simon Pegg delivers the comic relief and the enigmatic Rebecca Ferguson is a great addition to the cast.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu leaves behind the miserabilism of his previous few films for this strange, twitchy black comedy about an ageing Hollywood actor trying to hold a Broadway production together. Erstwhile Batman Michael Keaton is almost too perfectly cast as the former star of a superhero movie franchise making a desperate play for critical acclaim; Edward Norton steals the show as a preening co-star. It’s at once an uproarious backstage farce, an enigmatic sliver of magical realism, and a satire about the hold superheroes have on the public imagination. In a neat feat of shooting and editing, the film is made to look as if it was shot in one take.
Nightcrawler
Nightcrawler marks an assured directorial debut for veteran screenwriter Dan Gilroy. The sleek and cynical media satire follows a scraggy Jake Gyllenhaal as he scavenges crime scenes and car accidents for his slice of the American dream. It is as gritty as 1970s political satires Network and Taxi Driver, lacing its acerbic social commentary with amphetamine. Gilroy’s writing is incisive and provocative, crackling with nervy energy. For a first-time director working on a limited budget, he delivers an accomplished film with a few astonishing action sequences.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
For better and for worse, The Force Awakens meets fans’ expectations in every way. For better because it channels the same sense of fun and discovery that captivated so many of us who grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy. Arguably for worse, because director JJ Abrams and his production team don’t take any creative risks with the project. Our return to a galaxy far, far away is comfortingly familiar, even if it’s peopled and aliened by many new faces.
On the upside, Abrams captures the buoyant humour, the charming characters, and the spirited adventure of the original trilogy. He has pretty much delivered a film made to Star Wars’ fans specifications: away with Jar-Jar Binks, senatorial debates and midichlorians, and in with cocky one-liners, sentimental callbacks to Episodes IV to VI, and a classic hero’s journey story. New characters Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) are likable champions for the light side; Adam Driver’s petulant, wounded Kylo Ren is a compelling villain.
Harrison Ford, reprising the role of Han Solo, brings a craggy, weathered integrity to the film that makes it feel like more than a cash-in. Abrams keeps the action moving along energetically, uses the nostalgia for the original trilogy to his advantage in some nicely set-up jokes, and captures the grainy look of the original Star Wars through a mixture of modern CGI and wonderful practical effects. It’s rousing entertainment, even if feels like a cover version of the original trilogy rather than its own distinctive thing.
Whiplash
The brilliant character actor JK Simmons gets the role of his life in Whiplash as a bullying jazz maestro trying to beat an ambitious but cocky young drummer (Miles Teller) into shape. Simmons’ tyrant unleashes tirades of such exquisite foulness that the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket might blush, yet his student and victim is by no means an innocent. The battle of wills between the two fanatical artists is thrilling and exhausting to watch. Director Damien Chazelle turns jazz into a full-contact sport.
Mad Max: Fury Road
As far as summer blockbusters go, the Mad Max “rebootquel” Fury Road is utterly barmy. It’s a prolonged car chase with the grandeur of an opera, a thunderous spectacle of outrageous vehicles and outlandish costumes and beautifully choreographed chaos. Helmed by George Miller, who directed Mel Gibson in the original trilogy, it is a cultish oddity made on a blockbuster budget.
This time it’s Tom Hardy who takes the role that made Gibson famous, although he is upstaged by Charlize Theron’s shaven-headed, one-armed avenger, Furiosa. Miller’s film strips his characters down to archetypes, his plot down to a mad convoy chasing its prey through the desert, his sparse dialogue down to grunts, meaningful glances, and the throaty revving of car engines. It is bold mythmaking and an assault on the senses, full of striking imagery and jaw-dropping special effects.
Sicario
One feels dirty walking out of Sicario, so vivid is its depiction of the gratuitous violence and the even uglier realpolitik behind the US’s tussle with drug cartels in Juarez, Mexico. Director Denis Villeneuve uses this background to create a taut thriller about an idealistic FBI agent, Kate Mercer (Emily Blunt), trying to navigate the morally murky waters of the war on drugs.
The steely Blunt has never been better than she is here as a good woman who is impotent in the face of corruption she sees; she’s gruff and stoic, yet there’s also a hint of vulnerability behind her hard stare. She’s paired with an outstanding Benicio Del Toro as a shadowy government consultant whose soft-spoken demeanour masks dark secrets.
If there’s any justice in Hollywood, Roger Deakins’ stunning cinematography will finally earn him his long-elusive Oscar. The deeply unsettling score is excellent, too.
The Martian
The Martian is pretty much the “I fucking love science” of movies: an exuberant, sardonic and occasionally glib celebration of geeks, progress and innovation. Ridley Scott does a fine job of directing Matt Damon in an entertaining and optimistic story about an astronaut stranded on Mars. Scott finds poetry in the red landscapes of Mars, also delivering some nail-biting suspense in his action scenes. But it is the sharpness of the writing (translated from Andy Weir’s novel) and Damon’s performance as a droll, resourceful space MacGyver that make The Martian a joy to watch.
Movies from 2015 that are worth a mention
Bridge of Spies: Steven Spielberg’s stately Cold War spy drama with Tom Hanks is an enjoyable slice of nostalgic filmmaking.
Creed: Ryan Coogler reworks the Rocky formula in a sentimental but rousing yarn that sees a well-weathered Sly Stallone groom his greatest rival’s son for greatness. Coogler brings fresh indie energy to the sports movie clichés.
Fury: A swaggering Brad Pitt dominates this film about an American tank crew doing their best to survive through the last days of World War 2. It’s unrelentingly grim, but the superb action scenes and the moral ambiguity place it a couple of notches above the average war movie.
Kingsman: The Secret Service: In this cheerfully vulgar and violent fantasy, director Matthew Vaughn pokes fun at grim cinematic spies (I’m looking at you, Spectre) with as much enthusiasm as he mocked superheroes in Kick-Ass. — (c) 2015 NewsCentral Media
