Missing Movies — 2015
Y’all, I know it’s incredibly short-sighted to complain about little losses while the avalanche of tumult is still coming down. In the big picture, going to the movies is small potatoes. But I miss it anyway. Especially December-time: sitting alone, sometimes on a Tuesday morning, in the dark — indulging in the fruits of Oscar-baiting season, weeping openly at the trove of high-brow, art-house drama.
Every year I re-examine pop culture from a few years back to think through the value-added legacy of a year in movies, music, books, etc. I never get to take anything in during the actual year and taking five more gives me enough time to get to s**t.
I also think a few years helps me take a step back from the intensity of something in the moment — helping me gain a bit of objectivity. Such a reflection reminds me what was happening. Remembering the important/impactful stuff can show how stuff like movies influenced the way I (and we!) have come to think about self and the world today.
2015 was nutz — not 2020 nutz, mind you, but crazy nonetheless! Can you believe we’ve had five years of marriage equality. It’s been five years since the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in Paris (of which folks were just convicted last month). We’ve had five years of normalized relations with Cuba.
It’s now been five years since the world started contending with our now-outgoing prez as a political force. Moreover, it’s been five years since the Charleston hate-crime massacre…since Freddie Gray, since Walter Scott, since Laquan McDonald shed more (and more and more) light on the state of our police state.
Viewing and reviewing has made me more aware that the films I and most Americans watched in 2015 — as based on Box Office receipts — were overwhelmingly white and domestic (as they always have been). I didn’t see a single film in major contention for a best “foreign language” Oscar (that category has since been renamed); and I missed so many by prominent filmmakers of color. Understanding this is a difficult but important for reckoning with my own complicity in a system of white supremacy. Over the last few years I’ve spent more effort thinking through my relationships to privileged institutions (e.g. Hollywood, Higher Ed, etc).
As we change, I change. We all [hopefully] change for the better.
The following ten films tell us about who we were: how we represented our hopes, fears and desires for the future. And, five years later, they still have more light to offer a world that does occasionally feel rather dark.
Villeneuve makes messy action films. And by “messy,” I mean: he likes to show the realistic messiness of havoc. And this film is his mega-lecture on violence. Whereas the Michael Bays of the world show destruction as an aesthetic marvel, Villeneuve captures it in moralistic terms (even when crafting his sci-fi worlds). Sicario is difficult, yet it forces a series of conversations about borders, the complacency of comfort and the mislaid incentives proffered by unmitigated global capital. The film works if viewers are horrified and, in the end, understand their direct role in its perpetuation.
Just like the 1976 apex of the exposé-film genre, All the President’s Men, McCarthy’s searing account of the ongoing abuses committed by the Catholic Church tends to be more about the heroics of good journalism than any victory over corruption and abuse. This was my criticism then as it is now. The horrific and monstrous neglect by the Church is worthy of its own story. But this is narrative film, not documentary. And obvious heroes help build suspense.
The thing about hindsight, though, is that in 2020 the Press, after four years of repeated rhetorical attacks by the Trump administration, remains one of the last checks against tyranny in all its forms. Rewatching this film today (and, unfortunately, the still on-the-nose President’s Men) reminds me how necessary it is to celebrate the efforts of those who receive abuse while reporting it.
Interpersonal Communication classes around the country got to watch cartoons in class after the release of Inside Out. This “kids” movie is the perfect introduction to heady theoretical concepts. Its “simple” and clever script balances relational and cultural ideas in a way that is more sophisticated than any of Pixar’s other films.
Melissa McCarthy is the greatest comedic actor working today. Watching her with a good script and a seasoned director is pure joy. The evidence of her brilliance is not in her knack for comedic delivery, but in her ability to communicate powerfully conflicting emotions while splitting your sides. Audiences are sometimes too distracted by humor to see how hard she’s working. Spy isn’t even her best film (see: Can You Ever Forgive Me?), but it’s a great film. I like it better than Bridesmaids because it doesn’t have to rely on crassness to supply the laugh (though, admittedly, that’s what makes Bridesmaids an important film: centering crassness in a female-centered narrative. But, if we’re really getting in the weeds, an even more important version of that is 2017’s Girl’s Trip).
McCarthy gives weight to stories we too-often dismiss. And she can do it with or without fart jokes.
The only way to get dudes to watch a two-hour commentary on the links between machines and male desire is to come up with FX processes that are so f***ing cool, it actually draws in the audience being critiqued. This movie so brilliantly exposes the pitfalls of patriarchal heterodoxy and technophilia (there are a lot of not-so-subtle revelations in this film about how men play with their “toys”) by using the language of action and sci-fi — rhetoric that traditionally reinforces those two concepts. Subverting the tools by using them is a boss move.
If your boyfriend/husband saw the end of this film as a tragedy, he probably didn’t get it. And maybe you should make him watch it again.
The meta-tricks, sleek political jabs, elaborate punch lines and a real deft sense of directing drama as if it were a comedy make this film totally original. These concepts are precarious, though. They failed McKay when he employed them again in his hit-job masquerading as a film (i.e., Vice). But the villain in T.B.S. is so much more diffuse and, therefore, less scapegoaty.
Many great films are adept at translating occlusive information into palatable fare for the masses. I liked Moneyball and Margin Call for pulling it off; but The Big Short has a more expansive scope — going beyond a specific sector of the market or set of data. Its authority, ironically, comes when it self-deprecates, deploying Selena Gomez, for example, to explain s*** to me.
This was a big year for directors. Like Villeneuve and McKay, 2015 saw new creativity break out of many boxes. Like in Weekend, Haigh nurtured two brilliant performances without flash or excessive monologuing. Over the course of this film, tiny infractions build and, ultimately, explode. Rampling’s performance was the best of the year; Haigh’s light and impactful touch made for a thrilling slice-of-life. Perhaps it is not too early to suggest that he’s picking up the torches of Robert Altman & Mike Leigh — carrying them onto the next generation.
At first it strikes me as ironic that Miller is behind both the Babe and Mad Max movies. If you think about it for a few minutes, though, they have a lot in common: cute central characters, a world all-but foreign to audiences, BIG questions about social roles as they pertain to life-and-death decision-making, etc. Plus, each achieve their moments of beautiful humanity because they are contrasted with such brazen (and colorful!) acts of inhumanity.
Mad Max: Fury Road is a high-pitched, aesthetic party that, despite its rampant action and horror, creates a beautiful picture of how some heroes — in the face of catastrophe and crisis — rise to a state of true honor. Sounds a lot like Babe the Pig, too, amiright?
I want to suggest that Sorrentino is the boldest director working today. I have trouble thinking of others who can pull off such unmitigated pablum with this kind of sincerity (maybe Werner Herzog or David Lynch?). If you’re familiar with his HBO pope-shows, you understand what I mean. Sorrentino unpacks institutions that are universally influential. In The Great Beauty (his Oscar-winner from 2013), he abstracts “Italy,” The Young Pope does it with the Catholic Church. But it is, perhaps, Youth that focuses on the ultimate abstract and influential institution — age, perceived and actual. Perhaps the obsession with youth is as much a geopolitical force as the pope.
This film — like all of his — flips between quick, surreal moments and long, drawn-out realities. Though disorienting at times, it is a powerful metaphor for how many of us come to experience joy. The fleeting moments of escape hold so much sway over us because the drudgery of reality hobbles. There is a powerful (almost lyrical) way Sorrentino forces his audiences to reflect and regret. Michael Caine, after Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years, gave the finest performance of the year. He provides grounding for the abstractions continually thrown at us. (And his scene opposite Jane Fonda is worth the price of admission all on its own.) A triumph.
My bar is high for queer filmmaking. Either they need to be completely — and aggressively — camp or totally sincere. This is unfair, I realize. But I can’t stand side-kick tokenism or after-school special storylines devoid of sociopolitical context. Put another way: I hate the imagined worlds of post-gay narratives as much as I abhor 2-dimensional hate-criming in order to provoke sentiment and political activism. And hybrid worlds concocted to represent the banalities of bubble-gum pop culture (e.g. Will & Grace or, more recently, The Prom) give me gas.
So it is that my stuck-uppedness thinks there are only a few masterpieces of queer narrative filmmaking. A few examples: All About My Mother (P. Almodovar, 1999), Brokeback Mountain (A. Lee, 2006), Weekend (A. Haigh, 2011) and, well, Carol. This list is far from complete, of course — and it clearly smacks of my own privileged moviegoing (read: white and western. I’m working on it) and preferences for specific types of film craft.
Carol, as it is, is a masterpiece. Embedded in its setting of the mid-century, mid-American bourgeoisie, it tells a specific story without pretending to be universal. It is sincere and wrought with the immense power of film technique: texture, form, lusciously drawn detail. Like Haynes’s earlier films, it hinges on the power of its actors — all that opulence is squat without the dynamite that Blanchett and Mara bring. (And though Blanchett and Mara are straight — like Heath and Jake before them — I think there’s something especially powerful about straight actors queering themselves. Though I’ll never call their performances “brave.” Puke.)
Like he did in Far from Heaven (2001), Haynes’s Carol builds an aesthetic that heightens the horror of homophobia. Like Mad Max, it flips the typical utopia/dystopia dichotomy — this time, though, employing the device to critique the powerful constraints we place on desire, especially of women.
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Here’s to a more…well…everything in 2021! And, cheers to 2016 — a year sorting through its own political morass. But I’ll hope to share that story with y’all next year.
