IL’s Films Of The Year 2015

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good year, but probably only thanks to my membership of the wonderful Whirled Cinema Club near my flat. I hardly ventured to the multiplexes, partly due to laziness, but mostly due to a complete lack of interest in the usual blockbusters of the like of the interminable Star Wars marketing exercise (apparently there was a film too?), reboots of Mad Max and Terminator, or any of the superhero Ant/Bat/Spider/Iron/Whatever-Man franchises. So here they are, no apologies; these are genuinely my favourite films of the 35 I saw last year. But first…

Worst Film: As an unreconstructed grump, I’m going to have to disappoint some people by revealing that I don’t think I saw anything which I really hated last year. Certainly not anything which made by hackles rise like the ridiculous Gravity did in 2013. I guess I found Whiplash the most over-praised movie of the year, and actually rather dull, while a mention must go to the otherwise perfectly-fine remake of Far From The Madding Crowd for being a) utterly pointless; and b) fatally miscast in both Tom Sturridge as Troy (far too fey and completely lacking Terrence Stamp’s dangerous sexuality from the original) and Matthias Schoenaerts as Oak (way too brooding and hunky for the part of the boring but dependable stoic).

Honourable Mentions: I’m going with London Road for just being like nothing else. And Kingsman: The Secret Service was a lot of fun but flagged once (spoiler alert) Colin Firth was dispatched.

Top 10: Here we go…

10)  Trainwreck

This was billed as an ‘anti-rom com’; of course it was nothing of the sort, having all of the genre’s traditional structure, but differing to almost all rom coms from the past 30 years in managing to be actually really funny. This is almost entirely due to the presence and perfect timing of the wonderful Amy Schumer. It almost single-handedly rescues the form from years under the shadow of those dread words “starring Jennifer Aniston”. While we’re here, a mention too for both of Noah Baumbach’s couplet of comedies about people falling disastrously under the spell of people in different age brackets to themselves, While We’re Young and Mistress America, which were both good. Smile now, as from now on, it’s going to get grim.

9)  The Goob

Always knew there was something not right about Norfolk. This slice of British social realist drama derives a potent atmosphere from its flat unrelenting landscape and grinding rural poverty, and contains another terrifying performance from professional psycho Sean Harris. And could young Liam Walpole be the next Jack O’Connell?

8)  Amy

The mark of a truly great documentary is one that enlightens you on a subject in which you not only previously had very little interest, but also one where you know how it’s going to end. Director Asif Kapadia pulls off the same trick here which he did with Senna, presenting a moving, tragic, and engrossing look at Amy Winehouse’s rise and decline as her success took her somewhere she never wanted to go. It has a great piece of opening film of the young Amy’s talent revealing itself precociously at a birthday party, and just by the trick of reproducing her lyrics across the screen to accompany her music, made me realise finally what a great talent she was.

7)  The Falling

Making brilliant use of Maisie Williams’ otherworldly features, this defiantly odd and sexy film about fainting, incest and agoraphobia in a girls’ school in the late sixties almost seems to have come from another age. It’s distinctive, perhaps a little exasperating, but unpredictable and mesmeric.

6)  Ex Machina

Along with Channel 4’s excellent Humans, novelist Alex Garland’s directorial debut taps into the growing fear in 2015 that the robots might be about to take over. All three leads give impressive performances in a cat and mouse game that played out like a hi-tech version of Sleuth, while delivering some intellectual chills wrapped in properly sciencey science fiction.

5)  Carol

Beautiful, touching, absorbing and lacking some of kitsch archness of Todd Haynes’ earlier homages to fifties ‘female’ films, this kicks off the Top 5 largely due to a stunning career-best performance from Cate Blanchett. Meanwhile, Rooney Mara effortlessly channels the ghost of Audrey Hepburn. It all looks ravishing and sexy in a smouldering understated way, as subtlety wins the day over melodrama.

4)  45 Years

One of two 2015 films where, bizarrely, families are rent asunder by alpine accidents (see also Force Majeure), this also shares something in common with Carol: an outstanding female performance culminating in a long, lingering shot of a face which speaks a thousand words. Charlotte Rampling makes you feel the pain of everything crumbling around you as you realise you can never really know someone, even after a life together. Desperately sad and a huge improvement from Andrew Haigh on his earlier film, Weekend.

3)  Blind

Completing a trio of portraits of damaged women, this Norwegian drama stars the glacial Ellen Dorrit Petersen as Ingrid, a newly-blind woman, stuck in her Oslo apartment with too much time on her hands. Her marriage appears to heading into troubled waters, but how much of what we are seeing is actually happening, and how much is happening in her own head? The film makes you work hard to piece it all together, but as it starts to make sense, you understand how the alienation of a sensory disability must affect far more than that single sense.

2)  The Tribe

Talking of which: from blind, to deaf. And this one really makes you work hard. Set in a Ukrainian school for deaf children in which the pupils have become almost feral, and performed entirely by non-professional deaf actors in sign language, the film has no dialogue, no subtitles, and pretty much no sound apart from some grunting and background noise. It’s grim and extremely violent, but undeniably a unique experience. It also has at least two scenes so disturbing which I found almost unwatchable (and I’m not squeamish). An utterly unforgettable film, it left a big impression on me, and might have been film of the year, except I picked a grim and violent film last year and I don’t want you all to think I’m a total nihilist. So…

1)  The Dance Of Reality

I’ve been a fan of Alejandro Jodorowsky ever since I somehow got into the Australian post-premiere party of his film Santa Sangre in 1990 while living in Sydney. His first film in over 20 years has all his usual tropes (circuses, marches, freaks, vivid colours), whilst eschewing much of the violence and craziness he is known for to tell a much more heartfelt semi-autobiographical tale of his childhood at the mercy of his bullying Stalinist father, and a mother who communicates only via operatic singing. So it’s still a bit bonkers. It was filmed in his own home town and stars his own son as his father, and seems to want to give grant the family a happier ending than they apparently had in real life. Reportedly, a sequel is on the way this year, but this will be hard to beat for richness of the imagination. It also occasionally features the 86-year old director as himself now, comforting his childhood self, telling him everything will turn out alright. And who wouldn’t have loved that.

And finally:

Best Actor/Actress:  I’ve got to say that this year, it’s all about the women. In a close run thing, Rampling just beats Blanchett in a smackdown, but Blanchett gets up again with perfect hair and lipstick.