NOTE: Yes, if it got
nominated for won an Oscar in 2015, it’s eligible for this list even if it came
out the year before, before you start telling me that movie is old!!!
And no, I did not watch The Force Awakens (which sounds like a great porn title by the way).
1. MAD
MAX: FURY ROAD
Here’s the basic plot
for Fury Road: Charlize Theron’s
character Furiosa decides to escape from a maniac with his five brides in tow.
She drives down what is basically the stretch of an almost long ass straight
road… and *spoiler alert* then decides to drive back, it’s one of the best
things you’ll ever see… and oh, there’s some guy named Max!
2. STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON
A rollercoaster ride
with enough highs to overlook the lows! The story of brotherhood among young
men and surrogate fatherhood between a protégé and his mentor, you are about to
witness the strength of street knowledge and oh yeah… FUCK THE POLICE!
3. JURASSIC WORLD
Surprises at every turn
just like a good amusement park ride. I had to google the screenwriters of
this, just to give them props. For the record Jurassic World is not actually a reboot, it’s a continuation of the
existing franchise with one character from the first movie (as well as a few
allusions) making the connection. It’s basically Jurassic Park 4… and possibly
the best!
4. SPY
This is movie is
hilarious as fuck. Forget the plot, there IS one, but you’ll forget it
three-quarters of the way and concentrate on the humour. ALL the actors
deliver, even the ones playing secondary and minute characters and the one
cameo in the movie is on point! Kudos must be given to writer and director Paul
Feig who directed Bridesmaid for
writing a starring vehicle for Melissa McCarthy, while both making fun of and
eschewing the stereotypes of women’s roles in movies.
5. FURIOUS 7
It’s not the best in
the series (that honour goes to Fast Five),
but it’s definitely a movie that will be put on repeat for die-hards and casual
fans of the franchise. It’s also the last one to feature the late Paul Walker
and a very teary-eyed ending, where I’m told many a guys cried not unlike when
many a women cried at the end of Titanic.
6. ANT-MAN
Ant-man
is surprisingly good. For what has essentially been Marvel’s least hyped & expected movie after Guardians of the Galaxy and not to
mention the slight drama of the first director walking out, Ant-man didn’t turn out bad. It’s quite
good and not unlike the first Iron Man
movie, if not almost better. There’s a slow build up to Scott Lang becoming the
Ant-man, ‘cause hey you only get to tell an origin story once, so you might as
well take your time. It’s also a welcome pace when compared to Age of Ultron and that movie’s uneven
pacing. Even the secondary characters seem important and have you invested
(perhaps with the exception of Judy Greer who plays Lang’s ex-wife). Michael
Pena practically steals every scene he’s in and yet you remember that he’s not
even the hero of the story. That’s a good balance of characters there. While
Darren Cross is a formidable foe for first time hero Lang, he like most Marvel
movie villains is given the disposable treatment as his story doesn’t seem
fleshed out enough, but hopefully he might show up again. He has the same
tortured soul as one Asgardian seeking for attention.
7. THE MARTIAN
Not to sound cheesy
here, but I found this movie to be a metaphor for the last quarter of 2015 in
my life. Obviously I wasn’t stranded on Mars, but the oft-repeated survival
story of making it with what little you have struck a nerve. I felt they made
this movie for me… yeah, see I told you: cheesy! The Martian is a spectacle in a year full of franchise sequels
& reboots. This movie is based on a book, you know, those things people
used to read before Twitter & the Internet came along!
8. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: ROGUE NATION
MI:5 works it way
backwards in terms of its action scale, leading to a very anti-climatic ending.
It opens with a bang, keeps the momentum and by the time it ends, you’re not
mad it doesn’t feature the usual blow-everything end of most action movies.
Luckily, it’s worth putting on repeat! Ride with it!
9. THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E
Guy Ritchie’s take on
the spy genre is no less entertaining than that other spy movie of the year, The Kingsmen, except here it’s a bit
grown up and outdated by its setting (the 1960s and a world crisis today’s
generation probably have no idea about). Nonetheless it’s great fun and Henry
Cavill proves he can act (I think his Superman is flat, I’m just saying!).
10. PITCH PERFECT 2
Aca-bitches! The Barden
Bellas are back and the new competition is on a bigger stage, the world stage
actually. Can they succeed? You aca-bet they’ll try! (I should be writing aca-summaries
for aca-movies for real).
11. AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
Despite seemingly being
overstuffed, it’s amazing how Age of
Ultron manages to hold, then again it’s written by Joss Whedon, so I guess
no surprise there. It’s hard to say which part of the film’s almost two and
half hours we could’ve done without, especially when considering the movie was
already cut from its initially three hours and fifteen minutes (does Whedon
think he’s Scorcese?). The movie’s first problem is its pacing, very uneven.
Whenever the movie slows down, it doesn’t seem like enough time before it gets
swept in another action scene (apparently Marvel
seems to have an action-scene-every-twenty-minutes mandate). Things happen fast
and you can’t help but wonder after watching Daredevil, maybe this should’ve been a Netflix series, so we could digest everything. The movie’s other
problem is it sometimes lack of detail. While I love the Natasha/Bruce Banner
love story, I wonder if it took away from other scenes that could’ve used as
much concentration. The best part of the movie by far has to be Paul Bettany as
Vision, who conveniently shows up towards the end. I wish we were giving more
time with James Spader’s menacing Ultron; his voice (filtered through digital
tech) is worth hearing for more than two hours.
12. BOYHOOD (Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actress)
This should’ve won Best
movie and Best director. If there’s anything wrong with Boyhood, it’s that for a movie shot over 12 years, it ran about 15
minutes longer than it should. I felt we were aging with the kid after 2 hours!
13. THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
Wes Anderson’s style of
film-making NEVER gets old. It still amazes. I’ve been a fan of his since The Aquatic Life of Steve Zissou. I
think The Grand Budapest Hotel
one-ups that movie!
14. WHIPLASH
Miles Teller stuns in this Indie favourite, not unlike his co-star J.K Simmons who left no doubt as
to who was picking up the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor this year.
15. 99
HOMES (Nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 2016 Golden Globes)
For anyone who ever
doubts Michael Shannon’s acting abilities after all he’s done, this Sundance
favourite is a testimony to the man’s talents. Here he plays a real-estate
agent who with the help of banks clears people from their homes when they can’t
pay and in turn he buys the property. Capitalism at its best. What gives the
movie its spin is when he hires someone he just evicted from his home to work
as his protégé doing the same (talk about spin). That someone is Andrew
Garfield who once starred in a terrible Spiderman
franchise ironically called Amazing. Here there’s no let-down as Garfield leaves
that house of web that was burning!
16. THE DUFF
Yes, it’s predictable-
you can see the ending in the first 15 minutes –and clichéd, but guess what? It
works. It takes a true and tried formula- created in the 80s and mastered quite
well, REPEATEDLY in the 90s –and gives it the new millennial spin it so
deserves. The acting is on point and not phoned in like you see in several
cheap imitations of the teen genre. It also stars that little girl from Independence Day proving she can carry a
film all on her own. Will, Bill and Jeff who?!
17. SPECTRE
It seems am one of the
few who thoroughly enjoyed Spectre. Y’all
complain too much! When Skyfall gave
us a stripped down grittier version of Bond, y’all complained. Some of you
going as far as to blame potential future Bond director Christopher Nolan for
causing the Dark Knight effect of stripping down heroes to reality. Now Skyfall director Sam Mendes is back with
a typical Bond movie and y’all still complain! It’s not like it’s the worst
Bond movie in the Daniel Craig catalog. It also has one of the best Bond
endings ever in my opinion, though I know some die-hard fanatics will disagree
and since when has a Bond villain ever made sense that you just hate this one
sooooo bad?! If anything at least the movie was wonderfully shot, that should
make it excuseable for anyone who hates it!
18. GOOD KILL
Hollywood HARDLY ever
does movies where the U.S military is portrayed negatively or more importantly
as the bad guys (‘cause that could never happen, right?). There have been the
few exceptions… in some measures (The
Hurt Locker, The Green Zone),
continuing in that rare tradition comes Good
Kill starring Ethan Hawke (‘cause really when you think about it, only
Hawke would star in these movies). Good
Kill deals with the cowardice, yet deadly strikes of American drones and
how they are used partially and inefficiently by the U.S government, all the
while maintaining that they are good American soldiers out there (no denying
that).
19. EX-MACHINA
The plot to Ex-Machina isn’t necessarily original
(robot-gets-intelligence-and-poses-possible-threat), but in a year of
blockbuster robots and artificial intelligence, it’s the smartest of them all.
It might match Age Of Ultorn’s
titular villain in a game of wits.
20. TOP FIVE
Chris Rock FINALLY
makes a movie worthy of his stand-up routine all sort of based around the
argument of who’s in your top five list of rappers… sort of!
21. THE HUMBLING
You may not agree with
me on this, but I found the Al Pacino starring The Humbling to be the superior version to Oscar winner Birdman, there I said it. That movie was
good, but The Humbling- though
similar in storyline –has a better story, perhaps not told as well (which is
where it fails), but better nonetheless.
22. BIRDMAN
(Oscar winner for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and
Best Cinematography)
Here’s my qualm with Birdman. First off, it’s a great movie.
It even confuses people in a good way. Michael Keaton should’ve won the Oscar
for Best Actor, but that’s okay, ‘cause in my opinion Birdman robbed The Grand
Budapest Hotel for Best Original Screenplay. There’s nothing spectacular
about the script here. I’m not saying it’s bad, but imagine the movie without
its visual effects, think it’ll be as exciting? Probably not so much, the
performances would still be great though! Birdman
is going to be great for future film students to watch, but it reminds me of
Sam Mendes’ American Beauty (a winner
of all the same awards as Birdman,
except Best Picture. It won Best Actor though). That movie was a big deal when
it came out in 1999, but 15 odd years later, its shock value has worn off (it’s
still great to watch) and been replaced by the new golden age of TV. Now unlike
The Matrix and Fight Club, which both came out the same year (with not as many
awards), American Beauty hasn’t aged
as well (no pun intended). Now some of you are saying but both those movies had
visual effects. Yes, they did and as much as the effects are one of the first
things you remember about The Matrix,
it had a real story to stand on, same as Fight
Club. Birdman’s script minus the visual effects can be clumsy. To see what
it would look like without it, but perhaps superior, watch The Humbling. Once you cut the visual effects, Birdman doesn’t fly so well, but and there is a BIG but here, it’s
stage feel- the fact that it is set in a theatre –does add to its gravitas.
It’s like watching a 3D interactive stage play, where things pop out at you and
for that it does deserve mass credit… but it’s not that great!
23. FOCUS
Will Smith’s return to
form starts with this rom-com heist, which makes you wonder may be Mr.
Independence Day should do more mid-budget movies now, especially as he’s aging
into older leading man status now.
24. GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF
A great look into the
religion/cult of Scientology. Going Clear
doesn’t actually set out to (directly) bash Scientology; it’s more of an expose
of people who felt disillusioned, tired and dissatisfied by it. Will it go down
well with the Church of Scientology? Nope! Will it change your view of the cool
ass Tom Cruise? Probably not!
25. KINGSMEN: THE SECRET SERVICE
I was wondering where
to put this movie. I think on the surface it appears great (I mean it’s a great
way to waste two hours), even though the movie isn’t deep. It’s your standard
blockbuster fare.
26. ENTOURAGE
The first act of the
Entourage movie is brilliant, it’s like if they decided to extend the average
episode length to 40 minutes, but after that it dips into a cameo-filled fest
that funny enough doesn’t distract from the storyline, but then again doesn’t really
add much to it either!
27. TED 2
Unlike the first Ted movie that actually felt like a
movie, Ted 2 feels like a strung-out
episode of Family Guy, but there are
still laughs of course and perhaps that’s all that matters!
