My Favourite Films of 2015

After all the hype and disappointment, I had it in my mind that 2015 had been a poor year for films. Having gone back over the ones I managed to catch, I was happy to see I was wrong. There was one masterpiece and future classic and plenty of others that came quite close.

Here's my list of the ones I enjoyed the most.

Inside Out

 

 

The success of Pixar as a producer of superior family entertainment has been so unwavering that near misses like Cars and Brave are cause for genuine surprise. No danger of that here. Inside Out is my favourite of all Pixar's efforts, and easily the best film I saw this year.

It's a rare pleasure as an adult to sit in a cinema and be able to feel total wonder and joy, but Inside Out delivers big on both. The key to its success is again a commitment to providing entertainment for children and adults alike, delivering a feast for the imagination that carries genuine emotional impact.

One of the hallmarks of a classic is that it is endlessly rewatchable. There's so much to marvel at here that Inside Out is assured of that status.

Wild

 

Cheryl Strayed's quest for meaning and redemption is presented here as a simultaneous forward and backward journey. The further she walks on the Pacific Crest Trail, the deeper into the traumatic events of her past she delves. And as she successfully traverses each subsequent obstacle, so she begins to come to terms with the past and move on with her life. This externalising of her inner struggle is a narrative approach that generates powerful emotional impact. A deeply moving and inspiring film.

Mad Max: Fury Road

 

 

At the heart of this film's success is the relief and joy felt at witnessing the reattainment of greatness by a genre much diminished and maligned. Here is an action movie stripped of convoluted plot and postmodern knowingness, piloted unerringly by a singular vision, with enough depth of character and narrative drive to keep you firmly in tow. Mad Max reminds us that when done right, this is one of the most purely enjoyable movie experiences you can have.

Whiplash

 

So much of Whiplash hangs on the performance of J.K. Simmons as the tyrannical jazz teacher. It's like watching Keyser Soze played by Buddy Rich, a super villain puppet master pulling the strings of determined naïf Miles Teller, and the back and forth sparring between the two is riveting. By the end you're left as battered and exhausted as a punch-drunk prizefighter.

Foxcatcher

 

There's a feeling of dread pervading this film, and it stems from the decay of the American Dream. Here the Olympic ideal and family bonds are corrupted by the perverted Old Money of Steve Carell's John DuPont. Tragic and haunting.

It Follows

 

The scariest and most enduring horror films are those that prey on our deepest subconscious fears, and It Follows adheres to that formula, making it one of the most disturbing viewing experiences I've had since The Descent. Exploiting a fear of growing up and adulthood personified by an unstoppable sexually-transmitted curse, its half-glimpsed horrors linger on in the mind for days.

The Tribe

 

No dialogue. No subtitles. Just Ukrainian sign language. And yet this is no barrier to understanding this tale of organised crime in a school for deaf children. Uncompromising, unflinching, brilliant.

Beasts of No Nation

 

Beautiful, gliding, colour-drenched visuals and an ethereal soundtrack balance out the harrowing events in this tale of child soldiers in Africa. A starker, less deft approach might have been too much to take, but director Cary Fukunaga gives us hope amongst all the horror.

 Carol

 

Aesthetically speaking, Carol is a delight. Shot on grainy film, the wintry greys of New York are gorgeous, and the score is as languid and yearning as Cate Blanchett's trapped housewife. But this is a love story in danger of falling short of real emotion. For all the look and glance stuff between Blanchett and Rooney Mara, it threatens to remain so subtle as to be superficial. Until the final, triumphant scene, that is.

 

 

Macbeth

 

 

What differentiates this adaptation of Shakespeare's play is its focus on grief as the catalyst for Macbeth and his wife's tragic attempts at greatness. From the first shot of their child being laid to rest, to the last of the future king of Scotland, themes of parenthood, lineage and loss are at the fore. It lends great weight to the tragedy to consider that the seeds of Macbeth's doom are sown in the pursuit of power as recompense for the loss of a child.

Playing Russian Roulette with Cereal

Life is a lottery. One day it hands you roses, the next it leaves a flaming parcel of dog poo on your doorstep. This is how I feel when I open a new Kellogg’s Variety Pack.  At this point I’m usually hungover, and I’ve been too lazy to organise a proper breakfast, so I’m left with the choice of eight fun-sized boxes of cereal. 

I know these are ostensibly aimed at picky children, but if you double up on packets, you have just about enough to sustain an adult human being.  But here lies the challenge: which two cereals to combine?

This becomes especially tricky when you consider that there are eight packets, but only six different cereals.  Kellogg’s solution is to make up the numbers with a random final pairing, which can often lead to an unsuitable combination. It's the breakfast time equivalent of Russian Roulette.

So how do I avoid eating a cereal bullet?  How do I best buddy up these six cereals?  First, I’m going to examine them in more detail.

Coco Pops.  Considering the monkey on the packaging is named Coco, it seems likely Kellogg’s want kids to imagine they are eating bits of dessicated monkey dung.

Rice Krispies. Flavourless albino dust motes.

Frosties. Sugar flavoured flakes of corn.

Corn Flakes.  Corn flavoured flakes of corn.

Multi Grain Shapes. Fun-shaped shapes of amalgamated crops, including rice, oats and maize.  The Frankenstein’s Monster of cereal.

Honey Loops. These used to be called Honey Nut Loops but presumably due to an alarming spate of nut allergy incidents, the nuts have been removed, and replaced with god knows what.  Honey flavoured.

Now I know a little more about these cereals, I should be able to pick a perfect match for each of them.

Coco Pops are basically chocolate Rice Krispies, so that's an obvious combination.  Frosties are just Corn Flakes pasted in sugar, so those two go well together.  And Multi Grain Shapes and Honey Loops are similar enough in flavour and texture to make sense as the final pairing.

But what of the final two packets?  What if it wasn't one of these pairs?  What if it was, for instance, Coco Pops and Frosties?  Would that work? There are fifteen possible two-cereal combinations.  Discounting the three that I know already work, that leaves twelve.

The next step is for me to test all twelve cereal combinations.  I do this in one sitting, ingesting 300 grams of cereal and 2,839 mililetres, or roughly five pints, of semi-skimmed milk.  This is when my suspicion that I am lactose intolerant is confirmed, and I spend the next four hours in and out of the lavatory.

But what did I conclude from my findings?  Which of the six Variety Pack cereals is the most adaptable?  Who is the dependable utility player who will be happy to fill in at right back?

The answer is of course Rice Krispies.  Their adaptability lies in their very absence of character.  Coco Pops and Frosties together are just too sweet, and mixing the flaky cereals with the softer ones can lead to jarring differences in texture, resulting in an anxiety filled breakfast.  The bland softness of Rice Krispies makes them an ideal accompaniment to any of the other five cereals, adding bulk but not impinging on flavour.  It's the cereal for all occasions.

When my guts have finally settled down, and my recycling bin is full of empty cereal packets, I notice I'm left with just two boxes.  To my horror, I realise they are Coco Pops and Frosties.  Suddenly I know how Nicky from The Deer Hunter felt.

What will we do if Star Wars: The Force Awakens is rubbish?

We'll say we loved it anyway. Why? Because we need to. It is the realisation of a childhood fantasy, a dream we never imagined would come true.

Not so long ago, the Hollywood studios were content for their most beloved properties to remain in suspended animation in the catacombs of their vaults. They seemed precious about certain titles, wanting to preserve their dignity in the equivalent of cinematic museums, as if they were mummified pharoahs that would perish into dust if brought to the surface.

And if it wasn't respect, perhaps it was pride. Maybe subsequent studio heads believed they had it in them to make the next big thing, and resisted taking the easy route offered by repeating their predecessors’ past successes.

Consider the huge critical and commercial success of the Godfather Parts I and II, yet Part III did not appear until sixteen years later. There were gaps of seven and six years between the first three films in the Alien franchise. E.T. never got a sequel despite being the highest grossing movie of the 1980s.

But these days Hollywood has no such qualms, and regularly loots the tombs of its past for anything that might be revived and made to sing and dance again for a profit. And original ideas rarely make it out of infancy.

Now familiar figures return to greet us, like the half remembered faces of friends and relatives long since departed. So Ridley Scott revived his interest in Alien and Blade Runner. They reopened the gates of Jurassic Park. Tron got a sequel 28 years later. And Indiana Jones dusted off the fedora for another adventure.

And fans of those series couldn't believe their luck. It was as if Father Christmas had finally gotten around to reading all those letters they'd sent as children, and was granting those long forgotten wishes, one by one. And carried along on a surge of marketing hype and nostalgia, we met the returned with barely contained excitement, and a little trepidation.

But for the most part, once the excitement had worn off, and the clamour of hyperbole had died down, we realised they were just pale imitations of their ancestors. Like an image photocopied one too many times.

And so we are about to enter a phase that will see a new Star Wars film released every year for the foreseeable future, or at least until audiences lose interest.

But the thought of what that future might be like if these films were to stink, is too terrible to bear. The idea that they will make as insignificant an impression on us as the last trilogy of Star Wars films, does not warrant consideration.

Because if Star Wars fails, what else is left?

And so we will say that we love them anyway. We will rate them higher than they deserve. They will head our lists of the year's best films. We will talk of Oscars. And we will decry the naysayers for their inability to feel joy any longer.

We will paint over the flaws and embellish the good bits, creating new, perfect versions in our minds, the same way we did as children, imagining what new adventures in that galaxy far, far away might be like.

Whatever: A Poem About the Movies

Whatever

A million scenes I've seen
A million times before
Someone checks their gun for bullets,
What a surprise, just one left.

No one ever says goodbye
Before they hang up the phone.
Why bother having a phone?
When there's never a signal?

These days women keep their bras on during sex
And only the baddies smoke cigarettes
Unless it's the sixties, then everyone smokes
Just to remind you that you're watching the past.

Every keystroke is signalled by a beep
Every nightmare ends with a scream
These are the movies
And I see them in my dreams.