Dear 2015,
Movies are a great many things to me. They are products of collaboration, molded and harnessed by countless people; they are impulsive flashes of desire, uncontainable and feral. But more often than not, they are my emotional remedies, administered like medicine in times of need. Sometimes that need is escapism, a break from the trials of the real world, and sometimes that need is something completely unpredictable, a balm to soothe an itch I didn’t even realize I had.
It’s difficult for me to admit that the current moviemaking process has splintered. On one end of the spectrum are products that don’t resemble films so much as vehicles calibrated to maximize branding and market cap. These blockbuster behemoths carry with them budgets that could eclipse the GDP of many countries and often little else. The other end of the spectrum are micro- to mid-budget passion projects, works of auteuristic devotion that may never reach a wide audience. They are the ideas that tinker around the minds of writers and directors, biding their time for a chance to share their views with the public.
Yet this is not to say these two distinct, albeit over-generalized, models are mutually exclusive. Blockbusters may often appear empty and callous, but most also offer pockets of real fun -- a cameo by Hawkeye’s wife in Avengers: Age of Ultron, reassuring her husband that she “totally supports his avenging”, is still one of the best lines from any movie last year. Conversely, certain mid-budget dramas have real, objective reasons for a lack of audience; frankly, they are often not very well conceived or executed (see -- er, don’t see: Aloha, Chappie, anything involving Johnny Depp).
I used to think blockbusters and indies would forever be relegated to toil between the extremes of commercial viability and creative relevance. But perhaps they are actually more mutually beneficial than I thought. After all, Universal just hit a record year in 2015, riding the financial successes of Jurassic World, Furious 7, and Minions to gross over FOUR BILLION DOLLARS (!) from those three films alone. That’s an insane amount of money for a craft that essentially projects still images through a light. But beyond those blockbusters, Universal also released a considerably more varied and intimate slate of movies such as Trainwreck, Straight Outta Compton, and Steve Jobs -- projects that offered genuine, strong, unique voices that couldn’t be systemically manufactured in a computer.
At least for Universal, it seems blockbusters didn’t overwhelm the fledgling dramas so much as allowed the studio to take on riskier projects with less regards to the bottom line. It’s an oddly symbiotic relationship. Perhaps iron sharpens iron. Success begets success. Maybe instead of seeing movies only as avenues for money or prestige, studios still have the ability to encourage artistic creation and foster human curiosity alongside generating revenue. That’s what surprised me most about 2015. And that’s a recipe I will take any day.
Still totally supporting your avenging,
Arthur
Honorable Mention:
The Wolfpack - How would kids turn out if they were raised solely on movies, their only knowledge of the outside world projected through a TV screen? The Wolfpack begins as a documentary about a family raised on an unabiding love for movies, but it quickly evolves into a poignant look into a family tied together by a bond so tight that it strangles. Funny, heartbreaking, and genuinely arresting in its emotional complexity, The Wolfpack is a great movie that deals with cinema, but is actually about so much more.
Movies are a great many things to me. They are products of collaboration, molded and harnessed by countless people; they are impulsive flashes of desire, uncontainable and feral. But more often than not, they are my emotional remedies, administered like medicine in times of need. Sometimes that need is escapism, a break from the trials of the real world, and sometimes that need is something completely unpredictable, a balm to soothe an itch I didn’t even realize I had.
It’s difficult for me to admit that the current moviemaking process has splintered. On one end of the spectrum are products that don’t resemble films so much as vehicles calibrated to maximize branding and market cap. These blockbuster behemoths carry with them budgets that could eclipse the GDP of many countries and often little else. The other end of the spectrum are micro- to mid-budget passion projects, works of auteuristic devotion that may never reach a wide audience. They are the ideas that tinker around the minds of writers and directors, biding their time for a chance to share their views with the public.
Yet this is not to say these two distinct, albeit over-generalized, models are mutually exclusive. Blockbusters may often appear empty and callous, but most also offer pockets of real fun -- a cameo by Hawkeye’s wife in Avengers: Age of Ultron, reassuring her husband that she “totally supports his avenging”, is still one of the best lines from any movie last year. Conversely, certain mid-budget dramas have real, objective reasons for a lack of audience; frankly, they are often not very well conceived or executed (see -- er, don’t see: Aloha, Chappie, anything involving Johnny Depp).
I used to think blockbusters and indies would forever be relegated to toil between the extremes of commercial viability and creative relevance. But perhaps they are actually more mutually beneficial than I thought. After all, Universal just hit a record year in 2015, riding the financial successes of Jurassic World, Furious 7, and Minions to gross over FOUR BILLION DOLLARS (!) from those three films alone. That’s an insane amount of money for a craft that essentially projects still images through a light. But beyond those blockbusters, Universal also released a considerably more varied and intimate slate of movies such as Trainwreck, Straight Outta Compton, and Steve Jobs -- projects that offered genuine, strong, unique voices that couldn’t be systemically manufactured in a computer.
At least for Universal, it seems blockbusters didn’t overwhelm the fledgling dramas so much as allowed the studio to take on riskier projects with less regards to the bottom line. It’s an oddly symbiotic relationship. Perhaps iron sharpens iron. Success begets success. Maybe instead of seeing movies only as avenues for money or prestige, studios still have the ability to encourage artistic creation and foster human curiosity alongside generating revenue. That’s what surprised me most about 2015. And that’s a recipe I will take any day.
Still totally supporting your avenging,
Arthur
***
Honorable Mention:
The Wolfpack - How would kids turn out if they were raised solely on movies, their only knowledge of the outside world projected through a TV screen? The Wolfpack begins as a documentary about a family raised on an unabiding love for movies, but it quickly evolves into a poignant look into a family tied together by a bond so tight that it strangles. Funny, heartbreaking, and genuinely arresting in its emotional complexity, The Wolfpack is a great movie that deals with cinema, but is actually about so much more.
***
Favorite Movies:
#5
Anomalisa - Writer/director Charlie Kaufman is a sort of labyrinthine architect of the mind, an excavator of the soul. His ideas often revolve around similar tropes -- the ambiguousness of identity in Being John Malkovich; the evanescence of love in Eternal Sunshine; the inscrutable importance of a human life in Synecdoche, New York. Anomalisa is a potent mixture of many of these ideas, all presented in stunningly beautiful stop-motion animation. It’s a charmingly odd movie experience, and one that begs to be further dissected and discussed.
#4
Mistress America - At this point, I must admit I’ve developed somewhat of a huge crush on Greta Gerwig, the awkwardly funny and charmingly quirky writer/director/actor wading through the muddy waters of twentysomething millennials. She’s sharp, witty, and insightful, like a less self-obsessed and more emotionally accessible Lena Dunham. Somewhat of a distant emotional echo of Frances Ha, one of my favorite movies of 2012, Mistress America is ostensibly a story of young people struggling to leave an imprint on society, attempting to find meaning in their lives. It bristles with a kinetic rawness that captures the angst of youth and the indecipherable turmoil of growing up.
#3
Creed - Although it’s technically another reboot of a stagnant franchise, Creed excels in areas where other mega-blockbuster entrants such as Jurassic World and The Force Awakens stumble. Working with a streamlined tale of filial turmoil, Creed injects new blood into the Rocky franchise while carving out a new protagonist that feels primed for exciting new adventures in the future. It may not reach the same frenzied heights of the original Rocky, but Creed is a more than worthy successor to the champ.
#2
It Follows - It Follows begins with a disorienting 360-degree panning shot of a teenage girl, scantily clad, running through a quiet suburban street. We never see what she runs from, only the dread on her face. It quickly becomes clear that the film’s premise -- whoever you have sex with will be followed by it until that person either dies or has sex with someone else to pass it along -- becomes a prompt for a larger discussion. Is this a parable for unsafe sex? A throwback to a more primal past? A perpetual attempt at escaping mortality? Whatever the interpretation, the horror of It Follows permeates every corner of the screen, often in broad daylight with minimal gimmicks. It’s a massively adroit and crafty staging of something truly frightening -- the inevitability of ongoingness and inexorability of peril.
#1
