Culture, Sports, Writing…or whatever
I don’t think 2015 was a very good year. Few individuals might dispute that, but it seems a pretty universal feeling. A lot of bad shit happened, we talked about what that bad shit happening meant, then not much changed. Everyone just kept going.
This year wasn’t a good one personally either. No one enjoys labeling a period of their life ‘bad’ but that’s what it was. I didn’t like 2015 and I didn’t like the person I was for long stretches and I didn’t like pretending otherwise for the sake of those around me. This year was, as they say, not a good time. It was bad.
Which possibly explains my increasing trips to movie theaters. It has been my means of escape for quite some time now. Going to the movies for me is like visiting another planet where I’m not allowed to bring any baggage. Not even a carry-on. Nothing matters outside these characters and their stories and sometimes there’s popcorn.
I also happen to enjoy attending movies alone. Not always, of course. That would be a bit too depressing even for me. Movies not only transport you elsewhere, they also have the ability to place you within an altered head space. They can instill a mood that permeates your being, changes your perceptions, alters your concept of self. This may be one of those situations where I’m describing an experience that’s simply personal, but I don’t think so.
Somehow I found myself arguing with my parents over the holidays. It was about this. For some movies, I actively prefer to go alone and it’s because of this whole movies-as-drugs metaphor I’m describing. When I find myself in this haze leaving the theater, I try to make it last as long as possible. I drive without the radio or I don’t check my phone or as I did after seeing Lawrence of Arabia two months ago, I walk aimlessly. It’s not just because I like existing in that space, but also because I need time to process. Some films open up or reveal gaping holes inside me I didn’t know existed (or more accurately ignored). It’s what I call the great big forever nothing feeling. Standing at the edge of that great big forever nothing feeling can be terrifying, but it’s also healthy because it forces a type of personal confrontation that wouldn’t otherwise occur. It’d just lay dormant, quietly expanding, and eventually consume you. Then you die.
But anyways, this argument with my parents. It was more a discussion really, but it involved me explaining why I see some movies alone. We didn’t get to the great big forever nothing feeling because that’s not a normal conversation to have with your parents. Instead I came across with a bitch, don’t kill my vibe tone and my mom pointed out I try to establish control too much on things that don’t matter. Which, I kind of realized, was true.
The longer I live the more it feels like angst-ridden chaos is the default state for reality. The world does not act in a consciously beneficial way. It shits on your face at will and that’s just a random Tuesday. Not much of what you truly want happens. And if it does, it’s usually not on your schedule. Viewed with a particular lens, it begins to seem like everything outside your grasp is always out of control.
And so, the things you can control imbue a different weight after a while. I have accepted the shit-flinging chaos for the most part. I’m at peace with it. But I’m still trying to determine what small things do or don’t matter and which to exert arbitrary control over. Maybe I’ll figure it out in 2016.
Anyways, that was my roundabout way of explaining why I’m writing this again. I like watching movies and I wish I saw more than those on this list below. This is my continued processing. I’m disappointed the movies I’ve been most excited for this year—The Revenant, Anomalisia—won’t make this list of 2015 movies. One anticipated movie however did make the cut: Hateful Eight. It almost didn’t. The reason: I was waiting to see it with a friend.
So this list will do for now. I might update it later, but probably not.
45) Pitch Perfect 2
A toy brand masquerading as movie. Frustrating considering how rewatchable and joyous the original is. However, not as blatant a commercial as The Hunger Games finale was. I walked out of that theater because I didn’t want to miss SNL that night.
44) Paper Towns
I guess this is my fault pretending a movie based on John Green source material wouldn’t be cloying and preachy. I liked when that Bon Iver song played near the end; more movies should have Bon Iver songs.
43) Jupiter Ascending
Let them live long enough and your favorite artist will disappoint you eventually. This is because humans are messy and complicated and imperfect. Just like this movie was. But maybe we should stop expecting the Wachowskis to blow our minds every time.
42) Aloha
Not as bad as everyone wants you to assume it is. Not nearly good enough to defend it, though.
41) James Bond: Spectre
Somehow a Bond movie hitting rote Bond movie checkpoints from a watered-down Bond blueprint didn’t feel Bond enough.
40) Avengers: Age of Ultron
Something about alter egos surpassing the masks protecting them.
39) Trumbo
Anyone revolutionary will only be properly loved outside of their time, I guess. I liked Bryan Cranston’s capital-A acting in this. Louis C.K. did some funny Louis C.K. things. But it failed where most biopics fail: Too respectful toward its subject.
38) The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards
37) Digging for Fire
The first is an anthology film borne out of James Franco’s UCLA film class. It’s lifted by Franco recruiting actor friends to establish some notoriety to the material, but the best shorts end up coming from unknown actors. The latter is Joe Swanberg’s attempt to make his searching Robert Altman-esque roving character epic. Because Swanberg ‘goes there’ with some of his films, he has an acting troupe as weighty as Franco’s. Both these movies would’ve been better with 75% less ‘actors’ and their associative baggage, though. But I might not have been as eager to watch either otherwise.
36) Southpaw
33) A Most Violent Year
Pleasant genre films that didn’t push any boundaries. Both enjoyable enough for a one-time viewing.
35) Focus
Similar issues but with more Fresh Prince.
34) Mississippi Grind
I could watch and listen to Ben Mendelsohn ask for more Woodfords on a loop and not be bored. Same goes for Mendelsohn smoking cigarettes, limply hanging out his mouth. I could watch Ben Mendelsohn do anything is what I’m saying. I really like Ben Mendelsohn.
32) American Ultra
Meanwhile, I really don’t like Max Landis. He wrote American Ultra and Chronicle, two quite good movies, which doesn’t balance his amateur troll act. He’s the worst kind of sort of smart person: someone who utilizes it for mostly self-masturbatory means and is proud of that fact.
American Ultra suffers from its connection to Landis. And by that, the critical online crowd would never judge this movie fairly because Landis wrote it. Honestly, I’m not much better. I liked this movie better than it’s ranked. Jesse Eisenberg doing his socially anxious outcast thing, Kristen Stewart as badass secret operative, Walter Goggins playing “Laugher,” an insane guy who just laughs, Topher Grace doing a Max Landis impression. Oh, and Connie Britton, a.k.a. America’s pseudo mother, is there. Here’s what I’m trying to say: It’s a good time, but still fuck Max Landis.
30) Furious 7
I lied to my family numerous times this year. Chances are so did you. This one was small: I promised my younger brother and cousins I’d take them to see this. They were eager to watch this movie with me/through my eyes because of my unhealthy obsession with all things considered fast and furious. On the way to the theater, I summarized the ludicrous plot lines and development of bromance disguised as ‘family.’ My synopsis kept repeating the line, “Guys, family is like super important to them.” They laughed and smiled. We enjoyed ourselves.
In reality I’d seen the movie the previous week. I couldn’t wait. These movies hold a special place for me that is quite personal yet universal enough that intensive explanation isn’t required. Either you buy the disparate band of outsiders forming a family in ways more real than your bloodlines or you don’t. Either you accept Vin Diesel as measured father figure and grounded superhero or not. Either you call your friends “busters” as inside joke or…probably not because I admit it’s a weird thing we do.
I will watch this movie many more times, though I wish I’d done it with the right people instead of alone the first time.
31) Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
29) Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
We make excuses for those we love. For me that includes Tom Cruise. I wish he wasn’t a scientologist, but we don’t live in that world. What he does and doesn’t know about the insidious religion might be debatable for some. What isn’t is that he benefits from his status of symbol. He gains from others’ misery.
Art remains separate from artist, though. I think it’s good these two films exist. Scientology is a separate matter, however.
28) The Gift
More asshole Jason Bateman please. The movie’s more than that but that’s what I want.
26) The Martian
Fair warning: I’m about to be ‘that guy’ here. The snob who evinces the book was better than the movie. So if you’re not here for that, feel free to skip ahead.
Anyways, The Martian is one of my favorite books I’ve read this past year. It isn’t a virtuoso piece of Writing, but a damn good story. It smashes an uncomfortable question into your face page after page: Why do we care to survive? Why do some of us risk everything to help others survive? It’s one of those great big forever nothing questions. A thought most of us have had but few ever verbalize. Within the book’s framework, it’s the only question that matters.
This consciousness doesn’t neatly translate to the screen. Director Ridley Scott hints at it, but focuses on his stellar cast of a survival team. It focuses on the how rather than the why. It’s more informative than emotive. That said, the film contains my second-favorite shot in 2015: A setting sun over Mark Watney as he scrambles across the Martian landscape to find escape. Solemn and yet gorgeous.
25) The Intern
Robert De Niro is a wonderful chameleon. So this was my reaction when I remembered the guy playing the delight of an intern also played Don Corleone, Jake La Motta, and Travis Bickle, among others.
24) It Follows
Horror movies are best seen with others. This I hold irrefutable. I happened to see a screening of this on my old college campus, which was weird because I kept waiting for everyone to point fingers and yell in southern rebel accents, “You don’t belong ’round these parts no more, boy!” and also because no one recognized me. I like to pretend I’m more self-important than I am.
That happens to be an apt description of this movie. Not that it wasn’t fun and good, it was. It Follows just ended up regarding itself too seriously. And the rules that govern the monster seemed to shift depending on the scene. I guess we’re all a little skittish about ourselves.
23) Maps to the Stars
The story of Cersei and Jaime Lannister, except everyone’s chill about it. And they’re only chill because they’re so blind judging themselves 80 times harsher than anyone around them. And no one’s satisfied. And someone accidentally kills a dog.
Weirdest movie I saw, which means I saw a David Cronenberg film this year.
27) Dope
22) Brooklyn
What is maturation? Typically, within coming-of-age narratives it involves some grand evolution of awareness and behavior. These movies have their main characters function in that way. Yet what I love about Shameik Moore and Saoirse Ronan’s performances is their recognition. They reach a point where they understand their outsider status and embrace it, but know that isn’t enough. Because sometimes those closest to us want us to change the least. Both these films hinge upon a moment: Would you rather remain where you are, comfortable and with loved ones, or try for something more, possibly at the expense of those same loved ones? I like how both films answers the question.
Also I really enjoyed Moore’s dancing during Dope’s credits. Already ripped some of his moves.
21) Steve Jobs
Can we leave Aaron Sorkin alone yet?
19) Crimson Peak
I only see red when I remember this movie. The crimson red ore that oozes out of the ground and through the floors and slimes into walls. The fluttering red of romance between Mia Wasikowski and Tom Hiddleston. The red fluids spilling from dead bodies.
But mostly the red is Jessica Chastain. She transforms from manipulative mastermind into bloodthirsty monster entering the movie’s third act. Her performance isn’t breathtaking, it’s breath-stealing. Following a plot reveal, she absorbs every moment of attention when she’s on the screen. The moments she disappears, you edge forward, not waiting for her return but begging for it. Unhinged isn’t descriptive enough; she knocks the whole fucking doorframe down.
18) Straight Outta Compton
Ice Cube: “Yo Dre…”
Dr. Dre: “What up?”
Cube: “I got something to say.”
[“Fuck the Police” plays, crowd chants along, Bren’s brain ka-plodes]
17) Bridge of Spies
Ignore the American bravado and do-gooderness permeating this movie. Instead appreciate master Spielberg all-the-way trying on every damn scene to tell his story though the lens. Not a more motivated camera from start to finish this year.
16) Star Wars: The Force Awakens
This movie has 99 problems but stealing my nostalgic heart ain’t one. I pissed my pants when that floating text scrawled across the screen and heard bum-bum-bum-bah-BAH! I can’t wait to do it again.
15) The Big Short
A sad realization hit me watching this: I’m probably its precise target demographic. I care enough to know big banks control and exploit the American people more than I know. Basically I understand I should remain furious with big banks, yet possess zero understanding why or how or what measures these guys utilize to hurt us. So, yes, I’m the guy who needs Selena Gomez to explain bonds to him. This movie stands on its merit outside its informative properties, but um, I’m glad those were there, too.
13) Creed
Or: Meek Mill’s real diss track to Drake.
12) Citizenfour
Cheating with release dates to include it here, I know. But the questions raised internally haven’t stopped reverberating in my head since watching this. Many more thoughts on this later.
11) Spotlight
A very, very compelling film I’d likely never choose to see again. Not a condemnation, I swear.
14) Magic Mike XXL
10) Trainwreck
Excuse me. Allow me to slip into my mansplaining pants for a second here. A bit looser and worn than I remember and hey what’s this hole doing in the crotch and…
Jokes aside, fewer movies delivered a purer good time than these two. Sex, in its hottest and loveliest and awkwardest forms, can be found right up front. They make meeting female sexual pleasuring a notion to aspire to while not preaching it. Both will be highly rewatchable.
9) World of Tomorrow
Any discussion of Don Hertzfeldt begins with recognizing him as an unheralded genius. He is. But ‘genius’ almost belies his peerless craft. His movies hit you with truths so universal you already sort of know them. But he reaches them through an emotional journey so inventive and comedic you don’t see it coming until it one-twos you with simultaneous blows to the heart and mind.
I know this sounds like an oversell of sorts for a simple animation short. Don’t take it that way. Please just watch.
8) Sicario
The prettiest paintings and ugliest truths of the year.
7) Room
So much of what’s sad about being a child doesn’t seem that way to a child. A lack of awareness inhibits any recognition of terror. Everything scary contains blurred lines and hazy figures. That ignorance isn’t exactly bliss—confusion and unanswered question might worsen situations—but it can ease the pain. Simply put, it’s easy to fool children. This applies to a concept like Santa Claus as much as it does rapists. Remove context, which children don’t possess, and meaning branches multiple insidious ways.
Room emotes this equation gracefully. The film begins with the fixed perspective of a child, almost tricking you into believing a sanguine explanation exists for why Ma and Jack live in Room. It zooms out slowly, and the wider purview allows the audience of adults to see things clearly with context and hard edges and dark characters. As the movie continues and more of the world opens to Jack beyond Room, the relationship of audience recognition and a child’s disregard for the tragedy around him stabs and twists and bleeds.
Yes, I loved Room: It never sidesteps messy explanations inherent to the story; it skirts the easy message. Too often victim narratives just ask audiences to bear witness, but Room doesn’t victimize for shock. Brie Larson’s Ma hurts her son Jack as much as she saves him. She’s given room to fall apart and put it back together. Some moments steer too heavily into earnestness (an example: Explosions in the Sky’s “First Breath After a Coma” plays when Jack witnesses the outside world for this first time), but most of it’s earned. Room’s emotional journey wasn’t just devastating, it was vicarious.
20) While We’re Young
6) Mistress America
Finding your place in the world. What a phrase as often preached as it is misunderstood. Probably due to its self-sustaining nature: The answers are just as likely to point you back to the question itself as it is any solution. I say this as a member of a generation who genuinely claims experiences of ‘quarter-life crises.’ Don’t mistake me; I’m not mocking those people. Rather I identify with them, much like I identify with the characters of Noah Bambauch’s duo of photographic films. They are pictures depicting failure as necessity, wherein you look back on this journey of finding your place, feeling like you’ve come a long way, only to realize you went the wrong way. To solve this, both main characters choose to follow larger-than-life characters they just met. And why wouldn’t they? Adam Driver’s Jamie appreciates old ‘classics’, pulls off hip fedoras, attends ayahuasca retreats and doesn’t give a shit who judges him. Greta Gerwig’s Brooke appears to live the spontaneous New Yorker life every artist dreams and says things like, “There’s no cheating when you’re 18, you should all be touching each other all the time.”
How wonderful, or perhaps alarming, it is to recognize these two are posing just like the rest of us.
5) Mad Max: Fury Road
A cinematic experience so intoxicating and thrilling I fear any subsequent viewing might spoil how perfect it exists in my mind.
4) Ex Machina
3) Wild Tales
Take a conceit ripe with potential disaster—needing roadside assistance from your latest victim of road rage, discovering your spouse’s affair during your wedding reception—rip it apart, and pack its seams with explosives. The comedy of this Argentinian anthology film bubbles, then fissures until it erupts and you find yourself on the floor, slapping your neighbor, also on said floor, yelling, “Can you believe that just fucking happened?” You don’t and you do, which is why it’s so damn funny.
2) Hateful Eight
I’m still processing Quentin Tarantino’s latest. It feel like some sort of trick: You don’t want to love something so intensely vile, yet…It’s such gorgeous, egotistical, hilarious, political filmmaking. Saying much more of anything could spoil the fun. Trust: You will be hearing many, many commentaries echo across the interwebs from this movie. It seems like that was Tarantino’s intention.
But god I can’t wait to see this movie again and again.
1) Inside Out
I want to say I’m as surprised as anyone to find this movie ranked here, but I’m not. My appreciation might change and focus on other films as time moves on. That remains a possibility. But I’m at a point of my life where…
I don’t believe this movie was made for children. While the presentation wraps itself in that colorful animated sheen, its innards contain rather explicit adult content. Which is: The more time spent alive the less incentive demands a full range of sensitivity. Apathy too easily can become a default setting, out of which springs a minimum range of emotional sensory. Growing up involves testing each endpoint, though. That’s where Inside Out places its focus. How does it feel to be truly sad or angry or fearful? Can happiness remain a fixed point? What memories constitute our core foundation of personality?
Things change. A simple fact of life we wage war against each and every day. It is such a gargantuan task to live in the present, because it seems to appreciate the present requires some distance by which point it becomes the past. Melancholic attitudes ensue, perhaps attempting to re-create the past, all of which impairs our futures. Seriously contemplating one’s life throws in flux any emotional stability one might hope to grasp.
Of course that is the place I find myself as I decide how to make a living/life for myself. This is a precarious moment to be sure and many others I know are going through it too. The checkpoints have been hit, the path laid before us has been traveled. We’ve reached the terrain where no easy answers remain. Some days an overwhelming temptation presents itself: To give rule to one emotion. Fear chases you into a stable career. Anger explains why the world hasn’t granted your desires. Do anything that re-creates the highs of Joy. Disgust leads to believe you’re better than everyone else. Wallow in your Sadness. Inside Out knows this: Adult characters conceal emotional ensembles all transfigured into one range of shape. Riley’s dad has given into a life of distraction and anger; her mother one of regret and sadness. And this, Inside Out reminds us, is no way to live. In order to have a full life, one must accept and answer all their emotions.
Again, I don’t think 2015 was a very good year. All the problems of the world reduce down to this giving in of single-mindedness. We all were lacking some serious empathy. A state of fear has consumed most of my country, leading to more guns, more police killings of black lives, more tragic shootings, more being okay with all that. Disgust played a role as well. Peek around different corners of social media and encounter bigoted anger, both liberal and conservative, or possibly the joys of frivolous egotism. Sadness…well that’s the one no one demonstrates; that is not an accepted state of mind around these parts. Those Pixar geniuses know this most of all, which is why the movie ends with a literal embrace of sadness. It is okay to feel that way sometimes. It is good to feel. That was a lesson all of us, myself included, needed this year.
I cried. It finally happened, I mean. Been trying to cry close to four months now. Both times caused by movies. This time Room; previously Inside Out. The connection’s transparent: The saddest moment in life is when you’re no longer allowed to be a child.
I’ve been thinking about Her again. An obvious literary trick at mystery. Use pronouns to elicit symbolic distance. Also an attempt to call attention to myself; hope all the She’s read this and think that sentence was about Her. Really I’m referring to Scarlett Johannson. I am Joaquin Phoenix. Surprise.
I wish she called me.
Attended a writing conference. Many people instructed me lessons already learned. I’m an autodidact meaning I’m smart meaning I’m alone. This is all heading somewhere. If I had to predict a direction—down. In a shape of a spiral.
Some people were nice, some were assholes, I was somewhere in between. It was all nothing new. A repetitive cycle of questioning, belittling those deemed intellectually inferior, wondering why it wasn’t my turn, crystallizing into a millennial trope. I’m bored with how pathetic I sound.
I yearn for Purpose. Now I am Justin Bieber. What do you mean? I’ll show you. Where are U Now? Sorry. Get used to it. Love yourself. No pressure. No sense.
I return to my storage unit. It’s funny: I no longer am attached to this Stuff. It once held great meaning, now it’s a metaphor. Something about leaving Stuff behind, but refusing to let go. That’s as close as I can get.
I retrieve what I came for. A plot detail not necessary to explain. Travis Scott’s “Antidote” blares from my phone. I play his music only when no one’s around. I dance and rage. I bashed him once online and wish to maintain my brand. Can’t shatter the illusion. It’s all I have.
My plot detail and I leave. We speed away. The building blows up behind us. Stuff rains from the sky. Insert generic flourish of pluming fire, a couple embarrassing items like panties. One more weird thing. A chicken clucking in cocktail attire. A lesson: The only way to end eras is violently.
The sun sets as I drive. Kanye West’s “Power” provides background soundtrack. The fantasy ends at the bar “I’m jumping out the window, I’m letting everything go.” Too much identification.
In the editing bay, they revert the color palette back to its muted, drab aesthetic. Jump cut to the opening scene of me crying at the movies. Camera follows me from behind out the theater. Stunned shuffling. Drained appearance. Open the door to the dark outside.
Cut to a close-up of my face. Puffy eyes, salt streaks down my face, hot breath steaming in the cold night air. A push-in closer as a thought flickers but doesn’t complete itself in my expression. Pause an almost unbearable time at this position.
Right before it’s totally uncomfortable, a twitch of a smile. Then everything fades to black.
[a] millennial reservations 