Tangerine
My 83rd movie of the year was this LA drama shot entirely on an iPhone. (I was pleasantly surprised by the quality!) It's about two transgender sex workers and it takes place on Christmas Eve. Needless to say, it was something very different from the white-straight-male-dominated films I usually tend to see (like everyone else). I've already seen this one on several year-end best lists, and while I can't go that far, I did find this to be entertaining, harrowing, interesting, funny, and heart-wrenching. Worth a look!
Welcome to Me
Kristen Wiig suffers from a severe form of social anxiety, or maybe schizophrenia, or maybe bipolar disorder. I dunno, it's the type of character she always plays. Anyway, the plot here is that her character wins the lottery and spends her newfound fortune producing a talk show in which she's the host and also the focus of every episode. This was nothing special, but I didn't dislike it or find it boring or anything.
The Loneliest Planet
There's a very, very specific taste you need in order to enjoy this movie. It's very largely just an hour and forty minutes of three people walking through the Caucasus Mountains. There are lengthy tracking shots and gorgeous long shots and the whole movie is pretty quiet without very much dialogue. Lots of the chatter that does take place is non-English and non-subtitled. The entire movie's conflict basically comes down to a certain incident in the middle of the film. I really liked this one, but I can completely understand why so many people hated it. As a good litmus test - did you like Gerry? (Watch Gerry if you haven't.) This is longer than Gerry and not quite as good, in my opinion. But then, I loved Gerry. Whatever.
Holy Motors
Here's an interesting one. Holy Motors can best be described as "challenging." It's the type of movie I'd love to love, but it's not one I really understood at all. Describing it in any detail feels like a fool's errand, so I won't bother trying. In a nutshell, a man seems to understand that he is an actor performing different roles as he goes about his day, but there's no camera or audience in sight. And that really only scratches the surface of some of the surreal stuff going on here. Has anyone else seen this? Can anyone help me out?
Beasts of No Nation
We're at movie number 87, for those keeping track. This was a Netflix original film from Cary Fukugawa, the guy responsible for both seasons of True Detective (so, yeah, there was a really wide range in potential quality heading into this one). It's a story - not a documentary - about child soldiers in Africa. I dunno. Didn't do a ton for me.
Spring
Hell yes. I went into this one essentially blind and was rewarded with what was nearly one of my favorite movies of the year. (The ending - the final thirty seconds, really - was total butt.) Spring starts out looking like some generic mumblecore flick about an irresponsible shithead. Then it suddenly gets scary. I mean, this had some of the most startling and jump-indcing moments I've seen all year. But just when it seems like Spring is a mumblecore movie that turned into a monster movie, that monster movie turns into Before Sunrise. It's one of the strangest genre mash-ups I've ever seen, and it works surprisingly well. I loved this! I just still hate the way it ended.
Queen of Earth
Here's the second movie in a row from Alex Ross Perry that didn't live up to the hype for me. (The last one was Listen Up Philip, which also starred Elisabeth Moss.) Oh well! Moss was great here and I'm sure this was an objectively high-quality movie; it just wasn't one I ever felt myself getting into. The premise? Elisabeth Moss gets dumped and goes to spend some time in her friend's lake house. They bicker constantly, and Moss slowly loses her mind. Not in a surreal-hey-cool-dream-sequences way, but just in a holy-shit-she's-unhinged-and-possibly-very-dangerous way. I even tried to rewatch this one, but bailed halfway through when I realized, come on, if I'm going to get to 100 movies on the year I can't be wasting time on rewatches.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part I
I liked the first two Hunger Games books just did not care whatsoever about the third one. Turns out the movie was no better, especially when said movie is just the first half of said book. I'll be back for the conclusion soon enough, I'm sure, but this was a real dud.
Only Lovers Left Alive
Movie 91, y'all! And a solid one at that. This one got some acclaim a year ago and it took me until now to check it out. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton play vampires in a long-distance and severely long-term relationship; he's several centuries old and she's several centuries older. What I really enjoyed here was their two characters and their relationship. This ain't your father's vampire movie, full of blood and gore and sex and such; rather, it's an exploration of what it'd be like to live for such a long damn time - especially with the same person. I mean, imagine how "over it" you'd be. Imagine how well you'd know your partner. That's more or less the gist of this movie, and I really dug it. And yes, there's an actual conflict in there too, of course.
My Mistress
I liked Venus in Fur way back in January, and I absolutely loved The Duke of Burgundy a few months ago. But apparently lightning doesn't strike thrice, as the third dominatrix-y movie I saw this year was just a big old turd. Boring and unoriginal! Forget about this one.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
I love what Abrams did here. The man knows how to tease and foreshadow like no other, and that's really the best thing you can say about this movie - not really that it was awesome as a stand-alone film, but that everyone who saw it is even more pumped for Episode VIII now. And it's only a year and a half away! Hooray!
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Damn. I wanted to love this and I'm pretty sure I would have if it wasn't a Swedish film with English subtitles. This was full of dark, bleak humor. Every shot was a long one taken by a stationary camera and all the colors were intentionally drab and squalid. So this movie's quality rests almost entirely on the timing and delivery of its dialogue. I liked it, but I'm sure there were a few things lost in the translation from spoken words to written subtitles. Oh well!
Two Days, One Night
Marion Cotillard was great here - is she ever not? - but the movie itself was pretty forgettable. A mother of two is about to be laid off from her job and needs to spend her weekend lobbying her coworkers for their support. That's an interesting enough premise to hang a movie on, with some heart to boot, but I guess I'm surprised it won as many film festival honors as it did.
Goodbye to Language
Boy, this was not my cup of tea. It's an experimental video essay in the French language. I think it was meant to be seen in 3D, but I'm not sure what difference that would have made. It's a hodgepodge of footage and audio just kind of mashed together incoherently. The audio will cut out, get distorted, or get boosted to twice the volume seemingly at random and the footage is alternately oversaturated, black and white, tint-adjusted, grainy, blurry, or in crisp and stunning HD - again, seemingly at random. If movies are like books, then this was some really bad abstract poetry. So, why did I watch it? Sixty-minute run time! Four more to go!
Sisters
Saw this one in theaters with my - wait for it - sisters. Thanks to some fairly low expectations - seriously, those trailers - I was pleasantly surprised. There's nothing amazing here or anything, but it's Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and if you're not on board with that then, well, this isn't for you.
Kumiko the Treasure Hunter
While discussing Fargo recently, Sweeney brought up that some girl from Japan had misunderstood that the movie wasn't an actual documentary, and had flown all the way to Minnesota looking for the bag of money that Steve Buscemi buries in the snow by the side of the road. I was like, "Sween, hey now, come on. That's just a movie." Turns out the movie was inspired by the very urban legend Sweeney was talking about. And it was a pretty good movie! Imagine that.
The Bling Ring
This is Sofia Coppola's take on the true story of a group of Los Angeles teenagers who went around burgling rich and famous celebrities' homes back in 2008 or so. I liked this one more than I expected to, and I think a lot of that comes from Emma Watson playing "insufferable brat" extremely well. Like, don't get me wrong - all these kids were shit heads - but you're almost rooting for them to get away with it all until Emma Watson starts playing the victim. Good job, great stuff.
Whiplash
Oh fuck yeah, this makes a hundred! Figured I'd end on a high note. Whiplash isn't much more than JK Simmons berating Miles Teller with homophobic and slur-laden "tough love" in an attempt to push him to become the greatest drummer in the world. Is the attempt misguided? Probably - but Simmons justifies it soundly enough in a late monologue. Way to earn that Oscar, buddy!
Wow! Never again!
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