Around the world, herds of white middle-class mums have their kitchens decorated with alcoholic chic, an empty fridge, but a full wine rack of rouge; the sign sporting the phrase, “It’s 5 pm somewhere” proudly hung up, in place of a clock or piece of faux-Picasso, perhaps. Essentially, this article is seven-years overdue, though technically, just like those signs that subtly mask a middle-class mother’s alcoholism, “it’s 2015 somewhere." Yep, that’s right, it’s still only 2015 in Ethiopia due to their non-Gregorian calendar.
So, like those mothers that shop at Whole Foods and convince themselves that cracking a bottle open with breakfast because it’s 5 pm in Vanuatu is completely normal, at least somewhere in the world a calendar reads 2015, and therefore, this article is actually punctual. These are the best films of 2015…
9 Mad Max: Fury Road
Tom Hardy stars as Max Rockatansky in director George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, the fourth edition of the rebooted franchise. In this post-apocalyptic action adventure, Max reluctantly joins up with Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), in order to strengthen their ongoing feud with the tyrants who have assumed control of the wasteland’s water supply.
8 Son of Saul
Saul fia or Son of Saul, to us lowly English-speaking folk, is a low-budget Hungarian drama that certainly leaves a lump in one’s throat. As with any masterpiece that depicts the horrors of the Holocaust, the audience is often left with a sense of harrowing realism, a forceful realization that these horrors truly did occur.
Winning the prestigious Grand Prix Award at Cannes, Son of Saul explores the atrocities of Auschwitz via a Jewish Sonderkommando named Saul, who's responsible for leading fellow Jews to the concentration camp’s gas chambers, and subsequently to their deaths. The film often feels like it's shot in one take, creating an unrelenting sense of tension as Saul decides to do something dangerous.
7 Ex Machina
In this futuristic take on artificial intelligence, a competition winner and programmer, Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) is offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rub shoulders with revolutionary AI designer, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac). Caleb is brought in under the pretense of being Nathan’s sounding board, to ascertain whether Ava, Nathan’s robotic creation is capable of human thought and true, un-programmed consciousness.
However, Nathan’s narcissistic, volatile behavior leads to an alarming discovery. Oscar Isaac is delightful in Ex Machina as the calculated sociopathic maniac, Nathan, and Domhnall Gleeson is splendid as the relatively feeble, suspicious Caleb. Between them, Alicia Vikander is lithe, haunting, and mysterious as a sentient cyborg.
6 Sicario
Denis Villeneuve’s action-packed, star-studded Sicario shines a torch on the grim reality of Mexican cartel warfare, as we see it through the eyes of Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) an FBI agent who is relatively unconditioned to the barbarity of cartel killings, and conflict. The action thriller details the story of the FBI’s attempts at stemming the relentless bloodshed and illegal drug trafficking between the US and Mexican border by the notorious Sonora cartel.
5 The Revenant
After years of deserving Academy acclaim, just to be snubbed by so-called “industry professionals,” Leonardo DiCaprio finally broke his duck for his dazzling display in director Alejandro G. Inarritu’s multi-award-winning, The Revenant. In 1823, explorer Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) is left for dead by his fellow expedition crew members, following a vicious, and ultimately near-fatal grizzly bear attack. After his son is murdered, Glass, through some miraculous turn of events garners the strength to seek out his son’s killers and those who had forsaken him. The Revenant is an agonizing story of revenge, survival, and honor.
4 Anomalisa
Seven years after the critical success of his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman returned to the filmmaking fold with 2015’s Anomalisa. Having been the writing brain behind the likes of Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Adaptation, which recently celebrated its 20th birthday, Kaufman’s stock as a unique, and original screenwriter was at an all-time high.
Anomalisa is a comical animation that is also brimming with existential dread, a film that explores the loneliness of being by following motivational speaker Michael Stone (David Thewlis), who strikes up a rapport with Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a call-center worker who adds meaning to his dull, and lifeless existence (and is literally the only character with a distinct voice outside Michael's with every other character voiced by the brilliant Tom Noonan).
3 Room
Most will have heard of the horrifying case of Josef Fritzl or “Genie” Arcadia, and in Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, based on author and screenwriter Emma Donoghue’s novel of the same name, a terrifying story of one being imprisoned against their will is brought to life.
Starring Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay in the movie’s main roles, Room documents the tale of a mother and child kept under lock and key in a garden shed for several years. Held captive, they are forced to carry out their existence in the confines of an 8x10 foot room, with Ma (Larson) demonstrating remarkable resilience when faced with such excruciating adversity.
2 The Hateful Eight
Snowed in with seven seasoned killers, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight is an all-consuming whodunit. Set in the confines of Minnie’s Haberdashery in a blizzard-ridden post-civil war Wyoming, are a mixture of ill-famed bounty hunters and, unbeknownst to them, a group of scheming outlaws.
With John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) on his way to Red Rock with a $10,000 bounty, he’s naturally suspicious of those he picks up along the way, including Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), and Chris Mannix (Walter Goggins), however when they arrive at the haberdashery, all hell breaks loose. The Hateful Eight, while rarely included in the popular discussion of QT’s best movies, is certainly an underrated gem that can feasibly be considered one of the director’s best.
1 Spotlight
The issue of pedophilia being a prevalent matter in the Catholic Church has been the subject of many a fascinating documentary and novel. In Tom McCarthy’s Academy Award-winning film Spotlight, we are brought a dramatization of the Boston Globe newspaper’s expose on the child sexual abuse epidemic that shocked the world.
In this true story, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) the Boston Globe’s new editor-in-chief, teams up with the head of the newspaper’s “Spotlight” investigative team, Walter (Michael Keaton) and his crack team of journalists who venture into the sordid world of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church, as they uncover startling evidence of prolific, and historic juvenile sex scandals at the hands of clergymen. Spotlight took home Best Original Screenplay at the 2016 Academy Awards, with its harrowing true story, a lesson in the untouchable power of certain societal figures, and eventual, albeit lengthy road to justice.