Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle, 2015)

7/10
I guess The Social Network set us on a path of movies showing us how clever jerks got to be really rich jerks as each global giant successively gets their entry into the canon (stay tuned this year for Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc! Who will play Colonel Sanders in his biopic in 2018?!). Aaron Sorkin scripted this one as he did The Social Network. The dialogue certainly crackles, thanks in no small part to Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet who are both terrific, but it does veer into portentousness at times, with characters in the heat of an argument delivering clunky lines that are heavy-handedly meant to be interpreted as a metaphor for the scene as a whole.
The three product launch sequences that make up the movie are impressively mounted, although each feels more rote than the last - the movie has Jobs commenting on this repetitiveness in an attempt at self-awareness ("I feel like before every product launch people get drunk and tell me what they really think about me") but it doesn't make it feel less paint-by-numbers.
Like Moneyball, another Sorkin adaptation, there seems to be a fear of getting too technical - there with baseball stats, here with computer specs. Any technical sequence is immediately followed up with a hammy father-daughter scene as if to scramble to pull the viewer back in but frankly, as in Moneyball, I found the technical stuff way more interesting than the Hollywood schmaltz.
Overall it's a decent movie, the acting is the strength by far and the writing is solidly in second. I'm just not sure what all we were supposed to glean by sitting through it. We already knew that Sorkin could write and Fassbender could act and Boyle could direct and Jobs was a jerk who took more credit than he deserved.

Demolition (Jean-Marc Vallee, 2015)

6.5/10
I can't really make heads or tails of what this movie was going for. Jake Gyllenhaal's Davis loses his wife in a car accident, lashes out by claiming he never really loved her, and deals with his grief by taking things apart - and yes, eventually, demolishing them. It feels derivative of movies like American Beauty or Fight Club where there's some event that causes the main character to disconnect from society in bizarre and unexpected ways. But as Demolition goes on it turns more and more formulaic. Davis strikes up a friendship with his paramour's oddball son and, you know, The Healing Process Begins and all that stuff. It's okay; Gyllenhaal puts in a good performance, the kid actor is not entirely insufferable, there's good music, some funny scenes, etc. The direction itself is pretty bland though, not really what I would have expected from Jean-Marc Vallee, and overall there is a feeling that the movie thinks it's more clever and original than it actually is.

Love (Gaspar Noe, 2015)

5/10
This is just the 4th feature Gaspar Noe has directed in 17 years. It isn't as atrociously awful as Enter the Void, but we're still far from the heights of Irreversible (I have yet to see Seul Contre Tous). Notably, Love features graphic scenes of unsimulated sex. However, recent arthouse films like Blue is the Warmest Color and Stranger by the Lake have featured graphic sex scenes as well as being remarkable films, thus raising the bar across the board. It's not enough to skate by using sex in an attempt to be "shocking", you also have to provide a great movie. Love is not a great movie. As I said, it's not as bad as Enter the Void, but it's not as adventurous either, for what that's worth. Noe is at his best making his case for pure, passionate love and sexuality embittered by what we know is coming (evoking very much his strength in Irreversible) but these moments are too few and far between. The sex becomes monotonous, the acting is dicey throughout, and it's just not that interesting or provocative. The lighting, however, is truly exquisite. And at least Noe appears to have made an attempt to edit this one, unlike Void. But it's just not good enough.

Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

7/10
I find myself saying the same thing for a lot of these Oscar pix from the last year - fine, well-acted, nothing offensively horrible, nothing very memorable either. Cate Blanchett is immaculate and Rooney Mara is very good too. It is directed, ah, adroitly and I have no complaints.

Straight Outta Compton (F. Gary Gray, 2015)

9/10
As far as biopics go, this one hits pretty much all of the good notes. The only criticism I can really level at it is that it's self-serving, but it wouldn't be the first biopic guilty of irreverence. To go along with that, the movie does a great job at portraying Eazy E as a complex central figure, but frustratingly refuses to cast judgement - was he a shrewder-than-he-looks businessman complicit in undercutting his N.W.A. cohorts, or was he as naïve as the rest of them, being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous manager?
I suppose it's only fair, though - all of the other main figures are still alive, and so control how they come across, and let's say nobody in the group comes out looking too badly. Cube a genius wordsmith, master intimidator and sharp businessman, Dre a genius producer, tortured over the death of his brother and trying to put food on the table for a family, etc.
The strength of the film by far is its acting, especially considering most hadn't appeared in major film roles before. At 2 and a half hours it somehow never really feels long - there are a couple of parts you could probably ditch (let's face it, 2-Pac is only really there so people can go hey, it's 2-Pac) but it remains taut despite its length, and never uninteresting throughout. Pretty close to perfection.

Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015)

8/10
It is hard not to be slightly disappointed at the end of Sicario, but this is clearly not a movie designed to send audiences home happy, so I'll try not to hold that against it. It's so unrelentingly bleak and so devoid of any kind of comeuppance you'll say "well that's the point", but it doesn't exactly make for a fun film-watching experience. It almost feels like there should be an extra half-hour tacked on to tie up loose ends. But, of course, that's not how real life works. Sometimes we have to swallow the ugly truths presented to us and we don't ever get closure.
Nevertheless, it's extremely well done and well-plotted. Benicio del Toro is great, and Josh Brolin plays his part so well it's hard to stop hating him when the movie's over. A Rotten Tomatoes review commented that they felt Emily Blunt was miscast, because she so often looks like the smartest person in the room, and in this movie, she so rarely ever is. That's a pretty on-point complaint, and the movie does kind of stretch the bounds of believability with her character.
That aside, everything else was top-notch, and a particular set piece involving a tunnel near the end of the film is eye-popping in how well it's crafted and how tense it is.

Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg, 2015)

7.5/10
Another "fine" movie, slightly more "fine" than The Danish Girl and with a more interesting, knottier story, but still not exactly a classic. Tom Hanks plays this kind of role in his sleep - the affable everyman in a situation where he's out of his depth. Not that I think Russian spies would have been well-received in America during the Cold War, but the movie's insistence on treating Hanks' character as the only sane man in the country (even his own wife can't understand why her husband - a lawyer - would defend a spy) is grating. Other than that, everybody does their jobs well and I probably won't remember much of the movie in a few months' time.

Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015)

4/10
I'm not much of a Bond fan, but I did enjoy Skyfall. This is scripted by many of the same minds who wrote Skyfall, and shares a director, Sam Mendes. My feeling was they went back to the well a bit too much - is it the trend in every Bond film now where the events have to be so deeply connected to Bond's psychological profile, or his upbringing as a child? And does every gesture have to threaten the entire existence of the '00' section as we know it? What happened to Bond just trying to save the world from a bad dude in a movie that clocks in at a more reasonable, non-epic length?
These re-hashed themes feel very tired in Spectre. After a great opening sequence the movie quickly plunges into monotony. Christoph Waltz finally shows up as Blofeld about 4 hours in, but is totally wasted with a boring backstory that has him acting more like a passive aggressive math teacher who ends up with a cool scar in the end. Not only that but he's on-screen for roughly sixteen minutes of the whole thing. Why hire such a great actor only to give him such a milquetoast part and barely show him? Lea Seydoux, at least, was a pleasantly inspired and thoroughly successful choice as a Bond girl.
I don't blame Daniel Craig for wanting to be done with the franchise after this bloated, boring entry. Let's pick up some new writers and a new director to get some fresh looks all around while we're re-casting the lead role.

The Danish Girl (Tom Hooper, 2015)

7/10
The cynic in me says that this was a movie that was made not because it was great material for this movie, but because it was 2015 and somebody had to make a movie about a pioneering transgender woman. So that's all well and good. I wasn't cynical enough to hate it - it's perfectly fine. The costumes and sets and cinematography are lavish and gorgeous. Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander turn in two fine performances but their chemistry is the real stand-out. The movie goes through the paces without too many dips and turns, although it ends very abruptly. Thankfully much of the focus is on the main characters' response to Einar Werner's struggle, and not a boring exercise in "what will society think", save for a rote scene of Einer (as Lili) getting beat up. I wouldn't say it rises too far above its claim to being Oscar bait, but it's not the worst offender I've ever seen.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 2015)

5/10
I really liked the first Avengers. Also, it's one of the few superhero franchises where I haven't already missed a dozen entries and feel hopelessly behind the curve (X-Men, Captain America) so I'm doing my best to keep up with this one. And I'm having a hard time trying to pin down why I didn't like this one so much. Its plot feels extremely fractured, not so much in a confusing way but just that it's so noticeably all over the place. The amount of time devoted to the in-fighting in this group (just so they can inevitably bond together at the right moment) is bordering on critical mass, and it was already a criticism of mine the first time around. It feels like padding time in a movie that doesn't need any more padding. And OK, I understand it for the heroes, but geez, do you really have to make even the villain a smarmy, quippy, banter-heavy caricature?
The battle scenes were certainly impressive, but maybe the overall effect was like spending two and a half hours with the volume turned up to 11. After a while, things stopped registering and I got bored. Maybe it's me.

Sisters (Jason Moore, 2015)

7.5/10
One reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes said "if we're going to have one more dumb man-child comedy, at least this one has Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in it". That's a pretty good line. Sisters is very much in the Stepbrothers/Ferrell et al. style, but it's better than simply "Stepbrothers for chicks" (granted I didn't think much of Stepbrothers). The movie is probably as raunchy as anything the "Frat Pack" have put out, and it has the old "let's put off being adults as long as possible" trope that those movies (and Bridesmaids, and any other Apatow-produced comedy in general seems to have these days) use at their core.
The chemistry between Fey and Poehler doesn't need to be stated. Poehler plays pretty much the same character she always seems to play, the slightly naïve and awkward but more mature one, but at least Fey gets to try on being more of a brassy shitshow, to more interesting results.
There are some good laughs, but at 2h07m, it definitely starts to wear out its welcome, and that's not helped by the "everybody gets a happy ending" ending that feels very rote and contrived. But it was funny, and that's all I was looking for.

Room (Lenny Abrahamson, 2015)

7.5/10
Contrary to the above, here's one I thought I would like even more than I did. It was good, Brie Larson was as good as she was hyped to me, but I was expecting even more of an emotional punch. Although I liked how the second half of the movie dealt with the aftermath, it was hard not to feel like the movie lost some steam and was searching for a solid foothold. I enjoyed it on just about every level but I still can't say I wasn't expecting something a little more.

The Hateful Eight (Quentin Tarantino, 2015)

8/10
I stewed on this one for a while before finally bringing it up to an 8 from the 7.5 or so I had in mind when I saw it. It is certainly the most interesting movie Tarantino has made in almost a decade, since Death Proof I would say. Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained were cartoony throwaways. The Hateful Eight isn't perfect, and it probably riffs on Reservoir Dogs a little too much to stand on its own as a dazzlingly unique Tarantino creation. But it did feel, at the very least, like QT was challenging himself with this script. These are some of the most interesting characters he's written in a long time, and his knack for storytelling is as sharp as ever. As a theatre-style, locked-room mystery, it's very interesting. As a movie, well you probably could have shaved 20-30 minutes from the runtime, and I don't think it really says much despite the presence of the superficial racial politics that Tarantino is eternally obsessed with, but I liked it more than I thought I would. I was expecting a big action movie and it's quite a different beast indeed. So, not "perfect" but I'll happily settle for "interesting" at this point in Tarantino's career.

The Revenant (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 2015)

8.5/10
I don't have too much to say that hasn't already been said, except maybe to sing the praises of Tom Hardy some more because wow he was good. That's not to say DiCaprio wasn't but for a film with such a dominating central role, Hardy held his own and then some.
If you've heard anything at all about the movie you probably know how it's going to play out, so story-wise there aren't any huge surprises but the direction and photography is a marvel, and the final stand-off is one of the most brutal man-to-man fight scenes I've ever seen. And I know it's practically a meme at this point but the bear scene is still something to behold, I have no idea how they pulled that off and made it look so visceral and real.

High-Rise (Ben Wheatley, 2015)

7.5/10
I didn't realize going in this was an adaptation of a J.G. Ballard book, but knowing that at the end, it makes sense. The movie starts out very stylishly and very mysteriously. I wouldn't say I liked it less as it went on, but there is a certain sense of "...oh" when the central themes start to emerge and they're quite a bit less mysterious or innovative as you thought they would be at the start of the movie. That's a horrible sentence, does it make any sense? In the first act of the film I was dazzled with reminisces of Terry Gilliam and Stanley Kubrick and by the end of the film I was drawing parallels to the kinda-clunky-but-also-very-showy Snowpiercer from a few years ago. Ben Wheatley has all kinds of talent (see his last one A Field in England if you haven't) and he's really good at holding my attention. I like that he's getting high profile work and even if I didn't love this one I'll be paying attention to what comes next.

Unfriended (Leo Gabriadze, 2014)

7/10
I'll give this movie maybe a slightly higher score than it deserves just because I was suckered in by the central premise (gimmick if you prefer): a horror movie where the action takes place entirely on a computer screen, via Skype, Spotify, Gmail, Facebook, Chatroulette, etc. It delivered very cleverly on this premise and handled its central technology very well and believably. As a horror movie, I'm forced to admit it falls short in some areas. It's just not that scary, and for a while the movie dips into a little too much "teenage revenge drama" and neglects the scares for entirely for too long. So I enjoyed it, it moved along briskly (barely 75 minutes long too which is an ideal length for a movie like this) and it kept me entertained and engaged the entire time. No classic but a nice, clever little movie.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015)

9/10
Although I like the franchise, I'm not even a huge Star Wars fan and even I could tell just how much was being borrowed from the original trilogy. But you know what they say...if you're going to steal, steal from the best. I thought the movie was really fun, and to invoke a stupid cliché, It Really Felt Like Star Wars Again when the prequels often did not. I thought the chemistry between John Boyega and Daisy Ridley was a joy to watch. I was not expecting Harrison Ford back in such a big role but he really carried a lot the movie unexpectedly. Even Adam Driver, probably my last choice in the world for someone to play a villain in a Star Wars movie, looked great. So what I liked overall was that the script seemed to draw great performances out of lesser known actors, whereas the prequel scripts seemed to drag down even objectively excellent actors (Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman). Really lots of fun and well done.

Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015)

5/10
I didn't think it was bad as some people were saying, but it wasn't that great either. The Jurassic Park franchise relies on very smart people making consistently dumb and illogical decisions, and maybe it's because we're four films (right?) deep now but those illogical decisions feel harder to stomach than ever. The biggest problem for me was that the movie doesn't ever really feel fun, at least not in the sense the original did. Almost from the word go we're dropped into a park where things are (a) motivated by capitalistic greed and (b) going dangerously wrong. Where's the fun in that? Two other problems were the two annoyingly trope-y kid characters and the hilariously shoehorned-in romantic subplot. Some of the dinosaur kills felt remarkably gratuitous (even though, unlike JP, the horror aspect is almost completely dropped, so these gory kills feel weirdly out of place) and you're never totally sure who to cheer for between Chris Pratt and his group, or the militant guy and his crew who do make some decent points, or the heel-turning raptors, or the main "big bad" dinosaur, or what. It just led to disinterest for me.

Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015)

8/10
I don't have too much to say except that it's a really good story, really well-acted that constantly keeps you guessing and has everyone's motives properly kept in the dark. A good soundtrack and fantastic location and set design. Very cleverly written and I enjoyed it well enough.

Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015)

6/10
I was a little surprised at the overwhelmingly positive reviews of this movie. It seemed up my alley but I expected to like it more than I did. It had kind of superficial Herzog quality to it, but rather than being mystical and subtle it was kind of heavy-handed and on the nose. The sound design and mixing was excellent, but I'm a little on the fence about the use of black and white. I don't know, the movie did look good too but at the same time I kind of question washing out the whole Amazon, I feel like something was lost. Overall I found it okay, I liked the idea of a character bridging two narratives and being told via the diary of the people involved but as a whole it just didn't resonate too much with me.