{"id":321,"date":"2016-02-13T15:42:28","date_gmt":"2016-02-13T20:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/?p=321"},"modified":"2016-02-15T18:08:47","modified_gmt":"2016-02-15T23:08:47","slug":"the-dirty-dozen-of-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/the-dirty-dozen-of-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dirty Dozen of 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t approach this article with the same enthusiasm I\u2019ve felt in previous years. Untreatable problems with my right eye have taken some of the enjoyment out of moviegoing, and have left me more dependent on dialogue rather than cinematography.<\/p>\n

The list is limited to those films I\u2019ve had a chance to see. As usual, the better ones are crowded together at year\u2019s end, and many of them don\u2019t open in Pittsburgh until January or February. This year, in order to meet my self-imposed deadline, I\u2019ve had to choose without seeing 45 Years<\/i> or Son of Saul<\/i>. I also regret having missed Clouds of Sils Maria<\/i> and In Jackson Heights<\/i> (which played here for a grand total of five days).<\/p>\n

Here are my top twelve in alphabetical order. They are American unless otherwise noted.<\/p>\n

\n
The Assassin<\/i> (Taiwan). My choice for best film of the year is this dramatization of a Chinese folk tale about an expertly trained swordswoman sent home to kill the man she once expected to marry. Much more than a martial arts film, it has some of the more beautiful shot compositions you\u2019ll see for a long time. People who know about life in 9^{th<\/sup> century China were impressed with director Hou Hsaio-hsien\u2019s attention to detail. Hou is easily my choice for Best Director.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Big Short.<\/i> This film is a bit like an economics lecture, but I give it credit for teaching us things that we all should know in a reasonably painless way. You must see this film before you vote in the Democratic presidential primary.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Experimenter<\/i> and The Stanford Prison Experiment<\/i>. 2015 has been an embarrassment of riches for social psychologists\u2014not one but two serious attempts to portray two of our more famous (some would say \u201cnotorious\u201d) experiments. (<a href=\"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/an-embarrassment-of-riches\/\">Please see my separate review<\/a>\u00a0of these two films.) Too bad not very many people had a chance to see them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The Gift.<\/i> This one also flew under the radar. It\u2019s a creepy little story written, directed and co-starring Australian actor Joel Edgerton as an old high school acquaintance who shows up on a couple\u2019s doorstep bearing gifts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The Hateful Eight.<\/i> Although this is not Quentin Tarantino\u2019s best, it\u2019s still a terrific way to spend three hours. Another wonderful score from Ennio Morricone; let\u2019s hope he finally wins an Oscar. Here\u2019s a sample from the soundtrack.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"604\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/g5wnW_H9hXg?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Labyrinth of Lies<\/i> and Phoenix<\/i> (Germany). The Germans continue to relive World War II and its aftermath. The first film, whose title actually translates as \u201clabyrinth of silence<\/i>,\u201d is the true story of a prosecutor\u2019s investigation of what happened at Auschwitz. Phoenix<\/i> is a fictional tale of a Jewish woman disfigured in the war who tries to locate the ex-husband who betrayed her.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The Revenant.<\/i> I don\u2019t think this film should be sweeping all the awards, but it\u2019s certainly worth seeing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The Salvation<\/i> (Denmark). Mads Mikkelson stars in this western of the \u201crevenge-for-a-slaughtered-family\u201d sub-genre filmed in South Africa. It has the kinds of beautiful scenery and quirky plot devices that made spaghetti westerns so entertaining.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Spotlight<\/i>. This would be my choice from among the Academy Award nominees. It\u2019s nice to see a film about not a lone individual, but a group of professionals working cooperatively toward a the common goal of exposing Catholic church hypocrisy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Wild Tales<\/i> (Argentina). An anthology of six bizarre short stories, this film plays like an adult version of The Twilight Zone<\/i>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nHere are some honorable mentions. Despite Will Smith\u2019s fine performance, I can\u2019t put Concussion<\/i> in my top twelve, knowing that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/09\/02\/sports\/football\/makers-of-sonys-concussion-film-tried-to-avoid-angering-nfl-emails-show.html?_r=0\">Sony censored\u2014deleted or changed\u2014some scenes in order to appease the NFL<\/a>. (Ironically, the trailer features Smith, as Dr. Bennet Omalu, demanding that the NFL \u201ctell the truth!\u201d) As a long-time fan of the Mad Max series, I regret that Mad Max: Fury Road<\/i> has\u00a0far too many\u00a0computer-generated effects and does not tell as interesting a story as George Miller\u2019s previous three Maxes. Steven Spielberg\u2019s Bridge of Spies <\/i>was a lot better than I expected, and I\u2019ll be rooting for Mark Rylance to win the Best Supporting Actor award. (\u201cWill it help?\u201d Probably not.) Movie fans will want to catch Hitchcock\/Truffaut<\/i>, in which director Kent Jones illustrates Francois Truffaut\u2019s book-length interview of Alfred Hitchcock by showing many of the scenes they deconstructed.<\/p>\nOne of the better films I saw in 2015 is one that I missed in 2014, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne\u2019s Belgian film, Two Days, One Night<\/i>, for which Marion Cotillard was nominated as Best Actress. Without ever mentioning politics, it vividly dramatizes one of the tragic human consequences of predatory capitalism\u2014specifically, the ability of a ruthless management to divide and conquer nonunionized workers.<\/p>\nMy choice for Best Actress of 2015 is Shu Qi for her subtle performance as the title character of The Assassin.<\/i> No one really stands out as Best Actor, so I\u2019ll do something I ordinarily dislike and choose Samuel Leroy Jackson of The Hateful Eight<\/i> as a cumulative reward for his performances in five Tarantino films. (You only count four? Did you miss his brief appearance as the piano player in Kill Bill, Part 2<\/i>?)<\/p>\nYou may also be interested in reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/an-embarrassment-of-riches\/\">An Embarrassment of Riches<\/a><\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/the-dirty-dozen-of-2014-2\/\">The Dirty Dozen of 2014<\/a><\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkingslowlyblog.blogspot.com\/2014\/01\/best-films-of-2013.html\">The Dirty Dozen of 2013<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I don\u2019t approach this article with the same enthusiasm I\u2019ve felt in previous years. Untreatable problems with my right eye have taken some of the enjoyment out of moviegoing, and have left me more dependent on dialogue rather than cinematography. The list is limited to those films I\u2019ve had a chance to see. As usual, … <a href=\"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/the-dirty-dozen-of-2015\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading The Dirty Dozen of 2015<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6FkJj-5b","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}}