Movies Watched in 2015
So, I'd call it a bumper-crop of a year for movies I considered worth my time (and in several cases, multiple viewings at a cinema).
- Avengers: Age of Ultron
- Ant-Man
- Spotlight
- SPECTRE
- Hyena Road
- The Martian
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Comments
Ant-Man
Star Wars: TFA
The Martian
Mad Max: Fury Road
SPECTRE
Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation
Inside Out
Avengers 2 and Ant-Man were both exactly what it said on the tin. Good, but starting to feel formulaic.
There was some pretty good sci-fi: Ex Machina (good FX and ideas), The Martian* (humor + hard science), and Mad Max: Fury Road* (nuff said). There were also some clunkers: Jupiter Ascending (overwrought and clichéd), Chappie (implausible science, too much Die Antwoord), and Tomorrowland (better than the box office, but meh).
I saw Furious 7, James Bond 24, Mission Impossible 5, Jurassic Park 4, and Hunger Games 3B, all of which were ... the latest films in their series.
Inside Out was Pixar's best in several years.
The remake of Star Wars: A New Hope* was very well done.
I saw a fair number of good Oscar-bait docu-dramas (not all of which got nibbles): Bridge of Spies (by the book), The Big Short (off the books and off the wall), Love and Mercy (Brian Wilson played by two actors), Woman in Gold (Deadpool teams up with QE2), Trumbo (Heisenberg vs. the Blacklist). Gandalf as Mr. Holmes could've been Oscar bait, but was released at the wrong time of year to be noticed/remembered... and it was fictional.
The only actual comedy I remember seeing was Spy (good, not great), which is an indictment of how little adult-intelligence comedy Hollywood is producing these days.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was my favorite twee independent coming-of-age film, a genre that also seemed sparse last year.
Ant-Man (fun but predictable)
Star Wars 7 (fun but a lot of missed opportunities)
Mad Max: Fury Road (awesome)
SPECTRE (dumb, too long)
Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation (sharp)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (fun, but nowhere close to the first one.)
Ant-Man (well, the first half. Walked out halfway through. Throughly unimpressed.)
Mad Max: Fury Road (I'd never seen a Mad Max film before, and liked it much less than most of my friends)
Star Wars
Jurassic World (GOD, what a bad movie!)
Dragon Blade (Jackie Chan and John Cusack in Ancient Roman times)
Edge of Tomorrow/Live Die Repeat (older movie I finally saw)
Those may be literally the only movies I saw last year. I don't get out to the theater much!
I mean, we know Bond isn't going to die or even really lose. But he keeps getting into situations that should be difficult and aren't.
I mean....
SPOILERS
...he has probes stuck in his brain that are supposed to disable various parts of his brain. But they don't. And not only do they not, moments after he does this, he shoots his way out of a compound, killing good a dozen bad guys without sign of THAT inconveniencing him.
Compare this to Casino Royale, where he ends up having to recover for some period of time from being tortured by Le Chiffre, or even Skyfall, where there are actual stakes and his actions cost him.
As for what Justin described: One thing I took from those Bonds is that they usually have a decent "short game" but next to no "long game" - no consequences, no theme, hardly anything tying the set pieces to one anthoer. Apparently, Craig's Bond is finally settling into that tradition.
But this was about 2015 movies, right? Not so much movie-going for me last year. Avengers: AoU, The Martian, Mad Max and Star Wars 7, all delivering exactly what I wanted from them and not much more, although some of them delivered it extremely well.
Jupiter Ascending, though, disappointed on so many levels. I really wanted to like it the way I turned out liking Star Wars 7 or Guardians of the Galaxy last year, but it was all too confused and style-over-substance and, frankly, quite boring at that.
Really wnated to see Inside Out, AntMan and Ex Machina, but they didn't show in English in my town, so I'll pick them up on DVD or some streaming service when there's nothing on TV.
The thing about Bond is that he's more or less invincible and awesome. Which is absolutely fine. But in order to be consistently interesting, he needs to struggle. Same with Batman or whatever. The Mission Impossible movies are actually great at this as a whole - Ethan Hunt is awesome at basically everything AND he's genuinely a good guy. But the movies are careful to put him in situations where it seems like he could lose.
But take Spectre AGAIN SPOILERS
Bond goes into a meeting with LITERALLY hundreds of bad guys. He's spotted and....jumps out a window, gets in his car and drives away. Which is followed by a car chase where Bond is literally always in front of the (one) bad guy, and never comes close to being caught.
Which is the situation over and over again in Spectre (if it weren't consistently the case, it wouldn't really matter)- Bond is in situations that sound exciting, and are filmed with enough bombast and style to camouflage that there are basically no narrative stakes. The entirety of Spectre is James Bond winning more or less effortless at no cost to himself.
This also, I think, deflates the ending of it somewhat. If we had James effortlessly winning (and it's the effortless that's the main issue) until he goes up against Blofeld and then gets his ass well and truly kicked (not necessarily literally, just that Blofeld wins) before managing to come back, you could use the earlier weightless action as set up for a better climax. But that's not what happens.
Compounding this is that Blofeld's non personal threat is too abstract in the movie. It's actually a good topical threat, but because we don't have a good sense of what Blofeld wants - the actions of Spectre seem to be to make money and set up the system Bond thwarts, which is I think too solipsistic to connect - there's not as much satisfaction at seeing Bond stop him.
(Which sounds like I really disliked Spectre, and I didn't. It's much better than Quantum of Solace, and the combo of the right actors and accomplished directing can make up for a looooot of shortcomings)