Everyone, meet Domhnall Gleeson. That’s pronounced “Doe-nol,” like “tonal” but with a D. Don’t think too long about the spelling. It’s an Irish thing. You may recognize him as the rarely seen elder Weasley brother Bill in the Harry Potter series. He is the real-life son of Brendan Gleeson, also known for the Potter series. Anyway, Domhnall had a good year. He was featured in four movies this year which were nominated for a combined 22 Academy Awards. Spoiler alert: all four make an appearance in this essay. I’ll move on to my favorite movies of 2015, but I’m guessing we’ll be seeing a lot more from Domhnall in the next few years.
This year, instead of worrying about the distinction between the “best” movies or my “favorite” movies, I simply asked myself, “if you could only preserve one movie from this year, and all the rest would be destroyed, which one would you pick?” Then I added a second, and a third, and so on.
Without too much thought, here are the honorable mentions that didn’t quite make the cut. Even if I focus on the negatives, I do recommend them all. Straight Outta Compton was well-acted and compelling. The narrative just wasn’t very focused and with so many characters, none really had a strong story arc. The love for Mad Max: Fury Road baffles me. I liked it as a very good popcorn movie. I’d most compare it to the original Pirates of the Caribbean… but not as good. Tangerine is an extremely entertaining mess that had me grinning (or cringing) from start to finish. It follows a transgender woman just released from jail as she tries to track down the woman her boyfriend may have cheated on her with. It was filmed on an iPhone! While some consider The Revenant a contender for best picture, I found it a bit over the top. It is absolutely beautiful and superbly directed. Our friend Domhnall plays the leader of the band who leaves Leonardo DiCaprio behind after he is severely injured. But, ultimately, I think it becomes a parody of itself as it heaps misery upon misery on DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass. Finally, Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight just misses the cut for me. Though he has a reputation for the gratuitous, I’m usually quite forgiving given his genius. The structure and visual aspects of Hateful Eight are perfect. If a no-name, newer director had delivered this, everyone would herald it as revolutionary. For Tarantino, however, it is a hair under par and the story itself is the weakest point.
10. The Martian – “Cast Away on Mars” has often been thrown out to describe Ridley Scott’s movie staring Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded on the red planet after being left for dead in the aftermath of a storm. Whether it’s meant as a compliment or an insult, it doesn’t tell the full story. In both the book and the movie, what saves the whole thing and makes it worthwhile is the character of Mark Watney (Damon). Because we appreciate his upbeat, sarcastic humor in the face of likely death, we’ll sit through NASA’s bureaucratic bickering and watching Watney plant potatoes. This could have easily been a miss, but the emotional element works without getting heavy-handed.
9. Brooklyn – This movie keeps growing on me. I feel like when I look back in five years, I’ll wonder why I have it this low. The story is simple–Irish girl in the 1950s, moves to the U.S. to start a new life. There may not be much too it, but they craft it beautifully. Without being burdened by an intricate plot, the film has time to breathe. As Eillis (Saoirse Ronan) grows from timid to confident, each step feels perfectly natural. Domhnall appears in the second half as a nice, upstanding Irish boy whose mere existence threatens to throw a wrench in Eillis’s plans to settle permanently in Brooklyn.
8. Spotlight – An important story that will no doubt, unfortunately, remain relevant for years to come. A group of Boston reporters gradually uncover the size and scope of child sex abuse cover-ups by the Catholic Church. Great performances. This is one of the few movies with a great chance to bring home the Oscar for best picture. A little too procedural for it to be higher on my list, but it’s hard not to be moved by all the stories unearthed here.
7. Inside Out – Pixar does it yet again. As I sat down to watch this one, I chuckled, knowing this silly, animated movie would probably find a way to get me to tear up before the end. Sure enough, it got me once, if not twice. It’s a concept we’ve seen before–elements of a personality fleshed out into distinct characters representing Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. Joy is the emotion that all five are most comfortable having in control, but she has to learn that they all have their part to play.
6. Phoenix – This is a German film I hadn’t even heard of until right before I watched it. It starts with a solid and intriguing premise: a Holocaust survivor immediately after the war undergoes facial reconstruction surgery due to wounds suffered in the concentration camps. She seeks out her husband who doesn’t recognize her and thinks she’s dead. She’s too scared to just come right out and tell him who she is as she’s self-conscious of her altered appearance. He spots her and, due to her resemblance to his wife, recruits her to help him claim her inheritance. So the bulk of the movie is him grooming her to act like… her, while she tries to discover if her husband truly loved her or if he was perhaps the one who betrayed her to the Nazis. And, if that’s not solid enough, it has one of the best endings of any film I have ever seen. Check this one out!
5. Creed – After the first Rocky movie won the Oscar for best picture, most critics agreed that the films steadily degraded in quality ending in the much hated Rocky V. Rocky Balboa was well-received, however, and my comment at the time was that if the other four had never existed, and Rocky Balboa was just the second Rocky movie, it may very well have found itself in the best picture race. Well, all that goes double for Creed. If this was only the second time Stallone portrayed Rocky, I would almost guarantee it would be up for best picture right now. It hits all the right notes and doesn’t cheat the development of any of the characters. There is one reveal I would have moved to earlier in the movie, but other than that, it is hard to find much fault here. I found myself asking, what is it with all these boxing movies, and why do so many of them work? Why do they need to keep making them? Because it’s not about boxing at all. Boxing is the perfect metaphor for life and all its struggles. When Adonis is in the ring, boxing doesn’t have much to do with why we root for him.
4. Star Wars: The Force Awakens – This movie has no business being on a top ten list. There is no possible way for me to accurately be able to judge its quality or worth as compared to other movies of this year. When asked about my favorite movies of all-time, I don’t even mention Star Wars–because they are so much a part of my psyche that I don’t even really consider them to be movies. They are just Star Wars. To what extent does this film stand on its own two legs and not just the legacy of the last 40 years? I don’t know. For all those reasons, I strongly considered leaving it off altogether. But, here we are. By my initial criteria, there are only three movies I’d feel comfortable keeping in existence ahead of this one from this year. It’s just too much fun and we absolutely have a new epic hero in Rey. She instantly joins the ranks of Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, etc. as the underdog destined to greatness and blessed with powers far beyond her comprehension. And we don’t even know her full name yet, but there seems little doubt that it’s anything but Solo, Skywalker, or Kenobi. The original Star Wars movie remains my favorite for all the little seeds planted throughout that bore fruit in later films. Even though we don’t know it yet, I’m confident this film will yield similar fruit after we discover what’s in store for Rey down the line. Oh, and Domhnall is a bad guy in it!
3. The Big Short – A movie about the 2008 financial meltdown? Complete with fairly detailed explanations of the minutia of our financial system? Sounds… uh, riveting. Well, that’s exactly the genius of The Big Short. They took what sounds like a documentary which economics grad students would fall asleep to and made it compelling and entertaining. It’s fast-paced and infuriating. We follow the small groups and individuals that saw the 2008 collapse coming. In fact, they bet millions on it happening, meaning they won when everyone else lost. That bittersweet victory is portrayed just as it should be. The concern for this movie will be how well does it hold up. In 20 years, will it even make sense to those who didn’t live through the collapse and the recession that followed? At the risk of acting like the characters in the movie, I’m betting yes. Don’t be surprised if it brings home the best picture Oscar.
2. Room – The premise sounds like this could easily turn into a melodramatic, after-school-special type show. A woman and her son live entirely in a single room and not by choice. They are the dark secret of a man living a double life, but this isn’t his story. We see the whole thing through the eyes of the five-year-old son. To spare him the anxiety and pain, his mother has convinced him that the entire world is just this one room and they are the only ones (along with the man who occasionally visits) who even exist. I have to be very careful with what I say, because this is something you just need to experience for yourself. It is dark and heavy with few moments of levity, but a mother’s love and determination are the strongest forces on display. Brie Larson is the favorite to bring home the Oscar for her performance as the mother.
1. Ex Machina – Domhnall Gleeson stars! Yes, my theme has a point! Ol’ Domhnall stars as the “winning” employee at a Google-esque company who gets the opportunity to travel to the secluded home of their owner for some unknown project. It all seems simple enough and he’s excited to get started. His boss has created a cutting-edge artificially intelligent android. Domhnall’s task is to determine whether she (as the android has the face of a beautiful woman and is named Ava) could convince someone that she is self-aware or if he can see the chinks in her facade. As he proceeds with a series of interviews with Ava, it becomes clear there is a lot more going on than just testing a new robot. What is his boss’s real agenda? Why was he specifically chosen? Is Ava actually self-aware? What starts as an intellectual exercise turns into a psychological thriller with all three parties pitting one against the other. If I had to keep only one movie from 2015 and delete the rest, Ex Machina survives. As technology continues to skyrocket and become more and more integrated with our lives, it will only become more relevant.