Happy-go-lucky was in short supply at the movies in 2015. Gauging the current world economic and terror climate, perhaps, filmmakers put their best effort into making films that scared the pants off of us rather than ones that made us feel warm and fuzzy. With two cheery exceptions, here are the top films that frightened, educated and enraged audiences in 2015. Â
1. Mad Max: Fury Road
Relentless, visceral action plus restrained acting and astounding detail in costuming, makeup and production design: it all added up to one hell of a ride, a beautiful nightmare courtesy of Mad Max creator-director George Miller. Never mind the plot, which centres on one man’s lonesome strategy for survival versus a tribe of women who may hold the key to it... Let’s start with the fact that Max (Tom Hardy, muzzled for a good chunk of the opening) shares equal billing with a woman, Furiosa (Charlize Theron), in the kick-ass department. Add agile, post-apocalyptic “war boys,” People Eaters, Bullet Farmers and fleets of flame-spewing monster trucks all vying for survival in a world whose most valuable commodity is water. It’s the most hellacious cautionary tale of the year, but good fun.
2. Spotlight
Finest ensemble piece of the year goes to Spotlight, about the Boston Globe’s breaking of the pedophile-priest scandal that racked Boston and the Catholic church in 2002. Liev Schreiber plays editor Marty Baron; Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery and Brian D’Arcy are the reporters who researched the story; Stanley Tucci and Billy Crudup play lawyers “who turned child abuse into a cottage industry.” Exceptional performances all-round, a rare steady-handed treatment of difficult subject matter, and one of the most immersive newsroom films to come along in years.
3. Sicario
Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Sicario is a relentlessly bleak but wholly engaging film about an FBI agent (Emily Blunt) who volunteers to participate on a multi-agency team assembled to bring down a Mexican drug lord, whose violence south of the border is spilling onto U.S. soil. But it seems some team members (Josh Brolin, excellent) are determined to keep her in the dark while others (Benicio del Toro, superb) want to dispense their own type of justice. Score by Johan Johannson is suitably thrilling; lensing by Roger Deakins has some truly inspired moments.
4. Brooklyn
On the other end of the optimism spectrum from Mad Max is Brooklyn, starring Saoirse Ronan as a young Irish immigrant bursting with hope and prospects in her new homeland. It’s the 1950s and Eilis (Ronan) gets a crash course in all things American, including a lesson on how to eat spaghetti in advance of a date with Tony (Emory Cohen, playing what might just be the most earnest suitor on film this year). But when tragedy calls her back across the sea, duty might just nudge Eilis into a relationship with a good, Irish boy (Domhnall Gleeson). Ronan superbly proves that a good, old-fashioned love story — even a sanitized one — still has a place at the multiplex.
5. Room
Brie Larson is a wonder in this adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s best-selling novel, about a boy who spends the first five years of his life as prisoner in a backyard shed, with only his mother (Larson) to explain the world to him. The world, as far as Jack (Jacob Tremblay) is concerned, contains one Bed, one Lamp, and one Wardrobe, in which Jack hides when their captor comes calling. It’s a complicated world to create in such confined spaces (bravo, director Lenny Abrahamson), with complex emotional stakes, speaking to the adaptability of children and the powerful bond between a mother and son. Watch for Larson’s name at awards time. Â
6. Anomalisa
The brilliant Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) and Duke Johnson team up to direct this startlingly moving stop-motion animated film about a motivational speaker named Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis). Michael checks into the Fregoli Hotel in Cincinnati and, briefly, thinks he’s met the one other person on the planet who isn’t pretending to be someone else (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Nothing is as it appears to be: Fregoli Syndrome is the belief that one or more people have been transformed into someone else, hence every stranger you meet is someone you know, and hence the fact that actor Tom Noonan voices almost every character in the film, male and female. Filled with more longing and palpable loneliness than many live action films this year.
7. Inside Out
It took an animated film from Pixar to teach us all a thing or two about the inner workings of the human brain, how to parent an angst-ridden tween, and how to navigate the painful yet inevitable process of letting childhood go. After Riley moves to a new town the emotions in her head responsible for making memories — Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) — dispute the best way to get settled in. A refreshingly original concept in a mess of patronizing kiddie fare and uninspired sequels. Have some tissues at the ready.
8. Goodnight Mommy, It Follows (tie)
Book your therapist’s appointment now if you didn’t see one of the above horror films, which play on universal themes of child abandonment and the dangers of female sexuality, respectively. In Goodnight Mommy, twin boys (Elias and Lukas Schwarz) suspect that the woman who has recently returned, face bandaged, to their sterile and isolated home isn’t really their mother. But it isn’t long before our allegiance shifts in a big way. It Follows tells a tongue-in-cheek but terrifying cautionary tale of a 19-year-old (Maika Monroe) who sleeps with her boyfriend for the first time, only to discover that she’s contracted a curse that is transferred through sexual contact, an altogether fresh take on an old horror trope.
9. Mustang
Five sisters, raised by their grandmother but now deemed morally wild: first by gossiping neighbours, then by a suspect uncle. Doors are locked, windows barred. In a world of virginity reports and arranged marriage, is it any wonder the girls are desperate to escape? “The house became a wife factory that we never got out of,” said the youngest, Lale (Gunes Sensoy), who watches her carefree siblings married off, one by one. Debut feature from Deniz Gamze Erguven, Mustang is a powerful sisterhood movie about girls running out of time and being asked to grow up too soon.
10. Ex Machina
The perils of Artificial Intelligence are probed in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, in which Domhnall Gleeson plays research assistant to mad scientist Oscar Isaac. Ultimately both men face off with their graceful, too-knowing robotic creation, Ava, played beautifully by Alicia Vikander. Foreboding in every frame, with a narrative that keeps us guessing, Ex Machina is a new sci-fi classic.
