My Best Movies of 2015

I had a feeling when I first saw Spotlight that it would be my favorite movie of the year, and it is. Exceptionally intelligently written, one of the best ensemble casts ever, it brilliantly portrayed how difficult dealing with child abuse in general is and how very difficult it was to deal with it in Boston when the biggest perpetrators were employees of the Catholic Church. It's a powerful and painful movie that never lost track of the importance of the past in dealing with horrors of the present.

I lived in Massachusetts in the '80s and '90s. I was horrified by the former Father James Porter case and utterly dismayed by how little things changed after that case became oh so public. Spotlight insightfully portrayed why things failed to change after former Father Porter went to jail.

The writers, Tom McCarthy & Josh Singer deserve all best original screenplay awards for 2015 hands down. I didn't see another movie all last year that was as solid as this movie. McCarthy also previously wrote & directed The Station Agent (Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson & Bobby Carnivale) and The Visitor (Richard Jenkins) and wrote the story for one of the best animated features ever, Up. Almost everything he touches portrays real people like real people on camera and I love that (yes, even in Up).

I'd long been a fan of Michael Keaton and I'm very pleased that he's been in each of my favorite movies of the last two years (Birdman and Spotlight). Mark Ruffalo gave both a passionate and compassionate performance. And the actors who played the abuse survivors, particularly Neal Huff (Phil Saviano), Michael Cyril Creighton (Joe Crowley), and Jimmy LeBlanc (Patrick McSorely) captured the difficulties of telling their stories.

While much of this movie may come off as religion-bashing and a love letter to The Boston Globe, watch carefully because there were times when the Globe failed and other times when individuals in the Catholic Church tried to help and were rebuffed as no one (including the Globe) believed them.

When I look back at so many movies this year, I've seen many with great performances (like The Danish Girl and Concussion) but they seem to be lacking something in the storytelling. Spotlight lacks for nothing.

My Top Ten Movies

1. Spotlight
2. The Big Short
3. Suffragette
4. Grandma
5. Bridge of Spies
6. Room Youth
7. Inside/Out
8. Trainwreck
9. The Martian
10. Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Honorable Mentions: Youth, Ex Machina, Spy, Steve Jobs, Brooklyn, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

I have not seen some movies as they either haven't played in Pittsburgh yet or were here very briefly and I've missed them: Room, 45 Years, Tangerine, Anomalisa. [[1/28 - have seen Room now and it's an amazing flick with a career-making performance by Brie Larson. So it's in my "Top Ten" and Youth has fallen to "Honorable Mention."]]

I don't go to movies that are overly violent, so I will not see Fury Road, Hateful Eight or Revenent in a theater, but I might watch them on cable someday. [[Have since seen Fury Road on cable (early morning of the day the Oscar nominations were announced). Charlise Theron and the production values were great. Felt the script was on the weak side, but the journey back to Theron's home was great.]]

I go to most movies shot in Pittsburgh. I tend to avoid movies that look bad to begin with, but saw The Last Witch Hunter as I worked on it. I was the worst movie I paid to see all year. Will Smith gave a great performance in Concussion but the script and photography killed it. Love the Coopers was kind of fun.

Spoilers * Star Wars, The Force Awakens Comments and Spoilers

So if you really don't want to read spoilers, STOP NOW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I went to this movie not knowing anything new (though I've just rewatched I, IV, V & VI). Always been a big fan of the first three movies (Star Wars: A New Hope, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi), and didn't care for the second three (Star Wars: Phantom Menace, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith). I knew by the end of Empire that Leia was "the other," something I argued about for three years because an amazing number of Star Wars fans couldn't see Leia as having that potential.

I was really convinced going in to see The Force Awakens that Rey was Han and Leia's daughter, and, perhaps to protect her, they "hid" her away. She looks much more like their offspring than Adam Driver does. And I thought that helped to explain why she was instantly at home in the Millennium Falcon. But Rey is a great character, and if she's Luke's daughter, that explains a lot (except for her height). It is striking that when Daisy Riley has her hair done more "Earth style," she looks a lot like very tall Natalie Portman. Daisy Ridley was wonderful and I think she'll go far in the movie biz.

I'm not an Adam Driver fan, but I loved him as Kylo - he was basically the ultimate malicious fan boy but the object of his devotion was Darth Vader. If you noticed, he had some power, but he seemed to be barely tolerated by much of the Empire. His parentage was a great surprise and I'm glad that wasn't spoiled for me.

Really liked both Jon Boyega & Oscar Isaac (whom I met when we were working on a movie in Pittsburgh a few years back). Some people were critical of Boyega, but, remember, his character getting his bearings as an individual deserter for the first half of the movie and he was overwhelmed a lot of the time. That was appropriate. Both Boyega & Isaac were terrific and I look forward to them working together in future SW movies.

Adored the Mas character, one of the most realistic CGI characters ever. I hope she survived the bombing of her cantina.

When Han and Kylo both wound up on that bridge, I knew at least one of them would not walk off. That was well-done.

Thought the on-again/off-again relationship of Han and Leia worked very well.

The effects/production values mostly quite good. The practical effects were excellent. There's a tendency for full-CGI sequences to look very gray (particularly noticeable in Harry Potter movies and sometimes in LOTR movies). The filmmakers avoided this.

Loved the "Empire spaceship graveyard."

The bad things:

Not enough Carrie Fisher - Leia. After being a forceful, competent leader as a 19-year-old, Leia seems to have badly faded away. Hated that. Bad scriptwriting there.

Gwendolyn Christie was really underused. She might not have been killed so maybe she'll be back. She's wonderful with weapons and it was sad you never saw her with a light saber or at least a staff. [[Yes, I hear she'll be back YAY!]] Gwendolyn deserves the "best sport" award during the marketing of the movie because we had no clue that she was going to be so invisible in this movie.

The Empire seemed overwhelmingly huge and the Republic seemed incredibly tiny. This was a serious mistake. They needed to be slightly more evenly matched. The Rebellion can't survive with 10 X-wings and one base.

The new Death Star-ish weapon was just too powerful. With the Empire losing two huge weapons in the past, you think their weaponry would be better distributed and not in one basket like that. On the other hand, it was bizarre that the Empire destroyed all the planets in a system except for the planet where they knew the little droid was (since destroying the droid would have solved the problem of Luke's location getting out).

Since moviemakers can do anything with CGI, they did just that. As a result, we got an utterly unbelievable sequence with the Millennium Falcon flying very close to the ground. Sorry, that didn't work for me at all. The asteroid sequence in Empire, pre-CGI, is still the best science-fictional flight sequence ever.

There was way too much running around in the desert town in the first 20 minutes of the movie. Way too much. Pacing of the movie was generally frenetic after that, but usually made more sense.

A few too many convenient coincidences, especially R2-D2 "waking up" at a key moment in the plot (though a friend suggested R2-D2 may be sensitive to "the Force" and started coming around when Rey was in the area.

Finally, the overall plot is too much like the overall plot of A New Hope. Rian Johnson wrote the rather loopy Looper which I liked a lot and wrote the next script so I hope it's not so derivative of earlier Star Wars movies. He'll also be directing episode VIII.

"This Is John Lennon's 75th Birthday" and Other Language Mangles Around Death (a plea from Dead People Server)

I have always hated when people write things like:

Today is John Lennon's 75th birthday

No, no, a thousand times NO!

When people die, they stop aging. That's part of the point of death. John Lennon will never be older than 40. John Kennedy will never by older than 46. Marilyn Monroe will never be older than 36.

Attaching an age older than the age of a person at their death is just plain silly and it denies that they've died.

It is correct to say:

Today is 75th anniversary of John Lennon's birth

That acknowledges that time has passed since he was born, and that he is no longer with us.

Almost as bad is the all-too-common phrase

Today would have been John Lennon's 75th birthday.

Now, when a person dies fairly young, this is a common phrase, and it didn't start bothering me until recently. You expect when someone is murdered at 40, that they could very well have lived another 40 years or so more. But, somehow, once you start saying "X would have been 90" today, that gets much less likely. The vast majority of people don't live to be 90.

My tendency from now on will be to say:

Today could have been John Lennon's 75th birthday.

John Lennon could still have been hit by a bus or something at 41. Just because he was murdered young doesn't mean he would have lived to be very old.

I think acknowledging a dead person's birthday as "anniversary of their birth," while a little wordy, is much more accurate.

Finally, I really don't like the term "passed away," but I understand why people prefer to use it. It sounds less harsh than to say "died." But "died" is more accurate and more honest. So when I die, please say "Laurie has died." I haven't passed anywhere except into death.

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2015 Emmys - Even More Diverse Than You Think...

I'm really glad that Viola Davis, Regina King & Uzo Aduba won Emmys last night. Viola Davis is one of the finest actors working today. Congratulations!!

But the Emmys were even more diverse than most people realize.

For one thing, women-centered productions really dominated. In addition to the female winners mentioned above, Amy Schumer, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Frances McDormand (who was the person behind bringing Olive Kitteridge to screen when she bought the rights to the novel years ago) all won Emmys for their work.

For another, a fantasy show finally won Best Drama. Game of Thrones really ruled. For years, even good SF/fantasy shows (notably The Twilight Zone and Star Trek: The Next Generation) rarely got Emmy nominations beyond the special effects and some production awards. But Game of Thrones won an acting award, a writing award & a directing award in addition to Best Drama last night, in addition to a pile of production Emmys.

It has been over 50 years since a fantasy show won an Emmy for writing - Rod Serling won two writing Emmys for Twilight Zone.

Voters also finally noticed Orphan Black enough to give the versatile Tatiana Maslany an Emmy nomination for Best Actress. Long overdue, and there's always next year for her.

And, finally, as a longtime Mad Men fan, it was very nice to see Jon Hamm get his due. He was brilliant from the very first episode of the show. And he's also wildly funny. As Saturday Night Live has been kind of shakey the last few years, he was awesome every time he hosted the show.

One entertainment commentator observed this morning that the Emmys expanded its voting pool this year, which could be why the winners were more diverse beyond the usual. I'm really glad they did that.

So congratulations, Emmys, for awarding all kinds of shows run by all kinds of people and starring all kinds of people.