2015 Capsule Reviews

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

rating: *****

review: For me the sequels started out with a significant bang.  Admittedly, I'm not exactly square with a lot of mainstream opinion, particularly about the Star Wars saga.  I loved the prequels, and I loved the rest of the sequels, too, but didn't much care for Rogue One, which is the only recent entry fans actually did like.  I loved the new characters instantly, but what really seals it for me is that thing that made everyone instantly love the trailer: Harrison Ford's return as Han Solo.  I thought even his death was handled perfectly.  Too many people accept the simplest way of describing a thing to be the only way to view it, and of course Force Awakens has parallels with A New Hope.  But the results are very different.  I'm a huge admirer of J.J. Abrams as it is, so the fact that he got this assignment at all was absolutely best case scenario.

The Hateful Eight

rating: *****

review: Quentin Tarantino has been able to assemble absolute dream casts throughout his career while also pursuing talent he himself sought out that was otherwise being ignored.  Eight is as close to an all-star Tarantino cast as he's gotten, led by Samuel L. Jackson, whose breakthrough film was Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, and Kurt Russell, star of what too many dismiss as a minor Tarantino flick, Death Proof.  Famously, Tarantino initially thought to shelve this script when it leaked, but thankfully he thought better.  Unlike other period films he's pursued this one doesn't much worry about its place in history, but simply allows Tarantino to settle into the characters he's created, and there are few writers in any medium who creates as vivid characters as he does.  An underrated pick for best film he's yet directed.

Self/Less

rating: ****

review: Tarsem caught everyone else's attention with The Cell, a visual spectacle starring Jennifer Lopez just before she became Jennifer Lopez, but it was The Fall that continually captivates me, and I have been following his lamentably sporadic career ever since.  Self/Less also has the virtue of starring Ryan Reynolds, whose career instincts generally seem to intersect with my viewing interests.  Reynolds often chooses roles in which the person he's playing is someone other than he actually is, for a variety of reasons.  This one is a richly textured role in a truly impossible situation where he's trying to reclaim his life, bringing forth his perennially underrated dramatic chops.

Aloha

rating: ****

review: There are a few hallmarks of reaching the ridiculous culture we currently inhabit, and one of them is the rejection of this film on the basis of "Emma Stone isn't Hawaiian!!!"  Which anyone actually watching the movie couldn't possibly have had an honest problem with.  But, as I said, such are the times we live in, and now Cameron Crowe can't be taken seriously anymore.

The Age of Adaline

rating: ****

review: For a brief moment, it seemed as if Blake Lively was going to become a bona fide movie star.  It was during this period she got to star in what's probably going to remain her most interesting role, an ageless woman who finally gets to come to grips with how she reached this state.  Narrated, as with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, brilliantly by Hugh Ross.

The Martian

rating: ****

review: I honestly thought we were going to enter a golden age of Matt Damon as a movie star, as in him becoming a reliable top box office attraction, after this one.  That didn't really happen, but the results are still pretty magnetic in this adaptation of one of the viral literary hits from that time.

The Revenant

rating: ****

review: Everyone now thinks of this as the one where Leonardo DiCaprio has that encounter with the bear, but it's also the role that finally snagged him the Oscar, and gave Tom Hardy his closest shot at mainstream legitimacy, which of course he accepted in one of his most unrecognizable appearances ever.

Legend

rating: ****

review: If you remember, Hardy had that shot for a movie we'll reach a little later in this chronicle, but there was also this gangster flick in which he plays brothers, which ended up being dismissed "because we'd seen that movie before."  Which is crazy, because no, nobody had.  But this was also the point at which everyone seemed to conspire in dismantling the old Hollywood system of, y'know, movie stars.

Tomorrowland

rating: ****

review: If you want the poster child of modern Disney, you only have to look at the inexplicable rejection of this movie, the most recent attempt by the studio to create something of its own.  And, I guess, the last time Geoege Clooney was a movie star.

Ant-Man

rating: ****

review: I honestly don't believe any movie in the MCU has nailed the MCU formula better than this introduction of Paul Rudd's Scott Lang.  Except maybe the sequel.

Joy

rating: ****

review: David O. Russell had finally built himself into one of Hollywood's most significant directors when he chose this project as a star vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence.  The result is everything it should have been, except a project that let him keep that spot.

Pan

rating: ***

review: Instantly considered a ridiculous bomb, once I got around to watching it I of course loved the results.  Hugh Jackman gets to do what he wants, but more importantly this is the first time I actually enjoyed a Garrett Hedlund performance.  He seems to be having the time of his life as a youthful Hook.

The Peanuts Movie

rating: ***

review: Sometimes these things will be filled with movies I really just need to watch again (and somehow I didn't even manage that when I was spending recent months wading through that back catalog).  But I suspect doing so would improve my opinion of these particular results.

Ex Machina

rating: ***

review: One of the prototypical modern cult classics, propelled by a fresh cast including Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, and Alicia Vikander.

Jupiter Ascending

rating: ***

review: I still find it baffling how the Wachowskis became such pariahs after essentially becoming the patron saints of modern film lore.  This was obviously an attempt to craft a space opera out of the same basic premise of reality not matching up with perception as The Matrix, but as with Force Awakens, perception was instead chosen to eclipse reality.  

Sicario

rating: ***

review: This one became a full-blown phenomenon, and further propelled Denis Villeneuve to Hollywood royalty, and yet its ambiguities are such that the apparent lead character is overshadowed by two characters even the sequel (not directed by Villeneuve) is uncertain that we should cheer them on, even when one of them is Benicio del Toro in a role worthy of his talents.

Home

rating: ***

review: I've long struggled over this one.  On the one hand it has deep personal meaning that goes beyond the actual movie.  On the other, and while I very much enjoy it, I don't know...Either way I'll always be fond of it.

Terminator: Genisys

rating: ***

review: It's the popular thing to dislike every new Terminator movie past the second one, to find some reason to utterly dismiss it, so it really doesn't matter what you've heard or personally think of this one, it's already obvious.  But popular opinion isn't always right.  Another entertaining entry in the series.

Spectre

rating: ***

review: The third Daniel Craig entry in the Bond series left me cold, and circumstances left a considerable gap in my viewing of this fourth one, and so I'm probably still processing it.  But for me, there's little question that his are the entries that will, at least to this point, best stand the test of time, once we stop worrying so much about protecting older material.

Ted 2

rating: ***

review: I've developed this weird thing about seeing sequels without having seen the original, and this is one of them.  It's pretty much exactly what you would expect.

The Visit

rating: ***

review: M. Night Shyamalan redeemed some of his credentials with this one, but it's never going to be one of my favorites.

Furious 7

rating: ***

review: I've gotta be honest, I love this series, but a thorough rewatch is gonna be necessary.  This one is Paul Walker's final appearance, and is best remembered for that, including how they include a subtle nod to "retiring" his character at the end.  But at the moment it's the only thing I remember about it.

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

rating: ***

review: It's more popular to think of it as the one where Rebecca Ferguson joins the ensemble, but I tend to lament it as the one where Jeremy Renner takes a huge step back after having briefly threatened to take over in Ghost Protocol.

Fantastic Four

rating: ***

review: "There's never been a good film version!!!" is what you're always going to hear, but of the three that've been released to date, I like 'em all, including this effort to give the team a more youthful appearance.  The only problem with Miles Teller's Reed Richards is that he necessarily takes a passive role in the proceedings, since the rest of the team has to catch up with him eventually, even though the movie clearly pivots around him.

Mad Max: Fury Road

rating: ***

review: This is the one everyone went absolutely crazy about, and so of course it features as minimal a role for Tom Hardy as possible, surely the only Mad Max film yet produced, with his name right there in the title, to be able to say that.

In the Heart of the Sea

rating: ***

review: Based on the true story that inspired Moby-Dick, this is one I unabashedly just need to watch again.

Strange Magic

rating: ***

review: I absolutely adored this when I first saw it, a kind of fond creative farewell from George Lucas, but the visual results are so far below current popular standards it's not surprising that it's completely slipped out of the popular consciousness.  But even if he'd attempted a live action rather than animated approach, I doubt the result would be different.  This was just about the time when audiences started expecting the expected (and yet still mostly grumbling about it).

Minions

rating: ***

review: Hey, the Minions are the Minions.  Either you enjoy their hijinks or you don't.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

rating: ***

review: Hugely ironically, because I'm no big fan of his, but Joss Whedon did exactly what Joss Whedon always does with this one.  I honestly think the only reason it's not popular is because audiences were disappointed not to find Thanos in it.  But it proved integral to later developments in the MCU anyway.  Eventually fans will just view it as another entry in the series.  For me it's just par for the course.

War Room

rating: ***

review: This is exactly par for the course in the kind of movie it wants to be.

The Divergent Series: Insurgent

rating: ***

review: I'm not currently able to be overly objective about this series, either.  Eventually, while watching it, I began to view it as posing even more of a model's stance at blockbuster filmmaking than the Hunger Games movies it clearly wanted to be, which themselves just as clearly wanted badly to be Twilight, which badly wanted to be Harry Potter.  In the process, the biggest victim in all of this was Shailene Woodley, who before everyone realized what was going on was poised to become a reliable movie star.