"Are you a Rabbi?"

A Jewish death camp prisoner forced to burn corpses of other Jews searches for moral survival when confronted with his son's body. Directed by Lazlo Nemes. Trailer 2.

The phrase "style over substance" is often leveled as a criticism against films, but you'll notice it's almost always used by people who are not actually filmmakers. The style is the substance. Would you begrudge a painter for using oils or a canvas? In art, form is the means by which content is expressed, and this is done either poorly, well, or not at all.

The principal stylistic conceit of Son of Saul is a masterstroke: nearly the entire film is close-ups of the protagonist's head. The horrors of the camp he's prisoner in, where his job is to assist in killing fellow Jews, remain on the sidelines, blurry at the edges of the claustrophobic square frame. And yet those horrors are front and center on actor 's face, writ large in his reactions, which he of course must hide. This is a reinvention of film grammar comparable, if not as cataclysmic, as the moment Antonioni's L'Avventura premiered to a sea of boos at Cannes in 1960, before being hailed as one of the ten greatest films ever made less than two years later by Sight & Sound.

​The Holocaust is correctly thought of as a massive event, but Son of Saul makes that massiveness intimate. The earth-shaking on view here is focused on a single person's soul. You've never seen anything like it. 

4. Carol

"You seek resolutions because you are young." 

A coming-of-age love story set in the late 1950s, from the point of view of a young department-store shopgirl. Directed by Todd Haynes, with Rooney Mara & Cate Blanchett. International Trailer.

Loneliness, in my view, is the premier mental state of the human animal. Even the most busy and popular among us experience loneliness more than any other emotion, not least because existence is experienced singularly, unlike what society might like us to believe. The look on Rooney Mara's face expresses this and so much more. Her modulated performance reveals and conceals so much, and stands as a rapturous exercise in subtlety. 

Coming-of-age narratives tend to fall into two types: a protagonist achieves hedonistic success and is bewildered there is yet more afterwards ("after that summer they would never be the same"), or the protagonist has a series of experiences, usually romantic ones, which reveal there are questions in life which don't have answers. The latter resonates more for me, and Rooney Mara's journey in this film is of the latter category. How do we name the sensations within ourselves, if we're experiencing them for the first time, and how do we trust them as authentic or know their origin?

Beyond all this, Carol is just a great fifties-era romance, period. Sumptuous is the word that comes to mind. The images, the emotions, the architecture of the narrative, all sumptuously rendered by Ed Lachman's 16mm cinematography, are a treat. He does things involving reflected light and negative space I haven't seen in films before. Not as imagistically showy as Revenant or Mad Max, but equally brilliant and instructive for us photographers. See the film on blu-ray, and drink in the rich texture of 16mm's thick grain, a patina of unpredictable organic beauty. Note also how a male starts off the picture, to no surprise on our part, but almost immediately "hands off" the narrative to two females who end up being the real protagonists. Ah, how refreshing....

3. Macbeth

"I am in blood, stepped in so far."

An adaptation of the Shakespeare play. Directed by Justin Kurzel, with Michael Fassbender & Marion Cotillard. UK Trailer.

This is a perfect film. Films, like people, are usually too complex to be described by that label, but Mr. Kurzel achieves here exactly what he sets out to do, and with aplomb. This is a very specific adaptation of the play that likely won't be the one you hold in your head, but is the one in Kurzel's head, and it's a cold and savage piece of beauty to behold.

​Notice how he and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw often shoot below eye level; these people are giants, and they rove about with their existential problems like the gods in Greek tragedies of old. In Paris this picture was advertised as heavily as James Bond was– mega-sized posters and murals in public spaces everywhere, and I only wish it had been given the same level of attention stateside. It's quite the treat. Fassbender and Cotillard are titans here, laying waste in all directions with their formidable acting talent. Kurzel sets himself apart from all other Shakespeare adaptations in prizing not just wordplay but also silence. He covers significant mileage with images alone, giving space for the dialogue remaining to have stronger resonance. This is a visual and aural experience as much as a verbal one. His articulation of the opening battle as a visualization of Macbeth's mental state is a masterstroke of film direction. High marks to the music as well.

2. Youth

"Intellectuals have no taste."

A retired orchestra conductor, his daughter, film director best friend, and others spend time at a resort in the Swiss Alps ruminating on life, being, and time. Directed by Paolo Sorrentino, with Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, and others. Italian Teaser Trailer, & US Trailer 1.

You'll learn more about life, aging, multiplicity of perspective, and how we wrestle with time watching this impeccable film than any other motion picture released in the last two years. A deeply affecting experience with image after image of ravishing beauty. Two hours of perfectly exposed images that, as a photographer, leave me in a state of complete awe. I urge you to check out the trailers linked above; nothing looks quite like a Paolo Sorrentino movie. He also seems to view humanity with an all-encompassing (if world-weary) love and lack of judgment; no character is laughed at, and each of them, including those we might expect little from, have something to offer in terms of life perspective (I'm thinking of the Miss Universe's comments on irony, or Dano's quoting Novalis, one of many emotional high points for me). Click here for Katia Zorich's well-researched and illuminating essay on the film, the best writing on Youth there is online.

1. The Revenant

"They don't hear your voice! They just see the color of your face."

Dramatization of the the Hugh Glass narrative, in which real-life frontiersman Glass was left for dead after a bear mauling and survived with the intent of seeking revenge for the murder of his son. Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, with Leo DiCaprio & Tom Hardy. Teaser Trailer.

Hipsters will have a tough time with this, but I'm here to say face it, friends. There are times when something popular also happens to be great. Yes, I think it used to happen more often, but it still happens. This is just such an occasion. In the same way you don't want to short yourself by disliking ice cream simply because everyone else loves it, don't let the success of this utterly uncompromising artistic feat turn you away. There's nothing else like The Revenant. You want to see this. 

Shot for an hour or two each day over many months (the on-set experience was more like theatre, with grueling rehearsal followed by a brief period of filming when the light was right), Birdman and regular Malick cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's wide-angle, natural light scope cinematography has to be seen to be believed. I want to see a documentary about the cameramen who pulled these feats off.

As I've written elsewhere, the unbroken take is one of the last hallmarks of truth-telling in cinema, because of its self-evident linearity, and how hard it is to fake. The Revenant is comprised of unbroken take after unbroken take, some of which truly stagger the mind– the dive over the cliff; the bear scene happening without cuts, and its use of silence; the camera shifting focus from tracking foot soldiers to horse-mounted men in the opening battle, with no apparent effort… all this, in addition to a rigorous adherence to Method (DiCaprio actually eating that raw meat, or sleeping in animal carcasses, not to mention emoting without resorting to dialogue) add up to create semblances of reality which more than any other picture this year convey the maximum possibility of what we hope for when going to the movies.

There are echoes of Malick here, in form but not content, though Inarritu makes the approach his own.* DiCaprio hardly speaks for the film's middle hour; this is not just an acting masterclass, but Pure Cinema (not Bazin's definition but Hitchcock's: the expression of ideas using images and sounds as only the film medium can) at a new contemporary height. Cinema, at its best, is not about story, but experience. Other mediums can convey stories brilliantly, but no art form locates the viewer in a situation as potently and specifically as moving images and sounds. Not every film takes advantage of this possibility. The Revenant doesn't miss any opportunities to throw you into an alternate universe, whereupon afterwards you'll never complain about the weather again.

The conclusion is for me what elevates the picture beyond classic status; I'm referring to Hardy's lines to DiCaprio, as well as the interaction involving Powaqa. My jaws were agape. A simple revenge narrative would be too prosaic for a picture of this technical pedigree, and these moments fulfilled my hope of such transcendence.

*Lubezki describes Inarritu and Malick as basically opposites, based on work ethic. Inarritu is ruthlessly rehearsed, a necessity given his proclivity for unbroken takes. Malick shoots intuitively, to the point he'll film actors surreptitiously in between takes. More of Lubezki's thoughts on the two here. 

--
​
And now I'm headed back out to the street. I have a feeling I'll be back in a moment with a story under my arm....

"You will not survive here." (Image courtesy of Lionsgate)

Continuing from where we left off (here is the bottom third of this list), here are ten through six of my top seventeen films of the year– 2015 was far too good a year for a mere list of ten! I've attached the trailers for each film I think most accurately reflects the film, which is not always the final domestic trailer.

10. Amy

"Jules, this is so boring without drugs."

Archival footage of Amy Winehouse, focusing on the forces and people which contributed to her downfall. Directed by Asif Kapadia. Trailer 2 (US).

Kapadia, as is his wont, uses no talking heads in his documentaries. The entire film is primary footage– no recreations, reenactments, or sit-down interviews; just the blunt unvarnished images, which need no augment to impart the tragedy they contain. Nothing is manufactured here, and Kapadia does not assert himself other than to expertly organize thousands of hours of video into a comprehensible downward collapse that simply watches, withholding judgment on the causes for Amy's death, from the shocking lack of self-awareness of those closest to her to the ambivalent desires of the mobs who adored her without caring for her. Most potent is a comment which crystallizes why drug use is so appealing to celebrities: they offer an outlet for something no longer attainable– the ability to be alone. Amy transcends the bounds of documentary to register in the psyche as the great literary tragedies do.

9. Mad Max

"I live. I die. I live again!"

A woman searches for her homeland with the assistance of several escaped prisoners. Directed by George Miller, with Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy. Teaser Trailer.

This will rightly be celebrated as the great women's picture of 2015, galvanizing a conversation which has been taking place on the sidelines for most of the entire century-plus of cinema. Or maybe we should say gender-equal picture, for the film doesn't denigrate Hardy's character but correctly understands feminism not as the reactionary fight for superior rights for women, but as a fight for equal rights for women. We hope for the day when Dr. King's four little children will be judged by the content of their character, and we're excited when Max hands Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) his gun on the judgment of her abilities, ignoring gender as a consideration. A cinematic baton of sorts is being handed over in that moment.

The main character is female, isn't defined by her relationship to males or by romantic attraction to a man, doesn't exist to define or support male characters, has her own agenda, has motivations besides approval by or sex with males, and whose competence requires no explanation. All the better is that Miller did not write this with explicit political intent or conscious desire to make statements about women, the elderly, the deformed, enslaved, maimed, or otherwise marginalized; it's just that his worldview seeped through his writing of a story, and all those groups ended up being celebrated in this film in a way that (unfortunately) feels new. Miller is in his seventies, and a work of such vivacious energy coming from him defies the term "youthful" as the appropriate adjective. Note also how abysmal the gender relations were in Miller's original 1979 Mad Max, what with its laughably embarrassing damsel-in-helpless-distress narrative. One can't help but see this as a corrective of sorts.

Much has been written on this picture elsewhere, but I'd like to briefly note four things: Nicholas Hoult's character arc is as deeply encouraging to me as the presence of a strong female protagonist. His character is the only one with an arc in the film, and thus represents the arc of the film to a degree. We expect his transition from evil to good to be deceptive or self-motivated or both, but it isn't. The film believes in the capacity for growth toward good. 

Additionally, aesthetic ground is being broken here. Max has many more cuts than most films do, with each shot lasting an average of 1.8 seconds, placing it firmly in Oliver Stone-Paul Greengrass territory. Whereas Greengrass' intent is usually to disorient, by placing movement directions in unexpected places in subsequent shots to keep the viewer off balance, Miller frames most of the action so the object of interest is always in the center of the frame. It goes down like water. Film scholar David Bordwell analyzes this approach with visual examples here. 

Furthermore, visual effects ground is also being broken here. Most of the film's effects, aside from dust and tornado elements, are practical rather than computer-animated. The camera is picking up something tactile, and your eye knows the difference. I'd also like to comment on how well expository moments are kept to a minimum. We don't spend extraneous moments setting up why the evil warlord is evil, or what horrors the sex slaves have gone through, or what the milk is for, or what chrome is. Miller sketches quickly, and we get the basic ideas, which is all we need. The world is to be witnessed and considered by us rather than explained, and we are thus engaged, treated like adults. No wonder this is the only action film to premiere at Cannes Film Festival, of all places, in years! 

8. Steve Jobs

"We will know soon enough if you're Leonardo da Vinci– or just think you are."

Behind-the-scenes moments before three product launches headed by Steve Jobs. Directed by Danny Boyle, with Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet. Written by Aaron Sorkin. Trailer 2 (US).

People immediately lose interest when I tell them I've just seen this great movie called Steve Jobs. How do I fix this? What do I say? Do I say that the film is three long dialogue scenes, each set in a different decade? Do I say it's 180 industry-formatted pages (typically, 180 minutes) of dialogue spoken so quickly that the film's runtime is only 121 minutes? Do I say something about Michael Fassbender, how in less than a decade he's already comparable to Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Penn in terms of ferocious focus, range, and quality? That Sorkin has written possibly his best work and uses Jobs to make points about creativity far larger than the main character's dilemmas?

Or just that this film is extremely entertaining and will make you really dislike Steve Jobs while admiring him a little at the same time? I'm at a loss here. I've long considered Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross my favorite (not best) piece of screenwriting. Jobs threatens to surpass it. Each of the three scenes is a writerly orgy, an escalating action scene where the kinetic physicality is contained entirely in words exchanged. Unlike James Foley's staid and unadventurous interpretation of Mamet's text, Boyle pushes the writing out of this-should-just-be-a-play territory into the realm of exciting cinema with his trademark playfulness, using a variety of tricks when appropriate (including a bold but fitting moment of rear projection in an otherwise realist picture). Act 1 (set in the eighties) is filmed on 16mm; Act 2 (in the nineties) is in 35mm; and the final stretch, in the new millennium, is digital. A treat for many reasons, and a screenplay of such exhilarating involvement it has to be heard to be believed.

7. Sicario

"Nothing will make sense to your American ears."

An FBI agent (Emily Blunt) finds herself in deep water while investigating cartel activity in Juarez. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, co-starring Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin. Trailer.

Brutal, beautiful, and expertly constructed in a way that rewards repeat viewings. Villeneuve considers it his best film. Click here for an essay of mine on the film, going into numbing (and I do mean numbing!) levels of specific detail on the film's visuals. You'll watch movies differently after reading it. This youtube video analyzing the film's use of color and other visual elements also has a lot to offer, going into even further detail on many things I hadn't even noticed.

6. About Elly (Darbareye Elly)

"A bitter ending is better than an endless bitterness."

Friends on vacation at a beach house retreat notice one of their party has gone missing. Directed by Asghar Farhadi. US Trailer.

A shattering, universally human experience featuring a blistering lead performance by the radiant Golshifteh Farahani. You might think there's not much to relate to with this one, but you'd be pleasantly surprised. Some of the best films in the entire world being made right now are coming out of Iran. They tend to be probing dissections of human nature and relations, and because of how expertly the story has been constructed in this one, Farahani's moral dilemma at the end is completely understandable even though she doesn't speak a word. On the outside, it's just a young woman sitting alone at a table, but we know what's racing through her head.... 

My thoughts on the film and the circumstances surrounding its release here.

Final five coming soon!

It was the briefest of exchanges, but of the sort guaranteed to bring a smile to my face. We pulled into Rainier and Kenny, in Hillman City, one of several lower-profile but nevertheless thriving realms south of Columbia City.

The Kenny Street zone is famously dark, shrouded as it is in year-round conifers. A benevolent figure loomed in out of the shadows. "Hi," he said, a man of about thirty. "I lost my transfer. Could I get a ride downtown?"
"Yeah, man. Thanks for bein' honest." I handed him a new transfer. Which prompted the following:
"GOD BLESS! ONLY IN AMERICA! BRUCE LEE FOR PRESIDENT TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-SIX!"

Finally, an endorsement we can all get behind....

"So foul and fair a day I have not seen." (Image courtesy The Weinstein Company)

You came here looking for a bus story, and instead, what? We all love stories, and the ones in these films are far better than any I could ever relay. This blog is a probing celebration of the human spirit in its many forms. So too are these films, which is why I respond to them, and why I think you might take interest in them as well.

And anyways, don't tell me you don't love movies, the premier art form of our time, speaking to the masses in the way classical music did in 1700s western Europe, or literature during the 19th and early 20th century. Every art form has its time in the sun where it may not the best form of the day, but is by far the most resonant and wide-reaching. Anyone who tells you we're not in a golden age of filmmaking isn't looking hard enough.

Below is a list of what I found to be the best releases of the year in film, along with ruminations on each. I should note that the trailers I've attached for each film are not always the main US domestic final trailer, but the trailers I feel are most accurate to the films. That's why you get the UK trailer for Carol or the Mandarin teaser for The Assassin, for instance.

We start with the bottom of the list. These ones aren't necessarily great, but enthralled me for various reasons I'm compelled to share.

17. Experimenter

"Do you ever feel invincible in one moment and then worthless the next?"

Based on the life of Stanley Milgram, who famously conducted experiments revealing that most people will voluntarily torture strangers if asked politely to do so by an authority figure. Directed by Michael Almereyda, with Peter Sarsgaard. Trailer.

The ramifications of Milgram's work are crucial to our understanding of how widespread atrocities continue to be tolerated and enacted. Milgram was Jewish, and his quest to make sense of things following World War II underpinned much of his work. As he said, his results were less about human evil as human malleability, and the value we place on obeying authority figures. Mr. Almereyda appropriately takes an experimental approach, avoiding familiar biopic tropes and resorting to numerous 4th-wall breaks, rear projection, creative desaturation, and abandoning narrative almost entirely to get at what really interests us– not Milgram's life but what these experiments mean. He also pioneered the six-degrees of separation concept and several other interesting studies. Entertaining and erudite. 

16. Diary of a Teenage Girl

"I'm distracted sometimes. By my overwhelming all-consuming thoughts about sex and men!"

Minnie, a teen girl in 1970s San Francisco, finds herself drawn to her mother's boyfriend. Directed by Marielle Heller. Trailer 1.

Again, I'm not trying to say the films on the bottom of this list are masterpieces. But in the way I feel Experimenter relays something vital, so too does Diary. Perspectives on sexual awakening from the view of teen girls, let alone females, are basically nonexistent in cinema, despite being an experience roughly fifty percent of the population goes through. Diary offers tremendous wisdom through Minnie's reflective and frank vernacular, as she navigates uncharted waters and ultimately arrives at conclusions far beyond what most of us adults typically ruminate over.

We don't so much as wait around for her to come of age as learn about ourselves by extrapolating her thoughts (I'm thinking of the film's final lines here, which are gold) onto our own questions and struggles with love and selfhood. Also worth noting is the terrific lead performance, capable directorial handling of highly awkward material, brazenly creative incorporation of animation, and razor-sharp wit.

15. Hard to be a God (Trudno byt bogom)

"This is not Earth. It's another planet, identical, about 800 years behind."

Scientists sent to another planet exactly like Earth's Middle Ages struggle with not interfering when confronted with what they see. Directed by Aleksey German. Trailer.

Hard to be a God is not an easy watch, but it manages to be strangely captivating for the entirety of its gargantuan runtime. Mr. German has created a world that indeed feels like another planet, establishing normative behavior our 21st-century selves find alien (notice the different and pervasive amount of touching and focus on scents). This conflation of the distant future and ancient past is a portrait of the Middle Ages as you've never seen. Rumata, the lead scientist, wanders through a largely plotless Bosch-like theatre of disgusting squalor and ugliness, where man's inhumanity to man is front and center. Hard to be a God, indeed, and no job for a mere mortal. This gorgeously photographed three-hour think piece is a test, and brilliant in its theological and philosophical ramifications. There are conversations where the viewer is quite literally left reeling at the meta-connotations of what's being said. It whirls you around and soaks you in the grotesque and repulsively macabre, but I guarantee you'll come out of it with thoughts you've never had before.

14. Gueros

"This dude could've saved Mexican rock."

Young Tomas and his older friends get sidetracked on a meandering road trip searching for an obscure rock musician. Directed by Alonso Ruiz Palacios. US Trailer.

It's a little gem, is what it is. One hundred six minutes of beautiful full-frame black-and-white images, each indelible, laid over a rambling but strangely economical up-all-night-in-Mexico City road trip narrative. It pokes fun at seriousness while also possessing its own gravitas; it's whirligig absurdist humor feels oddly perfect in an aesthetically gorgeous environment. It effortlessly holds our attention as it unhurriedly switches from humor (admirable here in its ability to cross cultural boundaries) to banality to suspense and politics. I can hardly believe it's a debut feature, and yet I can: it's the sort of picture which says loudly and uniquely, here I am! I have things on offer you won't find elsewhere, and it doesn't matter if all the parts add up. Though I rather think they do.​

13. The Assassin (Nie yin niang)

"Birds sing only to their own kind."

​In seventh-century China, a female assassin is tasked with killing a political leader with whom she has a history. Directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien. China Trailer.

More than one critic has said this film does things you won't have seen in films elsewhere, and I agree. It doesn't feel like a film, for one, but nor does it seem quite like anything else, especially not other wuxia genre works in either film or book form. Hou Hsiao Hsien's entry into the field (wuxia is a Chinese genre of martial-chivalric fiction) is almost entirely comprised of meditative stillnesses, which in their own way are as enrapturing as the brief accents of martial arts which punctuate them. We wonder at what goes on in Qi Shu's head as we puzzle together the narrative, looking for clues while falling prey to the film's ruminant, prayerful spell. Aside from one scene in 1.85:1 widescreen, Hou shoots in a more squarish 1.4:1 ratio, offering a different kind of picturesque and employing stillness for things we expect to be addressed by sound and fury. The spaces between the notes are what interests him. 

12. 45 Years

"I'd like to be able to tell you everything I'm thinking. But I can't."

News of a former lover's death starts a process of unraveling in an otherwise stable marriage. Directed by Andrew Haigh, with Charlotte Rampling. Trailer.

Andrew Haigh is not in his eighties, nor even his seventies. He's only forty-three. How does he understand so acutely the troubles these two characters generations older than he are having? How does he grasp so perfectly the specific pace of life at that age, the currents beneath the surface, and how what is unspoken carries just as much weight as what is? Ah, we must remember experience is only one way of accumulating knowledge....

This piece magnetizes. We all spend a lot of time thinking about relationships, and whether we realize it consciously or not, I think we know we are often underserved by the cinema, in that films about relationships are generally only about the beginnings of relationships. This one goes further, and builds to a climax of such unspoken raw power as to have my jaw on the floor.

11. Spotlight

"Why are we hesitating?"

Based on the Boston Globe's landmark journalism which ultimately uncovered global abuse of children within the Catholic Church. Directed by Tom McCarthy, with Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and others. Trailer.

​Spotlight wasn't the best picture of the year, but it's probably a good thing it won the award. Like Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave or Spielberg's Schindler's List, this is a film that should be required viewing for every World Citizen. The direction is nothing flashy, and the cinematography is simple and journeymanlike; but oh, the content. There are truths we simply need to know about. Singer and McCarthy's script (an inarguably well-deserved Oscar win) is a piece of perfection, and it's edited with propulsive skill and performed with across-the-board excellence. Liev Schreiber's scruffy, taciturn introvert is a treat, and Mark Ruffalo's monologue on the porch with Rachel McAdams is a thing of heartrending beauty.

​Also compelling is the journeyman aesthetic of the filmmaking as a corollary to the attitudes of the players: the journalists in this film aren't portrayed as heroes, but just people doing their jobs, and well. Some of the films above are tough to recommend (don't subject yourself to Assassin or Hard...God unless you're in the right mood!), but this picture will play meaningfully for anyone. This is an unassuming masterpiece.


Check back soon for the rest of the list, and hopefully enough film recommendations to last a year!

It is my belief that I receive a disproportionate amount of goodwill and love from the world. I am hugely, overwhelmingly thankful for every day of this. I also believe time is the most valuable commodity of all, and for all you (over a hundred plus!) fine folks who set aside time, who made time and took the effort to attend my "First and Last Birthday Party," as it were, I'm simply unable to express my gratitude adequately. I hardly know what I've done to be on the receiving end of such an avalanche of kindness. Thank you all! We help each other into who we are, and I'm so glad to know each of you. 

Did you miss the party? No worries– you didn't miss the speech! Click here for a video of me telling a bus story on the roof of the Nolo...