Issue 01: 5 Movies You Missed, 5 to Watch, 5 to Keep an Eye on
Welcome to the first issue of Movie Enthusiast, where Tim enthuses about film! Every issue will follow a slightly different format depending on what's happening in film world at the moment, but going forward expect a regular roundup of links to reviews, articles, trailers, and posters of note, in addition to my own personal commentary. This week I'm kicking things off by highlighting 2015 movies that may have escaped your notice and a few upcoming titles to keep an eye on.
Five Movies from 2015 You May Have Missed
1. Phoenix – Now, granted, if you've been within an earshot of me in the last month or so, you've already probably heard me talk this one up. Phoenix tells the story of a Holocaust survivor who returns to her hometown in Germany after facial reconstruction surgery renders her practically a new woman. She's soon thrust into a plot of mistaken and recreated identities, with shades of Vertigo and Fassbinder dripping from every corner. Everything about this movie is stunning, the ending is one of the best of the year (to say nothing of the decade), and it's streaming on Netflix now. Queue up!
2. 99 Homes – While The Big Short is angrily ranting at audiences nationwide about the financial collapse, this indie drama from earlier in the season took a quieter and more personal approach. It carries the weight of a Dardenne brothers docudrama, only less European—and a bit less artful, though it's perhaps uncharitable of me to nitpick an otherwise excellent drama. Shot on location in Florida with local non-professionals rounding out the supporting cast, 99 Homes puts faces on The Big Short's statistics. (Shameless plug: I also reviewed it last fall.)
3. Tu Dors Nicole – Or as I've taken to calling it, “22 Sucks: The Movie”! Nicole is a listless college grad living at home with barely anything to do one hot and lazy summer. She's miserable, she has no idea where she's going with her life, and she just can't muster up the energy to do anything with herself (there's an Iceland trip on her mind, but wild ideas like that rarely follow through). The movie's odd, moreso for being shot on black and white film, but it has a sly sense of humor, both visual and verbal.
4. Kumiko the Treasure Hunter – A Tokyo office worker discovers an old VHS tape of the Coen brothers' Fargo and, mistaking it for a treasure map, takes a trip to the midwest in search of untold riches. Need I say any more?
5. Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem – Ronit Elkabetz directs herself in this Israeli courtroom drama about a woman who spends 5 years trying to acquire a divorce from her husband under rabbinical law. The film never leaves the confines of the courthouse, yet the story is edge-of-your-seat thrilling. Gett also has a bit of a fine art flair: I kept getting Vermeer vibes from the way Elkabetz frames, costumes, and stages the characters in her drama. This was my surprise discovery of 2015 (it snuck in right before the new year), and I couldn't recommend it more highly.
Five Movies to Watch in 2016
Look, I get it, there are like 5 billion franchise movies coming out this year (Batman vs. Superman! Suicide Squad!!! Fantastic Beasts!!!!! etc. etc. etc.), but you already know they're coming out next year—their studios have the marketing budgets to be constantly shoving them in our faces. So here's some alternative programming to look forward to.
1. The Lobster – The premise? Find a spouse in 45 days or get turned into an animal of your choosing.
2. Embrace of the Serpent – It's like Heart of Darkness met Shusako Endo's Silence and went to South America by way of the moon. If this ends up being the only movie I see in 2016 I would be perfectly okay with that.
Side note: Latin America is going through something of a film renaissance (or, uh, naissance, in some cases), and next year should bring us lots of goods, not least of which are Pablo Larraín's El Club and Guatemala's Ixcanul, one of the country's few movies to ever get a wider worldwide distribution.
3. Knight of Cups – Terrence Malick takes The Tree of Life to Hollywood and drags Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, and Cate Blanchett along with him. That is, assuming they made the final cut of the movie from the trailer.
4. Dheepan – I caught this in December so I can actually vouch for this one. A timely tale of Sri Lankan migrants who pretend to be a family to acquire passage to France. The women in the film have the more interesting storylines by far; Dheepan himself is less intriguing, though he gets to go full Taxi Driver in the end (so according to Newton's First Law of Movie Titling, the movie is named after him). Dheepan won the top prize at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, if not for artistry then for being a sleeper hit with a political edge.
5. The Witch – Y'all can go ahead and go see this Salem witch trials-era horror story while I stay as far, far away as possible from it.
Five More Movies to Wait for in 2016 with Bated Breath
No trailers for these yet, so we'll keep our fingers crossed that these high profile projects deliver.
1. Silence – Speaking of Silence, Martin Scorsese's long-awaited passion project finally drops this year. For my sake if not your own you better hope it lives up to my astronomically high expectations. (I might have been exaggerating when I said Embrace of the Serpent is the only movie I really need to see in 2016.)
2. The Bad Batch – A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which to the best of my knowledge became a cult classic the moment the premise dropped on the internet (Persian punk-rock vampire western noir? yes please), gets its follow up. Director Ana Lily Amirpour has the firepower of billionaire producer Megan Ellison behind her for her next project, a dystopian romance about…cannibals. Starring Jim Carrey!
3. It's Only the End of the World – You know him as the director of Adele's Hello music video, I know him as the director of Mommy, which, incidentally, is perhaps a bit too intensely emotional of a movie to take your parents to (for the record my dad admitted to thinking it was good): Xavier Dolan at 26 just finished shooting his sixth feature, a family tragedy with all of France's biggest stars (Marion Cotillard! Léa Seydoux! Vincent Cassel!). Never one to take a break, he's also at work on feature #7, his English-language debut with Jessica Chastain and Jon Snow (Kit Harrington, but wouldn't it be great if it were just Kit in character as Snow?). For all I know that one could also be done in time for a 2016 premiere. Kid keeps showing the rest of us up.
4. The Salesman – Iranian dramatist Asghar Farhadi, director of A Separation and About Elly, has a new film set to launch this year. I know literally nothing about it besides the title, but anything by Farhadi is cause for celebration and camping out in front of your local art house theater.
5. La La Land – Remember how I would not stop talking about Whiplash in 2014? Get ready for me to gab your ears off about Damien Chazelle's next project, a jazzy L.A. musical with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Presumably this one will be less stressful than Whiplash, but one never knows with movies these days.
Anything in particular you'd like to see me cover in the future? Do I use too many parentheticals for your taste? Drop me a message—I'd love to hear from you!