Top 20 of 2015

Last year I did a Top 30 for 2014, but to be completely honest 2015 didn't have enough great film experiences to warrant such a list, so we'll have to make due with a Top 20 this year. And here it is:

THE LIST

20. Mea Culpa

Damn this movie looks good! What is it about French action movies? They can take the most trivial stories, which we've seen a thousand times before in American movies, and make them new and fresh. This one concerns an estranged father whose young son becomes the target for some ruthless gangsters, after he witnesses a murder. However, there's so much more at play here than that simple description reveals. Plus, there's something about the actors here that just sells the whole endeavor on a completely different level than similar American movies.

19. Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

Full of energy, and juvenile to a fault, this film wears its derivative nature proudly on its sleeve, next to its 'lighting a fire using cow dung' badge. Don't bother if you want your zombie movie to be all gross and serious, or if you tolerate nothing but absolute Walking Dead grimness. This is a goofy, charming, little flick.

18. American Ultra

No, I'm not quite sure why this movie worked so well for me, by all accounts it shouldn't. Jesse Eisenberg is the stoner who turns out to be a secret agent, and Kristen Stewart is his resourceful girlfriend. I found their partnership, and the crazy adventure they get into, quite irresistible. The action scenes are inventive, and the whole stoner aspect is not quite as trite as I expected. And then there's Connie Britton.

17. Big Hero 6

Admittedly, this film would be nowhere near the Top 20 if it didn't have Baymax, the robot, but it DOES have that, so it's here! A fun, colorful ride! Hilarious, with a few surprisingly rough moments.

16. Antarctica: A Year on the Ice

A documentary about people who live and work year-round in the Antarctic? Hell yes, I'm in! There are some amazing images in this film, but it also captures the feeling of being stuck in a totally inhospitable place. The monotony, the isolation, the cold, the lack of fresh food. In spite of all this it did not dissuade me from my dream of moving there permanently one day. Nice try, though.

15. Birdman

Both self-obsessed and self-deprecating, and constantly on the verge of crawling up its own ass, Birdman is nevertheless an amazing film, both due to the technical aspects and the themes it covers. Although that drum-score can only be described as ear-rape.

14) Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau

Love Story is sad. My Girl will make most grown men shed a tear. The first 10 minutes of Up made everybody cry. But this... This is inhuman. This is the heartbreaking story about that great adaptation of H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau that never got made. Any card-carrying film geek will know parts of the story already, but hearing it from the people who were there in the trenches gave the whole fiasco a new dimension.

13. Pressure

Underwater movies are cool. And I love when filmmakers tell a simple story in a limited, but unique setting. So this story, about four men trapped on the bottom of the sea in a diving bell, with limited air supply, and no way of contacting the surface, did the trick for me. It's kind of like The Abyss, without the action sequences, the nukes and the aliens. And any time a movie reminds me of The Abyss, it's doing something right.

12. Black Sea

U-boats are cool. Underwater movies are cool (see above). Jude Law is cool! So this movie about a harebrained mission to recover lost Nazi gold from the bottom of the Black Sea had me from the beginning. This is such a cool, intense, little flick.

11. Let Us Prey

This sinister thriller came out of nowhere for me and I fell in love with it instantly. It's moody as hell, stylish, and rotten to the core. A simple premise - a cop on her first day in a small police station - combined with a supernatural twist - who IS that guy? And how can he make everybody do those things? - once again demonstrates how it's possible to turn the familiar into the brilliant if you've got the brains and the balls.

10. Inside Out

It's almost pointless to praise Pixar at this point. So I won't. They did it again. But boy, this is more depressing than I thought it was going to be. I'm never leaving my house again. The world is too cruel.

9. Big Game

Who says it's impossible to make an 80's action movie, just because we're no longer in the 80's? Finish filmmaker Jalmari Helander sure did it. He pulled off a Die Hard jr.  And young lead Onni Tommila manages to go toe to toe with BOTH Samuel L. Jackson and Ray Stevenson! I just loved the hell out of the rugged little bastard of a movie.

8. Spring

I found this moody love story, come supernatural tale, completely irresistible. It's just a story about a guy who runs away from his life and meets a girl with a secret in Italy. But what a girl, what a secret, and what a meeting. Few films capture the headrush of falling in love. This one does.

7. Time Lapse

Three young people discover a camera that can take pictures of tomorrow. And it completely takes over their lives. This is a great spin on traditional time travel movies, and it's got more than a few tricks up its sleeve. What it lacks in budget and big showstopping set-pieces it makes up for in cleverness.

6. Whiplash

This falls into the category: Loved it. Not sure I can ever bear to watch it again. Miles Teller gives everything he's got as the dedicated drummer, who runs into the music teacher from hell. J.K. Simmons got all the accolades, but the blood and sweat of this film is the stunning performances from the Miles man.

5. John Wick

The ending is weak, but that doesn't stop John Wick from being an immensely enjoyable, enormously cool return to form for Keanu Reeves. The entire plot description can double as the tagline - "They killed his dog, now he's going to kill them!" - but isn't that the beauty of a good action movie? A simple story and a lot of guns.

4. Spectre

We all loved Skyfall, and we were all worried that it would be impossible to replicate that movie's success, and sure enough Spectre didn't. But it came THIS close. It was the culmination of the Daniel Craig Bond movies, and I almost wish they wouldn't make any more with him, because this is such a perfect note to go out on. It's a gorgeous film, it's full of brilliant set-pieces, and though it stumbles here and there, it's still so much better than we had any right to expect.

3. The Martian

Science. Mars. Space. Survival. That's about all the ingredients you need to make a good film. The most surprising aspect of The Martian is that Ridley Scott managed to get out of his own way and make his first good film since 1989. I love everything about this film: The characters, the story, the designs, the adventure, the potatoes.

2. Mad Max: Fury Road

I'm not sure what the hell happened to George Miller. He hasn't made a film in 30+ years that would suggest he could create this thundering beast. Strike that, he's NEVER made a film that would suggest he could create this thundering beast. Mad Max: Fury Road is the pinnacle of cool, and a near perfect reduction of the Mad Max legacy. It's so far beyond the original movies - which are, frankly, pretty much shite - that I wonder why Mad Max was even a thing, before Fury Road came along.

1) Star Wars: The Force Awakens

He did it. JJ f**king did it. The Force Awakens did exactly what it needed to do. It obliterated the dark ages of the prequels. They are simply gone. They don't exist any more. We can once again be jolly little boys and girls, head over heels in love with a wonderful space adventure. The road has been paved for the next movies to take the story in new directions, but that wouldn't be possible without the new solid foundation this film has laid. The sheer joy I felt watching this movie is something everyone deserves to experience. I can't wait to watch it again.

FINAL THOUGHTS

That's it! All we have left of 2015 is to give out those pesky Oscars, and then we can start to wonder what films will show up on the Top and Bottom lists for 2016. I've got a few candidates already.

Bottom 20 of 2015

In the words of Brendan Frasier in Mummy 3.... Here we go again!

Time for a rundown of the worst movies I saw last year.

THE LIST

20. Taken 3

The first one was flawless, the second one was dreadful, but the third one is something else entirely: It's dull. The story doesn't make any sense, and Liam Neeson doesn't kill anybody anymore. So what the hell is the point?

19. Idealisten

It's based-on-a-true-story and deals with the clean-up after a plane carrying nuclear bombs crashes near Thule base in Greenland. That's an interesting story on paper. Unfortunately the reality is that one man spend 10 years trying the dig up the truth, and that's quite boring to watch. Top that off with lackluster direction and an inadequate budget, and you've got a dull misfire that means well. Frankly, we don't need another one of those.

18. Big Sky

Yawn. Already reviewed this. I have nothing to add.

17. Momentum

Yes, I admit Olga Kurylenko was the primary reason I rented this. And yes, she's cool, sexy and saucy, but this film sure doesn't share those qualities. It's just plain dumb. One of those completely nonsensical spy stories that feels like it was written by an 11-year-old.

16. Blunt Force Trauma

I held on for as long as I could. I figured, a film this cool, smooth and moody must have something up its sleeve. It must have an extra layer, some sort of reveal, a clever point. Eventually I had to give up and admit that this was just a cheap, empty, pointless piece of nothing with delusions of grandeur in the looks department. Once you get past the undeniably gorgeous facade, including the capable cast, this is more empty than your average Steven Seagal DTV garbage.

15. Terminator Genisys

The problem with the whole Terminator franchise is that no one seems to realize that the second film shouldn't have worked (And then they, like, sent even more Terminators back in time, right? And.... but now this one is good, and erm .... this one is really, like bad, and advanced and stuff...). The only reason we can ignore the stupidity of the core story in the first sequel is the stunning filmmaking abilities of James Cameron. None of the subsequent films or the TV-show had that, and every additional story made less sense than the previous one. If we count every episode of the TV show as a sequel that would make this Terminator 36. No shit it didn't work.

14. The Transporter Refueled

Sure, you could reboot The Transporter, but if you have to do it, do it right. Why would you reboot a franchise with such a clear identity and make it so vanilla? The lead actor looks like an underwear model, and displays about the same acting range, the film ditches the simple beauty of the original premise in favor of a badly written, ill-conceived mess, and don't get me started on the dull car-scenes. If you can't even get the car-scenes right, why bother?

13. Tiger House

A rare case of everything here could have worked, but somehow, thanks to a concentrated and meticulous effort from the filmmakers, the film fails in every aspect. From the simple premise (this is essentially a home invasion story) to the characters, to the situations they encounter along the way. Every decision, from location to the time of day, is wrong.

12. Barely Lethal

I like a silly, predictable teen movie as much as the next guy, who should have outgrown that genre by now and moved on, but even I have my limits. This reeks of direct-to-video lack of effort. It looks and feels so cheap. And how about this trifecta? It makes Samuel L. Jackson uncool, Jessica Alba completely unsexy, and manages to turn Hailee Steinfeld into a sugarcoated Disney star, devoid of charisma. She was freakin' Oscar nominated!

11. Dannys dommedag

I had high hopes for this Danish end of the world, monster movie. I was actually rooting for it. Unfortunately the script doesn't work at all and the budget is far too meager to relay any sense of doomsday or monsters.

10. Submerged

It sounded fun! A group of people trapped in an airtight limo at the bottom of the sea, but how did they get there? And what happened before? Unfortunately the awful soap opera drama and the unbearable lack of direction during the first hour only lead to a laughable finale, which is basically a 20 minute non-stop session of plot twists so ridiculous you wouldn't be surprised if the limo itself turned out to be the clever fiend behind the whole mystery.

9. American Sniper

Naive, clumsy, and simple-minded. Much like half of the US of A. Oh, and how did that dead baby get past quality control?

8. Poltergeist

We all knew it wasn't going to work. We all knew it. Every one knew this film was bound to fail. We could even tell how it was going to fail, before we saw the first glimpse of it. They probably won't get a young actress as good as Heather O'Rourke, the effects will be of the predictably unscary CGI variety, and the story will bring nothing new to the table, thus making the whole exercise even more pointless. And boy were we spot on.

7. Vice

If you're going to rip off Westworld and Blade Runner, at least have the common decency to look like you're having fun. This soulless, boring B-movie seemed liked at was a chore for everyone involved. Imagine how we, the viewers, felt.

6. Need for Speed

This... I mean... I can't even. I guess it's unfair to put this on my 'worst of' list, because I had SO much fun ripping it to shreds on my podcast. Unfortunately that's about all this humorless car crash was good for. Need for Speed? Indeed. One of the rare cases where a bunch of Hollywood writers actually could have used more speed.

5. Jupiter Ascending

Laughable on every level, this magical, polished turd of a movie looks good in stills, but you don't have to watch more than a few seconds of it to realize just how incompetent it is. Never mind that the story seems like the work of a retarded, drunk, cross-dressing clown - the film even gets the basics wrong. The heroine is as boring as a toilet plunger, the cartoonish bad guy is so aggressively awful it feels like we're in a SNL sketch, and the hero... well, he's half dog. That's 50% less dog than the movie, though. The Wachowski siblings should just quit while they're behind.

4. Chappie

Rarely have I wanted to punch a fictional computer-animated robot more than I wanted to punch Chappie. The movie itself was a repugnant feast, barely suitable for animal consumption, but on top of that we got the most infuriating character created for a film in 2015. Dreadful, absolutely dreadful.

3. Harbinger Down

No other movie's appearance on this list pains me more than Harbinger Down. I had such high hopes for this. A film paying tribute to classic filmmaking, from the guys who brought us the monsters in Tremors and Aliens. How could this go wrong? Well, the script was shit, the filmmaking was shit, and they had no money. In terms of sheer filmmaking talent, this is by far the worst offender on this list. No other movie comes even close to the incompetence on display here.

2. The Visit (Documentary)

A "documentary" about aliens visiting Earth. Except there's no aliens in it and no visiting of any kind, though at one point a guy walks around in a museum in a hazmat suit, pretending he's boarding a spaceship. This is just a bunch of moronic mumbling. Less close encounters then, more like mental masturbation of the chafing kind. I detest so-called documentaries of this variety. They're a waste of time, none more so than this. And by the way, this is the second appearance on a bottom list for a Michael Madsen non-mentary - his previous effort Into Eternity made it to the 7th spot on the 2011 list.

1. Mænd og høns

If you think a chronic masturbator, having sex with farm animals and dirty, disfigured people are the greatest things in the world, then by all means check out this bag of shit. However, anyone with a sense of decency or half a brain will loathe this dull, disingenuous turd of a movie. But at least it's spectacularly unfunny.

FINAL THOUGHTS

That was rough get to through, but don't worry, next up: The Best of 2015.

Right after these words from our sponsor.

Review: Big Sky (2015)

The story sounds simple, and infinitely cool.

Teenage girl Hazel (Bella Thorne) suffers from a crippling case of agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces. She's scheduled to visit a treatment facility, but on a normal day she can barely get out of her room, much less down the stairs and into a car. Her frustrated mother (Kyra Sedgwick), however, has managed to arrange for a transport, where Hazel can lie in the back, in a closed box, so she can get where she's going without having another seizure. Her mother comes along for the ride, as well as a few other patients. Along the way there's an accident. Hazel is fine, but everybody else is killed, and her mother is mortally wounded. There are no cell phones in the car, the road they traveled is isolated, so no one is going to come by and help them, leaving Hazel in a crushingly simple, yet impossible situation: If she wants her mother to survive she'll have to venture into the open dessert herself to get help.

Like I said: A simple and cool story. It's not like the goal of the plot isn't obvious - Hazel must confront her demons and overcome them - but it's the kind of story where I could enjoy the ride, knowing full well what the destination is going to be. I could, if the film delivers on the promise, of course.

There are two big weak links in Big Sky.

The first one is Bella Thorne. This is the kind of role a serious actor would do a ton of research for, to be absolutely sure they had the manic behavior of an agoraphobe down to a T. Thorne doesn't look like she did any research. She either hides behind her hair, or groans like a teenage girl who has just been told she must be home by 9. When she attempts to show Hazel struggling with her sickness she sounds like she's trying to parallel-park a car for the first time ("I can DO this!"), rather than dealing with serious mental issues.

The second big problem is the script. The story is poorly told and manages to make a mess of a crystal clear, simple premise in a spectacular way. The story is padded with needless storylines, some of which are inexplicably dropped along the way, never to be referred to again. Several solid plot lines remain unexplored, while other hastily introduced ones are allowed to take over the film.

For example: We've got some bad guys with a complicated plan, one of them is a completely retarded (yes actually retarded) young man, who can't be left alone for a second before he shoots somebody or tries to rape them, and yet for some reason the other bad guy (Frank Grillo, putting in a decent performance) constantly leaves him alone to create more problems. I was left yelling at the screen in frustration at times. Meanwhile Hazels mother is bleeding out in the car, but don't worry, her situation will remain unchanged for most of the film. And by the way, how about giving Hazel some sort of deadline ("you gotta get back before the sun goes down"), or at least a sense that the mother's situation is worsening? Nope. She just sits there and bleeds like a stuck pig. Worse yet, she literally spends hours pointing a gun at a bad guy who's afraid to move. Just pointing a gun at him. And he doesn't move. And she doesn't move. She just points that gun.

When the film gets to the big finale we're left with a lackluster shootout that plays out between characters we've barely met, and largely off screen. I think the filmmakers think they've shown us some sort of emotional journey, where Hazel has confronted her demons, and come out on the other side. In actuality Hazel's journey consists of her stumbling through the dessert, stuffing herself with pills, talking to a cactus and getting saved by strangers. We're not sure how long time she's walked or how far she's gone. At one point we're told Hazel is several miles away from her starting point, but if you had asked me, I would have guessed she had barely moved a quarter of a mile, and that she could still see the car, but I guess not. We never get the sense that Hazel faces her problems and overcomes them, she just stumbles along, a slave to the whim of other characters and her pills. The whole idea was that the crisis Hazel is facing would shake her up and push her forward, but honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if she was back in her room the next day, afraid to go out again. And then what's the point of the whole thing, right?

I love discovering little gems - barely released films that no one has heard of - and championing them. I really wish Big Sky had been one such film. Unfortunately it's not. Rather, it's one of those films where it's obvious why it was dumped on VOD platforms with little or no fanfare. It just doesn't deserve any better.