Review: THE FINEST HOURS

THE FINEST HOURS  (DISASTER-THRILLER/DRAMA) 

2 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Craig Gillespie
Starring: Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Holliday Grainger, Ben Foster, Eric Bana, John Oritz, Graham McTavish, Kyle Gallner, John Magaro, Michael Raymond-James, Abraham Benrubi
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of peril.
117 minutes
Verdict: A more earnest than interesting disaster-at-sea thriller, THE FINEST HOURS is an ordinary rendition of extraordinary events, but may be perfectly satisfying for fans of the "Disney dad movie".
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN THE FINEST HOURS IF YOU LIKED:
THE GUARDIAN  (2006)
THE PERFECT STORM  (2000)
IN THE HEART OF THE SEA  (2015)
MCFARLAND, USA  (2015)
WHITE SQUALL  (1996)
 
Disney has become weirdly specific in their movie output during the last 15 years, with all but a few exceptions falling into one of three distinct categories: blockbusters (big $150-$200 million tentpole action/adventure movies like the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, THE LONE RANGER, TRON: LEGACY, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and anything through Marvel or Lucasfilm), animation (Walt Disney Animation or Pixar, i.e. FROZEN, INSIDE OUT, BIG HERO 6) and the dad movie.  What's a dad movie, you ask?  They're almost all sports dramas, with 2000's REMEMBER THE TITANS probably where the formula started, often carried on with a culture clash element in movies like GLORY ROAD, MILLION DOLLAR ARM, and last year's MCFARLAND, USA.  Most of them are sports dramas, but they don't have to be.  The most crucial ingredients to the Disney dad movie are a marketable star (household name, but usually no one too hot at the moment, i.e. Kevin Costner, Paul Walker, Jon Hamm), a true story of "overcoming the odds", an overall male perspective (not like Michael Bay machismo, but a working family man sort of thing), and an experienced but generally low-profile journeyman director.  THE FINEST HOURS is a Disney dad movie, and not the first from director Craig Gillespie, who made MILLION DOLLAR ARM, but it's a slightly different Disney dad movie, not about sports, and a lot bigger, with a reported budget of $80 million.  It attempts to bridge the gap between the stoic nobility and truth-based heroism of the dad movie and the action spectacle of a blockbuster, but it's unmistakably a dad movie, through and through. 
It's star, Chris Pine, plays against his usually cocky, braggadocio type as a squeaky clean, by-the-book hero, Bernie Webber, a young but seasoned member of the U.S. Coast Guard, recently engaged to his slightly bolder girlfriend, Miriam (Holliday Grainger), when he's charged with leading a small boat rescue mission to pick up the stranded crew of the SS Pendleton, an oil tanker split in half by a ferocious winter storm off the coast of Cape Cod in 1952.
Casey Affleck stands in a similar position as Ray Sybert, the man to whom the duty falls to rally the men aboard the Pendleton to work together to survive long enough for help to arrive.  Affleck's and Pine's characters are too-good-to-be-true everymen who rely simply on force of will to overcome circumstance and pose stoically without offering much in the way of insight or ingenuity.  In this way, the film's extraordinary story feels slight and pedestrian, yet forcefully resolute in its simple track.
Like December's disaster-at-sea period drama, IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, THE FINEST HOURS is happily old-fashioned, not particularly distracted by any moral complications or insights that arise, but also, weirdly stagey in its execution.  The Boston accents are thick, and the personalities are broad, and the extended CGI storm sequences have a rear-projection vibe.  It doesn't look terrible, but you'd never believe they're actually on the sea.  There's not much noteworthy about it to praise in particular, but it's not bad either.  It's fine, a movie very much for the older crowd, harmless, but unremarkable.  At two hours long (mercifully tight in comparison to some of the more recent, bloated would-be epics), with sturdy production values and likable-enough earnestness, it's 'good enough'.

25 Movies That Must Be Seen in 2016

In order of release:

HAIL, CAESAR!  (COMEDY) 
Directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Starring: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, Christopher Lambert
Rated PG-13 for some suggestive content and smoking.
Opens February 5th
The Coen Brothers return to their wildly wacky world of yesteryear's show business, this time in the form of 1950s Hollywood, where Josh Brolin plays a "fixer" charged with keeping his clients' scandals out of the press when a major movie star is kidnapped and held for ransom by a mysterious group calling themselves 'The Future', throwing a huge wrench in the production of a new film epic entitled Hail Caesar.  The Coens' style of comedy is unique but they rarely go wrong, and HAIL,CAESAR appears to be in a vein similar to that of cult classics like THE BIG LEBOWSKI and BARTON FINK.  It can be difficult to guess accurately just what they have up their sleeves, but the Coens are typically a strong bet.

THE WITCH  (HORROR) 
Directed by Robert Eggers
Starring: Anya Talyor-Johnson, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson, Julian Richings, Bathsheba Garnett
Rated R for disturbing violent content and graphic nudity.
Opens February 26th
THE WITCH is technically a 2015 film, having been a hit way back in January 2015 at the Sundance Film Festival, but unless you had the chance to see it then or at one of the few subsequent film festivals it's screened at, it's about as good as a 2016 release.  For anyone who gave themselves chills when growing up by reading about the Salem witch trials or other historical witch-hunting (maybe that's not a common childhood experience), the premise is deliriously intriguing.  Set in 17th-century New England wilderness, a Puritan family turns in on itself when an infant child goes missing and witchcraft is suspected.  Made on a tiny $1 million budget, it's poised as that wonderful brand of deeply atmospheric, unsettling horror, with a religious bent that suggests substance.

ZOOTOPIA  (ANIMATION/FAMILY) 
Directed by Byron Howard & Rich Moore
Featuring the Voices of: Jason Bateman, Ginnifer Goodwin, Shakira, Idris Elba, J.K. Simmons, Nate Torrence, Jenny Slate, Mark Smith, Tommy Chong, Octavia Spencer, Bonnie Hunt
Rated PG for some thematic elements, rude humor and action.
Opens March 4th
The first of two movies coming from Walt Disney Animation Studios this year, ZOOTOPIA is a variation on buddy cop movies, set in an "alternate universe"-style world inhabited by anthropomorphic mammals in a metropolis called Zootopia, where an enthusiastic rookie cop (a rabbit, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin of ABC's Once Upon A Time) teams up with a sardonic con artist (a fox, voiced by Jason Bateman) in order to solve a major case that could make her mark in the Zootopia Police Department.  Based on the marketing, the gags are pretty obvious ones (the latest trailer centers around a DMV operated entirely by sloths), but the execution seems pretty funny, regardless.  More importantly, WDA has been on a real streak lately with TANGLED, WRECK-IT RALPH, FROZEN, and most recently, BIG HERO 6, so I'd give them the benefit of the doubt for now anyway.

THE JUNGLE BOOK  (ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY) 
Directed by Jon Favreau
Starring: Neel Sethi; Featuring the Voices of: Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Scarlett Johansson, Christopher Walken, Lupita Nyong'o, Giancarlo Esposito
Rated PG for some sequences of scary action and peril.

Opens April 15th
The word for the teaser trailer of this latest Disney remake of a classic animated feature is 'intense'.  Initially, it seemed like it was trying too hard, almost comically, like those internet videos of gritty reboot "what ifs".  But it's grown on me, and after getting back in touch with his roots in 2014's CHEF, I'm hoping director Jon Favreau is up to the challenge of not only another big budget blockbuster, but a mostly animated one.  Disney appears to be taking aim at an older audience with this one, emphasizing thrills and high adventure, and advertising it as "From the studio that brought you Pirates of the Caribbean; And the director of Iron Man", but curiously, reports suggest there will be some returning songs from the 1967 animated film, along with new songs from the surviving Sherman brother (the pair who penned the original songs along with many other classic Disney tunes), Richard Sherman, and it's not clear how these songs will be integrated with the apparently darker tone.  Furthermore, with the exception of Mowgli, played by newcomer Neel Sethi, the environments and animals appear to be mostly rendered in mostly photo-realistic CGI.  As one who considers the animated version to be overrated, I don't take any offense at the idea of the remake, but hopefully its an improvement on IRON MAN 2 and COWBOYS & ALIENS, Favreau's less inspired previous big budget films.

Image via Warner Brothers

KEANU  (COMEDY) 
Directed by Peter Atencio
Starring: Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Method Man, Gabrielle Union, Will Forte, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Nia Long
Not Yet Rated
Opens April 29th
A feature film from the makers of Key & Peele?  Yes, please.  Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele star as mild-mannered buddies whose insanely adorable kitten, Keanu, is taken by drug dealers, forcing them to infiltrate the local criminal underworld.  The trailer features the poster-cute kitten running through the mayhem of bullets and blood.  This looks amazing.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR  (ACTION-ADVENTURE/SCI-FI-FANTASY) 
Directed by Anthony Russo & Joe Russo
Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Emily VanCamp, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, William Hurt, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Rudd, Daniel Bruhl
Not Yet Rated
Opens May 6th
Kicking off the Summer 2016 movie season is the third installment in the Captain America series, but it's practically another Avengers movie what with so many major players from the other "Marvel Cinematic Universe" series showing up, including no less than freaking Robert "Iron Man" Downey Jr., the crown jewel of the MCU, in a primary role!  Very loosely based on Marvel Comics' Civil War limited series, CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR follows up both CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER and AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON with Cap, in the wake of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s destruction, refusing to enlist as a soldier to another oversight organization and refusing to turn in his friend, Bucky Barnes, aka "The Winter Soldier", wanted for crimes committed during years as a brainwashed assassin, which pits him and other like-minded superheroes against Iron Man and other heroes who believe they should be submitted to an authoritative body.  In addition to Captain America and Iron Man, CIVIL WAR is also bringing back Falcon (Anthony Mackie), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Vision (Paul Bettany), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), as well as introducing Chadwick Boseman as the Black Panther and Tom Holland as Spider-Man in their MCU debuts.  WINTER SOLDIER directors Joe and Anthony Russo are returning, and William Hurt is returning as General "Thunderbolt" Ross, making him the only cast member of the mostly ignored (and underrated) THE INCREDIBLE HULK to appear in another MCU movie.  One major concern, in addition to being potentially overstuffed already, there appears to be a new villain in the mix, Helmut Zemo, played by Daniel Bruhl, which seems unnecessary and a potential distraction from the more important central conflict.  The obligation of more recent MCU films to build the larger, overarching narrative has been at the expense of the individual films' primary stories, so hopefully they'll shake that trend.

FREE STATE OF JONES  (DRAMA/WAR)
Directed by Gary Ross
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Keri Russell, Mahershala Ali, Brendan Gleeson, Jacob Lofland, Brad Carter, Sean Bridgers, Kirk Bovill
Not Yet Rated
Opens May 13th
A truth-based story, director Gary Ross' follow-up to THE HUNGER GAMES is about a remarkable but little-known event in the course of the American Civil War.  Matthew McConaughey stars as Newton Knight, a poor Mississippi farmer who deserts from the Confederate Army, marries a former slave (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, from BEYOND THE LIGHTS), and leads an anti-secessionist militia of deserters and runaway slaves to overthrow the Confederate forces in Jones County, MI.  Ross isn't a 'great director', but he's a very good director, and although he departed after the first installment, his work on the Hunger Games was stellar.  There are plenty of Civil War films, including some very iconic, well-produced ones, but not, I would argue, many good ones, and this has potential.  Plus, although things have been picking up some in the past couple of decades, the pro-Union cause is weirdly underrepresented in the history of film, and this special case of a rebellion within the rebellion sound fascinating.

NEIGHBORS 2: SORORITY RISING  (COMEDY) 
Directed by Nicholas Stoller
Starring: Seth Rogen, Zac Efron, Rose Byrne, Dave Franco, Chloe Grace Moretz, Kiersey Clemons, Carla Gallo, Ike Barinholtz, Lisa Kudrow
Not Yet Rated
Opens May 20th
Typically, I put very little stock in comedy sequels, but with the whole creative team returning, including director Nicholas Stoller, and considering how great the original was, I can't help but have hope for this one.  Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne reprise their roles as the Radners, a married couple who are now called upon by their former rivals, Teddy (Zac Efron) and Pete (Dave Franco), to wage war against a sorority that just moved into their neighborhood.  Sure it's ridiculous, and probably won't be as good as the original, but it's not like they're making the GODFATHER PART II here.  Unless it is like that, in which case, whoa.

THE NICE GUYS  (COMEDY/MYSTERY-THRILLER)
Directed by Shane Black
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer, Margaret Qualley, Keith David, Kim Basinger, Beau Knapp, Ty Simpkins, Jack Kilmer
Rated R for violence, sexuality, nudity, language and brief drug use.
Opens May 20th
Shane Black, one of Hollywood's most distinctive screenwriters, with credits that include LETHAL WEAPON and THE LAST BOY SCOUT, as well as directorial credits for the underseen cult classic KISS KISS BANG BANG and the widely-seen Marvel hit IRON MAN 3, wrote and directed this original genre bender set in 1970s Los Angeles.  Ryan Gosling is a hapless private detective teamed up with Russell Crowe as a brutish hired enforcer, when the two uncover a conspiracy behind the case of a missing girl and the apparent suicide of a porn star.  It sounds very much in the vein of the aforementioned KISS KISS BANG BANG, but through a new lens, and the trailer is a riot.

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE  (ACTION-ADVENTURE/SCI-FI-FANTASY) 
Directed by Bryan Singer
Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, Olivia Munn, Lucas Till, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee
Not Yet Rated
Opens May 27th
After sixteen years, the X-Men film series reaches its proposed climactic chapter, one that will purportedly tie together the original film and X2, their casts led by Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, with FIRST CLASS and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, led by James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence, with Bryan Singer returning to the series a fourth time as director.  The title refers to the spectacularly over-powered mutant villain Apocalypse (played by Oscar Isaac), an apparently immortal and purple destroyer of worlds not too unlike Thanos of the Avengers movies (while Marvel keeps teasing their big bad in a ridiculously slow burn, the X-Men are jumping right into it).  This series has had its share of missteps, but so far, Singer has directed three of the good ones, and for better or worse, they appear to be going very large with this one.  Plus, if you're not into the Marvel Cinematic Universe thing, the X-Men are a more adult, edgy kind of superhero movie, without the gross overindulgence of something like DEADPOOL (who actually ties into the X-Men universe coincidentally) or the clumsy, grandiose posturing of the current iteration of DC movies.

WARCRAFT  (FANTASY/ACTION-ADVENTURE)
Directed by Duncan Jones
Starring; Travis Fimmel, Toby Kebbell, Paul Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Ben Schnetzer, Robert Kazinsky, Daniel Wu, Ruth Negga, Clancy Brown, Terry Notary
Rated PG-13 for extended sequences of intense fantasy violence.
Opens June 10th
I do have some fairly strong reservations about this one, but my curiosity is piqued nonetheless.  A long-awaited film adaptation of the nerdiest game this side of Dungeons & Dragons, Universal originally planned WARCRAFT as a big Lord of the Rings-style holiday season release until a little juggernaut called STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS plopped down right beside and sent WARCRAFT running into the crowded summer season.  It's directed by Duncan Jones, whose last film, SOURCE CODE, was an overlooked gem back in 2011, and the extensive use of motion capture technology looks impressive in some of the marketing, but I must admit, some of the fantasy world gobbledygook gives me pause.  It's also only the latest attempt to legitimize film adaptations of video games, but this game, Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft series, is a strategy game and less action-oriented than most games that have attempted the leap to the big screen.  Written by Jones and BLOOD DIAMOND screenwriter Charles Leavitt, the story revolves around a rising conflict told from the perspectives of two civilizations, one of humans, and one of the monstrous orcs.

THE BFG  (ADVENTURE-FANTASY/FAMILY) 
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring: Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Penelope Wilton, Rebecca Hall, Bill Hader, Jemaine Clement
Not Yet Rated
Opens July 1st
Steven Spielberg is taking a break from the awards fare drama for this whimsical family fantasy-adventure based on the book of the same name written by Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and The Witches.  A co-production between Disney (although he produced WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, and his last few films received distribution by Disney, this is Spielberg's first directorial feature produced at the Mouse House) and DreamWorks, THE BFG introduces Ruby Barnhill as Sophie, a little English girl who befriends the eponymous "Big Friendly Giant", an outcast from his race of foul, man-eating brutes.  Playing the BFG is Mark Rylance, who recently received an Academy Award nomination for his supporting role in BRIDGE OF SPIES, and seems ideally cast for the character, up against Bill Hader and Jemaine Clement as unfriendly giants "The Bloodbottler" and "The Fleshlumpeater", respectively.  With a screenplay by the late Melissa Mathison (best known for writing Spielberg's E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL), not to mention the fact that it's coming from no less than Steven-freaking-Spielberg, it's one of the most promising and unlikely films to look forward to this summer.

THE LEGEND OF TARZAN  (ACTION-ADVENTURE) 
Directed by David Yates
Starring: Alexander Skarsgard, Margot Robbie, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Djimon Hounsou, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent
Not Yet Rated
Opens July 1st
Coming from the director of the last four Harry Potter movies, I'm not sure what to make of this, frankly, insane-looking live-action Tarzan adventure, but I know that I've got to see it.  The eponymous Lord of the Apes is chilling it as Lord Greystoke, a fully tamed wild man living with his dear wife, Jane (Margot Robbie; I don't know if she's doing an English accent for the character, who was actually American in the books written by Edgar Rice Burroughs), but when the machinations of a sinister Belgian captain (Christoph Waltz) force him to go back to the jungle, he has to peel away the layers of civilization to become Tarzan once again.  In a really weird and potentially problematic twist, the plot apparently contains some serious historical elements involving crimes of colonialism and racial conflict (remember how well that worked out for THE LONE RANGER?) related to Belgian treatment of the native population in Congo, and Samuel L. Jackson co-stars as the historical George Washington Williams (apparently with his usual contemporary panache), who famously brought attention to the plight of the Congolese under the Belgian regime.  What's more, this movie comes with souped-up CGI gorillas.  The more I think about it, the more this movie sounds like THE LONE RANGER set in Africa, but I enjoyed THE LONE RANGER.  Either way, I'm super curious to see what all this is about.

GHOSTBUSTERS  (COMEDY/FANTASY) 
Directed by Paul Feig
Starring: Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Chris Hemsworth, Neil Casey, Andy Garcia, Matt Walsh
Not Yet Rated
Opens July 15th
Okay, confession time: I've always thought the original 1984 GHOSTBUSTERS was a little bit... overrated.  Don't get me wrong- I like it!  It's a good movie!  I just don't think it's a great one.  It's certainly memorable, that's for sure.  But after years in development hell, that Ghostbusters sequel Dan Aykroyd wanted to happen so badly evolved into a female-driven reboot from the director of BRIDESMAIDS, with a cast headed by Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy.  It's not the kind of movie that I'm super pumped up about, but in any case, it sounds worthwhile.  It's a proven comedy team, and I particularly like the idea of Chris Hemsworth as the ghost-hunting team's secretary.

Image via Paramount

STAR TREK BEYOND  (SCI-FI/ACTION-ADVENTURE) 
Directed by Justin Lin
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella
Not Yet Rated
Opens July 22nd
There's a whole lot of ways that this might go horribly wrong, but it looks like it could be fun, at the very least.  I'm not a big Star Trek fan.  I can only appreciate the adoration for WRATH OF KHAN on a very superficial, purely intellectual level, and not even that much then, but I love J.J. Abrams' 2009 reboot, STAR TREK.  STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS was okay; I wanted to like it a lot more than I ultimately did.  But Abrams, having moved onto a little ol' franchise (maybe you've heard of it) called Star Wars, is credited only as producer for this round and the man taking the director's chair, Justin Lin, seems like a hugely unlikely choice.  The director who brought the Fast & Furious franchise through its nadir (TOKYO DRIFT) to its peak (FAST FIVE) seems awfully oriented toward muscular action that's well outside the Star Trek realm, but he's proven that he can do fun ensemble adventures, and Simon Pegg taking on duties as screenwriter doesn't hurt either.

SUICIDE SQUAD  (ACTION) 
Directed by David Ayer
Starring: Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Will Smith, Viola Davis, Joel Kinnaman, Jai Courtney, Cara Delevingne, Adelwale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Karen Fukuhara, Jay Hernandez, Adam Beach
Not Yet Rated
Opens August 5th
The most unlikely installment in the slipshod Warner Brothers/DC film universe is also the most exciting prospect, with a colorful cast of nasty characters whose heads are implanted with explosives to coerce them into taking on suicidal missions rather than spending all their time in padded cells.  Not much is known about the plot, other than the idea of nine comic book villains being enlisted by a sociopathic government official (Viola Davis) as part of the titular team, the members including Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Deadshot (Will Smith), Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), Katana (Karen Fukuhara), Diablo (Jay Hernandez) and Slipknot (Adam Beach).  Other than possibly Harley Quinn, as whom Robbie looks amazing, the only really well-known character in this affair is the Joker, played by Jared Leto in the daunting task of following up the late Heath Ledger's turn as the character in THE DARK KNIGHT.  At least from the footage we've seen so far, I'm more intrigued than I expected to be.

SAUSAGE PARTY  (COMEDY/ANIMATION) 
Directed by Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon
Featuring the Voices of: Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Kristen Wiig, Edward Norton, Michael Cera, David Krumholtz, Nick Kroll, Salma Hayek, Bill Hader, Paul Rudd
Not Yet Rated
Opens August 12th
A hard-R computer-animated comedy from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and other members of the creative teams behind THE NIGHT BEFORE, THE INTERVIEW and THIS IS THE END, the non-subtly named SAUSAGE PARTY follows the adventures of Frank, a sausage voiced by Rogen,whose quest to find the meaning of his existence takes him on a perilous journey through the supermarket, along with fellow sausages Carl (voice of Jonah Hill), Troy (voice of Anders Holm) and Barry (voice of Michael Cera), as well as other products like Sammy Bagel Jr. (voice of Edward Norton) and Theresa Taco (voice of Salma Hayek), while facing off against the villainous Douche (voice of Nick Kroll).  Bonus, Alan Menken, legendary composer of the soundtracks to THE LITTLE MERMAID, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, ALADDIN and several other Disney animated features, is writing the musical score.  I don't know guys, but this sure sounds like my kind of thing.

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS  (ANIMATION/FANTASY) 
Directed by Travis Knight
Featuring the Voices of: Art Parkinson, Matthew McConaughey, Charlize Theron, Rooney Mara, Ralph Fiennes, Brenda Vaccaro, George Takei
Not Yet Rated
Opens August 19th
The stop-motion animation studio behind PARANORMAN and CORALINE aims for an epic tone set in ancient Japan with gods, monsters and samurai warriors as the eponymous Kubo embarks on a quest for a magical suit of armor.  I love PARANORMAN, and while their last film, THE BOXTROLLS, was a step down, it was still pretty good at that.  They're a pretty good bet, and the painstakingly-crafted animation is always gorgeous.

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM  (FANTASY/ADVENTURE) 
Directed by David Yates
Starring: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Dan Fogler, Samantha Morton, Ezra Miller, Colin Farrell, Faith Wood-Blagrove, Carmen Ejogo, Jon Voight, Ron Perlman
Not Yet Rated
Opens November 18th
Film for film, the Harry Potter franchise is the biggest film franchise ever with an average worldwide gross of $965.4 million per installment, and second only to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for total sum grossed by all installments with $7.723 billion to date, so even though they ran out of the books written by J.K. Rowling about the boy wizard's adventures, you can't expect Warner Brothers to just leave their most valuable franchise to rest.  FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM seems like a bit of a stretch to further milk Rowling's "wizarding world" for more dough, based (loosely) upon a 'reproduction' of Harry's textbook mentioned in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, written by Rowling under the pseudonym "Newt Scamander" in 2001 to benefit impoverished children through the British charitable organization Comic Relief.  But in spite of its likely to be overhyped relationship to the main series, the premise is intriguing, with a script credited to Rowling herself and the director's chair once again filled by David Yates, who directed films 5, 6, 7 and 8 of the series.  Set 70 years before THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE (although never specified in the films, Harry's school years are intended to take place during the 1990s), Academy Award-winner Eddie Redmayne stars as the titular book's author, Newt Scamander, a "magizooligist" who's in a hurry to round up a number of dangerous creatures let loose on 1920s New York City, while also dealing with strained relations between the hidden magical world and the 'non-magical'.  The cast includes some interesting faces, but it's unclear whether the film will hue closer to the whimsical tones of the earlier Harry Potter films or the grittier, epic nature of the latter installments, or if it will cut a very different path.  Either way, Warner seems to have complete faith in the movie to carry on the success of Harry Potter, with a reportedly huge $200 million budget.

THE GREAT WALL  (ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY)
Directed by Zhang Yimou
Starring: Matt Damon, Andy Lau, Willem Dafoe, Pedro Pascal, Luhan, Jing Tian, Zhang Hanyu, Peng Yuyan, Lin Gengxin, Ryan Cheng, Chen Xuedong
Not Yet Rated
Opens November 23rd
Little is known so far in terms of story about this epic co-production between Hollywood and China's film industry (likely a harbinger of things to come as China's film market begins to rival our own), from a story by World War Z author Max Brooks about a fantastical mystery regarding the origins of China's Great Wall, i.e. monsters were a bigger concern to the wall's builders than Mongolian warlords.  The premise is volatile from where we stand right now, but director Zhang Yimou has made a few very stellar films like HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, HERO and RAISE THE RED LANTERN, with sumptuous use of color, graceful but fierce action choreography, and rich emotional strokes, and now we'll get to see him work with an even larger palette.  Regardless of how it turns out, it's definitely one of the most interesting events in film happening this year.

Image via Disney

MOANA  (ANIMATION/FAMILY-MUSICAL) 
Directed by Ron Clements & John Musker
Featuring the Voices of: Auli'i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Tudyk
Not Yet Rated
Opens November 23rd
Disney created a freaking major cultural touchstone and the defining movie of a generation's childhood with FROZEN, so I'm curious to see what happens with MOANA, their newest Disney princess movie, the title character of which hails from the fictional South Pacific kingdom of Oceania.  It also coming from the directing team of Ron Clements and John Musker, the men who helped resurrect the Disney Animation tradition with THE LITTLE MERMAID, followed by ALADDIN, but then very much helped kill it again with the animation studio's biggest flop, TREASURE PLANET (which isn't such a bad movie though, just very, very different), and then tried to redeem themselves with the admirable but lackluster THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG.  MOANA is their first computer-animated directorial feature, and it'll be interesting if they'll be able to muster up some of their former glory in the wake of a new wave of Disney fairy tales.  In any case, WDA is on a winning streak, and it shows promise.  A musical fairy tale, it follows the adventures of Moana (voiced by Hawaiian newcomer Auli'i Cravalho), the daughter of a Polynesian chief and a natural navigator, with the legendary Maui (voiced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), on an ocean voyage to help her family by discovering a fabled island.

Image via Lucasfilm

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY  (ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY) 
Directed by Gareth Edwards
Starring: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Jiang Wen, Forest Whitaker, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk, Jonathan Aris
Not Yet Rated
Opens December 16th
ROGUE ONE is an "anthology film" in the Star Wars franchise, "one-off" adventures that Lucasfilm is releasing as "Star Wars Stories", rather than with the usual episode labels, and it's one of the most interesting prospects of 2016 for so many reasons.  Set in-between REVENGE OF THE SITH and A NEW HOPE, the film tells the story of a ragtag Rebel team's mission to steal the plans to the Empire's new weapon, the Death Star, as briefly recounted in the original film's opening crawl.  On the one hand, it's an act of pulling away the curtain at already established story events that the plot to one of the greatest movies of all time is founded upon, and we all know how well that kind of "story behind the story" formula worked out for the Star Wars prequels.  The script is also credited to Chris Weitz, the director of TWILIGHT: NEW MOON (the worst of a very bad series) and writer of the dreadfully dull THE GOLDEN COMPASS (but also the writer of the perfectly decent 2015 CINDERELLA remake)  On the other hand, it sounds way damn cool.  Directed by Gareth Edwards (the director of the 2014 film GODZILLA, a movie which, while disappointing and deeply problematic, showed Edwards has real chops on a blockbuster scale), the illustrious cast includes Felicity Jones, Mads Mikkelsen (Mads Mikkelsen, guys!  Mads Mikkelsen!), Forest Whitaker, Diego Luna and Alan Tudyk, and is described as a "boots on the ground" war film set within the Star Wars universe.  It'll also be very interesting to see how the usually event-like nature of a Star Wars film plays out only a year after THE FORCE AWAKENS.  Do they just play like Marvel movies now?  Is it a nearly year-long marketing event leading up to the release?  Will fan intensity waver?  Regardless, in concept at least, this is a very exciting introduction to a whole new form of Star Wars.

Image via Paramount

SILENCE  (DRAMA/THRILLER)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson, Tadanobu Asano, Ciaran Hinds, Shinya Tsukamoto, Yosuke Kubozuka, Issey Ogata
Not Yet Rated
Release Date TBA
A long-time project for legendary director Martin Scorsese (he first began planning it in 1991), SILENCE brings him back to the well of Catholicism that has served him proper a number of times before.  Based on the 1966 historical fiction novel of the same name, Andrew Garfield (star of the "Amazing Spider-Man" franchise reboot) and Adam Driver (recently appearing as Kylo Ren in the Star Wars series) star as Jesuit Portuguese Catholic priests who arrive in a hostile Japan in the 17th century to seek out their mentor (portrayed by Liam Neeson), but are persecuted in the wake of a Christian peasant rebellion.  Although it finished filming last summer, a release date has not yet been set, and it will probably arrive later in the year to court awards.  Any Scorsese film is worth checking out, but the story, themes and cast of this one are particularly intriguing, and its his follow-up to a late-career masterpiece, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.

Image via Summit Entertainment

HACKSAW RIDGE  (WAR/DRAMA)
Directed by Mel Gibson
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Vince Vaughn, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Hugo Weaving, Ryan Corr, Teresa Palmer, Rachel Griffiths, Richard Roxburgh, Luke Pegler, Richard Pyros
Not Yet Rated
Release Date TBA
Mel Gibson, after years of disproportionately harsh exile (I'm not arguing that what he did wasn't a big deal, but it's been a freaking decade, and we've forgiven rapists and pedophiles more quickly), is returning to direct this truth-based war drama about Desmond T. Doss (portrayed in the film by Andrew Garfield), a U.S. Army medic and conscientious objector who received the Medal of Honor for saving over 75 lives under fire during the Battle of Okinawa in WWII.  Gibson, when last we saw him anyway, is not always a great filmmaker, but he's definitely an interesting one, and his last feature, APOCALYPTO, remains his best by a tremendous margin.  He does tend to overindulge in violence and gore, which the bloody Battle of Okinawa will give him plenty of opportunity for, but it's strong material, and I'm interested to see how he manages these days.  Big concerns, however, include his spotty supporting cast (Garfield is golden, however), and the outrageous, jingoistic, and thoroughly non-subtle cornball Randall Wallace is listed among the three credited writers (he previously worked with Gibson on BRAVEHEART and THE PATRIOT).

Image via Doubleday Publishing

THE LOST CITY OF Z  (ADVENTURE/BIOPIC)
Directed by James Gray
Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, Tom Holland, Angus Macfayden, Edward Ashley, John Sackville, Adam Bellamy
Not Yet Rated
Release Date TBA
Based on a true story set in the 1920s, Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson star as fellow British explorers Colonel Percy Fawcett and Corporal Henry Costin, respectively, who embark on multiple attempts to locate the legendary "Lost City of Z" within the Amazon rainforest.  Jungle-set adventure movies are too rare, and the basic premise of this has an Indiana Jones-style allure to it, although I'm not crazy about Hunnam (the bland lead from PACIFIC RIM) starring.  James Gray is writing and directing, and although I haven't seen his previous films which include THE IMMIGRANT (2013) and WE OWN THE NIGHT, he has a decent rep.  Currently, this film's appeal lies primarily in the prospect of an old-fashioned period adventure in the untamed jungle (a type of story that 2016 is atypically not short on).

Review: THE REVENANT

THE REVENANT

(ADVENTURE-THRILLER/WESTERN)
2 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domnhall Gleeson, Forrest Goodluck, Duane Howard, Arthur RedCloud, Lukas Haas, Fabrice Adde
Rated R for strong frontier combat and violence including gory images, a sexual assault, language and brief nudity.
156 minutes
Verdict: Visually sumptuous, occasionally thrilling and exceptionally violent, THE REVENANT's technical prowess and a handful of good performances make most of its parts into many little masterpieces, but writer/director Alejandro Inarritu's failure to imbue the story with thematic weight or emotional resonance leave a hollow sum, not helped by an absurd length and questionable casting of the lead role.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN THE REVENANT IF YOU LIKED:
MAN IN THE WILDERNESS  (1971)
JEREMIAH JOHNSON  (1972)
THE GREY  (2011)
TRUE GRIT  (2010)
APOCALYPTO  (2006)
[The first paragraph of this review recounts the historical view of the events depicted in the film THE REVENANT, but because of the heavily fictionalized version of events as shown in the film, I do not believe this historical view constitutes a "spoiler".]
By all accounts, early 19th-century frontiersman Hugh Glass must have been one of the most absurdly manly men who ever walked this earth.  A lot of elements of his life story are unclear and the veracity of some accounts in question, however, he was believed to have been born around the year 1780 in Pennsylvania.  He told tales of being pressed into service as a pirate under the notorious Jean Lafitte, before escaping off the shore of Texas and living with a community of Pawnee people for several years and taking one as his wife.  That's pretty badass already, but things got really crazy in 1822, when Glass joined up with a fur-trapping expedition going up the Missouri River in what was then largely uncharted North America.  Mr. Glass was scouting ahead when he accidentally surprised a mama grizzly bear which tore him well to shreds, Passion of the Christ-style, taking plenty of his skin in wounds that exposed his ribs along with many other deep lacerations, and breaking his leg and other bones.  He then killed that bear.  By all rights, Glass should have died, and unable to take him with them, but unwilling to euthanize him either, Glass's company left two men behind to wait until death took him and then give him a proper burial.  Impatient and worried about nearby hostile native people, the men hastily buried a still-breathing Glass in a shallow grave, took his gun and knife and other belongings and moved on.  But for all the skin that bear took off of Glass, it didn't lay a claw on his undoubtedly massive balls, because he dug himself up and crawled/stumbled over 200 miles to the nearest American fort, stopping along the way to lay in rotten logs full of maggots to eat away at his gangrened flesh, stole a dead bison from a couple of wolves and ate it raw, and got a skin graft of damn bear skin over his exposed ribs by some helpful native people.  Naturally, he was a little upset about that being buried alive and left for dead thing, so he met back up with those jerks, but let one live because he decided he'd been only a foolish boy, and the other guy had joined the U.S. Army and decided it wasn't worth the penalty of murdering a soldier.

Quite loosely adapting these events by way of Michael Punke's book of the same name, Academy Award-winning director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's latest film, THE REVENANT, is a heavily self-indulgent, overlong, self-aggrandizing, visually-breathtaking, occasionally very thrilling, improbable and impractical mixed bag.  Over a 156-minute running time that is far too long by 40 minutes at least, the movie runs in fits and starts, frequently pausing for masturbatory, artsy-fartsy dream moments of soliloquy in the vein of Terrence Malick (like Inarritu, another dreadfully overrated, art house narcissist with misguided talent), but it occasionally grabs hold of truly thrilling and even terrifying sequences in the beautiful but menacing wilderness setting.  Among its cast there are also a few magnetic presences who enliven the movie whenever they get the chance, but unfortunately, the much-touted lead performance by Leonardo DiCaprio as Glass is not one of them.  It's not for lack of trying (although as Devin Faraci at Birth.Movies.Death wisely summed up, "Movies should be more than prestige episodes of JACKASS," in response to the film's hype revolving around DiCaprio's highly unpleasant experience of filming that included a eating raw bison liver and crawling inside a horse carcass), but the character of Glass is written so dull and devoid of emotion, that the role is basically Jesus out of a Passion play, enduring endless physical suffering that looks gruesome, but is emotionally distant.  In addition, while there's no doubting DiCaprio's fierce commitment and talent, he lacks the weathered, rugged quality crucial to the 19th-century mountain man.  Glass is also given a fictional half-Pawnee son in the film, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), whose death further motivates Glass' desire for vengeance, because being buried alive and left for dead is apparently not enough.
Tom Hardy plays the part of the principal antagonist, John Fitzgerald, a fur trapper who's a real douche and not much else, but affecting a thick drawl and chewing the scenery as just a real bastard, he's always fun to watch.  His character is introduced in the middle of a piss, which tells you a fair bit right of the bat, but he becomes cartoonishly more villainous as the film goes on.  In the more morally conflicted department is Will Poulter as the famed mountain man Jim Bridger when he's still a snot-nosed whelp, reluctantly persuaded by Fitzgerald to leave the dying Glass in the dirt, but unaware that Fitzgerald has also murdered his Hawk hours before.  Hardy's and Poulter's shared scenes are the dramatic highlight of the film and far more interesting than DiCaprio's central torture trek, as Bridger struggles with his conscience against the gruff and grizzled Fitzgerald's apparently total lack of one.

Outside of these scenes, THE REVENANT features a few extremely impressive and exceptionally violent action scenes, most notably an Arikara raid on the fur-trapping expedition at the beginning of the film where arrows fly from seemingly all directions and pierce bodies with startling ferocity, as the camera tracks through the bloody mayhem from character to character and the trappers hurry to pack up as many pelts as they can and get back on the river.  This particular sequence is incredibly vicious, dropping the viewer into this kill-or-be-killed environment with SAVING PRIVATE RYAN levels of bodily destruction and random but pervasive carnage.  Other exciting moments are dispersed throughout the film, but nothing quite again on this level.  THE REVENANT is insanely gruesome for a mainstream non-horror movie, and not for the faint of heart, but the novelty of hard R-rated action on this scale is exciting.  Unfortunately, by the time comes for the film's climactic action, the one-on-one combat, while plenty bloody, is silly, and the script's resolution is so clumsy that it devolves into an idiotic and wholly unearned moment of morality identified aloud by a character.  There are more than a few moments of THE REVENANT that play unintentionally as comedy.
The element of the movie which does live up to the hype is Emmanuel Lubezki's photography, which captures awe-inspiring natural environments (filmed in Canada, set in what is modern day South Dakota) in gorgeous natural lighting (gorgeous, but wildly impractical).  It does make one wonder whether there were any run-of-the-mill landscapes that didn't look like a tourist destination national park back in the day.  Taken in its individual moments, it's a sumptuously crafted film, but in context, it's often confused and hollow.  It's also the kind of movie that, by all rights, should not have been made.  For all its beauty, it's full of "hard to watch" moments of cruelty and suffering, runs a thoroughly unjustified two-and-a-half hours, comes a hard R rating, is kind of artsy-fartsy, and racked up a $135 million bill, more than doubling its original budget of $60 million.  Inarritu, who won Oscars for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for his Best Picture-winning 2014 film BIRDMAN OR: (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) (a decently entertaining, if pretentious, film that seems like one of the weakest Best Picture winners, but 2014 was a very weak year for film), reportedly went a little power-mad.  If the majority of the press and publicity for this movie is to be believed, it was one motherf***** of a thing to shoot.

The sum of its parts do not add up to a lot though.  It starts very strong, before commencing to an erratic rhythm of sluggish pondering and bursts of thrilling violence, always lacking a commitment to themes or purposeful thought.  Toward the final third or so of the film, it feels completely disconnected from the earlier events as it clumsily attempts to rectify this absence of purpose, but the quest for vengeance and brief moralizing that accompanies it is awkward and hokey.  There's a lot of hinting toward interesting moral issues, such as the displacement of the native peoples and their interactions with the European descendants, or the life-and-death struggle between Glass and a bear which leaves her cubs helpless, but in terms of story, Inarritu has little substantive insight to had to these events.  It's a technically impressive film, but it's a shame that its creators have failed to imbue it with satisfactory weight.  If it were about half has long, it would at least be a bit of great thrill-based entertainment, but as it is, it's a bloated epic with unfulfilled delusions of grandeur, many little masterpieces taken in piecemeal, but a mess as the sum of its parts.

Images via 20th Century Fox

2015: The Movie Year in Retrospect

2015 was a very good year for movies.  It certainly doesn't hurt that it only had to follow up 2014, one of the weakest years for movies (especially mainstream movies) in recent memory, but even without that advantage, 2015 was a mostly unqualified success on the cinematic front.  The biggest movie event of the year was, of course and without question, the release of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, which has just surpassed AVATAR to become the top-grossing movie of all-time at the domestic box office, with a single other major box office record, 'top-grossing movie in the world', in its sights.  It wasn't perfect, but eh, it was pretty good.  It was also the year of Universal Pictures, a studio which had three movies break the $1B barrier before the summer was even over (FURIOUS 7 was dumb fun, MINIONS was dumb and boring, and I actively disliked JURASSIC WORLD), in addition to big fat hits throughout the year like FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, PITCH PERFECT 2, STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON and TRAINWRECK.  At least in my opinion, the quality of their output was spotty, to put it lightly, but those no denying their financial results.  In addition to Star Wars and Universal's trio, the year saw a fifth billion-dollar movie, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, a movie whose predecessor started 2015 as the 3rd highest-grossing movie of all time and is now #5.  Although Marvel Studios' could very likely, hopefully, bounce back in 2016 with May's CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR and November's DOCTOR STRANGE, 2015 saw their powers waver.  AGE OF ULTRON was good, solid fun, but reach the lofty heights of the first film it did not, and was overstuffed as the recurring feud between executive creative input and a director infringed on even the mighty Joss Whedon.  On an even much lower note, ANT-MAN, a project began under Edgar Wright before it became clear he could not work within Marvel's overbearing system, was sadly mediocre, despite an unexpectedly solid box office performance.
Riding in on the hype of its good but overrated predecessor, SKYFALL, SPECTRE snuffed out the reinvigorated promise of the Bond series in a bloated and embarrassingly contrived behemoth.  But in the trend of the "legacyquel", MAD MAX: FURY ROAD and CREED breathed new life into their dormant series. 
A few years ago, it looked like 2015 would be the biggest year for movies we'd ever seen; the culmination of the absurdly escalating race for studio film franchises, with new installments of Jurassic Park, James Bond, the Avengers, the Hunger Games, Fast & Furious, Mission: Impossible and a meet-up of Batman and Superman (later moved to 2016, and what's more, we didn't know how dumb the trailer would look), and all of it overshadowed by nothing less than a new Star Wars movie.  Well, it wasn't small.


The Best
There were a lot of good movies in 2015, movies that were a lot of fun, movies that were unexpectedly pleasant, and exciting and insightful gems, but these are the cream of the crop.  These are the movies that thrilled and delighted me in the theater, then stuck with me well after; the movies that had an impact on a real gut level and that earned a place in my heart.  A couple of them are mainstream masterpieces that have extremely strong cases to last through the years as classics, and a couple of them are smaller, but immensely gripping and smart adult fare.  A great movie should excel in at least two of the following three categories: emotional stimulation, intellectual stimulation and visceral thrills.  These movies excel in all three departments.
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD  (ACTION) 

Directed by George Miller
Starring: Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Nicholas Hoult, Josh Helman, Nathan Jones, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz, Abbey Lee, Richard Carter
Rated R for intense sequences of violence throughout, and for disturbing images.
Three decades since the last installment in the post-apocalyptic Mad Max franchise with which he made his name, decades in which he largely occupied with family entertainment like BABE and HAPPY FEET and their sequels, Australian director George Miller returned with a masterpiece of action filmmaking.  The fruits of a difficult and densely planned shoot in Namibia, FURY ROAD is in part a heart-pounding two-hour car chase in the best way, comprised of beautifully unique and wild vehicles roaring through a stark desert landscape which Max aptly sums up as a world of "fire and blood", with dazzling Cirque du Soleil-style stunts such as "polecats" who swing from one vehicle to the next on giant pendulums, and the "Doof Wagon", a whole vehicle devoted to carrying a rock band, including a mutated guitar player on the front with a flame-throwing instrument.  And yet, FURY ROAD is hardly limited to its exceptional style, but is also a powerful feminist neo-western about women reclaiming their identities from a brutal patriarchal warlord and a war-mongering civilization.  The whole cast, including a surprisingly low-key titular character played by Tom Hardy, and mad dog warrior "War Boy" Nicholas Hoult, Abbey Lee as a feisty young runaway "breeder" referred to as "The Dag", and model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (whose previously starred in the dreadful TRANSFORMERS: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON) as a very pregnant but defiant breeder, is all excellent, plus there are characters with awesome names like the Organic Mechanic (a doctor).  At the center of it all, however, is the story of Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, a lieutenant of the cruel warlord Immortan Joe, who betrays her master to free his "wives", or breeders, and one of the great movie characters of 2015.  FURY ROAD, the movie, is also the best action scene of the year.

Image via Warner Brothers

INSIDE OUT  (ANIMATION/FAMILY) 

Directed by Pete Docter
Featuring the Voices of: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind, Mindy Kaling, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan
Rated PG for mild thematic elements and some action.
After the severely misguided CARS 2, the disappointing and impersonal BRAVE, and the hopelessly vanilla MONSTERS UNIVERSITY, Pixar finally delivered something on par with their initial streak of classic films with INSIDE OUT, an innovative and emotional tour de force on a level that is unfortunately unlikely to be matched by Pixar anytime soon as their next two scheduled features are FINDING DORY, an unnecessary sequel (for lack of a better term) that might be good but has the stink of a cash-grab about it (and how often does turning the focus on the comic sidekick really work out?), and CARS 3, the Pixar sequel that no one wanted.  But I digress.  From longtime Pixar "braintrust" member Pete Docter, in his followup to 2009's UP, one of the best of the studio's best, INSIDE OUT explores the emotional psyche of an 11-year-old girl in a colorful vision that is funny, complex and accessible, forming deeply empathetic film that in turn encourages and provides the tools to its audience to be more empathetic themselves.  The often hilarious interplay between the perfectly-cast personified emotions Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Anger (Lewis Black) and Fear (Bill Hader), contrasted with their counterparts occasionally shown inside other human minds, provokes lots of thought and conversation about the dominating emotional influences in ourselves and the people we interact with, essentially helping the viewer to in fact be a 'better person'.  With something as little and yet something so significant as the emotional well-being of an 11-year old girl on the line, it succeeds in the old cliche of a movie that will make you laugh, make you cry, and have you on the edge of your seat.  It's an emotional wallop and an intellectual delight that can stand alongside Pixar's other classics.

Image via Disney

SPOTLIGHT  (DRAMA) 

Directed by Tom McCarthy
Starring: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Liev Schreiber, Brian D'Arcy James, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup, Len Cariou
Rated R for some language including sexual references.
Some critics have compared Tom McCarthy's drama about a team of investigative journalists who uncovered the immense breadth of a cover-up by the Catholic Church in Boston to hide an epidemic of child sex abuse by priests to the 1976 classic ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN.  Those comparisons are not at all unfounded.  Based on the true story of The Boston Globe's special investigative team "Spotlight", which began, somewhat reluctantly, to look into the church's systematic protection of child sex predators within their ranks from the law in 2001, SPOTLIGHT stars Michael Keaton as team leader Walter Robinson, with fellow journalists Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams).  With incredible sensitivity and aplomb, the film, written and directed by McCarthy, provides a personal and comprehensive picture of a fight against the powers-that-be, the ways in which such a system of corruption operates with the unconscious complicity of many, and the crises of faith faced by people bringing down the facade of an institution that speaks so much to how they see themselves.  It's a powerful testament in favor of the free press, free to question and report and an integral part of a democratic society to hold power accountable while independent news media languishes in the shadow of big corporate media beholden to moneyed interests and sensationalist 24-hour cable news.  It an important film, no doubt, and it is a deeply engaging procedural dramatic-thriller with an exceptional cast that brings tons of flavor as their characters are forced to overcome tremendous obstacles in the ever-present shadow of the Church and the society it permeates, acting as a shield, in order to uncover the truth.  It's a triumph and a tragedy, with deeply flawed human persons who must deal with their own sense of faith as lapsed Catholics and lifelong Bostonians, as well as their devotion to devout family members, and the conflict between the tremendous good that an institution provides and the evil rot that subsists on the same.  It's both sobering and rousing, a precise and gripping experience.

Image via Open Road Films

SICARIO  (ACTION-THRILLER/DRAMA) 

Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio del Toro, Daniel Kaluuya, Maximiliano Hernandez, Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal, Raoul Trujillo, Jeffrey Donovan
Rated R for strong violence, grisly images, and language.
Grimly insightful into an unwinnable conflict around which a cycle of ever-escalating violence has grown around it, Denis Villeneuve's drug war drama SICARIO is one of the year's most exciting and thought-provoking films, one that is above all an experience, dropping the viewer on the ground in the midst of the thoroughly ambiguous "War on Drugs" through the eyes of Emily Blunt's straight-arrow new recruit to a CIA Special Activities Division squad fighting the Mexican drug cartels at the border.  Shot by the frequently hailed Roger Deakins, it's a gorgeous film about ugly deeds, with some of the most thrilling set-pieces of any movie this year, such as a searingly intense sequence where U.S. agents become trapped with cartel thugs in a traffic jam while attempting to cross over the border with a valuable prisoner extraction.  The three leads of Blunt, Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin are each exceptional and share riveting interplay, and the movie hits hardest when it shows the intimate cost of war on not only its participants, but also its bystanders.  It's a nerve-wracking visceral experience with a lot of substance to it, a ruthless, heart-pounding examination of not only the War on Drugs, but the nature of war itself, and an indictment of our often too-comfortable perspective on it as Americans.

Image via Lionsgate

The Worst
I don't actively seek out new bad movies generally.  If I've already seen the movie or otherwise have a pretty strong idea that a particular movie is bad in that oh-so-special way, I might indulge myself, but I want to give products newly on the market as much of a chance as I can muster.  It's rare to go in blindly about a movie, and based on the previous work of the persons involved, the material, marketing and earlier audience reactions, I usually have some idea of what I'm getting into, which I hope gives the movie an advantage, avoiding unpleasant surprises that I might perceive more harshly otherwise.  I have notions going into a movie that are similar to most people considering whether or not to see a movie, but these will rarely influence (consciously, at least) my decision to see a movie, and I do not go to a movie with a desire to dislike it.  I want to see as many movies as I can, and though I may prioritize, I don't think there are movies that should not be seen.  These movies sucked as far as I'm concerned, but do not take that to mean in any way that I'm advising you to not see them.  If you want to see a movie, go see it.  If you like it, and I don't, then I'd love to have a hopefully not too heated discussion about it with you, because that's all part of connecting through and better understanding film.  You can't have the good without the bad, and there's always a minority opinion.  You can always find someone who likes what everyone else loathes, and you can always find someone who loathes what everyone else loves.  So I'm not saying you shouldn't see these movies.  In fact, I hope you have, so you'll either find feelings you share, or feelings to challenge your own.  For me, it's a little bit cathartic.
PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2  (COMEDY) 

Directed by Andy Fickman
Starring: Kevin James, Raini Rodriguez, Neal McDonough, Daniella Alonso, David Henrie, Loni Love, D.B. Woodside
Rated PG for some violence.
Just consider for a moment that there is an actual movie called PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2.  That is the actual title of an actual movie that was shown in as many as 3,633 theaters nationwide.  It was a movie that a company spent $30 million to make.  Consider that there were enough human beings in the world that this movie, once again, called PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2, grossed $107 million worldwide.  Now cry yourself to sleep.  Okay, just kidding (sort of), there's simply no accounting for taste, but as yet another insult to their paying public from Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, the sequel to the 2009 surprise hit is lazy even by their standards.  It's not as obnoxious or tasteless as Happy Madison's usual fare, but everyone is going through the motions on this dreadfully dumb slog that doubles as a less than enticing advertisement for the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel, in which the entire movie takes place.  The jokes are surprisingly few and far in between, and not a one lands (particularly sleep-deprived or inebriated viewings may be slightly enhanced), and the whole production as an amateur, made-up-on-the-fly air about it, as if the filmmakers doubted anyone would see the movie anyway.

Image via Sony Pictures

VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN  (HORROR/SCI-FI)

Directed by Paul McGuigan
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, James McAvoy, Jessica Brown Findlay, Andrew Scott, Charles Dance, Freddie Fox, Mark Gatiss
Rated PG-13 for macabre images, violence and a sequences of destruction.
Taken in small doses, VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN fits very well into the "so-bad-it's-good" category, but taken in all 110 minutes at once, it's simply too much.  In a brainless "reimagining" of Mary Shelley's classic novel scripted by John Landis' son Max Landis, Daniel Radcliffe does his best as mild-mannered hunchback Igor saved from a cruel life as a circus freak by brash and ambitious medical student named Victor Frankenstein, played at an 11 by James McAvoy.  There are plenty of ridiculous conveniences like Victor's relatively easy (and incredibly homoerotic) fix of Igor's hump by siphoning pus out of a gigantic cyst on his back and giving him a back brace so the character can walk upright for most of the film, deeply upsetting visuals like Radcliffe done up like a dirty old-timey clown, and an abundance of homoerotic notes that may or may not be intentional but are always ridiculous.  Radcliffe tries, while McAvoy just seems to be making fun of the movie he's in, and Andrew Scott, as a devout Catholic police inspector, seems forever bound to the ghosts of his role as Moriarty in BBC's Sherlock.  Director Paul McGuigan (also a veteran of Sherlock), working from Landis' script, seems unable to settle on a genre and switches it around without rhyme or reason between inept, speed-ramped action, manic horror, comedy (may or may not be intentional) and gooey romance, and at the end of the wreckage, it has the audacity to suggest a sequel.  It had one of the worst box office openings of all time, so that's not happening.

Image via 20th Century Fox

JURASSIC WORLD  (ADVENTURE-THRILLER/SCI-FI) 

Directed by Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins, Vincent D'Onofrio, Nick Robinson, Irrfan Khan, Jake Johnson, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Judy Greer, Lauren Lapkus, Katie McGrath
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of science-fiction violence and peril.
Like the result of a worldwide gas leak, JURASSIC WORLD broke numerous box office records and became the third-highest-grossing movie of all time (records surpassed substantially by STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS six months later, which will almost definitely knock JURASSIC WORLD down a peg in the all-time rankings eventually, too), and now nobody has anything to say about it.  Colin Trevorrow's long-gestating sequel/reboot of the Jurassic Park franchise could have merely been an idiotic, pointless monster movie, but that wasn't enough.  JURASSIC WORLD is fully aware of and acknowledges its inherent cynicism, and what's more, it's startlingly mean-spirited (surpassing Spielberg's own unexpectedly nasty THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK) and misogynistic, in its most sickening moment delivering what may be the series' most gratuitous and cruel death (a more brief but similarly sick death was dealt to Richard Schiff in LOST WORLD) to an established but minor character loosely defined as a "bridezilla".  The hugely charismatic Chris Pratt is drained of all charisma is a role more befitting the talents of a Jai Courtney or Sam Worthington, a horrible human being named Owen Grady who sexually harasses his embarrassingly incompetent boss played by Bryce Dallas Howard, whose character is a bit of real retrograde "career woman" shaming, but who we're supposed to root for.  It's a big, CGI-laden box office movie that makes all the wrong choices with uncanny consistency, carelessly ignoring or eliminating anything about itself that might work and embracing all its worst potential.

Image via Universal Pictures

FANTASTIC FOUR  (SCI-FI/ACTION) 

Directed by Josh Trank
Starring: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson, Dan Castellaneta
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, and language.
The fact that a movie like Fox's disastrous Fantastic Four reboot exists in this age of overly manicured, assembly line-style studio franchises is a minor miracle that nobody can use.  It's only partially formed and feels as though the people involved realized too soon where the film was headed, and unable to simply jump ship went through the rushed motions of getting it over with rather than bother with any attempts at salvaging.  It's a movie truly dead on arrival, dumped out of obligation, mangled by fiercely conflicting interests on the parts of the young director handed the reins to a $120M franchise picture on his second film and the studio with no faith in a product they nonetheless wanted to join the ranks of A-list superhero film properties.  The result is an incoherent, completely detached mess of a movie that builds to a comically nothing finale, wasting an abundance of onscreen talent that seems as dissatisfied as we are.

Image via 20th Century Fox

Dishonorable Mention 
AMERICAN SNIPER  (WAR/DRAMA) 

Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Max Charles, Luke Grimes, Kyle Gallner, Sam Jaeger, Navid Negahban, Sammy Sheik
Rated R for strong and disturbing war violence, and language throughout including some sexual references.
AMERICAN SNIPER opened in limited release on Christmas 2014, but didn't open nationwide until January 2015, so while it's technically a 2014 film, I didn't see it until this year, and it's too contemptible and inept a movie to escape notice, especially in light of its success.  Based on the memoir of U.S. Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, director Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper, who produced the film and portrays Kyle, described in interviews an project I can get on board with, a film that shows the toll of war on the people fighting in it and their families on the home front, a film that raises awareness of the plight faced by veterans transplanted from the trauma of combat back into 'normal life' with post-traumatic stress disorder.  That is not the film they made, not by a long-shot.  The movie AMERICAN SNIPER is morally and artistically bankrupt with only the minor grace of a solid Bradley Cooper performance.  The script is clunky and confused, attempting to apply an old-style western template of 'white hats' and 'black hats' to the deeply ambiguous Iraq War, resulting in a lot of uncomfortably racist tones and hokey false moralizing and hero worship. Eastwood's direction is dull and impersonal, while the washed-out look of the film and occasionally cheap-looking production are ugly (the widely noted "fake baby" scene feels both farcical and disturbing as Kyle and his wife Taya (played by Sienna Miller) argue while he cradles the transparently fake doll that looks dead).  Put aside the dubious depiction of controversial Iraq War (well, more controversial than the average war), put aside the alleged politicking and jingoism, the movie's most egregious failure is in what should have been, and what Cooper and Eastwood claimed, was its priority to highlight the issues facing traumatized veterans who return from war.  PTSD is summed up in the film as Kyle momentarily threatening a dog with a barbecue fork, solved simply through a bit of therapy and hanging out with fellow veterans, with a cured Kyle going off to die off-screen for a sudden and unjustified sucker punch ending.  Kyle was killed by a veteran suffering from PTSD!  That's integral to what they claim this film is meant to be addressing!  How can they make that claim and completely ignore its culmination?  Why do we sympathize with Kyle's plight, and not with that of the man he was trying to help when he was fatally shot at a firing range?  In the end, it's a distasteful and exploitative sap piece that does disservice to our veterans by attempting to romanticize their suffering and sanitize the nature of war.

Image via Warner Brothers

The Overlooked
I don't see enough movies to have the knowledge preferred to draw the best gems from the vast pool of independent and insufficiently distributed films that most people of never heard of at all like some sort of NPR critic, but I've seen a few more than the average person, including a couple that failed to connect with the audience they deserved.
LOVE & MERCY  (DRAMA/ROMANCE) 

Directed by Bill Pohlad
Starring: John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks, Paul Giamatti, Jake Abel, Kenny Wormald, Brett Davern, Graham Rogers, Erin Darke, Joanna Going
Rated PG13 for thematic elements, drug content and language.
The story of the Beach Boys' creative leader, Brian Wilson, portrayed in youth by Paul Dano and in his middle age by John Cusack, is told through two chapters of his life; at the peak of his artistic powers as he crafts the revolutionary avant-garde album Pet Sounds in the 1960s and deals with the onset of psychotic hallucinations, and in the 1980s when he finds new love, played by Elizabeth Banks, who struggles to free him from an abusive relationship with his therapist, played by Paul Giamatti.  I don't know much about the artistic side of music or what makes Pet Sounds so great, but LOVE & MERCY gives me some idea.  The performances are all stellar and Michael Lerner's and Oren Moverman's script avoids the well-known cliches of music bipoics while delivering on real emotional weight.

SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE  (ANIMATION/FAMILY-COMEDY) 

Directed by Mark Burton & Richard Starzak
Rated PG for rude humor.
The clumsily titled SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE admittedly didn't look that promising, despite coming from Aardman Animation, the studio behind delightful gems like CHICKEN RUN and WALLACE & GROMIT: CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT, as well as hilariously cruder fare like FLUSHED AWAY.  Based a ho-hum television series and not offering much to go on from the marketing, it appeared surprisingly lackluster, but the movie itself is surprisingly brilliant.  It's simple and more rough around the edges than Aardman's previous features, but it's overflowing with moment after moment of clever hilarity, and pleasurably simplistic.




CHI-RAQ  (DRAMA/COMEDY) 

Directed by Spike Lee
Starring: Teyonah Parris, Nick Cannon, Wesley Snipes, Angela Bassett, Samuel L. Jackson, John Cusack, Jennifer Hudson, David Patrick Kelly, D.B. Sweeney, Dave Chapelle
Rated R for strong sexual content including dialogue, nudity, language, some violence and drug use.
127 minutes
If I'd seen CHI-RAQ sooner, it might have eventually made its way to a spot on the "Best" list, but for now, I'll at least include it here, because it deserves to be seen.  It opened in a limited release of 305 theaters on December 4 before arriving on Amazon Video for rental and purchase a few weeks later, so you can watch it from the comfort of your own home.  The latest and best film in a long while from controversy-meister Spike Lee, the title is a portmanteau of Chicago and Iraq, denoting a war zone nature to the city's Southside.  It's a modernized and ultra-timely adaptation of Aristophanes' ancient Greek play Lysistrata, in which the women of Greece withheld physical affection from their men in protest of the Peloponnesian War, translated to present-day Chicago, where women do the same in demands that their men give up their violent ways and firearm fetishism, in a movement organized by a gang banger's girlfriend, Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris).  With an illustrious cast including Samuel L. Jackson as the Greek chorus-style narrator, the dialogue is primarily in rhyming verse, contributing to a heightened reality, that occasionally gets very weird, but kind of fun and brings a quasi-musical feel.  The emotional beats hit their mark too, though, and Lee's passion, about things that were going on all throughout 2015 and continue today, is unmistakable and contagious.

Movies in Consideration
Although I watch more new movies than the "average person", and for my own small part in the business, many of these I watch free of cost, I'm very much an amateur reviewer/critic/writer and must seek movies out rather than a professional who may be sought out by the movies.  As such, please note that while I watch the most movies that I am able, I still have a lot of catching up to do for movies in 2015, and for the sake of clarity and context, the following is a comprehensive list of the new released films of 2015 that I've watched as of this writing.
TAKEN 3
PADDINGTON
JUPITER ASCENDING
THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER
KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE
THE DUFF
MCFARLAND, USA
FOCUS
CINDERELLA
THE DIVERGENT SERIES: INSURGENT
HOME
IT FOLLOWS
FURIOUS 7
THE LONGEST RIDE
FREETOWN
PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2
THE AGE OF ADALINE
AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
I AM BIG BIRD: THE CAROLL SPINNEY STORY
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
PITCH PERFECT 2
TOMORROWLAND
SAN ANDREAS
THE COKEVILLE MIRACLE
LOVE & MERCY
JURASSIC WORLD
ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
MAX
INSIDE OUT
MINIONS
ANT-MAN
PIXELS
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION
FANTASTIC FOUR
SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE
THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.
NO ESCAPE
MAZE RUNNER: THE SCORCH TRIALS
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2
THE INTERN
SICARIO
THE MARTIAN
THE WALK
PAN
BRIDGE OF SPIES
CRIMSON PEAK
GOOSEBUMPS
STEVE JOBS
THE PEANUTS MOVIE
SPECTRE
SPOTLIGHT
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - PART 2
THE NIGHT BEFORE
CREED
THE GOOD DINOSAUR
VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN
KRAMPUS
IN THE HEART OF THE SEA
STAR WARS: EPISODE VII - THE FORCE AWAKENS
TANGERINE
THE BIG SHORT
THE HATEFUL EIGHT
CHI-RAQ
THE REVENANT