The Films of 2015

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
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Jeff
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:49 pm
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The Films of 2015

#1 Post by Jeff » Thu Jan 01, 2015 1:00 am

This is the home for general discussion of the year in film, especially for those films that don't have dedicated threads of their own.

It looks like there will be plenty of reasons to venture to the cinema this year, including:

- Two films each from Noah Baumbach, David Gordon Green, and maybe even Terrence Malick!
- Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s looooooong-awaited, The Assassin
- Martin Scorsese’s loooooooong-awaited, Silence
- Werner Herzog’s first narrative feature in six years
- Michael Mann’s first film in six years
- Roy Andersson’s first film in seven years
- Wim Wenders’ first narrative feature in seven years
- Todd Haynes’ first theatrical feature in eight years
- Warren Beatty’s first film 14 years
- Quentin Tarantino shooting a western in entirely in 65mm
- Rick Linklater with his long-awaited “spiritual sequel” to Dazed and Confused
- Denis Villeneuve trying to continue his winning streak
- Jeff Nichols channeling John Carpenter
- Steven Spielberg’s Coen-scripted spy thriller with Tom Hanks
- Ridley Scott teaming with Matt Damon for an adaptation of The Martian
- Alejandro G. Iñárritu trying to finally make a film that Jeff likes
- A “ghost story and gothic romance” from Guillermo del Toro
- Robert Zemeckis doing the narrative version of the Man on Wire story
- Brad Bird’s mysterious Tomorrowland
- New Star Wars, James Bond, Avengers, Jurassic Park, and Mission: Impossible Films

- Plus new stuff from David Cronenberg, Gus Van Sant, Woody Allen, Peter Greenaway, Stephen Frears, Anton Corbijn, Cameron Crowe, Jonathan Demme, Pete Docter, François Ozon, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Abel Ferrara, Philippe Garrel, Bertrand Tavernier, and Andrzej Wajda… and many others that I'm forgetting!

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Re: The Films of 2015

#2 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Jan 01, 2015 2:17 am

There is also Jeremy Saulnier's follow-up to Blue Ruin, Green Room with Patrick Stewart as the leader of a gang of ruthless skinheads. If it's as any good as his previous work, he better keep his titles color-coded.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: The Films of 2015

#3 Post by FrauBlucher » Thu Jan 01, 2015 7:00 am

[-X Knight of Cups, Malick \:D/

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menthymenthy
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Re: The Films of 2015

#4 Post by menthymenthy » Thu Jan 01, 2015 7:16 am

And also, keeping it in the same format,

- Andrzej Zulawski's first film in 15 years.
- George Miller's new Mad Max movie after a decade working with the pliability of CGI animation.
- Rick Alverson's follow-up to The Comedy
- A high-concept Jerzy Skolimowski film
- Late-starter Aleksandr Mindadze's third film as director
- A Terrence Davies period drama shot on 65mm
- Ti West's first large canvas film, a western with Ethan Hawke and John Travolta
- Jocelyn Moorhouse's first film in 18 years.
- New films from Romanian masters Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu and Radu Jude
- A new Joe Dante film
- Paul Verhoeven's first full-length film in 9 years.

Heck of a year.

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D50
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Re: The Films of 2015

#5 Post by D50 » Thu Jan 01, 2015 8:29 am

Hope to see When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism.

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colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
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Re: The Films of 2015

#6 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:33 pm

OK, here's one:

Roald Dahl's Esio Trot (Dearbhla Walsh, 2015)

Spoilers:

Shown this evening on the BBC and executive produced by Richard Curtis and the Weinsteins this is a film that I think only really works because of Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman's performances. They are both absolutely charming in this film and play off of each other really well. I did come away thinking though that really if Mr Hoppy had just accepted the invitation to go out dancing with Mrs Silver at the beginning of the film that none of the over complicated silliness involving tortoises would have been necessary!

One aspect that I really liked was that it is not really clear how much Mrs Silver knows about what Mr Hoppy has been doing, and Judi Dench plays this beautifully with a little twinkle in the eye and a beautifully understated way of showing that she is obviously far more interested in Mr Hoppy than the other neighbour, even before this comes as a big revelation late in the film! I was a little disappointed that this adaptation makes Mrs Silver genuinely ignorant of the deception - I'd been hoping that she would have been completely aware of the tortoise swapping antics throughout and the regular changing of Alfie for a bigger model, and would just have been waiting for Mr Hoppy to come clean! It is a bit sad that this film had to resort to a bit of extra unneeded "you've betrayed me" dramatics in that final section. But I really loved that relationship between the two characters and have to admit that I had a tear in my eye at the end!

Unfortunately looked at dispassionately beyond Dench and Hoffman in the lead roles (they truly elevate this material) this becomes more obviously a rather twee tale with an added layer of Richard Curtis-isms that can be a little off-putting if you aren't into his brand of unthreatening multi-cultural view of London (but only supporting characters with single funny lines, or doing a bit of procedural business: everyone important in the story is white), disability tokenism (to make our able-bodied characters feel the requisite guilt) and aggressive framing devices (James Corden is still as abrasive as usual as a narrator who annoyingly keeps popping up throughout).

And particularly the use of broadly characterised as rude, smarmy and generally obnoxious supporting characters who it is made as clear as possible that it is OK to hate, particularly the horrible neighbour who eats half a packet of crisps when one is offered, pushes his way into a lift and leaves an elderly gent outside and tries to compete for Mrs Silver's attentions. Though he doesn't have much luck as despite his meddling he's in no way a soul mate for Mrs Silver, who is obviously infatuated with Mr Hoppy from the off. He also ruins Mrs Silver and Mr Hoppy emotionally bonding over the ending of The Railway Children by stating that his favourite film is Top Gun! (Which given the Tarantino-elucidated homosexual connotations of Top Gun is perhaps Curtis tipping a wink to the audience that he is not suitable for Mrs Silver and perhaps is even, shock!, a closet homosexual! If that wasn't underlined enough, the neighbour also wears pinky-violet trousers too).

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sir_luke
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Re: The Films of 2015

#7 Post by sir_luke » Sat Jan 03, 2015 3:47 pm

According to IMDb, Peter Greenaway has four films slated for a 2015 release, in different stages of production:

The Food of Love -- A gangster revenge film

Walking to Paris -- A biopic of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi

Eisenstein in Guanajuato -- which appears to be the first part of a two-part biopic on Sergei Eisenstein (the second part, The Eisenstein Handshakes, is set for a 2016 release), with small time Swedish actor Elmer Bäck starring as the filmmaker

4 Storms & 2 Babies -- A "sexual drama" about a woman who becomes pregnant after participating in a ménage a trois

It will be interesting to see how many actually show up during the year!

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Jeff
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Re: The Films of 2015

#8 Post by Jeff » Sat Jan 03, 2015 7:03 pm

sir_luke wrote:According to IMDb, Peter Greenaway has four films slated for a 2015 release, in different stages of production...

It will be interesting to see how many actually show up during the year!
I think only Eisenstein in Guanajuato will happen this year. It is playing at Berlinale. Walking to Paris could possibly shoot later this year, but isn't even cast yet. I think the others are merely hypothetical at this point. They're ideas from several years ago that never came to fruition.

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repeat
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Re: The Films of 2015

#9 Post by repeat » Thu Feb 05, 2015 10:27 am

sir_luke wrote:the first part of a two-part biopic on Sergei Eisenstein with small time Swedish actor Elmer Bäck starring as the filmmaker
Finnish, actually

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lacritfan
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What We Do in the Shadows (J. Clement and T. Waititi, 2015)

#10 Post by lacritfan » Wed Feb 11, 2015 11:31 pm

Looks like Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi reached their Kickstarter goal so it'll be opening in theaters outside New York and L.A. now.
Scroll down for theaters.
Kickstarter still has one and half days so I assume if you give it'll get to more theaters?
NPR interview with Clement and Waititi.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Films of 2015

#11 Post by domino harvey » Sun Feb 15, 2015 10:48 pm

the Ever After (Mark Webber) Deteriorating relationship fare written and directed by stars and real-life couple Mark Webber and Teresa Palmer, this self-distributed pic nevertheless has some interesting elements in play despite its familiar central premise. Palmer plays a former movie star who gave up the spotlight to raise the couple's daughter and whose general approach to tense or quiet moments is to elevate her voice into self-conscious wackiness that is anything but entertaining or funny but simply quite sad and hollow. This was a particularly promising angle for Palmer's character that remained slightly unexplored, especially when the film reveals the probable root of her uneven emotional behaviors. Webber initially is given less to do as the gallivanting celebrity photographer with anger issues and a wandering eye, but about halfway through the proceedings his coked-up photog takes a detour that's narratively expected (and almost inevitable) and yet unfolds in a surprising way that a better film would have given more focus and weight to. I'm not sure anyone here is going to pay $10 to watch this but just in case I'm spoiler-tagging this:
SpoilerShow
Webber's character gets increasingly fucked up partying with models and instead of cheating on his wife consensually as predicted by anyone who's ever seen a movie, in a long and uncomfortable scene he instead gets anally raped by a drug-pushing bearded hipster. The spectrum of emotion found in the response of Palmer to Webber's admission late in the film is anything but reassuring, but it feels real and true in a way that a lot of the more actorly excesses of the picture don't quite hit.
Webber and Palmer give solid perfs and Webber shows skill and promise behind the camera, but this could have used a more conventional structural skeleton to better fit its storyline and better utilize the aspects of the film which make it special, rather than spending the majority of the running time on scenes I feel like I've already seen twenty times in the last decade of indie cinema.

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jbeall
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Re: The Films of 2015

#12 Post by jbeall » Sat Feb 21, 2015 7:12 pm


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Red Screamer
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Re: The Films of 2015

#13 Post by Red Screamer » Sat Feb 28, 2015 2:39 am

I'm not sure how I missed this but Errol Morris has a series of short films on sports airing on ESPN Sunday night (8 CST) with his subjects including streakers and Mr. Met. Should be quite the show

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warren oates
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Re: The Films of 2015

#14 Post by warren oates » Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:17 am

Thanks, Superswede. Just set my DVR. It seems like the shorts will be released on-line at Grantland after this airing, but there's no way that would bet seeing them all at once like this. I'm a huge fan of Morris' previous ESPN effort Team Spirit, so hopefully these 6 shorts will be more of same.

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Re: The Films of 2015

#15 Post by Werewolf by Night » Sat Feb 28, 2015 6:01 pm

They'll be on Grantland.com next week for those who don't get ESPN.

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warren oates
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Re: The Films of 2015

#16 Post by warren oates » Mon Mar 02, 2015 1:24 am

I liked all of the Morris shorts, but especially "The Streaker" and "The Subterranean Stadium." I'd advise anyone who DVR'ed them to skip Morris' introductions (which are really substantively more like afterwords) until you've seen all the films. I don't know if or how these contextualizing extras will be included on Grantland, but I'd be wary of them there too and inclined to fast forward to the films themselves.


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malpractice
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Re: The Films of 2015

#18 Post by malpractice » Fri Mar 20, 2015 1:53 am

I take i am the only one who rolled out for Run All Night ?

[-X

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swo17
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Re: What We Do in the Shadows (J. Clement and T. Waititi, 20

#19 Post by swo17 » Tue Mar 31, 2015 10:57 am

lacritfan wrote:Looks like Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi reached their Kickstarter goal so it'll be opening in theaters outside New York and L.A. now.
Scroll down for theaters.
Kickstarter still has one and half days so I assume if you give it'll get to more theaters?
NPR interview with Clement and Waititi.
So they could raise half a million to get this in American theaters, but the home video release will apparently be DVD-only.

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willoneill
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Re: What We Do in the Shadows (J. Clement and T. Waititi, 20

#20 Post by willoneill » Tue Mar 31, 2015 11:25 am

swo17 wrote:So they could raise half a million to get this in American theaters, but the home video release will apparently be DVD-only.
Come up for the FIFA Women's World Cup and pick up a copy while you're here

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hearthesilence
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Re: The Films of 2015

#21 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Apr 01, 2015 11:05 pm

Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig actually made a Lifetime movie: a campy spoof of traditional Lifetime movies that is set to air on that network.

No doubt a complete coincidence, but the plot is fairly similar to the most horrific local news story I ever encountered in Chicago - a couple there actually did carry out a plot to kill a pregnant mother as soon as she was ready to give birth, just so they could raise the baby as their own. (Details are pretty horrific. I won't bring them up unless they somehow get mirrored in this movie.)

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hearthesilence
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Re: The Films of 2015

#22 Post by hearthesilence » Sun Apr 19, 2015 11:39 pm

I caught In Transit, Albert Maysles' last film (co-directed with Nelson Walker, Lynn True, David Usai and Ben Wu), and was really taken by it. A wonderful way to close his life in films for more than a few reasons.

Also caught Montage of Heck, which I enjoyed as a Nirvana fan, but it's a bit overrated. I wouldn't call it a great film, and the more I think about, the more I wish it delved into Cobain's music more. Maybe not an analysis, but even if they want to focus on the man, I don't think you can do that without diving deep into the music that lifted him out of his initial path to oblivion. We do get a brief summary of how he was introduced to punk music, but the less familiar you are with punk and the specific influences that world had on him, the less you'll understand the impact it really had on him.

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: The Films of 2015

#23 Post by Lemmy Caution » Mon Apr 20, 2015 4:07 am

(T)ERROR sounds quite interesting.
The documentary filmmakers start following an FBI informant trying to uncover/entrap a possible radical/terrorist. Then they get an unusual opportunity to film things from the target's perspective.
The film's title comes from how sloppy and questionable some of the FBI methods and tactics are.
This played at the Sundance 2015. Has anyone seen it?


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domino harvey
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Re: The Films of 2015

#25 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jun 21, 2015 11:34 pm

Welcome to Me (Shira Piven) The opening exchange of dialog in this film sets the tone and sense of humor for the entire picture. Kristen Wiig is briefly seen conversing with a stranger outside of a convenience store. She departs and the man gets into his car, where his passenger asks who the woman was. "I don't know," he replies, "She wanted to know if there were any rape scenes in A Tale of Two Cities." Either you see the comic brilliance in everything about that or you don't, and much of the film follows the same hyper-specific comic tone that ensures people will either hate this or find it instantly quotable and laugh out loud hilarious. I'm in the latter camp.

Wiig rules over everything in this film as a mentally unstable Oprah fan who wins the lottery and decides she'd like to have a show like Oprah, focused solely on her. Why? Because she's writing the checks, that's why. There's some commentary here about the narcissistic nature of talk shows, fame, and the increasing celebrity of YouTube superstars, but mainly its a premise to hang supremely awkward talk show bits for Wiig to run with. Her show covers important topics, like settling old grudges with reenactments of past slights ("Fuck you to death, Joanna!" she screams from the set to one of the reenactors), and features segments like five minutes of Wiig wordlessly eating a slice of meatloaf cake in real time. And swans. Lots of swans.

One of the best moments in the film finds a college student breathlessly praising her avant-garde brilliance in assorted academic terms while she blankly looks at him with bewilderment. It's an especially notable scene in that it's one of the few examples that I can think of a film criticizing the reliance of some academic pursuits to overanalyze a given text without devolving into cheap anti-intellectualism. I feel the blank disinterested stare here is especially a cogent line of rebuttal to those trying to make Adult Swim programming into some kind of genius commentary, as evidenced in all the highfalutin attention paid to some of their recent late night fare.

Welcome to Me wisely doesn't shy away from making its protagonist unapologetically unsympathetic for most of the running time, and her frequently near-psychotic behavior is either ignored or explained away by her enablers at every turn. And her mental health professional, Tim Robbins, eventually tires of trying to talk sense to her and cuts her out, leaving her with fewer and fewer people not financially dependent on her "wackiness" to talk straight with her, leading to her show going to new extremes (I'm spoilering this because it's a particularly bizarre idea that you may not want ruined in advance)
SpoilerShow
As when she decides she's going to neuter dogs live on-air. For a whole week. And she does!
This is the funniest performance I've seen yet from Wiig, and she commits to the tone and presence of this character beautifully (at one point she literally imitates several members of the Simpson clan by hugging her TV). Many of the lines are so off the wall anyway that Wiig just cements them into should-be cult status (if there's any justice in this world). But, to reiterate, I don't think this film works at all if you're not on its comic wavelength and can appreciate moments like Wiig arguing that a banana doesn't count as food or even blink and you miss it sight gags like a large moving box being labeled "Owl Masks." But from where I'm sitting, it's one of the best pleasant surprises of the year.

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