25 In 25: My Favorite Films of the First Quarter Century - 2015

It seems to be getting harder for me as we get closer to modern day.  That’s a sign of two things:  One being, my taste and education in film is expanding, and two, that filmmaking is getting better and better and there are more films that are worth watching. 

This year has been the most difficult for me as far as quality. 

Mad Max: Fury Road; we’ll start with the best film overall from 2015.  Hands down the most artistically phenomenal action film of all time.  Famously, George Miller made this film with minimal CGI for the action scenes.  The stunt team hired for this film deserve a make-up Oscar for how death-defying these stunts were and how cinematic they were.  Just watch this on a big screen as loudly as possible. 

I always partially base my love of films on how rewatchable they are.  Spotlight, a film about child abuse, shouldn’t be very rewatchable, but the way it was crafted begs for another viewing. 

This was the year Robert Eggers burst onto the scene with The VVitch and instantly became one of my favorite directors. 

Another film, like Moneyball, to take a mind-numbing subject and make it engaging is The Big Short.  Turning the 2008 economic crash into a stylized film in glorious fashion. 

And yet another year where Tarantino makes a film, but it is not in my favorites!!  Sensing a pattern here? 

Also, some great horror that furthers my intrigue into the genre: Bone Tomahawk and It Follows.

But for my favorite at the time, we go to Denis Villeneuve and his masterclass in suspense, Sicario. 

One scene is all I need to extoll the virtues of this film.  When the team is coming back from Juarez at the border crossing, stuck in traffic.  Doesn’t sound very cinematic, does it?  Enter Villenueve and Deakins, and Johann Johannsson.

What they do with this scene should be the gold standard for building tension with filmmaking technique.  The way the camera tells the story and the music plays along with it.  The blocking of the scene.  The editing, to the cars in question, back to our “heroes”, and back again.  By the third minute, you don’t realize how tightly you are gripping your armrests.  And when it explodes, it’s over before you can realize it even began!

Sheer genius on full display. 

And while I am glad Villeneuve knocked it outta the park with Dune, I am sad he is now in entrenched in franchise world instead of original creation as his films have popped up this whole quarter century.