If I Were an Academy Member: Ben Gruchow
By Ben Gruchow
February 27, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Room has a thrilling first half stapled to a sedate and rather maudlin second half, before almost, but not quite, totally redeeming itself with a powerful final scene. The effect of the two halves is inverse to the source novel, where most of the development and poignancy arrived courtesy of events less immediate and urgent than those in the first half. I'm dancing around the rather crucial event that separates the two parts of the film; it's a limited release that only recently got its home-media offering, and there are plenty of potential viewers to not spoil. The movie takes place in Room, a 10-foot-by-10-foot square containing a rudimentary bathroom, kitchen, and living quarters, and it's told from the point of view of five-year-old Jack, who lives there with his Ma. They live in Room, and never leave it, for reasons that go undisclosed for a while. In the film, this is terrifyingly claustrophobic, and a marvelous achievement in production design and cinematography. It is matched by the raw immediacy of Brie Larson's performance as Ma, and it is these two factors - Larson's work, and the environment of Room - that buoy the film into a worthy standing on this list, if only on the tail end of it.
7) The Martian
Getting the big reason for the movie's next-to-last place standing out of the way at the forefront: there is nothing that Ridley Scott's The Martian does as cinema that Andy Weir's The Martian does not do better as a novel, and the last-act timeline compression that one suspects was done out of sheer necessity for pacing reasons-the movie is already 140-odd minutes-does some destructive things to the final set piece and to the character work that's been built up so far. I read the book prior to seeing the film; I cannot un-read the book, and so the best I can do is attempt to put myself in the shoes of a newcomer to this story who chooses to see the movie first. In those shoes, I can recognize Scott's film as a skillful and intelligent procedural, while imagining that movie-only viewers might benefit from investigating the source material. The bright spots in this adaptation belong to Matt Damon as the astronaut Mark Watney, Chiwetel Ejiofor as NASA mission director Vincent Kapoor, and Kristen Wiig as NASA media-relations director Annie Montrose. These three create fully-realized personas out of varying degrees of screen time, and they're at least partially responsible for the success of a movie that celebrates challenge, invention, and perseverance in an optimistic way.
6) The Big Short
The best word I can think of to sum up this film is contemptuous. The Big Short is choppy and rough around the edges when it comes to its formal qualities - at times, it seems like it doesn't know whether to present itself as a full-on narrative or a faux-documentary piece - but it uses this shagginess to transport a potent examination of how amiably, even idealistically, the major players behind the housing bubble architected the downfall of homeowners and (to a degree) their own careers. The movie achieves the challenge of presenting these individuals as gullible and greedy without being anything less than or more than human in their strengths and weaknesses; it's a vicious apocalypse comedy that somehow also denies the audience the schadenfreude that we'd expect to feel.
It is above all else an angry film, about the fates of its nominal protagonists and antagonists; intelligent and instantly dismissive of anyone who can't keep up at the speed-rap pace of the film's characters. It's also true that nothing that happens here is particularly great; the emotions evoked and the conclusions drawn are nothing we don't already know, and director Adam McKay is noticeably rough with modulating the dramatic tendencies of his characters. Still, it's alive and spiky and irritable in a way that's pleasantly surprising for such a slick and trailer-ready studio vehicle.
5) Bridge of Spies
Bridge of Spies is a thoroughly respectable and well-constructed probe on one of my favorite themes: the manipulation of a person's identity to serve a narrative, in one direction or another. It's also pretty thoroughly unexciting in how it goes about this and where that probe ultimately ends up, with a third-act development that starts to feel in hindsight like a plot device intruding on the more natural character and story beats, like writers Matt Charman and the Coen brothers and director Steven Spielberg knew where they needed to end up and what they wanted to say but couldn't quite work out how to get there in time. It is a minor speed bump, for that, and the movie's stance on identity - and the politics of negotiation - are shot through with an elegance we can be grateful for if not especially surprised by. The same logic extends to the movie's look, which does nothing new with the cinematic techniques that Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski have developed over the last couple of decades…but that lack of novelty is presented with such evocative, moody stateliness that I feel like a churl for even mentioning it in a mildly negative way.
4) Spotlight
Possibly the most mechanically precise film of the year, Spotlight is about a specialized department of the Boston Globe that picks up the trail of a story about child abuse and deception in the Catholic archdiocese of Boston. The movie knows what conclusions to draw decisively - like the practice by the Church of burying each instance of abuse as it occurs - and which elements are more complicated and tragic, providing us with a story about victims and perpetrators that is several degrees more effective and textured than the basic storyline might lead us to believe. This is deeply disturbing story material, but we are not pressed or led to draw simple conclusions from it, and the movie's quiet insistence on exploring ethics, and how traumatic incidents affect everyone who comes in contact with them, feels exactly right.
3) The Revenant
I saw The Revenant with a friend, and while we were discussing our reactions to it walking out of the theater, I noted that it was a surprisingly intimate film for one with so vast a canvas. That more or less saves the movie from itself, because it's not very deep as a character study. We are, more or less, watching 155 minutes of someone trying to survive the physical duress of this challenge, and that challenge, and this danger and that danger. When you really dig for it, you can extract some light theme about how arbitrary the line is between survivalism and villainy, but it's barely there.
What is there, in spades, is the movie's physical reality. The new, IMAX-resolution equivalent Arri Alexa 65 was used for this film, and it's a perfect showcase for the future of digital cinematography, but what really sets The Revenant apart is the evident scope of the movie's setting - shot mostly on-location, in desolate mountain and prairie territory in the dead of winter - and the striking creative decision to shoot most of the key scenes using nothing but natural light. This is a move that's virtually guaranteed to create an arduous production experience-but director Alejandro González Iñárritu, working with established long-take cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki on a fixed focal length for (if I'm not mistaken) the entire film, creates a tactile, immediate reality on an incomprehensibly huge scale; it's a singular visual experience.
2) Mad Max: Fury Road
The list format dictates that one film be ranked at one number and one film be ranked at another, but Mad Max: Fury Road creeps up so closely to the #1 spot for this year's films that we can for all intents and purposes consider it tied with Brooklyn. Which is more than appropriate, really. If Brooklyn represents the epoch of classical cinema in 2015, Fury Road represents all that is giddily, gleefully bold and almost experimental about it: whether the question is how dense and thoughtful and reflective you can make a sustained action sequence or how energetic and charged you can make a story about religious fanaticism and resource-sharing, this film is a headlong, 115-minute exclamation point of an answer. Not for a moment does it stop moving, nor does it ever feel rushed or any element feel misplaced. More than just an expertly-handled action film, what we have with Fury Road is an examination and celebration of energy, momentum, and consequence, populated by engaging characters, stunning desert-landscape photography, and a heroine in Charlize Theron's Furiosa that's instantly iconic. It's something truly special.
1) Brooklyn
Here is a film that keeps landing at the top of the list, no matter how I rearrange my criteria. Both of the entries that would otherwise slip by it for movie of the year aren't in consideration for Best Picture, so this is a bit of a win by default. Regardless, Brooklyn does just about everything right. Like my #7 entry, it concerns itself far less with a good-vs.-bad story and much more so with the simple act of survival (albeit in a much less urgent context here).
It tells this story in an unfussy and straightforward way that ends up having all sorts of little observations to make about identity: how much of your personality your location informs, what it means to “go home” again, family as support structure and family as liability. It's a timeless film to look at: shot digitally with a clear, bright aesthetic that nevertheless does an admirable job of reconstructing 1950s-era New York and Ireland, with a use of color and light that almost leaps off the screen. And it contains a truly brilliant performance by Saoirse Ronan as Irish immigrant Eilis Lacey. It is above all else a generous and beatific film, one that well earns its place on this list.