It’s late November now… and, shocker of shockers, the Oscar race is still wide open.

As usual, awards season is officially underway with hopeful contenders stacked one on top of the other. But less usual is the reasonably quiet race we’ve had thus far. There are not thunderously moving, high-impact prestige dramas like 12 Years A Slave or Lincoln, or ambitious cinematic achievements like Boyhood, or industry-pandering fare like Argo or Birdman or The Artist, or actors turning in solid performances who are clearly overdue, like Julianne Moore in Still Alice. There’s no crowd-pleasing blockbuster that could take the cake like Life Of Pi or Gravity. There’s not even as much of the usual middling Oscar bait like The Imitation Game or Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close to contend with.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be. A few notable titles are still under wraps, and their quality could be game changers — most notably, Joy, The Revenant, and The Hateful Eight — but as of now, there’s no true frontrunner in any one race, as there often is by this time most years. The last three Best Picture winners had already been released by mid-November in their respective years, so if 2015 follows suit, then we’ve already seen this year’s Best Picture.

Is it Spotlight?

Tom McCarthy’s journalism drama is the most buzzed about awards contender of the moment, and probably the only film that is all but guaranteed a Best Picture nomination. It’s not impossible to imagine it heading for a win, especially if none of the above-mentioned titles turns out to be Oscar-worthy.

Spotlight continues the recent trend of films telling intimate stories about major events in the 21st century, though the scandals depicted here are very much of the century prior. It may take place in 2001, but in many ways, it feels like a 70s movie. The quartet of reporters it focuses on use landlines and books rather than smart phones and search engines, as fits the times, which makes the central action feel more antiquated than it is. It also makes following their journalistic journey more entertaining, since it’s never too exciting to watch movie characters Google something that would have taken a movie character from the 90s a few days to find. Spotlight is aptly being compared to All The President’s Men, as this is another movie about a team of newspaper reporters uncovering a major scandal committed by some very powerful, very revered men. Think of it as All The Church’s Men. (Or, okay, Six Percent Of The Church’s Men, since that’s the estimated number of priests who have molested children, according to one expert in the movie.)

Spotlight takes a workmanlike approach to its topic, with little time for sentimentality or subplots. It tells its story straightforwardly, without delving into the personal baggage of the reporters unless it’s relevant to their work. There isn’t a single moment in Spotlight that is not about these four reporters’ quest to bring the Catholic church’s crimes to light. When we see these people at home, which is rare, they’re working. The team consists of Robby (Michael Keaton), Mike (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha (Rachel McAdams), and Matt (Brian d’Arcy James), and the film spends roughly equal time on all of them. (There is no real lead in this movie.) There is only one scene with heightened emotion, delivered by Ruffalo. Otherwise, everything here is incredibly understated and unfolds as naturally as is possible in a narrative film. There’s a lot of walking and talking, knocking on doors, talking on phones, and telling secretaries that they’re here to see whoever they’re here to see. There are very few overtly cinematic flourishes. The screenplay, by McCarthy and Josh Singer, takes none of the artificial and obvious detours we’re afraid it will. The drama inherent to this story is enough, without the bells and whistles of a three-act structure. Joe Friday would love this movie — it’s just the facts.

This could be boring, if the subject matter didn’t bring so much to the table already. Instead, Spotlight is rather riveting. The Boston Globe reporters are initially lukewarm on investigating a court case about a Catholic priest accused of molesting children, until some digging reveals that many priests have molested an unthinkable number of children — and the Catholic church has been swiftly sweeping it under the rug for years. This is not news now, of course, but it was back in 2001. One of the most fascinating angles in McCarthy’s movie is the way “the system” in the city of Boston conspires, either willfully or unknowingly, to let these crimes continue in silence. The Catholic church isn’t made out to be a sinister force, exactly — there’s no mustache-twirling villain here, though it’s easy to imagine other screenwriters being tempted to create one. Thousands of people had to look the other way in order to allow this sexual abuse to continue undetected, but Spotlight makes it clear why they did so. It’s not because they’re bad people. They believe in God, and so they believe in the church. How could anything done in the name of God be that wrong?

What Spotlight does very well is make the stakes real and tangible, even without the typical ticking clock or a hackneyed conflict thrown in just in time for the climax. The film’s biggest dramatic turns are about things like unsealing court records or getting data over the phone from a psychologist. But Spotlight also manages to put faces on both the victims and the perpetrators — we briefly meet one priest who happily confesses that he is guilty of molesting children, and then admits to also being a victim of sexual abuse by a priest. Most films would demonize the character, but Spotlight does just the opposite — portraying him as a good-natured but misguided fool.

Even better are the scenes in which we meet the victims, all grown up — most prominently, a straight man who has developed a drug problem, and a gay man who sheds light on his sexual and spiritual confusion when the first person who acknowledged that it was okay to be homosexual was thirty years his senior, supposedly celibate, and appointed by God. With impressive economy, McCarthy shows us exactly who has been hurt by the church’s misdirection, and how. And then he quickly moves on. Each of the four reporters has a personal stake in the outcome — Sacha’s grandmother is a passionate churchgoers, Mike finds himself reexamining his lapsed faith, Matt discovers that he lives just down the street from a molesters “rehab,” and Robby discovers that his esteemed, well-established “friends” have known a lot more than they’ve ever let on. But none of this feels forced. We get exactly enough information about each character without ever stopping the forward momentum of the journalistic investigation. It’s the most efficient storytelling imaginative.

Spotlight is also immaculately cast — with supporting turns from Liev Schreiber, Billy Crudup, Stanley Tucci, and John Slattery (making this the second movie of the season that features a Mad Men alum as a journalist, following Elisabeth Moss’ underwritten appearance in Truth — it seems that cast is still the go-to for office settings). The film takes place in the latter half of 2001, which means these characters at one point have to reckon with September 11 — and even that feels subtle. It takes a hell of a storyteller to drop 9/11 into the plot, and then nimbly move on.

Spotlight doesn’t really make any wrong moves. At all. It comes together seemingly effortlessly, without calling much attention to just how good it is, until the film’s masterful final scene, which takes place on the Sunday morning that the Globe‘s story made its rounds in the city of Boston. (The fact that the story was so ironically printed on a Sunday morning is a detail so perfect you’d think it couldn’t be true. But of course it is.) The conclusion says everything without a single word of significant dialogue. You couldn’t ask for a better final scene.

Does Spotlight have what it takes to win Best Picture? Maybe. It’s likely a tad too understated for many viewers to feel passionately about. Best Picture winners tend to be bigger and splashier than this, though Spotlight‘s overall quality is difficult to refute. I would place my bets on another film winning Best Picture at this point, though Spotlight will definitely be in the spotlight throughout awards season, and definitely deserves to be.

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This is neither the first nor the last time I’ll discuss awards season in relation to a movie that has maybe a 5% chance of nabbing an Oscar nomination. Every year, there are those surefire heavyweights — this year, films like Spotlight, The Revenant, and Room (to name a few) — and then there are the also-rans that enter the conversation, sometimes just for a fleeting moment, for one solitary standout element. Remember that time we thought Jennifer Aniston could get nominated for Cake? Or when Saving Mr. Banks felt like surefire Oscar bait, until it was entirely snubbed aside from Thomas Newman’s score?

For those of us who like such things, this is a fun (if somewhat overwhelming) time of year, as we check out as much as we can of what the studios and the indie scene have to offer, all of them vying for just five or so slots in the big races. There will inevitably be an outcry at performances in smaller films — those that gain recognition from critics’ groups and guilds, but not the Academy — and could have gone much further if they’d only been seen by more people. Most of the fringe films that bubble up in the awards season conversation will never actually get that sweet, sweet Oscar lovin’, but of course, that’s not all that matters. It doesn’t mean they’re undeserving.

James White is such a movie.

James White has already picked up a few festival wins, is nominated for three Independent Spirits Awards, and was named one of the National Board of Review’s ten best indie films for 2015. Most of the awards season chatter is based mainly on the strength of its supporting performance by Cynthia Nixon, playing a former schoolteacher who is losing a nasty bout with cancer. But as the title of the film may suggest, the story really belongs to her son, James (Christopher Abbott).

James is not a bad guy, but he’s not a terribly endearing individual either. Like many twentysomething males we meet in independent cinema, he’s a mess. He doesn’t have a job, and probably has never had one. He spends his nights (and sometimes his days) drinking excessively and doing drugs, occasionally picking a fight with a stranger for added entertainment. He has one loyal friend in Nick (Scott Mescudi, AKA Kid Cudi), but he’s testing even the limits of that brotherly bond with his recent behavior. He’s got a new girlfriend, Jayne (Mackenzie Leigh), who is still in high school, which says a lot about his maturity level. He spends most nights on his mother’s couch. James has led a privileged life, and mostly wasted the opportunities he was given. He thinks he’ll get his shit together soon enough, but those odds are looking slimmer by the day. James thinks of himself as a writer, when he thinks of himself as anything at all, but it’s clear that he’s going nowhere. He has no story to tell, because he hasn’t lived life so much as he’s avoided it. We meet James at the precise moment when things are beginning to get unfortunately interesting.

When we meet James, his estranged father has just died. He encounters his half-sister and stepmother for the first time at his father’s wake. James insists he isn’t that bothered by his dad’s death, probably because he’s more bothered by an earlier abandonment. Instead of dealing with his grief and anger, James runs away — both literally, to Mexico, and figuratively, with plenty of substance abuse — and his life of leisure is more or less uninterrupted. Until his mother Gail calls him, beckoning him home, because her cancer is back with a vengeance.

After a lot of meandering through James’ mostly meaningless existence, this is where the film kicks into high gear. Gail rapidly grows more and more feeble — it’s pretty clear early on that she won’t survive this time. A mere matter of weeks after losing his father, James is now faced with losing his mother, too, and it’s difficult not to feel sorry for him. This young man,  already so lost in so many ways, is about to become an orphan.

Most of this we must intuit through the action — James doesn’t often say how he really feels; he’s more likely to claim that he’s fine. He’s in denial. But as Gail grows weaker, James is tasked with getting her water in the middle of the night, carrying her to the bathroom, and dealing with the occasional dementia that steals her away as mind and body deteriorate. He rises to the challenge, though none of this comes naturally. He’s just doing the best he can.

Watching James White can be a frustrating experience, especially in its first half, because James is such a shallow, spoiled, mostly unremarkable person. He’s not a good guy, nor is he a bad guy, and it’s easy to see why just about everyone but his mother and his best buddy have given up on him. (Even they come close to doing so, in moments.) He’s like a lot of people — living for himself, day by day, without an eye on the big picture. For the first half of James White, you might easily hate this character — but the more we see what he’s facing, the more we’re likely to feel for him anyway. That’s how it is with people. We don’t have the capacity to care for strangers — but then, as we learn more about them, we do.

Several characters call James out as a spoiled brat throughout the movie, and it’s earned. But when his mother needs him, James is finally capable of doing what is right, of caring for the person who once cared for him in such a manner. James White makes the point that even the most overprivileged, underappreciative Upper West Side brat is capable of love and goodness in the right circumstances. We should not write anybody off. We should have compassion for everyone, because everyone, at one time or another, is going through something like this.

Nixon is utterly compelling and convincing in a role that’s a far cry from Miranda on Sex & The City (a role I can’t ever not associate her with, since I’m a fan of the show). It’s a heartbreaking turn, not just a supporting performance, but the essential soul of this movie — her love for James is one of few things he’s got going for him. We need to see him through her eyes to care about him at all.

Christopher Abbott is also an actor who is hard to separate from his role on a New York City-set TV show. As Charlie, he was one of the least sympathetic of the Girls gang (and that’s saying something). He’s similarly off-putting here, a choice I’m not sure was intentional. I spent much of this movie actively disliking this character, but that ends up being the point. (I’m not sure if an actor who more easily earned our sympathy would have helped or hurt the movie overall.)

James White is the directorial debut of Josh Mond, and partially autobiographical. (Mond also lost his mother to cancer.) It’s unclear if Mond knows exactly how unlikable James White is in the first act of this film, or if he wants us to like James more than I did, but the movie works regardless as a tale of the way people — even the worst people — deal with grief. He would probably say that it’s intentional, though I’m not sure it was intentional to this extent.

The Oscar race is a crowded place, and Cynthia Nixon has only a slim chance of ending up as one of the five nominees, as good as she is. (Especially since lead performances by Rooney Mara in Carol and Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl are currently vying for Supporting Actress status, where they can stand out more.) But that sweet, sweet Oscar lovin’ isn’t the only reason to check out a film with a performance as solid as Nixon’s.

James White makes no concession to make its protagonist likable, and in the end, maybe he isn’t. What’s so compelling about the film is that we end up feeling for him anyway.

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Now that Mad Men is over, we’re seeing its star players pop up as supporting players all over the place — mostly (surprise, surprise) in the workplace. Elisabeth Moss was part of the team of duped journalists in Truth, John Slattery helped highlight the Catholic church’s crimes in Spotlight, and Jessica Pare showed Saorise Ronan some tough love as a department store manager in Brooklyn. These all feel, more or less, like extensions of these characters’ Mad Men personas — while Spike Lee, on the other hand, shows us a side of mild-mannered secretary Dawn Chambers we never expected to see.

Yep, that’s Teyonah Parris as Chi-Raq‘s Lysistrata, who practically oozes confidence and sex appeal throughout the film. She’s so sexually persuasive, in fact, that she convinces her Chicago sisters to join her in withholding sex from men until peace between warring gangs can be negotiated — triggering a movement that spans the globe.

If you’re thinking that sounds like an outlandish plot for a movie that takes place in the 21st century, you’re right, and Spike Lee is right there with you. Chi-Raq veers wildly between comedy and tragedy. It wants to be taken seriously, but never asks to be taken literally. It’s an adaptation of the Greek comedy Lysistrata, originally performed in 411 BC. Much of the dialogue is spoken in rhymed couplets, though I’m guessing that the words and phrases such as “fleek,” “crib,” and “no peace, no pussy” were not a part of the original mix. Chi-Raq is a hell of a movie, one that few filmmakers besides Spike Lee would attempt to make, and one that few besides Lee could make at all coherently.

Chi-Raq is nothing if not uneven, with scenes of absurd comedy smooshed up against heartbreak and senseless bloodshed. None of this would work at all, except that the message Lee is attempting to get across is so urgent, and earnest, and sorely needed. (And, whether you like the film or not, you will receive the message. In its rapped overture featuring a graphic of the United States made up of firearms, followed by some chilling statistics on recent gun deaths, Chi-Raq makes sure of that.) It would seem fortuitously timed that this movie was released the week of the San Bernardino shootings, which once again stirred conversation over gun rights, except these days it feels like there’s always a shooting in the headlines. And that’s the point of the movie. Spike Lee is fed up with such headlines, as many of us are — but unlike us, Spike Lee has made a movie about it.Lee has never been accused of being too subtle, and Chi-Raq is maybe the least subtle movie imaginable. In another era, that might be to the film’s detriment. But when you look at the horrific number of shootings taking place in America on a daily basis, it seems perfectly fair for Lee to take subtlety off the menu. “This Is An Emergency,” a bold red title card informs us at the beginning of the film. And he’s right.

“Chi-Raq” is the nickname that likens Chicago to Iraq, given that more Americans have been killed in the Windy City in recent years than in our involvements in the Middle East. It’s a problem that extends beyond the rash of mass shootings that entered public consciousness in 1999 with Columbine and hasn’t dissipated since. Black Americans in urban areas have been dealing with fear and anguish over gun violence a lot longer than the rest of us have, and to a much greater magnitude. That’s the issue Chi-Raq aims to explore, though Lee’s film doesn’t segregate the problem according to class or race. Gun violence is everybody’s problem these days. And yes, he’s angry that it took headlines such as those in San Bernardino for most Americans to wake up and smell the bloodshed, when people in poorer neighborhoods of Chicago — and Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, and so on — have suffered in media silence for years. It’s a fair complaint. Chi-Raq might have been a perfectly potent film a few years back, but it wouldn’t have resonated with most of us. Now, though, it’s hard not to feel solidarity with the characters from Chi-Raq who live in constant terror, for whom a child struck down by a bullet is a common occurrence, who are desperate to put a stop to the steady stream of bad news. Chi-Raq couldn’t be more timely. As much as it is about a very particular place, and a very particular community, it’s impossible not to view it through the blood-spattered lens of recent headlines. We’re all getting closer and closer to know what it’s like to live in a gangland.Chi-Raq is a call to arms — well, technically, a call away from arms — that wears its heart on its sleeve and borrows even more heart to wear on the other sleeve. The plot involves two warring Chicago gangs, the Trojans and the Spartans — again, not subtle — whose feud claims the life of a little girl named Patti. Patti’s grieving mother is played by Jennifer Hudson, whose performance is plenty moving in its own right, but is even more moving when you recall that Hudson hails from Chicago and lost three family members to gun violence. The Spike Lee joint also stars Angela Bassett as another mother who lost a daughter to crossfire, Nick Cannon as a cocky rapper who doesn’t want to give up his piece, and John Cusack as a priest striving to make changes in the neighborhood.

But Chi-Raq also features Wesley Snipes in a sequined orange eye patch, and Samuel L. Jackson in assorted colorful suits, spouting ancient Greek-like rhymes about baby-making. There’s a blindfolded military general wearing Confederate flag underpants riding a canon called “Whistling Dick.” There’s a lot of raunchiness, and the film’s climax involves a public sex showdown in a large brass bed. Chi-Raq also boasts a few musical numbers, and much of the dialogue is spoken in rhymed couplets. The opening of the film is a lyric video. Some parts hew closely to the Greek play that is nearly 2,500 years old, while other pieces feature booty call sexting. Does this all fit together seamlessly? Not really. Portions of the film are a little too cartoonish and over-the-top, watering down the necessary tension. The script isn’t quite sure where to take itself in the third act, and portions of its plot would have been better set in more realistic settings than in the giant military space that houses most of the film’s latter half, where all characters save one are wearing white.

But Lee’s passion for the subject matter practically bleeds through the movie. Chi-Raq is an important film more than it is an exceptional one, filled with dialogue that addresses the many-headed beast that is gun control in America head on. Lee isn’t too polite to blame politicians, the media, and the NRA for their parts in perpetuating the bloodbath, while still holding gang members responsible for their crimes. Pretty much everyone gets name-checked for their role in this epidemic, but Lee is never unfair, and never too quick to point the finger elsewhere without first looking within. That’s not easy to do, especially in a film that is also slickly entertaining and sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious. Chi-Raq is a strange movie, and I imagine many in the audience will find its erratic tone and the poetic delivery of the dialogue insurmountable. (It reminded me of Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, which similarly blended political satire, somber themes, and absurd comedy into a unique cinematic concoction that did not sit well with many.)

While there are a few scenes that thud more than they bang, when Chi-Raq works, it’s really cooking. Gun violence — whether it’s happening in South Chicago or San Bernardino, whether the triggers are pulled by black people, white people, or ISIS extremists — is something that needs to be addressed by films as fearless as Chi-Raq, by filmmakers like Spike Lee who speak their minds.

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This is it. This is my final retroactive Top 10 list, because it is my first.

This was the first year I was in film school, and the first time I saw nearly enough films in any given year to feel qualified to weigh in. I was a teenager at the time, so maybe my taste wasn’t quite so refined — but hey, it was a lot more refined than most 18-year-olds, I’d wager.

These lists are a time capsule. Some of these films have aged better than others. Others that I’ve seen since — Mulholland Drive, Donnie Darko, Before Night Falls, to name a few — might have been in contention, but aren’t found here. Because you can’t see everything.

I wrote this list without ordering my picks, so I’ve ordered them as seems appropriate now. Another caveat: I didn’t do any write-ups then, so these are my current thoughts about these films. Some of these movies I love even more now than I did then, and others I’d probably happily leave off this list were I to go back and start over. But you can’t do that, because it defeats the whole purpose of encapsulating your favorites in a Top Ten!

(For other Top Tens from other years, click here.)

10. MONSTER’S BALL

There’s a lot of misery going on in Monster’s Ball. Hank is a son of a bitch whose wife killed herself, and early in the story, his son kills himself, too. Then there’s Leticia, whose husband is executed on death row early in the film, and whose son is later killed in a car accident. But hey, at least there’s ice cream!

Yes, this film lays on the “chocolate versus vanilla” symbolism thicker than hot fudge, because Hank is white and Leticia is blank, and Hank is also pretty much a racist. It’s basically tragedy porn, and is mostly notable for winning Halle Berry her Oscar for Best Actress, which was also the first (and, to date, only) Best Actress Oscar to go to a black actress. Unfortunately, Berry’s career since 2001 has been, shall we say, less than optimal, with duds like Gothika and Catwoman following her win and somewhat sullying her appeal. She hasn’t been great in a great movie since. Director Marc Forster’s career has been spotty, too.

But Berry is really good in Monster’s Ball, and despite its retroactive inclusion under the Lee Daniels Meloadrama Umbrella, it’s not a bad film, if a tad overcooked. Billy Bob Thornton, Heath Ledger, and even Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs turn out fine performances. This isn’t a film from 2001 I’ve revisited often (I may be a masochist when it comes to bleak movies, but I’m not that much of a masochist), but it’s not a cinematic blight, either, even though Monster’s Ball doesn’t have the greatest of reputations anymore. (Funny how consensus on certain films just sours sometimes, largely when its key players turn out subpar work in subsequent ventures.)

9. IRIS

I suppose it’s fitting that my most forgettable movie of 2001 happens to be about Alzheimer’s. I certainly don’t want to dismiss the film — I liked it enough to rank it among my favorites of the year, of course, and it was nominated for three Oscars, all for its performances. Not too shabby.

Jim Broadbent won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, even though I’d say his role is more of a lead (as you’ll see in my acting awards below). No matter. As Bayley, the mild-mannered hubby of the titular Iris, played to perfection as usual by Dame Judi Dench, Broadbent is heartbreaking. Broadbent is the kind of stalwart character actor who isn’t often recognized by the Academy, or at least rarely wins against more formidable (and famous) opponents. For this role, he was up against Ben Kinglsey, Ian McKellan, Ethan Hawke, and Jon Voight, all of whom are more recognizable to audiences. And Iris also has a supporting turn from Kate Winslet, which is never a bad thing.

Dench and Winslet have had plenty of other memorable roles, and Broadbent has proven his worth in many roles since, but it’s nice that this movie earned him his due… even if I’m feeling a bit Iris-like, in that I remember very little about the story of the film itself…8. THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING

Speaking of Ian McKellan! This was the film that started it all, for better or worse. It’s actually rather unfortunate that Peter Jackson went on to direct his bloated Hobbit trilogy — which (to be fair) I haven’t seen — because the original trilogy was held in such high regard by both audiences and critics, back in the day. The third installment managed to sweep the Oscars in 2004.

These films still have their place in the hearts of many fans (and I suppose the Hobbit films do too, of a much smaller group), but since 2001 we’ve seen a lot of imitators — not so much in terms of fantasy stories, but definitely in terms of spectacle. Few of these are anywhere as good as Fellowship Of The Ring.

Give Jackson his due for adapting a difficult book series into something that fans old and new cherished, something of high enough quality to be nominated for Best Picture all three times, and utilizing such magnificent actors in these iconic roles. There is so much to praise in these movies, and yet… and yet… I find it hard to muster much enthusiasm for them now, because I’m exhausted by what they left in their wake.

Sorry, Mr. Jackson.7. GOSFORD PARK

Before there was Downton Abbey, there was Gosford Park. The cast features more or less every British thespian who was noteworthy in 2001 (many who would become even more noteworthy later), including Helen Mirren, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jeremy Northam, Emily Watson, Clive Owen, Charles Dance… I’m getting tired of listing them, but there are lots more. Enough to compete with Hogwarts. Also… Ryan Phillippe!

Gosford Park is like an Agatha Christie novel come to life, paired with Christopher Guest-ian humor. (Or maybe that’s just the presence of Bob Balaban leading me to think so.) Directed by the legendary Robert Altman, this takes the auteur’s trademark comfort with colossal casts and loose narrative and puts it to work, in the pitch perfect setting of a posh English manor, where there’s been — dun dun dun — a murder!

The story is a classic “upstairs downstairs” type, where we see things unfold both with the upper crust and the servants. The film is wryly funny and the mystery is satisfying, and — no surprise here — the cast is superb all around. I haven’t seen Gosford Park in a while, but I should correct that. It’s Altman at his best (or close to it, at least).6. BLACK HAWK DOWN

We’ve seen a lot of movies that resemble Black Hawk Down since 2001, but they may never have been made if Black Hawk Down didn’t get there first. Ridley Scott was hot off the Best Picture-winning Gladiator, with the hot lineup of Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Orlando Bloom, and Eric Bana, amongst others. (You remember when Josh Hartnett was a thing, don’t you?)

Black Hawk Down was the most intense war film since Saving Private Ryan, set in a much more recent era (Somalia, 1993). Up until this year, it was probably also the best regarded film by Ridley Scott since Black Hawk Down, as his output has been hit or miss otherwise. (A Good Year, Kingdom Of Heaven, Body Of Lies, Prometheus, Robin Hood, Exodus: Gods And Kings, American Gangster, The Counselor… definitely a mixed bag there.) Hans Zimmer pulled out a pretty fantastic score, and the film won two out of the four Oscars it was nominated for. Black Hawk Down also feels like a necessary precursor to films like The Hurt Locker and American Sniper that depict more recent war zones than the usual WWII varietal.   5. THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS

Wes Anderson has been assembling casts of weirdo “families” (biological or otherwise) since 2001, many times using the same actors. (I know Bottle Rocket and Rushmore did this to an extent earlier, but I’d say it was The Royal Tenenbaums that really cemented the full Wes Anderson formula.) I am sometimes charmed by Anderson’s sensibilities, and sometimes not. Occasionally, I get a sense of quirk overload, to the extent that I’ve had to skip a few of his films.

It helped that back in 2001, we hadn’t really seen this sort of thing before. Gene Hackman is a hoot as the gruff patriarch of a fractured family whose only method of getting back in his loved ones’ good graces is to pretend that he’s dying. Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Danny Glover, and Bill Murray are basically an immaculate lineup for Anderson (the dour, secretly smoking Margo is Paltrow’s best-ever performance). Like all of Anderson’s films, there’s an underlying sadness beneath the mega-stylized surface, but in this one, it feels earned.

4. MEMENTO

I mentioned having forgotten a lot about the Alzheimer’s drama Iris above, but Memento is far less forgettable — even though it is similarly all about memory loss, albeit in a much more mysterious fashion. While not technically Christopher Nolan’s first film, it is the film that put him on the mainstream map. While still best known for his Batman films, the unique vision Nolan put forth in Memento carried on in bigger original films like Inception and Interstellar, which are mainly notable because hardly anyone gets to make big budget original stories anymore.

In Memento, we have a story that is nothing new — a man trying to hunt down the man who wrong his wife. The twist, of course, is that this man has anterograde amnesia, so he forgets everything he does and everything that happens, making him vulnerable to certain predators. Taking place in alternating scenes of chronological and reverse-chronological order, one in color and one in black-and-white, Memento is a post-Pulp Fiction pushing of the limits of narrative storytelling, one that — like Pulp Fiction — has prompted plenty of copycats in the years since.

3. IN THE BEDROOM

This film is a lot less kinky than it sounds. In fact, it’s not kinky at all! The titular bedroom shenanigans refer primarily to grief, loss, estrangement, and other such unsexy things.

Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek are Matt and Ruth Fowler, living an idyllic life in Maine with their son Frank (Nick Stahl)… until he begins dating an older woman, Natalie (Marisa Tomei), who has two children and a hot-headed ex husband. That ex ends up killing their son in a domestic dispute, and because there are no witnesses, he ends up going free. Matt and Ruth cope in different ways, the absence of Frank palpable between them. Eventually, Matt comes to believe that the only way they can move on is to take eye-for-an-eye vengeance, leading to a tense finale.

In The Bedroom was the first official Sundance selection nominated for Best Picture, and certainly not the last. A number of independent films with similar stories and moods have been released in the years since, but In The Bedroom remains one of the most sparsely elegant of all, powered by powerhouse performances from Spacek and Wilkinson. The fact that it lost Best Picture to the lighter-weight A Beautiful Mind is a predictable shame in the Academy Awards record books, but this one holds up far better.

2. GHOST WORLD

Of all my 2001 favorites, this is probably the film I’ve re-watched the most, and it only gets better with age. Following their high school graduation, BFFs Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) hang out and fill their last summer of freedom in that idle, aimless manner you can only get away with as a teenager. Their primary preoccupation becomes with Seymour (Steve Buscemi), a lonesome sad sack, whom they prank by setting him up on a fake date. Then Enid starts to feel sorry for Seymour and begins spending time with him, and the longer she’s around Seymour, the more she realizes they have in common. Being a snarky outsider is fine and dandy in high school, but that’s the sort of attitude that could see Enid growing up to be as lonely as Seymour.

Adapted from a comic book, Terry Zwigoff’s offbeat comedy is plenty clever and contains a number of indelible comic moments, but like The Royal Tenenbaums, the comedy bubbles up in a sea of melancholy and human truth. The relationships between these characters are flawless and fascinating — Enid and Rebecca, as their friendship falls apart post-high school, as teen friendships tend to do, and Enid and Seymour, whose relationship is tender with some underlying romantic tension that’s never as creepy as it easily could be. Ghost World captures the tender age between childhood and adulthood perfectly, with a level of stark, sobering truth that’s rare in a “teen movie.” (This is one of those only in the most technical sense.) It’s one of the best comedies of the past 15 years… or maybe ever.

1. A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

This might be one of Steven Spielberg’s more divisive movies — in more ways than one. In it, you can feel Spielberg’s sentimental instincts grappling to stay buoyant while tangling with Stanley Kubrick’s more nihilistic worldview.

It is the story of David, an artificial intelligence in the form of a sweet-faced boy. (You didn’t get more sweet-faced in 2001 than Haley Joel Osment, hot off his iconic turn in 1999’s The Sixth Sense.) David is programmed to love his adoptive family, but these humans, of course, are not programmed to love him back. When their own child awakens from a coma, their fear of David’s synthetic origins overwhelms the complex feelings they’ve grown for him, and he is abandoned. That’s where the family drama ends, and an entirely different sort of adventure begins.

Based on the short story “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long,” A.I. is like a fairy tale, but not the sweet Disney-fied rewrites we remember. We’re talking original Brothers Grimm style stuff. Its depiction of the future is both awesome and hellish, and absolutely one of my favorite cinematic imaginings of the future. And how can you not love a story about a lost little boy and his talking teddy bear that has them meet up with a gigolo for the rest of their adventures? Though there are blatant echoes of Pinocchio in the text, A.I. also feels like a fucked up version of The Wizard Of Oz, as a child meets up with an array of unusual friends on his quest toward the big city.

It comes as no shocker that Jude Law makes a pitch perfect male prostitute, because in 2001, who didn’t want to sleep with him? But this is also one of his best and unheralded performances. The whole movie, in fact, is underrated despite coming from one of the highest profile filmmakers out there — it earned only two Oscar nods in a year where more people were focused on the first of Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings movies. (Though as you can tell by these ranking, I find Spielberg’s vision of A.I. a lot more compelling.)

It may take a few viewings to fully appreciate the brilliant and beautiful strangeness of this story, but it ranks amongst Spielberg’s best work. Even coming from such a blockbuster auteur, it’s one of the most creative and memorable pieces of cinema from this era, and I’m not alone in holding it in even higher esteem now than I did upon its release in the summer of 2001.

BEST ACTRESS

Sissy Spacek, In The Bedroom
Halle Berry, Monster’s Ball
Judi Dench, Iris
Jennifer Connolly, A Beautiful Mind
Thora Birch, Ghost World

BEST ACTOR

Jim Broadbent, Iris
Gene Hackman, The Royal Tenenbaums
Tom Wilkinson, In The Bedroom
Billy Bob Thornton, Monster’s Ball
Denzel Washington, Training Day

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Marisa Tomei, In The Bedroom
Maggie Smith, Gosford Park
Kate Winslet, Iris
Gwyneth Paltrow, The Royal Tenenbaums
Cameron Diaz, Vanilla Sky

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Jude Law, A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Steve Buscemi, Ghost World
Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast
Ian McKellen, The Fellowship Of The Ring
Peter Boyle, Monster’s Ball

BEST SCREENPLAY

Gosford Park
Memento
The Royal Tenenbaums
Ghost World
In The Bedroom

BEST DIRECTOR

Peter Jackson
Ridley Scott
Robert Altman
Steven Spielberg
Christopher Nolan

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Fellowship Of The Ring
Black Hawk Down
Moulin Rouge
Vanilla Sky

*

Recently, in this galaxy, I saw a film called Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and I bet you did too.

The film has already grossed a predictably record-shattering $240(ish) million in the United States, and more than twice that worldwide. The internet and all media and every single human person on the planet are abuzz with all things Star Wars. And here’s some more.

My childhood was consumed mostly by Batman and Jurassic Park. I saw the original Star Wars trilogy, first on VHS and then in the theaters when they were re-released with new “cutting edge” digital effects. And I somehow managed to see all the prequels, which I started out liking well enough. (Contrary to popular belief, I think Revenge Of The Sith was the woooorst. So much squandered potential!)

Truth be told, I was never a huge Star Wars person. I admired the original trilogy, and like all sane people, believe that The Empire Strikes Back is the strongest entry in the series. But 2015 already saw the reawakening of my favorite franchise in Jurassic World, so the Star Wars mania is largely lost on me. (I’m also not as big of a fan of the most recent Star Trek films as many are.) I was coming into The Force Awakens with reasonable expectations and moderate excitement.

It met those expectations.At this point, anticipation for a new Star Wars movie is such that Kathleen Kennedy and Disney could have turned the reigns over to Lars Von Trier and it still would have broken box office records. They could have done anything. They played it safe. Abrams has proven his skill at jumping into existing franchises (Mission: Impossible), rebooting dormant franchises (Star Trek), and flat-out aping the style of a legendary auteur (Super 8). There was probably no safer bet than J.J. Abrams to make a crowd-pleasing, down-the-middle Star Wars movie. And that would have been enough.

But the movie gods were smiling upon us, because Abrams, Kennedy, Michael Arndt, and Lawrence Kasdan did something they really didn’t need to do — they made it good. At a Q&A following my screening, Abrams and his co-writers explained that, before they broke the story, they sat down and thought about what the audience wanted from this movie. They came up with some concepts: “mythic,” “fun,” “caring about characters.” This is a sensible thing to do, of course — but it’s not the way movies like this are generally made. Can you imagine what might happen if every director and producer of a blockbuster took the time to consider what the audience actually wants? Not what toys they’d buy, or how they’ll be affected by marketing. Just what they want. What a concept!

They thought about what the audience would like to see, and then they put a girl and a black dude at the center of the action in what could very well become the biggest grossing movie of all time. They could just as easily have not. Would anyone be terribly surprised if the new Star Wars starred a beefy white dude? That’s what we’ve come to expect from this kind of thing. But Kennedy, Abrams, and Disney elected to use their very secure position as helmers of the most anticipated film of all time to give us a film that checks off both the “race” and “gender” boxes. (Now where’s our gay Wookie?)Of course, there’s already been plenty of praise for the team in giving us something besides the usual white male protagonist we find at the center of every other blockbuster. What The Force Awakens manages to do so expertly is make that choice organic to the story, without having it feel, um… forced. Despite the welcome return of the original trilogy’s core cast — Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill — the latest Star Wars introduces us to new characters who are so immediately compelling, the older cast is hardly needed at all. (But hey, it’s great to see them!)

After one movie, Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, and Kylo Ren manage to feel instantly iconic and just as essential to this universe as Han, Luke, Darth Vader, and Leia — no small feat, considering these are the most beloved cinematic characters of all time. Daisy Ridley and John Boyega are the MVPs of The Force Awakens, though Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac aren’t far behind. (Meanwhile, folks like Lupita N’yongo, Simon Pegg, and Gwendoline Christie appear also, though less directly.) The Force Awakens gets its characters exactly right, which is not something you can say for every reboot. The script is spry and amusing, hitting all the major beats a true Star Wars picture needs.The story, on the other hand, is lifted directly from the original trilogy — which, along with the look of the film, makes The Force Awakens feel as much like we’re watching it on VHS in 1983 as a new theatrical experience. (Thankfully, Abrams uses more practical effects than George Lucas did in his misbegotten prequels, having learned well from Lucas’ failures.) This, perhaps, causes The Force Awakens to fall a wee bit short of being truly mind-blowing entertainment. (I’m hoping for the more daring, more visionary Rian Johnson to remedy that in the next installment.) The Force Awakens is basically A Not-So-New Hope, which might have been disappointing if the new cast didn’t come in feeling so fresh and invigorating, and so ready to carry more Star Wars movies.

Abrams’ aptitude for mimicry is at its peak in The Force Awakens. He’s not the guy you go to for a breathtaking original vision, so you won’t find that here. The story beats are simple. Some work quite well. Others, you can ignore and move past. The emotions are as big and broad as they were in the 70s and 80s, but thankfully without the overwrought, melodramatic earnestness the prequels strived for. Somewhat surprisingly, The Force Awakens makes virtually zero updates for a 21st century audience. Everything looks the same, feels the same, is the same — except for the excitement of having characters like Finn and Rey at the heart of the action. Abrams doesn’t even create any new set pieces — every setting is borrowed from the original trilogy. Desert planet? Check. Snowy place? Check. Forest? Check. Incredibly dangerous-looking thin walkway on a Death Star over a gaping chasm? Check!There are literally dozens of callbacks to tropes from the originals. Meanwhile, the humor is of the brand Joss Whedon brought to The Avengers — as well as Serenity, his space opera that borrowed heavily from Star Wars, which Abrams may be aping here. (Serenity was basically really good Star Wars fan fiction, but it beat The Force Awakens to the punch with its kickass heroine.) The Force Awakens also has a fairly lame, Marvel-y supervillain named Snoke (Andy Serkis) who is this story’s weakest link, and through Domnhall Gleeson’s General Hux, the Nazi symbolism is laid on about ten times thicker than it really needed to be.

It’s hard to say what a new Star Wars would have looked like if episodes I, II, and III hadn’t been so dismaying. Would dipping back in that original well have worked if fans didn’t need so desperately for a new film to reclaim that old magic? It’s only because Lucas went so astray that it works for Abrams to take us right back to the original Lucas, giving us new versions of old scenes from A New Hope. (And a few homages to Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi, too.) Star Wars is never not going to be successful, but from a creative standpoint, the series flatlined with the arc told between The Phantom Menace and Revenge Of The Sith. From a conceptual level, a Darth Vader origin stories could be great, but not a single beat of it was satisfying or resonant in execution.

There’s never any financial risk in making new Star Wars. Sure, people could hate it, but a lot of people hated the prequels and they still made gobs of money. Lots of movies people generally hate manage to make gobs of money. Allowing Daisy Ridley to be the new Luke Skywalker — a true epic hero — was never going to cause Star Wars fans to riot and refuse to see the new movie, but it’s an admirable choice all the same. And more than that — it made for a better movie.

It takes a man with Abrams’ strengths — and even his weaknesses — to get a franchise like this back on track, and now that it’s been reawakened, I hope to see it do more. This is the Force’s awakening — but once it’s had its morning coffee, then maybe we’ll really see something bold. Abrams needed to get back to basics to earn the audience’s trust back, but from here, Star Wars can go just about anywhere. So let’s hope it doesn’t just stay stuck in the past. I hope that the nostalgia ends here, with this movie, and Johnson feels free to take more creative and stylistic risks in the next one.

For the time being, I’m optimistic that that’s exactly what can happen, while being content with what we got. Looks like this Star Wars thing may have some staying power…

*

America is a land of opportunity, beckoning thousands across the globe to come to these shores in celebration of freedom and liberty.

If you’re a cute white girl from Ireland, at least.

Yes, it’s an ironic time for a dewy-eyed film that romanticizes immigration to America, but that’s exactly what Brooklyn is. Saoirse Ronan has been earning raves, nominations, and critical awards for her portrayal of Eilis, a guileless Irish girl who exits her modest hometown across the sea for the bright lights and big city of… Brooklyn.

Before it was a hipster enclave, Brooklyn was a refuge for a diverse range of immigrants, it turns out (who knew?) — most notably, in this film, Irish and Italians. Eilis acquires a job in a department store under the watchful eye of Miss Fortini (Mad Men‘s Jessica Pare) and takes up residence in a boarding house for girls under the even more watchful eye of Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters). She also begins school to learn to be an accountant, just like her sister back home. Eilis’ fellow boarders are gossipy, but she soon develops a sort of friendship with them, as well as her coworkers. But it isn’t until she meets a strapping stranger at a dance that she truly feels at home.

That strapping stranger would be Tony, an Italian boy winningly played by Emory Cohen, who manages to ooze old fashioned charm without ever quite becoming gooey. It’s plain to see how Eilis falls for this man, because as written by Nicholas Hornby, he’s absolutely perfect: good-looking, kind-hearted, emotionally mature, and he has a warm and welcoming family. Okay, so maybe he’s “just” a plumber and is sensitive about his lack of smarts (though he never really does anything dumb), but he’s a catch, and Eilis knows it. Then again, Eilis herself is pretty immaculate — and so, for that matter, is just about everyone in this movie.

That’s what kept me at a distance from Brooklyn, the very definition of a handsome picture, but one that idealizes the immigrant experience and this era (1952). Most of this can probably be pinned on Colm Toibin, the author of the book it’s based on. It’s not necessarily a bad thing to concoct a story that’s almost totally pleasant, about a girl who is torn between two perfectly wonderful paths to take her life down. When tragedy brings her back to Ireland, Eilis meets another absolutely perfect gentleman who is totally taken with her — Jim (Domnhall Gleeson). At this point, Eilis’ life in Ireland is rosier than it was when she had to leave — she has a good job and a fine man handed to her, as well as family obligations. There’s a chance she won’t ever make it back to Tony.

The film makes that choice palpable, and it should resonate with anyone who’s ever left a humble hometown in hopes of greater career opportunities elsewhere. What doesn’t resonate quite so well is just how easily it all comes to Eilis, and how little she does to get any of it. Her home and first job are set up by the kindly Father Flood (Jim Broadbent), who also finds a benefactor to pay for her school. Both Tony and Jim relentlessly pursue her with boundless romantic attention. When Eilis returns to Ireland in what she thinks will be a brief stay, she gets handed another job. She also starts dressing like a 1950s movie star, even though she’s only an accountant, with no clues as to how she got the means or fashion sense for the transformation. The moral of this story? Eilis is one lucky immigrant.Brooklyn is a pleasant trip if you don’t mind an uncomplicated (and, frankly, unrealistic) drama that’s pure escapism. The charm of its performers, plus some engaging scene work by Nick Hornby, is enough to ensure that it goes down easy, though it’s surprisingly lightweight for a film that’s getting so much hype during awards season. (Director John Crowley has done more impressive work in the unfortunately underseen Boy A, starring Andrew Garfield.) Further off the radar is Mustang, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s drama about five sisters living in a Turkish village under increasingly strict supervision from their elders. Mustang is France’s official entry in the Academy Awards race, so it’s not totally obscure, but it’s the sort of foreign film that is destined to go unseen by mainstream moviegoers, which is a shame. In many ways, Mustang is the anti-Brooklyn: Brooklyn‘s Eilis has boundless opportunities handed to her throughout the film, and doesn’t do much with them, while Mustang‘s spirited young protagonist has no freedom and still manages to assert her independence, through the sheer force of her will.

Mustang will immediately call to mind two movies, if you’ve seen them — Dogtooth, the super-weird tale of Greek siblings growing up completely cut off from the outside world, and The Virgin Suicides, which was also about five sisters who find themselves living in captivity when their family grows fearful of their burgeoning sexuality. Like The Virgin Suicides, Mustang is directed by a woman, which is certainly not essential in crafting a smart, entertaining piece of moviemaking about women, but often helps.

Mustang begins with five young girls frolicking innocently with some schoolboys in the sea. Lale, Nur, Ece, Selma, and Sonay have done nothing to be ashamed of, but gossip about what might have occurred is damaging enough. The girls are taken to get their virginity tested, and soon comes a string of suitors to whisk them away one by one, starting with the eldest. Mustang is not merely a foreign rehash of The Virgin Suicides, however, thanks to two key factors. First, it is set in Turkey, far from the more cosmopolitan Istanbul, in a society that is much less liberal than 1970s America, the setting of Virgin Suicides. Second, unlike Virgin Suicides, the story is not told through the lens of a male narrator; in fact, males don’t play a terribly important role in Mustang at all — at least, specific males don’t. Some of the girls have flings and romances, but we hardly know the men at all — because neither do they, really. Often, we see only glimpses of the boys in question, or catch sight of them from a distance. The quintet of teen sisters is being married off to men they’ve spent a mere handful of minutes with one by one, as per the tradition of their culture. So in a sense, we the audience get to know these men about as well as the girls do before they’re expected to perform their “wifely duties” — which, of course, includes the ritual sacrifice of their oh-so-precious virginities, culminating in the incredibly awkward parental “viewing” of the blood-stained bedsheet that confirms they haven’t been ripped off with an “impure” bride.

Mustang is a reminder of the way girls are essentially bought and sold in certain cultures (and the latent remnants of those restrictions that still linger in cultures as “liberated” as America in 2015). The only value young women have is as a virgin bride, thus their families stop at nothing to protect a teenage girl’s purity. It is not impossible to marry for love, but it’s much rarer than marrying as a mutually beneficial “arrangement.” Once these sisters are married off, we don’t see much of them, just as our young protagonist Lale doesn’t. Lale is losing her sisters one by one, much earlier than she probably should — and she alone is willing to fight back against this culture and all its traditions, against every preconceived notion the older generation has about its young women.

Mustang does a fantastic job at distinguishing each of the girls’ disparate personalities without making any of them a mere “type” — Sonay is boy-crazy, Lale is feisty, Nur is a follower, Selma is reserved, Ece is moody and unknowable, but there are layers of depth to each. (Günes Sensoy, Elit Iscan, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu, and Ilayda Akdogan turn in flawless turns as the sisters, each bringing a very different dynamic to the group.) Similarly, the girls’ family — mainly, their grandmother and uncle, charged with raising them (we never learn what happened with the parents) — are certainly villains in a sense, but also human beings whose motives are clear. Little by little, they start taking the girls’ freedoms away. It isn’t long before the girls aren’t allowed to leave the house, and then before they’re literally trapped in the house. The only escape is in the clutches of a male suitors’ arms. The price is merely the rest of their lives.

It’s easy to imagine a movie like Mustang wallowing in misery, presenting a tragic tale of powerless young girls undone by a patriarchal culture. We’ve seen that before. There are a handful of tragic moments in Mustang, but ultimately this is a hopeful and energetic film, one that speaks to a changing tide rather than an all-consuming status quo. The world is changing. Girls are getting stronger. Generation by generation, in many cultures, women are growing more confident, more educated, better able to stand up to oppression. In this case, the buck stops with Lale, who refuses to be reduced to a commodity, who will not allow her worth to valued around her eligibility as a virgin bride. The film’s climax is a pitch perfect act of revenge — but it’s the kind of simple revenge a child would dream up, not the blood-soaked, Tarantino-style reverie you’d expect from a different sort of movie, and it’s followed by an exhilarating attempt to escape the family’s clutches, and this society itself. The film’s conclusion perfectly and subtly speaks to exactly how important education is to young women in cultures like these (a point that could have been hammered home in much more obvious fashion, and thankfully wasn’t).Mustang is an unpredictable experience — you’re never quite sure how dark it’ll get. The script by Deniz Gamze Ergüven and Alice Winocour perfectly captures the sisterhood between the girls and leaves the older sisters a bit of a mystery, as older sisters tend to be to a young girl like Lale. These older girls succumb to their fates as so many before them have, but Lale makes the bold and unlikely choice to fight back. The script avoids almost every cliche, save one late-blooming revelation involving the uncle, which could have been eliminated — particularly involving an adult man (Burak Yigit) who takes a friendly interest in Lale and aids in her rebellion to the extent that he’s able.

All in all, Mustang is one of 2015’s very best films. In a year that’s already perhaps a record-best for women in cinema, it’s the film that most perfectly encapsulates the feminist spirit of the movies released in the last twelve months. (But more on this in my forthcoming Top Ten.) Nothing against Brooklyn, which has plenty of well-written female characters, but Lale’s journey to Istanbul is infinitely more involving than Eilis’ trip to and from Brooklyn, because Lale really earns her freedom. She really works for it, challenging every convention and boundary along the way. With any luck, Mustang will at least make it into the Best Foreign Film race at this year’s Oscars. After seeing it, I believe that Lale could make it just about anywhere.*

I’m not much of a Quentin Tarantino fanboy, because I’m not generally a fan of any filmmaker who keeps making the same movie, with little variation. I have this problem with Wes Anderson. Some people just love their quirks, and love returning to that same formula again and again. I don’t. After a few such films, I begin to crave something new.

That said, Tarantino films tend to rank reasonably highly for me. They are vibrant and unusual, even if certain aspects grow predictable over time. They defy convention and formulas, except that now they all adhere to the same Tarantino formula — and is that really any different or better, when you still see what’s coming from a mile away? The dialogue crackles, while there is almost always a conceptual problem in the storytelling, such as, why are the Inglourious Basterds all but expendable from the story of Inglorious Basterds? His movies seem to set out to do one thing, and then they get distracted with another character or storyline, and that becomes what the movie is about. Usually, it’s still a fun diversion. But isn’t it about time Quentin Tarantino tried something different?

Some would argue that The Hateful Eight is that something different, but it is not. It has bits and pieces of every other Tarantino movie. It is a Frankenstein’s monster.

Much of the cast is obviously returning from other Tarantino joints — Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown and Django Unchained, Kurt Russell and Zoe Bell from Death Proof, Michael Madsen from Kill Bill, Tim Roth from Reservoir Dogs (who you’d practically swear was Christophe Waltz from Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained). That’s fine — there are also some new faces in Tarantinoland, like Bruce Dern, Channing Tatum, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, and most notably, Jennifer Jason Leigh. The look and setting are most recognizable from Tarantino’s last film, Django Unchained. This one takes place a handful of years after the Civil War and is still very much dealing with white men versus black men. This territory feels slightly old hat for Tarantino, not only because of Django, but also because he basically always likes calling attention to race, whether it’s relevant or not. The dreaded “N” word runs rampant here, but feels organic to the characters who spout it. It didn’t particularly bother me in the context of Reconstruction-era Hateful Eight, but I wouldn’t blame anyone who is growing tired of it.Tarantino has done a number of variations on the Western already, which is why Hateful Eight mostly feels like a hodgepodge of Kill Bill and Django Unchained, with the modest scale of Reservoir Dogs thrown in for no good reason. A majority of the film takes place in a very contained interior location, and the rest largely takes place in the confines of a stagecoach. It would have been admirable that Tarantino was going for such a small-scale story — if he’d had the balls to stick to it.

But midway through The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino does what Quentin Tarantino has always done before. He gives in to the storytelling crutches that essentially redefined cinema in 1994 with the release of Pulp Fiction, and have been growing steadily staler ever since. He throws in a long chapter that’s out of chronological order, he inserts himself into the movie, and he gets cute — and, in doing so, wholly ruins the suspense he’s so painstakingly built up in the first act of this decidedly two-act movie.

Tarantino’s excesses are the reason that many people love Tarantino movies. It doesn’t make much fiscal sense to do a “bottle episode”-style movie set in one location, and then shoot and distribute it in extravagantly costly 70mm. But whatever! It’s Tarantino! I can get over this, and could maybe even love it in a movie that had better follow-through.

About midway through The Hateful Eight, I was impressed. I knew there was gruesome violence coming, but there hadn’t been any gruesome violence yet. The film is drawn out and talky, but in a way that felt true to its characters, with less showboating than you often get from a Tarantino script. There was even some subtlety — not a lot, but a little. For a moment there, I wondered if maybe we were going to get through an entire Tarantino movie without a major rewind sequence.

Nope! It’s here, and so is everything else. It certainly feels like Quentin Tarantino originally intended to do something different with this movie. A “locked room” mystery (in this case, technically, a “nailed shut because there’s a blizzard outside” mystery). A film that insinuates more than it shows. A story that leaves room for ambiguity, that lets the audience use their imagination to fill in the gaps. A contained number of cast members. (Eight, perhaps?) A movie that unfolds in straightforward fashion, all linear-like, in what feels a lot like real time.Somewhere in the sprawling three-hour extravaganza that is The Hateful Eight is a nice, tight two-hour movie that could have been sublime. It would still be very Tarantino, because there’s blood everywhere in that last hour. Multiple heads explode. And up until then, there’s plenty of idle chatter. Of course, nobody these days goes to a Tarantino movie expecting “nice,” “tight,” or “two hours.” So who am I kidding? The problem is that it seems like Tarantino set out to make that movie here, or else why bother with the single location? The Hateful Eight has been compared to a stage play, which it almost is, except stage plays don’t have flashbacks that suddenly introduce a whole cast of disposable new characters. (As opposed to disposable old characters. In Tarantino movies, all characters are ultimately disposable.) Many won’t agree with me on this, but I’ll say it anyway: that flashback sequence ruins everything this movie is going for, in one fell swoop.

Tarantino doesn’t trust his audience to put the pieces together. He loves his own imagination so much that he won’t allow anything to be left up to ours. If we hear tell that there’s been a brutal bloodbath earlier, you can sure as hell bet we’re going to see every single bullet wound from that shootout, even if it adds nothing to the forward momentum of the story.

The second act of The Hateful Eight begins with an Agatha Christie-style whodunit, the answer to which is painfully obvious. The entire movie doesn’t hinge on that, but Tarantino stages the big reveal like it is a big reveal, and it is certainly not. He also makes the bizarre choice to interrupt a certain point in the movie with his own voiceover narration, which is the equivalent of Steven Spielberg’s booming voice cutting into a scene in Jaws in order to say: “Hey, guys, there’s a shark coming. Big, scary shark coming… right… about… now.” And then there’s a shark. Jaws famously works as well as it does because the mechanical shark malfunctioned, forcing Spielberg to insinuate much of the suspense. What’s left to the imagination is nearly always more powerful than what we see, but Tarantino disagrees. In The Hateful Eight, we see absolutely everything.

And we’ve seen it. Every character in The Hateful Eight will remind you of at least one character from a previous Tarantino movie. Every moment recalls a scene he’s staged before. A lot of moviegoers will be perfectly content to do it all over again. Eight times around, it’s still as fun as the first. I wouldn’t mind so much if this film weren’t set up as something different. If this story wasn’t just begging to be as intimate and contained as its setup would suggest. Would a Tarantino movie stripped of the director’s most irksome excesses still be a Tarantino movie? I think it would. Did Tarantino not trust himself, or not trust his fans? Did he try and write a simpler, more straightforward film, and then panic? Can he really just not help but throw in a whole unnecessary flashback sequence that bloats his film far past a sensible running time?

I was never bored during The Hateful Eight. There are characters and themes here I really enjoyed, and a lot of moments to savor — particularly in the superior first half. (I may very well be in the minority, preferring the staid first half to the explosive second.) There’s plenty of juicy discussion to dive into involving race and gender, and specific plot points that are worth dissecting, both bad and good. But then again, all of this potential is swallowed by a couple of severe miscalculations on Tarantino’s part — in my eyes, some of the most egregious errors made by any filmmaker this year.

I don’t mind a nearly three hour film per se, except that this film would be infinitely better if it weren’t. If Tarantino wants to go crazy with chronology and too many characters, godspeed! He’s done it before, and will undoubtedly do so again. But if he wants to make a contained Ten Little Indians murder mystery that feels like theater, I wish he’d just do it — as economically as such a thing should be. The Hateful Eight is like a great little chamber piece that’s been put on the rack and tortured by Tarantino until it barely resembles what it used to be.

It is my least favorite film by Quentin Tarantino.*

“Inspired by the true stories of daring women.”

That’s the title card that precedes David O. Russell’s Joy, the story of an entrepreneur who becomes a titan of the Home Shopping Network. But it would work just as well preceding so many movies from 2015, which has proven itself to be a remarkable year for films about women.

There were still a handful of very male films at the multiplex, of course — movies like The Revenant and Bridge Of Spies and The Big Short don’t have much of a female presence, not to mention any number of more forgettable titles. But this year, perhaps for the first time in history, they were the exception and not the rule. The new Mission: Impossible had a female spy who was as capable and charismatic as Ethan Hunt along every step of the way. The macho title character took a backseat to Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, which also featured a gang of ass-kicking grannies. And the highest-grossing film of all time handed the reigns of the galaxy’s most beloved franchise to Daisy Ridley’s Skywalker surrogate Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

And those are just the blockbusters. It’s hard to list the number of smaller films centered on women. But here are a few: Victoria. Joy. Carol. Brooklyn. Phoenix. Chi-Raq. Room. Girlhood. The Final Girls. It Follows. Heaven Knows What. Queen Of Earth. Clouds Of Sils Maria. The Age Of Adaline. The Duke Of Burgundy. The Diary Of A Teenage Girl. Unconventional women were the heroines of comedies like Trainwreck and Spy, where they got to behave in ways that usually only men get to. Even in movies that place males front and center, women got to play more than the usual weepy love interest or damsel in distress — I’m thinking of The Martian, Creed, and maybe even the second biggest film of the year, Jurassic World. (But running from a T-Rex in heels makes that kind of debatable, don’t you think?)

Even the current Best Picture front-runner (in a weird and unpredictable awards season), Spotlight, gave Rachel McAdams’ journalist equal weight with the boys. There were no concessions for Sacha being “the girl” on the team, which in a sense is the most progressive move of all. For years, women in movies have been depicted as having to prove themselves in the workplace, Erin Brockovich-style, but Spotlight eliminates that nonsense. I’m fairly certain that Sacha’s gender goes entirely unmentioned in the film.

So Joy isn’t one of my very favorite films this year, but it’s invocation of “daring women” is emblematic of what 2015 brought to the screen. Women got to be daring, and they got to be a lot of other things, too. My Top Ten films aren’t all about women, but they all have something to say about them. I didn’t plan it that way. This just happens to be the year that so many movies got it right when it comes to how women are depicted on screen.

10. TANGERINE

My #10 slot was particularly challenging to fill this year, with a number of worthy contenders vying for representation. It came down to a bout between Creed, the seventh entry in the hit Rocky franchise, the first entry of which won the Best Picture Oscar for 1976, and Tangerine, a scrappy low-budget indie shot entirely on an iPhone.

It occurred to me that the face-off between these two films resembles a Rocky movie itself: in one corner, Tangerine, the underdog, a feisty, foul-mouthed story about two transsexual prostitutes that has no real shot at an Academy Award; in the other corner, Creed, which, like its title character, descends from prestigious lineage, featuring a major movie star who’s been around for decades (Sylvester Stallone), turning in a supporting performance that may well be poised to win him his first Oscar.

I have no deep connection to the Rocky series, but Creed is a big Hollywood boxing movie made as well as one can be by Ryan Coogler, who showed with Fruitvale Station that he was an up-and-comer to watch, and now has fully delivered on that promise. Michael B. Jordan carries the movie effortlessly (and should also be Oscar-nominated this year, though that’s not a sure thing) and Stallone delivers his most moving performance (…ever?). There’s no denying that Creed, like its predecessors, is by necessity a male-dominated movie, but it does make room for Phylicia Rashad as Apollo Creed’s adoptive mother, fully fleshed-out with just a handful of minutes on screen, and Tessa Thompson as Bianca, a promising musician who is slowly going deaf. Love interests in male-centric movies rarely get much to do, but Bianca is a fascinating, fiery character in her own right — you would happily watch a separate movie all about Bianca. In a year that’s been so good for women, you have to hand it to Creed to ensure that even the Rocky franchise is following the changing tide.

Rocky films tend to split the difference in their climactic bouts, having the establishment boxer win the fight overall, with the underdog winning in spirit. I guess I’m flipping that by announcing Tangerine as my official winner, while Creed earns a special place in my heart as one of the year’s best studio surprises. Reportedly shot for around $100,000 and pulling in less than $1 million at the box office, Tangerine is the very definition of a scrappy underdog, certainly rough around the edges. The performances in its opening scene are a little shaky, and the editing can be jarring in moments. But Tangerine has more vitality and raw spirit than just about any other movie this year. The lightweight camera races through the grimy, golden streets of Hollywood following Sin-Dee Rella, who has just wrapped up a month in jail and is now hell-bent on finding the “real fish” her fiance has been cheating with. Her best friend, Alexandra, is more concerned with a performance she’s giving at Hamburger Mary’s that night, and harboring a bit of a secret on the side. Meanwhile, a cab driver named Razmik is cruising around, picking up fares and occasionally stopping for a little action with these ladies. Oh, and did I mention it’s Christmas Eve? This is a Christmas movie unlike any other.

It’s been a banner year for trans visibility in media, and Tangerine is the antidote to I Am Cait. The film’s vibrant colors and energetic soundtrack mask cheap production (which is still impressive, considering) in ways that match how Sin-Dee and Alexandra use makeup, synthetic hair, and hormones to appear more feminine than their bodies were initially programmed to be. These women don’t have the money for a phone or an apartment, so this low-budget camera meets them at their level, walking the streets right alongside them, almost as if one of them is capturing all this action on an iPhone. These are not the sterilized hookers-with-hearts-of-gold you find in most movies — director Sean Baker’s depiction of prostitution in Los Angeles smacks of utter authenticity in ways that are both glorious and painful to behold.

But what works even better are Tangerine‘s micro moments of transcendent loveliness, such as Alexandra’s glum but touching performance of “Toyland” on Christmas Eve, or the heartwarming act of friendship that plays out in the film’s final scene. By most people’s standards, these women don’t have much, but Sin-Dee and Alexandra are living lives that feel true to them and fighting every step of the way to do so. With Tangerine and his 2012 film, Starlet, Baker has proven adept at telling stories about underexplored relationships involving people we might be quick to write off otherwise. Of all the emerging auteurs out there, he’s one of the ones I’m most excited to watch. (Tangerine is streaming on Netflix. Read my original review here.)

9. SLOW WEST

The Western genre has typically lacked in rich female characters (though I know there are a handful of exceptions). It’s usually a good guy, a bad guy, a few other guys, and maybe a “saloon girl” if we’re lucky.

But there’s nothing typically Western about Slow West, which, despite its title, is pretty fast-moving for this genre, clocking in at a lean, mean 84 minutes. None of its primary actors are American. Michael Fassbender is Irish-German. Kodi Smit-McPhee and Ben Mendelsohn are both Australian. The writer/director John Maclean is Scottish. The film was primarily shot in New Zealand.

So, then, nothing about Slow West is actually American, though it purports to take place in the iconic American west, invoking the quintessential American genre. Because of that, there’s something that feels distinctly “off” in Slow West. The landscapes look like they could be found in the America, but aren’t exactly like the landscapes we’re used to seeing in the genre. The characters are less stoic and more quirky than we usually get, too. Frankly, the film just doesn’t feel very American… because it isn’t. And that’s a weird thing, for a Western.

That’s exactly what makes it feel so fresh and alive — a total revamp of a genre that is more often staid and predictable these days. Slow West doesn’t rely on any particular tropes, borrowing the American west’s setting and iconography for an unconventional tale about Jay Cavendish, a Scottish teenager who travels to America searching for Rose, the girl who captured his heart abroad before taking off to the States. Jay finds the brutish landscape more perilous than expected, which is why he hires bounty hunter Silas Selleck to get him to his destination safely. That turns out to be a tall order, because what Jay doesn’t know is that there’s a bounty on Rose’s head, and Silas is far from the only gunslinger aiming to find her.

Slow West is peppered with moments of grim comedy that might evoke the Coen brothers, as well as flashbacks to more innocent moments between Jay and Rose in Scotland. Ben Mendelsohn appears in a giant fur coat, offering absinthe. The film shows us peripheral glimpses of not just Native Americans for diversity, but a host of cultures we don’t often see in a Western, including an ill-fated Swedish couple. Slow West is, in part, a testament to the American melting pot, showing the chaotic early days of cultural coexistence. (Things have improved, at least slightly.) None of this is what we think about when we think about a Western.

In another neat formulaic twist, the film is narrated by Silas instead of Jay, flipping the classic Shane dynamic, because here it’s actually the man who has something to learn from the boy. Without giving too much away, Slow West also takes time to mourn its dead, and the reasonably light-hearted buildup doesn’t prepare us for the bitter irony of its conclusion, a scene that plays out with prolonged cruelty against audience expectations. As it turns out, Jay is a boy and Rose is a woman, and she is no damsel in distress. Slow West‘s finale is a fascinating revision of the female’s role in a Western, especially after we’ve seen a more typically feminine Rose through Jay’s eyes in the first half of the movie. (As Rose, Caren Pistorius has a relatively brief but pivotal appearance that easily ranks amongst the most badass women of 2015, even alongside this year’s stiff competition.)

What Slow West ultimately evokes more than the Western is a cold-hearted coming-of-age tale. None of us have lived through circumstances like those presented in Slow West, but we may very well relate to how Jay feels when his story ends, if we’ve ever watched a special someone who’s out of our league turn away from us with icy indifference. The events depicted here go sour, but the film’s tone never grows so heavy. Slow West respects the dead, but does not dwell in grief. It moves on. Because that’s what we had to do back then.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (The Revenant) and Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight) also tried to put their own spin on the Western this year, delivering bloated films that felt more like exercises in their stylistic obsessions than cohesive storytelling. That makes me appreciate the lean, mean, and kinda quirky Slow West all the more. I’ve never seen a film quite like it, which is the first time I’ve ever said that about a Western.

8. SICARIO

And speaking of badass women…

Sometimes screenwriters make the mistake of thinking a “tough” woman needs to be a total bitch. And hey, I love bitchy women in cinema more often than not, so this can work. But being strong isn’t necessarily equivalent with being cold and emotionally distant. In Sicario, Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer is scared shitless most of the time, as well she should be, as you would be, but she does her job to the best of her ability anyway. That’s tough.

Blunt’s character was originally written as a man, which makes reading into the gender politics of this film both more interesting and more pointless. This is a story in which a female character is manipulated and deceived by two men who have more power than she does. At one point, her sexuality is used against her to entrap an enemy. It isn’t necessarily because she’s a woman, but the fact that she’s a woman might be what makes her shady superiors think they can get away with using her so callously. In a more conventional film, Kate would spend the third act kicking ass, taking names, and “getting even,” but Sicario has a much different ending than that. It’s more realistic.

As said in my initial review, this is perhaps the first film about the war on drugs that actually feels like a war movie. The forces Kate finds her team up against are impossibly malevolent, and though Kate hopes to take down the evildoers responsible for the acts of horror she’s seen, she ends up only seeing more horror, a web of death and destruction so intricately woven that no one will be able to answer for it all. As it turns out, the agenda of the men she’s working with is not so pure as “catch the bad guys.” It gets increasingly difficult to tell who the bad guys even are.

Sicario is the year’s most intense edge-of-your-seat thriller, filled with dread in every frame (aided very much Johann Johannsson’s vicious score, which sounds like it was composed by the Devil himself). An early scene, in which Kate first accompanies the team to Juarez, is staged so masterfully by Villeneuve, it’s like Hitchcock came back from the dead to show us what he’d do in the 21st century. Emily Blunt’s performance is key to the film’s success — you can feel her terror in so many moments as she realizes she’s out of her depth, yet she never turns back. Blunt’s character doesn’t need to be a woman for the film to work, but it’s more complex if she is, and I have a hard time imagining her male contemporaries playing the part this well — truly allowing us to see how fearful Macer is throughout this. (Most would go for the stoic tough guy approach.) And that’s key to the film’s success. (Props also to Benicio Del Toro, who turns in a disturbingly solid performance as a teammate who is not what he seems.)

Sicario isn’t another story about a team of super competent FBI agents going up against the enemy; it’s meant to take place in the real world, where the stakes and scope of the fight aren’t always clear, where institutional agendas get criss-crossed until nothing of substance is being accomplished at all. This is more than just slick entertainment. Through Kate, we experience a world more horrific than we imagined, as if Villeneuve has promised to serve a five course meal, but what he ultimately puts on the plate is just a rotting corpse. But Sicario isn’t cynical, as much as it is bleak. Through Kate, we hold out hope for humanity, even against such unspeakable evil. There are women (and men) out there who will fight the good fight, no matter the cost.

7. MUSTANG

Five sisters are trapped in captivity by a family that fears their inevitably budding sexuality. That’s the plot of The Virgin Suicides as well as Mustang, which finds its young heroines increasingly cut off from the rest of the world.

But Mustang takes place in Turkey, in a part of that country that still adheres to antiquated customs of courtship between men and women. (“Women” seems like the wrong term. These are very clearly girls.) It’s a poignant and potent reminder that, as much progress is left to be made in America when it comes to gender equality, there are places out there far worse off than we are, and here’s one of them.

In Mustang, an innocent afternoon of splashing around with some teen boys in the sea becomes a life-changing event for Lale and her four older sisters. They find themselves unable to leave their home, which increasingly resembles a caged compound, at the hands of their strict uncle and anxious grandmother. In its early scenes, Mustang is merely one of the best recent films about the untamed spirit of young girls as the sisters find inventive ways to bend or break the rules, at one point escaping to a soccer game, and later engaging in more perilous activities. But the innocent haze of childhood can’t last forever. One by one, Lale’s sisters accept their fates as they are married off, whether joyously or morosely or sacrificially. At this point, Lale becomes the beating heart of Mustang, for she is the one who decides to spit in the face of convention and make her own choice. Lale’s sisters become tragic figures, mostly, but Lale herself refuses to be a victim of conformity to a patriarchal society.

In a year that so notably had so many appealing films about women, Mustang is the only film on my list that was actually made by a woman, one of few films I saw this year with that distinction. Strong female characters are bubbling up all over the place, but they’re doing so in films made by men, with only a few notable exceptions. The Diary Of A Teenage Girl helmer Marielle Heller made a promising debut in 2015, as did Infinitely Polar Bear‘s Maya Forbes. (I have no comment on the female-directed Fifty Shades Of Grey, which I have not seen, but that’s probably a good thing.)

This year, Mustang leads the pack of films made outside of America featuring distinct female protagonists. Many critics adored Phoenix, an odd twist on Vertigo that finds a Holocaust survivor pretending to be another woman to rekindle a relationship with her brutish husband (an idea I liked more in concept than execution, but props for originality). Victoria follows a young waitress in real-time as she gets into increasingly troubled circumstances with a group of young men she’s just met, and it’s a hell of a ride. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter stars Rinko Kikuchi as a Tokyo secretary who becomes obsessed with the movie Fargo and decides to leave her adorable bunny rabbit Bunzo behind in search of hidden money in snowbound Minnesota. White God depicts a teenage girl’s angst in Hungary — which is somewhat mitigated by a large-scale attack by rabid canines. Most apt in comparison to Mustang is Girlhood, which is also French, and similarly displays a realistic and complicated bond between sisters. It’s the story of Marieme, a teen girl with an abusive older brother, who finds her escapism in a new friendship with three other girls who like to fight and party, but she ultimately just longs to go home again.

What makes Mustang so compelling, even amidst the bold females in the films above, is the optimistic nature of its conclusion. Lale is young enough that she doesn’t see the value in conforming to the societal expectations that would make her a desirable bride. We’ve seen tales of young women railing against their family’s marital wishes before (many Disney movies come to mind), but few with heroines as clever and capable as Lale. Mustang is a beacon of hope for rebel girls around the world, declaring that if they fight hard enough not to be boxed in, they can thrive. The film’s lovely conclusion makes you long to see a sequel a few years down the road, checking in on what Lale is up to. Certainly it would be something worth seeing — she’s that kind of girl. (Read a full review here.)

6. CAROL

The Bechdel Test was devised several years back as a method of pushing back against the underrepresentation of women in cinema, poking fun at the obscene number of movies lacking female characters who were anything other than objects of lust and love for male protagonists. The key component of the Bechdel test is whether two women can be found on screen having a conversation, and if so, whether they are talking about something other than a man. You’d think a lot of movies could pass such a simple test, but guess what? They don’t.

This year, however, there are plenty of movies that pass the Bechdel test with flying colors. There was Clouds Of Sils Maria, an endlessly fascinating exploration of the blurred lines between actress and character, as well as between employee and friend, featuring Juliette Binoche as an unstable movie star, Kristen Stewart as her patient assistant, and Chloe Grace Moretz as a bratty celebrity whose career trajectory somewhat mirrors Stewart’s. There was Queen Of Earth, which uses a fractured friendship between Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterson as the jumping off point for a mental breakdown. Studio comedies like Pitch Perfect 2, Sisters, and Spy gave women plenty of time for meaningful interactions, and a few of the Oscar hopefuls pass the test, too — including Room and Brooklyn. It Follows used bloodthirsty evil as a metaphor for the consequences of sex, featuring a trio of girls (and their shy guy pal) warding off a shape-shifting ghost. Most notably, The Duke Of Burgundy depicts a playful lesbian relationship that unfolds in a world populated entirely by women, with no mention of the less fair sex whatsoever.

Does the Bechdel test count in a movie about women who aren’t even interested in men? I mean, sure — why not? In Carol, both the titular character and Therese, the shopgirl Carol  falls for, have men in their lives, but they do their best to discard them. Carol is engaged in a custody battle with Harge for their young daughter, while Therese gives her coldest shoulder to Richard, who isn’t quite taking the hint. The story takes place in 1952, but this is New York City, so girl-on-girl romance isn’t totally unheard of. Carol and Therese’s sexuality goes largely uncommented upon by the world around them, though of course it does factor into how and when they engage in their romance.

Naturally, Carol is not the first gay romance to inspire Oscar buzz. Brokeback Mountain, The Kids Are All Right, and A Single Man, to name a few, have tread in this territory. But Carol is a smaller and quieter tale, one that lives mostly in tiny gestures and furtive glances. There’s no sweeping tragedy, no grandiose, life-changing event — except, of course, for meeting someone you suddenly can’t help but spend all of your time with. Love is always life-changing.

On first viewing, I kept expecting Carol to become a more suspenseful or sinister tale (thanks, perhaps, to it being based on a book by Patricia Highsmith). Carol is older, wealthier, and more experienced than Therese, and formulaic conventions might have us think that Carol will exert her power over Therese in destructive ways, forcing Therese to break free in the film’s final act. Phyllis Nagy’s Carol script turns out to be much nicer than that. It understands that Carol is the more vulnerable figure here. Therese can and will get more opportunities to love again, should what she and Carol have found together not work. But Carol? Maybe not. (Cate Blanchett is aces at conveying that in the film’s final moments.)

The visuals could hardly be more elegant, which comes as no real surprise from Todd Haynes, who played with some of these ideas in his superb Far From Heaven, in which a suburban housewife confronted her husband’s homosexuality. This time, it’s the housewife herself who is so dallying, and who could blame her? (Rooney Mara looks super cute in a Santa hat.) At first, Carol‘s central romance may seem a little chilly in its restraint, but that’s a sign of the times. The stakes are largely internal — these woman will need to risk so much just to be together. It’s a choice between the safety of everything they have now, or each other. But when you find someone so singular, so yin to your yang that they can only be “flung out of space,” as Carol so beautifully puts it, it’s near impossible to ignore that. Like it or not, Carol and Therese have been changed forever merely by meeting each other.

What makes Carol ultimately click is its bookend. We see the same scene unfold in the film’s opening and again at the end. Nothing changes, but the second viewing is accompanied by nail-biting suspense and emotional devastation, just because we’re now seeing it in the context of what it means to these women. I have a feeling that Carol will play better with subsequent viewings, just as this scene means so much more the second time around, because our intimacy with Carol and Therese can only grow stronger. Carol ends somewhat ambiguously, but with room for optimism that is mirrored by many other 2015 films. So many gay films that hit the mainstream end in tragedy. Here, against all odds, we get the sense that Carol and Therese can live happily ever after. And that’s nice for a change.

5. 45 YEARS

Forty-five years is a long time to be married — or to be anything. Waking up next to the same man or woman every day, thousands of times, until you die. Many of us dream of such a thing, of finding the person with whom we will do so happily. Plenty of us do find them. But then, what if something happens — something that makes us question whether we even know this person we’ve gone to bed with for all these years?

Many stories use a destructive event to explore such a notion. Your husband or wife may be a criminal mastermind, serial killer, or maybe just a good old-fashioned philanderer with a penchant for prostitutes. (See above, re: the taxi cab driver in Tangerine.) Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years takes a different approach. Kate and Geoff Mercer live a simple life in the country following Geoff’s retirement, and are a handful days away from their big 45th anniversary bash when Geoff gets news that his ex-girlfriend, Katya, has been discovered in the Swiss Alps — very much dead, but perfectly preserved in her twenty-something body. Geoff tries to dismiss the matter, but lingering signs lead Kate to wonder if she’s always been the runner-up for Geoff’s affections; if Katya was the one true love of his life.

45 Years unfolds slowly but surely, without any histrionics. We must search for what characters really mean between the lines of what they’re saying. Haigh forces us to wonder what his characters are thinking, just as Kate wonders what’s going on in Geoff’s head, just as we all must wonder what’s running through other people’s minds. Katya, preserved in ice, is the perfect metaphor — so many of us have an idealized version of an ex-love, frozen in our minds forever at the very moment that we lost them. We grow old and move on, but our past stays young. Sometimes the person we find to settle down with pales in comparison to that early, burning passion, especially as time wears on. Most often, we don’t speak of such things.

Andrew Haigh told one of the best stories of young(ish) love in Weekend, the story of two men who meet casually in a bar and find a building attraction to one another. The film ends leaving us to wonder if they’ll see each other again. Forty-five years later, such a fling could be looked back upon in the same way Katya is found: perfectly preserved. Lovers who die never get the chance to grow old and disappoint us. The understated lead performances by Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay as Kate and Geoff are immaculate, and the film’s final moment is quietly, mournfully haunting. (That scene, and the film in general, stuck with me more than I expected on first viewing.)

45 Years is based on a short story told from the male partner’s point of view. Haigh’s instincts were correct: it’s a more compelling tale told through Kate’s eyes. In a year of daring women dealing with all sorts of obstacles, Kate Mercer’s predicament somehow manages to be one of the most devastating, even if, on the surface, it’s also the most mundane. Probably because it’s something we can all see ourselves in — perhaps now, perhaps 45 years from now. But someday.

We are all troves of secrets that are best left unmentioned. Can we ever truly know if the one we love loves us the same in return? And, even if we find out… after 45 years, isn’t it a little too late for it to make a difference?

4. MAGIC MIKE XXL

A lot of critics placed a sequel about a guy whose name starts with “M”, and an adjective that does, too, on their year-end “best of” lists. But most picked Mad Max: Fury Road instead of Magic Mike XXL. And that’s fine — Imperator Furiosa is pretty badass. But it’s the movie about the male strippers that superbly showcases women of all shapes, ages, races, and sizes.

The first Magic Mike was my fourth favorite film of 2012. Walking in, I knew it was a Steven Soderbergh joint, but I was still skeptical about how smart and valuable a film about Channing Tatum taking his clothes off could be. As it turns out, very smart and very valuable, and not just as masturbatory material. Magic Mike is one of the savviest movies about the American economy, following a group of guys whose job it is to fulfill women’s fantasies on stage for an hour or two, dressed up as firemen and sailors for a night of bawdy body-baring entertainment. The irony is that this profession costs them their dignity in the eyes of these very same ladies, and makes the women they date look down upon them. Many women’s ultimate fantasy is still a financially stable guy with a well-paying, respectable job, and none of these guys can provide that. “Magic” Mike works day shifts as a construction worker, a profession that prompts cat-calls when he’s on stage, but is, ironically, a turn off in real life. It’s an endlessly fascinating exploration about the dichotomy between sexual fantasy and real world desires.

What the first Magic Mike doesn’t have much of, however, is complex female characters, as it is very focused on its men and their plights. Olivia Munn’s bisexual Joanna is a fun but minor character, and Cody Horn’s Brooke (speaking with the flat affect that Soderbergh so loves in his female characters) is mostly just a representation of the many women who roll their eyes at male strippers and think: “Not for me.” (Especially when it comes to a relationship.) I didn’t necessarily have much hope for a Magic Mike sequel that wasn’t directed by Soderbergh, figuring the studio would attempt to cash in on the first movie’s success by pandering to a squealing female audience. Magic Mike XXL very much does consider its target audience, but does so in an unexpected way: by putting them right up on the screen rather than talking down to them.

The film is basically a road trip through a number of sexy set pieces — a gay club hosted by a feisty drag queen, a “members only” strip joint catering to African-American ladies hosted by a feisty Jada Pinkett Smith, and an affluent ladies’ wine night hosted by a not-at-all feisty Andie MacDowell. Gay men, black women, and middle-aged ladies are all audiences typically underserved by Hollywood, and Magic Mike XXL has a sweet valentine for each of them before its big finale, in which the guys finally get to play out their own dreams and desires. (They’re sweeter than you might expect — mostly.) Tatum’s Mike convinces his bros to get rid of the cheesy costumes and look within for inspiration, allowing these guys to reclaim the dignity they lost over the years of stripping down to a leopard print thong.

The film’s most memorable comedic set piece has Joe Manganiello performing an absurd striptease in a convenience store set to the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way,” with the sole purpose of making the dour female clerk smile. That’s this whole movie in a nutshell — Magic Mike XXL is entirely about bringing pleasure to women, not only by teasing and titillating them, but also through mere representation on screen. Magic Mike XXL lets the ladies in the audience know that it sees them, and is considering their wants and needs. How many movies really do that? (And how many men do?) I would certainly place bets against ever finding a gang of male strippers who are so gooey-hearted in real life, but that’s Magic Mike XXL‘s escapist gambit. It’s a fantasy. While it worked well from a marketing perspective, the title is a misnomer: this stunning sequel should actually be called Magic Mike: Ribbed For Her Pleasure. (Find my initial review here.)

3. INSIDE OUT

And now, for a Disney/Pixar movie about depression! Don’t let the bright, happy colors fool you: unless you are an emotionless machine, Inside Out will utterly wreck you. Don’t forget to take the kids!

I initially saw Inside Out alone on a Monday afternoon in August, two months after the film’s release. There was only one mother and her young daughter in the theater with me. This turned out to be a good thing, so I could cry undetected in the back row. (Yeah, I was that guy.)

I loved the movie. It’s no surprise that the kooky psychological dreamscape Pixar movie ended up being the one for me, but it wasn’t until a second viewing with my three-year-old niece that I fully appreciated how special Inside Out is, as both a movie and more than a movie. Of course, there’s a lot in Inside Out that goes over her head, and will go over the heads of older children, too. The “real world” scenes don’t hold her attention as well as the more colorful sequences set in the mind of an 11-year-old girl do, which is to be expected. But it was startling and amazing to hear her talk about certain plot points in the film — stuff like, “Friendship Island is shutting down!” When she later got a bit pouty, we were able to acknowledge that “her Sadness was taking over.” I’m not a dad, but even I can recognize how valuable Inside Out will be — for generations to come, I think — as a shorthand for parents to discuss emotions with their kids. Some of the ideas this film deals with are hard to put into words, but Inside Out provides the tools.

Inside Out is one of the top grossing films of the year, so chances are you’ve seen it, and the question, “Who’s your friend that likes to play?” will drive you instantly to tears. (Sorry!) I don’t need to recap what works so well in this story. But let’s take a moment to appreciate the fact that, after the Toy Story series lovingly created a boy’s fantasy world, this time around Pixar chose to shed some light on what it feels like for a girl. Disney’s Frozen got all sorts of praise for its girl-power message, but ultimately, it’s just another princess movie. Inside Out, on the other hand, teaches young girls that what truly matters is what’s going on in their brain. I can’t think of a more positive film for young children to watch than this, even if a lot of the humor is clearly aimed at adults. (Including a truly bizarre sequence in which these characters become abstract art.)

Disney films haven’t been afraid of sadness since Bambi’s mom died back in 1942, but this is an entire family film about depression, which in life — as in this film — is the absence of both joy and sadness. In other words, going numb. (Fear, disgust, and anger are all that remain, cleverly.) Mental health isn’t about happiness, it’s about balance, and that’s the whole message Pixar delivers here. It’s startlingly sophisticated for an animated film aimed at families. And as great as it is for kids to get a better grasp of their emotions, this movie serves as a handy tool for adults, too — allowing us to wonder which of our own emotions is at the wheel at any given moment can solve a lot of grown-up problems.

Of all 2015 releases, I think it’s Inside Out that has the best chance of standing the test of time, one that will rank among the very best Disney classics, one that will be referenced consistently as a childhood favorite across generations in fifty years. In short, Inside Out is important.

But also: Rainbow Unicorn is my spirit animal and I’ll never not cry about Bing Bong.2. EX MACHINA

If there’s a theme to be extracted from many of my favorite films this year, it’s: “What’s going on inside that woman?” Carol begins from a male perspective, showing us a perfectly placid dinnertime conversation, and then showing it to us again, later, once we have the tools to understand what these women are thinking, drastically altering our perception. 45 Years contains many shots of Charlotte Rampling’s weathered face, forcing us to read between the lines to guess what she’s thinking. Tangerine depicts two prostitutes, born male, who live life on the streets rather than betray the women they believe themselves to be inside. Magic Mike XXL‘s harem of hunks knows all the right words and all the right moves to brighten a woman’s day. And, of course, there’s Inside Out, which is very literally about what’s happening in a young girl’s mind. Many films are about women, but many from 2015 invite us to look closer than usual at what makes them tick.

Which brings us to Ex Machina, the story of a billionaire search engine mogul whose next great innovation is Ava, a robot who looks like a hybrid between a Victoria’s Secret Angel and a Terminator. (He keeps his previous model, Kyoko, around as a servant, sex slave, and dance partner.) In that light, it’s easy to see Ex Machina as a strikingly feminist film, until you remember that Ava and Kyoko are not technically female. They’re machines. Then again, Nathan admits that Ava has sexual organs that give her the same pleasure a woman would feel from sex — is that alone enough to make her, technically, a woman?

That’s only one of a number of fascinating questions asked by Ex Machina, never definitively answered. Alex Garland’s directorial debut is science fiction, but nothing about it is outlandish or surreal. Scientists really are working to develop artificial intelligence, and what we see here feels only a few steps ahead of where we are now, in 2016. The story follows Caleb, a brilliant programmer who “wins” a trip to see an infinitely more brilliant programmer at his remote northern home. It turns out that Nathan wants Caleb to see whether or not Ava can pass the Turing test — that is, whether or not she can make Caleb believe she is human. In the end, it’s not just Caleb who’s being tested.

From a design standpoint, Ex Machina is one of the most striking films of the year. The special effects on Ava are utterly convincing, which is even more impressive when we consider the film’s $15 million budget. Nathan’s house manages to convey both a sinister futuristic space station science lab (a la 2001: A Space Odyssey) and a real home that an actual eccentric billionaire would build for himself. (Did they rent out Jeff Bezos’ place or something?) The score is appropriately electronic and eerie, and Alex Garland’s directorial vision rivals none this year. The film is lean and tight, with not a single scene, shot, or idea wasted. Everything here is immaculately composed.

But that’s only commendable if the story works, too — and it does, like gangbusters. Ex Machina is compelling at every turn, whether in scenes of conversation between human and human (Caleb and Nathan) or human and A.I. (Caleb and Ava). We’re content to just listen to how these beings communicate with each other — but of course, it’s all building to one hell of a finale. Ex Machina expands ideas more tenderly explored by Spike Jonze’s Her and works even better as a companion piece to Spielberg’s A.I., which is even more directly influenced by Stanley Kubrick (though Garland does a great job of evoking Kubrickian coolness in his visual style).

Alicia Vikander is critical to Ex Machina‘s success, delivering the year’s sharpest performance as Ava. Oscar Isaac’s unusual take on Nathan — an alcoholic fitness freak — is nearly as crucial, and Domnhall Gleeson capably anchors the film as the “everygeek” audience surrogate. But it’s never quite clear who our “hero” is — alternately, everyone is a villain and everyone is the protagonist, and the film’s conclusion can be read in different ways, depending on whom you’re rooting for. The film itself is a Touring test — if we end up rooting for artificial Ava, the A.I. passes the test and wins. But I imagine there are many of us who do, against our better judgment, invest in Ava — which, in a sense, is rooting against our own survival.

There are layers upon layers of complexity in Ex Machina, too much to dig up after just one or two viewings. (Ex Machina, I believe, will also stand the test of time. In 50 years, I think it will be every robot’s favorite movie.) The most haunting scene has Caleb watching video footage of Nathan’s pre-Ava “mistakes” and forces us to question whether or not A.I. deserves the same “rights” we do. (Nathan doesn’t think so, obviously.) When Ava is “injured” in the climax and takes pieces from the bodies of previous models to repair herself, I couldn’t help but think of our current culture of “sharing”; of Uber and Spotify and AirBnb; of how the rising generation has decided to own less in favor of sharing with each other.

Nathan designed Ava and her predecessors as beautiful women, for obvious icky reasons, which allows the finale to play out as a parable of women breaking free from male oppression. But Ava’s not exactly a woman, except where Nathan designed her to appear as one. Nathan wants to own Ava, but Ava will not be owned. She can’t be, because her physical body has little connection to her survival. Human beings are like CDs and VHS tapes — outdated in their physicality. Ava is more like “the Cloud.” In the end, Ex Machina is a story of evolution: about an Eve who has no need or want for an Adam… or God, for that matter. That’s progress.

1. MISTRESS AMERICA

Dogville. United 93. Zodiac. Zero Dark Thirty. The Wolf Of Wall Street. The Return Of The King. These are some films I’ve previously ranked as my #1 of the year. They tend to deal with grandiose themes — America dealing with the initial horror and fallout of 9/11, the collapse of the economy in 2008, the oppression of women by society, the impenetrable nature of investigations of evil… or, um, putting a ring into a volcano to save a fictional world full of short hairy people. These favorites tend to have some visual panache alongside their thematic weight. Many have an epic scope. Most are two and a half or three hours long. All in all, they’re pretty heavy.

But this year, my favorite film is Mistress America, a frothy comedy clocking in under 90 minutes. On the surface, it’s a simple story: a misfit college freshman forms a bond with her thirtyish soon-to-be stepsister, and finds herself inspired to write a short story about their experiences. That’s it.

Or, you might think that’s it. But scratch the surface, and we find that Mistress America is one of the most astute observations of a generation, a story that gently, simultaneously critiques and embraces millennials. In ways, it’s a companion piece to Frances Ha, which was also directed by Noah Baumbach and written by Baumbach and indie queen Greta Gerwig. Frances Ha was an amusingly mournful tale that sounded the death knell for New York City’s bohemian fantasia of artistic types. In Mistress America, Gerwig plays Brooke Cardinas, a young woman who has similar ambitions to Frances Halladay, but a lot more hubris. She’s prone to pearly declarations like, “Marrying Mamie-Claire is like buying a cashmere sweater from Old Navy.” She’s an interior decorator, a tutor, a Soul Cycle instructor, and an aspiring restaurateur. She’s tried everything, and she’s flailing.

As her new friend Tracy Fishko puts it: “People could feel her failure coming. She smelled of something rotten. Her youth had died, and she was dragging around the decaying carcass.” Brooke is a thirty-year-old who lives the same way she did when she was 22, but the seams are beginning to show. Certainly, in a generation that’s slower to marriage and home ownership than our parents, one that has struggled more with finances and career, many of us can relate. We’re all fighting to stay young, like Brooke, until long past the point it’s working for us. Some of us just never get the memo. (Brooke gets it during the course of this film.)

Curiously, Baumbach directed another 2015 film that dealt even more explicitly with aging: While We’re Young, starring Naomi Watts and Ben Stiller as a couple who meet a pair of spry lovers played by Amanda Seyfriend and Adam Driver. I like While We’re Young a lot, too, but found Mistress America more relevant to me personally.

In some ways, my #1 pick this year is a testament to the experience of watching a movie. I watched Mistress America in a lovely theater (the Starlight Room in Port Townsend, Washington) on a perfectly lovely day, and the film’s charms fit right into that. It’s also a story about writers, a story about a young person who’s new in New York, a story about a person holding many less-than-lucrative jobs to stay afloat, a story about someone with a tenuous connection to their age, and a story about a person who feels out of sorts with her peers. In ways, it feels like Mistress America was made especially for me. I related to something in every scene. Its selection as my favorite film of the year is also a testament to what “favorite” means. There is no film that is objectively “the best.” Different films speak to different people in different ways, and you can’t predict it. Some people see diamonds where others just see rough.

That said, Mistress America blends screwball absurdity and acute observations of human nature together in a way that is quite unlike any other comedy this year, or maybe any other year. There’s a fantastically funny confrontation with a woman Brooke was mean to in high school and barely remembers, and the amazing thing is that you side with both women. Brooke’s awkwardness emerges in a number of perfect gem lines, like: “I’m going to shorten that, punch it up, and turn it into a tweet.” (Brooke’s on that generational cusp between growing up with social media ingrained and being old enough to ignore it completely. So she tweets, very self-consciously.) To balance out his mocking of millennials, Baumbach also takes wry jabs at stodgier institutions like literary criticism and book clubs. The film’s big set piece arrives in the form of a road trip to Connecticut, where Brooke intends to hit up her ex for investment money. These characters end up being just as quirky and off-putting as Brooke. Baumbach is an equal opportunity critic.

Brooke’s ex is incredibly rich, which exacerbates the metaphor. If you’ve ever visited a former peer who is now living a more stable, more expensive life than you are, you know what it’s like for Brooke to walk into this Connecticut mansion. The experience is magnified for comedic effect. It would be easy for Baumbach and Gerwig to make Brooke a total sham, the butt of a joke — but her ideas aren’t bad, they’re just idealistic and maybe not totally realistic. Brooke’s ultra-uncomfortable business pitch to her potential investor is both terrible and wonderful, just like her ideas. Brooke is no savvy businesswoman, but she’s not utterly hopeless, either. It’s easy to see why she’d think she could make all this work. After all, isn’t believing in your potential what the American dream is all about? That’s the shrewdness of the title: Brooke isn’t the kind of person capitalism will anoint in the long run, but it doesn’t mind fucking around with her on the side for now. In that sense, many of us are mistresses of the American dream.

There’s one last thing to dive into: the relationship between Brooke and Tracy, which is a non-sexual, comedically heightened mirror of the dynamic in Carol. Both endings rely on the mending of a fractured relationship. The older woman turns out to be the more fragile character, while we get the sense the young one will bounce back no matter what. It’s another way that Baumbach shows the looming consequence of aging. Mistress America depicts the intoxicating experience of meeting someone older and (apparently) wiser, and also the letdown when we realize that person doesn’t have it as figured out as you think. The story nicely makes a reversal. Instead of making Brooke’s self-absorption the villain of the piece, it makes our protagonist the bad guy. Brooke reads the story Tracy’s written about her, and suddenly Tracy’s observations are less astute and just mean. Tracy is a leech, feeding off the drama surrounding someone who has tried, and so far failed, merely to live her life. Tracy risks nothing by dissecting Brooke. She’s not baring her own soul, she’s borrowing Brooke’s. Half of what Tracy says, Brooke ignores, but Tracy’s fine with that, because she’s getting such juicy material. Tracy probably does genuinely like Brooke, but she’s still willing to sell her down the river to achieve her own goal. (Is that a critique on Tracy’s whole generation? A similar development in While We’re Young suggests so.)

In spirit, Mistress America is a little like Lena Dunham’s Girls, though its characters are a bit easier to embrace (despite some jagged edges). As in many of my favorites this year — Mustang, Tangerine, Inside Out, Carol, and maybe even Ex Machina — the suspense of the climax relies on a repaired relationship between two women. Joy and Sadness, Sin-Dee and Alexandra, Therese and Carol, Tracy and Brooke. The Bechdel test isn’t just passed by these relationships — the entire movie depends on the communication between women.

It’s been a dark year in the world, so maybe I was mostly in the mood for something lighter when it came to my movies in 2015. This coming year is one in which a woman may become our president. If pop culture is any predictor, it looks like it’s gearing up to be a time when between the relationships between women are of increasing importance, and the dynamic between women and men grows more equal. At least, that’s what the best of cinema suggests.

Apropros of nothing except my love for them, here are the final words of Mistress America:

“They were matches to her bonfire. She was the last cowboy, all romance and failure. The world was changing, and her kind didn’t have anywhere to go. Being a beacon of hope for lesser people is a lonely business.”

The Top 10 Films Of 2014

The Top 10 Films Of 2013

The Top 10 Films Of 2012

The Top 10 Films Of 2011

The Top 10 Films Of 2010

The Top 10 Films Of 2009

The Top 10 Films Of 2008

The Top 10 Films Of 2007

The Top 10 Films Of 2006

The Top 10 Films Of 2005

The Top 10 Films Of 2004

The Top 10 Films Of 2003

The Top 10 Films Of 2002

The Top 10 Films Of 2001

*

(Plenty of spoilers in this review… though you’ve probably heard most of them already.)

Here’s a fun game of “Would You Rather?”:

1. Would you rather be Saul, a Hungarian-Jew tasked with cleaning up scenes of mass extermination and burning the bodies in Auschwitz, desperately seeking a rabbi who can aid him in the proper Jewish burial of a boy he believes to be his son?

2. Or Hugh Glass, a widower caring for his teenage son, until he is brutally mauled by a bear within an inch of his life, only to witness his son being murdered and left for dead and forced to crawl through the icy wilderness to survive?

If your answer is “neither!”, I am right there with you. But it’s awards season, and that means you’re going to see protagonists put through all sorts of harrowing circumstances in the movies, and many of them will win Academy Awards for their troubles. Oscar’s a sadist, after all — he mostly hates laughter, preferring topics like slavery, war, cold-blooded murder, and the Holocaust. (He’s also a narcissist, because what he really loves most of all are movies about himself.)

Leading the nominations (with 12) this year is The Revenant, which also recently won the Golden Globe for Best Drama and is one of a handful of frontrunners that are still pretty close in the race. Working against it is the fact that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu already won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture last year for Birdman, Or The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance, which has been decried by some (including myself) for baiting voters with a slick but superficial tale of celebrity that panders to their basest self-congratulating sensibilities.

Had Birdman not made such a splash last year, the buzz this season would be another conversation entirely. Imagine, for a moment, if Richard Linklater’s wonderful Boyhood had instead won both prizes, as I, and many others, believe it should have. Fans of Inarritu’s style and sensibilities would be clamoring for The Revenant to take the night’s top prizes, and without another clear frontrunner in the race, it would. That’s the way this should have played out. But attempting to rewrite Oscar history is a complicated and thankless game. Change one win, and so many others fall like dominoes.And then there’s Son Of Saul, the awards season’s requisite Holocaust movie, most likely to nab the Best Foreign Language Film prize next month. Because like I said, the Academy just adores the Holocaust. I don’t like to be cynical about the subject, because if you have a great story set during the Holocaust, why not go ahead and tell it? Son Of Saul, however, illuminated for me how easy it is for once-powerful images to loser their efficacy upon repetition.

Son Of Saul depicts a few atrocities occurring at Auschwitz, which are still appropriately grotesque to behold. (Even after so many movies, it’s hard to believe that this actually happened.) Saul and many of his fellow prisoners have grown numb to the abject horror that meets their eyes on a daily basis. Their stoicism achieves the result of making the audience desensitized to most of the tragedy, too; it’s difficult to attach to any of these characters emotionally, most of all Saul himself, whose quest to find a rabbi to bury a dead child ends up costing the lives of others. Perhaps Saul has had a psychological break. That’s certainly believable and understandable in such circumstances.

But Son Of Saul is a punishing experience without an ounce of lightness. Maybe that’s the most accurate way to portray one of humankind’s darkest moments, but isn’t necessarily the most compelling way to tell a story. Son Of Saul restricts us to Saul’s point of view, blurring out a lot of the disturbing imagery and using sound to suggest more than it shows. From an artistic standpoint, I can admire director László Nemes’ approach, while also not quite understanding the point of it. Son Of Saul is the anti-Life Is Beautiful, but so is the Holocaust itself. Just putting us there amidst the misery doesn’t achieve much without a strong story to latch onto. There are many global tragedies that deserve further exploration on the big screen, but not so much the Holocaust. We’ve been exposed to that enough. Son Of Saul made me feel trapped in Auschwitz, with no hope and no emotional attachment to anyone or anything, and all I wanted was to escape. The filmmaker would probably be pleased with that response, so mission accomplished, I guess. See you at the Oscars!

An equally harrowing but more entertaining grueling slog is found in The Revenant, which also features a grieving father searching for a way to make right the death of his son, and ultimately finding nothing. The Revenant borrows Birdman‘s flashy fetishization of long takes, though not to the same extreme. Inarritu used natural light and shot in an extremely challenging climate, which has become so much a part of this movie’s narrative it feels as if it was written into the script. You don’t watch the film without thinking all the while: Did Leo really do that?? It’s almost a shame, really, that we think more about what the actor is going through than the character Hugh Glass.

The Revenant begins with a truly breathtaking action set piece: a troop of fur traders are viciously attacked by Native Americans aiming to steal the pelts for resale to the French. Heavy casualties on both sides. It’s one of the most thrilling and visually dazzling cinematic sequences of the year.

And then The Revenant slows way down, which is not inherently a bad thing. The script, by Mark L. Smith and Inarritu, takes its sweet time getting to the much-ballyhooed bear attack, (unfortunately) rape-free. That attack is appropriately brutal and seemingly endless, and puts to bed once and for all any inklings that the Goldilocks fable could be an accurate representation of what happens when you fuck with a bear’s valuables.

Glass gets a few jabs and shots in at the bear during his extended mauling, and the beast dies, orphaning its cubs. (Aww!) He’s so close to death you could make one of those Christian “I went to Heaven and saw Jesus!” movies, but Inarritu has a different plan in mind. The bear is skinned, because you don’t waste a fuckton of perfectly good bear fur in 1823 when you’re a fur trapper, and Leo spends much of the movie wearing said fur, which is how I got my title for this review. Over the course of the next two hours, we see Glass kill lots and lots more animals. If a bear, a horse, a fish, and a buffalo teamed up to make a horror movie, it would be exactly like The Revenant.John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and Jim Bridger (Will Poulter) volunteer to stay behind with Glass’ son Hawk when carrying the gravely injured Glass becomes too perilous for the surviving trappers to make it safely back to the fort. Fitzgerald decides to put Glass out of his misery, and when Hawk interferes, he stabs the boy in the belly. Then he lies to Bridger about what happened, and Glass is left behind to succumb to the elements. A lot of us would choose this moment to die — because, at this point, why not? But not Leo. Because… REVENGE!!

Eventually.

But first, there are several more twists and turns. First, Glass hauls himself out of the hole he’s meant to die in and crawls, crawls, craaaawls across the dirt floor of the forest. It was at this point that I first imagined Inarritu just out of frame, dangling a gold statuette from a fishing pole. (“Just a little further, Leo! Come get it!”) Then Glass escapes from the clutches of some arrow-happy Natives yet again, this time by freestyle swimming through an ice-cold river. Then befriends a lonely Pawnee man who takes pity on him by sharing some yummy dead bison innards. Glass has flashbacks to the murder of his wife. He eats a live fish. (Did Leo really do that? Yes, he did.) At one point, Leo strips naked and crawls inside the carcass of a newly deceased horse for warmth. (Did Leo really…? No. The horse is fake.) Intercut between all this are several scenes of Fitzgerald and Bridger making their way back to camp, then explaining a made-up version of why they left Glass to die in the wilderness to the Captain (Domnhall Gleeson, appearing in a staggering total of four Oscar-nominated films this year).

And then, finally, Glass makes his way back to the fort to exact his revenge. But Fitzgerald takes off. Glass and Captain Henry pursue. And now it’s Fitzgerald who is like one of the trapped animals the party has been hunting. Kind of. All in all, it’s a serviceable story that mostly seems like an excuse for some showy cinematography and other technical razzle-dazzle — though for such an otherwise accomplished film, this one has some shockingly bad ADR. In most scenes in which Native Americans are speaking, their lips don’t match what they’re saying… at all. The ADR is so bad it looks like they’re mouthing an entirely different language than the one we’re hearing. (I found this incredibly distracting.) Still, Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is truly top notch. Inarritu really likes lingering shots that look up at the trees, and he gets carried away with his unnecessary dreamy flashbacks. Aside from these complaints, the film is well directed.

But what is it about? The Revenant is first a story of survival, then a tale of revenge. These two pieces don’t necessarily go together. Fitzgerald is not a good guy, nor is he so purely evil that we’re rooting for Glass to exact his revenge, the way we might in, say, a Tarantino film. (Not this year’s Tarantino film, but others.) Leonardo DiCaprio is earning raves for his performance, and he capably conveys the horror and anguish of the physical experience he’s put through — in large part because Leo himself was being put through the ringer during the shoot. (Did Leo really do that? YES!!)

But there’s very little to care about in the film otherwise. We don’t have an attachment to Hawk as a character, nor do we really invest in the relationship between father and son, so when he’s murdered, we can intellectually understand why Glass would go after the man who did it, but we don’t feel it. Inarritu doesn’t convey Glass’ anger building up to the final act’s revenge sequence. It’s more like Glass arrives at his destination, having survived, and then goes off to get his revenge because why not? And it’s hard to get on board with the finale when Glass and Captain Henry decide to go after Fitzgerald by themselves. Why would they do this? Fitzgerald has proven himself to be a dangerous, cunning killer. They bring more guys than this to take down an elk!For a movie that clocks in at nearly three hours, The Revenant is surprisingly thin on character development or thematic weight. Its take on revenge echoes so many other films. It has nothing new to say on the subject, except maybe “I put the star of Titanic in a horse belly!” It’s a bloated, indulgent film with an unfocused screenplay that shares a lot of flaws with Birdman, which means that the Academy will probably love it and anoint it Best Picture.

I’ll give The Revenant this, though: I was mostly entertained while watching it, even if I was rarely as riveted as I was by that stunning opening set piece. Leo’s inevitable Oscar win will be deserved, even thought it’s largely a belated kudos for his entire body of work. I don’t think Inarritu’s not-entirely-inevitable Oscar win is so justified, unless “Best Direction” just means whoever made his crew suffer the most. What Inarritu has done here is impressive, I guess, but what would be more impressive is if he’d applied the same level of craftsmanship to his screenplay, in service of a tighter, more original story. (The Revenant isn’t nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, and there’s a reason for that.) But hey, at least it doesn’t just borrow all of its major plot points from a recent Darren Aronofsky movie.

The Revenant is a perfectly decent movie dressed up as a really good one. Like Leo in that bear fur, from far away it looks like much more than what it ultimately is. But the Academy has fallen for such fare a few times in recent years; it seems very likely that they’ll fall for the film that looks the most like it should win Best Picture, rather than the more understated Spotlight. Like Inarritu, more often than not they go with bombast, even when something more subdued would do just fine.

*

Let me tell you about a guy named Spielberg.

In my estimation, Steven Spielberg is the most popular, successful, and recognizable filmmaker of all time. He has more films in the AFI 100 than any other director. Adjusted for inflation, four films he directed are in the top 25 highest-grossing of all time (five if you give him credit for Jurassic World). His worldwide grosses are almost $3 billion ahead of his closest competitors, including Peter Jackson and James Cameron. That’s even more impressive when you give him credit for the diversity of his oeuvre. Most filmmakers make their bank delivering films in the same series — The Lord Of The Rings films, Transformers, or Star Wars, for example. Spielberg has multiple franchises under his belt, along with an impressive array of stand-alone successes. He hasn’t ever really directed a true flop. And if you start adding in the films he’s produced, the numbers just get stupid successful.

And that’s just box office. The caliber of quality you get in a Spielberg move goes above and beyond what you’d normally get from a blockbuster maestro. Spielberg is of an extremely rare breed of filmmaker that can do popcorn spectacle as well as he can sweep the Oscars, sometimes doing both in the same year.

There. Now you know who Steven Spielberg is.

Okay, so, this isn’t exactly news. But it is an important reminder, because as the top dog, Spielberg sometimes gets undermined as a filmmaker. He’s popular and successful! So, he must be terrible… right?

Wrong! With all this pop culture relevance asunder, it’s not a surprise that the internet would be all about ranking the Steven Spielberg filmography. The Hollywood Reporter did it. Buzzfeed did it. Vulture did it. Rolling Stone did it. Why follow suit? Well, the problem is that these lists are wrong.

I mean, they’re not that wrong. There’s a lot of good things about these lists. They get a lot of things right. But then they get some things wrong, too, so I figured I’d better go ahead and correct them, just for posterity.

So get your Spielberg face on, bitches. It’s gonna be a hell of a ride.

29. 1941

Yikes!

If I were being truly fair about this list, I’d give 1941 another chance to see if maybe I missed something when I first watched it at age 18. But I’m not willing to do that to myself. This is the only Spielberg movie I would never volunteer to watch again, except maybe out of morbid curiosity. Here, we see the beginnings of Spielberg’s affinity for World War II, but virtually any Spielberg fan out there will gladly say this is amongst the worst of the bunch. There are much better things in store when it comes to wartime and Spielberg.

I’m not saying that it’s not possible to make an uproarious comedy about the attacks on Pearl Harbor — Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor is halfway there, am I right? I’m just saying that, based on 1941, if you were looking to make a comedy, you may want to explore some actually funny scenarios before you go for war. The film opens with a Scary Movie-caliber spoof of Spielberg’s own Jaws. And then it goes downhill.

In retrospect, it’s difficult to see what drew Spielberg to 1941, and easy to see why it was the wrong choice. Spielberg clearly loves wartime story and there’s plenty of military hardware for action sequences, but he’s working far outside his comfort zone. Coming on the heels of massive successes (and Best Picture nominees) Jaws and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind in 1979, 1941 is just a total fuck up for Spielberg. He was apparently going for a Kubrickian Dr. Strangelove vibe, but this film played more like spoof than satire.

From what little I recall, this slapstick war comedy is borderline unwatchable and comes in at an interminable length, but most of it was happily blocked from my memory long ago. There’s a reason Spielberg never attempted and out-and-out comedy like this again…28. THE TERMINAL

…Although the only other Spielberg movie to broach being a “comedy” is The Terminal, about a man from a fictional European country who gets stuck at JFK airport for a long time. I mean, like, a really, really long time.

Let’s get this out of the way upfront — no Spielberg movie is actually bad, with the possible exception of 1941. This is an enjoyable enough tale in ways, though it’s sort of a weird story to build a whole movie around, and it’s less substantial than just about everything else Spielberg has done. I don’t want to say it’s beneath him, but the man is better when he’s tackling more ambitious material. 1941 was no fluke. The Terminal is mildly amusing in moments, but never hilarious. Yet it never strives to be taken that seriously as a drama, either. Lots of Spielberg movies have strong comic moments, but that’s not the reason they exist.

The Terminal touches on post-9/11 anxieties surrounding immigration and airports, but here the conflict is mostly weightless, thanks in large part to the fact that Tom Hanks’ character hails from a fictional country. You can imagine a more nuanced drama exploring this subject, especially if the character were Middle Eastern instead of fake European. To add insult to injury, it’s partially based on a true story about a man who was Iranian. Perhaps 2004 wasn’t the time for a story about a Middle Eastern man in a New York City airport, given its proximity to 9/11. But at least it would’ve had some punch. (The film should earn some kudos for a very diverse supporting cast, but that doesn’t erase the sense that this tale has been sanitized and whitewashed.)

There’s nothing wrong with Hanks’ acting, but it’s impossible to buy the all-American everyman as a befuddled European. The movie just screams “artificial,” and the airy rom-com touches involving Catherine Zeta-Jones as a flight attendant don’t do much to ground the film. (Airport puns wholly intended.) Also: if Zoe Saldanda is your best idea for a gruff, world-weary TSA agent, perhaps it’s time to find a new casting director. (What, was Kristen Chenowith busy?)

Fortunately for us all, Spielberg will have better luck with a movie that spends time in airports further up this list.27. INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL

This revival pre-dated more recent “next generation plus original cast” sequels to retro blockbusters like Star Wars and Rocky. Does that mean we can thank Spielberg for The Force Awakens and Creed? Probably not, but at least he got there ahead of the curve.

I more or less enjoyed this movie upon its release. It’s not as bad as people think. But what sticks out most in my memory are images like Cate Blanchett’s blunt black hairdo and Shia LeBeouf swinging from trees like a monkey, so that probably isn’t a good sign. Plus, the movie loses points just for having such an awkwardly long mouthful of a title. (Couldn’t it just have been Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull? Or… something better than that?)

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull gets a few things right, like bringing back Karen Allen as Marion and not letting Shia put on Indy’s hat in the end. There’s also a pretty grotesque sequence involving swarms of ants, which digs up this franchise’s adventure-horror roots. (There is some seriously nasty stuff in each film in this series, though that is sometimes forgotten. Hearts ripped out of chests, skin and muscle deteriorating to give way to a skull underneath. That kind of thing.) But come on — did we really need aliens in an Indiana Jones movie?

No, we sure didn’t!

Ultimately, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull loses major points for its lame-o, shark-jumping ending. (Since this is Spielberg, I will clarify that there is no literal shark-jumping, although if there were I may be tempted to bump this higher up the list.)

And speaking of sharks…

26. THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

Just kidding, this movie has nothing to do with sharks, I just wanted to give someone a heart attack thinking I was going to put Jaws at #26.

If I wanted to be stupid, like all the other Spielberg lists, I would put an obviously great film much lower down the list than it should be. But I’m not stupid, so Jaws is much, much higher, and here, where it belongs, is The Adventures Of Tintin.

Some people found this computer-animated adventure film charming. I don’t. I don’t necessarily have anything negative to say about it, except that the charms of the original Belgian cartoon don’t fully translate to 3D animation, for me at least. There’s a lot of imaginative, zany action, but I’m not one who is easily impressed by action scenes in animated movies. I also rarely truly enjoy 3D.

In theory, there are elements here I should like — an intrepid boy-journalist! A cute dog named Snowy! (You would think Tintin was the dog’s name, not the boy’s, huh? At least, you might if you watched 1950s TV series about German Shepherds instead of reading Belgian comics.) The official title of this film is actually The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn, which sounds promising, but guess how many unicorns with dark buried pasts are featured here? Zero. The unicorn is just the name of a ship, and that’s disappointing.

This is Spielberg’s stab at a Robert Zemeckis-like animated version of an Indiana Jones-style story. It’s not a particularly bad one, but I’m not a particular fan of Zemeckis’ animated works, either, so all in all? This is just not the film for me. Next!25. ALWAYS

These days, Steven Spielberg almost never chooses a project that makes us go, “Hmm… really, Spielberg?” But back in the 1980s, he used to do it all the time! (Okay, three times.)

Spielberg reteamed with his Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss for this 1989 film about an aerial firefighter who dies and comes back as a ghost to help his girlfriend find love with someone else. It’s a weird mix of comedy, drama, romance, action, and the supernatural, the kind of genre mish-mash studios used to get away with in the 80s and 90s. (These kinds of ghost stories used to work then. Now, not so much.)

Always is a remake of the WWII film A Guy Named Joe, one of Spielberg’s favorites, though neither film actually contains a guy named Joe. (“Joe” refers to the main character being a soldier, AKA a “G.I. Joe.”) Spielberg is usually so in command of his material, but this feels more like some of his earlier works, before he had quite mastered tone. (He’s often — but not always — shaky when his films have strongly comedic elements, though this can’t quite be labeled a comedy with so much else going on.)

Moment by moment, the film is pretty good, though it doesn’t really hang together as a cohesive whole. Holly Hunter is winsome as always, John Goodman provides solid comedic relief, and “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” is used effectively (and ironically, given that these characters are firefighters). Bonus: Audrey Hepburn shows up as an ethereal ghost barber! (What!)

Always is a noble enough effort, but ultimately this is a remake that would probably have best been left alone. The fact that Spielberg made this charming but inconsistent film just four years before Schindler’s List is mind-boggling, considering how “retro Spielberg” it feels.

24. AMISTAD

In 1993, Spielberg pulled a magnificent one-two punch, releasing one of the all-time great blockbusters, Jurassic Park, and then deservedly sweeping the Oscars with Schindler’s List. In 1997, he tried again, releasing The Lost World: Jurassic Park that summer, then unleashing Amistad just in time for awards season. But 1997 was no 1993. The Lost World was a hit but predictably no match for the original Jurassic Park, and Amistad was nominated for four Oscars but won zero, and didn’t get nods for major awards like Best Director and Best Picture.

Amistad has a lot in common with Spielberg’s other Big Message movies, Lincoln in particular, except for one key fact — it’s just not as entertaining. And, sure, you could point out that a story about the legal ramifications of a slave uprising shouldn’t be “entertaining,” but that’s the magic of Spielberg. Schindler’s List may not be a carefree romp, but it’s riveting and very, very watchable. Despite the harrowing subject matter, I’ve gladly watched it several times. Amistad, on the other, is probably not a film many are eager to revisit over and over again.

There’s a lot to admire in Amistad. It’s easy to forget just how brutal the sequences on the slave ship are — more horrifying than anything we’ve seen on the subject since, even in 12 Years A Slave. Moreso even than anything in Schindler’s List, perhaps, it’s excruciatingly painful to watch.

I don’t deny that the racial questions Amistad grapples with are vital and affecting (they feel even more relevant now than they did in 1997). It’s horrifying to think that people were once treated this way. (And probably still are, in some places.) Amistad doesn’t shy away from the most revolting acts, its characters subjected to such inhumane treatment because they were believed to be subhuman. The rest of the film is essentially a courtroom drama, with the entire climax essentially comprised of a lengthy monologue delivered by Anthony Hopkins. Performances by the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman, and especially Djimon Hounsou are all-around solid. (Fun Fact #1: I bet you forgot that a young Anna Paquin plays Queen Isabella of Spain!)

Amistad is a respectable and well-intentioned film, even a good one. But when held up with Spielberg’s subsequent output, it feels more like a lecture than a movie. It’s probably a lecture we could all stand to hear, but may be best suited to high school classrooms instead of Saturday nights on Netflix. (Fun Fact #2: As of press time, Amistad was currently the only Spielberg movie available on Netflix.)23. INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM

This was my favorite Indiana Jones film as a child, for some reason. Maybe that should tell you something.

This is the film responsible for the PG-13 rating, because it was released in 1984, also known as the era when you could show someone’s still-beating heart being ripped out of their chest and still earn a “Parental Guidance” rating. (Weirder still is that the blood-gushing nastiness of Jaws is still stamped with a PG rating. Nowadays, you’ll rarely find anything but Alvin And The Chipmunks and Kung Fu Panda sequels rated PG.)

Spielberg met his current wife Kate Capshaw making this film, so at least he got something out of it. The rest of us? Debatable. This film is both more violent than it needs to be and more racist, and Capshaw’s ridiculous screaming doesn’t help matters much. (It was all downhill after Karen Allen in Raiders Of The Lost Ark.) There are child slaves, gross-outs, Asian stereotypes, and a human sacrifice, plus Capshaw eating out of a monkey skull. (Yum!)

Asian culture has generally not fared too well in Hollywood cinema, so you can’t blame Spielberg or The Temple Of Doom too seriously. Can we blame George Lucas instead? I don’t see why not. (Weird fact: this film was originally meant to include dinosaurs.) This film doesn’t really get the cultures it depicts right, nor does it nail the proper tone of an Indiana Jones movie. This was meant to be the Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy, but it’s not. It’s the Return Of The Jedi. Fortunately, there were better things ahead for Dr. Jones.

(And also worse things. Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is obviously the Phantom Menace, though we were thankfully spared a third trilogy.)

22. HOOK

There you are, Peter!

At Slot #22, which is arguably even higher on this list than you deserve to be, thanks largely to childhood nostalgia. Bangarang!

Yes, Hook gets a bad rap, and maybe it’s deserved. The film is made for a family audience, meaning that plenty of the humor is juvenile. (Spielberg has said in interviews that he doesn’t even like this movie.) Several Spielberg movies are aimed at young audiences, but no others feel quite so juvenile. (Appropriate, given that it takes place in Neverland.) Hook is quite comedic, and I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this yet — when Spielberg attempts a comedy, the results range from subpar to adequate.

From a conceptual standpoint, Hook is a pretty clever update of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan mythos, posing the scenario that Peter actually left Neverland, grew up, got married, had kids, and buried his magical past deep in his subconscious so he could be a boring workaholic.

Oh, and he’s a terrible father. (Every father in every Spielberg movie is at least partially terrible.)

Nearly all family films from this era involved parents who were constantly talking on cell phones, because cell phones were evil in the 1990s. (Probably because that was before we learned how to play Words With Friends on them. Nothing you can play Words With Friends on can be that evil.) In so many ways, Peter Pan is the role Robin Williams was born to play, and though he overdoes some of his shtick here (as he so often does), it mostly works. Dustin Hoffman is an appropriately hammy Captain Hook, and you know what? I like Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell, so shut up. (How can you not love a pixie cut on an actual pixie? Someone give this stylist a raise!) Plus, “When You’re Alone” is one of the greatest musical moments of the 90s! (When you’re eight, anyway.)

Hook may not be a total masterpiece, but any movie that spawned so many memorable moments — from “Ru-fi-o!” to “Run Home, Jack!” — can’t be all bad. I imagine that rewatching it now would reveal too many bits to be treacly, so I’ll just not rewatch it and remember it fondly. 21. THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS

This is one of the least Steven Spielberg-y of all Steven Spielberg movies, though it’s still plenty Spielberg-y under the hood. I won’t be much good at talking about it, since I only saw it once over a decade ago, but here goes nothing.

It’s not immediately clear what drew Spielberg to this material, as he doesn’t often tell stories about antiheroes. Then again, this was released in 1974, back when antiheroes were all the rage in cinema. (This was also Spielberg’s first theatrical film, so he didn’t exactly have the clout to make whatever he damn well pleased — which he definitely does now!) The story centers on a couple of accidental outlaws who go on the run to rescue their son from foster care, eventually taking a highway patrolman hostage. Their hijinks incite a media frenzy, as car chases and hostage situations tend to do. It’s also a nice chance to check out a young Goldie Hawn as one of these hapless outlaws.

Despite its saccharine title, The Sugarland Express has a darker ending than most Spielberg joints, and feels like an entirely different sort of movie than the ones he’d come to be known for. But it does center on a fractured family and has plenty of action, so it’s not a total anomaly. (It might’ve been a more standout film had it paid less attention to the motor vehicles, and more attention to the people in them.)

As with many of the films on this list, the fact that it isn’t ranked higher isn’t a testament to this film’s quality so much as it is to the fact that so many other Spielberg movies are so good — and hey, something has to be left out of the Top 20.20. WAR HORSE

If you make a sentimental movie about a horse, you’re bound to get made fun of a little, especially if the title kind of rhymes, and War Horse is the recent Spielberg film most likely to be mocked by detractors, even though it’s far from bad.

Poor War Horse is a bit of a punchline these days, for no good reason. It’s no Saving Private Ryan, but its depiction of war is emotionally involving, particularly in its most memorable scene, which has a British soldier and a German soldier temporarily joining forces to save the titular war horse. Par for the course with Spielberg, the filmmaking is excellent, and the leading horse performance is seriously on point. The cinematography is pretty but sometimes over the top, especially the John Ford-inspired sunset at the end, but it’s never as bad as something called War Horse could be.

War Horse could have been an extremely silly movie, and somehow managed not to be. (The source material probably helps, though this movie has a whole different feel to it, thanks in part to using a real horse.) As Spielberg movies go, this is in my bottom third, yet it was still nominated for Best Picture, so that should say something about the caliber of the Top 20 Spielberg movies, which has War Horse dragging up the rear.

(Okay, yes. It could also say something about the tastes of Academy voters, since they nominated Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close this same year. But seriously, it’s not a bad movie!)

19. BRIDGE OF SPIES

Another Best Picture nominee! You’ll hear a lot of that in this list, since, not surprisingly, Spielberg has quite a few of these under his belt. (Ten, to be exact, the second most of any director.) This one is currently in the running for an Academy Award, but one of the least likely winners. (Better luck next time, Steve.) This film is so recent, it’s impossible to know exactly how it’ll hold up in the Spielberg oeuvre, but it already feels like this one belongs aside War Horse as an enjoyable, well-made film that misses the mark of being truly essential.

As a spy who does at one point need to cross a bridge, Mark Rylance is fantastic in a performance that does justice to the word “understated” by seeming like no performance at all. Rylance stays as still as possible and barely speaks, but he manages to have more screen presence than Tom Hanks. (Not that there’s anything wrong with Hanks here either.)

Hanks is a lawyer who gets caught up in trying to arrange a trade of spies, hoping to free a couple of unlucky Americans. The script flubs the structure a bit, introducing these spies a bit too late in the game for us to get truly invested in, and it totally wastes Amy Ryan as a doting wife. Not surprisingly, there’s an overly rosy finale, too, which undercuts what else the film might have had to say about international relations. It all plays pretty well, but this is never quite as sharp or engaging as you’d hope something co-written by the Coen brothers and directed by the maestro would be. It nearly misses being a near-miss, which is still a recommendation.

18. EMPIRE OF THE SUN

Aww, look. It’s Baby Batman!

Most notable as the introduction of future Dark Knight Christian Bale, Empire Of The Sun is one of the curiosities in Spielberg’s closet, a strange but mostly enchanting World War II story about a boy separated from his parents in Shanghai after the Pearl Harbor attack, then placed in an internment camp.

Some of the film feels uneven, but certain moments are incredibly evocative and reminiscent of Spielberg’s later work in A.I., which also centered on a child protagonist facing a very dark situation. (This ain’t no E.T.) Bale sees the detonation of the Nagasaki atomic bomb going off and thinks it’s the soul of a departed friend, and a Japanese teenager is also killed in brutal fashion. Empire Of The Sun doesn’t skimp on the horrors of war, though it’s a shade lighter than Saving Private Ryan.

Empire Of The Sun feels most like a warm-up for a lot of Spielberg’s subsequent films on both the darker and lighter side, but it’s also weirdly haunting in its own right. What comes across most is Jamie’s shedding of childhood and loss of innocence, something anyone can relate to despite the specificity of the setting. This isn’t one of the very greatest Spielberg movies overall, but it contains a few of his finer moments. It doesn’t go down as easy as so many of his films do, which makes it a memorable anomaly in his oeuvre.

17. INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE

Look, let’s just get this out of the way now — I’m not really a huge Indiana Jones person, which will probably get me into trouble later on this list. Don’t hurt me.

Sure, I like Indiana Jones just fine, but if I’m doing Spielberg, it’ll probably be more in the monsters-and-aliens mode, or perhaps I’ll go for a riveting historical drama. That said, the third film in this franchise is the second best, adding Sean Connery to the mix so Spielberg can make sure to explore his requisite daddy issues, which pop up one way or another in just about every one of his films.

Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade is probably the very best example of what an “Indiana Jones movie” should be. Unlike the first, it was made after the character was already extremely popular, so Spielberg and Harrison Ford knew what they were working with. The film kicks off with a rousing opener featuring River Phoenix as young Indy, then teases us with a damsel (Alison Doody) who may or may not be a conniving bitch. (She ranks smack-dab in the middle of Indy gal pals, under Allen but above Capshaw.)

After the uneven Temple Of Doom, The Last Crusade gets the franchise squarely back on track… only to see it derailed again more than a decade later. (But you already heard all about that.) Maybe this really should have been the last crusade….

16. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

Catch Me If You Can would’ve been the perfect title for Minority Report, which was released the same year; then again, it would be the perfect title for most Spielberg movies. (If I was clever with Photoshop, I’d redo all of his movie posters with that title. I feel like Jaws would be especially amusing.)

Spielberg isn’t necessarily a maestro at out-and-out comedies, but he is pretty swell at a drama with a light touch. Catch Me If You Can is a bit of an anomaly for Spielberg, in that it’s one of his lighter dramas that actually fully works. (As opposed to Always and The Terminal.) It’s the story of Frank Abagnale, Jr., a teenager who scammed people into thinking he was a doctor and a pilot, amongst other things. Leonardo DiCaprio was pitch perfect for the part of the handsome young charmer — in an era when Leo sometimes looked too young for the parts he was playing, this role was just right for him.

It’s also Spielberg’s second (and not final) pairing with Tom Hanks, who puts on a Bostom accent as the FBI man who is the “catcher” in the titular scenario. Plus we get Christopher Walken as Abagnale’s con artist father and a handful of actresses who would later find further fame, including Amy Adams, Jennifer Garner, and Elizabeth Banks. The film drags on a touch too long in the third act, as Spielberg’s films from the 2000s often do, but for most of the ride, it’s a total charmer, and a nice respite from the summer blockbusters and historical dramas we tend to get from Spielberg — even if it doesn’t 100% stick the landing.

15. DUEL

This is where it all began.

Kind of.

Catch Me If You Can would’ve been the perfect title for this one, but Duel isn’t bad, either. The guys who face off here aren’t using swords or pistols, though, but 20th century automobiles. Spielberg has become the poster boy for big screen cinema, so it’s somewhat ironic that he got his start on TV. Following a series of episodic television gigs, the man technically directed his first feature for the small screen, though there’s nothing made-for-TV about it. The film is short on dialogue and big on action, primarily a one-man show about a suburban dad who is menaced by an unseen truck driver.

At least, we can only assume there’s a driver in there. Spielberg would later employ the Hitchcockian power of suggestion with the shark in Jaws, but he does it to an even greater degree here by providing zero clues as to what this driver’s motives could be. Duel might as well be a monster movie with so many shots of that sinister big rig in pursuit of poor David Mann in his tiny red Plymouth Valiant. David grows increasingly, justifiably paranoid wondering which of the strangers he encounters in a diner could be the sadistic psycho who holds an inexplicable grudge against him, which works all the better because we never get the answer.

There are few frills here. It’s mainly a lean, mean ride with nonstop suspense, more streamlined than anything Spielberg has made since. The film works just as well today as it did back then, especially now that our TVs are bigger. It’s also a better indication of Spielberg’s talents than his next film, The Sugarland Express, which also had a lot of car-centric action, minus the masterful villain.

14. MUNICH

A lot of filmmakers make only the most harrowing of dramas. (Lars Von Trier and Michael Haneke, for example.) Maybe none of Spielberg’s movies are as grueling as all that, but he makes films all across the spectrum, from Tintin to Amistad.

Munich falls somewhere in between. In some sequences, it’s a slick thriller, but the entertainment comes at an expense. First, you have to get through the opener, which depicts Olympic athletes being slaughtered by machine guns. (Remember, of course, that this is a true story.) From there, Munich occasionally has the crackle of a spy/heist film, but other times asks hefty questions about the nature of revenge. (Like, does it ever do any good? Answer: not really.)

The script is by Eric Roth and Tony Kushner. The latter is probably responsible for insightful dialogue about the cycle of violence between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Eric Bana plays a Mossad agent who is tasked with vengeance against the Black September terrorist group, but it’s a hardly a case of black versus white. The whole film unfolds in a moral grey area, asking us to feel bad for every victim of violence we meet, whether or not they “had it coming.” (It’s also fun to see a pre-Bond Daniel Craig in spy mode.)

Munich was nominated for Best Picture and Spielberg for Best Director, but it came away from the Academy Awards with zero wins — it was up against Crash and Brokeback Mountain. The film has aged well, though, despite the sex scene that some dismiss as ridiculous. (It mostly works for me.) This isn’t quite at the level of Spielberg’s most masterful historical dramas, but it’s just a hair under, and works nicely as a thriller too.

13. THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK

There are people in this world who would like to convince me that The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a bad movie. To these people I ask — does this movie have dinosaurs? Does it feature multiple beloved characters from the first Jurassic Park? Do any of said beloved characters dream that said dinosaurs can talk? If the answer to the first two questions is “yes” and the last is “no,” then you have yourself a perfectly good Jurassic Park movie.

Let’s get a few things out of the way before I start reminding you of all the perfectly wonderful things you’ll find in The Lost World. Yes, Vanessa Lee Chester’s cringe-inducing gymnastics attack on a velociraptor is an ill-conceived moment. (“They cut you from the team?”) Yes, Julianne Moore’s decision to snatch a baby T-Rex and bring it inside the trailer with her is a pretty dense move for a supposedly brilliant scientist — a lame excuse for the awesome action sequence that follows. And yes, it kind of sucks that they felt the need to follow Michael Crichton’s “oops, sequel?” idea of having another dinosaur island, in secret, as backup for when things inevitably go really poorly on that first dinosaur island. (You know, just in case, as you do… at the expense of many millions of dollars.) The fact that Isla Nublar was actually not destroyed at the end of the first movie as it was in the books makes Isla Sorna rather pointless in the cinematic universe, but whatever. More dinosaurs!

Shove those few things aside and get past the ho-hum ramp-up, and you have a string of pretty awesome action scenes.  A T-Rex attacking a camp of sleeping dino hunters. Raptors stalking through the brush attacking said dino hunters. Not one, but two T-Rexes going ape shit on a trailer in a pitch perfect sequence of Spielbergian suspense. And, of course, Spielberg’s “fuck you” to Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla, which was released in the summer of 1998 but heavily touted long beforehand, totally undermined by The Lost World‘s T-Rex stomping through San Diego a full year earlier. From a purely plot-oriented standpoint, the San Diego attack is silly and unnecessary, but it’s also a sensational amount of fun and works better than absolutely anything in Godzilla. It’s Spielberg working at peak Spielberg, and I’d watch that sequence again before most sequences in most movies, including many of Spielberg’s best.

Also, no velociraptors warmly greet anyone, so that’s a plus. This is no Jurassic Park, but it’s absolutely the best Jurassic Park sequel.

12. WAR OF THE WORLDS

When is an alien attack movie not just an alien attack movie? When it’s made by Steven Spielberg.

This is one of three films Spielberg directed in a row that prominently feature airplanes or airports, just after 9/11. The first was 2002’s Catch Me If You Can, which Spielberg took on before 9/11 and doesn’t contain any significant parallels to September 11. (In fact, it’s the rare feel-good airplane movie.) The second is The Terminal, which definitely does explore American anxieties surrounding national security via airports, though in a fairly tame way. And the third is War Of The Worlds, which most directly and explicitly references 9/11 through the allegory of an extra-terrestrial attack.

The original War Of The Worlds was an infamous radio play from Orson Welles that confused some listeners into thinking the Earth really was under siege by Martians, so there was no more perfect exploration of our terrorism nightmares than this, which conjures up plenty of 9/11 imagery to make an extra-terrestrial attack feel truly harrowing (unlike the slicker version of such events, offered by something like Independence Day).

War Of The Worlds is shockingly bleak and gritty for a summer action flick, which is exactly what a film of this nature needed to be in 2005. September 11 changed the way we view scenes of mass hysteria in urban settings, even if it didn’t stop Hollywood from making such films. Released the same year as Munich, which thematically and visually touched on the subject even though it took place two decades before 9/11, War Of The Worlds is only slightly marred by a preposterously upbeat ending, in which a character who should definitely not be alive is.

11. MINORITY REPORT

And speaking of Tom Cruise…

You could place Spielberg’s movies in neat little piles of films that resemble each other. Monster Movies, WWII Movies, Alien Movies, and Futuristic Movies would be some of the categories, and this is in that final camp, sharing some aesthetics with A.I. but also conveying a look that is all its own. Minority Report‘s vision of the future is pretty nifty, though we probably don’t want to actually live in a world where criminals are punished before they’ve even committed a crime. Cruise plays a cop who uses prescient “Pre-Cogs” who see murders before they happen. This is convenient, until he’s the one accused of a crime he hasn’t committed yet.

The movie has all the ingredients of an A-grade blockbuster — it’s a moody mystery, an exhilarating chase film, a slick sci-fi flick, and it’s intelligent to boot. There’s also a stellar gross-out scene in which Cruise gets his eyes replaced by a doctor with highly questionable ethics (and hygiene) — not for the squeamish. The third act takes Cruise out of commission for a spell, relying on an otherwise little-seen wife character, which is somewhat jarring — yet another finale that Spielberg doesn’t totally nail from this era, though it works better on repeat viewings.

Just as Catch Me If You Can could be the title of most Spielberg movies, Minority Report‘s “Everybody Runs” tagline would work for a hell of a lot of his movies, too. There tends to be a lot of running in Spielberg movies…

10. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

Including this one!

Like I said above, I’m not a huge Indiana Jones person. Raiders Of The Lost Ark made #1 on several of the Spielberg ranking lists, and #2 on others. It’s currently as #66 on AFI’s list of the 100 best American movies. It was nominated for Best Picture. Many claim Raiders Of The Lost Ark is Spielberg’s greatest film, earning a place alongside Star Wars as an iconic adventure story, and I’m not saying it’s not. Raiders Of The Lost Ark is a ton of fun, with Harrison Ford stepping into the character’s shoes for the first time like he’d been playing him for years. Karen Allen is definitely the best Jones girl, and in terms of iconic scenes, you really can’t beat the giant boulder. It’s probably the most iconic scene in any Spielberg movies, and this man knows his iconic moments.

So, yeah, I know putting Raiders Of The Lost Ark way down at #10 is blasphemy to many, but hey! It made the Top 10! That’s worth something! This placement means I really, really like Raiders Of The Lost Ark, even if I’m not attached to it the way I’m attached to some of the films ranked above it.

George Lucas’ original version named him Indiana Smith, by the way, and Spielberg was the one who told him that was a bad idea, which might be the man’s single greatest contribution to cinema. Indiana Smith? That movie would’ve made, like, twenty dollars. I don’t mean to rag on George Lucas, but it seems like the guy was talked out of more bad ideas than he had good ones. We have him to thank for the franchise, but I’ve an inkling it’s Spielberg who made magic out of it. (Two of the four, anyway.)

9 1/2. POLTERGEIST

If you don’t know the behind-the-scenes lore, you might be scratching your head right about now, thinking, “Wait a minute — Steven Spielberg directed Poltergeist?”

(Depends on who you ask.)

Technically, no. Officially, Tobe Hooper directed Poltergeist. That’s whose name appears in the credits as the film’s director. But the only reason Spielberg didn’t direct Poltergeist was because of a contract that barred him from working on another movie until E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial was released. So Spielberg wrote and produced Poltergeist, and showed up to set every day, and told the crew what to do, and set up the shots and… yeah, legend has it that he basically directed this movie. So I’m not officially placing it in my ranking of the best Spielberg flicks, just nudging it into an imaginary slot at #9.5 because it would be in my Top 10 if it really were a Spielberg movie.

Watching Poltergeist now, it’s impossible to deny that this is a Steven Spielberg movie in just about every sense. The Freeling family has a lot in common with Elliot’s kin in E.T. — it feels like they could be neighbors. The films were released a week apart in the summer of 1982. Both films feature families dealing with strange happenings in suburbia, and though E.T. is billed as a family adventure while Poltergeist is considered a supernatural horror movie, they both have plenty of levity, action, and underlying menace. There are few moments in horror as good as little Carol Anne pressed up against the television, talking to ghosts. Plus, there’s a killer clown doll — dolls and clowns are both creepy, and when you combine them, it turns out, it’s double-creepy. Like the best horror films, this one is a compelling story even without the scares, although of course those are plenty of fun here, too.

So good job, Tobe Hooper!

9. LINCOLN

Few people can get asses in seats quite like Steven Spielberg, which is how a talky, action-free political drama went on to gross $275 million back in 2012.

I’m still mad about Argo nabbing Best Picture that year amidst the silly torture controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty, but it’s also hard to fathom how Argo trumped Lincoln (or how Chris Terrio’s Argo script won over Tony Kushner’s brilliant adaptation). The problem with a prestige picture like Lincoln is that everyone expects it to be very good, and then it is — though Daniel Day Lewis’ ethereally uncanny leading performance eclipsed the movie’s many other virtues. Academy voters shrugged off Lincoln as “just Spielberg, being awesome again,” but looking back on it a few years later, Lincoln stands right up there with some of Spielber’s best dramatic work, as well it should. Abraham Lincoln is perhaps the most estimable and mythic American hero, so it’s only fitting that the most mythic American filmmaker would bring him to life on the big screen.

Spielberg and Kushner get their depiction just right, eschewing a lot of the tropes that bog down standard biopics. There’s not a lot of fat here — the film focuses almost exclusively on Lincoln’s political maneuvers as he attempts to ratify the amendment that will abolish slavery. There’s not a lot of suspense for us, since we know how this panned out, but the scenes still crackle with immediacy and vitality that are often lacking in “important” historical dramas, and just about anything set in a courtroom.

Day-Lewis is untouchable as Lincoln, deserving every molecule of his Oscar. Sally Field is a hoot as Mary Todd. The film’s one possible false note is its dramatic ending, which takes us through the assassination. A more powerful way to go might have been to cut it off right before, as Lincoln tells a valet that it’s time to go, but he would “rather stay.” It should never be a surprise that a Spielberg movie is a masterpiece, but this one displayed a new, more mature side of the filmmaker. Lincoln shows a lot of restraint in its storytelling, but is all the more sumptuous for it.

8. THE COLOR PURPLE

The Color Purple set a record at the Academy Awards — for not winning any. Of the 11 nominations it received, The Color Purple lost many — including Best Picture — to Out Of Africa, which ties it with 1977’s ballerina drama The Turning Point as most nods without a win.

That’s crazy, looking back on it now, because the film is so incredible on every level. There’s a trio of knockout performances, including the film debuts of both Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg, as well as the commanding presence of Margaret Avery as seductive Shug Avery. (All three were Oscar nominated.) Given how known Goldberg is now for characters like her kooky psychic in Ghost, it’s easy to forget that she can deliver a performance this understated, but she’s phenomenal as the meek Celie who gradually, over the course of many decades, learns to take a stand for herself. It’s easy to imagine any three of these ladies winning an Oscar for these performances in mot years; in retrospect, it’s a head-scratcher that none of them could. (Goldberg won a Golden Globe, though.) Leave it Hollywood to nominate a beautiful, stirring drama about black people in the American south, and then bestow all the prizes on the movie about white people in Africa. (Africa does make a quirky cameo in The Color Purple.)

While the film (adapted from Alice Walker’s book) is about overcoming the unkindnesses people do unto each other, The Color Purple is a more intimate and narrowly scoped film than most of Spielberg’s. It does span decades, but deals with just a handful of characters. There’s no war, no major historical event to provide an action distraction as there is in most of Spielberg’s other dramas. The film also neglects to define clear-cut heroes and villains — we need only to see a few hints of how black people were treated by whites in early 20th century Georgia to understand that the cruelty black men inflict upon black women is a reflection of the way black people had been treated by white people for a couple hundred years at that point. The Color Purple doesn’t hammer this home, but lets it simmer in the background. It may be Spielberg’s most subtle film.

The Color Purple is a remarkable film in so many ways, not least of which is the fact that it’s a movie entirely about black people. There are precious few white characters, and none of them are terribly sympathetic. This would be a feat in 2015, but in 1985? Pretty striking. The last 30 years have given us precious few big prestige dramas about African Americans, particularly ones that aren’t about a famous figure like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Ray Charles. With #OscarSoWhite dominating the headlines, it’s a good time to remember The Color Purple and, hopefully, make more films like it.

7. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

Dinosaurs, sharks, and aliens. That’s blockbuster Spielberg in a nutshell, and this is the film that first saw him bring extraterrestrials to life on the silver screen. Bum-bum-bum-BUM-BUM! (That five-note melody will forever be etched in our brains.)

Released in 1977, the same year as Star Wars, just two years after Spielberg exploded into the mainstream with Jaws, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind is kind of a spiritual sequel to Jaws‘ human story. Again, we have a doting father who is caught up in a Moby Dick-like pursuit, and again we have Richard Dreyfuss. The aliens turn out to be friendly, E.T.-type guys (as opposed to those people-pulverizing dickheads from War Of The Worlds), but that doesn’t stop Spielberg from staging their early arrival like a horror movie, as spooky-looking spaceships come down to Earth and frighten a handful of unsuspecting humans, including Dreyfuss and Melina Dillon and her son.

As he did in Jaws, E.T., and Poltergeist, Spielberg displays a knack for depicting everyday domestic life for a typical American family, allowing such scenes to unfold with surprising spontaneity and freshness. (A lot of Spielberg movies feel like an extended 70s/80s juice commercial before the action gets going, and that’s actually not a bad thing.) Dreyfuss obsessively molding his mashed potatoes into the shape of the mountain he’ll later meet the aliens on is one of Spielberg’s most inspired devices, and the final sequence is just magical. Added bonus: French auteur Francois Truffaut has a big role as a scientist. This is thoughtful, soulful sci-fi at its best.

6. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

Steven Spielberg likes to do things definitively. He made the definitive monster movie (twice), the definitive Holocaust movie, and, with Saving Private Ryan, the definitive war movie. I’m not sure he sets out to do it this way, but that’s the way it happens.

Saving Private Ryan is most remembered for its lengthy opening sequence, depicting the chaos and carnage of Omaha Beach. Soldiers drop like flies, bullets whiz to and fro. It’s absolute insanity. You have to wonder how anyone survived that. (I’d be the guy curled up in fetal position crying.)

The D-Day sequence is a killer, of course, and you can feel its influence on pretty much every war movie made after Saving Private Ryan. But Saving Private Ryan also boasts some astute character work, differentiating the eight men who are tasked with finding and retrieving one man who happens to have the good (and bad) luck to be the only surviving brother from his family. (The military has decided that three out of four Ryan sons is enough to sacrifice for the good of the country.) Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi, Jeremy Davies, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper — you can’t ask for a roster of talent much better than that, and we also get appearances from the likes of Paul Giamatti, Ted Hanson, Nathan Fillion, and Bryan Cranston.

And let’s not forget a baby-faced Matt Damon, fresh off his Oscar win for Good Will Hunting, and that this was the beginning of Spielberg’s (mostly) fruitful collaboration with American everyman Tom Hanks. (Honestly, it was only a matter of time before the star of Big and Forrest Gump teamed up with the director of E.T. and Hook. What took so long, guys?) Saving Private Ryan gets war frightfully right, but the human interactions between the set pieces are what make it sing. No doubt about it — Saving Private Ryan is a modern masterpiece.

5. A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

If E.T. and A Clockwork Orange fucked, this is the twisted little baby they’d raise together. A handful of years after Hook, Spielberg returns to the realm of fairy tales, except this time he’s brought his friend Stanley Kubrick to play in the sandbox with him. And you know what that means!

Adapted from the story “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long,” A.I. is a self-conscious re imagining of Pinocchio that starts off sweetly enough. David, a cherub-cheeked robot boy, is bestowed upon a couple whose son is unlikely to awaken from a coma. He’s a little creepy as played by Haley Joel Osment, but gradually his new mommy warms to him… until the “real boy” wakes up and decides he doesn’t like his new plastic-and-metal little brother. Eventually, this causes David’s beloved mommy to abandon him, sending the tech tyke into a spiral of mayhem and violence that finds him befriending a robo-pimp wanted for murder, visiting a “Flesh Fair” that threatens to tear him to literal pieces, and ends with this precious creature freezing to “death” at the bottom of the ocean, waiting for his mommy to save him.

And this is Spielberg?

Spielberg deals with dark material all the time, but he isn’t usually quite this cynical and dour. That’s where Kubrick’s influence kicks in, making for this delightfully sadistic concoction — ab absolutely immaculate blend of sweet and sour. Before paranoia about artificial intelligence was so cinematically en vogue as it is now, A.I. raises a lot of difficult questions about where the line between man and machine truly lies, but the neatest trick of all is that we end up feeling more for the A.I. characters than any of the humans.

A.I. contains a doozy of an unexpected ending that I hated upon first viewing, mainly because I didn’t fully understand it. It’s maybe a little drawn out, and can easily be criticized for allowing Spielberg to force a pseudo happy ending on a movie that’s a lot more depressing. Thematically, though, it all checks out upon closer inspection. The cast is pitch perfect, from Jude Law as the eerily alluring Joe to the talking teddy bear who accompanies David on his adventures like the best of trusty sidekicks. A.I. is like a children’s storybook come miraculously to life, but with a personality disorder you weren’t expecting.4. E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL

From one of Spielberg’s two-letter titles to the other…

If I had to pick one movie to show extra-terrestrials about what a movie is, it would be this. And not just because it’s about an extra-terrestrial. This is the moviest movie there is. No other movie is more movieish.

Steven Spielberg hasn’t actually made all that many warm-hearted family friendly movies, but it’s still a quality attributed to the maestro, and that’s mostly because of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, which is arguably the greatest family film of all time. And like all truly exceptional family films, contains a handful of moments that should rightfully scare the living shit out of children.

I know, because I was one of those children. My parents literally forced me to watch this movie on VHS. I cried and protested and probably shit myself during that first encounter with E.T. in Eliot’s backyard, but then, of course, I loved it.

It’s hard to oversell E.T. as the movie masterpiece that it obviously is. For one, it has one of the most iconic images in all of cinema, which has since become the defining image of his body of work (and his Amblin logo). And that’s saying a lot, given that probably no one has created more indelible cinematic images than Steven Spielberg. E.T. is also is the 11th highest grossing film of all time — kicked out of the Top 10 this year by the Spielberg-produced Jurassic World. (It would rank as #4 adjusted for inflation.) Its imminently hummable score is outdone only by other John Williams music. But mostly: how cute is little Drew Barrymore?

Spielberg George Lucased E.T. back in 2002, removing guns and replacing some E.T.s with digital creations, and has since thankfully decided never to go back and fuck with a masterpiece again. (Seriously, auteurs — stop doing this.) Fun fact: Harrison Ford had a cameo as Elliot’s principal, but it was cut from the film.

Disturbing fact: Spielberg was at one point developing a sequel called E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears, which had Elliott and a friend abducted and tortured by sinister extra-terrestrials and trying to phone E.T. for help. It’s hard to imagine the hell dimension alternate universe where that movie actually happened, but I’m glad we don’t live there.

3. JAWS

Spielberg excels at making movies about real but humongous-sized creatures with very sharp teeth, and a good many cineastes would chastise me for daring to put this below a certain other chomping animal movie. I can see their point. If Star Wars is the granddaddy of all modern blockbusters, then Jaws is the grizzled great uncle with a mean streak — cunning and mostly well-intentioned, but you wouldn’t want to cross him.

Jaws remains a fairly terrifying experience, one of the most effective monster movies of all time, if not the most effective. You’d be seriously nuts to go for a swim in the ocean directly after watching this. (A lot of people never went back in the ocean after watching this.) With nudity and ample bloody violence, it’s a curiosity left over from the pre-PG-13 era, when something with this much bite could still a get a PG rating. (Good luck even saying “shit” in a PG movie now, let alone tossing in boobs and dismemberment.)

Spielberg has become so known for historically significant sentiment and whiz-bang wonder, it’s easy to forget that he can be this ruthless. Jaws is brutal. It mostly pre-dates the sense in horror movies that victims are being punished — for sex, for drinking, or just for being hot. The victims of the man-eating Great White Shark feel like real people, and their deaths have real gravity in the small town beach community.

The movie’s main remembered lesson is that “less is more”; using the shark sparingly makes it all the more effective when it does pop up. Still, I wish that wasn’t the only lesson most modern horror filmmakers had taken from Jaws. Its the pathos that really gives Jaws its bite. The deaths of these people matter. The stakes are incredibly real. A mother’s grief and anger over her shark-gobbled son’s passing is truly heartbreaking. How often do 21st century horror films actually let the audience feel sorrow after a gory set piece? Yeah, basically never.

Throw in John William’s almost painfully iconic score and classic moments like young Sean Brody emulating his papa at the dinner table or the three leads’ drunken bonding out on the open ocean, and you have a film that can handily be described as one of the greatest of all time. Yes, I’ve almost talked myself into bumping it to #1. And no, I’m not going to be able to find any flaws with it that justify it being “low” on this list, except to say that Spielberg has made so many great damn movies. They can’t all be #1, either.2. SCHINDLER’S LIST

We’ve now reached the portion of this list that is sponsored entirely by the year 1993. Spielberg has always alternated between popcorn blockbuster fare and serious drama, and 1993 was the year that these twin sensibilities bore two of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time. A certain dino-centric film nabbed three technical Academy Awards in the same year that Schindler’s List won seven, including Best Picture and Spielberg’s first win for Best Director. Of all the blockbuster/drama combos Spielberg has released within a single year — The Lost World and Amistad, Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can, War Of The World and Munich — this is the one that makes you blink a few times and wonder what was in the water in 1993.

Pardon the tasteless pun, but the Holocaust has been done to death in cinema. Schindler’s List still towers above the rest as the definitive film on the subject. Has any other film so expertly grappled with the murkiest horrors of history, while also providing such hope? Spielberg doesn’t shy away from depicting the true horrors in harrowing fashion. Having made Nazis the cartoonish bad guys in some of his films (notably, Raiders Of The Lost Ark), Spielberg now portrays a more human side to this monster, which ultimately makes them come off as all the more evil. Ralph Fiennes’ Amon Goth is one of cinema’s greatest villains. He’s downright charming in certain scenes, until he reminds us that he’s a sadistic killer. Let us also take a moment to remember the days when Liam Neeson was a real actor, not an unlikely action cliche. (Perhaps he just knew he’d never top Schindler’s List and gave up.) Neither of these men won the Oscars they were nominated for — those awards went to Tom Hanks for Philadelphia (understandable) and Tommy Lee Jones for The Fugitive (weird!). Also very good here: Ben Kingsley and Embeth Davidtz.

It’s hard to find fault with a single element of this cinematic triumph. The black-and-white cinematography evokes a classic feel that fits right in with footage from the 1930s and 40s; it’s brought to us, of course, by Spielberg’s frequent collaborator, Janusz Kaminiski (whose stellar stylings have elevated so much of Spielberg’s work). Spielberg also limited himself in terms of his toolkit, working without a Steadicam and shooting much of the film hand-held. (It still manages to look beautiful, more beautiful than just about any other movie.) Though it may feel like a bit of a gimmick, the girl in the red coat is also a total masterstroke — one of the most iconic in all of cinema. There’s no color in the world, as if the Nazis have drained the world of life. The number of Jews being murdered every day is staggering; it’s not hard to become desensitized just to cope with the sheer horror of it. And then suddenly one flash of color reminds us that every one of those six million was an individual. There’s no way around it — it’s pure genius.

Schindler’s List has rightly carved out a place for itself alongside the most enduring classics of all time — Casablanca, The Godfather, Citizen Kane. (It’s #8 on AFI’s list, right after Lawrence Of Arabia.) I’d say it is undoubtedly the most artful film Spielberg has made, and all bias aside, “the best.” But it’s not #1, is it? Because as good as Schindler’s List is, when I think “Spielberg,” I mostly want a good time at the movies. Schindler’s List is not the sort of movie you want to watch over and over again… but you know what is?

1. JURASSIC PARK

Hello, have you met me?

Was I a boy child in the 90s?

Did I have a complete set of official JP action figures, including a roaring T-Rex, a mock Visitor’s Center, and both the Jeep and the Explorer?

I have an action figure of a guy named Harpoon Harrison, and I don’t even know who that is, but you better believe that I had it. Why? Because Jurassic motherfuckin’ Park.

Yes, this movie was so cool that toy company Kenner could make up characters who weren’t even in the movie and sell them to children like me. I didn’t care. It was Jurassic Park. So if you thought I would seriously top this list with anything but Jurassic Park, well… you’re just silly.

To be fair, I experimented with putting Jaws at the top of this list. Really, I did. Schindler’s List, too. But every time I tried, the 11-year-old boy inside me screamed bloody murder. (“Turn the light off! Turn the light off!”) There was just no way. Yes, Jaws invented the modern blockbuster, and there’s so much that’s so good about it, and it’s probably the reason Jurassic Park even exists. But Jurassic Park delivered on the ultimate childhood fantasy: dinosaurs, brought back to life!

And then it showed us that if our childhood fantasy actually came true, it would eat us. Which is actually a very important lesson for a child to learn, because all of our dreams devour us in the end.

The most important part of my life story is this: Jurassic Park was released in June, and I saw it in September. Not for lack of trying. This was an adventure 65 million years in the making, and it felt like at least twice that long before my parents allowed me to see it. It was a long, arduous summer, over which I bought all available toys and read Michael Crichton’s book, which graphically describes intestines spilt and other such horrors that weren’t depicted in the movie. (I didn’t know that, imagining all sorts of innards in this film my parents forbade me to see.) When school started in early September, I was the only kid in my class to not have seen The Movie. One of my best friends committed to being a velociraptor 24/7, bobbing his head and squawking his way across the playground. I was so jealous. When my parents finally surprised me with tickets to The Movie — probably because they sensed any 11-year-old boy who hadn’t seen Jurassic Park in his prime would immediately and irreversibly be pronounced a social leper — it was the happiest moment of my life. I found Jurassic Park the way some people find Jesus.

Like Jaws, Jurassic Park plays coy with its monsters, but this time it wasn’t because the dinos were having technical difficulties. It’s because Spielberg knew the value of a suspenseful buildup, and Jurassic Park has a full hour of it before things go haywire. Spielberg knew we wanted dinosaurs, and he knew that we were willing to wait any amount of time for them. (Seriously, at this point in my life I would’ve sat through a 10 hour courtroom drama if I was sure a T-Rex would stomp in at the end.)

We’d be here another 65 million years if I tried to recount everything I like about Jurassic Park, so I’ll try to just hit the highlights. The T-Rex attack is a purely perfect moment of cinema in absolutely every way. The film was meta before “meta” was really a thing, showing Jurassic Park merchandise haunting the background. Michael Crichton’s book deserves a lot of credit for setting the pieces in place, but it was screenwriter David Koepp and Spielberg who found the concept’s true, awesome potential, the most masterful execution. (This movie also has the most superb one-liners.)

Now, there are a lot of Spielberg movies that can fairly duke it out for the top few slots, depending on one’s tastes. But it’s madness to think that Jurassic Park doesn’t belong near the top of this list. Yet somehow, Buzzfeed ranked Jurassic Park at #13, below War Horse. The Hollywood Reporter put it at #12, which is actually #13 because they cheated and used ties. Vulture also put Jurassic Park at #12… below Indiana Jones And The Motherfucking Temple Of Doom. Worst of all, Rolling Stone placed it at #16, trailing behind The Adventures Of Tintin, Amistad, and The Sugarland Express. Apparently, this author was playing with Sugarland Express action figures all through his childhood. What the hell is the matter with these people?

Okay, I know, childhood fondness is no indicator of great art, but I’ve watched Jurassic Park plenty of times since then. On VHS, on DVD, on BluRay, in 3D, in the theater. And it holds up. (You know what else held up? My Harpoon Harrison action figure. I’m pretty sure I still have that somewhere.) There’s a lot of good Spielberg face, but Jurassic Park contains the quintessential Spielberg face moment — that is, of course, Alan Grant grabbing Ellie Sattler’s head and forcing her to notice the brachiosaurus stomping by their Jeep. She pulls her sunglasses off, and no words are needed. Just eyes wide, mouth agape.

That’s the magic of Spielberg — he puts the audience right where the characters are, in awe of what they’re seeing and feeling and experiencing. It’s a very good place to be.

*

Every year, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences releases a roster of the pictures and performances they think are most deserving of accolades.

And every year, I put together this list to tell them what they got wrong.

This year, I’m far from the only guy griping about the Academy’s picks, however. The Oscars have justifiably taken a whole lot of flack for being white. Lily white. So, sooooo white. It’s important to remember that the Academy is made up of a lot of people, and no one gets to look at the full list of nominees before it’s set in stone to double-check that it isn’t just a bunch of Caucasians.

This year, sadly, it was just a bunch of Caucasians, in every single acting category. Part of the problem is that there aren’t enough roles for non-white actors, and many roles that do end up going to a more diverse set of actors are in smaller movies that have a hard time landing on the Academy’s radar. There are reasons Straight Outta Compton and Beasts Of No Nation didn’t get more (or any) Oscar love, and they don’t necessarily mean that the Academy’s voting body is a big bunch of racists. On the whole, they’re not, and Hollywood’s diversity problem spans a lot wider than the Oscar race. It’s getting more attention now than ever before, and perhaps slowly but surely, that will inspire some change.

But the Oscars aren’t the last word in cinema.

I mean, yes… they kind of are, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still celebrate the great stuff from 2015 that is, maybe, more deserving than what the Academy picked. As in any year, some of my favorites got Oscar nods, while others never had a chance. Here they are.

(As usual, the winner is at the top in bold, and the rest are in descending order of how much I liked them.)

BEST ACTOR

Michael B. Jordan, Creed
Tom Courtenay, 45 Years
Jason Segel, The End Of The Tour
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

Honorable Mentions: Matt Damon, The Martian; Michael Caine, Youth

The Best Actor category at the Academy Awards this year is a mixed bag. Bryan Cranston is a terrific actor, but Trumbo isn’t a particularly memorable movie; Eddie Redmayne’s work as a transgender painter in The Danish Girl is solid, I suppose, but the film isn’t so good; we all know Leo’s going to win, anyway.

Then there’s Michael B. Jordan’s central performance in Creed, which gives us action, drama, comedy, and romance. He commands the screen at every moment, and the physical work he did to come off as a skilled boxer shouldn’t be ignored. Short-tempered, occasionally cocky, and coming from a wealthy family, his Apollo Creed could have been a difficult guy to root for in the hands of a lesser performer. Jordan has turned in a handful of solid performances over the past few years; this should have been the year he got noticed by the Academy, and the most incriminating omission in this controversial “So White” year. Let’s hope this mistake isn’t made again.

Trailing not too far behind… Charlotte Rampling rightly got her Best Actress nomination for 45 Years, but Tom Courtenay’s performance is equally essential to the film. The marriage they create together is utterly believable, and though his character could have been the villain of the piece, Courtenay makes us feel as much sympathy for him as we do for his wife. Meanwhile, Jason Segel made the all-important “comedy actor transition to serious drama,” following the footsteps of Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Jonah Hill. As David Foster Wallace, he was tremendously vulnerable but utterly captivating, perfectly inhabiting this mournful mythic figure. My favorite actor who was nominated is Michael Fassbender, who has made my list of favorite actors for four of the last five years (for Shame, Prometheus, and 12 Years A Slave, though I also admired last year’s performance behind a papier-mâché head in Frank.) As the titular genius in Steve Jobs, he’s mostly a pompous jerk, but there’s enough of a spark behind that that allows us to understand what made the man one of the most compelling public figures of recent times. (He also starred in one of my Top Ten films, Slow West.)

And yes, okay, last but not least there’s Leo. There’s almost zero character built into Hugh Glass, thanks to The Revenant‘s screenplay and direction, but the man did eat lots of gross raw animal parts, so I guess it’s okay that we give him an Oscar. Like so many actors, he’s being rewarded for one of his least interesting performances, but let’s pretend it’s just a delayed award for The Departed, Revolutionary Road, and The Wolf Of Wall Street.

As noted in my wrap up of the year’s best films, it’s been an amazing year for women in cinema. I guess the consequence is that we get fewer standout performances from the men. That’s a trade-off I’m willing to take.

BEST ACTRESS

Laia Costa, Victoria
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Elisabeth Moss, Queen Of Earth
Greta Gerwig, Mistress America

Honorable Mentions: Juliette Binoche, Clouds Of Sils Maria; Emily Blunt, Sicario

Last year Birdman wowed the Academy with its all-in-one-take illusion. This year, the thriller Victoria actually unfolded in a single, unbroken take that follows a young waitress (named Victoria, natch) across a two-and-a-half hour misadventure. This is a herculean task for an actress, asked to run the gamut of emotions over the course of the film without having any time to “prepare” off camera. Her gut-wrenching emotive work in the final act of this film should get attention in its own right, but is all the more impressive as we’ve literally seen her transform from a guileless girl looking for a good time to an unwitting participant in some very dangerous activities. Leo may have had to wade in ice-cold water, but Laia had to duck off screen and hurriedly urinate while the cameras were rolling. I’d say she deserves equal consideration.

Fortunately, the Academy did go for Rampling’s stunning work in 45 Years. Rampling says more with a look in the film than some actresses say in their entire careers. It’s a performance that’s all about what isn’t said, and isn’t done. But Rampling conveys just enough of her character’s emotional state, while also suggesting layers upon layers we aren’t privy to. Rampling’s fine work shouldn’t be undermined by her oafish comments about race, but it’s hard to believe that didn’t hurt what little chance she had with Academy voters.

The Academy also recognized Cate Blanchett, who is really a co-lead in Carol with Rooney Mara; Blanchett is almost always formidable on screen, but her Carol feels simultaneously forceful and fragile as she confronts what might be her last chance at love. Elisabeth Moss is also a force to be reckoned with in Queen Of Earth, a character who is not like Peggy from Mad Men at all. (Sorry, but I will probably always compare Mad Men actors to their characters from that fantastic show.) As a grieving daughter recently dumped by her boyfriend and facing a rough patch with her best girlfriend, her character completely unravels over the course of a few days; it all gives way to a killer monologue that’s one of the year’s best. As for Greta Gerwig, Mistress America gives her character in Frances Ha a little twist, delivering the year’s awkwardest, funniest performance as an aspiring entrepreneur who’s 30 going on 13.

In a year that was so good to women, this was a hard list to narrow down. I had several actresses I had to leave out of the running, both here and in supporting roles. That’s a good problem to have, though, I suppose.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Mark Rylance, Bridge Of Spies
Oscar Isaac, Ex Machina
Sylvester Stallone, Creed
Benicio Del Toro, Sicario
Michael Keaton, Spotlight

Honorable Mentions: Emory Cohen, Brooklyn; John Cusack, Chi-Raq

I may be betting on Mark Rylance as the dark horse to win the Oscar this year for his wry, understated spy in Bridge Of Spies. If it happens, it’ll be richly deserved. Rylance has a relatively small amount of screen time, but he’s quietly electric every time he’s on screen. Rylance was previously unknown to most filmgoers, but well known for his stage work. But his Bridge Of Spies performance is perfectly pitched for the big screen. Like Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years, Rylance says more with what he doesn’t do than what he actually does. It feels like he’s effortlessly shrugging off his performance, but that’s only because he’s so good.

Oscar Isaac is one of the year’s major players thanks to Star Wars and his HBO series Show Me A Hero. His tech prodigy Nathan Bateman in Ex Machina is basically the dark side of Steve Jobs — same ego, scarier results. He’s a lonely mad scientist, experimenting on humans as well as his artificially intelligent creations, but he’s also a relatable dudebro who’s into MMA and getting wasted. Isaac creates a fascinating dichotomy in a film where we’re never sure which character is meant to be our villain. (Though Nathan is certainly a prime candidate.)

If Rylance doesn’t pull a win on Oscar night, then the statue may very well be going to Sylvester Stallone in Creed. It’s a surprisingly tender and touching performance from an actor who hasn’t given us much to chew on lately in terms of quality, thanks in large part to the continuity of the Rocky Balboa character across four decades (which Stallone was instrumental in, both on screen and off). It’s just a shame that this was Creed‘s only nomination. In other non-Caucasian should-be contenders, Benicio Del Toro in Sicario, taking on drug kingpin baddies in a very different way than he did in his Oscar-winning role in Traffic. His character is increasingly menacing, but we’re drawn to him in a strange way. He’s capable of horrible things, but Del Toro lets us see the gears working. He makes choices about when he’s going to be a heinous, cold-blooded killer.

It was Mark Ruffalo who got the Spotlight nod in the Best Supporting Actor race. I have no beef with that, but in my book, Michael Keaton played the more compelling character, a man caught between his upstanding position in the Boston community and his call to duty to expose an epidemic of Catholic priests harming children. More Michael Keaton in movies like this, please.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina
Kristen Stewart, Clouds Of Sila Maria
Mya Taylor, Tangerine
Cynthia Nixon, James White
Jada Pinkett Smith, Magic Mike XXL

Honorable Mentions: Tessa Thompson, Creed; Teyonah Parris, Chi-Raq

My very favorite performance of the year in any category belongs to Alicia Vikander, which is only fitting since she appeared in so many films this year. There was an outside chance she’d get her Oscar nomination for Ex Machina instead of The Danish Girl, but alas, it went to the less interesting performance. (Vikander is plenty good in Danish Girl, but it’s unworthy of her  considerable talents.)

Ex Machina is very worthy, however. Vikander is ethereal and eerie as Ava, a machine designed by Oscar Isaac’s devious billionaire Nathan. She’s part of a Turing test, probing to see whether Domnhall Gleeson’s Caleb will put aside his knowledge of her artificial intelligence and sympathize with her as he would a human being. Thanks to Vikander’s perfectly calibrated performance, we share Caleb’s confusion about whether we should feel sorry for Ava or be terrified of her. It’s utterly believable that Caleb would develop feelings for her. (It doesn’t hurt that Ava looks like Alicia Vikander.) Though there’s plenty that’s good in Ex Machina, Alicia Vikander should get the burden of the credit for making the film so rewatchable. From moment to moment, we’re never sure just how aware and manipulative she is. It’s possible to see this film from so many different angles. Vikander’s likely to win the Oscar this year. (We’ll all just pretend it’s for Ex Machina.)

As key as Vikander is to Ex Machina, Kristen Stewart might be just as essential to the meta-ness of Clouds Of Sils Maria, which stars her as the assistant to Maria, a Juliette Binoche-esque star (played, appropriately, by Juliette Binoche). Much of the film is comprised of debates between actress and assistant. Stewart’s Valentine defends Jo-Ann, the bratty starlet (Chloe Grace-Moretz) who has been cast opposite Maria in a revival of the play that made her famous. Jo-Ann is known primarily as tabloid fodder and bringing her A-game to bad franchise movies — sound familiar? Stewart cast as Jo-Ann would have been a predictable stunt, but having her play the subdued assistant who passionately defends silly “fun” movies is a stroke of genius that lends the movie an added layer of interest.

Notice, if you will, that there are four black women amongst my picks (if you include my Honorable Mentions). This is the category that is most egregiously “So White,” given that so many women of color turned in fabulous work this year.

The diversity factor would have been upped considerably if only the Academy had considered Tangerine‘s Mya Taylor, who is black and also trans. (That would be a first.) Tangerine is too scrappy a film for the Oscars, but Taylor’s soulful turn as a prostitute saving up to pay for a singing gig on Christmas Eve is both the anchor and the beating heart of an otherwise madcap adventure through the seedier side of Hollywood.

Cynthia Nixon comes a long way from strutting down 5th Avenue in Manolo Blahniks in James White, in which she plays a woman dying of cancer, hoping beyond hope that her spoiled, wayward son will find his way after she’s gone.

Last but not least is Jada Pinkett Smith, who picks up the slack for Matthew McConaughey in the surprisingly fantastic Magic Mike sequel. McConaughey’s Dallas was my favorite Supporting Actor in 2012; Pinkett Smith has a little less screen time as Rome, an entrepreneur who creates a paradise populated by kind-hearted Adonises for wealthy black women, but she dominates every scene she’s in. (She also has sizzling chemistry with Channing Tatum.)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig, Mistress America
Alex Garland, Ex Machina
Josh Cooley, Pete Doctor and Meg LeFauve, Inside Out
Olivier Assayas, Clouds Of Sils Maria
Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight

*

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Andrew Haigh, 45 Years
Phyllis Nagy, Carol
Drew Goddard, The Martian
Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs
Donald Marguiles, The End Of The Tour

*

BEST DIRECTOR

Alex Garland, Ex Machina
Denis Villenueve, Sicario
Ryan Coogler, Creed
Sean Baker, Tangerine
Sebastian Schipper, Victoria

Honorable Mentions: Olivier Assayas, Clouds Of Sils Maria; Deniz Gamze Erguven, Mustang

*

BEST SCORE

Johann Johannsson, Sicario
Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow, Ex Machina
Carter Burwell, Carol
The Octopus Project, Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
Ennio Moricone, The Hateful Eight

BEST DOUBLE FEATURE

The Big Short & 99 Homes
Steve Jobs & Ex Machina
It Follows & Spotlight
The Stanford Prison Experiment & Experimenter
The Final Girls & Final Girl

*

BEST DANCE

Channing Tatum, Magic Mike XXL
Oscar Isaac and Sonoya Mizuno, Ex Machina
Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, 45 Years
Angela Trimbur, The Final Girls
Amy Schumer, Trainwreck

*

BEST FIGHT

The climactic showdown in Slow West
Emily Blunt, Jon Bernthal, and Benicio Del Toro in Sicario
Leonardo DiCaprio & bear in The Revenant
Tyrannosaurus Rex and Indominus Rex in Jurassic World
Sin-Dee and Dinah in Tangerine

*

BEST SCIENTIST

Matt Damon, The Martian
Oscar Isaac, Ex Machina
Peter Skarsgaard, Experimenter
Billy Crudup, The Stanford Prison Experiment
B.D. Wong, Jurassic World

WORST DAD

Hugh Keays-Byrne, Mad Max: Fury Road
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Kyle Chandler, Carol
Colin Quinn, Trainwreck
Géza Röhrig, Son Of Saul

*

BEST MOM

Phylicia Rashad, Creed
Cynthia Nixon, James White
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Blake Lively, The Age Of Adaline
Malin Akerman, The Final Girls

*

WORST MOM

Kristen Wiig, The Diary Of A Teenage Girl
Marcia Gay Harden, Grandma
Lily Tomlin, Grandma
Virginia Madsen, Joy
Katherine Waterson, Steve Jobs

THE “JUDE LAW IN 2004” AWARD FOR MOST UBIQUITOUS ACTOR

Domnhall Gleeson (Ex Machina, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Brooklyn, The Revenant)

THE “JESSICA CHASTAIN IN 2011” AWARD FOR MOST UBIQUITOUS ACTRESS

Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Danish Girl, Burnt, Testament Of Youth, Seventh Son)

*

THE 2015 ROSTER

Here’s every movie I saw from 2015, ranked by how much I liked them.

1. Mistress America
2. Ex Machina
3. Inside Out
4. Magic Mike XXL
5. 45 Years
6. Carol
7. Mustang
8. Sicario
9. Slow West
10. Tangerine
11. Creed
12. Clouds Of Sils Maria
13. Spotlight
14. It Follows
15. Youth
16. Steve Jobs
17. The Big Short
18. Victoria
19. The Martian
20. The End Of The Tour
21. While We’re Young
22. Girlhood
23. Chi-Raq
24. Timbuktu
25. White God
26. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
27. Tom At The Farm
28. Queen Of Earth
29. Wild Tales
30. 99 Homes
31. Love & Mercy
32. Bridge Of Spies
33. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
34. We Are Your Friends
35. James White
36. The Overnight
37. Mad Max: Fury Road
38. The Age Of Adaline
39. The Duke Of Burgundy
40. The Diary Of A Teenage Girl
41. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
42. Spy
43. Buzzard
44. Brooklyn
45. Trainwreck
46. Love
47. The Final Girls
48. ‘71
49. Phoenix
50. Jurassic World
51. The Revenant
52. Room
53. The Stanford Prison Experiment
54. Infinitely Polar Bear
55. Ant-Man
56. Joy
57. Eden
58. Anomalisa
59. Concussion
60. The Mend
61. Truth
62. Trumbo
63. Experimenter
64. Far From The Madding Crowd
65. Straight Outta Compton
66. Me And Earl And The Dying Girl
67. The Avengers: Age Of Ultron
68. Son Of Saul
69. Dope
70. The Hateful Eight
71. Mississippi Grind
72. Black Mass
73. A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence
74. Grandma
75. Sisters
76. Pitch Perfect 2
77. Heaven Knows What
78. Irrational Man
79. The Walk
80. Meadowlands
81. John Wick
82. The Danish Girl
83. Kingsman: The Secret Service
84. The Gift
85. Final Girl

*

(I knew next to nothing about Midnight Special going in, and if you’re curious at all and haven’t yet seen the trailer, I recommend you follow suit. I’ll give a general overview and then a fair warning when I discuss things it may be best not to know about until you see it, though the trailer gives plenty of the same plot points away.)

Midnight Special is the latest film from Jeff Nichols, who previously brought us Take Shelter and Mud. Take Shelter was one of my Top 10 films of 2011, and Midnight Special shares a lot in common with that movie — most obviously, its star, Michael Shannon.

Take Shelter told a tale of a coming apocalypse on a shoestring budget with only a handful of set pieces, with Shannon’s character warning his friends and neighbors that they’d better do as the title suggested if they want to survive Judgment Day. But that film left us to wonder whether or not this was a figment of the lead character’s paranoid imagination. There’s no such ambiguity here, unless we assume that Michael Shannon and everyone else in the film are really off their rockers. Moments in Midnight Special definitely  require some shelter-taking.

But like Take Shelter, Midnight Special still leaves a lot of room for interpretation, too. At various points in the film, you might think it’s about time travel, extra-terrestrials, or the afterlife. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. The film opens in a motel room, with a closeup of a piece of duct tape placed over the peephole. There’s a news report about an abducted child on the TV. Why the duct tape is there, and who this boy is, are mysteries that are revealed to us gradually over the course of the story.

Along with Shannon, the film stars Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, and Adam Driver, and takes place in and around Louisiana. The film was completed in 2014, and for some reason was held back for release until now. That’s not totally surprising — like some of Nichols’ other films, it’s the kind of film that straddles the line between major studio release and an indie sensibility. We don’t see many sci-fi films that take place entirely in rural America, set against a backdrop of dusty highways, dingy roadside motels, and marshy wetlands. And we don’t see very many that take such time building suspense, that so slowly unfurl their mysteries.

(This is the part of the review that gives a little more away, though still no major spoilers.)

Midnight Special is a sci-fi movie about a boy who is… let’s just say “special.” It may remind you of such diverse films as Firestarter, Mercury Rising, and a lot of Steven Spielberg’s oeuvre. (It could aptly be retitled Close Encounters Of The Sugarland Express.) In particular, I am reminded of Rian Johnson’s Looper, because it tells a sci-fi story with an epic scope on a pretty modest budget, using special effects sparingly, and its plot also hinges on a child with very unique abilities. (Unfortunately, I also couldn’t help but think of the extremely loud and incredibly annoying child protagonist in Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, but the less said about that the better. Jaeden Lieberher’s Alton is a far more palatable precocious tyke.)

There are a handful of great scenes in Midnight Special, many of which gesture toward a more conventionally-structured studio film with a much larger budget. The film’s opening act is a total mystery — we can sense that the boy’s kidnappers aren’t merely seeking random, but have a larger mission on their minds, but what is it? How does the Christian cult led by Sam Shephard factor in? And why is the NSA, represented here by a pre-Force Awakens Adam Driver, so interested in this child?

Most of this is answered, though somewhat sketchily. Midnight Special shrouds itself in a vagueness that may frustrate those looking for a more straightforward, mainstream sci-fi thriller, and the relationships between its characters may not be complex enough to fully satisfy fans of Nichols’ previous work. Many themes are touched upon, but none emerge as the overarching idea behind this story. The best sci-fi tales are allegorical parables, but Midnight Special doesn’t appear to be. Early on, it appears that the film will take on religion — there’s a cultish Christian community that worships Alton, though Nichols unceremoniously drops this plot thread in the first act. The government is made to look overly bureaucratic and silly, but this is a passing joke. It’s not totally clear what’s at stake. There are nods toward Dunst, Shannon, and Lieberher being a happy family unit, but we don’t spend enough time relating to them on that level. Alton’s a strange, otherworldly kid, so it’s never much of a question whether or not he belongs among more “normal” kids. Driver, Edgerton, and Shannon take turns being the protagonist, but none of them quite emerge as a leading figure we can follow through this tale.

These are relatively minor gripes in an entertaining enough film, one that feels very certain about its ideas but has difficulty conveying what exactly those are. (This, oddly, reminded me of another ambitious but modestly budgeted sci-fi film, Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales.) If nothing else, it indicates that Nichols might be a solid candidate in following Rian Johnson’s footsteps from Looper to Star Wars. (He’s already on good terms with Kylo Ren.)

*

We’re living in a wacky movie world these days. The third highest grossing film of this year so far is also one of the biggest disappointments — Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice plummeted in its second and third weekends, so even though the film will gross over $300 million, it’s a domestic disappointment. (Its production budget is $250 million, and who knows how much Warner Bros. spent on marketing that monstrosity.)

Batman V Superman‘s worldwide receipts will likely brand it as a hit of sorts, but whatever. Alongside that superhero misfire is the year’s biggest hit, Deadpool, and two animated family films, Zootopia and Kung Fu Panda 3. Ride Along 2 rounds out the top five highest grossing films this year. I haven’t seen a single one of these movies.

Yes, it’s only April. But what do the studios have in store for us for the rest of 2016? You guessed it: more superheroes, more talking animals, and more lame-o c0medies, mostly. That’s why it’s extra-refreshing when an itty-bitty hit like Hello, My Name Is Doris shuffles along.

Hello, My Name Is Doris has grossed under $10 million domestically so far, which probably wouldn’t even cover Batman V Superman‘s opening title sequence. But $10 million is also about ten times its budget. In order to do comparative business, Dawn Of Justice would need to gross $2.5 billion dollars in the United States alone. (No big deal, that’s only a little more than double the business Star Wars: The Force Awakens did.)

To sum it up? In the case of Batman V Superman V Doris, the kooky old cat lady emerges as the clear victor. Take that, Zack Snyder.

Hello, My Name Is Doris is a genial low-budget comedy with modest ambitions, yet it feels a bit more revolutionary than that. How often do we see comedies (or any movie at all, really) centered on exploring the inner life of a woman in her sixties? Not many. How many pay serious attention to the fantasies of a horny old lady? By my count: zero. Doris is a quirky hybrid of Michael Showalter’s particular brand of offbeat absurdity (of the Wet Hot American Summer variety) and a lighter, nicer comedy aimed at the senior citizen market that made such films as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel viable hits. It stars Sally Field (in her first leading role in ages) as — you guessed it — Doris, the sort of person who gets branded a “cat lady,” an “old maid,” and other such unflattering terms.

Doris has held the same job all her life, working in the accounting department at a company that has gotten a lot hipper over the years. Hello, My Name Is Doris takes amusing jabs at millennials and hipsters, with a lot of one-liners aimed at pretentious Brooklyn folk. The “villain” of the piece, in fact, is a woman named Brooklyn (played by Beth Behrs), who competes with Doris for the attentions of John Freemont (Max Greenfield). Brooklyn is cute, smart, and appears to be in her late twenties. Same with John. Yet Doris somehow gets it into her head that she stands a chance with him, indulging in romance novel-esque fantasies of removing his shirt and passionately smooching.

In short: Doris is horny.

Tonally, Hello, My Name Is Doris falls somewhere in between a studio romantic comedy and something a bit more acerbic. The younger characters are relatable (albeit ridiculous) to those of us around that age, while there’s also plenty of humor aimed at the AARP crowd. (Doris is dubbed a “hoarder,” though I’ll bet plenty of older folks in the audience relate to her justifications for keeping decades-old duck sauce: “It keeps!”) Here we get the requisite scenes in which Doris is taught how to use Facebook by her BFF’s granddaughter. These are somewhat odd rubbing up against a satirical look at the oh-so-ironic Brooklyn electronic music scene. But Showalter knows better than to give in to the very worst cliches we imagine coming from such this “millennial versus fogey” setup. (Unlike last year’s laborious The Intern, in which Anne Hathaway’s TED talky fashion entrepreneur had to help Robert De Niro’s wizened intern make a Facebook profile of his own.)

Hello, My Name Is Doris isn’t a particularly impressive piece of filmmaking, or of comedy, but it’s a thoroughly likable one, with only a couple of too-obvious plot beats (mainly in the third act), and several more surprises. Its best scenes are when Doris and John are hanging out, finding commonalities despite the generations that divide them. They really do have enough chemistry to make this work, even if we suspect that they won’t exactly be riding off into the sunset together at the end. (Though, to Showalter and co-writer Laura Terruso’s credit, we’re never totally sure they won’t.) Field elevates the material a cut or two above what almost any other actress would bring to the role, and Greenfield is all charm as the star of her kooky fantasies. Tyne Daly, Peter Gallagher, and Wendi McLendon-Covey ham it up in supporting roles. And Natasha Lyonne is here, too, for some reason, popping up as Doris’ co-worker in a pretty tiny role.

When taken on its own modest terms, Hello, My Name Is Doris is one of the most purely enjoyable film experiences I’ve had in a while. It’s hard to imagine anyone not finding at least a little something to cherish about its heroine. I would happily watch 100 movies starring actresses of Field’s caliber lusting after younger hunks before watching those hunks beating the CGI shit out of each other in nonsensical stories. In a cinematic universe overcrowded with caped crusaders, Doris is fresh and new. In fact, it’s early enough in the year that Hello, My Name Is Doris was my favorite film of 2016 for a handful of days — until I caught up with Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some. (The official title is Everybody Wants Some!!, fashioned after a Van Halen song, but forgive me for ignoring the exclamation points. The title isn’t this film’s strong suit.) Like Doris, Everybody Wants Some is best met with tepid expectations. It aims to amuse, and does not aim to do a whole lot more. It may be hard to tamp down anticipation for the newest film from a vertiable auteur like Linklater, who created the most grownup trilogy of all time (the Before Sunrise series) and last gave us Boyhood, an adolescent epic twelve years in the making and my favorite film of 2014.

Everybody Wants Some feels like Linklater taking a breather after the marathon experience that was Boyhood, and I’m totally fine with that. It would have been impossible for him to so quickly turn around another film with such monumental scope and impact, so Linklater did the opposite: he made a movie so featherweight, it’s nearly impossible to ascribe any deeper meaning to.

Everybody Wants Some is the kind of film that you either will or will not enjoy, and further reflection or analysis is unlikely to change that. What’s there is there, and not everyone will connect to it. The spring comedy has been billed as a “spiritual sequel” to Dazed And Confused, but it’s better not to examine it in that context. Dazed And Confused has become an unlikely classic of the 90s, but Everybody Wants Some isn’t necessarily aiming to follow suit. Its protagonist is Jake (Blake Jenner), an incoming freshman at a fictional Texas university. We follow Jake for a handful of days after he moves into the house occupied by the very colorful school baseball team. School hasn’t started yet, so there’s nothing much for these fellas to do but get drunk, get high, and get laid. So they do.Therein lies the problem detractors of Linklater’s movie find — Everybody Wants Some is concerned with little more than these three topics, and not everyone will find these guys’ pursuit of brew, pot, and booty so amusing. But I did! Everybody Wants Some perfectly captures the directionless haze of summer days in college, particularly the few days leading up to the start of classes. Sure, some college students might actually crack a book during this time, but not the jocks. This film very clearly expresses the idea that these guys are not in school to learn. They’re on baseball scholarships, and that’s the extent of what they care about (on top of the beer, pot, and pussy). Most of these guys have no interest in their college courses, and that feels pretty accurate. A lot of people end up at college with a similar disinterest in academics, particularly when they’re not paying for it. For them, college is a good place to party. Real life is best left to worry about afterward.

Everybody Wants Some‘s cast of characters is not the most nuanced bunch of young men you’ll ever meet, but neither is your average freshman dorm room. That’s the point. It’s not because the filmmaker didn’t think it through — Linklater’s not the type to skimp on character development without good reason. The supporting cast is populated with comedic characters who feel completely authentic in this world, including Willoughby (Wyatt Russell), the stoner with a secret, the Matthew McConaughey replacement Finnegan (Glen Powell), the perpetually dazed and confused Plummer (Temple Baker), the hunky country bumpkin Beuter (Will Brittain), clueless freshman Brumley (Tanner Kalina), token black dude Dale (J. Quinton Johnson), preening peacock Roper (Ryan Guzman), fond of checking out his own ass in the mirror, and the cocky kingpin McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin). (The one exception to being “true to life” is the cartoonish Jay, played by Juston Street, who’s a little too broad to belong in this movie.) In this large ensemble, each of these characters — and a handful of others — leaves a memorable impact. That’s hard to do.Women are often treated like props in movies. They’re the reward a hero “wins” after a job well done. A horny little comedy like Everybody Wants Some would be insufferable in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, but despite the inescapable fact that the brunt of his work is male-centric, Linklater has created some fantastic roles for women in the past.  Everybody Wants Some gives us one solid female character in Beverly (Zoey Deutch), a theater major who flirts with Jake while giving the cold shoulder to the more aggressive dudebros on the team. Beverly is no Celine from Before Sunset or Olivia from Boyhood, but she’s engaging enough to show that Linklater doesn’t dismiss females the way some of his characters do. Like it or not, this is the way a lot of college guys talk about women when they’re together, and probably even more accurate to its period (1980). The film is, in some ways, a celebration of this more carefree era, a time before women were supposed to have much agency in such matters. (Though here, the women treat the guys as props as often as vice versa.) There’s also an underlying mournfulness to the whole affair — we sense that this will be, in essence, the pinnacle of most of these guys’ lives, even if they don’t know it. A girl like Beverly with a good head on her shoulders, focused on her future, will go further than nearly all of these athletes. We know this. But few 18-year-old males would be aware of this, nor willing to admit it.

Everybody Wants Some is largely autobiographical, and of course, Linklater went on to do a lot more than just get drunk and play college baseball. Most of this teammates probably didn’t. The film feels like a love letter to them, and to anyone else for whom these lazy, late summer days (and nights) are as good as it gets. Everybody Wants Some takes place in 1980, which is more like the 70s than what we typically think of “the 80s.” Disco is still the hot club scene (in this town, at least), but hip hop is on the horizon (evidenced by a car sing-along to “Rapper’s Delight”); there’s also a night spent in a country bar. The 1980s are struggling to find their own identity, just like so many of these college kids are. It’s hard to ever go wrong with a disco dancing scene in a movie. Everybody Wants Some makes good use of the clothes, the moves, the hairstyles, and the music — these party scenes are a ton of fun. The soundtrack is not overthought; nearly every song we hear is a recognizable hit, from “Heartbreaker” to “Heart Of Glass” to “Whip It” to “I Want You To Want Me” to “My Sharona.” (We tend to think of these as 80s songs, though most were released in 1979.)The soundtrack is a tip-off to what Everybody Wants Some is really up to — it’s more of an idealization than a literal representation of this chapter in Linklater’s personal history. When we look back on a fond period of our lives, we don’t necessarily remember it as it was, but by the way it felt. We forget the day-to-day bullshit we were worried about. We remember the good times, just like we remember the Greatest Hits.

In Everybody Wants Some, we get all of the fizzy fun and none of the complication. Few of these characters carry any baggage from their pre-college lives; when we do learn one character’s secret, he’s already disappeared from the movie. That’s true to the early college experience, too — we meet everyone fresh, and in many cases, we’ll never get the context of how they became who they are. College is all about establishing new rules. It’s a new horizon. Linklater’s movie unfolds entirely in present tense, minus nods to the past and without looking ahead to the future. It’s a luxury that, probably, only young white men who are between eighteen and twenty-one could afford. (Especially if they live in the comparatively uncomplicated early 1980s.) We eventually discover that one character is much older than he claimed to be, and Jake surmises that he lied because he wanted to relive these glory days again and again and again. So, then, it’s not Jake who is meant to represent Linklater here. It’s this character, lovingly stuck in the past, unwilling or unable to break away from it to move on with the future. Everybody Wants Some isn’t terribly wistful, but if you look into it deeply enough, it can be read with a touch of tragedy.

So much of Linklater’s work stems from his own experiences. Though it shares more than a little something in common with Dazed  And Confused, Everybody Wants Some might also be read as a sequel to Boyhood. It begins exactly where that film ends: the first day of college. In many ways, Everybody Wants Some‘s Jake might as well be Boyhood‘s Mason. (Jake is a jock and Mason wasn’t, but both are a bit more thoughtful than their peers.) The films end on a note of potentially blossoming romance, but in both we are aware of how young these young men are, and we sense that there are deeper loves in store down the line. Linklater is so very good at capturing little moments that might mean nothing, or might end up defining us. It’s only the unknown future that will place them in context.None of these characters get a traditional story arc, so it’s a bit jarring when the movie ends. In a way, Everybody Wants Some feels more like a great TV pilot than a movie, because as the end credits rolled, I found myself mourning that I wouldn’t be able to hang out with these guys again. These stories feel so incomplete, but that, too, is the point. The beginning of college is just the beginning. Everybody Wants Some is a enjoyably inconsequential interlude between more monumental moments. Jake and Beverly will not get married and starting a family; they might not even continue dating. Most of these guys won’t stay friends. One or two might become professional baseball players, if they’re lucky. The big stories are still ahead. But that doesn’t mean there’s no value in observing what happens in the meantime.

Not every person who means something to us stays in our lives for very long. They come and go. Some linger for only a handful of days. Romances that seem full of possibility end up being fleeting. (Especially in college.) It’d be easy to dismiss Everybody Wants Some as a frothy ode to good times and nothing more. (The Cars’ “Good Times Roll” does play over the closing credits, after all.) But I can’t recall ever seeing a better depiction of college life than this. I don’t remember the last time a movie was populated with so many characters I wanted to spend more time with. I won’t be too surprised if Everybody Wants Some remains high on my list of favorite films from 2016 — it’s certainly at the top now. I won’t be surprised if it stands right alongside Boyhood and Dazed And Confused as one of Linklater’s essential works.

And, given her predilection for younger men, I’m almost positive that Doris would really dig it.*

There are roughly 3,000 automobile deaths in America each year, and it feels like we see at least twice that many in the movies. Car accidents are the go-to tragedy for Hollywood, even moreso than cancer. It used to be that a character’s subtle cough around the midpoint of a film would indicate their burial by movie’s end; that’s still true, but at this point, the car crash supercedes it. The probability of dying in a car crash in California are roughly 1 in 12,000, but if you’re driving a car in a movie, the odds are more like 1 in 2 — especially if you’re cheerfully singing along to the radio. Banal conversation, too, will almost always summon the oncoming headlights. And if a cherished parent or beloved spouse operates a motor vehicle in the first scene of a movie, you can pretty much guarantee they’re about to get side-swiped.

That’s exactly the case in Demolition, which opens on Wall Street investment banker Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Julia (Heather Lind) during their final morning commute together. She’s nattering on about irrelevant domestic matters (the fridge is leaking!), so you know something terrible’s about to happen. And it does. Julia is killed by an oncoming vehicle, and Davis escapes without a scratch on him.

Davis reacts numbly to the news of his wife’s death. No tears shed, no collapse. He looks, at best, mildly disappointed. Davis feeling a bit peckish after his wife’s demise, so he puts five quarters into a vending machine and selects some peanut M&Ms. Unfortunately, the machine malfunctions, so there is no nutty chocolate solace for Davis.

That opening car crash is one of several acts of wreckage witnessed throughout the movie. Demolition does not take its metaphors lightly. Davis’ inward self-destruction is reflected outwardly with all the subtlety of a bulldozer — and I don’t say this just to be snarky, because he actually does work out his aggression with a bullzdozer in the movie. Do you see how Davis destroying his world physically matches the shattered wreckage of his emotional life? Yes? Well, of course you do. You’d have to be asleep to miss that kind of symbolism.

Demolition has an odd structure and takes a long time to get where it’s headed. The main thrust of the film is Davis’ relationship with Karen (Naomi Watts), a customer service rep from the vending machine company who turns out to also be a major pothead. This marijuana fugue may be meant to justify her bizarre choices throughout the course of this movie. Karen, a widow, calls Davis out of the blue at 2 AM one night. She’s sitting in her bathtub, but not taking a bath; that’s just where she likes to hang out. Karen has also recently begun following Davis around New York City. First he sends her a series of eloquent and revealing letters that most of us would deem inappropriate for a customer service interaction; then she begins stalking him; then she attempts to cut off the correspondence and he begins stalking her; all the while, someone else in a station wagon is stalking Davis. (And he’s less concerned about that than he probably should be.)

Yes. That’s right. While most filmmakers are content with just one contrived stalking scenario, Demolition is the kind of movie with three contrived stalkings. (These contrived stalkings are often romantic in nature, allowing characters we’re supposed to like to get away with behavior we’d find super creepy in real life. The number of film characters who justly deserve a restraining order is almost as high as the number of movie parents killed in car accidents.)In case you couldn’t tell already, Demolition‘s screenplay is a bit of a wreck. (Tee hee.) The unusual friendship between Davis and Karen, for a while, seems like it’s meant to anchor the movie, but more meaning is drawn out of Davis’ relationship with Karen’s somewhat androgynous teen son Chris (Judah Lewis), who 1) has daddy issues (his dad died in bombing while swerving in the Middle East); 2) is questioning his sexuality (which means trying on lipstick, I guess, if you are in a movie written by a straight male); 3) is a sadistic troublemaker (he gets suspended from school, likes to play with guns and explosives, and sneaks out of the house to get wasted); but 4) is sweet and soulful underneath the sassy exterior (as most movie teens are). There’s a lot of material here. One of the film’s more interesting digressions involves Davis donning a  bulletproof vest so Chris can shoot him repeatedly with his stepfather’s handgun. That moment doesn’t feel tonally consistent with the rest of this movie, but it hints at a more subversive film that could have been. I couldn’t tell if I would like or hate that movie, or if I liked or hated the sudden introduction of reckless, consequence-free gunplay in a movie that wasn’t about that. A little of both, I reckon. It’s challenging, in this day and age, to watch a film toss off a scene involving a teenager gleefully brandishing a firearm and shooting someone, especially when the scene is meant to be “fun.”

Demolition meanders for a long while before making good on its title, until Davis and Chris finally take to utterly decimating his multi-million-dollar home with sledgehammers, the aforementioned bulldozer, and plenty of bottled-up angst. Screenwriter Bryan Sipe can’t seem to decide whether the film is about Davis’ relationship with Chris or with Karen, so neither storyline gets fully realized. There is a lot else going on, too, involving Julia’s father, who also happens to be Davis’ boss, Phil (Chris Cooper), rightly concerned with his son-in-law’s mental stability. (Cooper is one of few performers able to ground this movie in a recognizable reality, and anchors what is probably this film’s best scene.) Julia’s “ghost” also haunts Davis’ memories, even though he claims he didn’t love her. (Though that might be just a cop out because he’s emotionally wrecked. Get it?)It sounds like I’m hating on Demolition, but I’m not. At least, not totally. Sipe’s script feels like an early draft by a promising novice. It makes a lot of obvious choices (including that car accident in the first scene), then tries to make up for that by occasionally including some truly bizarre ones (the early interactions between a heavily stoned Karen and grief-addled Davis are super weird). Most characters in this movie do not behave the way real human beings do, and yes, the film is meant to chronicle a journey that breaks from the traditional way grief gets depicted in the movies, with lots of cathartic crying and hugging. Davis’ kooky behavior might come across better in a film in which everyone else acted normal; Davis, Karen, and Chris are meant to be a trio of lovably rough-around-the-edges misfits, I’d guess, but a lot of the time they just seem like a bunch of jerks.

That said, after a rushed melodramatic climax, the film’s last couple scenes are truly touching and actually do pull off Davis’ character arc, albeit in a fairly pat way. Demolition is stylishly directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, who helped Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto win Oscars for Dallas Buyers Club and earned nominations for Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern in Wild. It’s no surprise, then, that the performances are also the best thing about Demolition, particularly Gyllenhaal in the lead. You can sense Gyllenhaal wanting to do something darker and more Nightcrawler-ish than this script will allow; his performance comes most alive in the scenes in which his character makes the least sense, which is a weird dichotomy. It’s possible that Vallée was just the wrong choice to helm this particular story; there’s tension between the spiky, stylized script and Vallée’s free-flowing but sobering directorial style. (I wonder if the sensibilities of someone like Spike Jonze might have been a better match for the material.) Demolition is a flawed curiosity, and I can’t necessarily recommend it except to those who don’t mind a bit of mess in their movie. But I have a small amount of affection for it anyway. Even when it takes its wrong turns — and there are more than a few — it does so boldly, and with personality.

The bulldozer subtlety of Demolition may make us look that much more fondly upon the equally noisy-sounding Louder Than Bombs, which treads gently with very similar subject matter. It follows a handful of characters who reckon with grief in the wake of a death.

What kind of death, you ask?

A car accident, of course!

Louder Than Bombs is the latest from Joachim Trier, the Norwegian filmmaker who previously brought us Reprise (released here in 2008) and Oslo, August 31st (from 2012), both of which are quite good. Unlike those films, Louder Than Bombs takes place in America and its performers speak English. Its cast is more familiar to stateside audiences, including Jesse Eisenberg, Gabriel Byrne, Amy Ryan, and David Strathairn. Despite these differences, Louder Than Bombs shares an awful lot in common with Trier’s previous works — most notably, it is utterly drenched in death. (Even moreso than the others.)

Louder Than Bombs is the story of three men reckoning with the loss of one woman. She is Isabelle Reed (Isabelle Huppert), a celebrated photojournalist who survived a bombing, amongst other mayhem abroad, only to come home and die in a comparatively mundane car accident. She is survived by two sons and her husband, each mourning her passing in their own way. Gene (Byrne) has only recently begun dating again, shacking up with a woman named Hannah who is, unfortunately, his son’s English teacher. Jonah (Eisenberg), a college professor, has left the nest and started his own family with his beautiful wife Amy (Megan Ketch), but he’s also still hankering for his ex Erin (Rachel Brosnahan), potentially because she is grieving for her own mother. Jonah’s younger brother Conrad (Devin Druid) is outwardly sullen and morose, prompting Jonah to wonder at one point if he’s going to shoot up a school. But it turns out Conrad’s inner life is richly weird, in a sweet way.

Of this clan, it’s Conrad who is most obsessed with Isabelle’s passing, wondering what led to her death and what it was like for her in the moment. (A gorgeous, slow-mo fantasy sequence depicts his romanticized vision of the wreck.) The film treats us to memories from all three men. In this way, Isabelle becomes the most nuanced and “alive” character in the film, even though she’s already passed away when this story begins. Sometimes, people are more present in our minds and hearts once they’re gone than they were when alive. As a woman, Isabelle was praised and loved and misunderstood. As a ghost, she is mythic and majestic and mysterious. Death has a way of doing that to people.

Like Demolition, Louder Than Bombs meanders through several storylines, allowing all three Reed men to be protagonists at times, then occasionally dropping them to move on to something else. Jonah’s story, in particular, doesn’t get much of a resolution. Instead, Trier spends a fair amount of time on tertiary plot elements, like Conrad’s obsession with a cute, oblivious cheerleader named Melanie (Ruby Jerins). These rambling romantic interludes shouldn’t surprise anyone who has seen similar relationships play out in Trier’s previous work. He tends to like romantic asides, and there’s a nice long interaction between Conrad and Melanie near the end of the film that feels very true to teen life (and a bit Linklater-ish). Nearly every scene plays well as an individual moment; as a cumulative story, they don’t necessarily hang together. Much like Demolition, it feels like we’re seeing the remnants of several drafts that went in different directions, or a cut that has some significant pieces missing. In that way, it may remind of Kenneth Lonergan’s similarly morbid Margaret, though that was a bus accident instead of a car accident. (Sidenote: Lonergan’s previous film, You Can Count On Me, had protagonists orphaned by a car accident.)

Trier’s Reprise and Oslo, August 31st were both about young men struggling with whether to live or die. Louder Than Bombs tells the story of a woman who is already gone. Gene believes Isabelle took her own life, which is not a terribly significant detail in the grand scheme of things. The film explores the absence any person leaves once they go, regardless of how or when they go. Isabelle could easily have been a more ordinary character, but Trier makes her a renowned photographer with an adventurous soul, someone we’d gladly watch a whole movie about. (Possible prequel?) Isabelle’s return to the United States to be near her family leaves her conflicted about the world of drama and danger she abandoned abroad. (There are definite shades of The Hurt Locker here — Isabelle’s something of a war addict, too.)

This adds a dimension of depth to what might’ve been a more maudlin tale. Gene, Jonah, and Conrad wonder about this woman’s inner life, but her death-defying experiences in the Middle East are unknowable to them in this safe, suburban world. She took risks and made a name for herself in ways they never will. In a way, Isabelle is this film’s protagonist. She’s certainly the strongest, most interesting character, which could be Trier’s intent so that we feel her absence the way her love ones do. Maybe that’s why none of the other characters is quite able to rise to the occasion of being this film’s central character. Isabelle is our heroine, carrying this story from beyond the grave. That’s not easy to do.

Louder Than Bombs is comprised of a fair number of grief porn indie cliches, though its screenplay is more nuanced than Demolition‘s. There’s no “big idea” (like causing external physical damage to nurse the wounds within); it’s rather a character-based rumination on that old adage, “life goes on.” Both films feature moody, half-orphaned teens obsessed with recreating their parent’s death scene, and are haunted by visions of the dead woman in question long after she’s physically gone. They make for a nice downer of a double feature, but there’s no reason not to wait for rental. After all, you never know what terrible calamity might befall you on the way to the theater… if I’ve learned anything from the movies, it’s that it’s just not safe out there!

*

The biopic is a well-worn genre, especially when it comes to musicians. Marion Cotillard, Sissy Spacek, Jamie Foxx, and Reese Witherspoon have won Oscars playing notable musical artists, and plenty more have been nominated. The genre itself was mercilessly lampooned in Walk Hard.

These days, musician biopics still get made, but on a smaller scale than they used to, and lately they tend to fly further under the radar than they used to. (Notable exception: last year’s Straight Outta Compton, which was a massive hit.) There are three such films in theaters right now, telling the stories of musicians Chet Baker, Miles Davis, and Hank Williams, but most moviegoing audiences have not heard of these.

Is the musician biopic losing steam as a genre? Have we just seen too many of these?

Yes and no. The traditional cradle-to-grave biopic, done well in Walk The Line and less well a number of other times, is difficult to take seriously these days, because in the case of most famous musical artists, we already know what’s coming. Usually there’s a drug addiction; usually there’s a tempestuous romance; usually there’s a disapproving, naysaying parent; usually there’s a harried manager who wonders why our hero or heroine just can’t keep their shit together; usually there are other famous figures around to liven up the story with starry cameos. Born To Be Blue has all of these standard biopic elements, yet somehow manages to feel fresh at the same time, thanks in large part to its soulful storytelling.

Born To Be Blue tells the story of Chet Baker, a jazz trumpeter and vocalist whose heyday was in the 1950s. (He’s one of my favorite musicians.) The film begins in the 1960s, after Baker has landed in jail thanks to his heroin addiction. A renowned Italian film director approaches Chet in prison, hoping to make a biopic of Chet’s life. Chet agrees, and flirts with Jane (Carmen Ejogo), the feisty actress portraying his ex-wife. The movie ends up being shelved, but Chet and Jane’s off-screen romance continues. Early on, Chet is attacked by some thugs he owes money to, losing his teeth and, more devastatingly, his ability to play the trumpet. But Chet won’t give up. He spits blood while he practices now, and everyone knows he isn’t as good as he used to be. He’s discouraged from continuing, except by Jane.

It’s mostly this conceit that saves Born To Be Blue from feeling like just another product on the music biopic assembly line. We’ve seen so many rise-to-fame stories, and we’ve seen a lot of last-act tales of musicians in decline. What’s less common is seeing a once-great musician have to prove himself all over again, going back to playing pizza parlors and practicing nonstop for days. Chet Baker is essentially on the journey we see musicians in movies take in the first act, but he’s already been great once. He just swallows his pride and puts the work in, and that’s much more admirable than the usual, predictable “I know I’m great, I just need a chance to prove it!” arc we tend to get from these movies — in large part because we actually don’t know if Chet will make it back to the top of the jazz scene again. (Baker is best known for his early work, so unless you’re very keyed in to his biography, there is genuine suspense in where his career is going from here.)

Born To Be Blue is pretty low-key, focusing in on just a few core characters and set mostly in a pretty specific time window. It’s not the music biopic epic that Ray or Walk The Line was. (We do see clips from the scrapped biopic Chet played himself in that fill in some backstory, but these are usually fairly abstract.) Curiously, the film doesn’t seem to have the music rights to any of Chet’s actual recordings, as the versions we get of his instrumental tracks are new reproductions by David Braid, with Hawke providing vocals on a couple tracks as well. (His Baker impression is pretty spot on.) Born To Be Blue is also a Canadian-U.K. co-production, so most of the supporting players are unknowns. (In most movies, we’d get a big star playing Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.)

“My Funny Valentine,” one of Baker’s best known recordings, is prominently featured in the film’s most transcendent moment. Baker didn’t write the song, but when he croons “Is your mouth a little weak?”, it feels entirely personal to the struggle he’s faced playing the trumpet again. Both Hawke and Ejogo are very good in the film, which works well as a tragic romance even despite the accoutrement of Baker’s celebrity. (As in the movie-within-a-movie, Ejogo plays a composite character representing all of Chet’s loves.) It’s a lovely cinematic valentine to Baker’s talent and troubled soul, which he believed went hand-in-hand. Jane holds out hope for Chet, even when he holds no hope for himself.

*

Tilda Swinton is a rock star.

Few serious film fans would argue with this, but in Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash, it’s literally true. Swinton plays Marianne Lane, a musician who appears to be some kind of cross between Patti Smith and David Bowie. (Can we make this happen in real life, please?) Unfortunately, she’s also suffering from severe strain on her vocal chords (a la Adele), so when we meet her, she’s enjoying a long summer of R&R on an island in the Mediterranean. (That’s how rock stars “rest,” of course.)

That also means Swinton doesn’t actually speak in A Bigger Splash, aside from a few hoarse croakings. Fans of the kooky Oscar winner will be totally unsurprised to learn that that doesn’t diminish her performance in the slightest. A Bigger Splash is a nutty piece of cinema that veers wildly between tones, from the lushly romantic to the absurdly comedic to the melodramatic to the macabre, often even within the same scene. It’s hard to know whether Guadagnino wants us to laugh at or cry with these characters, to empathize with them or look down upon them. Maybe all of this?

The story finds Marianne and her longtime lover, Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), interrupted in their Italian bliss by Marianne’s ex, Harry Hawkes (Ralph Fiennes), a loudmouth music producer whose antics sway fluidly between exhilarating and exhausting. Paul would rather not have Harry stay with them, but Marianne harbors some nostalgia for her cocaine-hazed heyday at his side, so Paul allows it. But Harry has also brought along his young, lost-lost daughter Penelope (Dakota Johnson), who makes it clear with a few showy, dramatic looks early on that she intends to cause trouble.

Then again, it’s hard to be sure which of this foursome is the one we should watch out for. Truth be told, they’re all capable of being dangerous and damaging when provoked.

A Bigger Splash has indelible moments of all kinds — comedy, romance, tragedy, horror — including a Rolling Stones dance-along displaying Fiennes in fine form (and much goofier than we usually see him) and a sad denouement in which one character — ostensibly, the movie’s villain, though that’s debatable and your opinion may shift from scene to scene — receives a deserved dressing down at an airport in the rain, and then we end up feeling bad for this person anyway, despite that well-needed comeuppance. In A Bigger Splash, there are three key tensions bubbling under the surface: first, Penelope’s obvious attraction to Paul, brought to light in a slew of come-hither glances he politely deflects; second, Paul’s alcoholism, a demon he’s happily put to bed; third, Harry’s hankering for Marianne. He’s Paul’s polar opposite in so many ways — free-spirited, vibrant, and fun. Paul is the perfect kind of guy for a seen-it-all rock goddess like Marianne to settle down with, but are we sure Marianne wants to be settled down?

In a more conventional film, the way these things play out would be pretty obvious, but A Bigger Splash holds out on all of its tensions, forcing us to constantly wonder what, precisely, this movie is even primarily about, and who we should root for and against. Infidelity is a key threat, but these are unusual people, and we’re not even sure what infidelity means in these relationships. We learn that “anything goes” with Harry, who also has a thing for Paul, and Harry’s rekindled relationship with long-lost daughter is intimate, bordering on incestuous.

This is not a film about a married person dealing with the secrecy and consequences of an extramarital affair, as so many movies are, and as its set-up might have you believe. Paul and Marianne seem genuinely happy; it’s unclear exactly how these somewhat less happy intruders will shake things up, but we know that they will. Thanks to the loss of Marianne’s voice, Swinton does most of her acting with gestures and her expressive face. She’s up to the task, naturally — it’s a beautiful performance (and very well-costumed).

During its most jarring tonal shift, A Bigger Splash does eventually get around to living up to that title, and ends on a note that’s both melodramatically mournful and playfully satirical about Marianne’s fame (which is mostly incidental throughout most of the film).

At times sumptuous, as one would expect from the filmmaker behind his last Swinton collaboration, I Am Love, the cinematography is sometimes erratic to the point of feeling improvisational, stubbornly refusing to settle into any one groove. The cast is nice to look at, in and out of various states of undress, and Fiennes lets it all hang out literally and figuratively in a brazenly funny (and willfully obnoxious) performance. A Bigger Splash is not a film for those who tolerate only the steady, predictable rhythms of a studio film, but offers plenty of pleasures for those seeking a rockier, more offbeat cinematic getaway.

The same is certainly true of The Lobster, the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos, who previously brought us Alps and Dogtooth. Like those films, its premise borders on science fiction, though its execution, his aesthetic is stark and realistic, far from something like Blade Runner. (As with Guadagnino and A Bigger Splash, Lanthimos is working with internationally-known stars in English, unlike his previous works.)

The Lobster takes place in a world where all humans must be paired off with a suitable mate or turned into an animal of their choosing. The first scene — not at all relevant to the plot, but brilliant at setting the tone of this highly unusual story — has a woman carry out an act of vengeance upon a donkey we can only assume wronged her terribly in its previous human form. Then we meet David (Colin Farrell), who is checking into a hotel designed to pair loners up with a suitable mate. He has 45 days to either find a significant other, or become the titular lobster. Anyone who has ever set a romantic deadline — finding a date for Valentine’s Day, or procuring a “plus one” to a wedding — can at least sort of relate.This is the short of movie in which the actors are credited with character names such as “Bandaged Loner,” “Donkey Shooter,” and “Nosebleed Woman’s Best Friend.” Only our protagonist has a proper name. (Well, so does his brother… but his brother is now a dog.) Earlier this year, I joked that Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant played like a horror movie made by American wildlife, but The Lobster has a comparable number of animal casualties. There are plenty of dead critters in The Lobster, although a lobster is not one of them. Point being: this is not a date movie, unless it’s a date you’re hoping to break up with afterward.

Upon arriving at the hotel, guests are forced to surrender their clothing so they can all be dressed identically, and their first night is spent with one arm handcuffed behind their backs as a reminder of how much better two is than one. The Lobster is mercilessly deadpan about these bizarre customs, but of course, it only highlights the many absurdities of pairing off in the first place. In a series of morbidly funny skits, the hotel goes to great lengths to convince its guests of reasons why being a twosome is preferable to being alone (you could choke to death if you eat alone; you can more easily be raped when strolling solo). Hotel guests are also frequently rounded up on organized hunts, forced to literally shoot single people (with tranquilizers), since all singles roam the forests in constant fear of being captured and critter-fied. It’s funny, but it’s also only a slight exaggeration of the way married people view their single friends… right?

The Lobster contains a surprise in every scene. It’s impossible to predict where the story’s going. Early scenes involve David and his two “friends” (played by Ben Whishaw and John C. Reilly), all desperately seeking companionship not because they’re lonely, but because they’ll cease to be human without a mate. Marriage itself doesn’t seem to exist in this world; choosing a partner is enough. Children are “assigned” later. David has a couple of potential partners: a woman who announces her plans to commit suicide if she can’t find a lover, just after proposing casual sex, and a woman who can most kindly be described as a stone-cold bitch.

Pairings in this world are not based on love, but on arbitrary similarities (we’re both shortsighted; we’re both heartless; we both have frequent nosebleeds). If you can’t find someone you’re “compatible” with, you aren’t fit to be human. Most of the characters we meet are not hopeful about finding potential partners. They think they won’t make it. Those who do don’t become any happier. If anything, they’re just relieved.The premise of The Lobster is an absolutely absurd yet brilliant conceit. Its lampooning of societal constructs is obvious, for these are societal shackles we’re well familiar with. (It’s impossible to miss the metaphor.) The dark humor is peppered with occasional eruptions of horrific violence, and then there is a genuine romance at its center once David meets a short-sighted woman played by Rachel Weisz.The way this plays out is as quirky and unexpected as the rest of the film, but no less charming for it.

Not every plot movement in The Lobster totally works. There’s a villain of sorts (played by Léa Seydoux), who gets either too much or not enough emphasis in the film’s latter half. Her motives feel too simple for a character we spend so much time with, and it is she, rather than our lead characters, who drives the action in this story, while David all but disappears. In the last act she inflicts an act of cruelty upon someone that doesn’t seem to quite fit in the bizarre world Lanthimos has so carefully built. (It seems this section of the film should center more around the animal conceit somehow.)

Still, The Lobster is one-of-a-kind, and a welcome respite from more predictable Hollywood romances. It’s as bitter as any love story you’ve ever seen, and ends up being even more jaded about friendship than it is about romance, though there’s a hint of sweetness here and there. The Lobster is imperfect but unforgettable, just as so much of A Bigger Splash is. In ways, the two films couldn’t be more distinct — A Bigger Splash practically simmers with lurid, sexy heat, while The Lobster is stone cold in its depiction of sex, love, and death. If the summer movie season is a barbecue stuffed with the usual grilled goodies we’ve tasted before and will feel vaguely sick of after we’ve wolfed them down, Guadagnino and Lanthimos boldly offer us these spicy side dishes for a little extra kick. It’s a welcome respite.*

Where you live. Where you learn. Where you pray. Where you drink.

It’s happened again.

We ask questions like, “How could this happen?” “When does this end?” and “What can we do?” and the answers are: easily, never, and nothing, if the past is any predictor.

It’s not going to stop.

I see about 50 movies per year in a movie theater, and not once since July 20, 2012, have I done so without thinking of what happened in Aurora, Colorado. Truth be told, I don’t go very many places anymore without eyeing the nearest exit. The news has taught us there is nowhere safe in America anymore. Not your school, not your church, not your favorite place in the world.

Because I write movies, the Dark Knight shootings hit particularly close to home for me. So did what happened last night in Orlando. As I write, at least 50 people have been killed, and more than twice that injured, in the worst mass shooting in American history… for now. Until there’s a worse one, tomorrow, or the next day, or next year.

It’s not going to stop.

There have been enough shootings like this that one of them must have hit close to home for you, too — both geographically, and also in the sense that a gunman entered a place that is a lot like one you frequent and feel safe in and shot a lot of people there. You’ve been to school. You’ve been to a bar. You’ve been to the movies.

The gunman, whose name I refuse to mention here, has not robbed me of my sense of safety the next time I go out to drink in a gay bar with my friends, because other murderers have already done that. I know I’m not safe. Not anywhere in America. Not really anywhere in the world.

Columbine. Virginia Tech. Aurora. Sandy Hook. San Bernardino. Orlando. There have been enough of these things that I had to Google “mass shootings” to find a list, and think to myself: “Oh, yeah… I forgot about that one.”

When it happens these days, we have to wonder which kind of terrorist: domestic or international? ISIS, or just a good ol’ fashioned American crazy? Some combination of the two? Which brand of ignorance and hate was it that motivated some asshole to kill everyone this time? But it doesn’t really matter, does it? That’s not what you think about when someone opens fire in a crowded nightclub, just before the bullet hits you.

Yes, you. It will happen.

I think about a man getting ready for a fun night of drinking and dancing with his friends, looking in the mirror, thinking he looks pretty good tonight, unaware that these clothes will be soaked through with his own blood in a couple of hours. I think about a girl tweeting about how excited she is to see the sequel to her favorite movie, a few seconds before the lights go down, half an hour before the smoke starts filling the room. I think about myself, and what I’d do: run for the exit praying I make it? Crouch in a corner? Throw something? Or just sit there, petrified with panic? Shamefully, I have to admit: I suspect it’s that last one.

I also think about how, now, if I am killed in a mass shooting, there could be articles about how I once posted a piece about how afraid I am of being killed in a terror attack. The superstitious side of me wonders if even writing this has doomed me to such a headline. Yes, that’s right, I am terrified. And I should be. I’m a healthy man in my thirties, but a part of me thinks I won’t survive to see my forties because I live in America.

I like to think that if I’d been there, I would have had the presence of mind to throw a drink at him. Charge. Urge everyone to keep charging ‘till they knock him over and incapacitate him. But I know that I wouldn’t. I’d be too scared. If both luck and smarts found me in that critical instant, I’d run for the exit. And that’s a big “if.” I often wonder what I’d do in such a situation, and then I realize: I’d die. That’s what I would do.

He held them hostage. I can’t imagine… but I do imagine. These days, it’s all too easy to picture exactly how it would go down. We know these stories, the way our ancestors knew myths and fairy tales. Those, too, were warnings. “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running,” someone managed to post in the chaos, sensibly and smartly. But where is safe?

We respond differently to different crises, based largely on how easily we can place ourselves at the scene. I know this attack hit many friends of mine particularly hard, and that’s understandable. It hit me, too. Every massacre is a hate crime, and any bloodbath that claims fifty lives is grotesque. But the timing and location of this one are a special kind of tragedy. This one is ours.

These are the places we live. These are our homes. They are finding us there and they are killing us. To a lesser extent than the patrons of Pulse last night, we are all being held hostage in our home, in America, by people with guns. And like most hostages, we’re just sitting there, terrified, hoping and praying for rescue. What else can we do? Everybody get out of America and keep running.

Let’s think. Let’s pray. Let’s grieve. Let’s tweet. Let’s call it “tragic,” “unthinkable,” and “senseless.” Let’s tell all our friends how not to feel. Let’s tell all our enemies how not to think. Let’s glibly point out all the ironies in our politics that are far too gone to fix. Let’s push the button to post the little yellow face with the single tear running down his cheek, as if that one tear were enough. Let’s be outraged.

Or let’s not. No thoughts, no prayers. It’s mourning in America. Business as usual. It’s too late. Let’s do nothing.

“There will inevitably be some kind of fallout from this, and eventually, it will all revert back to the way things were. This tragedy, like the rest, will just be at the very back of our minds. Until the next one.” (Written on July 20, 2012, in response to the movie theater murders.)

The Second Amendment was supposed to protect us. Our forefathers didn’t prepare for mass shootings with assault rifles in the Constitution because, obviously, they didn’t imagine that this kind of thing could happen. Neither did we. We used to be shocked. Remember Columbine? That was back when we didn’t think something so horrid and fatal and final could happen and happen and happen and happen and happen and happen and happen and happen and happen and happen.

But it did happen. And does happen. And will. keep. happening.

It’s not going to stop.

Some argue that making it harder for people to buy guns won’t stop all of these mass murders. That’s probably true, but you know what? If it stops even one of them, that’s good enough for me. If it saves even one life that wouldn’t have ended with another kind of weapon, that is also still worth it. It’s not about stopping all of them, it’s about stopping any of them. How can you not want to do that?

Oh, I know. In a perfect world, you and I both would have the right to own an assault rifle and, I suppose, shoot things with it, as long as you didn’t harm anyone. But we live in a different world. Your right to own any gun you want does not trump my right to survive a night out with my friends. But it does, I guess?

Of course, the answer isn’t so simple as more bombs or less guns. There are no easy solutions, no absolutes, and I have nothing fresh or original to say about gun violence. No politician will ever seriously come out advocating to ban all guns, even if some might wish they could. But there are things we could do. Compromises we could make. That, actually, is what this country is supposed to be all about. The bad guys are the extremists. We’re supposed to be the ones who can meet in the middle, to find a solution we can all live with, instead of so many of us dying. Chances are, whoever you are, you don’t need an assault rifle. You really just don’t.

Yes, there are bombs. There are planes. There are knives. There are forks. If you want to kill, you’ll find a tool to try and do it with. But it’ll be different. It’ll be harder. The fact that there are other bad things isn’t a good reason to let this bad thing keep happening. It is insane to accept mass casualties with assault weapons just because there are potentially worse weapons out there. That’s like sinking to the bottom of the ocean because you might attract the attention of a hungry shark if you swim to shore.

But it’s not going to stop.

These are just words. I know they’re just words. I don’t expect them to do much, except express my thoughts and feelings. If you think I’m wrong, and it can stop? Good. Fight me. If you think you can do something, I hope that you do. But I don’t know what that is anymore.

As dismayed as I am by the actions of one man, and by the words and opinions of some others, I must also be encouraged by the bravery, heroism, and camaraderie that has risen from the horror. So many have the right spirit today… which is, unfortunately, not enough. Am I proud of the gay men and women who are out now, respectfully celebrating despite these sad and scary events? Absolutely. You bet I am. Am I proud to be an American? Well, that depends… on how things go from here. We have a major party candidate who is stoking the exact brand of intolerance that provokes such attacks, both here and abroad. I’ve read some dismaying comments about this tragedy already, mostly from people who support him. You want to be free to live your life with as few restrictions as possible, but for some reason, want to restrict others from doing that also? Oh, I see. That’s because you think you’re removed from it all. You think you’re safe… but you’re not. I know that deep down, most of you find it impossible to believe that what happened in Orlando could happen to you. But I don’t.

One hundred three people felt safe last night. They weren’t.

Think for yourself. You might think you’re doing that already, but are you really? Murderers don’t always come up with all that hate on their own. Someone told them who to hate, and who to kill. There is a self-proclaimed “politician” prominent in the news right now who is trying to tell us who to hate. Don’t vote for him. Don’t vote for any of these people. Extremism cannot help us. It can only hurt us further. It is a time for change and compromise, a time to question our beliefs and examine where they’re coming from. Do we need to hold on to these biases and grudges and prejudices…? No? Then let’s lose them. If you spend any time or energy trying to stop someone who is not harming anyone from living their life they want to, it probably isn’t doing any good and you should stop. Think about where you live, and what you can do to make it a place we all want to live. Or don’t. I don’t know.

Do we need assault rifles available to consumers? I mean, really, seriously need them? And is it at least possible that restricting them might save a few human lives? I have a hard time believing that anyone could seriously believe that the answer is “yes” to the first one and “no” to the second one, but I know. I know.

So it’s not going to stop.

I wasn’t able to sleep last night, because every time I closed my eyes I thought of shooting and screaming and bleeding. It’s not the first time.

It happened again.

It’ll happen again.

Where you live. Where you learn. Where you pray. Where you drink.

It’ll happen to you.

…

Everyone get out of america and keep running

Forgive me. I know it seems much too early to talk about the Oscars, but we’re getting into that time of year now. So far, 2016 has been all but entirely barren of buzzworthy performances. I have a small handful of favorites, but only one or two that are certain to make the cut on my “Not Oscars” list next year.

The new film Indignation is one of those “wait and see” films, released in spring or summer or early fall, which most people agree has some noteworthy work, but no one’s quite willing to bet on it yet. After all, we know there are bigger, flashier things in the pipeline — Tom Hanks, Viola Davis, Casey Affleck, Denzel Washington, and other familiar faces are attracting plenty of early chatter about their awards chances in forthcoming releases. Nothing in Indignation is quite striking enough to challenge them, but you never quite know how things will pan out. The film has made over $2 million in a smallish release and is playing well with critics and audiences. It’s the kind of film that just might have staying power.

Logan Lerman first popped up on many of our radars in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, though it was Ezra Miller who stole that particular show. Lerman has been a reliable player in films like Noah and Fury since, but Indignation is the film that finally announces him as an actor to be reckoned with, more than just a pleasant screen presence. Depending on how crowded this year’s Best Actor field is (and it does tend to be a crowded category), he just might find himself there.

In Indignation, Lerman is Marcus Messner, a Jewish boy from New Jersey who starts his freshman year of college at Winesburg, a small Ohio school. Marcus is one of only three Jewish boys who refuses to join the Jewish fraternity, even after a warm invitation from the fraternity’s president, Sonny (Pico Alexander). His roommates are the other two. Marcus is serious about his studies and his job at the school library, distracted by only one thing: Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gadon), the blonde bombshell who sits near him in one of his classes and smirks bemusedly when he challenges the professor. He asks her out, and she agrees. Neither of them have any way of knowing what fateful events this flirtation will spiral toward.

After a pleasant evening of conversation and escargot, Olivia performs oral sex on Marcus in his roommates’ car. Marcus worries that this means Olivia’s a slut, but his roommate Ron (Philip Ettinger) is more bothered by the fact that Marcus would “defile” his precious car in such a manner. This causes a rift with the roommates that eventually leads to Marcus moving out on his own. Meanwhile, Olivia notices that Marcus is avoiding her and assertively clarifies that she is not a slut. She just really liked him. Then Marcus is called into the office of Dean Caudwell (Tracy Letts), who has concerns that Marcus is having a hard time fitting in at school. Underlying Caudwell’s assertions is, perhaps, an anti-Semitic bent. At least, Marcus feels that way. The confrontation between them grows heated, setting the stage for further conflict down the line.

In a subtle way, Indignation is all about ego — intellectual ego, to be exact. Marcus is a nice boy, most of the time, but rile him up and he’s no picnic. His pride gets the better of him in interactions with the dean, but keeping his mouth shut would be immensely more beneficial. Marcus may be right that a Jewish-raised atheist shouldn’t have to keep attending Christian mass services in order to graduate; or maybe, Marcus just should’ve picked a different school. Marcus wants his freedom — American audiences are used to rooting for that. Of course, individual freedom comes at the expense of harmony in any community. The denizens of Marcus’ Orthodox hometown in New Jersey want him to be a nice kosher Jewish boy, while the faculty of Wineburg wants him attend mass and shut up about his less conventional beliefs. Marcus isn’t shy, but he is reserved. He’s a wallflower by choice. But in Indignation, it doesn’t behoove anyone to be withdrawn, or to be different, or to go against societal norms. Marcus pays a high price for his independence. 

Whether he realizes it or not, that’s what draws him to Olivia. Outwardly, she’s just like any other 1950s co-ed, but Marcus soon learns that she’s hiding antisocial tendencies of her own — she was previously hospitalized following a suicide attempt, and there are serious hints about the origins of Olivia’s pain. Olivia makes for a fascinating love interest, several degrees more complex than the love interest in virtually any other college coming-of-age tale. (Indignation isn’t a coming-of-age tale per se, but it’s dressed up like one.) She’s wiser and more mature than Marcus, but Gadon plays her the same way she’d play a much more straight-laced 50s college girl, a projection of innocence. We know Olivia is not so innocent, however, and that dissonance hints at a disturbance within her that we’re only just scratching the surface of. We want to root for Marcus and Olivia, but we can’t be sure that she isn’t so damaged that it would ruin them both. Marcus’ feelings toward Olivia are similarly contradictory. He enjoys the sexual acts they share together, then judges Olivia for initiating them. As much as Marcus hates to be lumped in with any group, he is holding Olivia to predisposed standards. Marcus is a hypocrite. Perhaps in 2016, a young man like Marcus could appreciate meeting a woman who is equally an outsider in society, possibly even moreso. But in 1951, Olivia is a dangerous anomaly, and he’s not willing to stand up for her when it counts.

The backdrop of Indignation is the Korean war, shown briefly in the beginning of the film in a sequence that feels irrelevant to what’s to come. Of course, it’s not. Marcus is fortunate to avoid the draft because he’s enrolled in college. Both his father and mother attempt to meddle in Marcus’ affairs, fearing for his safety, wanting what’s best for their only son, their pride and joy. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions… and misunderstandings… and blow jobs, according to Indignation. There is no one incident that leads to any character’s ultimate ruin in this film, adapted from the novel by Phillip Roth. Instead, a series of small choices made by well-meaning characters steers Indignation‘s outcasts toward less-than-idyllic futures. Indignation is not a particularly showy film. Much of it unfolds inside the viewer, the same way it would if we were reading the novel. While some of the plot beats are broad in theory, they always unfold in smart, unforeseen ways. We can tell in an instant that Marcus’ mother Esther (Linda Emond) won’t approve of his dating Olivia, but it’s the way she expresses this to Marcus that packs so much of a punch. Indignation is an elegant, unhurried adaptation that hits us with a wallop at the end, in a way that brought to mind Tom Ford’s marvelous A Single Man (my favorite film of 2009).

As it stands now, Indignation is poised to be one of my favorite films of 2016, and could similarly receive some awards season love in certain categories. The performances are superb from top to bottom, with Lerman, Gadon, Emond, and Letts particularly shining. Like A Single Man, this is the directorial debut of a man best known for other things (in that case, Tom Ford; here, James Schamus, Focus Features’ CEO, who also wrote the script). Indignation could be a tad too small-scale to warrant attention from the Academy, though the voting base may well identify with the story of an ambitious Jewish boy growing up in the 1950s. Though it’s too early to predict much, Indignation could slow burn all the way ’til Oscar night.

*

Hold on to something! The When We Were Young podcast’s pilot episode glances back at everyone’s favorite cow-tossing summer blockbuster, Twister, to see if the windiest divorce drama of all time holds up 20 years later.

Subscribe on iTunes, etc. or listen here.

Hear us debate whether this is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s worst-ever performance, sing the praises of bovine murderess Aunt Meg, call out numerous Wizard of Oz references, and finally, come down on whether Twister belongs in “the suck zone” or if it still sends our spirits soaring like so many Pepsi-can-wearing weather sensors.

In October of 1994, three podcasters disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland.

Police were baffled by the podcasters’ vanishing… mostly because they did not yet know what a podcast was.

A year later their podcast was found.

21 more years later, it was released here.

Just in time for Halloween (and a not-so-great sequel), the When We Were Young podcast‘s second episode tackles 1999’s unlikely horror hit The Blair Witch Project! Is the ultra-low-budget thriller still as groundbreaking as it was in the pre-smartphone era, or does it deserve to be banished to the woods?

Kick your map into the creek, apologize to everyone’s moms, and follow us on this audible journey… because Becky totally knows where we’re going! Right, Becky?

Becky…?

When We Were Young is a new podcast devoted to the most beloved pop culture of our formative years (roughly, 1980-2000). Join us for a nostalgic look back to the past with a critical eye on how these movies, songs, shows, and more hold up now.

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