hollywood Best Movies of 2015REEL LIFE DEPICTING REAL LIFE
2) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. I could
identify with the young wannabe filmmakers (I was a film student, my first few years of college), who lead this comedy, infused with some very serious moments. Their friendship with a leukemia-stricken classmate, ultimately serves as a wake-up call regarding what is truly important in life. TV director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon makes an impressive leap to the big screen with this offbeat, visually engaging tearjerker. I would love to see him and/or this film’s adapted screenplay further honored after it deservedly won both the Audience and Grand Jury Awards for Best Dramatic Feature at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
Could it be that the movies we
consider “the best” are those that resonate most personally with us? Many of last year’s films cur-
rently being hailed by critics and Hollywood guilds are drawn from true stories, with LGBT lives being recognized more than ever before.
Here are my personal picks of the best cinematic achievements of 2015, including those who I
consider this award season’s front- runners in various categories:
by chris carpenter
1) Spotlight and The Big Short. The two finest films
of the year were both drawn from horrific events that occurred last decade. Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight shows with near-documentary precision how an intrepid team of Boston Globe reporters uncovered the Catholic Church’s long history of sexually abusing children. (A gay victim is featured during one heartbreaking scene.) It rightfully infuriates but also inspires and is completely engrossing. As a former Roman Catholic priest myself, who served during the church’s resultant global sex abuse crisis, I can attest to the film’s authenticity. The Big Short, meanwhile, is an eye-opening but
unexpectedly entertaining expose on how big banks manipulated the mortgage loan industry, ultimately crippling the U.S. economy in 2008 and costing millions of Americans their homes and jobs. Both films’ terrific all-star casts are award-worthy as a whole but I would single out Spotlight’s Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo as well as Short’s Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and a perpetually pissed-off Steve Carell.
3) Phoenix. The title of this psychological
thriller has nothing to do with my hometown in Arizona. Rather, it is a Hitchcockian tale from Germany of a young woman disfigured by her time in a Nazi concentration camp, who, after undergoing plastic surgery, returns home after the war to learn terrible truths about her husband. Since he doesn’t recognize her as his wife, she is that much more able to exact a slow-burning revenge. Nina Hoss is excellent as the wronged woman. Phoenix wasn’t eligible for this year’s Academy Awards, though it was recently named Best Foreign Film of 2015 by the National Board of Review.
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RAGE monthly | JANUARY 2016
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