The Best Films of 2015 (from our point of view)
And that was the year that was...
2015 marked some important milestones in film fiction. The Avengers returned. Jurassic Park still isn't a safe vacation spot. Paul Walker was marvelously Furious one last time. The Hunger Games served up their final course. And the Force re-Awakened. The year had its mis-fires too. Spectre couldn't quite live up to its predecessor, Skyfall. Jupiter Ascending joined the list of box office bombs. Poltergeist really didn't need to be re-made. And as for the Fantastic Four reboot, well...
Several reviewers have already published their favorites (and least) from 2015. I like to look over their lists and see what I agree with and what I don't. Many seemed to have forgotten the films from the first half of the year. Memories seem to be short these days.
People's opinions are also sometimes overly influenced by their expectations. Several films suffer not so much because they are bad, but by failing to live up to fans' expectations. Avengers: Age of Ultron, as good as it was, had trouble living up to The Avengers. Spectre failed to match the appeal of Skyfall, just as Quantum of Solace failed to match Casino Royale. (But now, since expectations have dropped a bit, perhaps the next Bond film may be well received?) After the mostly disliked prequels nearly wrecked the Star Wars franchise, Disney and director Abrams brought back Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi scribe Lawrence Kasdan to help re-capture what fans missed from the original trilogy. Their approach seemed successful. The Force Awakens isn't the best film ever or possibly even the best of the year. But it did a decent job of satisfying what the multitude of viewers wanted to see in a Star Wars film. And that is no small feat.
So what are my choices for best of 2015? As with our reviews, I will go over these by genre. But some of my choices may be called 'cheating.' So be it.
Adventure
Of the films we reviewed in this category in 2015, I give the nod to Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. It was a good all-around spy thriller with plenty of action, though it may not have quite matched its predecessor Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
Honestly, because of the great action and epic themes, I'm quite tempted to give the nod to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, even though it's on our sci-fi page.
Fantasy
This field was a bit weak this year. And while I enjoyed Seventh Son, the best fantasy we saw in 2015 was actually The Force Awakens. Yes, the outer space locales, aliens, and machines put it in the sci-fi genre, but the over-arching importance of the Force - a power to affect reality that follows bloodlines and has sides, light and dark, mirroring good and evil - grounds this saga more in the realm of fantasy. After 32 years of waiting, the characters we love and the type of storytelling we have missed are finally back.
Horror
This is a genre that only rarely has big hits and this year was an example. My favorites for 2015 would be It Follows, Unfriended, Goosebumps, and Krampus; the first two for creating genuine scares in innovative ways and the last two for giving lighter scares in entertaining ways. Forced to choose, I would give the nod to It Follows. This film, with its basic premise - once cursed, this entity will simply walk towards you until it reaches and kills you. It can look like anyone. And the only way to divert it from you - temporarily - is to pass on the curse to someone else. This film will keep the viewer in a state of dread all the way through. And isn't that what horror should be about?
Science-Fiction
For our site, this is practically the king of the categories. Besides being a personal favorite, it has raked in most of the box office money this year with The Force Awakens, Jurassic World, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, and The Martian.
However, a lot of sci-fi these days isn't the kind of cutting edge entertainment that makes us think and stretches the boundaries of how we see ourselves in the world. That the story contains technologies we don't currently have is not enough to make it good sci-fi. To my mind, Twilight Zone and Outer Limits represent Science-Fiction better than Buck Rogers and Star Wars.
Given that, my pick for 2015 is Ex Machina, a film about artificial intelligence as a concept, the consequences of flawed individuals creating it, and what it could mean to our world. My close runner-up is The Martian, a fantastically intelligent and creative film of one man's attempt to survive alone in a practically lifeless environment, extremely far from home.
Superheroes
Though this isn't the king of categories, it's one close to my heart. There were only three superhero films of note this year. Marvel retried its strategy of releasing its more serious superhero film, Avengers: Age of Ultron, early in the summer and its more light-hearted story, Ant-Man, later on. Fox released the Fantastic Four reboot shortly after.
My pick for the best of 2015 is Age of Ultron. This isn't just bias, even though I grew up on these characters and would probably pay to see them shop for groceries. Age of Ultron is simply the most carefully plotted and executed of the three. I have great respect for what director Joss Whedon accomplished in making a second blockbuster to carry on from his first - a daunting task. Ant-Man was fun and entertaining, but it simply isn't at that level.
A word about Fantastic Four. This film suffered from flaws in its concept and in-fighting between director Josh Trank and the producers at Fox. But as I stated in my review, I've seen worse films and I'm not sure this film deserves as much bad press as it's getting. My feeling is that because the Fantastic Four is Marvel's original super-team, they have a well fleshed out mythology, and they are a very prominent part of the Marvel universe, comics fans have expectations along the lines of Star Wars fans. They want a reasonably faithful, satisfying version of the story and won't be happy with anything else. The version of the FF depicted in the films from the 2000s, didn't quite get the characters right, but they were close to the flavor of a superhero family involved with cutting edge science but who could be humorous too. In the 2015 version, Trank tried a modern re-telling of the story - new origin, new version of Doom, etc. Fans hated it. With any luck, Fox will give up and let the license to the FF revert back to Marvel. I have a feeling they could figure out a way to do it right.
So ... my top films for 2015 are:
Adventure - Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (with respect to Mockingjay Part 2)
Fantasy - The Force Awakens
Horror - It Follows (with affection to Goosebumps)
Science-Fiction - Ex Machina (barely edging out The Martian)
Superheroes - Avengers: Age of Ultron
I won't rank these films against one another because each is being judged on how well they represent their genres. They are, metaphorically, from different food groups (apples and oranges).
What do you think? Comments are welcome, as always. For now, I'm looking forward to what 2016 brings...
- JC