Editorial meeting: Anjelica Bette Fellini, Bill Murray, and Elisabeth Moss in The French Dispatch.
Mention director Wes Anderson, and eventually someone will say he’s “twee.” What does that mean, exactly? The Merriam-Webster definition of “twee” is “affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute, or quaint.” The word itself is thought to come from the way a small child pronounces “sweet.” Anderson’s films, which began with Bottle Rocket in 1996, were sort of retroactively lumped into a poptimist mini-movement that arguably began with a 2005 Pitchfork article titled “Twee As Fuck.”
But I’ve never thought of Anderson as particularly twee in the way, say, Shirley Temple was twee. Yes, he’s meticulous in his visuals, and childhood has been a recurring subject for him. You can tell he’s someone who has cultivated what the Buddhists call “the beginner’s mind,” staying in touch with the awe of youth most people lose as they grow older. But there has always been a darkness underneath the curated surface of his films. The Royal Tenenbaums is about a family trying to deal with the aftermath of growing up with an abusive drunk father. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is about failing to deal with failure. At the end of The Grand Budapest Hotel, the hero M. Gustav is summarily executed by Nazis, and the narrator Zero’s wife and child die in a flu epidemic. Moonrise Kingdom is … okay, I’ll give you Moonrise Kingdom. But it’s also a major fan favorite, and one of the director’s biggest financial successes.
Anderson’s latest film is The French Dispatch. I’m going to go ahead and cop to being biased toward this one, because it’s about magazine writers, and that’s what I am. (Read me in the pages of Memphis magazine!) Befitting the eclecticism that is the magazine form’s bread and butter, it’s an anthology movie — an exceedingly rare bird these days. It begins with the death of publisher Arthur Howitzer Jr. (a magisterial Bill Murray), whose will specified that his magazine, whose name is the film’s full title, The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (okay, that’s pretty twee) would shutter after one final issue which re-runs the best stories from its long history. First, we get Owen Wilson narrating a cycling tour of the fictional French city of Ennui, which lies on the Blasé river, because of course it does.
Tilda Swinton, Lois Smith, Adrien Brody, Henry Winkler, Bob Balaban, Léa Seydoux, and a whole bunch of other people.
Then, Tilda Swinton delivers an art history lecture on the origin of the French Splatter-School Action Group. The wild painters were inspired by Moses Rosenthaler (an absolutely brilliant Benicio Del Toro), an insane, violent felon who takes up painting to pass the time during his 30-year prison sentence. His first masterpiece, a nude portrait of Simone (Léa Seydoux), a prison guard who becomes his lover and muse, is discovered by Julien Cadazio (Adrien Brody), an art dealer imprisoned for tax evasion.
Lyna Khoudri, Frances McDormand, and Timothée Chalamet on the barricades.
In “Revisions to a Manifesto” Frances McDormand plays journalist Lucinda Krementz, who abandons neutrality by having an affair with student revolutionary leader Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet) of the 1968 “chessboard revolution.” Due to the students’ lack of demands — beyond unlimited access to the girls’ dorm — Krementz drafts the revolutionary manifesto herself.
Jeffery Wright working on deadline.
“The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner” is the least coherent episode, but it features a killer James Baldwin imitation by Jeffery Wright as Roebuck, a writer whose assignment to do a profile on chef/gendarme Lt. Nescaffier (Stephen Park) spirals off into a tale of kidnapping and murder, with very little actual food content.
“Twee” implies closed off, hermetically sealed, and precious. The French Dispatch is anything but claustrophobic, even in the scenes set in an actual prison. This is Anderson’s most expansive and generous work, teeming with life in all directions. Heavy hitters like Willem Dafoe, Griffin Dunne, Christoph Waltz, Elisabeth Moss, and the unexpectedly dynamic duo of Henry Winkler and Bob Balaban appear for only seconds at a time. The dizzying array of faces flashing across the screen led me to count the acting credits on IMDB. I gave up at 300. While there are some great shots of the actual French countryside, most of the action takes place on soundstages. Nobody does set design like Anderson, and all kinds of wonders are on display, from tiny dioramas to livable multi-story cross sections.
The French Dispatch is a love letter to the golden age of magazine journalism, and it made me think I was born in the wrong era. But the underlying theme is revolution in all its forms, from the students manning the barricades to new artistic movements springing from a prison riot. Maybe the critics are right, and all this stylized attention to detail designed for aesthetic shock and awe really is “twee,” but if so, it’s twee AF.
Earlier this year, Knox Shelton became executive director of Indie Memphis after the departure of former director Ryan Watt. Preparations for the 24th edition of the film festival, which will run from October 20-25, are well underway, but Shelton took a few hours out of his busy schedule to watch a movie he’s never seen before: Inherent Vice (2014, available at Black Lodge). Our conversations have been edited for length and clarity.
Chris McCoy: What do you know about Inherent Vice?
Knox Shelton: I know that it is a film by Paul Thomas Anderson, adapted from a novel by Thomas Pynchon, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, a ton of other pretty well-known actors and actresses.
CM: Why did you pick this movie?
KS: One, it’s been on my watch list for a really long time. I’ve probably not watched it for the same reason that I’ve owned a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow for I don’t know for how many years, but I’ve never read it. And I told myself that I would read the Pynchon novel before watching the movie, and that’s probably not going to happen. So, it’s time to just watch this movie. And we’ve got the festival upcoming, so I was trying to find some great connections there. One of our films this year, C’mon C’mon, is starring Joaquin Phoenix, so I thought this would be a great film to watch.
150 minutes later…
CM: OK! Knox Shelton, you are now someone who has seen Inherent Vice. What did you think?
KS: I thought it was really good. It was really funny, which I don’t think I expected going into a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, given his most recent films. It’s definitely a movie, I think, to watch a few more times, to let it all sink in. I was immediately drawn into loving the dynamics between Bigfoot and Sportello. They were a really fun little pair.
CM: I have watched it a whole bunch of times and I see new stuff in it every time. Paul Thomas Anderson took the novel and did the whole thing in a screenplay format, and then edited it down into this movie. What really struck me this time was that this is Pynchon doing hard-boiled detective language. If you think about it, The Big Sleep and stuff like that has very flowery dialogue. But you don’t think of it as flowery, ’cause it’s being growled by Humphrey Bogart. That’s what I was really listening to this time, the musicality of the dialogue — really throughout the whole thing. Everybody kind of talks alike, but it’s just so beautiful that you don’t care.
KS: You’ve got this Big Lebowski element, where you’ve got the stoner detective. But the dialogue is so much more elevated, and of course other elements of the film, I think, are a little more elevated too. It’s really artistic and delightful throughout.
CM: I think you’re right that there is a straight line from The Big Lebowski to this movie. When this movie came out, a lot of people did not get it. I had a conversation with Craig Brewer where I was like, “Oh my God, have you seen this?” And he was just like, “Meh.” I fell in love with it immediately. But he was like, “People are whispering. I can’t understand what’s going on. They’re talking about characters who are never seen on the screen.” Well, yeah! But it really works for me. I have a real emotional attachment, I guess, to this movie.
Owen Wilson as Coy and Joaquin Phoenix as “Doc” Sportello
CM: So, you’re a head of a film festival now. How do you sell something like this to a festival crowd? It’s kind of an “eat your vegetables” thing for some people. But on the other hand, like you said, you were surprised that it was funny.
KS: That’s a good question. I think I’d want to highlight that it was a funny and entertaining movie. You also have to be upfront about it too, right? ‘Cause I think you can tell someone it’s entertaining, but they’re probably not expecting two and a half hours. Paul Thomas Anderson’s gotten really good at the slow burn, and this to me was a slow burn, but it was funny, and you still get a little bit of that reward at the end that you get with a lot of his films.
CM: You’re right, it’s got a great ending, an emotional wrap up like Boogie Nights. Are you generally a PTA fan?
KS: Yeah, generally. Ahead of this, I re-watched The Master. My wife had not seen it, so we watched that this past weekend. I hadn’t seen this or Punch-Drunk Love.
CM: A lot of people love that movie, but I am not a fan.
Joaquin Phoenix as private investigator “Doc” Sportello.
CM: What did you think about Joaquin Phoenix?
KS: I liked Joaquin Phoenix. I think he’s done some great stuff. In The Master, his performance really stuck out to me. That was, I think, a very physical performance. Not to move away from Joaquin, but to go back to this: it’s a period piece, but it’s not obsessed with being a period piece. You feel it in the dialogue, with Manson, paranoia…
CM: The Mansonoid Conspiracy!
KS: This came out around the same time as American Hustle, which is just obsessed with being a period piece. This has none of that feel at all, which I think is great and feels very natural, very contemporary.
CM: There is a lot of subtext about the end of the sixties, and the corruption of the counterculture. Sportello is a total creature of the sixties counterculture, a hippie to the bone. He’s shocked when Shasta shows up, wearing what he calls “flatland gear.” It looks like it’s about a real estate scam, when it starts. That’s basically Chinatown, you know? Then it sort of wanders off from there. Did you feel like you could follow the plot?
KS: Yeah, reasonably so.
CM: That’s good, because I think to a lot of people, it seems like gibberish.
KS: I feel like I could capture it. Maybe I’m being overconfident. That’s definitely why I said I need to rewatch it. I got the commercialization of the counterculture, and especially the real estate part of it. I was not real clear on how we got to Adrian Prussia.
CM: That’s a big plot hole that they hang a lampshade on. The narrator Sortilége says something like “he threw himself onto the karmic wheel.” He’s the guy I haven’t checked out yet. So it’s a very loose connection. But then it turns out to be the key to the whole thing. You know, the basic film noir structure is pretty simple: The detective just goes and bounces off one person after another until he solves the crime. Or not.
Joaqin Phoenix as “Doc” Sportello and Josh Brolin as “Bigfoot” Bjornsen.
KS: There’s something with Paul Thomas Anderson and male friendships, and it’s in this movie, too. There’s something kind of fun and sweet about it. Sportello and Bigfoot have these dynamics that are established in our society all around us. You’ve got Doc, the hippie, and Bigfoot this sort-of Republican, super buttoned-up man. Yet they’re able to understand each other on a deeper level than just sort of, “Hey, we’re both detectives.” There’s something very sweet about that connection.
CM: Turns out when Sportello finds out that Adrian Prussia killed Bigfoot’s partner for the Golden Fang, he’s like, “Oh my God! I understand this guy now!” He has empathy for him, you know? Then there’s Benicio del Toro, the lawyer, which is another conflicted male friendship. “Clients pay me, Doc. Clients pay me.”
Benicio del Toro and Joaquin Phoenix.
Lemme ask you: Sortilége, the narrator. Do you think she’s a real person?
KS: I mean, no. It’s interesting. He’s using Joanna Newsome, who’s got probably the most otherworldly voice I could imagine, and using her for this character that kind of just floats in and out, and sometimes she doesn’t even have a body. Until you asked the question, I didn’t think about it, though.
CM: Seriously, I had watched it a couple of times until I realized, she’s not actually a person, she’s just in his mind.
KS: Wait, there’s a scene when they’re in the car together, towards the beginning, where she just kind of fades away.
CM: You see them in the car, then the angle reverses, and she’s gone. She’s his internal monologue. And she also fills that film noir voiceover role. You know, “That’s me, floating dead in the pool …”
Joanna Newsome as Sortilége, Phoenix, and Katherine Waterson as Shasta
KS: It’s a very film-y movie without being overly film-y. I think of Boogie Nights, where the opening scene has a very Spielberg feel, like he’s like paying direct homage. He doesn’t do that here. It feels natural.
CM: The cinematography is incredible.
KS: Yeah, all the blues and yellows. I keep thinking of that opening and closing. It’s not quite the closing shot, but the ocean in between those two buildings, it’s a beautiful, beautiful start to a movie. It’s a really gorgeous, gorgeous film. And I heard y’all kind of react to it, at the end when he’s driving with Shasta, and the lights are coming in, right in his eyes. It’s got this sort of dream-like light. It’s almost like they’re floating in the air.
CM: It’s full of these weird dualities, and fascists lurking in the background, like the Jewish builder who hangs around with Nazis. And the bit, “Is that a swastika?” “No, that’s a Hindu symbol of luck.” Nah, it’s a swastika tattooed on that guy’s face!
KS: It goes back to what I was saying about Sportello and Bigfoot — the more liberal hippie Sportello and the very conservative, super buttoned-up cop who were able to get along.
CM: And the Black Panther who comes in and tries to hire Sportello to find out who killed his Aryan Brotherhood friend.
Joaquin Phoenix and Michael K. Williams
KS: And rest and peace to Michael K. Williams. I did not know he was in this movie. He just passed away.
CM: I didn’t realize that was him! I mean, seriously, the cast is amazing.
KS: Oh yeah. Maya Rudolph is in like, what, two scenes maybe? She’s just the receptionist!
Maya Rudolph’s (center) cameo in Inherent Vice.
CM: One of the things I like about film noir, and you see it in this movie, too, is that everybody’s playing a game against everybody else, and everybody’s a rational player. Everybody’s looking two or three moves ahead, which allows the dialogue to be very subtle because everybody’s anticipating each other’s moves. That’s one of the things that appeals to me about noir. Everybody’s smart and savvy. But real life is not like that at all. People are stupid. If you expect rational actors, it’ll mess you up. I’m very distrustful of people.
KS: And that’s on steroids in this with all the paranoia that he’s already feeling from the pot.
Coy’s (Owen Wilson) surf band’s pizza party becomes The Last Supper.
CM: Sportello doesn’t actually solve anything! He gives the dope back to the Fang and Shasta just comes back on her own.
KS: He helps out Coy, which seems like the most insignificant of all the connections that are made. And you’re like, “Wait, so the end prize is that he gets to go home to his wife and kids? Like, okay, great.”
CM: Maybe that’s what’s challenging about it: This movie’s not holding your hand. It presents all the information, but you gotta put the work in. And to bring us back around to Indie Memphis, maybe that’s what you want out of festival movies. It’s not just passive viewing. Right?
KS: No, absolutely not. I think one of the things that we find really important is that the festival is finding films that do a good job at that in such an entertaining way — this is a really good example — and then making sure that there is a conversation, because films like this deserve a conversation like we’re having here. Whether that be from our local filmmakers, whether that be from national films, they all deserve a really thoughtful conversation. That’s what the festival is really all about — being able to celebrate creative and artistic endeavor and give it the honor that the work deserves through thoughtful conversation and celebrating the artist.
In his May 17, 1999 review of The Phantom Menace, Roger Ebert wrote “The dialogue is pretty flat and straightforward, although seasoned with a little quasi-classical formality, as if the characters had read but not retained “Julius Caesar.” I wish the “Star Wars” characters spoke with more elegance and wit (as Gore Vidal’s Greeks and Romans do), but dialogue isn’t the point, anyway: These movies are about new things to look at.”
Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker
Ebert gave The Phantom Menace 3 1/2 stars. Had he been around to review The Last Jedi, he would have had to add several more stars to his scoring system.
In 1999, it had been 16 years since Return of the Jedi, the final installment of George Lucas’ epoch-defining space opera. Those of us who had been fans from the beginning never thought we would see another Star Wars movie, and the anticipation was intense. Ebert, like everyone, was dazzled by the visuals, which heralded the maturation of CGI. But the elemental, mythological storytelling that had made Star Wars a cultural phenomenon in 1977 was missing, the dialog was awful, and the acting ranged into the embarrassing. The prequels were wildly uneven, but there were still hints of what we knew Star Wars could be.
The Last Jedi feels like the fulfillment of that missed potential. It is the most visually stunning of the eight Star Wars films, the characters speak with the elegance and wit that Ebert wanted, and the acting is often outstanding. It is exciting, funny, cute, tense, melancholy, smart, goofy, unexpected, and occasionally profound. The opening night audience at the Paradiso burst into applause four or five times. I cried through two Kleenexes. But most importantly, The Last Jedi is fun. In a year with some astonishing big budget misfires, it represents the pinnacle of 21st-century Hollywood filmmaking.
John Boyega and Gwendoline Christie do battle in The Last Jedi.
The success of this film can be credited to two people. The first is writer/director Rian Johnson, whose 2005 debut film Brick is an indie classic, and who directed one of the greatest hours of television ever produced, “Ozymandias”, the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad. Johnson is clearly a first generation Star Wars geek, but he is skilled and clear-eyed enough to craft a universal story. Johnson’s talent for visual composition is in the same league as Spielberg and Hitchcock. Lucas’ prequels were overloaded riots of color and movement. J.J. Abrams’ The Force Awakens was successful when it aped Lucas’ superior 1970s style. Johnson’s frames are mathematically precise without succumbing to Kubrickian coldness. He’s not afraid to swoop the camera around, but there’s a reason for every movement. From the clarity and acumen of his action scenes, he’s been studying the lessons of Fury Road. But where The Last Jedi exceeds all previous Star Wars movies—and 99 percent of other movies as well—is the use of color. Deep reds, lustrous golds, inky blacks, and vibrant greens reflect and reinforce the characters’ emotions.
Daisy Ridley faces the Dark Side in The Last Jedi
In the tradition of the Saturday morning sci-fi action serials like Zombies of the Stratosphere that inspired Star Wars, Johnson’s screenplay is full of red herrings, hairpin reversals, and betrayal. He was given too large a cast and too complex a situation, and he not only made the most of it, but left the story better and tidier than he found it. Ebert’s Phantom Menace review closes with these lines: “I’ve seen space operas that put their emphasis on human personalities and relationships. They’re called Star Trek movies. Give me transparent underwater cities and vast hollow senatorial spheres any day.” The Last Jedi delivers on both fronts in a way the Abrams’ nü-Trek simply doesn’t.
Not only that, but Johnson can work with actors like Lucas never could. One of the miracles of the original Star Wars is that Lucas, preoccupied with the various technical disasters unfolding around him, largely left the actors to their devices. And yet Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill managed great performances. In the prequel era, it became quickly obvious which actors could wing it, like Ewen McGregor, and which ones depended on dialectic with the director, like poor Natalie Portman. Not all actors in The Last Jedi are created equal, but you get the sense that Johnson has set everyone up to give the absolute best performance possible. Daisy Ridley’s physicality carried her through The Force Awakens, but in The Last Jedi she seems more relaxed and playful, even if her default mode is still “scary intensity”. Oscar Issacs stretches out into Poe Dameron, and by the end of the movie his look is echoing Han Solo’s Corellian flyboy, pointing toward the Harrison Ford-shaped hole he’s filling in the cast.
Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega
John Boyega’s Finn is unleashed with a new partner, Rose, played by comedian Kelly Marie Tran. Their chemistry is near perfect, and their subplot bounces them off Benicio Del Toro as DJ, delivering a crackerjack turn as one of the shady underworld figures Star Wars loves. Lupita Nyong’o’s Maz Kanata makes the most of her extended cameo. I hope we see more of her next time around, but for now it makes me smile that the phrase “Maz flies away in a jetpack” must have appeared in the screenplay.
Adam Driver as Kylo Ren
Comic book movies are ascendant right now, but the biggest lesson the Marvel and DC teams can learn from The Last Jedi is that you need quality villains to make epic stories work. Johnson’s excellent script gives Adam Driver, a fantastically talented actor, the juiciest role, and he grabs it with both hands. Caught between Supreme Leader Snoke, Andy Serkis’ preening, snarling big bad, and Domhnall Gleeson’s General Hux, the latest in a long line of arrogant Imperial Navy twits, Kylo Ren comes into his own as a complex, conflicted character. In battle, Kylo is a lupine predator, but his eyes are haunted. The Last Jedi is a sprawling ensemble piece, but Driver and Ridley are the real co-leads.
Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa
Most of the audience’s tears are reserved for Carrie Fisher, who died a year ago, shortly after completing her work on The Last Jedi. Perhaps it is hindsight, but Fisher looks frail and vulnerable as General Leia Organa, her physical appearance reflecting the increasingly desperate straights of the Resistance she leads. But there is fire in her eyes and steel in her voice, and the bravado sequence Johnson designed for her where she at long last manifests her Force powers drew gasps and cheers. We can all only hope to go out on such a high note.
But if The Last Jedi belongs to any one actor, it is Mark Hamill. Luke Skywalker has been both a blessing and burden to Hamill, who at heart seems to be an amiable geek who would be perfectly happy doing cartoon voice acting for the rest of his life. (He is the best Joker ever, and I will fight anyone who disagrees.) Hamill gives the performance of a lifetime as a man who finally broke under the weight of his own legend. The boys who grew up idolizing Luke Skywalker are men now, and Hamill’s performance is full of the regret, hard-won wisdom, and grit that age brings. Luke, the focus of the original Hero’s Journey, provided generations with a mythical model of how to grow up. Now, he gives a model of how to pick yourself up and keep going through a life that didn’t turn out quite like you thought it would.
Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill
The second person on whom the success of The Last Jedi depends is Kathleen Kennedy. The Lucasfilm honcho is simply the best producer working today. She’s driving the biggest bus in the business, and succeeding spectacularly where so many others fail. Kennedy has practically infinite resources at her disposal, but so did the producers in charge of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Transformers: The Last Knight, The Mummy, X-Men: Apocalypse, and so many other corporate vomitoriums of 2017. The key to producing good movies—and really to any artistic endeavor—is creating a healthy process. This is something that Kennedy, alone in contemporary Hollywood, seems to understand. This year alone, she fired the directors of not one but two Star Wars movies while they were shooting, an unprecedented move that prompted grumbling in both the fan community and the swank brunch spots of Hollywood. But even before The Last Jedi premiered to boffo box office (As of this writing, earning more than $160 million in TWO DAYS), she gave Johnson the deal of a lifetime—a whole Star Wars trilogy to himself. She saw Johnson’s professionalism, knew what she had in the can and wanted more of it. And if you spend 152 minutes in the Star Wars universe in the coming days and weeks, you’ll want more of it, too.
It’s fashionable to complain about how bad Hollywood movies have become. But from the perspective of a critic who has to watch it all go down, it’s simply not the case. At any given time in 2015, there was at least one good film in theaters in Memphis—it just may not have been the most heavily promoted one. So here’s my list of awards for a crowded, eventful year.
Worst Picture: Pixels
I watched a lot of crap this year, like the incoherent Terminator Genysis, the sociopathic San Andreas, the vomitous fanwank Furious 7, and the misbegotten Secret in Their Eyes. But those movies were just bad. Pixels not only sucked, it was mean-spirited, toxic, and ugly. Adam Sandler, it’s been a good run, but it’s time to retire.
Actually, I take that back. It hasn’t been a good run.
Most Divisive: Inherent Vice
Technically a 2014 release, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s ode to the lost world of California hippiedom didn’t play in Memphis until January. Its long takes and dense dialogue spun a powerful spell. But it wasn’t for everyone. Many people responded with either a “WTF?” or a visceral hatred. Such strongly split opinions are usually a sign of artistic success; you either loved it or hated it, but you won’t forget it.
Best Performances: Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, Room
Room is an inventive, harrowing, and beautiful work on every level, but the film’s most extraordinary element is the chemistry between Brie Larson and 9-year-old Jacob Tremblay, who play a mother and son held hostage by a sexual abuser. Larson’s been good in Short Term 12 and Trainwreck, but this is her real breakthrough performance. As for Tremblay, here’s hoping we’ve just gotten a taste of things to come.
Chewbacca
Best Performance By A Nonhuman: Chewbacca
Star Wars: The Force Awakens returned the Mother of All Franchises to cultural prominence after years in the prequel wilderness. Newcomers like Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver joined the returned cast of the Orig Trig Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in turning in good performances. Lawrence Kasdan’s script gave Chewbacca a lot more to do, and Peter Mayhew rose to the occasion with a surprisingly expressive performance. Let the Wookiee win.
Best Memphis Movie: The Keepers
Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson’s film about the people who keep the Memphis Zoo running ran away with Indie Memphis this year, selling out multiple shows and winning Best Hometowner Feature. Four years in the making, it’s a rarity in 21st century film: a patient verité portrait whose only agenda is compassion and wonder.
Best Conversation Starter: But for the Grace
In 2001, Memphis welcomed Sudanese refugee Emmanuel A. Amido. This year, he rewarded our hospitality with But for the Grace. The thoughtful film is a frank examination of race relations in America seen through the lens of religion. The Indie Memphis Audience Award winner sparked an intense Q&A session after its premiere screening that followed the filmmaker out into the lobby. It’s a timely reminder of the power of film to illuminate social change.
Best Comedy: What We Do in the Shadows
What happens when a group of vampire roommates stop being polite and start getting real? Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement and Eagle vs Shark‘s Taika Waititi codirected this deadpan masterpiece that applied the This Is Spinal Tap formula to the Twilight set. Their stellar cast’s enthusiasm and commitment to the gags made for the most biting comedy of the year.
Best Animation: Inside Out
The strongest Pixar film since Wall-E had heavy competition in the form of the Irish lullaby Song of the Sea, but ultimately, Inside Out was the year’s emotional favorite. It wasn’t just the combination of voice talent Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, and Phyllis Smith with the outstanding character design of Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness that made director Pete Docter’s film crackle, it was the way the entire carefully crafted package came together to deliver a message of acceptance and understanding for kids and adults who are wrestling with their feelings in a hard and changing world.
It Follows
Best Horror: It Follows
The best horror films are the ones that do a lot with a little, and It Follows is a sterling example of the breed. Director David Robert Mitchell’s second feature is a model of economy that sets up its simple premise with a single opening shot that tracks a desperate young woman running from an invisible tormentor. But there’s no escaping from the past here, only delaying the inevitable by spreading the curse of sex and death.
Teenage Dreams: Dope and The Diary of a Teenage Girl
2015 saw a pair of excellent coming-of-age films. Dope, written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, introduced actor Shameik Moore as Malcolm, a hapless nerd who learns to stand up for himself in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Inglewood, California. Somewhere between Risky Business and Do the Right Thing, it brought the teen comedy into the multicultural moment.
Similarly, Marielle Heller’s graphic novel adaptation The Diary of a Teenage Girl introduced British actress Bel Powley to American audiences, and took a completely different course than Dope. It’s a frank, sometimes painful exploration of teenage sexual awakening that cuts the harrowing plot with moments of magical realist reverie provided by a beautiful mix of animation and live action.
Immortal Music: Straight Outta Compton and Love & Mercy
The two best musical biopics of the year couldn’t have been more different. Straight Outta Compton was director F. Gary Gray’s straightforward story of N.W.A., depending on the performances of Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. playing his own father, Ice Cube, for its explosive impact. That it was a huge hit with audiences proved that this was the epic hip-hop movie the nation has been waiting for.
Director Bill Pohlad’s dreamlike Love & Mercy, on the other hand, used innovative structure and intricate sound design to tell the story of Brian Wilson’s rise to greatness and subsequent fall into insanity. In a better world, Paul Dano and John Cusack would share a Best Actor nomination for their tag-team portrayal of the Beach Boys resident genius.
Sicario
Best Cinematography: Sicario
From Benicio del Toro’s chilling stare to the twisty, timely screenplay, everything about director Denis Villeneuve’s drug-war epic crackles with life. But it’s Roger Deakins’ transcendent cinematography that cements its greatness. Deakins paints the bleak landscapes of the Southwest with subtle variations of color, and films an entire sequence in infrared with more beauty than most shooters can manage in visible light. If you want to see a master at the top of his game, look no further.
He’s Still Got It: Bridge of Spies
While marvelling about Bridge of Spies‘ performances, composition, and general artistic unity, I said “Why can’t all films be this well put together?”
To which the Flyer‘s Chris Davis replied, “Are you really asking why all directors can’t be as good as Steven Spielberg?”
Well, yeah, I am.
Hot Topic: Journalism
Journalism was the subject of four films this year, two good and two not so much. True Story saw Jonah Hill and James Franco get serious, but it was a dud. Truth told the story of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes’ fall from the top-of-the-TV-news tower, but its commitment to truth was questionable. The End of the Tour was a compelling portrait of the late author David Foster Wallace through the eyes of a scribe assigned to profile him. But the best of the bunch was Spotlight, the story of how the Boston Catholic pedophile priest scandal was uncovered, starring Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo. There’s a good chance you’ll be seeing Spotlight all over the Oscars this year.
Had To Be There: The Walk
Robert Zemeckis’ film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who tightrope-walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, was a hot mess. But the extended sequence of the feat itself was among the best uses of 3-D I’ve ever seen. The film flopped, and its real power simply won’t translate to home video, no matter how big your screen is, but on the big screen at the Paradiso, it was a stunning experience.
MVP: Samuel L. Jackson
First, he came back from the grave as Nick Fury to anchor Joss Whedon’s underrated Avengers: Age of Ultron. Then he channeled Rufus Thomas to provide a one-man Greek chorus for Spike Lee’s wild musical polemic Chi-Raq. He rounds out the year with a powerhouse performance in Quentin Tarantino’s widescreen western The Hateful Eight. Is it too late for him to run for president?
Best Documentary: Best of Enemies
Memphis writer/director Robert Gordon teamed up with Twenty Feet From Stardom director Morgan Neville to create this intellectual epic. With masterful editing of copious archival footage, they make a compelling case that the 1968 televised debate between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal laid out the political battleground for the next 40 years and changed television news forever. In a year full of good documentaries, none were more well-executed or important than this historic tour de force.
Best Picture: Mad Max: Fury Road
From the time the first trailers hit, it was obvious that 2015 would belong to one film. I’m not talking about The Force Awakens. I’m talking about Mad Max: Fury Road. Rarely has a single film rocked the body while engaging the mind like George Miller’s supreme symphony of crashing cars and heavy metal guitars. Charlize Theron’s performance as Imperator Furiosa will go down in history next to Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and Sigourney Weaver in Alien as one of the greatest action turns of all time. The scene where she meets Max, played by Tom Hardy, may be the single best fight scene in cinema history. Miller worked on this film for 17 years, and it shows in every lovingly detailed frame. Destined to be studied for decades, Fury Road rides immortal, shiny, and chrome.
