Without checking back, I probably start every one of these movie year-ends the same way:
I saw the same 30 or 40 new films I always do.
Forty-one, to be exact, although it’s tricky deciding which late-2015 releases I didn’t
catch up with until January feel more like last year and which to count as this year. If
it’s a bigger film that comes out with a lot of fanfare and which ends up getting nomi-
nated for awards--e.g., The Martian--I tend to relegate those to the previous year. If
it’s something smaller that is dated 2015 but probably didn’t show up in Toronto until
early in the new year--e.g., James White and I Smile Back--those I’ll count as new.
According to ILX’s “Last (x) movies you saw” thread, I listed and rated 141 films this
year, which means I saw over 150--at a certain point, because it was getting embarrassing,
I stopped including some of the older films I seem to re-watch on a rotating basis every
two or three months. That 41 of them were new actually surprises me, as three things got
in the way this year:
1) I have three somewhat pricey memberships with local theatres--the Revue has now gone
the way of the Lightbox and the Bloor--and it felt like I just wasn’t using them very often.
Don’t like driving downtown, parking gets worse and worse, and I didn’t much like the Light-
box’s schedule this year.
2) Spent a lot of August and September watching older Trump-related films for the book.
3) Once I finished with that, I kind of shut down for a month--job-related stress--and hardly
left the house.
With all of that, I still managed to semi-keep up with what I wanted to see. First, a Top
10, then I’ll break down the rest of the 41 by ratings:
1. O.J.: Made in America (8.5)
2. De Palma (7.5)
3. Maggie’s Plan (7.5)
4. Obit (7.5)
5. Manchester by the Sea (7.5)
6. Sing Street (7.5)
7. Moonlight (7.5)
8. Christine (7.0)
9. Arrival (7.0)
10. Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words (7.0)
The O.J. documentary was the only new film I gave an 8.0-or-higher to on ILX. I saw it at
the documentary festival in one sitting, so I don’t know if it would feel quite as epic
chopped up on TV, which seemed to be how most people experienced it. Complaining that it’s
not a “real film” seems silly to me. How would it have been made any differently if it had
been done expressly for theatre release? All I can think of is that it would have been sub-
stantially shorter. Also, how is it any different than something like Fassbinder’s Berlin
Alexanderplatz (or other such parallel examples), which was also originally made for TV?
The next nine films were the 7.0s and 7.5s, along with the following: Don't Blink - Robert
Frank (7.5), Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words (7.0), Mustang (7.0), Janis: Little Girl
Blue (7.0), Hockney (7.0), The Pulitzer at 100 (7.0), Wiener Dog (7.0), Lo and Behold,
Reveries of the Connected World (7.0), Under the Sun (7.0). As always, I’m too forgiving
with documentaries. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about The Pulitzer at 100,
but the subject and interviewees held my interest the whole way through.
6.0s and 6.5s would seem to be interchangeable, but 6.5s usually have a performance or
something else that stays in my mind, and 6.0s are often things I was looking forward to
and were disappointing. Not always--sometimes they just mean that I saw this movie, didn’t
dislike it, and quickly forgot about it: James White (6.0), The Hateful Eight (6.0), I Smile
Back (6.0), Joy (6.5), Crazy About Tiffany’s (6.0), The Big Short (6.5), Cemetery of Splen-
dor (6.5), The Incomparable Rose Hartman (6.5), The Damned: Don't You Wish That We Were
Dead (6.0), Midnight Special (6.5), American Dreamer* (6.5), Weiner (6.0), Money Monster
(6.0), Eight Days a Week (6.5), The Girl on the Train (6.0), The Accountant (6.0), Every-
body Wants Some! (6.0)
Three films I could’ve and should’ve liked and didn’t: Hail, Caesar! (5.5), The Nice Guys
(5.5), Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You (5.5). The thoroughly pedestrian Everybody
Wants Some! was approximately two minutes--the great “Rapper's Delight” scene--away from
being dumped into this group.
Film I was wary about assigning a rating to: No Home Movie (--). I’ve liked Chantal Akerman
films, and this one (released just before or after her death) was obviously as personal as
could be. I found it tedious.
The one film I most regret missing was Tower, about Charles Whitman. It played at the Kings-
way for a few weeks, but mostly daytime screenings during the week, and knowing it was a mix
of news footage (good) and animated recreations (not good), I kept delaying until finally it
was too late. David Edelstein had it on his Top 10, and I’m not sure if it’ll show up again
anytime soon.
*The Kit Carson/Lawrence Schiller documentary from '71 about Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie.
Got its first official release this year, and improbably turned up at the Carlton for a week.
I think there were four other people in the theatre besides me.