7.) 13 Hours [1/19/2016]

I want to make one thing clear from the onset: the heroism of the six private contractors who saved the CIA operatives in Benghazi is not in question here.  Those men risked their lives, saved dozens, and cleaned up a messy situation which they did not create in a hostile and murky political environment.  They all deserved to be glorified as heroes, as the movie does.  That said...

Michael Bay is not known as a subtle film maker (see: anything he has ever done, ever), and the incident in Benghazi is a complex diplomatic and militaristic situation which is still under investigation as to what really happened.  I was worried that Bay would flatten out all the complexities of the narrative to highlight how great America is, and to an extent he certainly did this.  In 13 Hours, he makes a compelling argument for smaller government and a private military (the CIA and State Department were one bit with a ladder short of the Keystone Cops in their incompetency), but it completely ignores the complex diplomatic situation that the US was in.  It never fully raises the big question: what were any of those people doing in Libya to being with?  The failure was not so much the rescue operation as it was the arrogance to think any American would be safe in Libya in 2012.  Rather than grapple fully with that question, it shows how the manliest men with beards and private contracts were the only thing standing between American lives and death.  It was more nuanced than I was expecting, though, and there were some moments where the film at least acknowledged that it might not be as simple as blowing up the bad guys to save the good guys.  In the end, though, the government failed and private enterprise saved the day (which I am not sure is exactly accurate).

6.) Hateful 8 [1/15/2016]

Quentin Tarantino has long been know for making excellent pastiche films: Reservoir Dogs, Django Unchained, Inglorious Basterds, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and so on.  With Hateful 8, he makes a pastiche of Tarantino films, borrowing the best parts of each of his films to make a weird conglomerate that doesn't really hold together well.  It was long, full of unnecessary digressions, and overly violent without any context for the violence.  If this was his first movie, I would have been interested in a second film, but seeing as this is really late in his career, I was left feeling like he might be out of tricks.

5.) Carol [1/14/2015]

This was not as moving as Freeheld for movies about non-hetero-normative relationships; nor was it as good a story as The Danish Girl for characters struggling with sexual identities.  It wasn't a bad film, per se, but it was slow and the plot was extremely subtle.  Still, Rooney Mara is excellent, as always, and I am sure fans of Kate Blanchet will like her in this.  The most lasting impression from the movie was how awesome the cars were in the 50s, and that should say something about the movie.

4) The Revenant [1/12/2016]

Intellectually, I knew what I was seeing was meant to be incredible, and I can see why other people regarded the movie so highly.  The cinematography alone was worth seeing the film on the big screen.  Like Birdman, it was full of long, well-frame shots, but unlike Birdman, this movie was filmed in some beautiful locations.  Leonardo DiCaprio was good, and Tom Hardy held his own. All in all, though, the movie left me flat.  It was interesting enough, but I just couldn't get into the story (particularly the father-son dynamic) and the ending was too Lord-of-the-Rings-esque for my tastes.

3.) The Big Short [1/9/16]

This film should be required viewing for anyone arguing to deregulate investment banking or looking to buy a house. The Big Short and 99 Homes (one of my favorites from last year) are ready-designed to piss-off the middle class, which it likely needs. In both, it shows that two things are needed to cause a crisis: large, impossibly big, greedy power structures and an uninformed and greedy base. More than just a propaganda piece for Democratic Socialism, the movie had some amazing performances from the lead cast, including a brooding Steve Carell. I also liked the used of quick-cutting visual metaphor montages and celebrity cameos to explain complex economic issues. All in all, everyone should see this movie. 

2.) Point Break [1/5/2016]

This was an incredibly stupid, though visually beautiful, pop-corn movie that was barely associated to the original of the same name. Overly complicated and utterly pointless, the movie did afford some nice shots of beautiful scenery, so that's something.

1.) The Danish Girl [1/3/2016]

This moving film examined the complicated, confusing, and messy search for identity that faces those who do not neatly fall at either end of the gender spectrum. The film was as much about Einar Wegener's transformation in Lili Elbe (played by the incredible Eddie Redmayne)  as it was about Lili's wife Gerda (Alicia Vikander) who helped Lili emerge and lost her husband in the process. This was excellent and everyone should see this film.

2015 Top Ten

This year was a bit light with only 87 trips to the theater.  Stupid job and graduation got in the way.  Like last year, this list is culled from the movies I saw in 2015, so some excellent movies are left off the list, most notably Room and Dear White People, which were released at inconvenient times for my schedule. Without further hemming or hawing:

Top 10:
10: Everest - There are still images from this film that haunt me
9. Inside Out - The best Pixar has put out in a while
8. Joy - Jennifer Lawrence's best performance ever
7. Bridge of Spies - A tense WWII spy film showing what the Bond film should have been
6. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl - An adorable movie about love, dying and teenagers
5. Dope - An incredibly fun, well-written indi-flick about nerdy kids out of their element
4. Trumbo - Bryan Cranston stands up for actual freedom
3. 99 Homes - Michael Shannon and Andrew Garfield show how terrible the housing crisis was
2. Mad Max: Fury Road - The best of the rebooted franchises this year
1. Ex Machina - Easily the most interesting movie or concept I have seen all year

Honorable Mentions:
Black Sea - Jude Law can still act

Diary of a Teenage Girl - A neat little indi-flick about a girl becoming a woman

Love and Mercy - Good movie about good music
Woman in Gold - Really well-acted movie about the fallout of the Nazis
End of the Tour - Maybe not the most honest bio-pic, but nonetheless entertaining

New for this year: Bottom Five - the worst movies of 2015

There were a lot of mediocre movies, or just poorly produced, but these five were really, really terrible.

5. No Escape - A boring, unintelligible movie about uprisings and survival
4. A Walk in the Woods - Unnecessary and hardly representative of the source material

3. Paper Towns - Few movies have made me this angry at young people
2. Jupiter Ascending - ALL THE EXPLOSIONS!

1. Fantastic Four - Just...awful. Awful.

89.) Joy [12/30/2105]

David O. Russell doesn't work often, but when he does it's usually great and usually stars Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, and Joy follows the success of Silver Lining's Playbook  and American Hustle; Lawrence, who was in practically every scene save a few flashbacks, was phenomenal in this beautifully shot, slow-moving character study of a women who would not accept what life had given her.

88.) Concussion [12/26/2015]

This year has been a year for films that explore insidious cover-ups by large, powerful organizations (Spotlight, Sicario, etc. etc.) and Concussion continues that trend, where Dr. Bennett Omalu (Will Smith) plays the righteous David and the NFL plays the powerful Goliath; despite the fact that most of this excellent film was spent discussing medical issues (including several montages of actual studying), the film was surprisingly tense, and Will Smith gave what might have been his best performance ever.