Standard Industry Practices (Raising Abel) or "You'll Never Do Anything Harder Than Looking Someone in the Eye and Telling Them the Truth." (And It's Hard to be a Saint in the City) J.C. Chandor has made three films now, each one different in scope and breadth, but each challenging as to subject matter and presentation. He does not go the easy way—if any way, he goes the opposite of what might be expected from a film, genre-shaped or no. His first, Margin Call, dared to make drama out of the economic crisis, which it did as if it was the easiest thing in the world (it isn't, ask Oliver Stone) creating a boardroom drama as if it was a high-rise Game of Thrones. His second film, All is Lost, had one star, one actor—Robert Redford—and its survival-at-sea story was told with images and virtually no dialogue that systematically robbed its lone sailor of everything, including hope. Now, it's back to business, as Chandor takes a look at the oil industry circa 1981 in New York, where the city is divided into turfs of heating oil customers that are treated like fiefdoms of the various oil companies, jealously protected and vehemently guarded—and where there's oil, there's usually fire.
A movie about an oil dealership. Sounds exciting, right? But Chandor always has an interesting spin on the most mundane of ordinary situations, be it crunching numbers, burying a beloved pet, or patching a hole in the side of a boat. His protagonist inA Most Violent Yearis Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac, as far afield from his dour folkie of the CoenBrothers' Inside Llewyn Davis), the latino head of the Standard Heating Oil Company. Abel's as hands-on as they come, knowing the names of all his employees, salesmen, truck-drivers. He's worked his way up from hauling tankers to running the company; he knows every step of the way and mentors and coaches his workers based on his own singular success story moving up the ladder.
Now, he stands on the cusp of his biggest transaction—buying a defunct distribution center from Jewish garment workers so that he can take deliveries right off the Hudson River, without depending on trucking the fuel in. He has 30 days to close on the property, and has put up a considerable deposit, and if he can't come up with the rest of the cash the sellers will keep the deposit and entertain the competing offer of a rival company. The stakes are high and Abel could lose everything.
Of course, there are complications: Standard Oil is becoming a player in the city and the other oil companies are getting aggressive: his trucks are being hijacked, his drivers beat up and hospitalized, the tankers drained to the tune of $80,000 a tank; men with guns are casing his new upstate house; New York's assistant DA (David Oyelowo—appearing twice in one week here!) is investigating his company for corruption—probably because Standard is the least established and less contributing to political campaigns. Throughout that 30 day option window, the stakes will get higher and the violence will increase.
Jessica Chastain gives David Oyelowo an unfortunate gesture.
At home, he's getting pressure, too. His wife, Anna (Jessica Chastain) is the daughter of a Mafia family—if Abel shows weakness on any front, Anna merely has to call her brother and father and offers will not be refused. For Abel, that's an easy offer not to take. He's working the business his way, on his own path, negotiating the shoals the best he knows how. And he won't stoop to using the same tactics that are being used against him. So, he's constantly at war—with his competitors, with the teamsters, with the government, with his wife—everyone who is considering the easier path, the simpler path, the one with no conscience and the least resistance.
Except by Abel, that is. Very early on, the visual of Abel in expensive suits, a camel-hair coat and the steady gaze with hooded eyes reminds of Al Pacino's Michael Corleone from the Godfather series. But, this is completely different. Michael was a corrupting influence in a normal world, even in the corrupt world of the Mafia. In Abel's world, the corruption is already in place and he's attempting to resist and change by example. And Chandor's philosophy is counter to Coppola's (and Marlon Brando's) who saw the Mafia as a metaphor for Big Business. Chandor sees Big Business using the same tactics as the Mafia—being interchangeable with them with turf wars, shakedowns, intimidations and criminal activity being condoned and encouraged for market share and territory. There is the constant temptation (especially when deadlines are looming, the banks aren't co-operating, and violence is escalating) of fighting fire-power with fire-power, of doing wrong until you get caught, that looms in front of Abel.
A Most Violent Year is very familiar, but in a different context. It is an anti-Godfather, where the world is no less cynical, no less hard or even criminal, but there is one man who, though surrounded by and acknowledging all of that, still finds a better path, walks it, talks it, and will not be deterred. It's a movie about something rather rare in modern drama: a hero.
We started "Blogging By Cinema-Light" on January 26, 2014 to fulfill a need. Not to give the world another movie review blog (there are far too many of those), but to focus my attention on the writing and the movies and less on the day to day busy work of maintaining the various little goo-gah's and widgets of the previous web-site—"Let's Not Talk About Movies." That site was doing well (approaching 1 million hits when I abandoned it). But the name...that started seeming a little precious and counter-productive. So, for 2014, I re-thought, re-imagined, and did a thorough scrub of the concept (eliminating a ratings system that, while practical, still seemed to box films into niches that unfairly summed them up and became too much the focus), accentuated the visual, and allowed me a better chance to focus and work on an ever-growing back-log of reviews for older films (a goal that still manages to elude me).
The blog has steadily grown without benefit of affiliations although I have expanded the distribution through Google+, Twitter, Facebook and the usual Networked Blogs, and slowly but surely, the numbers have been picking up as word has gotten out semi-organically (while LNTAM continues to be a warehouse store that people keep coming back to, even if the shelf-life of those articles have approached gaminess and might be breaking down, functionally—they get moved over to BBCL and fixed and updated, if possible).
And what have people been clicking on since we started?
"I have taken over your blog... and your readership" (And, yes, I'm pandering)
Scarlett Johansson, evidently. The article that has gotten the most hits since we started was my snarky review of Lucy, the sixth is my luke-warm but appreciative look at Under the Skin (But, curiously, not Don John or Captain America: Winter Soldier). Maybe it's the gif graphics of her eyes blinking that are attracting people (Morse code?). Hard to say, but the folks coming here have some sort of Scarlett Fever. We shall see if something else attracts people more in the coming months (There's the new Avengers movie and one from the Coen brothers (Hail, Caesar!)...but they both feature...Scarlett Johansson. Damn!). The rest of the top five are a single review of The Godfather, Part III (I LIKE to think because people are fascinated with my take on the religious aspects of it, but probably not), two entries of the semi-regular "Now I've Seen Everything Department" overviews—for James Cameron (because who doesn't like James Cameron movies?—me, evidently) and the "Planet of the Apes" dynasty, as well as Shutter Island(no idea why that's so popular, but I suspect folks just want someone to explain it to them...not gonna happen, sorry). Another curious entry in the top ten is my review of The Maury Island Incident, which I explain away because it was a locally-made film and the review was probably visited by every member of the cast and crew (and re-distributed through other web-sites).
Two that I have missed: A Most Violent Year (because I haven't gotten around to it) and Still Alice (because the studio is waiting until Oscar buzz makes audiences want to see a drama about Alzheimer's).
I'm out of the sound business...permanently now. But, I still listen closely to movies and very much admire films that are mixed well and where the sound is integral and part of the visceral experience of a film (and do something creative, which is rare). I can't say I was impressed by much this year, everything I saw sounded competent for verisimilitude, but nothing made me sit up and take notice, except for one thing: I was quite annoyed that some movies were horribly mixed...Interstellar being the prime example. I love film music, too. But, in the same movie, I found Hans Zimmer's thumping score for it a detriment to the entire experience—at one point, even drowning out and supplanting dialogue. It might not be important dialogue, but nevertheless, it should be heard. Music supports, and can even drive a narrative. But it should never smother it. Here are my favorite scores of this year: The Imitation Game and The Grand Budapest Hotel by the versatile Alexandre Desplat, and The Theory of Everything by Johann Johannsson.
I also collect soundtracks, which with the digital revolution and the parsing of the multi-tracks of sound and music have created a boom of releases over the past 20 years, including the official releases of scores I thought would never see the light of day—one of those being a personal favorite that I've wanted for nearly 30 years—Jerry Goldsmith's score to the John Huston mystery trifle, The List of Adrian Messenger.
Freeze-Frames:*** The Imitation Game—Held shot on young Alan Turing (Alex Lawther) as he finds out about his school friend, Christopher Morcomb Birdman—an extended conversation (well, they all are in this movie) between Riggan Thomas (Michael Keaton) and Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) where Keaton stumbles over his lines...but it feels so natural and real I wonder why more actors (excepting James Stewart) don't do that. The Guardians of the Galaxy—the perfection of the selection of the songs for the "Awesome Mix Tape"
Whiplash—J.K. Simmons (just saying...and cowering). Jersey Boys—Clint Eastwood indulges in a CGI tour up The Brill Building accompanied by many songs filtering out the windows in their infancy. A Most Violent Year—"power" performances by Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in every sense of the term. The Grand Budapest Hotel—the never-ending civility of M. Gustav (Ralph Fiennes) despite "the barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity."
Best line of 2014: The Theory of Everything—"Thank you, Mother. I think that may be the most English thing anyone's ever said to me" The Drop—Bob Saginowsky (Tom Hardy) reacts to the idea of keeping a dog: "That's a huge responsibility." Second best line. Big Eyes—A Hitchcock echo from Tim Burton: After leaving her first husband, Margaret Ulbrich (Amy Adams) drives to San Francisco with her daughter; she passes a line of foothills that will be passed by Marion Crane (on her way to The Bates Motel) one year later in screen time, but 54 years ago in ours. Under the Skin—The Female (Scarlett Johansson) lures her victim into a non-descript house and walks teasingly into blackness, as her victims strip...and sink.
The Homesman—Reluctant shepherd George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones) goes looking for another lost sheep and finds a bitter reflection of his earlier circumstances: "I kept my word and here you broke yours..." Selma—Martin Luther (David Oyelowo) and Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo) sit in a darkened room listening to a tape sent to them by the FBI of a blackmailing sex tryst. Director-writer Ava Duvernay writes it so that Coretta recognizes it's not him, but Ejogo plays it so the question still hangs. Boyhood—The big "eerie" of how different young Mason (and Ellar Coltrane) looks as he ages.
The Amazing Spider-man 2—Peter Parker (the sadly fired Adam Garfield) tries to explain the soot all over him to Aunt May (Sally Field): "I was cleaning the chimney!" "We HAVE no chimney!" "Wha-a-a-a-a-a...??" and while we're in super-hero territory: Captain America: Winter Soldier—Cap (Chris Evans) keeps a checklist of things he needs to check out in the here-and-now since his WWII deep-freeze.
and: X-Men: Days of Future Past—Quicksilver (Evan Peters) super-speeds around a room being disarming while grooving to Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" on his Walkman. It would be the best presentation of that super-power already, but the song just aces it.
Oh, okay, two more... Big Hero 6—another leap in CGI animation with the amazing facial work in this film and the "look" of San Fransokyo.
Birdman—Riggan Thomas' "Birdman" voice sounds less like his "Batman" voice and more like Christian Bale's. Now, THAT is funny... Leaving super-hero-ville with one last line—from Guardians of the Galaxy: "I'm going to die surrounded by idiots!" Interstellar—Astronaut Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) reacts to 40 years of messages from home, realizing that, for his choice, he can never get those lives back. Never, ever go near a black hole.
The Theory of Everything—"How long?" Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) asks his wife (Felicity Jones) apropos of nothing and everything. "Two years" is her sorrowful reply. Gone Girl—"We're so cute I could just punch us in the face." Agreed. Still do. The Imitation Game—the eyes of Keira Knightley: an actress most well-known for how well she can go off the rails, in The Imitation Game, she has to play a very normal, very proper, very restrained, very British woman, and all the acting comes from her eyes, most notably in the horror expressed at the effects the chemical castration drugs on her friend Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch).
Director Damien Chazelle does the Oliver Stone "double daddy" dance to the extreme in Whiplash. Birdman—Is Riggan's on-stage shooting a jokey metaphor for actors trying to reach too far? Really? The Most Wanted Man—Philip Seymour Hoffman's F-bomb screaming freak-out at the end of a very, very measured performance.
Big Hero 6—"On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain?" Baymax is hilarious. Godzilla—the best thing about it, really: the bizarre HALO jump into the city besieged by two prehistoric monsters to the tuneless voices of Ligeti's "Lux Aeterna."
Fury—This nearly final exchange between Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) and "Wardaddy" Collier (Brad Pitt): "I'm going to surrender." "Please don't..."
The Fault In Our Stars: "Perhaps 'okay' will be our 'always.'"
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes—the opening sequence of apes on horseback hunting reindeer. The one time I actually DID laugh in Inherent Vice—"Doc" Sportello reacts to Hope Harlingen's (Jena Malone) "crack-baby" picture.
Edge of Tomorrow (or is it "Live. Die. Repeat?")—the semi-guilty pleasure of watching Tom Cruise being killed over and over entertainingly. Jersey Boys—We get an idea of what a "Clint Eastwood Musical" really is, at the end, when the entire casts bops down the street to "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night) with performer's brio and panache...and on the last note, Eastwood hangs on the performers in their final stances for a very long period of time, smiles plastered on their faces, arms raised in the air. A series of frozen tableaux...for nostalgia? This thing haunts me.
The Homesman—the varying degrees of crazy on the prairie.
The Grand Budapest Hotel—the intricate nested doll construction (with aspect ratios) devised by Wes Anderson.
The Imitation Game—Turing's bombe...stops.
Captain America: Winter Soldier: Robert Redford gloriously underplays his villainy: "Oh, Renata, I wish you would have knocked..."
Foxcatcher—Wow! Steve Carell comes out of nowhere in the face-slapping scene: "You ungrateful ape!"
The Drop—another brilliant Dennis Lehane turnaround you never see coming, but should have. The Imitation Game—Joan Clarke (Keire Knightley), under pressure from her parents, refuses the job offer at Blechley Park to Alan Turing, who won't take "no" for an answer: "That would be...indecorous" Turing, the genius, bursts in frustration, "I don't even know what that means!!" No, of course he doesn't. The Theory of Everything—Stephen Hawking sitting in his bathtub, staring at the hand that is betraying him by no longer functioning because of ALS.
Life Itself—Despite a non-existent jaw, Roger Ebert's spirit comes through in the form of a smile above ever-twinkling eyes. American Sniper—Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper) looks at TV footage of an embassy bombing and sums up and presages: "Look what they've done to us..." The Skeleton Twins—Maggie Dean (Kristen Wiig) is pissed off, but that just won't do for brother Milo (Bill Hader), who presents her with a little inspirational Starship.
And, from Into the Woods—Agony:
And finally, lest we forget:
*** After, and in the spirit of, Kathleen Murphy and Richard Jameson's yearly recap of "Moments Out of Time" .
"I think we’re all up to our f@¢%ing necks in the films that are inevitably going to get made and are all going to feel the same and be all full of action and heroes and redemption and box-office potential. You know, that shit’s killing us. We’re entertaining ourselves to death."
That David Simon quote (from an interview he did with Vulture.com about Tom McCarthy and Spotlight) is a good summation of how I feel about the movies of 2015—an overwhelming sense of "sameness" started creeping in, where I thought I should be doing reviews in pairs. Movies would be about the same theme, just different story. Even small things seem familiar—right after a scene of people catch snowflakes on their tongue in The Revenant, I see it in The Hateful Eight (that happened a few times this year). Sequels and series had no spark, merely echoes of the original flame.
As an example, I am a big fan and "noticer" of film-music, that separate art whose component provides so much emotion in films. This year, there was nothing that stuck with me, all the original scores seemed to depend on atmospherics and Zimmer-ing textures, rather than a complementary melody; even music-emperor John Williams, returning to his Rebel roots, turned in his least-inspiring "Star Wars" score to date.
But, despite the cookie-cutter nature of so much movie-product, there were a lot of movies that broke the mold. Most of them were not properties, franchises, or tent-poles with their profit-oriented insistence on non-resolution (and the stench of purposely withheld potential). They were movies, large and small, that did not out-stay their welcome (or freshness), but stood on their own and did an efficient job of story-telling, of using the precious time on-screen and not wasting it. They had the courage to say "The End," having actually said something and then exiting, point made. It's courageous to say "The End." It is also courageous to put it all out there, knowing that you might not get a second chance to get it right. Even when this year's Fantastic 4 was shown to be such a stinker, 20th Century Fox had the hubris to say they were on-track to make its sequel, then (very quietly) pulled the movie from its release schedule. Not that it wasn't noticed and crowed about all over the web. "Flame Out!" At least, they had the sense to do that. In the past, Hollywood has not had the ability to face facts. Iron Man 3 should never have been green-lit for production in the state of its final script (one got the impression there was nothing left to say, so they just moved set-pieces around), This year, SPECTRE could have used another couple months in editing post, but the release date was set in stone so it HAD to be put in theaters. And, like the equally unlikely Home Alone 2 and 3, Liam Neeson keeps losing members of his family in the Taken series, up to 3 now. The very existence of it nullifies the series and the lead character. Skills he may have, but vigilance isn't one of them. One approaches 2016 with dread. What "sure things" are going to be sabotaged for their series potential (I'm looking at you, Batman v. Superman) as opposed to just being the best thing that it can be? What highly anticipated movie like Tomorrowland is going to turn out to be...Tomorrowland? What movies will take the chance...to take a chance and be something unique, instead of just something in the crowd?
The State of the Site
When you "google" "Blogging by Cinemalight" the "go-to" reviews are SPECTRE and The Maury Island Incident (probably because they generated intense scrutiny when they were published...SPECTRE had some help from friends who are fellow Bond fans, and The Maury Island Incident was a local production that I was very impressed with involving people I knew. You look at the app on the side with "Popular Posts" it always seems that The Godfather Part III and Now I've seen Everything: The Planet of the Apes is there. It's a mystery to me why The Godfather III is so well-read: I would like to think it's because of my thesis that it explicitly deals with what the other films in the trilogy deal with, if buried in sub-text, the status of Michael's actions on his soul. My cynical side says because it's being copied for thesis papers in a film class (Anyone notice the blurb at the bottom of the site saying that this stuff is copyrighted? Just sayin') The Planet of the Apes thing...who doesn't like the Planet of the Apes?
The Godfather Part III is the most viewed post of all time. Again, it's a mystery. I don't recall embedding a nude picture in the text (which grabs page views all the time from random Google Image searches...no, I don't do that...although there were a couple on the old site that when I saw people looking at the article, I knew what drew them there...especially if Google was the search engine. The second is the "Now I've Seen Everything Department" entry on The James Bond movies (updated with SPECTRE, by the way, as is the Sam Mendes entry).
Rounding out the top five are It Follows (which is interesting because it only came out this year, indicating that readership is slowly growing despite my efforts to keep it from doing so...like not writing it for long stretches. Mea culpa), Lucy (see above in regards to ScarJo Google searches) and San Andreas (I wouldn't have a clue why).
Far and away, the audience is from the United States, using Windows, and Google Chrome.
State of the Films
As always, I don't "do" Best Ten lists (because I hate choosing only ten, especially if there was more then ten great films in the year). Here's the list of new movies from the 2015 release schedules that were reviewed at Blogging By Cinemalight. The best ones are bolded and brightest. The rest fade into varying shades of dullness until they become nearly invisible (if only...). It's my own version of "Fifty Shades of Gray." AND (this is a Big Deal), I have help this year from international author Michael Destro, an esteemed co-worker with whom I trade observations, notes, and brick-bats about movies (everywhere I work it becomes quickly apparent that I obsess over movies). We don't always agree, which is good, even though I don't often act like it is. And I find his view-point well-considered and frequently wise. Which annoys the hell out of me. His list (he can't do "Top Ten's," either, for the same reason I can't) appears below. He also helped (ENORMOUSLY) with the "Freeze-Frames" section later on. Thank you, Michael. Multe multe mulțumiri Michael's books "The Thirteen Doorways" and "Don Quixote and the 13 Tampits" are wonderful reads and I highly, highly recommend them (links for them are at the bottom of the page, which will be a surprise to Michael)
HONORABLE MENTIONS: THE FINAL GIRLS, ME, EARL AND THE DEAD GIRL, INFINITELY POLAR BEAR
WORST 2015 MOVIES
TOMORROW LAND
AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
DADDY’S HOME
SPECTRE
THE VISIT
DARK PLACES
OVERNIGHT
LOVE AT FIRST FIGHT
COP CAR
Best Sound Design of 2015: This is a tough one, despite—but more probably because—it was one of the noisiest years in movies. There were some sequences—sound designer Lon Bender escalating the sounds of a chess-room in Bobby Fischer's paranoid mind in Pawn Sacrifice; Michael Caine conducting "in the field," as it were in Youth; Pixar did their usual splendid job in both Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur; The Revenant had good sound, but mostly I was grateful they didn't use the same red-tail hawk cliche that always seems to get used for conveying the outside (whether desert or alpine). Nothing stood out and was noticeable. That's either a bad thing...or a very good thing.
Best Score: As above, nothing came to me. There were clever song soundtracks (I particularly liked The Man from UNCLE and The Martian amused), but original scores seemed lacking. Even veterans like John Williams and Ennio Morriconne seemed lackluster. I would hate to put that to age, and shouldn't as Thomas Newman, Alexander Desplat and Michael Giacchino seemed to be running in place in their respective scores (other factors might be running out of post-time—I think Newman had that issue on SPECTRE because a lot of the tracks were dependent on music from Skyfall— and over-reliance on "snorting the temp-track," when the film-makers fall in love with a temporary piece of music for pacing or "feel" and tell the composer to "make it like that." A lot of it just may be film-makers exerting creative control over composers and watering down the music because of it, in a mixture of ego over talent. In Quentin Tarantino's DGA talk about The Hateful 8, he said he hates handing over "his vision" to a composer. When the composer is as legendary as Ennio Morricone and he actually entertains the notion of giving you music designed for your film, it might be best to put illusions of "vision" aside and watch how he might actually improve the "vision" of your film (and with The Hateful 8, frankly, nothing could hurt). Carter Burwell, on the other hand, did some very nice things with Carol, Anomalisa, and Mr. Holmes.
Freeze-Frames (Inspired by the yearly feature "Moments Out of Time" done every year by Kathleen Murphy and Richard T. Jameson. Their 2015 entry is here. I asked Michael Destro to help on this and his entries are in glowing white, while mine are slightly more dull. Infinitely Polar Bear --- Cam Stuart is picking mushrooms with his girls and their friends, then the scene shifts to them all eating lunch out in nature
The Walk: Jean-Phillip Petit narrates the amazing story of his walk across a tight-rope fastened between the twin towers of the World Trade Center—and it's revealed where he's telling the tale: a particularly impossible shot of the past New York skyline as he's perched on the torch of the Statue of Liberty.
Dope --- the final scene where Dom is writing his application letter to Harvard, such wise and brilliant words
Carol: Therese(Rooney Mara) leaves a Holiday party alone and contemplative in the dark, where a single street-light shines like an after-thought (or a beacon). One of the few unobstructed shots in Carol.
Brooklyn: Over a voice-over of Georgina's make-up tips, we watch the back of Eilish's head standing in line at Ellis Island awaiting immigration. Her head turns around, as if affording us a view of her make-over, and director John Crowley cuts to a shot of a distant New York shore with the Statue of Liberty standing as gate-keeper/concierge. Cut back to a long-shot of Eilish looking back/looking forward—a seamless transition for the audience's benefit. Experimenter: We already know that the movie is going to be a bit out of the ordinary when the lead character Dr. Stanley Malgram (Peter Saarsgard) turns in mid-experiment to address us. But when he leaves to go into the hallway, he is soon joined by a literal elephant in the room.
Experimenter - when Stanley Milgram is walking down the hallway talking to the viewer and an elephant is walking behind him Spotlight: "We're running the story on the Feast of the Epiphany." "Seems appropriate."
Amy: "Dad! It's Tony Bennett!" It's not winning the Record of the Year Grammy that most gob-smacks Amy Winehouse—it's that Tony Bennett is presenting it. The wide-eyed naked hero-worship is raw, and later, he will treat her so gently for a studio-duet, as both mentor...and peer.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Finn (John Boyega) gives BB-8 a "thumbs-up" for playing along and the little droid improvises a return gesture (which makes you wonder if this Universe didn't once have a Roman Empire from which the gesture originated—a little too familiar and "on the nose" to be from a galaxy far, far away.
Crimson Peak - the rich blue and red hues throughout the entire film, especially the red clay seeping out onto the white snow. Mr. Holmes: "Do you regret?" "So MUCH!" What We Do in the Shadows: Lest we forget that vampires live a very long time, at a house-meeting, the subject of cleaning up after themselves is dispelled by Vladislav (Jemaine Clement): "Why don't we just buy slaves?"
Black Mass: Whitey Bulger (Johnny Depp) is sitting down to a nice quiet meal with one of his enforcers and his two FBI accomplices and casually asks what the "secret family recipe" for the steaks are. John Morris (David Harbour) tells him, and Bulger turns all-serious, telling him that a man who would betray such secrets can't be trusted and pushes it until the FBI guy starts to sweat bullets. Spotlight: The whole of Stanley Tucci's performance as attorney Mitchell Garabedian. In an ensemble film filled with great performances, his burned the brightest.
The Walk - Philip Petit sitting on the wire in a meditative pose Ex Machina: It's not all work at the Nathan's technological hideaway.He and his A.I. servant Kyoko break into a synchronized dance routine. So...who taught who?
Brooklyn: Eilish, on the ship taking her to America and not knowing if she'll ever return, blows a kiss good-bye to her Mother and sister Rose, and her fingers add a couple extra waves, as if in fear that it won't be enough and won't reach.
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation: "Ben-jy! O-pen...the...DOOR!!!" Granted, Tom Cruise is crazy. But, I don't care how many lanyards and safety-harnesses were CG-erased from that footage of him hanging off the side of an ascending Airbus A400M, he is one brave Mo-fo. Focus: (Will Smith) does a long Sherlock dissertation of why the shakedown of Jess (Margot Robbie) and her accomplice just doesn't work and sums it up nicely: "It was a bum lift. You suck!" Avengers: Age of Ultron: The best running gag of a disappointing movie.
It Follows: Is it THAT big a sacrifice to have sex with Jay (Maika Monroe) and become "it's" next victim?: two guy-friends (Daniel Zavatto, Keir Gilchrist) weigh the pro's and con's...for "the good of all." Love & Mercy: Paul Dano's eerily "right" portrayal of a young splintering Brian Wilson.
The Martian: The martian landscape dryness of Jeff Daniels' reply to Purnell's (Donald Glover) antic, breezy "who are you?:" "I'm Teddy...I'm the head of NASA..."
The Revenant - Hugh Glass has been woken up by an attacking tribe and rides his horse over a cliff and into an ice cold river Youth: Composer Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) sits at the edge of a forest overlooking a field of grazing cows. After awhile, he raises his arms and the cows watch waiting. Then he begins to conduct the scene: the wind, the bells, the birds, everything.
SPECTRE: A hung-over, sleep-deprived James Bond draws down on a mouse in the Hotel L'Americaine, and asks it whose side it's on. Moneypenny was right: at this point, he doesn't trust anybody.
Mustang --- The sisters are cheering at the all women spectator football game, a moment of solidarity, sisterhood, patriotism, and most importantly freedom. Mr. Holmes: The elderly Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellan) goes to see himself portrayed at the cinema. The actor playing the actor playing Holmes is Nicholas Rowe—Young Sherlock Holmes now-grown-up.
Inside Out: The lovingly conceived compartmentalization of a young girl's mind. Victoria -- Victoria is sharing a drink with Sonne and his friends on a roof while Germany sleeps, as well when she first gets on the back of his bike, the conversation and scene felt so authentic as if I was a voyeur
SPECTRE: The Day of the Dead: One long tracking shot (joined by CG, evidently) starts with a smoking skeleton float and ends when James Bond taking aim at nameless baddies. It gets more frenetic and heart-stopping from there, but that opening shot, even in this post-Gravity world is still amazing.
Room: Jack (Jacob Tremblay) unwraps himself from the carpet just the way Mom said to, but he is quite unprepared for his first view of the Outside World.
Avengers - Age of Ultron - toward the end of the opening long beginning, Hulk lays his humungous hand in Black Widow’s tiny one.
Mad Max: Fury Road: "You will ride eternal, shiny and chrome!"
The Revenant: In a momentary truce in the war against Glass by Nature, Hikuc (Arthur Redcloud) convinces him to catch snowflakes on his tongue.
The Martian: A line that could have been in The Revenant—"Surpriiiise!"
Mad Max: Fury Road- The Green place where the hues have turned from desert colors to a violent bruised color. We see sick men walking on stilts and a barren tree covered in ravens.
The Walk: Like an overture before a ballet, Nature (actually director Robert Zemeckis because it really didn't happen that way) provides a dramatic fog -curtain opening to Petit's walk.
Trainwreck: The rhythm of Amy Schumer's comedy aided and abetted by the essential Bill Heder. To wit:
Kumiko - the Treasure Hunter --- While searching for treasure in an icy Minnesotan wasteland, she stands out as a tragic speck in a sea of white. Ant-Man: It's all a matter of perspective, of course, but the creators of Ant-Man are just not afraid to show that the frenetic fight on the moving train—eventually looks like this:
Straight Outta Compton - the scene when Dr. Dre is recording Easy E’s first hit, the scene for me captured something historic and groundbreaking was taking place
ROOM: "Look at him!" Cut to the face of Robert (William H. Macey), loving father of Ma (Brie Larson), and though he tries, he really tries, he can't and crumbles internally.
Phoenix --- Johnny’s expression of utter disbelief at discovering the woman singing is not the woman he hired to impersonate his supposedly dead wife, Nina, but is actually her. The scene is wordless and the realization a devastating victory. SPECTRE: Searching the L'Americain secret room, Bond finds a video tape among many, looks at the label "Interrogation--Vesper Lynd" and pauses. Then tosses it away.
It Follows: All it takes is a 360 pan of the surroundings and you're looking for "it" and immediately identifying with every "target" in It Follows.
Concussion -- Preema first arrives at Bennet’s house and is looking at pictures, there’s a moment when they look at each other and there’s a feeling they are meant to be together The Walk: The last shot of the film. Only ten people have walked on the Moon. Jean-Phillip Petit is the only man to walk in a space that doesn't exist anymore.
The Assassin ---Yinniang has just entered the room where Huji is sleeping, it is a scene filled with incredible stillness yet pounding tension
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