The Monthly Countdown: January 2015

In which I list the 10 best movies that I saw for the first time last month.

I promised new content in 2015 and here it is: a new monthly series that will count down the top ten movies that I saw for the first time in the previous month.  I don't think that it's any secret that I end up seeing a lot of movies: it's almost exclusively what Becky and I do in our free time.  Last month, I saw 27 movies (just shy of averaging one every day), 24 of which were first time views for me.  Most were pretty good (and a few a little disappointing), but a surprising number of them were truly exceptional.  Admittedly, a lot of the high-end films are because we're trying to get in as many Oscar nominees as possible before the 22nd, but certainly not all.  There is, for example:

10) The Raid: Redemption - This Indonesian martial arts film proves that good films don't need to be complicated, include big name talent or draw from a bloated special effects budget: they just need to be good.  In fact, the film's lead, Iko Uwais, was not a professional actor before this film, but a martial artist.  Because of this, director Gareth Evans needed to do very little beyond choosing a setting and pointing the camera at Iko as he punches, kicks and headbutts his way through an escalating series of equally talented opponents.

The Raid is an action movie with every fiber of its being.  Action is the sole point: both a means and an end in of itself.  Iko's prominently displayed skills in Pencak Silat are visually dazzling and the only special effects that this film really needs.  It even features better staged and executed gun-jitsu than Equilibrium, which was that film's greatest strength by far.

9) Gone Girl - Like In the Mood for Love, Gone Girl is a film that, despite an initially cool reception, has really gotten under my skin.  The more that I thought about it - something that I couldn't help but do in the days after actually seeing it - the more I liked it and the more I found to consider which initially escaped my attention.

Because despite what you might at first think, Gone Girl is not a movie about a media darling's disappearance and eventual return.  That's the plot, yes, but the actual point of the film is everything surrounding that: everything other than Amy Dunne.  It is at its core a deconstruction of the media, media crusaders, public opinion, law enforcement, feminism, marriage and social privilege.  It's about everything dredged up and put on display because of her disappearance.  Amy Dunne is simply the occasion that director David Fincher found to address the sound-bitten, honey-combed court of public opinion that loves nothing more than another dead white girl to increase ratings and direct web traffic.

8) Foxcatcher - You might recall that I named Foxcatcher one of the ten movies that you definitely need to see in order to be prepared for this month's Oscar ceremony.  After having actually seen it myself, I can confirm that to be the case.  Foxcatcher is a maddeningly restrained, intricately nuanced character study of not only John du Pont, but of the Olympian brothers that found themselves caught in his web of privilege, power and paranoia.

Foxcatcher showcases some of the most subtle, nuanced and rewarding performances that I've seen in any film outside of The Godfather.  And although it lacks its forebearer's narrative breadth and depth, it is an ominous, fatalistically doomed story whose conclusion is telegraphed in its pervasively bleak tone and uniformly uncomfortable narrative.  Steve Carell is an absolute revelation as John du Pont, but Mark Rufallo and the sadly overlooked Channing Tatum are just as, if not even more, impressive.  Foxcatcher is without a doubt the definitive "actor's movie" of 2014.

7) The Grand Budapest Hotel - I'll admit it.  I never liked Wes Anderson.  His films were always too eccentric and unreal for me to really invest myself in.  With the exception of Moonrise Kingdom, which I found to be just okay, his films all seemed to achieve the same nebulous level of mediocrity between average and good.  There was no doubting that he had talent, but that talent never really seemed to add up to a good film.  That summation of his career ends with The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Obligated to see it owing to its Best Picture nomination, I was utterly floored by how much I actually enjoyed the film.  It was quirky, yes, but wasn't defined by that like some kind of celluloid hipster.  It applied those eccentricities into its engaging characters and thoroughly enjoyable story.  It's also one of the most visually arresting films of the year: the likely front-runner among the technical categories from its impeccable costuming, hairstyling and production design, all of which create the illusion of a picture book (complimenting its needlessly, although pleasingly, layered narrative).

6) Snowpiercer - This is a movie that I will definitely be making a point to review in the near future.  It is easily the most ambitiously creative science fiction film of 2014 not named Interstellar.  Between its Korean director, American cast and French source material, it is easily one of the most international films of the year as well: a multiplicity that lends itself to creating such a uniquely envisioned and executed film.

Much has been made of Chris Evans intended retirement from non-Marvel acting.  Before this film, he'd never really impressed me as anything other than Captain America.  He was as good as anything in Fantastic Four (which isn't saying much) and a fun addition to Scott Pilgrim vs The World, but he never really wowed me as anything other than Cap'.  Sowpiercer illustrates that he has so many great performances left to give and that doing any less would be nothing less than a mistake.

5) Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods - As I have mentioned earlier, Battle of Gods is easily the best 90 minutes from the entire Dragon Ball meta-franchise.  It's funnier than Dragon Ball and nearly as exciting as Dragon Ball Z.  It forces its characters into interesting new directions, such as Goku having to accept a power than he cannot achieve on his own and Vegeta having to relinquish that power to him.  It makes excellent use of its full cast of characters, allowing the most ridiculous situations to develop from the most seemingly mundane interactions (such as Beerus trying to destroy the Earth because Buu refused to share his pudding with him).

If this is the new face of Dragon Ball, then I am 100% on board with it.  Broad humor, organic characters and tactically placed fight scenes are a drastic improvement on the latter series confusion of punches for plot and kicks for character arcs.  And with Akira Toriyama back at the helm, I can't wait for this year's Resurrection of F.

4) Whiplash - Without a doubt, Whiplash is the most energized film from this last year.  It's not a nuanced character piece like Foxcatcher nor a sophisticated vision of a single human life like Boyhood, but a piledriving depiction of a dysfunctional creative relationship between a gifted musician and his abusive mentor.

At this point, the Best Supporting Actor Oscar is J.K. Simmons' to lose.  No other supporting role is given so much screentime, so many showy moments nor so much phenomenal material to work with.  And as things currently stand, Whiplash may very well prove to be this year's big winner at the Academy Awards, potentially upsetting the races for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Sound Mixing.  With as exceptional as this film is, and as fanatical as its fanbase is, nothing - nothing - is out of the question.

3) In Cold Blood - It is an absolute travesty that something like In Cold Blood could be overlooked for Best Picture when in its same year something like Doctor Dolittle could somehow make the grade.  In Cold Blood is easily my second favorite film from 1967 - behind equally overlooked Cool Hand Luke - and handily ranks among my absolute favorite films.

It goes without saying that a script adapted from a Truman Capote novel is going to be well written, but what is most surprising is just how much better the actual direction of the film is.  It juggles the criminal and law portions of the narrative with equal ease, paralleling in one darkly beautiful moment how heart-rendingly close the murderous Perry was to growing up like the murdered Nancy Cutter.  And in the moments before his death, the shots of him reflecting on the tragedy of his life  as the rain-spattered windows seem to cast unfallen tears along his sullen face are among the most morose and beautiful that I have ever seen.

2) The Raid 2 - For as fantastic as The Raid was - and make no mistake, it was fantastic - The Raid 2 is in every way the superior of the two films.  It explodes the film's criminal underworld outward with reckless abandon, as if mollifying those critics who called its predecessor overly simplistic was its sole narrative aim.  The resulting film is an Indonesian Frakenstein: stitching together The Departed and The Killer together with Pencak Silat and setting it loose on an unsuspecting public.

While the fight scenes in The Raid came off all as a bit samey (other than the obvious final boss fight in the end), The Raid 2 keeps each increasingly elaborate sequence distinct and memorable from one another.  Where there was really only one "boss fight" in the first film, the second features an increasingly eccentric cast of assassins - including a Machete wielding hobo, a relaxed baseball player, a deaf girl with a pair of claw hammers and the dark reflection of Iko's own Rama - each with their own set of weapons, fight styles and immediately memorable combat scenes.

1) Seven Samurai - When she showed us Rashomon in one of my film classes at ISU, Dr. Zeng told us that the reason why she wasn't showing us Seven Samurai was because we would see that in every other applicable film class that we would ever take with any other professor, and she didn't want to be the one to show it to us for the umpteenth time.  The problem was that ISU was pretty short on film professors, and she was the only one that I ever had.  As a result, despite having seen and liked A Bugs Life, seen and loved The Magnificent Seven and seeing and loving any number of Kurosawa's other films, Seven Samurai had somehow eluded me until this last month.

Having now seen it, however, it easily ranks among the ten best films that I have ever seen, and for good reason.  Despite an incredibly large cast of characters, each one is not only rendered distinct from one another, but substantially develops over the course of the narrative.  Despite its imposing 207 minute run time, the film never drags: keeping a forward momentum that carries it through an escalating series of battles between Samurai, villagers and bandits.  This is definitely a film that I plan on revisiting and reviewing in further depth in the near future, because I feel that there is so much left to discover on subsequent viewings that my initial impression of this film will prove to woefully inadequate on its own.

So what films did you see in January for the first time?  Which were your favorites of those?  Please let us know in the comment section below.

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