The Best Movies of 2015 (So Far)

We're halfway through the year, so (as is our custom) Will and I each spotlighted our six favorite films from the first six months. We only have one in common, and not the one I was expecting. You can read our lists here.

(And, as a mental note to myself, I still need to catch up on About Elly, Buzzard, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, Hard to be a God, Girlhood, Li'l Quinquin, Paddington, Seymour: An Introduction, La Sapienza and Spring.)

SAG Foundation: My Conversation With Yana Novikova of 'The Tribe'

The Tribe, a dark drama set in a school for the deaf, is the best film of the year so far. Yesterday, I had the privilege of speaking with one of the film's stars, Yana Novikova, for the SAG Foundation. Because Novikova is deaf, our chat required two interpreters, which you'll notice in the below video.

'The Tribe' Review

The year's best movie so far, hands down, is The Tribe, a Ukrainian drama about a school for the deaf where a few bad apples seduce the impressionable new student. Gripping, bleak, mesmerizing, fascinating, upsetting, sometimes hard to take, brilliantly constructed ... The Tribe is all that and more. My review is up at Deadspin.

Sundance 2015: Ranking the Best and Worst of the Festival

I could have just as easily put together a list of the movies I wished I could have seen at this year's Sundance Film Festival: The End of the Tour, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, Going Clear, Diary of a Teenage Girl, The Forbidden Room, Tangerine, Experimenter, I Am Michael, The Stanford Prison Experiment, The Overnight....OK, you get the idea. (Plus, I have Don Hertzfeldt's acclaimed short World of Tomorrow waiting for me on my laptop. I cannot wait.) So consider the below ranking a snapshot of one person's experience in Park City. Five different critics could give you five different overviews.

I can't say I saw any slam-dunk stunners this year, as opposed to 2014 when I flipped for Boyhood and The Raid 2. You'll note my top two picks from the 2015 edition are actually films that premiered elsewhere but were included in Sundance's Spotlight section. I suspect a couple of the movies I didn't see on the list above might have competed for one of the top spots.

Looking at my rankings, I realize I'm less enthused about Brooklyn than many of my colleagues are. On the opposite side, I'm guessing I'm higher on The Nightmare than most. What's funny is that many of the best films at Sundance this year have an element of horror to them, whether it's the 17th century creepiness of The Witch, the school of the damned in The Tribe, the post-apocalyptic setting of Z for Zachariah, or the real-world terrors in the documentaries The Nightmare and Welcome to Leith. As for Eden, I bonded with two new friends at the festival because they responded to Mia Hansen-Løve's film as strongly as I did. It's not a horror movie, but it's a deeply felt character study that I haven't stopped thinking about since seeing it in Toronto last year.

On to the rankings. Links lead to individual reviews (some may be behind paywalls)...

26. Strangerland
25. A Walk in the Woods
24. Ten Thousand Saints
23. The Bronze
22. Stockholm, Pennsylvania
21. Brooklyn
20. What Happened, Miss Simone?
19. True Story
18. Results
17. The D Train
16. Homesick
15. Partisan
14. 99 Homes
13. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
12. Last Days in the Desert
11. Mistress America
10. Dope
9. Wild Tales 
8. Mississippi Grind
7. Digging for Fire
6. Z for Zachariah
5. Welcome to Leith
4. The Nightmare
3. The Witch
2. Eden
1. The Tribe

AFI Fest 2014: The Final Rankings

I can't think of a festival in Los Angeles that's ever been more of a whirlwind than this year's AFI Fest. Partly, that was because I was part of the New Auteurs jury (alongside Alonso Duralde, Eric Kohn and Anne Thompson), but mostly it was due to the fact that a mad rush of world premieres (some of them announced at the last minute) kept me watching and reviewing highly-anticipated Oscar contenders just about every day. I wouldn't have traded a moment of any of it.

Before I get into the rankings, I'd like to thank the AFI Fest staff, especially Jacqueline Lyanga, Lane Kneedler, Jenn Murphy and Landon Zakheim, who all took such good care of me. They run a fine festival.

Now, to the list. I should say that all 10 films in the New Auteurs section, which focuses on first- and second-time international directors, were all good enough to recommend. (You can see our list of winners right here. I co-sign on all of them.) I've been on juries before, and I know that this isn't always the case: Normally, you have to suffer through some real dogs. So, again, my thanks go out to the programmers for finding the wheat among the chaff.

As always with my rankings, they include films I saw before the festival elsewhere. (I decided to leave off Cinema Paradiso since I haven't seen it in years and barely remember it.) I already can't wait to see my No. 1 film again next year when it gets its official release. I've been intrigued by it since May: I'm happy to report that it lived up to the hype.

28. The Gambler
27. The Wonders
26. Viktoria
25. The Homesman
24. Güeros
23. Red Army
22. Flapping in the Middle of Nowhere
21. Blind
20. Happy Valley
19. Tales of the Grim Sleeper
18. Clouds of Sils Maria
17. Leviathan
16. A Most Violent Year
15. American Sniper
14. Run
13. Black Coal, Thin Ice
12. Thou Wast Mild and Lovely
11. Self Made
10. Violet
9. The Duke of Burgundy
8. Wild Tales
7. Jauja
6. Alive
5. Two Days, One Night
4. Still Alice
3. Eden
2. Foxcatcher
1. The Tribe