Oscars 2015: The Screenplays
Yesterday, the Manifesto analyzed the technical categories. Today, we’re looking at the screenplays and the supporting actor/actress awards. You can find the latter here; for the former, read on. Read More
Oscars 2015: The Big Techies
Oscars 2015: The Little Techies
The 88th Academy Awards are airing on Sunday. Are you excited? Neither am I. OK, that’s a lie. As much as we complain about the Oscars, whether because of their racial homogeneity or their self-congratulatory atmosphere, the fact remains that they routinely honor some pretty good movies. Besides, the Manifesto has been obsessively analyzing the Oscars for the last 14 years, so we aren’t about to stop now.
This means that we have 21 feature awards to predict between now and Sunday. (Per usual, I’m excluding the three short-subject categories.) Today, we’ll be looking at a number of below-the-line categories that tend to be buried early in the show. For those interested in some sexier (but still technical) fields, you can find our analysis of those here. Tomorrow and Saturday, we’ll dig into the high-profile categories. Read More
Ranking Every Movie of 2015 (yes, all of them)
The Manifesto has already delivered its list of the top 10 movies of 2015. Now, it’s time to look at the rest. What follows is a ranked list of every 2015 theatrical release that I’ve seen up to this point. It’s far from comprehensive—as ever, there are a number of films that I’ve failed to see, whether through lack of theatrical distribution, laziness, or bad luck. (The only movie that I truly regret being unable to include here is Son of Saul; I’ll be seeing it this weekend, but I just couldn’t hold off on publishing that long.)
As for the movies I did see, well, there were still quite a few. And while this post is just a pure list, I’ve added hyperlinks to the 56 different titles that I formally reviewed, so you can click over to those for more detailed analysis. Per my custom, I’m also including each film’s director in parentheses, as well as its respective scores on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, so you can see whether I confirm with or diverge from the critical consensus.
I’ll dispense with the usual rhetoric about the arbitrary nature of list-making (besides, I already did that yesterday for the top 10). But please, when you find yourself tempted to exclaim, “How could this idiot possibly rank [X] ahead of [Y]!” just bear in mind that the list is more of a guideline than a firm set of rules.
That should do it. Here are the Manifesto’s rankings of every movie we watched in 2015: Read More
The 10 Best Movies of 2015
We all know top 10 lists are meaningless—arbitrary attempts to objectively quantify highly subjective works of art. But top 10 lists can also be meaningful, not just as encapsulations of the year that was, but as snapshots in time. Were I to pick the 10 best films from 2015 a month from now, or a month ago, this list would assuredly look different. Those who prefer their year-end collectives to be cemented in stone may deem that sentiment overly tentative, but I’ve always accepted that my opinions of movies are like my memories: fluid, changing with time, and susceptible to multiple feelings and interpretations.
But here we are today, and here I must enumerate my thoroughly impeachable rankings of the year that was. In reviewing 2015 at the movies, I am struck by how many big-budget pictures I enjoyed. From the thrilling action scenes of Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation to the equally thrilling dance sequences of Magic Mike XXL, from the interplanetary collaboration of The Martian to the intergalactic warfare of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, studios routinely served up rousing entertainment at the multiplex, and they should be commended for it. (Yes, they also served up the usual dreck.)
None of those high-profile movies, however, is on my year-end list. Instead, my top 10 is populated largely by more intimate stories focusing on relationships—mothers and sons, bosses and employees, men and women (and women and women). This should not, of course, reflect a value judgment on my part in favor of “smaller” films. I like all good movies, regardless of the scale of their production or the size of their target demographic. This year, I happened to gravitate toward more independent fare, but that is a coincidence rather than a signifier of taste.
But while the following 10 movies may not have been commercially successful—only two made more than $50 million at the box office, and just one topped $100 million—there is nothing small about their artistic achievements. They told beautiful stories, and they did so with clarity, vigor, and passion, lingering in my mind’s eye for some time after I watched them. They may span countries and eras and genres, but they are all powerful, provocative pictures, with their own singular style and vision. Here are the Manifesto’s 10 best movies of 2015. Read More