10 Best Movies of 2015: Rogerebert.com Contributors

The 10 regular reviewers at Rogerebert.com were polled for our top movies. Editors then tallied up the polls, came up with the winners:

10 Best Films of 2015

Each of us were assigned to write a short piece on one of the films. I wrote something on Creed.

Please go read our Top 10: my fellow contributors are all such good and diverse writers.

I participate in Lists because it’s part of the gig, and it’s fun to have the opportunity to write something short/pointed/celebratory about one of the entries on the list – especially if I hadn’t reviewed it when it came out. Felt that way last year, too, when I participated in The Dissolve’s awesome 50 Best Films of the Decade (So Far) list. The writing pool for The Dissolve each submitted choices. Again, editors tallied them up, came up with a list based on those tallies, and handed out assignments. I got Melancholia and Amour. I had written a review of Melancholia (not for The Dissolve but for Capital New York), but hadn’t written anything on Amour, so it was great to be able to do so. I’m not complaining about Lists, I’m happy to be asked (and paid) to participate in all these different polls, but I must go on record with saying that the concept of Lists has many many problems built into it.

Once more, with feeling:

10 Best Films of 2015

Our individual Top 10s will be listed tomorrow.

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9 Responses to 10 Best Movies of 2015: Rogerebert.com Contributors

  1. Paula says:

    This is a great list and can’t wait to see your Top Ten tomorrow. It warms my sci-fi loving heart to see Mad Max:Fury Road at #1. I think I may be a little in love with Matt Zoller Seitz for mentioning The Iliad and The Odyssey and for this quote:

    //It fills its lead role with the puppy-loving method hunk Tom Hardy rather than bringing back its original lead actor, the increasingly unhinged and unemployable caveman Mel Gibson.//

    • sheila says:

      Yes, I thought Matt’s piece was really good – and I didn’t know they were releasing it in b&w?? He’s right: it would work as a silent film, and really only the great films you can say that about.

      The only one on the list I haven’t seen is Chi-Raq, but love my friend Odie’s piece on it. Odie can WRITE – he’s one of those writers whose “voice” I can pick out of a lineup, even in a blind sample.

    • sheila says:

      Tom Hardy is also in The Revenant and I pretty much could not understand a word he said. Method-mumbling to an extreme.

      and yet I know he is capable of speaking clearly! Locke shows that!

      I like him a lot. One of my favorite performances of his so far was in The Drop where he barely says one word, but tells us everything in his behavior. And he’s great in Mad Max – another almost wordless performance.

      Sometimes he reminds me of what Russell Crowe started out as – and, sadly, moved away from when he started wanting to be seen as relatable, a hero, a good guy, an Everyman. His career really suffered – and has never recovered. There was always an unpleasant bullying edge in Crowe’s stuff – even in The Insider, with his resistance to playing along, his fury at being bullied … it made him interesting, a throwback to Bogart, and the anti-heroes of the past.

      Then he went soft and heroic. And he won the Oscar for it. and totally lost his perspective, thinking “Oh, audiences love me now. Now I need to go for the emotional brass ring every time!”

      Tom Hardy, so far, has totally resisted that crowd-pleasing pandering self-congratulatory attitude.

      • sheila says:

        AND, he’s enough of a he-man to let a woman RUN the action picture he’s in. Only real men can allow that.

        It’s the vicious little boys who hate women intruding on their precious (violent, antisocial) space.

        He’s like: “Hey there. You’re a woman. I’ll fix your truck. I got your back.”

        The mostly-wordless love story in “The Drop” was like that too. Have you seen it? It was Gandolfini’s last movie – I think it’s lovely. He has a romance with Noomi Rapace, a thin and angular little actress – who is not a bombshell, or conventionally pretty – she’s serious and strange, with a wincing little smile. But Hardy’s character looks at her like she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. He’s a hunk, but he’s filled with guilt, and shame, and wonders, at times, if she’s making fun of him. (She’s totally not. He’s being too sensitive and paranoid.) The movie never even shows them kissing – but their romance is the sweetest romance I’ve seen in film in a long time.

        and that’s, in part, because Hardy is TOTALLY focused on her in their scenes together. A lot of men just can’t do that, even actors. They’re too self-absorbed, too self-protective. (I get that a lot of real men are like that. But Hardy is not – it makes him super interesting onscreen.)

        • Paula says:

          //Method-mumbling to an extreme.// The mumble trifecta of Layer Cake/RocknRolla/Sucker Punch. Even when you can’t understand him or he is in the background, he stands out.

          The comparison to Russell Crowe is so apt. I used to love him and in particular his off-screen personality, that he didn’t care about what you thought of him. Tom Hardy brings that quality too but there is such a difference in their disregard in that Crowe is bluster and Hardy is sharp edged. Interviewers seemed to like to “poke the bear” with both men but this is where you see the “star quality” in Hardy. His responses show that he is listening and thinking and questioning (not just reacting in the moment) and strikes me as one of those people that remembers everything that is said but may choose to disregard as unimportant.

          Would love to see The Drop.

          • sheila says:

            Excellent thoughts, Paula! I love your analysis of the Hardy/Crowe “poke the bear” divide.

            // but this is where you see the “star quality” in Hardy. //

            YES!

            Have you looked at this man’s Instagram? It is so hilarious it should be an 8th Wonder of the World.

            And then of course there was his “What are you going on about it” response to a reporter at a press junket – that was so triumphant I wanted to cheer. It’s now become a gif, which I am sure you have seen.

          • Paula says:

            God, that look in his eye and he never once dropped his gaze away from the person.

            Legend looks phenomenal as well. The Krays are so weirdly fascinating that I cannot wait to see his take on both brothers.

          • sheila says:

            “Are you asking me about my sexuality?”
            “Yes.”
            “Why?”

            Good for him.

            And yeah, Legend!! I haven’t seen that one yet but looking forward to it.

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