Favorite Movies Of 2015

I'm slipping, since I realized I've only written one movie review all year long, which was for the recent installment of the James Bond franchise, Spectre. So I'll take the time to write mini reviews. I'll try to keep them spoiler free.

10. The Hateful 8
Although I saw this on the first day of 2016, I'm still counting it as part of 2015's year-end list. Normally I don't like Tarantino. I want to like him, since he's talented and has soaked up movie lore like a sponge, it's more that I'm irritated by him. His recent movies Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained tried to use real world events as a setting for stories. He took that very seriously, yet it was only when it suited the story. Moments later they would turn into a parody, ending with a Looney Tunes-like finale.

I actually enjoyed The Hateful 8 for all of it's nearly 3 hour running time. This was just pure Looney Tunes violence throughout, with bad guys just being bad guys. As is you took all of the villains for Con Air and put them into a log cabin in the middle of a blizzard. I especially liked Kurt Russell's handlebar mustache, giving him a Yosemite Sam appearance, furthering the Looney Tunes comparison.

9. Jurassic World
Much like this summer's Terminator film, it was full of references to the original film, almost is if it was more content to wink at the audience than focus on story. While all of the characters were a bit flat, Chris Pratt was excellent as the hero. Almost opposite from "Star Lord" in last summer's Guardians of the Galaxy as a character who could talk his way out of any situation, "Owen Grady" is a skilled trainer who has worked closely with a pack of raptors. Jimmy Fallon had a fun cameo, and it was neat to see a face return from the original, B.D. Wong as the lead scientist behind the dinosaurs.

However I wasn't sure if B.D. Wong's character was being set up as a villain or just a character who's doing his job. He was instructed to make bigger and scarier dinosaurs, so I think a future sequel should go deeper into the background of the company that created these dinosaurs, InGen. Evil companies have been a staple of other franchises, so it would make sense for a sequel to explore this side of the series.

8. The Avengers: Age Of Ultron
I really enjoyed the story of this movie, with Stark's creation backfiring. The previous Iron Man film saw him creating an army of iron drones (similar to what the villains in Iron Man 2 had done), so it made sense for Tony to finally meet his match. I'm familiar with the character of Vision but never knew his background, so I thought it was creative to tie Vision to Ultron with the use of the Infinity Gem that the audience is familiar with. For the casual fans not familiar with those stones/gems/objects/whatever you call it, they've seen several villains in possession of these- the Tesseract (from Captain America), the Aether (from Thor: The Dark World), the Mind stone (from these Avengers movies), and I believe the Power stone was used in Guardians.

However what I didn't like and I'm fastly growing tired of, are these scenes in the movie where everyone battles all at once in some slow motion sequence. It's like, "okay, we get it, the effects are very cool looking", but enough is enough.

7. Mad Max: Fury Road
The first time I saw this was incredibly jarring. I'm used to the low budget Mad Max movies of the 1980's where everyone looks like they rummaged through a Goodwill store for their outfits. This was a big budget extravanga road movie across the desert, and then back again. I realized this is likely what George Miller had envisioned back in the 80's but the effects of that era wouldn't allow it. While Tom Hardy was solid as the silent and tortured Max, I was more drawn to Charlize Theron's Furiosa. Her character propelled the story forward and was as equally tough, and tortured, as Max. I especially liked the focus on the hand to hand combat. So many movie fight scenes are either obsessed with close-ups or draw heavily from The Matrix with flips and effects. Instead, George Miller let the action tell a story, and the three-way fight was innovative with Max still chained to Nux, which both worked to his advantage and was a detriment.

6. Spectre
I wasn't initially sold on these Daniel Craig movies. I wanted to laugh. I wanted gadgets. I wanted a diabolical villain, or at least an interesting henchman. Instead Bond disposed of the henchmen rather easily, and the movies were more dramatic and hard-hitting than funny. 2012's Skyfall was a return to form as it slowly introduced many of these trademark James Bond elements. I suppose those initial Connery movies didn't have that Bond movie formula either.

Spectre went even further, reintroducing the Blofeld character, and also did something that I had been waiting for, which was casting a professional wrestler as a henchman. Former WWE Champion Batista filled that role perfectly and also had one of the best movie introductions that I've ever seen.

5. Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation
Tom Cruise has been on a serious role over the last few years with a string of excellent action movies- Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol, Jack Reacher, Oblivion, and last year's Edge of Tomorrow. This year he returned to the role of super spy Ethan Hunt with a fifth Mission movie, with Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames joining him as his team. The most interesting thing I noticed was that while Tom still performed all of the major stuntwork, it was the female co-star who had the final fist fight in the closing moments of the movie. Perhaps a passing of the torch?

4. Star Wars: The Force Awakens 
I'm a fan of the Original Trilogy but you'll rarely hear me supporting the Prequels. So I was a bit skeptical of a new trilogy, especially with Disney and JJ Abrams at the helm. I was impressed- JJ Abrams delivered an entertaining adventure, although I shouldn't be too impressed since he already remade Star Wars once before with his 2009 Star Trek reboot.

My minor story nitpicks aside, Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the funniest movie I saw in all of 2015. I especially love movies like this- action movies full of belly laughs, with Harrison Ford and John Boyega delivering them by the truck load. It was great seeing Harrison slide into his old role with ease, while Boyega's "Finn" was my favorite of the new faces; maybe even my favorite of the entire series. The special effects and design was spot-on as well, and I knew this would be special from the early moments of the movie when the villain Kylo Ren stopped a blaster in mid-air with his Force abilities.

3. Inside Out 
Pixar have long been my favorite of these computer animated movies. While many are being created that are funny and have creative visuals, very few measure up to the heart of Pixar's movies. In fact, Inside Out almost brought me to tears. I'm not ashamed to admit that either, with Pixar's Toy Story 3 giving me a similar reaction. At least that time I was hidden behind 3D glasses.

2. Kingsman
I left the theater wanting to get into a bar-room brawl. How many action movies have caused this reaction?? I seriously went to work after this and played that KC & The Sunshine Band song and did poor attempts at roundhouse kicks in the hallway. I can also say it got me interested in Lynyrd Skynyrd, too. I watched this twice in theaters and then twice since purchasing it on Blu Ray. I hear there's also a sequel in development too, and I'll be there.

1. The Martian
Matt Damon definitely deserves the top actor awards, or at the very least nominated for every single one. I'd liken it to "Castaway in space", although that's a bit of a disservice because the ensemble cast was fun to watch too, especially Donald Glover as an eccentric scientist with the idea of how to bring Matt Damon home. The music was also excellent, and I'd be disappointed if they didn't include a David Bowie song (since one of his album is Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.)