Billy Ray’s (Breach, Shattered Glass) Secret In Their Eyes is a movie with a trailer that makes it look amazing. With an all-star cast that includes two Academy Award-winning actresses, a mystery/suspense/drama, and a murder of a teenage girl with close ties to the main character’s plot, this movie was sure to be a surefire hit, right? Not so fast. When the mixed reviews started rolling in, you had to wonder what was keeping this moving from being great. There were enough negative reviews that would have saved me from seeing this review or at least had me wait for a home viewing if I weren’t a person obsessed with seeing as many movies as possible in the theater. It turns out I could have easily waited for or maybe skipped it entirely. While entertaining, it’s not a movie that needs to be seen. When all is set and down, I can’t see this landing as even one of the 25 best movies I’ve seen this year. It wasn’t the most disappointing movie I saw this year because I had tempered my expectations, and it still held my interest the only time. However, it was very uneven, pretty far-fetched, and didn’t have an audience for it. I think these suspense/mystery/drama-type movies are losing their audiences (at least in terms of watching them in the theater). With the influx of superhero movies, Pixar and other excellent animated films, and more and more quality independents, movies like Secret In Their Eyes are slowly becoming a dying bread. Of course, there are exceptions, especially when a movie is excellent or win it is based on a book that just about everybody reads (see the astounding Gone Girl for both of these exceptions). But if a movie such as Secret In Their Eyes gets just average or even slightly average reviews, it’s just unlikely to do well in the theaters anymore, regardless of which stars are on it.
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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
The second-best action movie heading into the final month of the year has got to be Mad Max: Fury Road, which also happens to be one of the best remakes of a movie ever. I’ll be honest in saying that I did not like the 1979 original movie that started Mel Gibson. I waited until maybe five years ago to watch the film, preferring to keep it as one of those classics to watch on a rainy day. Not so much. It was more disappointing to me than both Blade Runner and Total Recall. That is saying something, as both of those movies I felt were overrated. Blade Runner gets some slack because it was so far ahead of its time. However, I still thought it was overrated. A few things about Mad Max: Fury Road before I get into the review. I mention that it is the second-best movie going into the final month. No action movie will beat the incredible Sicario, which will compete until the end for the best film of 2015. Also, December is when both Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Revenant were released, and I felt both were guarantees to be better than Mad Max: Fury Road. Also, this movie isn’t my type of movie anywhere. So while I will recognize it as a fine film, its score will be slightly better than how I felt when I watched it.
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Creed (2015)
The first question that a person might ask when deciding to see Ryan Coogler’s (Fruitvale Station) Creed could be, “Do I need to have seen all of the Rocky franchises to really like this movie?” The answer to that question is no, but I think you’ll definitely enjoy the movie if you are familiar with movies I through IV. There are lots of references to the relationship between Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed. While this movie is fine as a standalone, it, most likely, is much more fulfilling if you understand some of these references. Creed might be the surprise movie of 2015. I, for one, couldn’t believe what I saw when I first saw the preview. It certainly did not help my current belief that Hollywood is, and has been, for many years, void of original ideas. After seeing the preview, I tried to count the number of Rocky movies that shouldn’t have been made. The list was short. It included Rocky V and Balboa, but I was already willing to stick Creed with that group. While it’s not a great movie, it is a good movie. I think all of the potential Academy Award buzz with the movie is a little ridiculous (Indiewire currently has it as one of its 10 best movies of the year? Please). I will be honest that I’m a sucker for a good boxing movie. 2015 has two really good boxing movies. In addition to Creed, Southpaw, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, was one of the best movies of the summer and, at the moment, is still in my Top Ten for 2015. Younger audiences and big fans of the franchise should see Creed. However, if you are looking for a darker, more meaningful movie, I would definitely recommend watching Southpaw instead.
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It Follows (2015)
Total creep-fest. 2015 was looking for a legitimate horror. While this movie has completely flown under the radar for the general public, word of mouth has allowed the independent It Follows to become a cult classic quickly. Not only is this the best horror movie of 2015, but it is also the best horror movie in years. Honestly, the feeling that I got while watching this movie was what I expected to feel in, perhaps, the most over-hyped horror movie of all time, 1999’s The Blair Witch Project. When I saw The Blair Witch Project in the theater, I was expecting to be scared in ways that I had been before. I know that a few of the friends I went with were completely freaked out, and I wondered if we had just watched the same movie. The Blair Witch Project is a different type of horror than A Nightmare on Elm Street. I think that perhaps as a 23-year-old, I hadn’t yet adapted to the idea that what you might imagine could be even more terrifying than what you actually see. I’ve mentioned on this blog a couple of times that I need to go back and watch The Blair Witch Project just to see if I view it the same way that I did 16 years ago. By looking at its 87% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m willing to admit that I am probably missing something when I give it a grade of a D-. But this is neither here nor there. It Follows is much more like The Blair Witch Project than A Nightmare on Elm Street. Its 96% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes is very much on par with my view of the movie. It Follows is an instant horror classic.
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Far From Heaven (2002)
One of my five favorite previews for 2015 has been for the movie Carol which is, more or less, Cate Blanchett narrating a quick story about her life in 1952 New York City. We don’t learn much about it other than she’s married to Kyle Chandler and that not everything is what it seems to be. At the start and then again at the end of the trailer, Blanchett mentions how everything comes full circle. The trailer is captivating and made me want to see it. It’s directed by Todd Haynes, who has filmed just one movie (I’m Not There) between 2015’s Carol and 2002’s Far From Heaven. In Carol, Haynes returned to what worked in Far From Heaven. We return to 1950s Northeast America. In both movies, Haynes craftily tells the stories of lives that are less perfect than they appear.
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