My Top 10 Films of 2015

1.

Mad Max: Fury Road (★★★★)

Directed by George Miller

Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris

Bold, ingenious, and completely bonkers all the way through, George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” is a visual masterpiece with a story so concisely drawn out and to the point, full of convincing characters with curtly explained backstories that it elevates an already brilliant film to the level of near-perfection.

The story is so concisely drawn out and to the point, and full of convincing characters with curtly explained backstories that it elevates an already brilliant film to the level of near-perfection. Furiosa, simply put, is one of the coolest characters ever created, her face smeared with black engine grease serving as her war paint, the fire in her eyes. There is a real passion to Charlize Theron’s performance as Imperator Furiosa that drives the story forward, as she strives for hope in a hopeless land, and carries scorn for those who have scorned her, but not malice.

It helps that she is paired with an engaging band of characters, including five excellent actresses as the wives, the oft-silent Max, played by Hardy with subtle brilliance in a performance that is a lot of physicality, but also a lot of expressions and eyes, and wasteland tyrant Immortan Joe’s sickly soldier, Nux, played by Nicholas Hoult in a revelatory performance full of humor and sadness.

It’s remarkable to notice this in a film with so few quiet scenes, but I emphasize that “Fury Road” is not your run of the mill summer blockbuster. I wish this was the standard, as opposed to soulless, dull and dead-eyed stuff like the “Transformers” franchise or  even movies that are playing it safe with formula and repetition, like many (not all) of the Marvel universe movies. Maintaining the sensibility and atmosphere of the previous “Mad Max” movies, but cranking the energy up exponentially, Miller realizes the full potential of this universe with “Fury Road” in a way that unsurprisingly took more than a decade to complete.

“Fury Road” establishes such an exciting new era of filmmaking for Miller, and proves promising for the modern action genre by indicating that there’s still hope to be foraged in what was starting to look like a hopeless genre. It’s the best film of the year.

 

2.

Anomalisa (★★★★)

Directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson

Written by Charlie Kaufman

Leave it to writer/director Charlie Kaufman to give us the most human, soul-piercing film of the year and to do it entirely with stop motion miniatures, and the voice talents of only three actors.

“Anomalisa” introduces us to Michael Stone (David Thewlis), a renowned self-help author who is visiting Cincinnati to speak at a customer service convention. We follow him as he arrives in town, takes a Taxi to the hotel where the convention will take place and where he will be staying. We also come to realize that everyone he meets has the same voice — that would be the great Tom Noon, who is credited for this film as playing “everyone else.”

That is Michael’s affliction, or perhaps it could just be Kaufman’s fascinating way of presenting a person’s perception of his or her life as having become completely mundane and passionless. Either way, what we experience with “Anomalisa” is a man caught in a strange, Kafkaesque state of mind where he no longer enjoys any kind of modulation among the people he meets — everyone is the essentially the same person with the same voice, even in the music that he hears through his ear buds and in the hotel lounge.

This monotony of spirit is brought to a sudden, startling halt when Michael, from his hotel bathroom, hears someone outside in the hallway… someone whose voice is different than all of the others — that would be the great Jennifer Jason Leigh, who creates a fully fleshed out and complex character here and helps us to forget for a time that these are just miniatures, and that we aren’t actual watching living, breathing actors on screen.

While “Mad Max: Fury Road” is certainly the finest crafted BIG movie of 2015, it goes without saying that “Anomalisa” is the most beautifully and meticulously crafted miniature movie. So much work went into making this small world a reality, and all efforts have led to this final masterwork of human communication, heartache, pettiness and hope.

Kaufman is the man who brought us such cerebral masterpieces as “Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and “Synecdoche, New York,” all four-star films in my book, and as with all of his previous work, “Anomalisa” reflects the serious questions, anxieties, feelings and observations about life, death, love and existence that are caught and sifted out of the fascinating filter of their writer’s mind, and what a mind it is.

 

3.

The Hateful Eight (★★★★)

Written/Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Funny, violent, mean, but certainly not lean, Quentin Tarantino’s 8^th movie is his longest (nearly 3 hours for the wide theatrical release, well over 3 hours for the 70mm roadshow presentation), and darkest cinematic outburst — I think outburst is just the right word for what Tarantino does. As with his previous work, “The Hateful Eight” feels like an erupting surge of ideas, a culmination of story, ideas and characters straight out of the B-cinema that Tarantino treasures so much.

This time channeling Sergio Leone, Agatha Christie and John Carpenter, Tarantino creates eight of his most dastardly characters yet, shoves them all into a haberdashery to wait out a blizzard, and blends in elements of a Leone western, a Christie locked-room mystery, and Carpenter’s “The Thing.” Paranoia, festering grudges and racism pervade this small space, where in a post-Civil War Wyoming we see the threads of Tarantino’s quirky, quixotic style intertwine with a dark and complex history.

What’s really great is the way in which Tarantino takes his grandiose ideas about the United States then and now, and fleshes them out on a small scale. These ideas are personified by the eight main characters, including Tarantino regulars Tim Roth (as Oswaldo Mobray – the little man), Michael Madsen (as Joe Gage – the cow puncher), Samuel L. Jackson (as Major Marquis Warren – the bounty hunter), Kurt Russell (as John Ruth – the hangman), and Walton Goggins (as Sheriff Chris Mannix – the Sheriff).

Among all of these revved up, larger-than-life performances is that of Jennifer Jason Leigh (as Daisy Domergue – the prisoner), who is a newcomer to the Tarantino universe along with Bruce Dern (as General Sandy Smithers – the Confederate), and Demian Bichir (as Bob – the Mexican). Leigh gives the most nuanced performance and nearly steals the show away from the others, although to do so in a Tarantino movie when Jackson is involved is not a task to be taken lightly.

It must be said that “The Hateful Eight” is not Tarantino at his very best – that would be “Jackie Brown,” a film that displays both his complete control as a filmmaker and his ability to pay homage to past cinema, while also paving an entirely new way for himself. It also shows a balance of violence and depth of character and startling sensitivity that this, his eighth and most brutal film, lacks — although it serves up plenty of terrific plot twists and turns, abundant cutthroat, vengeance-fueled brutality, and still proves, yet again, that Tarantino is a filmmaker to be reckoned with.

 

4.

The Stanford Prison Experiment  (★★★★)

Directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez

Written by Tim Talbott

“The Stanford Prison Experiment” is a film of chilling relevance and brutal realism, in which director Kyle Patrick Alvarez weaves a disturbingly familiar portrait of how the power structures that we ourselves design can ultimately lead to a break down in our humanity in favor of something more animalistic, and more frightening.

What is perhaps most dramatic, upsetting, and infuriating about the results of the Zimbardo’s experiment is that although it featured only a mockup of these environments, and a simulation of the structure of power that exists in reality, between those who are trusted with the job of maintaining peace and order, and those who live behind bars, there is an undeniable and harsh reality that bleeds from that experiment and stains us as a society.

A rivalry that develops between the “guards” and the “prisoners,” all students who happen to be pursuing degrees at one of the world’s most prestigious universities. The question that the study poses is if these Stanford students will resort to this kind of behavior when placed within these circumstances, what does that suggest for actual correctional officers and prisoners who have to face conditions like this on an everyday basis, and for real? And how do these structures of power affect situations outside of the prison system?

Everyone’s performance in this film is incredible, and like so many great films, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” echoes the time and place in which it has been made. We see the everlasting significance of Zimbardo’s study, and the sweeping relevance of Alvarez’s film, which, with its impeccable timing, strikes a serious nerve and stays with you long after it’s over.

 

5.

Beasts of No Nation (★★★★)

Written/Directed by Cary Fukunaga

There is a tremendous sense of clarity and confidence built into Cary Fukunaga’s “Beasts of No Nation,” an incredible narrative and technical achievement featuring a powerful, ethereal score by Dan Romer, graceful writing, direction and cinematography by Fukunaga, and restrained, sincere performances all around.

Perhaps the most interesting observation I can make about this extraordinary film is how poetically the story is told. Fukunaga served as cinematographer on this film, as well as writer and director, and his visual style and fluid approach to storytelling calls to mind the transcendental work of filmmakers David Gordon Green (“George Washington,” “Joe”), Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter,” “Mud”), and Terrence Malick (“The Thin Red Line,” “The New World”).

Fukunaga also has a way off taking more “showy” shots and blending them into the story without distracting us from it. There is one particularly amazing sequence that shows the fractured passing of time, and is communicates both Agu’s moral deterioration, and his lost perception of time and place, as the violence becomes such a frequent part of his everyday life that it actually begins to lose its impact on him.

The anonymity of the film’s setting enhances the urgency of the story and steers it out of the way of being a preachy, political sermon. This allows the film and us to focus on the real journey, where we witness a young boy’s loss of innocence as he is abandoned, and then rediscovered in a war-torn land. “Beasts of No Nation” above all is a human story, not one chiefly fixated on placing the blame, and who better than Fukunaga to guide us through the dark and find humanity living among the shadows?

 

6.

Entertainment (★★★★)

Directed by Rick Alverson

Written by Rick Alverson, Gregg Turkington and Tim Heidecker

When viewed shallowly, from a distance and with slightly squinted eyes, the very premise of Rick Alverson’s “Entertainment,” which he co-wrote with star Gregg Turkington and Tim Heidecker, is not an unfamiliar one. The idea here is that Alverson and company are taking something we have seen before in more conventional films about aging entertainers, and deconstructing it in order to get a fuller grasp, not on the story arc itself exactly, but more on what about this kind of story makes sense in a naturalistic sort of way, one that is not blurred or sweetened saccharine by clean resolutions or sentimental revelations.

Alverson’s film doesn’t contain a single disposable scene, or a scene out of place. It is refreshingly efficient in its storytelling, and proves Alverson to be one of the most focused, confident and uncompromising directors working today. He makes confrontational movies about confrontational people, and there’s something both unsettling and somehow completely brilliant and refreshing about his approach.

Turkington as a truly strange and fascinating to watch as he re-interprets his own real-life character for the film, which has been digested and reinterpreted by Heidecker, Alverson and himself, and then switches it off and becomes the hollow shell of a man. As the film progresses, the comedian struggles to communicate with others, both through his belligerent stage character (based on “Neil Hamburger,” a character that Turkington performs as in real life),  whose act is made up of subversive, carefully constructed hacky jokes of misogyny, homophobia and overall distaste, and in his life off-stage.

That inability to communicate builds, driving the always restrained and subtly affecting story into increasingly surreal territory that paints the American Southwest as somewhat of a wasteland of washed up opportunity and spent talent. There is a lot of humor, but none of it comes without a little bit of a sting. That’s the kind of film Alverson is interested in making.

 

7.

Spotlight (★★★★)

Directed by Tom McCarthy

Written by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer

“Spotlight” is a quietly harrowing thriller based on the 2003 Boston Globe investigation of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The Globe’s “Spotlight” team of investigative journalists published a story that year that revealed a staggering statistic, that 6% of Catholic priests have been guilty of pedophilia, and that the church itself has done everything in its power to conceal this fact from the public.

As we watch the true story of the investigation unfold, and witness the slow uncovering of this massive scandal by the Boston Globe journalists, the tension builds and builds. So does the characters’ (and our) exasperation with how far the corruption spans, within the church and beyond. There are scenes where victims are interviewed about their experiences of abuse that are completely devastating, and then there are scenes of rage where we see the lies and moral decay of the abusers and their allies.

There is also triumph, as the “Spotlight” team, with the publication of the story, at last reveals this issue to the world, and by extension provides a new avenue for hundreds of victims of abuse to come forward with their stories.

The best ensemble cast of 2015, including brilliant performance from Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Live Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup, Brian d’Arcy James and Mark Ruffalo, and a slow-burning and emotionally searing screenplay by Josh Singer and director Tom McCarthy, make “Spotlight” one of the great investigative journalism films — “All the President’s Men” and “Zodiac” are perfectly fair comparisons.

 

8.

The Revenant (★★★★)

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

Written by Mark L. Smith and Alejandro González Iñárritu

Last year, mad-scientist Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu managed to grab 3 of the big Oscars for Best Picture, directing and writing for “Birdman,” a razor-sharp take on acting, theater, blockbuster movies and… well, whatever else “Birdman” was about, it was a wild ride, shot and cut to appear as though the entire thing was done in one single shot — this was, I think, used to great effect, and helped to earn another Oscar for Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography, which will again be noticed in Iñárritu and Lubezki’s new collaboration, the equally insane and technically breathtaking frontier film, “The Revenant.”

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as fur trapper Hugh Glass in this blisteringly cold but beautifully savage story of suffering and revenge. Glass was a real person who, in the 1820s, was abandoned by his men after being mauled within an inch of his life by a grizzly bear while on a fur expedition. In “The Revenant,” we act as witness to this harrowing and prolonged attack, and then watch as his team of hunters, led by Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) attempt to resuscitate him and carry him onward back to camp.

Henry decides to lead all but two of the men back, and leaves the cutthroat John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), the younger and more naïve Bridger (Will Poulter), and Glass’ half-native American son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) to watch over Glass and see to it that if he is given a proper burial should he perish from his wounds. Fitzgerald is a true snake who decides he’s had enough, and after killing Glass’ son, convinces Bridger that they must leave Glass to die in order to escape an impending attack by supposedly nearby hostile natives.

Glass survives once they’ve left, and film then follows him as he journeys through a frozen hell, returned from the dead, and fueled by a thirst for retribution against those who abandoned him.

“The Revenant” is a technical marvel, and features some of the most brilliantly framed and captured photography we have seen on screen. The production was shot in staggeringly cold conditions, in entirely natural light, and in geographical locations that are so isolated and unlivable that many cast and crew have come back with utter horror stories of working on this.

All of these touches and sweeping decisions layered in have made “The Revenant” a truly remarkable experience. With a sad, sometimes eerie and often atmospheric score by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto, and brilliant work by both DiCaprio and Hardy, as well as Gleeson and Poulter who are great young actors working among giants and holding their own just fine.

Iñárritu is a treasure in the world of cinema, and carries onward a great legacy of films, from “Babel” and “21 Grams,” to “Birdman” and “The Revenant,” he has tirelessly delivered striking works of art that challenge, thrill and make us feel deeply.

 

9.

Sicario (★★★½ )

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Written by Taylor Sheridan

Haunting: That is the word to describe “Sicario,” director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan’s descent into the dark world of Mexican drug cartels and CIA intrigue.

Hold tight for the first quarter of this film, as it’s a slow burn in which we are pulled gradually into an increasingly disquieting realm of secrecy, drug trade and unimaginable atrocities via our avatar, FBI SWAT agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt, never better), whose relatively naïve and innocent point of view — despite having helped discover dozens of decaying corpses hidden in the walls of a house, all victims of the cartel — matches ours. We know there are gruesome things going on, but are less aware perhaps of the extent to which the cartels are in charge. We also come to discover, as Kate does, the extent of our own country’s culpability for the drug-trade crimes being committed, and that is where the haunting really begins.

There are touches of Alfred Hitchcock and David Cronenberg here, as Kate is left in the dark about her involvement with the CIA task force led by Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), and for an inordinate amount of time knows close to nothing about why she is being assigned to join Graver and his mysterious partner Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro) on a Cartel-related mission in Mexico. She eventually discovers the truth, as we do, and her reality spins faster and faster out of control until everything she though she understood about right and wrong, good and evil, and who she can trust is tested.

Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson delivers a brooding score that further enhances our sense of foreboding, and cinematographer great Roger Deakins captures some of the most striking and strange overhead shots of the Mexican desert I’ve seen, framing it almost as an alien place that could stand in for another planet in another galaxy. This adds to the out-of-place out-of-time anxiety that Kate begins to experience as she realizes she is way over her head.

Villeneuve, whose previous work includes “Prisoners” and “Enemy,” once again reveals as he did with those films his fascination with the fragile morality of man — this time, he layers it further into genre than ever before, weaving his themes into a story that is both a taught, nerve-shattering crime thriller, and a relevant web of horror that exists just south of the border.

 

10.

Krampus (★★★½ )

Directed by Michael Dougherty

Written by Todd Casey, Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields

Writer/director Michael Dougherty’s “Krampus” is perhaps one of the most unlikely and surprising genre masterworks in years. With his family cooped up in a house in the midst of a sinister winter maelstrom, 12-year-old Max Engel (Emjay Anthony) is teased and tortured by his visiting cousins, and angry about his parent’s looming separation, and so loses his temper, rips up his carefully composed letter to Santa Claus, tosses the shreds of paper to the wind, and unknowingly summons Krampus, the mythical demonic shadow of Father Christmas himself.

What follows is a tour de force of filmmaking, with creature and sound design that will rival any movie of its kind that has been released in the past decade. Drawing from a more practical bag of tricks than audiences are used to seeing these days (George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” notwithstanding), Dougherty crafts a truly masterful series of set pieces in which we witness the wrath of Krampus and his minions — these include demonic Gingerbread cookies, man-eating toys, and eerie elves wearing elaborate masquerade masks. Krampus himself is saved for the final course, and trust me on this: he’s a doozy.

As with Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” series, though, there is a great deal of humor cut with the cries of terror and bewilderment. Dougherty manages to establish a solid tone throughout the film, from the confidant set up of the family quarrels, to the sinister snowstorm that drifts in and turns the neighborhood into a claustrophobic winter wasteland, a nightmare reminiscent of Frank Darabont’s world in his screen adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Mist.”

Dougherty’s film takes a well-earned place beside Joe Dante’s “Gremlins” and Ron Underwood’s “Tremors” as one of the great horror-comedies. It offers real scares and real laughs, often times simultaneously, and with a pitch-perfect ending, invigorating practical effects and sincere performances that seriously invest in the material rather than treating it with a wink and a nod, “Krampus” has true potential to reach holiday-tradition status — families hopefully will try to squeeze a movie about a Christmas demon somewhere in between “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Elf” and “A Christmas Story.”

 

HONORABLE MENTION:

“Chi-Raq”

“Creep”

“Crimson Peak”

“Ex Machina”

“Inside Out”

“It Follows”

“Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens”

“What We Do in the Shadows”

‘Life of Pi’

Visually jaw-dropping and thematically resonant, Ang Lee’s screen adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel “Life of Pi” is nothing short of magnificent, a transcendent display of filmmaking that represents a new pinnacle for both visual effects and storytelling.

“Life of Pi” is a truly moving, profoundly universal story about a boy who survives against all odds, and the man he becomes as a result. Young Pi Patel (Suraj Sharma) lives an extraordinary childhood surrounded by animals in his father’s zoo in India. Due to financial woes, the zoo eventually faces closure, and Pi’s father (Adil Hussain) decides he must transport the zoo animals by ship to Canada in order to sell them.

While en route to Canada on a Japanese cargo freighter, a merciless storm crashes into the vessel and, after Pi alone is able to escape on a lifeboat, completely submerges it along with his family, the other passengers and most of the animals.

Pi’s survival after the storm and shipwreck makes up the rest of “Life of Pi,” as he is stranded at sea sharing one small boat with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker, who starts off hungry, but grows ravenous as the days turn into weeks, and the weeks turn into months. All of this is recounted by Pi as an adult (played with heartbreaking sincerity and grace by Irrfan Khan) to an interested writer (Rafe Spall) who is constructing a story from Pi’s tale.

“Life of Pi” is undoubtedly a film that demands to be seen more than once, for its beauty and spectacle, but also for its reverberating message of enduring faith and humanity through tragedy and loss. Lee and maestro cinematographer Claudio Miranda create so many images that have remained in my head long after seeing it, images that continue to echo and haunt.

Zebras and giraffes swimming through a stormy sea of tempestuous waves, a strange, carnivorous island inhabited by meerkats, a blue whale penetrating the ocean’s surface and crashing down again, these are the images of a movie miracle that deserves heavy praise for its ambition and its stunning execution.

A story of faith and courage, loss and survival, “Life of Pi” is like no other film I have seen, in the sense that it deals with all of these familiar, cosmic themes in ways never before seen on screen. This uniqueness can be attributed largely to Lee, a true visionary who has never shown us a clearer, more unforgettable film than this in his entire career.

“Life of Pi” should have been a challenging work to adapt for the screen, as it blends complex metaphors and philosophical ideas and images with intense realism, but in Lee’s hands, it is a sweeping success, a masterpiece that enchants and move us all at once.

After some well-earned Oscars, including Best Score (composed by Mychael Danna), Best Visual Effects (by Rhythm and Hues Studios) and Best Director, “Life of Pi” will continue to inspire and be celebrated for years to come.

★★★★ (out of 4) 

‘Silver Linings Playbook’

Writer/director David O. Russell has a gift for exploring and staging the complexities and dynamics of dysfunctional families, shown in his previous film, “The Fighter,” and again in his newest film, “Silver Linings Playbook,” a romantic comedy that transcends the genre in many ways and features career best performances by Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.

Cooper plays Pat, a bipolar ex-teacher who has been in a mental institution for several months after beating his wife’s lover to a bloody pulp and nearly killing him. Pat’s mother, Dolores (Jacki Weaver), signs him out of the facility and brings him home with hopes that he is ready to start his life again.

Pat has the same desire, and pledges to look on the bright side of things, and seek out the “silver linings” in his life. He clearly hasn’t yet worked through his emotional issues and frequently has bouts of depression and anger. His father, Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro), suffers many of the same emotional and mental problems, and has developed obsessive-compulsive tendencies that prove to have an interesting effect on his football fanaticism — they live in Philadelphia, so the Eagles are a second religion.

The internal fissures and knots surface slowly throughout “Silver Linings Playbook” as Pat’s path to healing reaches several jerks and turns before coming to a screeching halt one evening when he is agrees to eat dinner with his friend, Ronnie (John Ortiz), and his wife, Veronica (Julia Stiles).

Veronica’s sister, Tiffany (a stunning, Oscar-worthy Jennifer Lawrence), shows up and rocks Pat’s universe at first sight and forever more. She is as peculiar as Pat and has emotional problems of her own, on top of being an ex-sex addict. She proves to be a saving grace in disguise as she promises to help Pat in his quest to rekindle romance with his ex-wife, while also making some plans of her own to guide Pat toward another path, another light.

“Silver Linings Playbook” features one of the finest ensemble casts in recent memory. Indeed, the four principal actors all received well-deserved Oscar nominations. Of the four of them, I predict that Lawrence, one of the most gifted young actresses around today, will win. She floored me with her work in “Winter’s Bone” two years ago, and again in “The Hunger Games,” but this may be her best, most nuanced performance. I say give her the gold.

The film also features De Niro’s best performance in ages, and manages to melt away all of the self-parody and pretense that have hardened around the veteran actor in the past decade. It is an emotional, poignant performance that draws us back to the golden age of De Niro, and reminds us of what a powerful actor he truly is.

The subject of mental illness is fascinating to me, and particularly in the way O. Russell, adapting a book by Matthew Quick, deals with it and weaves it into “Silver Linings Playbook” and into the characters’ lives. The way he handles the subject is so deeply and painfully sincere, that as it moves along, we become involved in these characters’ lives and lose ourselves in the story in a rare kind of way.

O. Russell is a unique, edgy and talented director who lost his way with the abysmal, unwatchable “I Heart Huckabees,” but has found his voice again as an important storyteller interested in flawed, relatable characters and families. “Silver Linings Playbook” is one of his best films to date, and one of the best films of 2012 because it manages to balance its humor with the painful realities of mental illness, love and heartache.

★★★ 1/2 (out of 4)

‘Zero Dark Thirty’

I chewed my nails and broke a sweat watching Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” one of the darkest, most suspenseful films of the year. It is Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal’s follow-up to their 2009 hit, “The Hurt Locker,” which won Bigelow her first directing Oscar, Mark Boal his first screenwriting Oscar and the movie Best Picture.

I don’t predict “Zero Dark Thirty” to be quite as successful, but for all it’s worth, this taut thriller about the decade-long events leading up to killing of Osama Bin Laden by a Navy S.E.A.L. team manages to chill your blood and raise your heart rate. In another excellent performance in an already impressive career, Jessica Chastain plays Maya, a character based on the woman who was the brains behind the entire operation.

In the film, there is a scene where she stands in a meeting room with fellow C.I.A. agents and their director (James Gandolfini), who asks for percentages of confidence that Bin Laden is in fact living inside a large, heavily surveyed compound nearby the Pakistan Military Academy. On the table the agents are standing around is a model of the compound and its surrounding geography. Everyone but Maya seems to think there is a 50/50 chance that Bin Laden is inside the compound. Maya says she is 100 percent sure. This is the place, and she knows it.

This scene, in part, defines what “Zero Dark Thirty” is interested in showing, Maya’s long and painful struggle to convince everyone of her confidence. She becomes obsessed with finding the man behind the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, and devotes her life, and often risks it, to get the job done. There are some harrowing scenes of torture, which have come under much scrutiny by critics who say they glorify or misrepresent the truth.

From my perspective, they are a vital part of the film, and go a long way toward lending hard gravity to the film’s final shot. There is not a doubt in my mind that the C.I.A. has tortured, and in trying to learn Bin Laden’s location, I cannot help but believe at least the essence of what went on post-9/11 is reflected on screen here by the filmmakers. They are difficult to watch at times, but as parts of a whole they are necessary to the story — after all, this is a story based on true events, not a documentary feature.

As in “The Hurt Locker,” there are long periods of silence and waiting in “Zero Dark Thirty,” punctuated by scenes of quick, blood-curdling violence and action. Bigelow’s direction is not as stylish as David Fincher’s, but the overall pacing of this film is reminiscent of Fincher’s “Zodiac,” in that it tracks the search for one man over the course of many years and captures the obsession that develops in the course of trying to do so. “Zero Dark Thirty” is the lesser film for a lot of reasons, including some editing issues that rob a number of scenes of suspense, and an annoying, inconsistent series of title cards that seem redundant in hindsight, and unnecessarily split of segments of the movie.

The final 30 minutes of “Zero Dark Thirty” alone are worth the price of admission for this movie, as they capture the actual storming and killing of Bin Laden. No spoiler here, we all know he is killed at the end, so all that remains is the execution of the sequence, and Bigelow directs the hell out of it. A lot of silence and pure suspense, punctuated by some truly jarring explosions, all shot in night vision, leads up to what can only be described as the ultimate anti-climax, but that is the exact ending this film needed to prove the point it is trying to make. The amount of violence, torture, interrogation, death, tears and political tactics that went on between the 9/11 attacks and the actual death of Bin Laden leaves Maya and all of us thinking, what now?

It is a far more bittersweet, morally ambiguous ending than a lot of filmmakers would have approached, and that is why Bigelow and Boal are a great pairing. They take incredibly controversial subject material and, after Hollywood churned out a series of failed, preachy Iraq war movies, they made “The Hurt Locker.” Now, they have made “Zero Dark Thirty,” and once again they get it right, more or less.

★★★ (out of 4)

‘Django Unchained’

From the mind and pen of writer/director Quentin Tarantino, and in the style of filmmakers Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Leone, “Django Unchained” is a blood-splattered spaghetti-western set in the south two years before the Civil War, a tale of a former slave’s quest for revenge as he journeys to save his wife from the plantation to which she was sold.

The man’s name is Django (the “D” is silent) and he is played by Jamie Foxx in one of his best performances. While being transported along in a chain gang, his buyers, the Speck brothers (James Remar and James Russo) cross paths with German dentist/bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). Schultz is looking to purchase Django, who can identify the Brittle brothers, a new bounty that Schultz is trying to track down.

The Brittle brothers — Big Jim (M.C. Gainey),  Lil Raj (Cooper Huckabee) and Ellis (Doc Duhame) — are a nasty bit of business and only the first of many dangerous encounters Django and Schultz must face on their path toward Django’s wife, Broomhilda “Hildy” von Shaft (!) (Kerry Washington).

When the two bounty hunters finally find out where she is, they come up with a plan to infiltrate the plantation, owned by notorious slave owner and Mandingo fighting enthusiast Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a Francophile who cannot speak French but insists on being called Monsieur Candie. His plantation is called Candieland.

All of these characters are classic Tarantino, as is every drop of this violent, epic love letter to spaghetti-westerns. Indeed, “Django Unchained” may be termed the first spaghetti-southern, as it deals with America’s dark history of slavery in a profoundly subversive way.

But even while there are some brutal and disturbing events on display, Tarantino above all is an entertainer who balances the historical bits with pure cinematic bliss, merging fantasy and fiction with a reality many would rather forget. It’s a real showstopper, and in both showings I sat through, the audience reacted with overwhelming enthusiasm and standing ovations once the end credits began to roll.

As in “Inglourious Basterds,” Waltz’s delivery of Tarantino’s words is masterful, and proves that these two are meant to work together. The same goes for Samuel L. Jackson, who steals scenes a plenty in “Django Unchained” as Calvin Candie’s head house slave, Stephen. Jackson has been featured in five of Tarantino’s films including this, and as always, sparks fly when they join forces.

DiCaprio’s first part in a Tarantino movie is a juicy one that he has blast with. Tarantino has said Candie is the only character he has written that he hates, and indeed Candie is a vicious, immature monster who enjoys seeing black people tear each other apart in arranged fights. He has brown, rotted teeth. He drinks fancy mixed beverages from a coconut and considers himself an intellectual of sorts when it comes to the science of phrenology — the differences in skull shapes among slaves and their white owners. He is nasty business.

Once again, all of the elements that make a Tarantino movie so good come together in “Django Unchained,” from the sublime music selections (including an original song by Ennio Morricone) to the stylized violence and the rhythmic dialogue. It’s better than “Inglourious Basterds” and shows that, at 49 years old, the master filmmaker is better than ever.

I’m calling it: “Django Unchained” is the best film of 2012.

★★★★ (out of 4)

‘Les Miserables’

Call me a square, but I shed tears no less than three times during “Les Miserables,” Tom Hooper’s gritty, not-so-subtle movie-musical adaptation of the Broadway hit written by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg.

Originally performed in Paris and London and based on the novel by Victor Hugo, “Les Mis” tells the story of unfairly persecuted peasant Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a convict who steals a loaf of bread and serves 19 cruel years on a chain gang under the rule of a crueler police inspector named Javert (Russell Crowe).

Once Valjean violates his parole and seeks a new life as a factory director and mayor, Javert’s obsession grows and Valjean is forced into a life of fear, which is not a free life after all.

Much of Hugo’s tale is about Valjean’s quest for redemption and freedom from the law. He adopts the young daughter of one of his former factory workers, a broken, dying woman named Fantine (Anne Hathaway), he faces confrontations with Javert throughout his life and must try to escape his fate while also protecting his adopted child, Cosette (Isabelle Allen).

After nine years pass, Cosette (played as an adult by Amanda Seyfried) and Valjean have moved and live near the site of a group revolutionaries, one of whom is named Marius (Eddie Redmayne). Cosette and Marius fall in love, Valjean faces the impending doom of Javert’s ever-looming presence, and all of this takes place in the middle of a revolution.

Hooper’s movie makes for loud, relentless melodrama, and all of the elements that have allowed audiences to connect with the stage musical for decades come together more or less intact in adaptation on screen. “Les Mis” certainly has hit a cord or two with me since I first became aware of it as a kid, and to see it come together on screen so well is a joy.

The music is uncanny in its ability to pierce the soul. Boublil and Schönberg had angels on their shoulders when they originally wrote the musical, and in their composition of a new song in Hooper’s adaptation, the same angels have returned.

Hooper and his crew even returned to Hugo’s novel to draw out some of the details previously left out in order to enrich and tie the story together a bit better for the screen. Some added bits with Fantine’s suffering and the adjusted string arrangements of “Lovely Ladies” brought to mind Darren Aronofsky’s “Requiem for a Dream.” Indeed, some of this material has never seemed darker than it does now in the film, as the filmmakers drill down and find frightening places in which to place the beautiful, passionate songs.

What must be discussed first is Hooper’s brilliant choice to have the actors sing live on set rather than record a soundtrack months ahead of time, the technique nearly every movie musical every made has used. The tremendous, raw live performances in the movie are crucial to the integrity of the music.

Jackman, Hathaway and Redmayne are the highlights in terms of both singing and acting, and Crowe plays Javert in a refreshingly different way, more quiet and tortured by his obsession. Despite his weaker singing chops, he delivers an intense, brooding performance that does justice to the character.

“Les Mis” should be the standard for all future movie musicals until something more effective is realized because it charges forward through its own world without flinching and unapologetically tells its story to the audience with a special passion not found often enough. Hooper directs with confidence, even when he gets ahead of himself from time to time. His is a faithful adaptation that should satisfy existing devotees of the show, including myself, and garner some new ones.

Through dark, dirty and gritty streets, Hugo’s characters continue to plead, sing and suffer, and we continue to listen.

★★★ (out of 4)

‘Lincoln’

One of director Stephen Spielberg’s greatest gifts as a filmmaker always has been his ability to drill down and discover the raw humanity in his characters.

As portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis in Spielberg’s newest film “Lincoln,” the sixteenth president of the United States comes to life in an extraordinary way, transcending the legend of Abraham Lincoln and revealing him to be a frail, soft-spoken man with a hunch in his back and a limp in his step.

In the opening scene, he sits wrapped in a warm wool blanket talking casually to a group of young soldiers in their camp. He communicates with them, not to them, and is humbled when one soldier remembers verbatim his Gettysburg Address. This scene sets the tone of “Lincoln” by revealing immediately that Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner are not interesting in displaying Lincoln as an icon, but rather as a flawed, frustrated president dealing with a civil war and a war to battle the 13th amendment passed through Congress.

Much of “Lincoln” is about this endeavor to end slavery in the U.S., and Lincoln’s struggle toward a reunified nation.  A team of advocates including W.N. Bilbo (James Spader), Robert Latham (John Hawkes) and Richard Schell (Tim Blake Nelson) is assembled to push for more yea voters via bribery while Lincoln deals with the consequences of stalling the end of the war for the sake of ending slavery first.

Kushner’s screenplay, based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” neatly captures the chaos in Lincoln’s life as he faced opposition from every corner of his life. His attorney general, secretary of treasury and secretary of state, William Seward, played brilliantly here by David Strathairn, were all previous political opponents. Goodwins’ original title has no shortage of meanings in relation to Lincoln’s time in office.

As Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens, Tommy Lee Jones nearly runs away with the entire film in a sharp, passionate and inspired performance. In Lincoln’s struggle to end slavery, Stevens plays a crucial part in congress as one of the most blunt, eloquent speakers whose sincere revulsion of the Confederacy is only held back once in compromise.

Spielberg and Kushner put up front all of these characters’ greatest strengths and flaws, and the performances all allow us to see them as complex human beings capable of fear, shame, joy and love.  Day-Lewis’ performance as Lincoln is definitive, as is Sally Field’s performance as Mary Todd Lincoln. One of the most chilling scenes in “Lincoln” is a fight between the president and his wife over their son, Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), where we discover the turmoil Lincoln faced inside his own home, in addition to the war and a nation divided.

My only substantial critique of “Lincoln” is that it does not quite manage to find the right way to end, and therefore the film falls short of greatness by a hair. There is so much richness on screen throughout, from the incredible performances by everyone mentioned above and more, including Hal Holbrook, Jackie Earle Haley, Jared Harris, Michael Stuhlbarg and David Costabile — what a cast! — to the cinematography of Janusz Kaminski, to the production design and art direction, not to mention John Williams’ sweeping score.

Everything comes together in this movie right up until the end, which is essentially botched when the perfect moment to end is reached, and then passed by in order to tell a little more of Lincoln’s story, without which “Lincoln” would have been a great film.

But never mind that, because when you see “Lincoln,” even though the ending is rough and comparatively stitched together, the rest is pure Spielberg, and one of the best films of 2012.

★★★ 1/2 (out of 4)

‘Argo’

After his two knockout thrillers “Gone Baby Gone” and “The Town,” one could suppose Ben Affleck figured it was time to bump it up another notch by directing and starring in what is, by far, one of the most thrilling, entertaining and important films of 2012.

The film is called “Argo,” and it covers the events surrounding the historical CIA mission to rescue six U.S. diplomats who were trapped at the home of the Canadian ambassador in Iran during a hostage crisis between 1979 and 1980.

In the film, the man heading up this mission is CIA operative Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck). Struggling to find a way to extract the hostages, Mendez is watching a B-movie with his son over the phone one evening, “Battle for the Planet of the Apes,” which inspires him to approach the hostage extraction from a new angle.

In order to get into Iran and successful pull the Americans out of Iran, Mendez plans to use the CIA’s connections in Hollywood to concoct a fake movie project, a “science fantasy” adventure à la “Star Wars” whose crew wants to film on location in Iran.

The key connection is Hollywood make-up artist John Chambers (John Goodman), and he puts Mendez and his supervisor Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston) in touch with producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), and the plan quickly snowballs. An existing script called “Argo” is taken from the bottom of a pile of screenplays, casting auditions, script readings and production meetings are held in order to keep up the appearance of reality.

This is an extraordinary story. There are a lot of genuinely tense, thrilling scenes throughout “Argo,” but there also is a tremendous amount of humor, most of which comes from Goodman, who screen presence is always a gift, and Arkin, whose movie producer character insists that even if the plan is to make a fake picture, he intends to see that it is a hit.

The humor of the methodology Mendez takes is inherent in how Hollywood and the CIA manage to work together to try to save the hostages from a volatile and dangerous revolutionary nation. Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, Christopher Denham, Scoot McNairy, Kerry Bishé and Rory Cochrane play the diplomats convincingly and capture the fear and anxiety of the entire situation.

In terms of Affleck’s performance in the film, it may be one of his best. In terms of his direction, I think it is safe to say that after three films, Affleck has established himself as one of the most vigorous young directors around. Peter Travers of “Rolling Stone” put it this way: “Ben Affleck doesn’t merely direct ‘Argo,’ he directs the hell out of it.” Travers, who I often read, sums up Affleck’s power behind the camera.

Affleck does indeed direct the hell out of this film, and from a dynamite script by Chris Terrio. Just watch the masterful opening sequence where revolutionaries storm the American embassy — every moment of that sequence is handled with care, and Affleck believes in building tension and creating an experience on screen. Observe his brilliant attention to detail in relation to the period and the history of these events, and the difficult but well executed balance he strikes between tension, humor and drama.

After a declining acting career, it is great to see that Affleck has bounced back as one of the best directors out there, and “Argo” is one of the best films of 2012.

★★★★ (out of 4)

‘Compliance’

“Compliance” is a genuinely powerful, chilling film about the consequences of following authority blindly, all the more difficult to watch because the story is plucked from reality. If it weren’t crafted so well, the film would likely be unwatchable, but because writer/director Craig Zobel handles the material with such serious restraint and skill, and the performances are so strong and sincere, “Compliance” never comes across as trashy voyeurism.

The setting is a fast food chicken restaurant. The manager, a middle-aged woman named Sandra (Ann Dowd), informs her employees of an inventory shortage of pickles and bacon. Then, she tells them a secret shopper will be in sometime during the day, so they must all be in top form.

Right away, even before the phone rings, there is a palpable layer of tension in the film. Sandra is stressed about the inventory shortage, caused by a freezer that was left open the previous night, and about the secret shopper who will be evaluating the quality of food and service. She already shares a slightly abrasive relationship with a few of her employees, particularly Becky (Dreama Walker), a young blonde girl who works at the front.

And then the phone rings.

When Sandra answers, the man on the other end of the phone introduces himself as Officer Daniels (Pat Healy). He tells Sandra one of her employees has been accused of stealing money from a customer’s purse. The victim, he says, is at the station and identified the employee as a young blonde girl — he describes Becky exactly. Sandra proceeds to take Becky in the back employee room to question her at the officer’s command.

From there, the film becomes a downward spiral into the dark depths of human obedience, as the man on the phone orders Sandra and other employees to do increasingly cruel and humiliating things to Becky, who sits naked in the back room for most of the film, barely covered by an apron. The man manages to convince nearly everyone of his authority, and establishes early on that Becky only has two options: She can either be taken downtown and jailed overnight, or strip-searched at the restaurant. He recommends the second option as the quicker, easier choice, and Becky agrees.

Zobel is a gifted filmmaker, and scene after scene in “Compliance,” he masterfully examines the power of suggestion, and our desire to obey authority, and to do the right thing, whatever that may seem to be. This is a scary idea, as most people try to live their lives day to day while making the right decisions and following the rules. So when audience members choose to stand up and walk out on this film, as they did at several premiere showings in New York and L.A., it signifies just how challenging the ideas and images presented in the film are, especially because Zobel presents them in a stark, realistic manner so as not to sensationalize true events.

Ann Dowd plays Sandra the manager in a deeply sad, frustrating and sincere performance, an award-caliber performance. From her first scene on, Dowd establishes Sandra as a good person struggling with insecurity and a need to control and maintain the restaurant service and to please the man who calls himself an officer of the law. She also has a boyfriend, Van (Bill Camp), whom she soon hopes will propose marriage.

There is a heartbreaking, cringe-inducing scene where Sandra overhears Becky talking with another employee about her many boyfriends. Sandra urgently jumps into the conversation, overcompensating for herself and revealing a hint of jealousy for Becky’s youth and sexual activeness. Dowd makes us ache for her in these scenes, but when the tables turn and we feel resentment for her compliancy, it does not feel manipulative. The sudden reversal comes eerily natural to the story.

These moments early in the film weave a layer of everyday, human anxiety into the story, and are heightened as it moves along. The tension between these characters even comes into the foreground when the officer tells Sandra to call in Van to supervise Becky while she goes back to help work the front counter — it is a busy night, so Becky and Van are left alone for a stretch of time, during which the more disturbing and tragic events happen.

I would like to think I would never (in a million years) behave as these people in the film do, following the man’s orders over the phone despite lacking any actual proof he is a police officer. But a blood-curdling statistic at the end of the film reveals there have been 70 similar instances that have occurred in 30 different states. In “Compliance,” every second leading up to the phone call, and every nuance leads me to question myself, even as I question the actions of Sandra and everyone else. What would I do?

What would you do?

★★★ 1/2 (out of 4)