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DamienRoc's 15 from '15 | Complete List on Page 3

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#2

 

What could it be? What could it be?

 

 

Inside Out is Pixar's best film.

 

This, obviously, isn't a statement made lightly. For two decades, the studio's arguably been the premier film production house anywhere in the English-speaking world, not just releasing films that have been hits, but that regularly get universal critical acclaim. A mid-range Pixar film is probably in the running for the best reviewed movie the year it came out. A lower tier Pixar film is still very likely to be at least a good film.

 

But Inside Out is the best film the studio has made.

 

Part of the reason is Pete Docter. A member of the Pixar brain trust, he's something of the "other" one from an external viewpoint. John Lasseter is the big name, and is now in charge of two animation studios (WDAS along with Pixar). Andrew Stanton and Brad Bird have both gone on to high profile live action directing jobs. With... questionable success, to be sure, but doing so has raised their profile considerably. Docter, on the other hand is relatively reserved. He's more unassuming and apparently focused on the studio. He's the one who stayed and kept working, perhaps with a bit of anxiety that he's going to mess up and lose his job at any point.

 

He shouldn't worry. At this point, Docter is the best active director in the feature animation industry. You can assume that one film, good or bad, might be a fluke. Two, maybe, could be the result of external factors. But when you've delivered three brilliant films, as Docter has, there has to be something to it. Until Miyazaki decides to come out of retirement or Satoshi Kon figures out how to not be dead, Docter will retain that status. In many ways he's the heart of Pixar. The part that keeps it thrumming along.

 

What he's delivered with Inside Out almost seems like a culmination of two decades of Pixar history. The studio has always been a master at delivering emotional connection with their films. But Inside Out manages a nuanced and layered approach that is able to connect emotionally across demographics. What a child feels is going to differ from someone in their 20s is going to differ from a parent is going to differ from a grandparent and so forth. The tricky intersection of emotion and memory is a powerful beast, and while Pixar has been leading to this moment, nothing the studio has done is quite like it.

 

Given that, it makes sense, really, that it's a film about emotions.

 

Of course, it wasn't predisposed that Inside Out would be so great. There are stories about how it almost went very wrong. How, deep in production, they weren't feeling it (heh) and Docter couldn't figure out how to fix it. Sometimes Pixar has hit these points and been unable to recover. Just this year, The Good Dinosaur showed it's possible for the studio to not quite get to the finish line, either critically or (for a first time) financially.

 

But Docter took a walk, thought it through, and figured out that a central plot point--that Fear was with Joy on the journey through Riley's mind--was the problem and that they needed to switch Sadness in for Fear. And pretty much with that, the film righted itself.

 

Again, this makes sense. The two strongest weapons in Pixar's ongoing arsenal have been their ability to make audiences smile and cry. The other emotions all happen, but they are not the core of Pixar's being. These two characters, in this film, evoke the perfect Pixar feeling.

 

I could say more, talking about the fantastic animation itself, or Michael Giacchino's brilliant score. Or how Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith deliver two of the best acting performances of the year, just with their voices. But all that would belabor the point.

 

Inside Out is Pixar's best film. Because it is the film that is truest to the heart of Pixar.

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#1

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

Psych. I'm just fucking with you. This movie is terrible. The last minute of the above trailer is the best thing about it. It was all downhill from there.

 

 

Edited by DamienRoc
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#1

 

 

Okay. Wow.*

 

*

Due to the writeup I've got to do for the BOFFYs, I'm not going to do an in depth analysis of this. But, seriously, this movie is freaking awesome.

 

Just look at this:

 

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Or this:

 

tumblr_nr904njl581qz7otto7_540.gif

 

Or this:

 

anigif_longform-original-19881-141823851

 

Or this:

 

tumblr_nna4diskmp1u62kxvo1_500.gif

 

Or this:

 

mad-max-fury-road-explosions.gif

 

Or this:

 

0063702c092c2662e6790635d03ff562112f2936

 

And that's just the action shots.

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COMPLETE LIST!

 

Honorable Mentions:

Ant-Man

The Good Dinosaur

Home

Jupiter Ascending

Kingsman: The Secret Service

The Martian

Paddington

Slow West

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Turbo Kid

 

#15 - Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

#14 - Chappie

#13 - The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

#12 - Cinderella

#11 - SPY

#10 - Bridge of Spies

#9 - When Marnie Was There

#8 - Magic Mike XXL

#7 - Tangerine

#6 - Ex Machina

#5 - Creed

#4 - Furious 7

#3 - World of Tomorrow

#2 - Inside Out

#1 - Mad Max: Fury Road

 

All in all, a pretty great year for movies.

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Just so I have everything in one place, here's the BOFFY write-up I did for Fury Road:

 

Discussing Mad Max: Fury Road is difficult, not just because it engenders an amazing emotional connection with its audience, but also because it’s such a layered film. There is so much THERE that it’s like picking at an errant thread in a sweater factory. You can just keep tugging and tugging and it never ends. Books could be written about it and not fully explore it. Actually, in the future they probably will. There will be college classes in the coming years that focus on it, for a variety of subjects: film theory, women’s studies, creative writing, sociology, economics. You name it. I could see a reasonable argument for building an archeology course around it.

 

But we certainly don’t have that kind of time.

 

An interesting context to take the film is to compare it to those it is superficially similar to. While any given year will have a large slate of sequels, 2015 had several films that were new, largely nostalgia-driven entries into venerable series. Star Wars and Rocky both had their seventh films, Terminator its fifth, and Jurassic Park and Mad Max their fourth. All attempted, to greater or lesser degrees, to connect both to older fans while offering something to appeal to a newer, more diverse audience. This isn’t to say that all were successful, but you can see the evidence of Hollywood group-think in their overall construction. There was a consensus that this was the year to bring old things back, bigger and better than ever.

 

But Fury Road diverges rather starkly from there. Unlike the other films, while it allows nostalgia to exist within its framework, it isn’t driven by it. Every other film brought back an old, familiar face (or more): Harrison, Arnie, Sly, and… the T-Rex, I suppose. Those elements were front and center for the film. While Fury Road has things that tie it back to the original trilogy, they’re often more cute asides than a critical feature. And even in the case of something like Max’s Interceptor, the film nearly goes out of its way to say “nostalgia isn’t important” can be discarded in a fiery explosion.

 

Every other film was an attempt to erase some sort of mistake that existed in between the original great(s) and the present. And while you could argue that Thunderdome is a bit of a mixed effort compared to the first Mad Max films, it’s still managed to generate one of the most enduring pop culture references. No, George Miller wasn’t trying to correct a mistake. He didn’t have a prequel trilogy to contend with.

 

Even so, the film did have to prove it was worth watching to the older viewers. Unlike the other films, he didn’t (or couldn’t) bring back his familiar star. Max needed to exist, but he wouldn’t have Mel Gibson’s presence. This didn’t prove to be a detriment, however. Miller’s approach, even back with the original films, was less concerned about internal continuity and more about consistent theme. Max isn’t the hero of a single saga, but a protagonist of multiple stories that may or may not actually connect to each other. In many ways, the Mad Max series bears more in common with classic myths than it does with any modern film franchise.

 

There is an obvious disadvantage of this approach. Nostalgia allows a film to rest on past successes, and by taking a deliberately different path, Fury Road needs to stand on what it brings to the table itself. It’s easy to see why this might make a producer nervous. There are many ways that could go wrong, not least of which is that fans of the originals may take umbrage and start the negative word of mouth early.

 

However, thankfully, Fury Road doesn’t misstep. If anything, it manages the near impossible: discarding all but the barest elements of the original films and still surpassing them. Engaging viewers, new and old. An implied message is, “this may not be entirely familiar, but it’s still for you. Come along on this ride.”

 

Managing to hit this near mythical sweet spot happens because of an absolute attention to detail. Every element of the film’s construction is chosen to mesh into a greater whole. By doing the work at every level, from storyboarding to production and costume design to filming to editing, it’s created a deeply layered experience. It’s possible such an effort can go wrong. Try too hard to control for everything and a film can feel stifled and overly controlled. But George Miller and John Seale and Margaret Sixel and everyone else involved managed to pull it off. Even if at times it seemed to be falling off course, there was that perfect mental vision holding it together, pulling the elements of construction in just the right way to become this fuller, layered whole.

 

What results is a viewing experience that’s matched by very few films. Fury Road is a film that encourages and rewards multiple viewings. The car chase action is riveting enough to provide enjoyment in early viewings, but beyond that you can tease away at the design elements, hinting at the worldbuilding and backstory and character connections that may not be apparent at first. And then you can look into the actual filming practices used. How the shots are framed and cameras centered. What cuts are made.

 

It almost feels limiting to call Fury Road the best action film ever made. But I truly believe that’s the case. Not only that, it’s one of the best films ever made, period. It is, without hyperbole, “perfect in every way."

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