Magic Mike XXL isn’t a movie that panders to women; it’s a movie that worships women.
As Carol, Blanchett is both boldly assured and covertly lost. Her voice is deepened and authoritative, her body language at once contained and careless.
Inside Out is a big-budget, mass-market Hollywood studio movie that actually embraces sadness as a necessary thing.
That old Joan Didion aphorism—“We tell ourselves stories in order to live”—has never felt more real to me than it did this year.
This is at the core of what I love most about the Mad Max franchise: each film manages to present the deeply traditional in a way that somehow feels daringly original.
Crimson Peak is a beautiful, aching meditation on grief, mourning, and the scars that our physical and psychic histories leave on us.
The reporters in Spotlight, finally seeing a grand old institution for the corrupt monster that it is, channel their newfound anger into shining a light in the darkness.
I’m rarely reminded of Godard when watching modern movies, but Saint Laurent, a biopic that reads more like a time-travel historical dialogue shot by 60s-era Godard, comes pretty close.
By the end of the season I’m feeling not quite blue, but maybe a little silver, and I want to nestle into remembering that there is a fine tomorrow on its way no matter how dark today is.
Our editorial staff and regular contributors on the movies they liked most in 2015.
