2015 in Film Part 3: The Best and Worst of Ourselves

And so we come to the main lists we all write up each and every year, the best and the worst of 2015.

Though I prefer to say my favorites of the year instead of best but before that list I have to talk about the worst of the year, the ones that took 2 hours out of life and 15-21 dollars of our money neither of which we will ever get back.

5. Aloha: Cameron Crowe made another film this year with Aloha a comedy drama with Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Bill Murray and Rachel McAdams now with all of that talent you'd think "hey this could be good" right?

WRONG! This movie was awful to sit through and once again the script is to blame as quite frankly it feels 2 separate movies (one being the space mission the other being the return to Hawaii and meeting your ex again) spliced together into one incoherent mess that was also full of bad stereotypes when it came to the characters who by the way were also boring and unlikeable to watch as well as wasting most of that talent.

And I wanted to like this one I really did but Crowe dropped the ball here and to think he once made Almost Famous which is a great film but this was just garbage and the gall of it to use the 1977 20th Century Fox logo just makes me even angrier frankly as all it makes me want to do is watch the original Star Wars again.

4. Pan: Ah Pan, it was based off the legend of Peter Pan and it starred Hugh Jackman who I will pretty much watch in anything he stars in and Rooney Mara who was fantastic as the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Boy oh boy was this just AWFUL to watch whether it was the dull as all hell visuals, the much too dark action scenes, the drab storyline and the blatant attempt by Warner Brothers to try and turn this into the next Harry Potter series (they even say in the fucking previews for this film "From the Studio that Brought you Harry Potter."

Seriously guys don't say that as your just asking for trouble as well as making film fans feel very uncomfortable and this could've been bright and fun and exciting to watch much like the Walt Disney Peter Pan movie is but here nothing works and I didn't care about any of it and you wasted Hugh who I love, how the fuck could you do this then again it's the same producer as that Green Lantern film even its own star wants to forget about making in 2011 and like that film this one has no idea who its even for so it just tries to throw every dart it has on the table and they all missed.

3. Man Up: This one starred Simon Pegg as a man looking for love and Lake Bell as a single girl not wanting to but meeting Pegg's character by accident.

Of all the entries here this one hurts the most to talk about as I love Mr Pegg from the bottom of my heart (he, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright have earnt a permanent gold pass from me in terms of their films and me seeing them) but instead this just has Pegg and Bell who do have genuine chemistry fight and argue and bicker in every scene they share plus there was not one time (not one) where I felt like genuinely laughing like I do when I watch the Castle or the Dish.

Plus the character Rory Kinnear played just insulted me whenever he was on screen in the way he would treat Bell's character, I mean how the fuck do we even try to change the way men treat women when our pop culture space does this to us, hopefully Mr Pegg can return to form soon as he deeply deeply failed me here.

2. Chappie: Chappie looked promising, a return to the tone of District 9, a more family friendly type of film in the style of Short Circuit and Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver playing the villains.

Boy was I wrong as this was just another example of Neill Blomkamp pissing away what promise he held with District 9 (he also did it with 2013's pathetic Elysium with Matt Damon) as the main leads were hardened drug criminals that I didn't care about, didn't like as characters and just wanted to die a horrible horrible death in the first 10 minutes plus they weren't even proper fucking actors just some bloody hip hop group Blomkamp hired because he liked them, for fucks sake.

And as for Jackman well he just phones it in here and Weaver is only here so Neill can ask her to play Ripley again in his planned Alien sequel which Fox seems to have scrapped (and rightly so I might add) and the story is just a retread of Paul Verhoeven's classic Robocop from 1987.

But in all seriousness how does this happen how do filmmakers who show great promise out of the gate stumble and lose their way like this and not just Blomkamp or Crowe or indeed Michael Mann with his Blackhat movie earlier this year which was also crap but not crap enough to make this list does anyone honestly think or feel that filmgoers like me enjoy saying that cause I sure as hell fucking don't.

But before I get to number 1 all 4 of these have a common flaw that cripples all of them and that is who were these movies for, what story or vision did you have in mind when you decided to make these movies and how could you take people I personally love watching especially 2 of them and just serve them up this utter garbage, we have to do better than this for we deserve so much better than this.

But those are nothing compared to my number 1 worst film of 2015:

1. 50 Shades of Grey: Remember this movie boys and girls, based off of EL James's bestselling novel and starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan plus it was written and directed by women.

And yet this was the most uncomfortable I've been sitting in a cinema since watching Kick Ass 2 back in 2013 primarily because the sight of Dakota Johnson being tied up naked and beaten by this psychopath in Christian Grey even if she consented to it or not just left me feeling sick and very nearly breaking my 1 rule of cinema going and that is getting up and walking out.

And look all of the traditional negatives about this movie aside (the pathetic dialogue, the zero chemistry and the boring storyline we've seen before back in the 80s and 90s with films like 9 and a half Weeks) the main reason this makes me so angry is because of the global conversation we've been having this year about the treatment of women in both the movies as well as the industry they work in.

Not to mention the discussion about broader Violence Against Women at the hands of the Men (more like Mutts if you ask me) who swore to love and cherish them forever only to become obsessive and paranoid because heaven forfend they might actually have some life of their own outside of their Man/Mutt.

And this is where our pop culture space I feel must take some sort of responsibility when it comes to changing to conversation about the treatment of women by men in our society today as this sort of Smeg where the women fall for the big strong man with the big muscles and the chain around their necks or the handsome charismatic man who looks good in a suit and both probably know how to rock the casbah in the Bedroom and could also have lots of money and turn on the charm and tell them want they want to hear has to stop.

And you only have to look at the success of the Hunger Games series to see that it can be done and done well but given the fanboy age in which we live I fear that it could be a fair while before we see any meaningful change on this front but I hope sincerely that I am wrong and that change positive change does come much sooner.

But those are the worst of the year out of the way let's get onto my favorites of the year.

4. Minions: Only 4 selections here but these were the 4 I genuinely loved watching at the cinema and that I went to see again and that I wanted to own on Blu-Ray and watch over and over and here in 4th place is Minions.

I know this film got sniffy treatment by critics for the most part but I don't care as I had so much fun watching this film and it did give me what I wanted from a Minions movie which is to be bright and fun and full of good laughs plus it has Bob who was just adorable to watch.

But on top of that the film along with another pick tapped into my love of a good villain and Scarlet Overkill was exactly that she wasn't Gru in a dress that I felt she might be from the ads she was a proper villain and the way her and Kevin the main Minion were handled in the story really impressed me plus there are great sight gags and 60s songs and references plus the Minionese which always impresses me when I hear it given its born from our own languages here on Earth.

3. Dragon Ball Z Resurrection F: A very surprising choice here and one I definitely didn't think would be here before I saw it.

Seeing this movie in the cinema was an incredible experience, a proper big screen, packed full of fans and everyone having a good time as Freeza came back from the dead for Revenge against Goku and watching those 2 go at it again like in the TV series was far more entertaining to me than the Superhero offerings served up this year.

As well as the great action the film is also a nice tribute to Freeza himself (Chris Ayres is far superior here to Linda Young who did the role originally in 1999/2000) and it has some really good comedy moments, there are some key character omissions that bother me and the ending is horrible when it could've been strong but still I enjoyed the hell out of this film.

2. Kingsman the Secret Service: Coming in at number 2 is still my favorite action film of the year despite many challengers that came forth and tried their best to run the gauntlet.

The reason I feel this way is that it has one of my favorite filmmakers working today Matthew Vaughn in his stride crafting not only a loving tribute to the Spy genre but also bringing his own hard edged style to the proceedings and I just ate it all up and Colin Firth makes for a very cool action hero, gentlemanly, polite but also deadly with his assortment of Gadgets.

But this movie also had Michael Caine, Sam Jackson (who played a terrific villain), Mark Strong and even MARK. HAMILL. that's right Luke Skywalker himself plus a promising young actor in Taron Egerton who you will see much more of soon.

But now the time has come to reveal my number 1 film of 2015:

A Most Violent Year: Every film fan has that feeling they have, the feeling that they know they are watching what could be their favorite film of that particular year.

And this movie gave me that feeling for me, it was impeccably put together in terms of its look, it had fantastic performances across the board and it really reminded me of the kind of films that came from the early 80s which is an era that I deeply love movie wise.

And so that was my look back at movies in 2015, hard to believe it's come and gone so quickly and yet we are almost at 2016 where we'll do all of this all over again at the end of that year but.

But in 2016 it will be here at long LONG LAST!!!!!!! I am of course referring to Bryan Singer's X-Men Apocalypse which from everything I have seen so far looks amazing and another home run for him in the series, in AFL terms he has certainly pulled off the fabled 3peat that Hawthorn pulled off but whether he can match Collingwood's long standing record of 4 in a row that remains to be seen but one thing's for sure I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS MOVIE AHHHHH!!!!!!!