Film critics live in a wonderful bubble where you get to see most movies early and for free. If you’ve been doing it long enough, build a readership, and make the proper contacts, you can expand into festival coverage as well. Meanwhile, outside of the bubble, people pay high costs for tickets at the theater or scrounge around Netflix for what was released in past years. However you end up seeing movies is great, but I fully admit that film critics have a privileged position that should encourage us to sympathize with people who may not be aware of certain indies or didn’t want to chance their time and money on a particular film.
While the 15 films on this list may not be “Best Overall” of the year (although there could be some overlap), they’re certainly worthy of your attention, and we understand why they might have slipped past you. Add them to your queue, your watchlist, or whatever you need to do to make sure they don’t sneak past again.
Of Men and War
There are three cuts currently circulating of this wrenching, endlessly fascinating study of a group of combat veterans working through the emotional toll of warfare in a Napa Valley facility. If you have the chance, seek out the longest one possible, which clocks in at a little over two hours and offers a totally immersive psychological experience in watching these soldiers talk through memories of death, blood, and almost surreal tragedy with one another. Insights into how memories manifest as anger, paranoia, and calcified routine, and how medics are often the most severely damaged in wartime, are only the tip of the iceberg, and directorLaurent Béque-Renardshapes the material beautifully to give a full view at these men’s lives. Beyond the therapeutic sessions, the filmmaker films them with their families, and captures moments that give a unique sense of how such experiences affect parenting, spousal harmony, and general health. More than anything, Beque-Renard’s assemblage gives a profound argument for homes and support structures like this in greater number, an argument that so often is ignored by those who ensconce themselves in all things “patriotic.” -Chris Cabin
Z for Zachariah
If you need proof that Sundance buzz can evaporate as quickly as the snow in Park City on a warm day,Z for Zachariahmay have been felled by too much secrecy, which in turn created a level of anticipation an intimate character drama about grief and guilt never could have matched.
And that’s a shame because it’s no fault of the film itself, which takes place in a post-apocalypse unlike any you’ve ever seen. The story follows Ann (Margot Robbie), who lives in a peaceful valley that’s managed to remain untouched from a global-nuclear war, and yet when two men (Chiwetel EjiforandChris Pine) eventually cross into her sanctuary, the pain of the outside is inescapable.
Paired with his last feature,Complicance, directorCraig Zobelshows he’s a master of psychological and emotional tension emanating from our deepest fears and frailties. The deep melancholy and fear that runs throughZ for Zachariahalong with the great performances and direction make it a darling little gem that may not have caught heat at Sundance, but you should still seek it out. -Matt Goldberg
Queen of Earth
For those who have been following the career ofAlex Ross Perry,Queen of Earthboth offered an entirely new angle on his artistic perspective and temperament and reaffirmed his place in the upper echelons of modern American filmmaking. Following the wry, wonderfulListen Up Philip,Queen of Earthsummons notes of Polanski alongside the obvious Rohmer and Pialat influences in its tale of two best friend, played with alternating quiet and deafening ferocity byElisabeth MossandKatherine Waterston, who find their relationship rubbed raw during a short holiday in the countryside. Matters of class, sex, trust, and mental illness bleed through the initially docile environs and make for one of the most immediate and thrilling cinematic experiences of the year, shaped by stirring close-ups and long takes from DPSean Price Williams. That this would come from the man who is currently scripting the next Winnie the Pooh film makes its unrelenting psychological power all the more bewildering and brilliant. -Chris Cabin
While I’m always reluctant to make long-term wagers since no one will ever realistically check on the outcome, I’d wager thatSlow Westwill eventually grow into a cult western, and while the bigger films on its actors’ filmography might overshadow it,John Maclean’s weird little movie will still hold its own.
The wry picture follows a young Scotsman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who has come to America to be with his ladylove only to find a west that’s far removed from his idealized romanticism and far more in line with the cold pragmatism of his compatriot, Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender). However, Silas has a hidden agenda: collect the bounty on the Scotsman’s girlfriend.
These are the fun tweaks, twists, and turns Maclean brings to the genre, and the movie sports one of the best visual gags I’ve seen in years. Don’t wait twenty years to see this one. See it now and be one of the people who champion the movie. -Matt Goldberg
In Jackson Heights
In Jackson Heightsis the latest in a long line of masterworks from the high priest of cinema verite,Frederick Wiseman, and may be his best film of this decade thus far. Whereas his last two brilliant studies focused on distinct institutions, namely California’s Berkeley College and London’s National Gallery, his latest is more a view of a community, per the film’s title, and that the titular neighborhood is considered the most diverse area in America suggests just where Wiseman is going with all of his stunning and generous imagery. Wiseman focuses his attentions to a myriad of communal elements, from preparations for the upcoming gay pride parade and the memorial for a slain gay man to a number of houses of prayer and discussion. As fans of the documentarian will note, he does not speak a word, nor does he employ any kind of graphics or informational animations, throughout the film. Instead, he finds the thumping pulse of life in one of New York City’s most beloved neighborhoods through shrewd editing, compositional curiosity, and an inherent sense of where to be and what to shoot. Here, he invokes an American ideal, a few dozen blocks where our nation still feels very much like the melting pot it always intended to be. -Chris Cabin
Finders Keepers
Finders Keepersis one of the most thoughtful documentaries of the year, and I’m includingJoshua Oppenheimer’sThe Look of Silencein that estimation (which I almost included on this list, but I figured more people would be slightly more aware of that movie because it’s a follow-up to Oscar-nomineeThe Act of Killing). The quarrel between two men over a severed leg may not be on the level of genocide, but it’s also nowhere near as silly as the absurd pretext may lead some to believe.
The reasons whyJohn Woodwanted to hold on to the leg he lost in a plane crash and keep it in a smoker grill, or whyShannon Whisnantrefused to give that leg back when he won the smoker grill in an auction, seem inexplicable at first glance, but directorsBryan CarberryandJ. Clay Tweelfound the achingly human heart at this bizarre conflict. Symbols have meaning, and sometimes we don’t get to choose those symbols. Sometimes the symbol is a severed leg; that doesn’t make its meaning—orFinders Keepers—any less poignant. -Matt Goldberg
Christmas, Again
While many have been speaking aboutThe Night BeforeandKrampusas 2015’s most obvious candidates for new Christmas classics, my choice would beCharles Poekel’s tight, terrific micro-indie about a Brooklyn christmas tree vendor, played by the talentedKentucky Audler. The set-up is similar to the recentPaul Giamatti-Paul RuddgoingAll is Bright, but where that film went for forced idiosyncrasies and familiar storytelling cohesion,Christmas, Againgets at the fractured details of being alone in your lonely work during a time of sentimentalized familial unity. Audler’s unlikely salesman gets brief but telling glimpses into the lives of his customers, weathers a bitter boss and lazy new hires, and starts something like a romance with a drunk stranger. Poekel, working withQueen of EarthcinematographerSean Price Williams, finds a fleeting yet fulfilling intimacy in this brief flicker of city living and, in the course of the films 70-odd-minute runtime, finds an ideal symbol for the working life of a low-scale filmmaker. -Chris Cabin
Even if I didn’t love submarine movies, I would still recommendBlack Sea. It’s not going to go down as one of the all-time greats of the genre, but it’s also a film that was unceremoniously dumped in January, a cruel fate for a solid film about class and cultural warfare on an old Russian submarine.
The plot follows a group of old seaman who have been laid off but believe they have the coordinates to sunken Nazi gold. It’s a great B-movie plot that’s well delivered by a strong cast (I partly suspect the reason the film was ignored is because half the cast is Russian, and therefore unknown to American audiences), and it’s exceptionally timely.Black Seais a nice mix of throwback and current-day economic strife boiled together in a thrilling undersea survival flick. Put it on your radar. –Matt Goldberg
Or 2015’s other angry political allegory from Russia, after the lateAleksai Germain’s towering, grotesqueHard to Be a God.Yuri Bykov’s infuriating, unrelentingly cynical vision of Putin’s Russia takes a crumbling housing complex, filled with dope-heads, criminals, gamblers, the elderly, and the unemployed, as its central metaphor but the focus of the film is on the moral journeys taken by an engineering student, Dima (Artem Bystrov), and Nina (Nataliya Surkova), the mayor of the unnamed town where the low-income housing complex is placed. The film leans on a linear time frame, but in this case, the familiar unspooling of the narrative makes the unrelenting barrage of corruption that these two figures come into contact with all the increasingly dread-laden. No fair explaining how this all ends, but make no mistake, Bykov’s fury and anguish over the state of his homeland rings loud and clear without letting the ignorant, passive contingencies of the populace off the hook. -Chris Cabin
While We’re Young
This was my favorite film I saw at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, and while I didn’t adore it quite as much on a second viewing, it still absolutely nails the relationship not only between baby boomers and millennials, but also the re-appropriation of culture between the two. One of the main things that makesWhile We’re Youngso admirable is that it doesn’t carry a sense of bitterness. There’s no angry, elderly fist-shaking at these darn kids today with their YouTubes.
Instead, it looks at the relationship between a childless couple played byBen StillerandNaomi Wattsand a millennial couple played byAdam DriverandAmanda Seyfried, and satirizes the similarities and differences between them. By finding the universal—unhappiness with your partner—and the distinct like Driver’s need to record and choreograph everything,While We’re Youngmakes for a defining work on generational clash, and does so with a big smile on its face. –Matt Goldberg
