Countdown to the Oscars: Best Editing

The Big Short is among the frontrunners in a number of categories this year, including Best Editing.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day this month for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories.

Best Editing

The nominees are:

The Big Short

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Spotlight

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The four films with the best chance of winning Best Picture are matched against each other in only three categories – Best Picture, Best Director, and here in Best Editing. It is a fitting trio of nominations for these films. If these are the four best films of the year, it stands to reason they are also the best directed, but once the director’s job on set is finished, the editor’s work begins. None of the hard work of getting the film in the can means anything if the editor cannot piece it together into a coherent whole.

The Academy of course is well aware of this, which is why Best Editing is so strongly tied to Best Picture at the Oscars. Since 2000, seven of 15 Best Editing winners have won Best Picture, while 12 of 15 have been nominated in the top category. Even more striking, since the Best Picture lineup expanded beyond five nominees in 2009, only two films have been nominated for Best Editing without a corresponding Best Picture nod – surprise Best Editing winner The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in 2011 and Star Wars: The Force Awakens this year.

All of this means we are probably looking at a four-way race for the award this year with Star Wars: The Force Awakens on the outside looking in. One thing that has been consistent through the years is that voters tend to like their editing big and flashy. They want to be able to see the cuts working on screen, which gives a leg up to the first nominee below.

Mad Max: Fury Road – Starting in the 1980s, action pictures have actually done quite well in this category, even without earning a larger stamp of approval from the Academy. The editors have seen fit to nominate films such as Aliens, Top Gun, Die Hard, Speed, and eventual winner The Bourne Ultimatum. Not one of those was nominated for Best Picture. Well, Mad Max: Fury Road has gotten a tremendous stamp of approval from the Academy, and its editing is the boldest of the bunch.

First-time nominee Margaret Sixel is tasked with assembling a linear narrative from essentially a series of action set pieces. She does so and more as the film’s rambunctious style and propulsive energy owes a great deal to Sixel’s machine-gun editing. It is no easy task to begin with, but keeping in mind this is just Sixel’s third feature film, it seems utterly impossible. All of those films have been for her husband, director George Miller, and based on the work they have produced together, it might be fair to say they bring out the best in each other.

The Big Short – Director Adam McKay’s Wall Street satire jumps around constantly from character to character and storyline to storyline with a whole bunch of stops in between. While the plot is straightforward, McKay turns the film into a wandering exploration of modern greed in all its terrible incarnations. The only reason the whole enterprise does not spin out of control is because editor Hank Corwin is perfectly tuned into the machine. He knows what every part does and where it fits, and as a result, what appears clunky and cumbersome on the page runs smoothly and effortlessly on screen.

Corwin is another first-time nominee, but he started his career as an assistant editor on Oliver Stone’s JFK, which won Best Editing. More than two decades later, Corwin is still wrangling wide-ranging tales of governmental conspiracy, except this time, instead of the assassination of a president, it is the assassination of the world’s economy. If The Big Short works for you, it is because Corwin was able to tie all the loose threads McKay was intent on following into one, tightly tied knot.

Spotlight – This is the subtlest work in the lineup and, therefore, a surprising and welcome nominee. Spotlight is a film about people doing work, slowly and laboriously. The characters dig and prod and dig some more. Little by little, they uncover the depths of corruption in the Catholic Church. There is no big “gotcha” moment, no climactic chase sequence, or anything like that. Director Tom McCarthy’s film relies on the cumulative effect of the reporters’ investigation for its power, and editor Tom McArdle displays tremendous patience and skill in allowing all the elements of the story to build on top of each other until the result is simply overwhelming.

McArdle, who has been at this game for nearly 25 years, has mostly spent his career in independent film, including editing all five features directed by McCarthy. Spotlight, McArdle’s first Oscar nomination, is of a piece with the rest of his career and follows the rhythms of an indie drama much more closely than the big-budget legal thrillers with which it also shares DNA. McArdle never forces false drama or artificially raises the stakes. The story is important enough, and McArdle is content to ensure it plays out the best way it can.

The Revenant – Alejandro González Iñárritu’s slow-burn western plays like a cinematic riff on the quiet-loud-quiet-loud dynamic trumpeted by musicians such as Kurt Cobain. It alternates seamlessly between long stretches of meditative silence and wild bursts of extreme violence. The action only works because of the contrast, the moments when the world seems to stop so the rest of us can listen. Then, when we are deepest in our reveries, everything comes crashing down around us and snaps us back to the present.

Stephen Mirrione is the only previous nominee on this list. He won an Oscar for Traffic and earned another nomination for Iñárritu’s 2006 drama Babel. Mirrione’s career highlights, which also include the Ocean’s 11 trilogy, Good Night and Good Luck, and Birdman, mostly revolve around large ensembles and sprawling stories, and he has shown a tremendous facility for balancing disparate elements within a narrative. Here, he adapts his style to help tell the perilous journey of one man, and rather than be constrained by the narrower focus, Mirrione seems freed by the opportunity to step outside the narrative and explore the thematic wilderness of The Revenant.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens – This is just the second Star Wars film to be nominated for Best Editing after the original film in 1977, which ultimately took home the award. The difference is that original film was also nominated for Best Picture, while Star Wars: The Force Awakens could not find any traction outside the crafts categories. Still, you will not find many ready to argue against its inclusion here. It is a critically acclaimed adventure spectacle that benefits greatly from fight scenes and action sequences that audiences can actually comprehend in real time, unlike so much other action fare.

Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey have edited each of director JJ Abrams’ feature films, including Mission Impossible III and the two most recent Star Trek pictures. Their collaboration on those Star Trek films seems to have come in particularly handy as the team does an excellent job of balancing the desire to pay homage to a beloved property while also establishing a unique identity. Brandon and Markey never allow the tributes and nods to the original trilogy (and the prequel trilogy, too, I guess) interrupt the flow of the story or distract from the clockwork pacing of the plot.

The final analysis

The American Cinema Editors handed out top awards last week to Mad Max: Fury Road for dramatic feature and The Big Short for comedy, making those the two frontrunners here. However, The Big Short is probably little more than a red herring as this seems to belong to Mad Max: Fury Road through and through. It is big, flashy, and popular, a combination that almost always spells victory, regardless of other factors.

Will win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Should win: Mad Max: Fury Road

Should have been here: 99 Homes

Tomorrow: Best Production Design

Year in Review: Top 10 Films of 2015

The best films tell us something about ourselves, something about what it means to be human. Sometimes, the picture is not so rosy, but look out the window. It is not so rosy out there either. The world is perched on a ledge, and it could tip at any moment. I do not mean to sound like a harbinger of doom here in my little movie column, but when we go to the cinema, it is because of what is going on in the world. Either we are seeking an escape from the darkness or a reflection of it.

Well, I have never been one for escape, so each of my top 10 films of the year is representative of the society we have built and the culture we have bred. If it sounds like a dour evening of programming, it is in some ways, but in these depictions of a world askew, I find hope. These are bleak films, yes, but this is because they dare to confront us with human truths, and if we are to find a way forward or some kind of light at the end of the tunnel, we must first open ourselves to honesty.

In one way or another, every film below is about people – or a dog or a machine – trying to take the next step toward a deeper understanding of themselves and the world they inhabit. Their circumstances may be dire, and they may not always succeed in their quests, but the search for truth and meaning is always worthwhile. These are the top 10 films of the year because for whatever else they are, they are celebrations of the search for truth.

Before we get to the list, here are five other fantastic films from 2015 that exemplify the perilous march forward, either for individuals or whole movements: The Second Mother; Everest; Room; Suffragette; Macbeth.

The Top 10 of 2015:

10. The Kindergarten Teacher, directed by Nadav Lapid

For Nira (Sarit Larry), the kindergarten teacher at the center of the story, beauty comes with a responsibility. If one is capable of recognizing something beautiful, it is incumbent upon that person to share it with the world. Nira would love to be that beautiful thing, but she knows she is not. Instead, she finds it in the poetry of a 5-year-old boy, Yoav (Avi Shnaidman). Once she finds it, she can think of nothing else but sharing this boy’s poems with an ungrateful world.

Lapid has called Nira a warrior for poetry, a warrior for beauty in a world that has neither the time nor inclination to enjoy it. Lapid creates a universe – not unlike our own – in which people would rather watch inane television shows, talk about their sex lives, and drink away their worries. That Yoav is destined to be unappreciated causes great pain in Nira, and she acts out. Perhaps her decisions are irrational or extreme but only in the world in which she and Yoav live. In a better place, where beauty and poetry meant more, Nira would be hailed as a righteous hero, and it is that world for which she fights.

9. Ex Machina, directed by Alex Garland

All of Ex Machina is a test. We learn this almost from the beginning. Nathan (Oscar Isaac) brings Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) to his secluded compound to test a new artificial intelligence program, Ava (Alicia Vikander). The goal is to see whether this machine can imitate humanity so well as to be indistinguishable from it. The obvious ethical question is if Ava is so human she fools Caleb, does she deserve to be treated like a human, or is she still simply a robot? Ava asks what will happen if she fails the test, and she is told her memory will be wiped and she will be broken down. At this point, Ava demonstrates the most human thing of all – the will to survive.

Isaac, Gleeson, and especially Vikander are tremendous as three characters who each represent a different path for humanity. Nathan is an innovator, but he is cruel. Caleb is kind but weak. Ava is strong but alien. Garland suggests only one of these will inherit the earth, and he forces the audience to choose an allegiance. We can create the future, fight the future, or be the future, but if we choose wrong, then we have failed the test, and the repercussions will be severe.

8. White God, directed by Kornél Mundruczó

Mundruczó set out to make an angry, unflinching film about his native Hungary and the growing inequities that have torn the country apart from within. He certainly has made that, but he has also made a beautiful fable about a girl and her dog. That two such disparate stories could be told not only parallel to each other but in concert is a testament to the remarkable filmmaking and storytelling on display in White God.

After Lili’s (Zsófia Psotta) father forces her to abandon her beloved dog, Hagen, the film charts the course of these two outsiders as they try to make their way back to each other. Both are abused and degraded by systems set up to keep them on the outside looking in. The wonder of Mundruczó’s story is that he makes Hagen the hero. Hagen is the one who finally cannot take it anymore and rises up with an army of the oppressed.

That they are dogs is what makes the story a fable, but in that fable, Mundruczó uncovers undeniable truths about the despicable ways we treat each other. He argues that if we cannot find some empathy inside ourselves, we are doomed to be destroyed, not by some outside force but from within.

7. 99 Homes, directed by Ramin Bahrani

Adam McKay’s The Big Short has received much acclaim and many accolades this year for the way it tackles the financial crisis and housing market meltdown of the mid-2000s. That film is a big, flashy, star-studded, smart-ass look at the world of Wall Street, but for me, it does not compare to 99 Homes. Bahrani’s film chooses substance over style and has the guts to examine the human toll of the crisis. While The Big Short laughs and jokes its way around big numbers and big ideas, 99 Homes goes for the throat, takes hold, and never lets go.

There are no winners in Bahrani’s film, only those who keep their dignity intact and their souls unstained – and there are not many of those either. Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) is a good man who wants to do right by his family, but the only way he can do that is to give up a piece of himself. Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) is a bad man who also wants to do right by his family. He has already given up every part of himself to the system he serves and spends his days collecting the broken pieces of others. Bahrani creates a dichotomy in which we can either give in and be destroyed or fight back and be crushed anyway. 99 Homes may be a dark statement on our time, but it never feels anything but true.

6. The Revenant, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

It would be hard right now to find another auteur operating at the consistently high level at which Iñárritu works. The Mexican-born director has made just six feature films, and each is a masterwork. In 2014, he gave us the acid-tongued satire Birdman, which amazed with its vibrancy and technical wizardry. In 2015, he returned with The Revenant, a stone-faced adventure epic set in the Old American West. The technical mastery remains – in particular, director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki’s lush cinematography – but this time, Iñárritu uses his storytelling gifts to far more humanist ends.

The story of Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) dragging his broken body hundreds of miles through the snow to find those who left him for dead could easily be positioned as a revenge saga. In fact, the marketing would have you believe that is all it is. It is not. The Revenant is about grief and guilt, survival and strength, nature and progress. Against the vast expanse of frozen tundra, Glass is barely a speck on the horizon, and his personal tragedy is just one of many tragedies suffered every day on this land. As he wills himself back to civilization, he discovers his true home and his duty to the universe.

 

5. Mustang, directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven

 Complacency is a byproduct of a successful society. Certainly in the U.S., most of us have the luxury of being insulated from the truly terrible acts committed in this world. Even if we are not satisfied with what we have, we have the choice to go out and seek something more or something else, which is its own kind of privilege. Mustang is an important film because it has the ability to shock us out of complacency by showing us a world in which people do not have a choice.

Five sisters in a small Turkish village are held hostage by their family and forced to participate in a culture that has no place in a modern society. They fight back against their oppressors, but an entire system has been set in place to hold them down. However, Ergüven wisely does not fill her film with sorrow but rather rage. Mustang is an angry cry against inequality and an urgent call for justice. The subjugation and degradation of women is not a cultural issue but a human rights issue about which none of us can afford to be complacent.

4. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, directed by Roy Andersson

Every scene in A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is shrouded in death, but this is not a film about dying. It is a film about being alive. There is no more precious gift than life, and if it sometimes takes a morbid reminder of this fact, then so be it. Life is not always pretty or fun or sweet, as we are all well aware, but you know what – it sure as hell can be all those things, and when it is, the struggle and the pain seem worth it.

There is no story to speak of in Andersson’s film, just a few connecting threads here and there, loose tendrils of lives intersecting almost imperceptibly. In fact, the frame is filled constantly with life. People go about their business in the foreground, and the rest of the world goes about its day in the background. It quickly becomes clear that neither is more important as the next scene, or three scenes later, could focus on one of those background players, or we may never see any of these people again. Few films capture the simultaneous majesty and randomness of life as well as this, and as the film wanders, it pulls viewers along, making us a part of its wondrous tapestry.

3. 45 Years, directed by Andrew Haigh

Put next to films about the financial crisis, the systemic abuse of women, and rampant inequality, the small-scale marriage drama 45 Years may seem to involve fairly low stakes, but for its characters, the stakes could not be higher. Haigh’s film is a deeply penetrating look at the damage we inflict on each other when we refuse to be honest with ourselves. It concerns the way old wounds do not heal when left unattended but rot and infect everything they touch. The tragedy is that it could all be easily avoided if we were stronger, more open people. Instead, we become guarded, thinking we are protecting ourselves, but we are just causing further pain.

Kate and Geoff (Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, who give two of the best performances of the year) have been married 45 years and still seem deeply in love, but when news from the past shakes the foundation of their bond, they realize the fragile nature of everything they have built. Bit by bit, Kate’s world crumbles around her, and all she can do is sift through the rubble, searching for a reason to carry on with life the way it was before. She wants to bury the past, discard the truth, and ignore all those old wounds, but she cannot. Everything is in the open now, and she must confront her new reality or be destroyed by it.

2. Spotlight, directed by Tom McCarthy

Spotlight is another film about people who would rather ignore the truth, and the film’s heroes are the Boston Globe reporters who refuse to remain silent. They uncover decades of abuse hidden by the Catholic Church, and everyone else would prefer to pretend the problem does not exist or will go away on its own. The Spotlight team, however, cannot abide the lie and goes to great lengths to ensure the truth will see the light of day.

McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer’s screenplay works as both a thrilling legal procedural and a moralistic drama. The film understands the mechanics of journalism and the lives of reporters like few others before it, but it never gets so bogged down in minutiae that it fails to tell a human story. The victims are the heart of Spotlight, and in his construction of the film, McCarthy guarantees we never forget the real people who suffered because of a corrupt system.

Finally, what Spotlight reminds us is that this work is never done. The Catholic Church still harbors and hides pedophile priests in cities around the world and places not fortunate enough to have teams of reporters, lawyers, and investigators dedicated to the truth. In the end, justice is our responsibility, and we must seek it everywhere, not just from the Catholic Church but from governments and Wall Street and schools and big business. Spotlight is a great film because it shows us how good people can change the world one truth at a time.

1. The Tribe, directed by Miroslav Slaboshpitsky

For sheer audacity, there is no film that could match Slaboshpitsky’s tale of humiliation, rage, and defiance set at a Ukrainian boarding school for the deaf. Apart from being told entirely in Ukrainian sign language, the film is shot in a remarkable series of long takes that makes the audience complicit in the abuses and atrocities being perpetrated in this insular society. After a while, the silence becomes so unsettling it is almost unbearable. We want to scream for these kids and the suffering they endure, but we cannot. We remain quiet, passive observers, and in so being, it feels like we are allowing this to happen.

Sergei (Grigoriy Fesenko) is a new student at the school and quickly becomes embedded in the school’s ruling gang. The gang controls the student body through intimidation, fear, and brute strength. They sell drugs, deal in other contraband, and operate a prostitution ring. Anya (Yana Novikova) is one of the prostitutes. Sergei falls in love with her and wants to escape this life together, but she rebuffs him. This is the life she knows, and she refuses to give it up. From there, the story spirals into hate, madness, and violence so rapidly the audience is left gasping for air.

There was no other film this year that offered the mix of sensory overload and emotional devastation in The Tribe. It is not a fun night at the movies, but it is something more. Cinema is a beautiful medium because it inserts viewers directly into the lives of others. If those lives are not always pretty or happy, so much the better. In life, we shut ourselves off from the pain of other people, either because we wish not to feel pain or because we do not want to be reminded of our own. The Tribe is a daring, confrontational rebuke of that numbness. We want to hide, but The Tribe forces us to open ourselves to feeling.

Thank you for being a part of Last Cinema Standing's 2015 Year in Review. Be sure to check out the other installments in the series by clicking any of the links below, and keep coming back for continued coverage of this year's Oscar race and the year in cinema that will be 2016.

Top 10 Performances of 2015

Top 10 Quotes of 2015

Best & Worst of 2015

Year in Review: Top 10 Quotes of 2015

A great film quote for me is one that contains within it the entire meaning of a film. It is a tremendous feat for a writer, director, actor, or producer to come up with a line that sums up the disparate thematic elements of a complex work of art. In fact, it is nearly impossible. That is what makes the following 10 lines from some of the year’s best films so remarkable. Almost effortlessly, they tell us everything we need to know about the characters, their circumstances, and the meaning of all they are experiencing.

10. “Don’t get emotional about real estate” from 99 Homes, written by Ramin Bahrani

99 Homes is a Faustian story about a good man, Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield), who makes a deal with the devil, Rick Carver (Michael Shannon). Nash makes this deal – he will help Carver remove people who are delinquent on their mortgages from their homes – to save his own family’s home. His actions are not necessarily noble or heroic, but he does what he thinks he needs to do to keep a roof over his son and his mother’s heads.

Throughout the film, in his more private, unguarded moments, Carver tells Nash not to get emotional about real estate. It sounds like good advice, but the devil of course is a smooth talker. Nash’s downfall certainly is precipitated by his getting emotional about real estate, but he is rightly emotional. Those emotions are what make him human, what make him flawed, and they allow him to hold on to the little part of his soul the devil has not gotten his hands on yet.

9. “That’s not a reason” from Everest, written by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy

Early in the expedition, Jon Krakauer (Michael Kelly), who went on to write Into Thin Air about his experiences on Mount Everest, asks the group of climbers he has joined the obvious question: Why do this? The climbers look at each other, smile, and blithely reply in unison, “Because it’s there!” It is an oft-repeated line about the mountain that daredevils use to defend the indefensible, and as I pointed out in my review of the film, the man who originally spoke those words died on Everest.

So, Krakauer pushes further, saying, “That’s not a reason,” and he is absolutely right. “Because it’s there” is meant to project bravado and confidence. Krakauer’s line cuts right through that. No one needs to climb this mountain, and everyone on this journey will learn that along the way, but Krakauer saw it from the beginning.

8. “We make up half the human race. You can’t stop us all” from Suffragette, written by Abi Morgan

Director Sarah Gavron’s tremendous rallying cry for equality Suffragette has been unfairly forgotten as the year has worn on. It created little positive buzz upon its release, died a quick death at the box office, and has been passed over pretty much universally throughout awards season. It deserved a much better fate. The story of the British suffragette movement of the early 20th century is tragic and sadly still relevant. This is the kind of history that should be taught in schools, but it will not be because it is too dark, too messy, and too real.

Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) is new to the movement at the start of the film, but it does not take her long to become convinced of its inherent rightness. There is no justice in a world where women cannot vote, and there is no democracy either. Any government in which women have no say is fraudulent, and the movement recognizes this. Watts says this line to the police inspector (Brendan Gleeson) tasked with destroying the movement, and while he may be able to arrest her and silence her comrades, she is right. He cannot stop half the world from taking what it has earned.

7. “It’s getting harder to walk up that hill. What does that mean?” from Creed, written by Ryan Coogler and Aaron Covington

Sylvester Stallone in Creed.

Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is a childhood hero to generations of movie fans. Think of it this way: Children when the first Rocky movie came out in 1976 are reasonably old enough now to have grandchildren to share the series with, but those kids will likely look up to Adonis Johnson, née Creed (Michael B. Jordan). He represents new blood and new life for the series, which is why this film is named for him and not Rocky.

Rocky remains, though. Each day, he trudges up the hill at the cemetery to visit Adrian and Paulie, and each day, it gets a little harder. This is life. He is getting older. So are we. It can be a shock to see our heroes age this way onscreen because it usually does not happen like this. More often, they come back one time too many, trying to recapture a spirit that never left in the first place and doing more harm than good to the legacy. But in Creed, Coogler, Covington, and Stallone have created a graceful portrait of a legend who is long past his prime but can still make it up that hill.

6. “Life teaches you really how to live it if you can live long enough” from Amy, directed by Asif Kapadia

Kapadia’s powerful Amy Winehouse documentary is a tale of manipulation, media hysteria, and self-destruction. It is not an easy watch, but it is an important film, depicting the downfall of a talented performer and entertainer who was devoured by an industry that took what it could from her and left no more than a shell. While it is not traditionally “written,” Kapadia and editor Chris King create the narrative by assembling the right footage and the right interviews and deploying them at the exact right time.

No moment is better chosen than that of Tony Bennet, one of Winehouse’s heroes, reflecting on the singer’s death. Bennett is obviously an old pro at this game. He has been around a long time and seen many triumphs and tragedies. He has grown both older and wiser in that time. His quote, which comes near the end of the film, is a mournful observation about youth and the irony of a life that often does not make sense until you can look back and make sense of it.

5. “No one explains it. You’re born knowing what you can and cannot do” from The Second Mother, written by Anna Muylaert

We all feel the generation gap. It is that moment when you realize you no longer have much in common with people younger than you – or that general feeling that you have nothing in common with people older. In The Second Mother, Val (Regina Casé) is brought to this realization by the arrival of her estranged teenage daughter, Jéssica (Camila Márdila). Val is a live-in housekeeper and nanny for a wealthy Brazilian family. Her life is governed by rules of conduct and propriety, which she believes are essential for keeping everything in its right place. Jéssica blows all of this up.

Jéssica did not grow up this way. If she is invited to swim in the pool or eat some ice cream, propriety be damned, she is going to do as she pleases. To Val, her daughter is taking liberties to which she is not entitled. Jéssica asks who invented all these rules, who taught them, and Val tells her no one should have to teach her. She should just know. It is a crushing reminder there are people in this life who believe they are lesser than others and believe they deserve less. The truth is these things are taught, and Jéssica was simply lucky enough not to grow up around the mother who would have taught her.

4. “If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a village to abuse one” from Spotlight, written by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer

Everyone knew, and no one did anything. That is the core of McCarthy and Singer’s exploration of the journalistic investigation that uncovered the decades of abuse perpetrated by pedophile priests in the Catholic Church. Silence was the rule, not the exception, and no one wanted to believe the organization in which so many had invested their faith – and in a very real way, their souls – could be so irreparably corrupt. But, it was, and the evidence was always there. Someone just needed to look.

The beauty of Spotlight is in the way the reporters slowly come around to the idea that this problem is not just one or two bad priests, but it is systemic. The church itself is rotten, and it has defiled everything it has touched. Every single person involved is culpable in some way, either by direct action or inaction. The more details that come out, the more sickening it all becomes, and the more you just want to take a torch and burn this whole village to the ground.

3. “I want to help you. I’m just trying to figure out how” from Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, written by David Zellner and Nathan Zellner

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is a tragedy that plays like farce. It is black comedy borne of depression and alienation. Kumiko (Rinko Kikuchi) is a stranger in a strange land on a quixotic quest to find a mythical treasure she believes is implied by the Coen Brothers’ Fargo. In her journey, she meets friendly people who simply want what is best for her, but there is a language barrier and a reality barrier that no one can break through.

She is not solely in search of buried treasure but of something she can use to justify her whole existence. Her life in Japan has been one degradation after another, so she comes to America to seek something outside herself to define who she is and who she could be. The policeman (David Zellner) who says this to her genuinely wants to help, but there is nothing he can offer that will change the reality of this woman’s life. His kindness may be the most she has ever known, but in the end, it means nothing.

2. “This is the story you get” from Room, written by Emma Donoghue

Joy (Brie Larson) has invented the entire world for her son, Jack (Jacob Tremblay). Their captor and abuser has kept them locked in a shed for seven years of Joy’s life and all of Jack’s, but within that shed, Joy has given Jack the universe. It is not the real universe, though, but a fabrication intended to help him cope with their circumstances. When those circumstances finally become unbearable, she must tell him the truth so they can break out together.

Everything up to this point has been a story to help Jack understand his life, and the truth, in all its horror, is a story he rejects. He says he does not want to hear this story, but Joy tells him this is the story he gets. This is true for him, but it may be even truer for her. No one would have chosen the life she has had, but she did not get to choose. Joy gets this one story of her life, and Room is about choosing not to focus on what has already happened but on the chapters still to come.

1. “It’s so beautiful but horribly sad, too” from A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, written by Roy Andersson

Nils Westblom and Holger Andersson in A Pigeon Sat on a Branch.

Jonathan (Holger Andersson) and Sam (Nils Westblom) drift through their lives. There is nothing particularly remarkable about these traveling novelty salesmen, except that they are alive, as are all the other characters in this film, as are we. No one fully appreciates this in the moment, and it would be impossible to do so, but for every added second we find value in, life becomes increasingly precious.

Exemplified by Jonathan and Sam, there is even value in drifting. In A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, their drifting becomes our window into the worlds of countless people whose lives are just as precious to them as ours are to us. It is a reminder that every individual on this planet matters, even if our stories will go on without them and theirs without us. Jonathan comes to this conclusion while listening to a song that reminds him of his childhood, and though he says this line about that song, he could just as well be speaking about the whole of the human experience, so beautiful but horribly sad, too.

Check back tomorrow as Last Cinema Standing takes a look at the Top 10 Performances of 2015, and check back each day this week for continued Year in Review coverage.

Grab your pencils: Oscar voters receive ballots

Ballots went out today to the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the 2015 Oscar nominations. It is an occasion we here at Last Cinema Standing like to take to remind voters of less heralded work from throughout the year that deserves attention. Now, I have done this a couple times, and not once has anything I mentioned been nominated, so I won’t sit here and pretend like I have that kind of influence. However, you’re here, and you’re reading this, so consider this list a primer for films you should check out and work on those films that should be recognized and applauded.

Here are five Oscar-worthy feats the Academy should consider this year:

Best Supporting Actress: Günes Sensoy for Mustang

Gunes Sensoy in Mustang.

Writer-director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang is a true ensemble piece about five rebellious sisters growing up in an oppressively traditional family. Sensoy plays Lale, the youngest of these sisters. Due to her age, she is somewhat shielded from the worst of the treatments doled out to her sisters, namely their forced arranged marriages. Much of what the audience sees is shown from Lale’s point of view as the sisters are degraded, punished, and abused in the service of an outdated cultural code.

Sensoy has the difficult task of communicating both the girls’ flagging will and their steadfast resolve. As her sisters are systematically broken down by circumstance, Lale remains on the front line, fighting the battle against a structure she does not support and had no say in building. A young actress in her first and only role to date, Sensoy carries much of the film and its thematic resonance on her shoulders, and rather than buckle under the weight, she soars.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Andrew Haigh for 45 Years

Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay in 45 Years.

I have not written about it yet, but in the coming days, I will be writing a lot about Haigh’s brilliant marital drama 45 Years. It is a subtle, masterful bit of storytelling that takes the time to build its characters and their world brick by brick, laying a foundation so solid that when it is overturned, the audience is left in as desperate a state as the characters.

Haigh, who also directed the film, adapted the script from award-winning author David Constantine’s short story “In Another Country.” Turning a relatively brief story into a feature-length film is no easy feat, but Haigh adds layers of depth and detail to the writing and incorporates that work into the film in a way that would translate to no other medium. The performances in 45 Years are almost effortlessly breathtaking, but they are rooted in a screenplay that puts an emphasis on creating strong, nuanced characters.

Best Editing: Ramin Bahrani for 99 Homes

Andrew Garfield in 99 Homes.

Writer-director Bahrani has edited most of his own feature films, and he has always brought to the process the same distinct feel for the rhythms of daily life that is evident on the page and behind the camera. While none of his films would likely be considered a thriller, they all share with the genre a certain pacing and sense of ever-mounting tension. 99 Homes might be the closest to a traditional thriller Bahrani has yet come, and he absolutely nails the flow and energy of the film.

There is a relentlessness in the main character’s march toward self-destruction that Bahrani perfectly mirrors in his cutting. There are flashy moments throughout, and the climax is a white-knuckle spectacle that owes much of its success to the way it is constructed, but Bahrani is also subtle. For every montage or quick cut, there is a tender, quiet moment in which Bahrani the editor steps away to allow Bahrani the director to guide the emotion of a sequence.

Best Art Direction: Mark Digby, Katrina Mackay, and Denis Schnegg for Ex Machina

Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina.

There was a lot to love in writer-director Alex Garland’s creepy techno-thriller – from the clever writing to the cagey performances and the sleek editing – but one thing sticks in the mind long after the final credits roll. That is the alternately icy and sensual production design, as well as the sparse but pointed set decoration. Science-fiction films often do well in this category at the Oscars for creating worlds we have never seen before, but the work is rarely this restrained or this unsettling.

The compound where about 95 percent of the action takes place is more of a laboratory than a home, and as the story progresses, that vibe becomes more and more pronounced, to the point where anyone who steps inside may seem like part of the experiment. The low ceilings and narrow hallways contribute to an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia, and as the noose tightens around the characters, it starts to feel as though they may never escape this place or its icy grip.

Best Original Score: Disasterpeace for It Follows

Maika Monroe in It Follows.

I am on the record as believing the hype surrounding writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s low-budget, high-concept horror picture outpaced its actual merit. It is a good but not great little movie that does a fine job inducing dread and paranoia in the audience. The one exceptional element, though, is the score by composer Rich Vreeland, working under his stage name, Disasterpeace.

The music draws on the best tropes horror music and repurposes them in a propulsive, synth-heavy set of near-electronica compositions. It is like an unholy lovechild birthed by the coupling of John Carpenter’s simple piano motifs from Halloween and Tangerine Dream’s bubbly yet sinister pop anthems for Risky Business. In other words, it is like nothing you have heard before.

New movie review: 99 Homes

Andrew Garfield stars in writer-director Ramin Bahrani's masterpiece 99 Homes.

If the soul exists, it must have no price. If the soul exists, it must be an essential part of a person. If the soul exists, it must be the most valuable thing one can possess. That is – if the soul exists. The way we often speak of it, the soul is intangible, and being such, we do not have a lot of use for it in our daily lives. Our families cannot eat it, take shelter in it, or survive off it, so its value seems rather negligible against the raw realities of life.

Speaking in a strictly areligious sense, the devil knows this. Maybe the devil is your boss, asking you to sacrifice a part of yourself for the company. Maybe the devil is your spouse, asking you to sacrifice a part of yourself for your family. Maybe the devil is you, and you sacrifice a small part of yourself every time you go against your better judgment or your reason or your ethics. These small trades for money, love, or comfort cost us little on the surface, but if the soul exists and makes you who you are, then every piece you give up is another piece of yourself lost.

In the magnificent legal thriller 99 Homes, from writer-director Ramin Bahrani, Andrew Garfield plays a man who makes a Faustian bargain with the devil he knows, and we stare on breathlessly as he loses himself piece by piece. The suspense comes from watching and wondering how long this man will allow himself to fall apart before he realizes what he has done and tries to put everything back together. It is a shattering, heart-rending experience, and it is one of the best films of the year.

Garfield plays Dennis Nash, who struggles to provide for his mother (Laura Dern) and young son (Noah Lomax). When they can no longer afford to pay the mortgage, they are evicted from their longtime family home and forced to live in a hotel, where many other families have suffered the same fate. Real estate operator Rick Carver, played by Michael Shannon, is in charge of the eviction. Carver makes his money evicting people from their homes and exploiting government and banking loopholes in the wake of the housing market crash.

Nash earns what little money he can working odds-and-ends construction jobs until Carver offers him a deal. Carver will buy the Nash family home if Nash agrees to work for him to pay off the debt. Nash signs off on the deal, and that is how easy it is to make a pact with the devil. For the rest of the film, Nash will descend further and further into the morass and compromise more and more of what he stands for with every transaction until he resembles Carver more than himself.

Michael Shannon in 99 Homes.

Garfield and Shannon are excellent as two men with competing loyalties whose interests are briefly aligned. Shannon turns in the kind of work befitting one of the best actors of his generation. He is menacing and pragmatic but just vulnerable enough to suggest how Nash could fall into Carver’s trap. He may be playing the devil, but Shannon’s performance shows us how even the devil cannot do his job without being stained by it.

The true revelation, however, is Garfield, who was so good in 2010’s The Social Network but has been lost down the rabbit hole of superhero movies for the last five years. In fact, 99 Homes is his first non-The Amazing Spider-man movie since The Social Network, and it is a great relief to see Garfield once again with a tremendous role to play. As Nash, he is resolute and determined but beaten down by a system that has no regard for him or his family. Garfield is just 32 years old, but he slides easily into the role of weary family man. His youth works for the film thematically as well and suggests problems of poverty and debt will affect generations to come.

Speaking of youth, there is the film’s co-writer and director. Bahrani is 40 years old and has made six feature films. In 2005, Man Push Cart launched him into the critical consciousness, and after his superb 2009 feature Goodbye Solo, no less than Roger Ebert called him unequivocally “the new great American director.” Bahrani even shows up in Steve James’ Ebert documentary Life Itself, and Ebert gifts him a puzzle once owned by Marilyn Monroe. Though Ebert long championed Bahrani’s work, the puzzle felt like a passing of the torch. Here, Bahrani returns the favor by dedicating his masterpiece to Ebert.

And a masterpiece, it is. The American-born son of Iranian immigrants, Bahrani has specialized in films about the struggle to achieve the American Dream. For the first time though, he turns his focus in 99 Homes to the difficulty in maintaining that dream. This is a film about mostly good people whose lives are destroyed by greed and corruption. Nash is but one of many people who got the home they always dreamed of but could not afford to keep it. The banks preyed on these people from the beginning, and what we are watching as Carver evicts them is the final kill.

Bahrani shows us row after row of homes in the Orlando, Fla., suburbs where the film takes place. Each house represents a family, and many are abandoned. They are not empty because of people like Carver. Carver is an opportunist, but he serves a higher master – the banks, those institutions we were told are too big to fail. Implicit in that oft-trotted-out maxim is the little-discussed fact that Nash and you and I are not too big to fail. In fact, we are too small to matter.

This is the kind of film that should make us angry about the world in which we live. Hopefully, none of us will endure the pain and heartbreak of losing our homes, but statistically, some of us will. Some of us have, and our options are few. Around the midpoint of the film, Carver tells Nash, “America was built by bailing out the winners.” Nash has seen losing and does not want to see it again. He takes Carver’s deal because it is the only one on the table. No other help is on its way. For his son, his mother, and his own dignity, he trades away a part of himself, but if the soul exists, what good to his family is a man without one?

See it? Yes.

Fall film season blasts off: My 10 most anticiapted upcoming movies

With Labor Day weekend upon us and the first film festival of the fall underway in Venice, the summer movie-going season is coming to a close. The comic book movies and young adult fiction adaptations will linger at the box office, and the next Hunger Games sequel is on the horizon, but for the most part, we are approaching the prestige season.

It is that time of year when studios set their sights on the Oscars and break out the kind of high-minded, star-studded films they hope will strike a chord with critics and audiences alike. In other words, it is my favorite time of the year to go to the movies. With that in mind, I put together a list of my 10 most anticipated films set to screen over the next few months. Feel free to chime in with yours in the comments section.

10. Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan (release date: Nov.7)

Nolan is a filmmaker I admire more than love. I appreciate that there is a director of his stature taking the risks he does on the budgets he is given. While I am often lukewarm on the films he makes, I am in awe of his tenacity in getting them made. A new movie from Nolan is reason enough to be excited, but one that deals with space exploration, the fate of mankind and this planet, and the kinds of deep connections that make us human? Count me in.

9. While We’re Young, directed by Noah Baumbach (release date: to be determined)

Baumbach has a tendency to be hit or miss, occasionally climbing too deep into his particular milieu. Those who saw Margot at the Wedding know what I mean. But The Squid and the Whale is among my favorite films, and last year’s Frances Ha was a genuinely surprising delight. Here, he reteams with Greenberg’s Ben Stiller and adds Naomi Watts, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Driver, and the wonderful Charles Grodin, about whom it is impossible to write enough nice things. The cast alone is enough to spark my interest in this admittedly clichéd logline: A middle-aged married couple loosens up after meeting a younger couple.

8. 99 Homes, directed by Ramin Bahrani (release date: to be determined)

One of the late Roger Ebert’s favorite young directors, Bahrani specializes in stories of the American Dream and how that dream is pursued and perverted. As such, the story of a man forced to work for the real estate broker who cost his family its home would seem to be right in his wheelhouse. Add to that Michael Shannon, whom I would watch paint a fence, and Andrew Garfield ditching the Spider-man suit, and the recipe is there for a searing portrait of life in the U.S. after the economic collapse.

7. Fury, directed by David Ayer (release date: Oct. 17)

Truth be told, I am a sucker for a good war picture. Any era, any war, plop me down in front of a band of brothers on a mission, and I am yours. Fresh off an Oscar win for producing 12 Years a Slave, Brad Pitt executive produces and stars in this actioner about a tank crew in the last days of World War II. Ayer, perhaps best known as the writer of Training Day and the original The Fast and the Furious, is behind the camera for this one. In his previous directorial efforts, he has displayed an eye for unique visuals and a capacity for intensely claustrophobic action sequences.

6. Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher (release date: Oct. 3)

I am unfamiliar with the source material, other than its status as a megahit bestseller. Fincher is at his best with pulpy thrillers like Seven, Zodiac, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and this one should line up nicely alongside those titles. Rosamund Pike stars alongside Ben Affleck, who having proved himself behind the camera will hopefully have a chance to flex his acting muscles before focusing on his real muscles as Batman.

5. Leviathan, directed by Andrei Zvyagintsev (release date: to be determined)

All I have to go by on this one is reputation, but that reputation includes a win for its screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival this year and near-universal praise for this far-reaching tale of human insecurity and weakness. This may be a bit more under the radar than some of the other films on this list, but everything I read about this film suggests it is pure cinema at its best.

4. Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie (release date: Dec. 25)

When people talk about “Oscar bait,” this is the kind of movie they mean: an inspiring true story about an Olympic athlete who also was an honest-to-goodness war hero (Louis Zamperini, who died in July at the age of 97). The film is practically dripping in prestige, but I firmly believe Jolie is not chasing an Academy Award or anything of the sort – after all, she has an acting Oscar for Girl Interrupted – rather the story itself is so compelling that she simply had to tell it. That alone is worth celebrating.

3. Inherent Vice, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (release date: Dec. 12)

Anderson is incapable of directing a boring film. I was head over heels for his last effort, The Master, and find myself more intrigued with each new movie he releases. Joaquin Phoenix delivered a performance of stunning power and control the last time these two worked together, and it is intriguing to think what they might pull off this time – with source material from Thomas Pynchon, no less. While Anderson has shown a penchant for strict formalism of late, this film is shaping up to be a return to the pulsing rhythms and gonzo energy of earlier works like Boogie Nights.

2. Foxcatcher, directed by Bennett Miller (release date: Nov. 14)

The notices were stellar coming out of Cannes, where Miller picked up a Best Director prize for his work on this picture, and the buzz around it has only grown louder. Miller made his name with the true crime/biographical film Capote and looks to be returning to that fertile ground once more. Steve Carell looks downright terrifying in the trailer, and this may prove to be the perfect vehicle for Channing Tatum, a wonderfully talented comedic performer, to announce his presence as an actor ready to tackle more serious fare.

1. Birdman, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (release date: Oct. 17)

This sits at the top for a host of reasons, not least among them the reviews trickling out of Venice, which could not be more laudatory. Inarritu’s “Communication Trilogy” (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel) stands among the towering achievements in cinema over the last 15 years. If you have not seen any or all of those films, I urge you to make a special trip to the video store – or more likely get your Netflix queue in order – and block out some time. You will be glad you did. For Birdman, it seems as though Inarritu has narrowed his focus to the mind of one man without sacrificing any of the scale of his previous efforts. Michael Keaton looks to be doing career-best work in the leading role, and I am equally excited by the prospect of supporting turns from Edward Norton and Emma Stone. This is all not to mention the technical prowess of the filmmaking, which I understand is considerable. These films will all have my full and undivided attention, but I will be first in line on opening day for Birdman.