Countdown to the Oscars: Best Visual Effects

JJ Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens is nominated for Best Visual Effects at this year's Academy Awards.

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 Visual Effects

The nominees are:

Ex Machina

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

What a strange and refreshing category this year. Normally the domain of big-budget action spectacles, the Academy has given over Best Visual Effects to some of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. It would be hard to overstate just how unusual this lineup is in terms of the recent history of this category, but let’s take it step by step. The history of Best Visual Effects at the Oscars is a little hard to pin down, but we will start in 1963, when it basically took the shape it is in now – give or take a few changes over the years.

In the entire history of the category, only four times has the Academy nominated more than one film in both Best Picture and Best Visual Effects (1995, 2003, 2009, and 2015). This year, there are three – Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, and The Revenant – which is a first. The difference in those three previous instances is that there were only two or three nominees in the category each time. In 2010, the Academy changed the rule to allow for five nominees in Best Visual Effects.

Since that change, last year was the only year in which no Best Picture nominee was nominated for Best Visual Effects. In every other year, a Best Picture nominee won this category over four non-nominees, while last year, Interstellar won Best Visual Effects and was the only nominee cited in more than one other category. This is a long way of saying: Having mind-blowing effects is great, but if you want to win, the Academy better embrace your film in a much bigger way.

Circling back around to this year, in addition to the three Best Picture nominees, we also have the new Star Wars film and Ex Machina, one of the lowest budgeted films nominated in this category in at least the last 20 years. So, I say again – how strange and how refreshing. The two most likely winners – and you will hear this a lot throughout this series, so get used to it – are Mad Max: Fury Road and The Revenant, but with voting split among five clearly popular films, anything could happen.

Mad Max: Fury Road – A visual feast in every way imaginable, the most remarkable thing about writer-director George Miller’s action extravaganza is how its effects work is both awe-inspiring and seamless. Of course, the stunts are the big draw, but the way those stunts are incorporated into the almost impossible world of the story is breathtaking. The film also features the kind of big, showy set piece that craftspeople appreciate in its sandstorm sequence.

The nominees are Andrew Jackson, Tom Wood, Dan Oliver, and Andy Williams, who are all sharing their first Oscar nomination, though Williams was a technician on the Best Visual Effects winner Hugo. What they all have in common is extensive work in the action genre, each having contributed to numerous films that blend the fantastic and the real in ways that engage the audience rather than distract.

The Revenant – Director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s gritty western is the least fantastical of these nominees but also the most impressionistic. It takes us to a place and time we never knew but have long imagined, before our westward expansion drained the natural world of much of its beauty. Like Mad Max: Fury Road, it also contains a bravura effects sequence remembered even outside the context of the film in its horrific bear attack.

Richard McBride, Matt Shumway, and Jason Smith are all first-time nominees, while Cameron Waldbauer is a two-time nominee, having earned recognition last year for his work on X-Men: Days of Future Past. McBride, Shumway, and Smith, however, have all worked in the effects department on previous winners in this category. Most notable perhaps is Shumway’s work on Life of Pi and The Golden Compass, both of which prominently feature computer-generated animals that are stunning in their realism.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens – The most conventional nominee this year is of course the big-budget sci-fi space adventure that features alien planets, alien spacecraft, and, well, aliens. JJ Abrams’ blockbuster is wall-to-wall effects with an admirable blend of CGI and miniature work likely to appeal to more traditional members of the Academy. In another year, this would be a good threat for the win. Of the seven Star Wars franchise films, six have been nominated for Best Visual Effects, and three have won. Working against it is the fact that all three of those wins came for the original trilogy.

This is a veteran group with 11 nominations and four wins among them. Chris Corbould is a three-time nominee who previously won for Inception. Neal Scanlan won for his only previous nomination, Babe (directed by Mad Max: Fury Road helmer Miller). Roger Guyett is a four-time nominee, and three of his nominations now have come for Abrams films – Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek. Pat Tubach’s previous nomination also came for Star Trek Into Darkness. It would be foolish to underestimate the Academy’s willingness in the crafts categories to vote for people it has voted for in the past.

The Martian – The other Best Picture nominee in this category, The Martian is also the other sci-fi movie here, along with the next nominee below. The Academy clearly loves this movie, evidenced by its seven nominations, third-most behind The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road. However, it is neither as beloved as those two films nor as adventurous as Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The effects are grand but probably not grand enough to win in this field this year.

Chris Lawrence is a previous winner for Gravity, Richard Stammers has been nominated three times, and Anders Langlands and Steven Warner are each enjoying their first nomination. No one would dispute the quality of their work on this film, but in a year with such a rich list of nominees, The Martian probably will not be a factor for the win.

Ex Machina – This is my favorite of these nominees and unfortunately the least likely to win, but for integration in the film and importance to the story, the effects in writer-director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina have no equal. Every shot with Ava (Alicia Vikander) is an effects shot, but none of them seems that way because the effects – and Vikander’s incomparable performance – make us feel as though we are watching just another human. This to me is the goal of great visual effects.

Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Sara Bennett, and Mark Williams Ardington are all first-time nominees, but despite the recognition for their subtle, self-contained work on Ex Machina, all have worked in departments on major blockbusters. Whitehurst, Bennett, and Williams helped bring various films in the Harry Potter franchise to life, while just this year, Ardington also worked as a character technical director on Ant-Man and Spectre.

The final analysis

There are three ways this category could go this year. The Academy could be head over heels in love with nominations leader The Revenant, and the bear sequence will stick in voters’ minds as reason enough to reward it; Mad Max: Fury Road will be a crafts juggernaut and sweep up Best Visual Effects along with a number of other below-the-line awards; Star Wars: The Force Awakens will earn the award for the sheer scope of its effects work, while also benefiting from those other two likely splitting votes. For now, I am guessing option No. 1 will rule the day.

Will win: The Revenant

Should win: Ex Machina

Should have been here: Everest

Tomorrow: Best Cinematography

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.

Year in Review: Best & Worst of 2015

It was just last year when I discussed in this same space how easy it was to see the bad in the previous year of cinema and how difficult it was to see the good. Well, things sure do have a way of turning around as this year featured a number of great developments just begging to be called out and nothing as egregious as the Sony and The Interview debacle last year.

Even the worst things about the year identified below are not so much irrevocably bad as they are trends in need of correcting. In that spirit, I would call 2015 a year of optimism, a year that pointed the way forward to a better cinema landscape overall. Nothing is perfect yet, and it never will be, but we seem to be on the right track, and that is worth celebrating.

Four best things

1. Women in film

Anne-Marie Duff, Carey Mulligan, and Helena Bonham Carter in Suffragette.

Here is one of those things that is not perfect yet, but it sure does seem to be moving in a positive direction. Women have been sorely underrepresented behind the camera in the history of film, and they have not been treated too well in front of it either. There have been small steps toward progress in the last decade – including Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director for 2009’s The Hurt Locker – but this year, it felt like we took a couple giant leaps.

A number of remarkable films in 2015 were written, directed, and produced by women, including Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang, Anna Muylaert’s The Second Mother, and Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette. Director Isabel Coixet put women to work behind the scenes in every department of the Patricia Clarkson vehicle Learning to Drive. Director of photography Maryse Alberti has a fair shot at becoming the first woman nominated for the Oscar for cinematography for her stunning work on Creed.

More generally, great stories about women were everywhere this year from writer-director George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road to Pixar’s Inside Out. As Carey Mulligan identifies in Suffragette (in a quote we will discuss more tomorrow), women make up half the human race. Hollywood can no longer afford to ignore them, as it has done in the past, and any industry that excludes women from the process will not remain viable for long. There is a long way to go, but 2015 showed us a way forward.

2. Ensemble acting

Some of the best performances this year were delivered not by individual actors but by groups of actors. It was a bit of a strange year for acting as few films really offered the opportunity for huge star turns – though there were a number of stellar performances, which we will cover later this week. Instead, this felt more like the year of the ensemble.

Spotlight, The Big Short, Everest, Mustang, and a host of others were all defined by talented actors ignoring vanity and ego and giving themselves over to the story. Each of these films works like a finely tuned machine, and every performer is part of what makes the machine run. We all like to see great actors chew scenery – I would give anything if Daniel Day-Lewis were more prolific – but there is nothing like watching a wonderful ensemble share the workload in a totally selfless way.

3. Reinvigorated franchises

Paul Rudd in Ant-Man.

There is a sequel problem in Hollywood, and everybody knows it. Studios box out original stories in favor of proven products they know will sell. It is generally a low-risk, low-reward enterprise as these studios spend unimaginable amounts of money to make unimaginable amounts of money at a small profit, but we will get to that in a minute. This year felt like a banner year for sequels – or reboots or remakes or however you want to fit these films into the canon. More than ever, it seemed like we had intelligent filmmakers with great stories breathing new life into franchises thought long dead and into series seemingly sapped of creative energy.

None were more invigorating than Miller’s wildly inventive and just plain wild Mad Max: Fury Road and Ryan Coogler’s impeccably crafted, fiercely independent Creed. Add to that Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man, which gave a much-needed jolt of energy and fun to the flagging Marvel Cinematic Universe. These movies had a lot to live up to because of their forebears, and they exceeded those expectations in every way. If only more franchise films could be like these, the movie-going world might be a better place.

4. Spectacle at the movies

Studios and theater chains are always trying to come up with the next big thing to get audiences to come out to the movies – 3D, IMAX (and its bastard cousin lieMAX), smell-o-vision, and all sorts of other gimmicks that tended to come and go with the wind. I usually try to avoid these sorts of tricks because they rarely add anything to the films they accompany, but this year, some of the best directors we have tried on some spectacle for size and delivered a few special experiences.

With the help of IMAX 3D, Robert Zemeckis brought the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center back to life in his virtuosic Philippe Petit biopic The Walk. Maser of gothic horror Guillermo Del Toro used the IMAX format to build one of the most haunting and lush visual extravaganzas of his distinguished career in Crimson Peak. Baltasar Kormákur put viewers on top of a mountain, then made them look down in his exquisite and underrated Everest.

Perhaps no one tried to return spectacle to the cinema universe this year more than Quentin Tarantino with his The Hateful Eight roadshow. I may have been lukewarm on the movie, but the passion Tarantino showed – and has always shown – for making sure his film was seen in the right way, the best possible way, should inspire more filmmakers to take such risks. An overture, intermission, super-widescreen presentation, and even a program made for one spectacular night at the movies.

Four worst things

1. Movie-going experience

Now, for the flipside of that coin, I will present something of an “Old man yells at cloud” scenario. I love going to the movie theater. It is why this site exists and is so named, but this year, more than ever, I felt the difficulty in enjoying the cinematic experience. One could point out the fact that I live in noisy, busy, crowded New York City, but I would counter that two of the best cinemas in the country are located here – the IFC Center and the Lincoln Center – and suggest that if you really think about it, no matter where you live, you have probably found movie-going at least a somewhat daunting and annoying prospect.

It starts before you even walk in the theater as average ticket prices in the U.S. reached an all-time high in 2015, topping $8.60 – although, fair warning, if you visit me in New York City, you are looking at $15.50 for a regular ticket; and if you want to see one of those spectacles I mentioned at the only real IMAX theater in the city, it’s $22.50. Already, this is clearly cost prohibitive for a family of three or four. Snacks? Well, we all know those are expensive, but it is a price I am willing to pay because almost all of that money goes directly to the theater, as opposed to ticket sales, of which studios get the lion’s share.

Anyway, now you have your expensive ticket and expensive food, and you get to sit in an old, uncomfortable seat with terrible sight lines to see the badly projected digital image while sitting behind the guy in the hat and his girlfriend using her phone while the teenagers behind you talk about whatever the hell they talk about. I am not sure how to fix all of this, but I think we can all agree it is a problem. Maybe that is the solution. If we all agree this is a problem, we can all agree to be a little kinder and a little more courteous to each other at the movies.

2. Specialty box office

Still, none of that seemed to stop the cash registers from filling up across the country as box office records seemed to fall every week – a little movie called Star Wars: The Force Awakens might be helping that cause right now. Of course, those higher prices are certainly a factor in all those records as actual movie attendance continues to dip. If 10,000 fewer people see a blockbuster, though, no one is going to cry, but if even 1,000 fewer people see an independent movie, the whole industry suffers.

It was a bad year at the specialty box office as independent movies struggled to find an audience. Some survived long enough to pick up viewers from on-demand services, but you and I both know that is not the same thing. I mentioned the IFC Center and the Lincoln Center. Depending on where you live, there is probably a little independent movie theater within driving distance. Most of these are great places, where they really care about the programming and the experience they offer. Visit these places. Help keep their doors open, and help keep little gems from disappearing from theaters altogether.

3. Sagging franchises

Jake Johnson in a Jurassic Park T-shirt in Jurassic World.

So, we saw the good this year with those reinvigorated franchises I mentioned above, but we also saw the bad. Judging from the wild success these movies had at the box office, I may be in the minority opinion on this one. In fact, I am out about to call out the Nos. 4, 6, and 7 highest grossing movies of all time (without adjusting for inflation or higher ticket prices because we do not need to get into that right now).

Okay: Jurassic World, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Furious 7. The numbers say a vast majority of you saw these and saw them in theaters, but were these movies actually good, or was it just some blend of nostalgia and brand loyalty driving ticket sales? From where I am sitting, it seems very much like the latter.

Jurassic World plays like a meta-commentary on itself, constantly alluding to how much better the original film is, then largely failing to offer anything new or interesting. Avengers: Age of Ultron represented the total reverse of Ant-Man. It drags, it is convoluted, and worst of all, it just is no fun. Meanwhile, Furious 7, the seventh entry in a franchise that was never that good to begin with, is the reason for the term “diminishing returns.” Of course, I could be wrong about all of this, and the billion or so other people who saw these movies could be right. That would be fine, too.

4. Missed opportunities

Finally, as much distaste as I have for franchise films, particularly bad ones, there is something much worse – a missed opportunity. There are some stories just crying out to be told well, and there are talented filmmakers who seem on the verge of making memorable art. When these elements come together and the resulting film is less than it could be, it is frustrating, to say the least.

Crystal Moselle’s documentary The Wolfpack takes an interesting subject – a family that has been locked in its home for years by a dictatorial father – and makes the least interesting movie she could. Moselle has a wonderful filmmaker’s eye, but she has missed the story, choosing instead to focus on the teenage and adult sons’ obsession with films and filmmaking. I wrote recently about David O. Russell’s Joy, another intriguing story but simply told by the wrong person. Russell can be a good director, but Joy was not his story to tell.

The biggest missed opportunity of the year, though – and therefore, the biggest disappointment of the year – was writer-director Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth. Starring Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterston, the film explores jealousy, hate, pain, and female relationships in a unique way with a clear filmmaking vision, and it features great performances from two great actresses. Yet, it fails on every level.

I attended a Q-and-A with Perry and Moss for this film, and they were a fun, intelligent, informative pair who clearly had an idea for what they wanted to do with this film. I wanted so badly to like it. Knowing how smart and skilled they both are just made the experience of watching the film that much more frustrating. I cannot wait to see what Perry does next, and whatever it is, I will be first in line. For now, Queen of Earth is 2015’s biggest missed opportunity.

Check back tomorrow for more of Last Cinema Standing’s Year in Review as we count down the Top 10 Quotes of 2015, and check back each day this week for continued Year in Review coverage.

New movie review: Everest

Director Baltasar Kormakur's stunning new film Everest is a gripping exploration of the folly of man and the power of nature.

Hubris and boredom are really two sides of the same coin. Humanity has come a long way since it came down from the trees, and the evidence of that journey is obvious if we take even a second to consider the world around us. The seemingly never-ending advancement of technology gives the impression we can do pretty much anything, but by the same token, it means we rarely have to do anything. A vast majority of us will never till the land or hunt wild game in any meaningful way. By virtue of living in a mostly successful society, our needs are met.

These twin experiences of believing we can accomplish anything and having too much time on our hands mean feats such as scaling Mount Everest hold a strange place in our collective psyche. Nobody needs to climb Everest, but we applaud those who do. We stand in awe of the men and women who risk their lives to reach the highest peak on our planet. It is foolhardy at best and suicidal at worst, but every year, more and more people head to the top of the world, and the best explanation anyone seems to have comes from a British explorer who died trying: “Because it’s there.”

Jason Clarke plays Rob Hall in Everest.

The new film Everest explores the varying motivations of a group of climbers that participated in the 1996 expedition that proved the deadliest ever at the time – it was surpassed just last year in a tragic avalanche that killed 16 and this year in a series of avalanches that killed at least 19. If you are familiar with the popular Jon Krakauer book Into Thin Air, then you will be familiar with the basics of the story. However, director Baltasar Kormákur and screenwriters William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy smartly cull their material from multiple sources, giving a broader view of the tragedy.

While the film is a true ensemble piece, the screenplay goes to great lengths to examine the individuals that make up that ensemble. There is Rob Hall (Jason Clarke), a professional climber and the leader of the expedition who has a pregnant wife, Jan (Keira Knightly), at home. There is Doug Hansen (John Hawkes), a mailman out to prove to the schoolchildren back home what a regular guy can accomplish. Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin) is a wealthy Texan who feels most alive when he is climbing.

Yasuko Namba (Naoko Mori) is a Japanese woman who has reached six of the seven highest peaks in the world, and Everest is the seventh. Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal) is another professional climber who loves the thrill of it all. Even Krakauer (Michael Kelly) appears in the film. All these characters and more are carefully detailed early in the story, which gives later developments more emotional impact than most big action-adventure movies. Because we care about the individuals, we care about the group.

Clarke is essentially the lead of the film, and he does fantastic work in a harrowing role that is both physically demanding and emotionally exhausting. Hall states repeatedly through the film it is his job to take his clients to the top of Everest and bring them back down safely. He takes his work seriously, and when disaster strikes, he takes the ensuing tragedy personally. Clarke is careful not to play Hall as heroic but as a regular guy – albeit eminently skilled and incredibly brave – who makes his living in extraordinary circumstances, and the movie benefits from this portrayal.

Josh Brolin plays Beck Weathers in Everest.

In contrast to Hall, there is Weathers, who is full of Texas swagger and the kind of bravado that money seems to buy. Early in the film, after almost dying on an ice ladder, Weathers complains to Hall he did not pay $65,000 to wait in line for the ladder. His transformation on the mountain is the clearest in the film, and Brolin is expert at showing Weathers as simultaneously full of confidence and full of fear. The moment he realizes the price of feeling alive may be to die on the mountain is beautiful, and Brolin plays it perfectly.

Everest is unusual and refreshing in its dedication to character work. Many adventure and disaster films of this type hide behind spectacle, backgrounding the story and foregrounding impressive, if narratively empty, visuals. In the rare instance a film does try to examine character, it often comes across as clunky (Gravity) or undercooked (Interstellar). Everest manages both feats, telling a compelling story with grace and subtlety and wowing the audience with a stunning visual landscape.

In fact, stunning may be too light a word. I know many people who are happy with their home-theater systems – a high-definition, big-screen television and a great surround-sound system in the comfort of home. That is fine. Even as a proponent of going to the cinema, I am willing to admit there are certain movies that play well enough at home. This is not one of them. There is nothing in the movie-watching universe that will match the majesty of seeing Everest on the big screen – in IMAX (real IMAX), if possible.

Kormákur does not have an extensive resume, and if you know him from anything, it is probably one of his collaborations with Mark Wahlberg, either Contraband or 2 Guns, but his craftsmanship here is masterful. Mount Everest is an alien world right here on Earth, and Kormákur deftly evokes that feeling, giving us endless expanses of broken, jagged rock, impossibly deep crevices, and blinding snow whipping around constantly. Wide shots of distant figures trudging up the mountainside help emphasize humanity’s insignificance against the awe-inspiring power of nature.

Everest was here long before us, and it will remain long after we are gone. Humanity can cure disease, make art, and build flying machines that take us to outer space, and yes, we can even summit Everest, but we could never create it. Everest is a testament to something beyond human achievement. It is a tribute to the unconquerable state of the natural world. If the film reminds us of anything, it is this: We may stand on the mountain’s peak, but we will never reach its heights.

See it? Yes.