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.

Last Cinema Standing’s 2015 Year in Review

Another year behind us and another year of films to look forward to, but let’s not close the book on 2015 just yet. The movie industry certainly won’t be doing that as it spends the next two months reflecting on the best the year that was had to offer, all leading up to the Academy Awards at the end of February. At Last Cinema Standing, I like to take just a week to remember some of the best – and a few of the worst – films, performances, and moments from the last 12 months.

It has been a year of change at Last Cinema Standing, pretty much all of it positive. Back in January, I launched a redesign of the site, which has gotten a lot of positive feedback. In February, I introduced the Countdown to the Oscars, which drew the most reads the site has ever gotten. In fact, in the seven years since I founded this site, 2015 was the best year yet for overall readership.

In 2015, Last Cinema Standing featured more content than ever before with 40 new film reviews, extensive coverage of Q-and-A’s with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, and the kind of film and industry analysis that hopefully makes this site a unique and valuable destination for readers. I hope to deliver even more content in 2016, but my focus will remain – as it always has – on quality.

I started this site because I love thinking about, talking about, and writing about film and not in a perfunctory way. I take film as an art form seriously, and my goal is for Last Cinema Standing to stand out because of the depth of discussion it hopefully fosters. I do not write quick-hit pieces or click-bait articles just to draw eyes to the page, and I never will. Readers can get that elsewhere. The people who come to Last Cinema Standing deserve a different cinema experience on the web, and every day, that is what I seek to deliver.

None of this exists without you, the readers, though. I would go to the movies anyway, but knowing I have a place to come to discuss what I watched with an intelligent, interested, like-minded group of people makes it all worth it. I have a day job and a life outside of movies, but I do this because I love it, and one of the reasons I love it is because readers seem to enjoy it. So, thank you, readers, for making this site one of my favorite things to work on day in and day out.

So, what interested you in 2015? A lot, it turns out. This year, Last Cinema Standing introduced contributor Sean Patrick Leydon and his Now Watch This column, a guide to the obscure treasures hiding on Netflix Instantwatch. That column proved incredibly popular, and we hope to bring you even more of it this year.

Miroslav Slaboshpitsky, Greta Gerwig, and Kevin Corrigan

The most read stories of the year were Sean’s piece on writer-director Rian Johnson’s excellent The Brothers Bloom, my coverage of a Q-and-A with The Tribe writer-director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky and star Yana Novikova at the Film Forum, and my piece on writer-actress Greta Gerwig’s double-feature presentation of her Mistress America and director Jonathan Demme’s classic Something Wild at the IFC Center.

Topping all of that, however, was a Q-and-A with writer-director Andrew Bujalski and stars Guy Pearce and Kevin Corrigan, who were at the IFC Center to discuss their new film Results. The success of the piece – the second-most popular article in the site’s history – was due in no small part to Corrigan’s help promoting it on social media, so a special thanks to him. He is truly one of the good guys in the business.

The mantra for 2016 is more of everything – more reviews, more events, more industry columns. Last Cinema Standing has certainly proven to be an “if you build it, they will come” venture, and as long as that remains true, my promise is to continue building this into the best site it can be. So, once again, thanks to everyone who reads, comments, and offers feedback, but mostly, thanks to everyone who goes to the movies.

Check back tomorrow for part 2 of our Year in Review with Last Cinema Standing’s Best & Worst of 2015, and check back each day throughout the week for more Year in Review coverage, ending Friday with the Top 10 Films of 2015.

45 Years: Of ghosts, gone but not forgotten

Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling star in writer-director Andrew Haigh's superb marital drama 45 Years.

“They asked me how I knew my true love was true

I of course replied something here inside cannot be denied

They said someday you’ll find all who love are blind

When your heart’s on fire, you must realize smoke gets in your eyes

So I chaffed them and I gaily laughed to think they could doubt our love

Yet today my love has flown away; I am without my love

Now laughing friends deride tears I cannot hide

So I smile and say, when a lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes”

– “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” lyrics by Otto Harbach

People make honesty trickier than it needs to be in most cases. Though it may not seem so initially, the easiest path is always the path of truth and openness, and the long-term ramifications of a lie will inevitably dwarf the short-term pain of the truth. The longer a lie sits, the more it festers, and the worse it will be when its falsehood is brought to the light of day, and rest assured, it always finds the light of day.

We form most of our relationships based on these principles, in particular our romantic ones. Marriage may not mean much as an institution, but at its most basic, it is an agreement to communicate honestly and share openly. The couple at the center of writer-director Andrew Haigh’s magnificent 45 Years has failed this test, and in one letter they probably never thought would arrive, the weight of 45 years of deceit is brought to bear.

Haigh and Rampling talk 45 Years. (photo credit: Julie Cunnah)

Earlier last month, Haigh and the film’s star, Charlotte Rampling, came to the Lincoln Center in New York City to screen the movie and stayed after for an intelligent, evocative chat about lies, liars, and the demons they bring to life. Rampling especially was witty, charming, and unafraid to discuss the depths to which she went to portray a character whose world is shattered by a long-forgotten, thought-buried trauma.

“In a film like this, you really need to evolve very subtly, and you don’t know what level of subtlety you’re looking for until you start to play a character,” said Rampling. “In the situation with [co-star Tom Courtenay], we didn’t know how far it was going to go, where it was going to go. We were really exploring. Although obviously, there is a script, but within that script and within sequences and within the dialogue, we’re always feeling our way. … Day by day, we’re living that story.”

Rampling and Courtenay are legends of European cinema with a combined 110 years of onscreen experience and more than 160 credits between them. Though they had never worked together before this, they were part of the same movement in European cinema that led filmmakers to tell more personal stories about the everyday lives of working-class people. In a very real way, that legacy of honest, emotionally grounded storytelling continues with 45 Years.

They play Kate and Geoff, who are a week away from celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary when Geoff receives a letter in the mail. The body of his long-dead first love, Katia, has been discovered. She died in a hiking accident in the Alps some months before Geoff met Kate, and her body has been perfectly preserved in a glacier at the exact moment of her death – a fitting symbol for the memory of a long-ago love who has never aged and never changed.

The news understandably brings up a lot of feelings in Geoff, feelings Kate thought he had discarded when they met. They have spent 45 mostly happy years together, but Geoff’s reminiscences cause Kate to question whether she is and always has been his second choice. Haigh’s slow-burn narrative puts the audience fully in Kate’s headspace as we walk with her through each of seven days leading up to the couple’s anniversary party. The strain this news puts on their relationship becomes suffocating to the point where the film no longer plays like a traditional marital drama but like a thriller.

Courtenay and Rampling in 45 Years.

This building tension informs the way Haigh chooses to shoot most of the scenes, filming long, unbroken takes of the couple interacting. Sometimes they speak, and sometimes they are silent, but there is always a conversation taking place, an exchange of ideas and emotions. Courtenay and Rampling are brilliant at using these extended sequences to create fully realized characters and a totally lived-in relationship.

“From the very early stages, I knew that I wanted it to be shot in long takes and lots of essentially two-shots,” said Haigh. “For me, it’s very interesting to see, especially in a film about relationships, to see two people who are quite intent on having that relationship, to see the dynamics of that relationship unfold in real time rather than have the emotion created by the cuts. I want to see the awkwardness of that emotion sometimes happen in front of my eyes, and I think if you start cutting too much, you’re creating the emotions with the cuts within scenes. I just love what it does to performance and what that means about performance. … It just feels more truthful to me.”

While Geoff becomes obsessed with a fleeting moment in time from his past and gives himself over simultaneously to reverie and regret, Kate begins to question the very foundations of not just her marriage but her life. Faced now with the reality of a husband who may never have given up the ghost of his former love, she wonders how much that specter has loomed over her relationship and the choices she and Geoff have made.

“We all have these alternative versions of our lives that play out in numerous different ways, and I think that’s almost the hardest thing for Kate to deal with,” said Haigh. “It’s like somebody shining a very intense light on her life and what’s happened to her life, and one of the interesting things to me about those kind of conversations is when he says that he would have married [Katia] … What would have happened to Kate? What would have happened to her life? She’d have met someone else, been living somewhere else, doing something else. Those kind of issues, if I think about them, they make me have a mental breakdown. The weight of choice and the weight of our decisions and coincidence and randomness can be very heavy on people.”

That weight only grows as the film progresses and Kate and Geoff become even further enmeshed in their feelings about the past, their lives together, and the lives they could have led separately. Rampling and Courtenay quietly deliver two of the best acting performances of the year individually, but when they are together onscreen, it is like the rest of the world stops. For better or worse, in those moments, it is just Geoff and Kate and nearly five decades of betrayal, and the actors come together to make the audience feel every ounce of their shared pain.

It is of course no easy feat to portray the kind of intimate, dynamic relationship shared by Geoff and Kate, but Rampling and Courtenay absolutely dig into their characters’ psyches to unearth all the fears, jealousies, and doubts that have kept them rooted to this place. Neither performance works without the other, and Rampling and Courtenay have an almost effortless onscreen chemistry, which Rampling attributed to their shared life experiences.

“You are what you are anyway, and then you come to a role, and that role needs you to bring your own past in, but that’s actually the most natural thing you can do,” said Rampling. “An instant rapport is created with the person if he also is the same age as you, more or less, and also did the same things. Although we didn’t actually know each other, it didn’t matter we didn’t know each other. We were actually involved in the same world, so that made a big difference. I think also the choice … when Andrew decided that it would be Tom, it was very much that. There’s already a kind of something familiar between the two of us, something almost like as if we come from the same place.”

Rampling and Courtenay in 45 Years.

From an audience perspective, the love the characters clearly shared and still share, aided by the obvious chemistry between the two leads, makes the devastation of their situation nearly impossible to bear. We are bystanders, watching as a couple whose foundation seemed solid disintegrates in front of us because Geoff could not bring himself to be honest with Kate from the beginning. Perhaps he has not even been able to be honest with himself until the letter arrives.

“What’s interesting to me is that they do love each other, and they always have loved each other, but that doesn’t mean that’s still not fragile,” said Haigh. “It doesn’t take that much to start throwing people off balance, and that’s how I see it. I think it is emotional infidelity. I think it’s a lack of honesty, like your understanding of your relationship has just shifted, has changed, and you can’t get back to what it was.”

It ruins nothing to say there is no blow-up argument, no final confrontation, nor even a real resolution, and there never could be. That is not who these people are, Kate in particular. She would rather, were it possible, move on, start over, do anything they can to put the past back in the past, but the past is one thing. Truth is another, and truth, once known, can never be unknown.

Finally, it is up to Kate to decide how she can move on now that the fundamental relationship in her life, the thing that has defined her entire adulthood, has been forever altered. How, indeed, when her husband is so consumed by a past frozen in ice that he cannot see the present and future have gone up in flames? Perhaps they will be able to put out this fire, but the smoke will linger, and hiding therein will be the ghost of which they dare not speak.

New movie review: The Hateful Eight

Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson star in writer-director Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight.

Minnie’s Haberdashery sure is a fine place to stop over in a blizzard. It may not look like much from the outside, but inside, it is downright cavernous. Depending on your preferences, you could settle in by the fire for a game of chess, camp out in the far back corner and read or write, belly up to the bar and imbibe, grab yourself a pot of coffee over by the stove, or trade stories at the communal dinner table. Yes, anything that strikes your fancy, Minnie’s has got it, including jelly beans and peppermint sticks.

Only, you may not like the company you are forced to keep. See, right now, Minnie’s Haberdashery is playing home to a few angry, vengeful souls harboring, let’s just say, mutually exclusive goals. To get out of here alive, you are going to have to survive a beating, a poisoning, a stabbing, a gunfight, and probably a long-winded monologue or two. In this universe, that is just the nature of the beast, and when you find yourself in the hands of the beast master, you are more than likely to end up doused in blood.

Writer-director Quentin Tarantino, the bad boy of U.S. cinema himself, returns with his eighth film, The Hateful Eight, a chamber play masquerading as a bloody western saga. The movie has been billed as, what the residents of the Moulin Rouge might call, spectacular, spectacular – and if it is nothing else, it sure is that. If you are fortunate enough, as I was, to catch one of the film’s highly touted, much-discussed 70mm roadshow screenings, you will be treated to more than a movie. It is an experience, complete with overture, intermission, extended cut, and even a program.

The Hateful Eight roadshow program

The program is a neat little souvenir (see at right), the overture with that great Ennio Morricone score is tremendous, and the intermission is superfluous at best, but let’s be honest. The biggest selling point here is the 70mm, super-widescreen presentation. Your feelings on its success or failure will change based on what theater you attended and what showing you saw. My screening had a couple little hiccups and some things I would have changed, but I have to admit there is something oddly meditative about hearing that huge reel of film click through the projector.

Director of photography Robert Richardson captures some absolutely gorgeous images in the film’s first two chapters, set out in the snowy hills and mountains of Colorado, standing in for Wyoming. The vistas look great and undoubtedly benefit from the expanded field of vision, but then, for the last two-thirds of the movie, Tarantino locks up his characters in Minnie’s Haberdashery, and we rarely go outside again.

So far, reaction among critics and commenters has been sharply divided. Those in the pro camp suggest the 70mm presentation adds depth, nuance, and interest to the interiors, while those in the con camp think it is a wasted opportunity and an injudiciously employed gimmick. I fall somewhere in the middle, believing the wide frame adds to the suspense of watching the characters circle around one another in a single room but acknowledging how nice it would have been to get more of the film’s superb exterior photography.

Ultimately, though, this discussion is a distraction. Tarantino is clearly a fine director, and Richardson’s cinematography is obviously stellar. When you go to a Tarantino movie, though, you expect something else. Tarantino is one of the pre-eminent screenwriters of our time – if not exactly prolific – so those attending The Hateful Eight most likely are looking for the signature dialogue and intricate plotting that has defined most of his career. The disappointment of The Hateful Eight is that it does not quite deliver on that promise.

Frequent Tarantino collaborator Samuel L. Jackson plays Maj. Marquis Warren, a black Civil War officer turned bounty hunter on his way to the city of Red Rock with a fresh haul of bounties – their frozen corpses tied to the roof of a carriage provides one of the more delightfully macabre images in the film. Warren hitches a ride with fellow bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell), who is taking prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to Red Rock to collect the $10,000 bounty. In their travels, they pick up the new sheriff of Red Rock, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins).

Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hateful Eight.

Warren, Ruth, Domergue, and Mannix are our first four “hatefuls.” When they arrive at Minnie’s Haberdashery, hoping to wait out an approaching blizzard, we meet the other four: Gen. Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), Bob “The Mexican” (Demian Bichir), Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), and Joe Gage (Michael Madsen). Based on nothing but a hunch and on having a suspicious nature, Ruth becomes convinced one of these people is partnered up with Daisy and has come here with the intention of helping her break free. This conflict sets the rest of the plot in motion.

The cast of course is incredibly talented and totally game, and they have as much fun as one would hope chewing on Tarantino’s always inventive dialogue. Jackson, who starred in Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Django Unchained and had bit parts in Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds, seems particularly at home in the Tarantino-verse. Leigh also delivers a knockout performance, spitting, snarling, and gnashing her way through the film. Though she is handcuffed and sidelined through most of the action, Domergue’s presence is felt even when she is not around, and that is a credit to Leigh’s performance.

It should surprise no one that Goggins, Dern, Roth, and Russell are also standouts, while Bichir and Madsen do the most they can with the thinnest characters in the script – at least as pertains to the central eight. The actors pretty much universally shine, but they are stranded – literally and metaphorically – in a story that sometimes strains credulity and is a little too amused by its contrivances for its own good.

Without wanting to spoil the events that take place after the intermission, suffice it to say there are two key plot developments that seem to exist for convenience rather than because they grew organically from the events that preceded them. Truth be told, this is unusual territory for one of Tarantino’s films, which generally are expertly plotted and carefully developed. It feels as though Tarantino was in such a hurry to get to the bloody, extended climax that he skipped laying some of the groundwork that might have carried us there.

Now, I do not want to misrepresent myself completely here. As with any Tarantino film, I had a hell of a lot of fun, but none of that fun seemed in service of anything. This certainly feels like the director’s emptiest film. There are some overtures to slavery and the Civil War and an attempt to draw parallels to the racial divide in the modern U.S., but by the second half, when the carnage kicks in, most of that is forgotten in favor of pools of blood and mounds of bodies. There is an entertaining movie in The Hateful Eight, but its flaws are many and glaring – and they sure do make a mess of ol’ Minnie’s Haberdashery.

See it? Yes.