Having compiled my ten favorite films of 2015 — and therefore, by subjective definition, the best of the year — I realized a decided bias towards films about writers, writing and filmmaking. My number one film centers on the investigative reporting team for The Boston Globe and, in addition, I have great affection for one about a prominent blacklisted screenwriter, an aged film director eager for one more hit film, a jargon-filled explanation of the bursting 2008 housing bubble, a documentary of the televised debates between two erudite wordsmiths and a dark comedy about a couple of high school filmmakers of low-budget parodies.
So call me biased, but I think it was a good year at the movies. (Note: I have limited myself to films that opened in South Florida during the calendar year, which knocks out Alejandro Iñárritu’s haunting The Revenant, which doesn’t arrive until Jan. 8.
OK, here they are, in descending order of quality:
1. Spotlight — Named for the elite investigative team of The Boston Globe, this Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor) film uncovers the multitude of sexual abuses by Catholic priests and the complicity of church hierarchy. It plays out like a thriller, as well as a nostalgic look back on the not-too-distant past when newspapers could afford to devote major resources to such a story. As many have noted, this is the best celluloid look at inside journalism since 1976’s All the President’s Men. The cast, including Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and Liev Schreiber, form the best movie ensemble of the year as well.
2. Room — Novelist and first-time screenwriter Emma Donoghue probably had no idea what a difficult task she gave herself — and director Lenny Abrahamson — adapting her page-turner tale of an abducted young woman, held captive in a backyard shed and repeatedly raped, resulting in a son. Abrahamson manages the claustrophobic story with impressive visual variety and expertly handles the heightened emotions of the second half as — Spoiler alert! — mother and son struggle to readjust to society. Brie Larson, herself a former child star, cannot miss getting an Oscar nomination for her empathetic performance as Ma, while young Jacob Tremblay gives the single best juvenile performance ever captured on film.
3. Trumbo — Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts and the resulting career-destroying Hollywood blacklist is a fertile, dark period in our history, which has inspired numerous films and plays. Here the era is viewed through the lens of Dalton Trumbo, the highest paid screenwriter of the time. Bryan Cranston plays quirky, effete Trumbo, demonstrating that his acclaim and awards for the TV series Breaking Bad were no fluke. In a scene-stealing supporting turn, Helen Mirren is even better as viciously anti-Communist gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Who knew that Jay Roach, previously best known for the Austin Powers movies and Meet the Fockers, could handle such dramatic material, directing it with such assurance.
4. Inside Out — State-of-the-art animation is a mark of Pixar, as seen in this highly imaginative film with at least two levels of appeal, one for youngsters and the other for adults. But it is the intriguing, well-structured storytelling that sets this studio apart, as seen in this heart-tugger about an 11-year-old girl named Riley who relocates to San Francisco with her family, a journey that tests her many, often conflicting, emotions. Each emotion is personified in Riley’s brain, such as the typecast, but fever-pitch perfect Lewis Black as Anger.
5. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared — Swedish nursing home resident Allan Karlsson (deadpan comic Robert Gustafsson) wants nothing to do with the 100th birthday party being readied for him, so he gingerly escapes, crawling through a rabbit hole to the outside world, allowing him to reflect on his past in a series of wry adventures with world leaders that are likely to bring to mind Woody Allen’s Zelig. Director Felix Herngren has a weakness for foolishness, but he blends it with a meditation on the centennial mark, a milestone more and more of us may eventually face.
6. Youth — As he did so masterfully in his 2013 Oscar-winning foreign-language film, The Great Beauty, Italian director and staunch Fellini fan Paolo Sorrentino fills the screen with lush, surreal images in this sumptuous contemplation of aging, times past and life’s endgame. Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel play a retired symphony conductor and a still active filmmaker respectively, lifelong friends trying to relax at an upscale Swiss Alps spa, contemplating their careers as personal chaos — including a stunning cameo by Jane Fonda as Keitel’s box office muse — swirls around them.
7. The Big Short — Since comedy is tragedy that happens to someone else, director Adam McKay’s mordant account of the 2008 rupture of the housing bubble and the money manager (Christian Bale) who predicted the meltdown is a darkly humorous retrospective on the financial crisis. The screenplay by McKay (and Charles Randolph) is dense with Wall Street jargon delivered directly to the audience. So lean in, listen carefully and enjoy the ensemble cast of Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt as they recap the recent history of the American way of deceit.
8. The Martian — Call it Cast Away in Outer Space or maybe, since it stars Matt Damon as a stranded astronaut, Saving Private Ryan on Mars. In any event, this is a surprisingly intelligent, low-key science fiction tale laced with scientific details about an American spaceman left behind on Mars, separated from and stranded by his fellow crew members. Food is low and the next Mars mission is due in four years, but Damon’s character is nothing if not resourceful and upbeat. Director Ridley Scott tells the story — based on Andy Weir’s novel — with remarkable restraint, a previously unseen approach for him.
9. Best of Enemies — Documentary filmmakers Morgan Neville (Oscar winner for 20 Feet From Stardom) and Robert Gordon look back on a turning point in cultural and media history when ABC-TV, the distant third network, invited two effete pundits on opposite extremes of the political spectrum, William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal, to square off in debate during the two presidential nominating conventions of 1968. With broadcast footage and talking head analysis, those debates come vividly to life, as the two highly articulate men cross the line of decorum and lose their cool. As the film convincingly argues, these debates marked the beginning of the end of objective TV news.
10. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl — The title lists the cast of characters of this genuinely funny teen-angst saga about high school senior Greg (Thomas Mann), who makes pun-based parodies of classic films with his pal, Earl (RJ Cycler). But Greg’s life is in for an emotional shake-up when his mother insists he spend time with his neighbor, a school acquaintance named Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who has been diagnosed with leukemia. Yes, it sounds like a mawkish disease-of-the-week movie, but director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon avoids all the inherent traps in this endearing, smart and smart-mouthed film that will bounce you back and forth between laughter and tears.