2015 Movies: The Year
in Review
This year, instead of just doing a top ten best of the year,
I’m going to break down the entire year by month and look at the movies that
stand out from each, whether good or bad or surprising or disappointing. Let’s
begin!
JANUARY
While there were some carry overs from 2014 that received
limited releases in order to qualify for last year’s Oscars, generally
speaking, January was another abysmal month, proving once again why it’s often
considered the dumping ground of the year. The big stand out was American Sniper, which built up a lot of
buzz in December, then opened wide and broke all January records. As far as new
movies go, pathetic attempts at horror flicks like Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death and just plain bogus movies like Mortdecai, another dud on Johnny Depp’s
resume (more on him in September), as well as The Loft, Blackhat, The Boy Next Door, and the much-loathed
threequel Taken 3 (A.K.A Tak3n). The gem amongst all the turds
was Paddington, which had already
opened in the UK, but had its wide release in America on January 16th,
and while I have yet to still see it, I’ve heard nothing but great things about
it.
FEBRUARY
Once again, another disappointing month of mostly
nothingness, save for one highlight. The long-delayed Jupiter Ascending from the Wachowskis will surely be among many top
ten worst of the year lists, the Jeff Bridges-led fantasy adventure Seventh Son was almost completely
forgotten, and another shoddy horror flick, The
Lazarus Effect (featuring a surprisingly talented cast including Olivia
Wilde and Donald Glover), came and went. The biggest opening from a financial
standpoint was the long-awaited book-to-screen adaptation of the Twilight fanfiction Fifty Shades of Grey, which raked in millions of undeserving dollars
despite horrendous reviews that were forecasted long ago. A few films that
weren’t huge hits but did turn out better than many were expecting include the
sports drama MacFarland U.S.A, the
heist thriller Focus, and the return
of SpongeBob SquarePants, and while SpongeBob carried over into March with
pretty good reviews and did well at the box office, the big hit of February was
Kingsman: The Secret Service, the
Matthew Vaughn-directed graphic novel adaptation that received plenty of praise
from critics and was a juggernaut that remained in the top ten for many weeks.
MARCH
The third month of 2015 rolled up and along with it, one of
my most anticipated of the year, Chappie,
from the director of District 9 and Elysium. I was looking forward to
checking this one out with some friends, but then the bad news hit: Chappie was crappy, said the critics. I
literally heard nothing but bad reviews; it seemed no one had a good thing to
say about it, and as a result, nobody I knew wanted to see it any longer, so I
skipped it, and have still yet to check it out. Most of the March movies
weren’t in my realm of interest, but Disney’s live-action retelling of Cinderella was a hit with critics and
audiences alike, making me even more excited for next year’s Jungle Book (which I thought was coming
out this year when I did my most anticipated of 2015 last December). The second
installment in the Divergent series
also did well, and Liam Neeson made a slight recovery from Taken 3 with another action flick, Run All Night, which I still haven’t checked out but probably will
once it comes on Netflix. The throwback to 80’s slasher flicks It Follows received a limited release,
and while I liked it for the most part, I think critics overpraised it.
APRIL
Just like last year with Captain
America: The Winter Soldier, summer started in April once again (it’ll
start even earlier next year with Batman v. Superman in March) and Furious 7, which was delayed because of
Paul Walker’s untimely death in 2013, opened huge, beating the April opening
record set in 2014 by The Winter Soldier.
While everyone seemed to agree it wasn’t quite as good as the previous two
installments, it still offered lots of high octane action and retired Paul
Walker’s character in an emotional and appropriate way. The rest of the month
didn’t have any big openers, with features like The Age of Adaline and Paul
Blart: Mall Cop 2 barely making any waves. A limited release film that I
had seen a trailer for a couple months earlier and heard nothing but positive
things about was Ex Machina, which
seemed like it might end up being another It
Follows, where it gets an overwhelmingly positive critical response, but
doesn’t turn out to be all that great. I was glad to discover Ex Machina really was that great, and is still one of my favourites of the year.
MAY
The first official month of the summer movie season opened
with one of the most anticipated sequels amid a year of many anticipated
sequels, and that was Avengers: Age of
Ultron. It turned out expectations were a little too high for Joss Whedon’s
follow-up to his mega-hit from 2012. While still a funny and action-packed
superhero flick, it didn’t seem to fulfill the promises of furthering the
characters like The Winter Soldier
did or deliver on the villain of Ultron being the next Loki. While it still
made tons of money, it wasn’t near the level of the original’s success.
But then, a couple weeks later, another sequel came out, a
sequel to a film series I was not familiar with when 2015 began. I saw a
trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road
sometime in January or February, and it looked intriguing enough to make me go
out and buy the original three Mad Max
movies and watch them before going to see Fury
Road. I was not expecting the level of awesome that it delivered. While it
couldn’t beat out Pitch Perfect 2 at
the box office, it still did well enough to be considered successful
financially, but with an astounding critical response (currently holding a 97 %
on Rotten Tomatoes), it seems to be in just about everyone’s top ten for the
year.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, some disappointments
from May include Tomorrowland, Hot Pursuit, and (not that anyone was
expecting much) the Poltergeist
remake. San Andreas, a disaster movie
starring The Rock, didn’t get much critical love, but held its own during this
busy time of exceptional action movies.
JUNE
June kicked things off with the Entourage movie, following up the show, which I haven’t watched, so
I had no interest in it, but it sounds like fans of the show enjoyed it. The
third installment in the Insidious
franchise continued its streak of success, and Spy, the Melissa McCarthy action-comedy directed by Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, also did
very well, and is among the very few good comedies of the year (opening at the
end of June was Ted 2, which didn’t
do nearly as well as the first Ted,
though many have said it’s as funny if not funnier than the original. I have
yet to see it).
Back from extinction was Jurassic
World, which was on my most anticipated of the year, but it was also the
one I was most nervous about, because I’m such a humungous fan of Jurassic Park, and many of the things I
had seen in the trailers looked pretty lousy. I was very pleased with how Jurassic World turned out, but probably
not as pleased as Universal Studios was when it broke the opening weekend
record and climbed to the number three position of highest-grossing films.
While not a particularly brilliant sequel, it was still fun and paid homage to
the original, and obviously pleased many other fans as well.
While Jurassic World
crushed in its first week, opening alongside it was Pixar’s Inside Out, which almost got
overshadowed by the returning dinos, but Inside
Out also broke a record: becoming the highest-opening original movie (not a
sequel or remake or based on a book) of all-time. It has also been hailed as
Pixar’s best in years.
JULY
Another attempt at a franchise resurgence was Terminator Genisys, also among my most
anticipated of the year, but unlike Jurassic
World, Genisys failed to please
the masses. Though it has a few supporters, fans generally found it was a weak
attempt to bring Schwarzenegger back into the story, and the time travel
elements made it so convoluted, it quit making sense altogether by the end.
While it did poorly in America, overseas it brought in more revenue and
eventually broke even, though I doubt the studios’ plans for a trilogy are
going to remain the same after the cold reaction to the latest installment. I
was among those who disliked it, and it seems obvious to me that this
once-proud franchise should just stay dead, rather than on life support.
On the bright side, the Steven Spielberg classic Jaws celebrated its 40th
anniversary this year by being re-released in select theaters, and I was lucky
enough to catch a screening of it at my local cinema. Jaws is among my top ten favourite movies of all-time, and it’s
been on my list of movies I’ve wanted to see at a theater for a long time. Though
it’s probably the 15th time or more I’ve seen it, it was the best
viewing of all.
2015 wasn’t a great year for animated films, and the spinoff
Minions ended up being a
disappointment for most people over the age of ten, but it didn’t stop the
movie from making a killing over the summer and helping contribute to
Universal’s one-of-a-kind successful year. Family films in general had a tough
time competing against Jurassic World,
which dominated the month of June and continued to do huge business for the
rest of the summer. Pixels, Adam
Sandler’s 80’s-arcade-alien-invasion-action-comedy (say that ten times fast)
flopped, and the other two comedy offerings for the month were the Vacation reboot, which failed to satisfy
fans of the Chevy Chase originals, and Trainwreck,
which actually did very well and launched Amy Schumer to a new level of
stardom.
Marvel’s Ant-Man
seemed poised to fail, with the general disappointment of Age of Ultron in May and the turmoil of original writer/director
Edgar Wright leaving the project just over a year earlier, and the sudden
takeover by lesser known director Peyton Reid. But much to everyone’s surprise
and enjoyment, Ant-Man turned out to
be among the funniest superhero movies yet, and while I didn’t totally love it,
nor did I find it as original as some, it still did well critically and
financially—much better than a movie called Ant-Man
could have ended up.
And finally in July, the heart of the summer movie season,
we got the fifth installment in the Tom Cruise-led Mission: Impossible series, which was originally supposed to come
out in December, but somehow, was moved up a whole five months, which is almost
unheard of—usually blockbusters like that get delayed. As it turned out, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation was
another tremendous hit for the franchise—matching the critical reception of
Cruise’s previous summer flick, Edge of
Tomorrow, but doing much better financially—and continued to be among the
top earning movies for the following month.
AUGUST
As opposed to the successful earlier half of summer, the
latter half was not quite so bright. The month got a rocky start with the
release of Fantastic Four (A.K.A Fant4stic), Fox’s attempt to reboot
Marvel’s first superhero family, but lo and behold, it tanked harder than
anyone was expecting, outright bombing at the box office and being loathed by
critics even more than the previous iterations. A lower profile thriller by
Joel Edgerton, The Gift, came out to
much critical acclaim the same weekend—another hit for Blumhouse productions.
Blumhouse also released Sinister 2 a
couple weeks later, and while it was panned by critics, it still made money
thanks to a low budget, marking another success for the production company. The Man From U.N.C.L.E didn’t make much
of a splash, but along with Mission:
Impossible, hung on through the month in the top ten. The N.W.A hip hop
biopic Straight Outta Compton had a
huge opening, marking the biggest opening weekend for a musically-based biopic,
and becoming another big hit for Universal, making it one of the few new
releases in August to do well. Some big bombs include the stoner action flick American Ultra, the feeble attempt to
reboot the Hitman franchise with Hitman: Agent 47, and We Are Your Friends, with Zac Efron. No,
Zac, we are not your friends.
SEPTEMBER
The beginning of fall saw the release of a few stragglers
from the summer and the beginning of award season material. The Transporter Refuelled failed to
refuel the Transporter franchise,
being given so-bad-its-good status by some critics. M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit, which was being watched
closely by film fans because it seemed like it might be the director’s return
to form, became a considerable success, and continued to do business into
October thanks to its horror-comedy combo. While it wasn’t viewed as a
fantastic film, the general consensus seems to be it is far superior to
anything Shyamalan has done in the past decade. Johnny Depp actually turned in
a great performance for a change in Black
Mass, and while the film wasn’t beloved, Depp was lauded for portraying the
mob boss Whitey Bolger, and it was considered a return to form for the actor.
The mountain climbing adventure Everest opened
huge in IMAX, but didn’t have as successful of a run in standard theaters. Hotel Transylvania 2 did much better
than Adam Sandler’s earlier summer release Pixels,
and like The Visit, continued to do
well into October. Sicario was one of
the first films to attract serious Oscar buzz, for directing (Denis Villeneuve)
acting (Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro) and cinematography (Roger Deakins). I
missed seeing it, but plan to A.S.A.P, along with Black Mass.
OCTOBER
Things started strong with The Martian opening to unprecedented critical acclaim and big box
office bucks. I overlooked this movie when constructing my top ten most
anticipated of the year, actually forgetting that it was due for release in
2015, and though the trailer seemed to give away most of the movie, it still
turned out better than I was expecting—a funny, exciting, convincing, and
entertaining story all around.
The following week didn’t have as strong of a showing. The Walk expanded from just IMAX to all
theaters, but like Everest, failed to
capture the same success it had with just the IMAX release. I wanted to see
this one in 3D, because it apparently has some of the best 3D in a long time,
but the story of how a guy walked between the world trade center buildings
didn’t seem to entice that many people, as evidenced by its box office. The
Peter Pan origin story Pan was panned
by critics, and was another of the year’s biggest bombs. Another film not many
people saw but is being heavily considered for awards is Steve Jobs, which had had a successful limited run prior to its
wide release, but not a lot of people ended up seeing it. The Martian instead continued its successful run, retaining the top
spot at the box office for a second weekend.
Week three had a strange mix of movies, with the Steven
Spielberg-directed cold war drama Bridge
of Spies, the Guillermo del Toro-directed gothic romance Crimson Peak, and the family friendly Goosebumps, based on the popular
children’s book series. I had no hope for Goosebumps,
but surprisingly, it did pretty well and most critics saw it for what it was: a
fun kids movie with some stuff for the parents in there, too. Bridge of Spies became another awards
contender, and Crimson Peak, which
was in my top ten most anticipated of the year, disappointed both critically
and financially. While I didn’t think it was terrible, it definitely wasn’t
what I was hoping it would be, and it seemed to split viewer’s opinions, some
calling it brilliant, others calling it terrible. I thought there was a lot of
dumb stuff and a lot of boring parts, but the ending picked up, the acting was
pretty good, and the production design was great. It was definitely a mixed
bag, and the marketing didn’t help, leaving people confused, and it ultimately
didn’t do much at the box office. Once again, The Martian came out on top.
Another of my all-time favourite movies celebrated an
anniversary, and a truly unique event: the future date Marty McFly and Doc
Brown travelled to in Back to the Future
Part II, October 21st, 2015, came to pass! I got a chance to see
“Back to the Future: The Fan Event”,
and experience all three movies back-to-back-to-back, surely going down as one
of the best theater experiences of my life.
The rest of October didn’t feature any new releases that
interested me. The only thing I found noteworthy was how extremely bad Jem and the Holograms did. The
supposedly final entry in the Paranormal
Activity series happened (I hated the first and haven’t watched any others)
but from the sounds of all the hilariously upset reviews I saw/read, it should
remain the final one. In the end, The
Martian won the Halloween month.
NOVEMBER
The month before the release of the most anticipated movie
of the year offered enough to keep everyone entertained before its big release.
One of the biggest surprises was The
Peanuts Movie, which kept true to the Peanuts everyone knew, but
successfully converted it to 3D animation and made it accessible to a new
generation. While I missed out on seeing it at the theater, I will definitely
be checking it out on blu ray. Opening alongside it was the latest James Bond
adventure Spectre, which ended up
disappointing fans of the franchise, failing to live up to the previous entry Skyfall or the first of the Daniel Craig
Bond’s, Casino Royale. It wasn’t
downright loathed like Quantum of Solace
and still opened big, but it was definitely considered a step down, and might be
the last outing for Craig as 007. The
Hunger Games franchise came to a close, though didn’t bring in the same
heaps of dough like the previous entries, and was considered “a flop”, because
y’know, 600 million is not that great apparently.
Seth Rogen and co. delivered the stoner Christmas comedy The Night Before, which I wanted to see
but missed, and from what I heard it was a fun holiday-themed flick, but
nothing too special. Pixar released The
Good Dinosaur, their second film this year, and while kids enjoyed it,
adults didn’t express the same sort of emotional reaction they had to Inside Out. Opening alongside it was Victor Frankenstein, screenwriter Max
Landis’ second bomb of the year (first being American Ultra), but the real champ of the month was Creed, the seventh movie in the Rocky franchise that spun off from the
original series to tell the story of Apollo Creed’s son, who trains with Rocky
Balboa. Viewers not familiar with the original Rocky movies had no trouble getting into this new story, and fans
of the originals were thrilled to see Sylvester Stallone return, arguably
better than he’s ever been. I had hope Creed
would turn out alright, but I wasn’t expecting it to be as great as it ended up
being. It easily became one of my top five faves of the year.
DECEMBER
A movie that came on my radar after rave reviews of footage
screened at Comicon was Krampus, a
holiday horror a la Gremlins that
harkened back to 80’s movies and offered practical effects rather than lame
cgi. While it didn’t quite live up to my expectations, Krampus ended up being a lot of fun, and the reception in general was
considerably more positive than nearly every other horror movie from this year.
I don’t usually say this, but I actually hope it gets a sequel and becomes an
established franchise, because horror fans need a good series like Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street, not like a
pathetic Saw or Paranormal Activity series.
A movie I had been hoping to see in March was In the Heart
of the Sea, telling the true story that inspired Moby Dick, but it was delayed
to December only a couple weeks before its original release date. It had been
in my top ten most anticipated, and the delay had seemed like a strategy to
make it more of an awards contender, but despite excellent-looking trailers, it
ended up getting mixed-to-negative reviews. I still might go check it out at
the theater, though my excitement for the movie has dwindled.
After a year of ups and downs, the big moment came, the long
wait was over, and fans came out in droves to the theaters, lining up around
the blocks for Star Wars: The Force
Awakens, the seventh installment in the Star
Wars saga, the movie more eagerly anticipated than any other this year. Not
only did it shatter the opening weekend record set in June by Jurassic World, it is continuing to
demolish record after record even as I write this. Not only is it on the way to
dethroning Avatar as the highest
earning movie ever, it actually deserves it, because The Force Awakens lived up to all the hype and turned out excellent.
You can read my spoiler-free review and spoiler analysis on the previous page
of my blog.
2015 certainly went out with a bang, but a couple of my
other most anticipated for the year snuck in with limited releases: Quentin
Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, and The Revenant, starring Leonardo DiCaprio
and directed by Alejandro Iñárritu, director of last year’s Best Picture winner
Birdman (both are being viewed as
serious award contenders). Some other flicks opened over Christmas, such as the
football drama Concussion and the Point Break remake no one wanted, but
nothing could dethrone Star Wars as
the king of the box office. Oh yeah, and they made another Alvin and the Chipmunks, apparently.
That about wraps up 2015 at the movies! Tune in again soon
to see my look ahead to 2016, as well as my top ten most anticipated of 2016
and my top five favourite movies of 2015!
