THE ELEVENTH ANNUAL BETTER-THAN LIST
>In 2015 more movies were released than ever (an average of a dozen a week). And while many of them offended one’s sense of truth, beauty, and politics, mainstream media (both conservative and liberal) promoted them nonetheless — as if only newness mattered, and not quality.
>Commerce smothered art in 2015, disguised as movie love. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t still excellent, satisfying films — the best, Queen and Country, released in early January by British master filmmaker John Boorman, remained unsurpassed. You could still have a good time going to movies in 2015, but it required discernment, personal taste, and political rigor. Thus, this year’s Better-Than List reminds filmgoers that in cinema as in politics, quality and integrity are more important than popularity. It’s never too late to vote for the better movies.
Queen and Country > The Force Awakens
>The visionary Boorman’s memoir/swan song recalls the roots of family, citizenship, and morality, all conveyed in cinematic mythology. The Disneyfied Star Wars replaced pop mythology with fascist marketing, deceiving viewers who are ignorant of the difference.
Güeros > The Hateful Eight
>Alonso Ruizpalacios’s mixed-race Mexico City college students search for their ethnic and cultural roots in the style of Sixties New Wave cinema, superior to Quentin Tarantino’s pointless mashup of spaghetti westerns and blaxploitation movies. By exploiting American racism, QT promotes it.
The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet > The Revenant
>Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s coming-of-age fable expresses an outsider’s affection for 20th-century Americana, while Alejandro González Iñárritu reduces the history of the American West to savagery — and Obama-era self-deprecation.
Fuck I love this uppity nigger
Love at First Fight > The Martian
>France’s Thomas Cailley updates the service comedy — social experiment in the military viewed as Millennial screwball romance — but ultrahack Ridley Scott minimizes NASA space exploration as Matt Damon’s solipsism in outer space.
Creed > Straight Outta Compton
>Ryan Coogler reenergizes pop ethnography and Sylvester Stallone’s bootstrap boxing franchise, reasserting that All Lives Matter because all are connected. But F. Gary Gray’s bio-pic about the hip-hop group N.W.A. panders to current social cynicism and valorizes hip-hop culture’s most noxious historical episode.
The Green Inferno and Knock Knock > Mad Max: Fury Road
>Eli Roth’s two-fer made him the year’s wittiest political filmmaker, reviving low-grade genres as social satire — the opposite of George Miller’s craven, violent, utterly mindless spectacular.
The Stanford Prison Experiment > The Big Short and Spotlight
>Kyle Patrick Alvarez experiments with the power dynamics of masculinity, while Adam McKay and Tom McCarthy both ignore race and gender components in films that celebrate white professional-class privilege (via stock-market arrogance and anti-Catholic journalism). Alvarez’s compelling, watchable actors contrast with McKay & McCarthy’s miserably dull all-celeb casts.
Black Souls > Black Mass
>An authentic Mafia critique from Italy’s Francesco Munzi surpasses Scott Cooper and Johnny Depp’s mob-monster Whitey Bulger film. The crime movie Scorsese cannot make vs. the movie Scorsese has made ad nauseam.
>>64624303
Get off his dick op
Macbeth > The Force Awakens*
>Justin Kurzel uses Shakespeare to envision a metaphor for modern political nihilism, a moving, classical reminder of what has been lost to Star Wars infantilism.
>* Yes, Star Wars again. Its menace is no phantom.
In the Name of My Daughter > Carol
>André Téchiné’s family saga goes beyond modish sexual transgression through deep insight into class ambition. Todd Haynes’s dull lesbian melodrama endorses the cliché of 1950s repression (while still favoring the dominant bourgeoisie) to make today’s political correctness seem “smart.”
Sicario > Bridge of Spies
>Denis Villeneuve explores the moral parameters of the U.S. drug wars while Steven Spielberg plays moral-equivalency games with Cold War history. Visionary boldness vs. visionary smugness.
Horse Money > Timbuktu and Arabian Nights
>Portugal’s Pedro Costa owns up to colonial debt in an emotional, visually arresting art film. He humanizes the personal cost of Europe’s immigrant debacle, while Mauritania’s Abderrahmane Sissako, in Timbuktu, panders to jihadist clichés and liberal guilt. Meanwhile, Miguel Gomes’s trilogy, Arabian Nights, reveals Portugal’s (Europe’s) capitulation to G8 and ISIL narratives.
La Sapienza > Ex Machina
>Expat American Eugène Green’s Western-heritage drama, delighting in the ethics of classical architecture, perfectly contrasts with Alex Garland’s juvenile rehash of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Adult sophistication vs. teenage sci-fi misogyny.
Appropriate Behavior > Trainwreck
>Desiree Akhaven’s bisexual-identity farce (the year’s most original comedy) was ignored by mainstream-media acclaim for Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer’s hetero-skank privilege.
The New Girlfriend > The Danish Girl
>François Ozon spiritually redeems sexual dysfunction, but Tom Hooper settles for a ghoulish, politically correct tearjerker. Compassion vs. freakdom.
Joy > Steve Jobs
>David O. Russell puts a human face on capitalism in a bio-pic that’s really an American social comedy — the opposite of Danny Boyle’s babbly hagiography, which deifies and sentimentalizes corporate fascism.
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence > Anomalisa
>In several powerful tableaux, Sweden’s Roy Andersson connects personal anxiety to historical anxiety, while Charlie Kaufman pampers faux existentialism with zombie puppets.
Furious 7 > It Follows
>James Wan’s populist sequel in the Fast & Furious franchise celebrates E Pluribus Unum brotherhood, but David Robert Mitchell’s Detroit-set ruin porn and scaredy-pants narcissism result in the year’s crummiest thriller.
>>64624419
>Its menace is no phantom.
:^)
Also I had no idea he was writing for NRO...
>>64624376
I agree with everything except his woefully inadequate appraisal of Fury Road.
Green Inferno and Knock Knock were trash. Entertaining trash, but trash nonetheless.
>>64624456
>while Charlie Kaufman pampers faux existentialism with zombie puppets
>>64624456
>Furious 7 > It Follows
hahaha these movies have nothing in common
>>64624456
>Critic with the balls to call out Ex Machina for the empty, derivative 'babby's first hard sci-fi' shitfest that it was
I like this guy.
He's full of shit comparing movies that are completely different in nearly every way.
>Horse Money > Timbuktu and Arabian Nights
There is literally nothing similar about all three.
>The Green Inferno and Knock Knock > Mad Max: Fury Road
And this is just wrong.
>>64624456
>A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence > Anomalisa
Why put those two films up against one another?
>John Boorman
>still alive
woah
Armond is entertaining to read, but often he's trying too hard.
I'm a bit surprised Armond didn't like Bridge of Spies considering he'll fellate most things Spielberg makes.
>>64624984
Bridge of Spies was a bridge too far for him. Even he was dismayed at his reaction.
>>64624984
Armond can't handle any negative portrayals of the US military or government agencies. I can just imagine him losing his spaghetti at the point where they make direct parallels between the CIA and the KGB.
I'm not kidding by the way. Any anti-war movie he calls smug liberal pandering, look it up. Even shit like Zero Dark Thirty he calls out for daring to show the CIA as anything other then our great protectors.
these look fake af
>>64624337
>The Disneyfied Star Wars replaced pop mythology with fascist marketing
godayum that nigga's based
>>64624376
>ultrahack Ridley Scott
>Güeros > The Hateful Eight
>The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet > The Revenant
>Creed > Straight Outta Compton
>The Stanford Prison Experiment > The Big Short and Spotlight
>In the Name of My Daughter > Carol
>Horse Money > Timbuktu and Arabian Nights
>A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence > Anomalisa
>And while many of them offended one’s sense of truth, beauty, and politics, mainstream media (both conservative and liberal) promoted them nonetheless — as if only newness mattered, and not quality.
I love you Armond
>>64626901
i don't know what emotion this image is conveying
>>64624456
>>James Wan’s populist sequel in the Fast & Furious franchise celebrates E Pluribus Unum brotherhood, but David Robert Mitchell’s Detroit-set ruin porn and scaredy-pants narcissism result in the year’s crummiest thriller.
What the fuck do these have to do with each other?
>>64624303
>And while many of them offended one’s sense of truth, beauty, and politics
Hate it when bad writers do this. What he means is "while many of them offended my sense of truth, beauty, and politics"
>>64626483
I really can't comprehend this mindset from any intelligent person. Blind devotion of any kind is a sign of poor judgement and ignorance
>Creed is Armond approved
I need to see it now, with my wife's black son and his bull.
>>64624376
>The Green Inferno and Knock Knock > Mad Max: Fury Road
I'm not even a Mad Cuck fan but holy shit
>>64624376
>Black Souls
Havent heard of this, sounds good
>no Jurassic World
Is Owen no longer in Armond's spank bank?
>>64624337
>>64624376
>>64624419
>>64624456
How can one man be so fucking right? Aside from Mad Max (which is 6/10 not 0/10 like he depicts it) he's spot on pointing out good films and trashing pretentious plebbit bait like The Danish Girl and Anomalisa.
Did he like Mistress America?
>>64628648
I'm pretty sure Armond hates everything with Gen Xers out of spite.
>tfw Armond would be irrelevant if he was white
>>64624303
>>64624376
>>64624337
somehow the gayness and blackness cancel each other out and you end up with a near flawless understanding of film
>>64628834
He's one of the few reviewers worth listening to today.
And even better is he triggers the redditors on this site by pointing out what artistically bankrupt trash their space, capeshit and faux "indie" movies are
