As always, my list of cinematic lost causes for this year consists of the type of movies that the commercial Hollywood industry has turned its back on—indies, documentaries, and overlooked gems that failed to attract audiences to the theaters. What is different this year is the number of medium-budgeted films or star-driven dramas on the list that the studios, distributors, and exhibitors did not support with sufficient marketing, distribution, or screens.
Medium-sized Hollywood films and the star-driven dramas are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Since the turn of the millennium, studios have opted to make fewer films and to throw their considerable resources at blockbusters, assuming that large investments will equal large returns. Projects that are not blockbusters, tent poles, or part of franchises, such as dramas, character-driven comedies, and mystery thrillers, are not getting studio support. Medium-sized films, which tend to offer a diversity of content, are more likely to appeal to adult audiences—a group Hollywood continues to ignore as it panders to adolescent males.
With the increase in vapid blockbusters by hacks who curry favor with the studios, the caliber of Hollywood filmmaking continues to decline. An entire generation of filmmakers who thrived in the 1980s and 1990s—Walter Hill, David Lynch, Susan Seidelman, Carl Franklin, Martha Coolidge—no longer make films. Auteur cinema is all but gone in Hollywood.
The films on this list were overlooked or under-marketed at the time of their theatrical release. Most them are currently available for home viewing and deserve a second look and more thoughtful consideration. It is not without irony that my list of overlooked films appears just after the opening weekend of this year’s biggest behemoth blockbuster.
1, 2 and 3: Kill the Messenger, Truth and Spotlight. This year saw the release of several films about real-life investigative journalists who exposed corruption in the ranks of our trusted social institutions, including the recently released Spotlight. This well-acted and well-written drama reveals the massive cover-up by the Boston Archdiocese regarding priests who molested children. Spotlight has garnered considerable acclaim along with several awards and nominations, so it is not an overlooked film, but it serves as a cap to this year’s fixation on heroic journalists.
Truth chronicles the events that ended Dan Rather’s career as a CBS anchorman and destroyed the reputation of producer Mary Mapes. Robert Redford portrays Rather with credibility and conviction, though Cate Blanchett anchors the film as Mapes. In 2004, an episode of 60 Minutes II alleged that family connections enabled George W. Bush to avoid the draft during Vietnam by serving in the Texas Air National Guard. The allegations hinged on documents that supposedly proved Bush was lax in his duties during his Guard service and, at one point, was even missing. However, Mapes failed to authenticate the documents, and she was fired. After a stellar, one-of-a-kind career, Rather stepped down as anchorman. Truth doesn’t try to resolve the mystery of the missing Bush. Instead, it reveals that our social institutions—the military, journalism, the government—fail us when those in high places (the corporate suits of CBS, politicians) will stop at nothing to protect their personal interests.
The retaliation against Mapes and her crew is similar to the downfall of San Jose Mercury News journalist Gary Webb after he discovered that the CIA used cocaine smuggling to fund Nicaraguan rebels. Webb’s story is told in Kill the Messenger, starring Jeremy Renner as the unfortunate journalist who was destroyed by forces angered by his revelations. Recognizing that the major studios rarely make more than two small dramas per year, but will produce one comic-book film after another, Renner started his own company to develop material that – as he said in an interview – will make him actually want to go to work. Kill the Messenger was the first film produced by his company, but it was not released outside of the major markets.
4 Amy. This remarkably crafted documentary is about the tragic life and short career of jazz singer Amy Winehouse. Amy is not done in the facile History-channel style; nor does it take the Ken Burns approach. There are no talking head interviews with family, friends, or experts, or a voice-over narrator to tell you how to interpret her life. The documentary is edited together completely from found footage – home video by her best friends, professional footage from her record label, fan footage of concerts. No new footage was shot, no filmed interviews footage were used, though comments from friends and associates can be heard over the footage. The result is a story that is intimate and heartbreaking.
5 Clouds of Sils Maria. I like the work of filmmaker Olivier Assayas, who directed Carlos, the best film I have ever seen about terrorism. In this film, Juliette Binoche stars as an international movie star who travels with a loyal young American assistant, played by Kristen Stewart. Binoche’s character owes her stardom to a role she played 20 years earlier in which she portrayed a callous young girl who drives a vulnerable older woman to suicide. Binoche is startled when someone offers her the role of the older woman in an update of the play. In prepping for the project, the parallels between the play and Binoche’s relationship with Stewart become apparent, creating tension. The revelation in this film is the performance by Stewart, whose career was both made and broken by the Twilight series. After suffering the slings and arrows of being in a teen-driven franchise, she seems to be selecting projects that challenge her.
6 Wild Tales . Directed by Argentinian filmmaker Damian Szifron, Wild Tales is an anthology of six short films related by the theme of revenge. When someone wrongs us, and we feel powerless to stop them, most of us steam in our frustrations and anxieties. Not the protagonists in Wild Tales; they explode with an uncontrollable desire for revenge –regardless of the consequences. The result is biting, pitch-black humor that just skirts the grotesque. I could tell you that this film was nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Film last year– instead I’m just going to say, “Sex and violence!”
7 Sicario. This police procedural drama takes place along the U.S. -Mexican border, where the brutal dealings and psychotic practices of the powerful drug cartels threaten to bleed across the Rio Grande into America. Emily Blunt stars as Kate Macer, an FBI field agent who is plunged into the fight against the cartels when she accepts a special assignment. She joins a shadowy unit headed by Matt Graver, played by Josh Brolin, an unsung actor of great range and charisma. From the moment Kate crosses the border into the nightmare that is Juarez, Mexico, she is in over her head. Kate represents the viewer’s narrative point of view. We know only what she knows; we discover the atrocities of the cartels as Kate discovers them. Like Kate, we are in shock as she encounters one barbarism after another, including headless, mutilated corpses hanging from highway overpasses in broad daylight—a warning from the cartels not to cross them. It’s a world where mysterious men like Alejandro, played with relentless intensity by Benicio Del Toro, are hired as advisors by the U.S. and allowed to operate with vicious impunity. Though Del Toro speaks very few lines, he owns the screen. Directed by Canadian Denis Villeneuve, Sicario is about the impact of trafficking in violence on the human psyche.
8 Phoenix is a German-made film set during post WWII Germany starring Nina Hoss as a concentration camp survivor named Nelly. Everyone believes that Nelly has died in Auschwitz, but she is very much alive, despite being badly disfigured from a gunshot wound to the face. Nelly’s friend, Lene, takes her to a clinic for reconstructive surgery. The doctor tells Nelly that she can choose any sort of look she wants for the reconstruction of her face, but Nelly insists that she wants to look just like she did before the war, when she was a popular singer married to a handsome piano player named Johnny. Few German films have explored the immediate post WWII era, and it is impossible not to see the characters’ actions as representations of German history. The doctor who encourages Nelly to pick a brand new face represents those Germans too eager for everyone to put the past behind them—even those literally and figuratively scarred by war. You could say they wanted to put a new face on Germany and just move on. But, Nelly’s insistence on keeping her old face—at least as much as possible—is also a bad idea, because you can never reclaim a lost past. A horrific social upheaval like war shakes a country out of its very foundations, especially after an event like the Holocaust. Like Nelly, Germany’s former identity was lost forever. Don’t miss this moody, thoughtful, and beautifully composed film.
9 The Water Diviner. Russell Crowe directed and starred in this period drama about an Australian rancher who loses three sons in the Battle of Gallipoli during WWI. On April 25, 1915, Allied troops consisting of English, French, Canadian, and ANZAC soldiers landed on the Gallipoli peninsula (now Turkey). ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The ANZAC troops, who were experiencing their first major campaign, landed on a part of the peninsula that consisted of beach and high cliffs. The Turks entrenched themselves on the cliffs pouring artillery and machine gun fire down onto them. There’s a lingering belief that ANZACS were sacrificed by the class-conscious British leadership, who knew the initial wave of troops landing on Gallipoli would bear the brunt of casualties. The Gallipoli campaign was one of the first international events that saw Australians taking part as Australians. It became a defining moment in the country’s history.
So, the fact that Crowe’s character has lost all of his sons at Gallipoli is more than a plot point—his loss is a micro symbol for the loss of thousands of ANZAC troops who sacrificed their lives for an uncaring British government in a war not of their making. The film commemorates those buried in mass, unmarked graves—the nameless as they are called in the film—but it is also about reconciliation. I thought the film was unfairly reviewed at the time of release, with reviewers more interested in taking pot shots at Crowe than actually considering the strengths and weaknesses of the movie.
10 Hitchcock/Truffaut. The title of this documentary is also the name of a book, originally published in 1966, in which Alfred Hitchcock discussed his films with French New Wave director Francois Truffaut. This documentary is by film critic Kent Jones, who corrals commentaries from a who’s who of today’s finest directors (people like Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Richard Linklater, and Wes Anderson). The directors’ statements are pulled together into a swiftly paced but thoroughly illuminating overview of both the legacy of the book as well as the Master of Suspense’s career in general. Amply illustrated with well-chosen clips, from 1926’s he Lodger through 1976’s Family Plot, this is crucial viewing for Hitchcock — and movie — fans.