Best of 2015

Steve Jobs

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Steve Jobs
  • IMDb: link

Steve JobsSteve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) has been the subject of several movies and documentaries in recent years. Aaron Sorkin‘s screenplay, based on the book by Walter Isaacson, isn’t your typical biopic. Rather than a look through the man’s life, Steve Jobs is instead a series of conversations between Jobs and the people closest to him behind-the-scenes at various product launches. Given how much has been covered about the man’s career, life, and personality the film’s choice skips over well-covered events such as the creation of Apple computers to focus on Jobs’ continual struggle to deal with the people closest to him.

Filling in gaps with montages and dialogue, the script focuses in on the Apple Macintosh launch in 1984, the NeXT Computer launch in 1988 following Jobs’ removal from Apple, and the launch of the iMac following Jobs return to Apple in 1998. Through these events we see Jobs’ relationships with longtime assistant Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), and Chrisann (Katherine Waterston) and Lisa Brennan (played by Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine).

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Shaun the Sheep Movie

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Shaun the Sheep Movie
  • IMDb: link

Shaun the Sheep MovieThe British stop-motion animated television series gets its own movie when a little farmyard tomfoolery leads to the Farmer (John Sparkes) getting lost in the big city with a nasty case of amnesia. So it falls on Shaun (Justin Fletcher) the sheep and the rest of his flock to find their missing friend and bring him home.

Shaun the Sheep Movie is a throwback screwball comedy as Shaun and his friends scour the city for the Farmer in ridiculous costumes, cause a break-out of an animal control center, and generally cause all kinds of mischief wherever they go. Completely dialogue free, the movie’s humor doesn’t miss a beat or need to rely on any form of exposition to tell its story. Marvelously animated, the film is a joy to behold.

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Sicario

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Sicario
  • IMDb: link

SicarioHow far are you willing to go to achieve justice? At want point do you draw a line you will never cross? And what happens when you are forced over that line by forces beyond you control? These questions are all at the heart of Sicario, a drama from director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan that stars Emily Blunt as idealistic FBI Agent Kate Macer stationed in Arizona. Kate volunteers for a joint DEA task force after the discovery of dozens of corpses in Chandler, Arizona, all tied to a Mexican drug cartel in a house rigged with explosives that takes the lives of two fellow officers.

Completely unaware of what she’s getting herself into, and lied from the beginning by the head of the task force (Josh Brolin) and his mysterious consultant (Benicio Del Toro), Kate follows the pair down the rabbit hole leading to a kidnapping in Juarez, Mexico (where she has no authority) and the torture of Mexican citizen, as she struggles with the end game of finding drug lord Fausto Alarcón (Julio Cedillo). Along the way she will discover the power of the Mexican cartel and their reach which extends into law enforcement on her side of the border.

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Ex Machina

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Ex Machina
  • IMDb: link

Ex Machina

In creating a film about artificial life that is almost entirely driven on emotion rather than logic writer/director Alex Garland has beautifully crafted one of the most memorable movies in recent years. The film begins with a computer programmer winning an exclusive trip to the secluded home of the company’s CEO who has far more going on than anyone associated with the world’s largest search engine could possibly guess.

In the hidden compound Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) comes face-to-face not only with his boss, the alcoholic self-absorbed Nathan (Oscar Isaac), but also Nathan’s creation Ava (Alicia Vikander) who Caleb was handpicked to help Nathan test whether or not she is indeed the world’s first true Artificial Intelligence. Stranded miles from civilization in these odd surroundings, Caleb’s view on sentience and reality will be tested as Ava proves to be everything Nathan promises, and more.

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Inside Out

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Inside Out
  • IMDb: link

Inside Out

What’s going on in an 11 year-old girl’s head? That’s the question writers/directors Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen seek to answer in Inside Out where young Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is uprooted from her home in Minnesota to San Fransisco without warning causing chaos both inside her mind and in the real world.

In a summer loaded with sequels, franchises, and reboots, Inside Out stands out as refreshingly original. Inside Riley’s mind we meet the aptly named Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) who work in concert to manage Riley’s reaction to any possible situation. When Joy and Sadness get lost in the outer region of Riley’s mind during the most tumultuous time of the young girl’s life Riley’s happiness is put at risk leaving the other three emotions to try their best to keep her on track.

The filmmakers allow the emotions to humorously interact, playing to the younger audience, while using the concept to delve into deeper themes about how a person’s mind works and what happens when something goes wrong.

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