The Films of 2015 so far: Our mid-year report

Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)

Mad Max: Fury Road feels like a miracle; similar to “the green place” MacGuffin that Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa is seeking in the film, it's a furtive oasis within a parched, CGI landscape. It's also full of contradictions: the plot is pared to the bone yet its world is bursting at the seams with ideas; the action feels non-stop but it’s peppered with elegiac grace notes; the characters say almost nothing but, like all good acting from the Robert Mitchum school, their eyes say everything. George Miller, a septuagenarian with the energy of a 20-year-old (another contradiction), has given us a kind of junkyard Wacky Races, a mad and beautiful thrill ride that leaves the rest of the year’s action films choking on its exhaust fumes. [Jamie Dunn]

Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Shaggy, colourful and silly in its rhythms, mournful of the hippie dream in the face of Nixon-era corruption and conformity in its story, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest is a stone groove you might have to rewatch before you can fully surf on its delicious, myriad sensations. Apparently a lot of people walked out of Inherent Vice. A world where people walk out of Inherent Vice is the world Inherent Vice warns us about. [Ian Mantgani]

Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)

Don’t let its nomination for Best Picture nomination at the Oscars give you the wrong idea: this student-teacher drama is no stodgy prestige pic. It’s the kind of bravura study in masochism that Hitchcock or De Palma might've cooked up. Simmons has never been better as the foul-mouth pedagogue who delivers skin-scalding putdowns to Miles Teller’s jazz drummer ingenue, but the real breakout is writer-director Damien Chazelle, whose camerawork and dialogue are as breakneck and thrilling as a Buddy Rich drum solo. [JD]

It Follows (David Robert Mitchell)

It's easy to spook us in the dark. The genius of David Robert Mitchell’s inventive shocker, in which a sexually transmitted curse haunts a group of dazed and confused teens, is that it’s equally adept at scaring us in the light of day, its gorgeous widescreen cinematography and audacious 360-degree pans putting its shapeshifting bogeyman on full display. That it all feels like a dream, from the eerily empty suburbs to the kids’ drowsy mood, also piles on the dread; when we’re dreaming, you see, we know our world can easily slip into nightmare. [JD]

Mommy (Xavier Dolan)

A family melodrama of bludgeoning intensity, Xavier Dolan’s elemental fifth feature charts the toxic yet often tender relationship between unhinged, violent teen Paul (Antoine-Olivier Pilon – astonishing) and his spiky if slightly more lucid mother Die (the equally fantastic Anne Dorval). Visually audacious – Dolan’s frame, initially 1:1 ratio, widens and tightens according to the volatility of the drama it houses – and relentlessly bold of theme and performance, Mommy vies with George Miller’s batshit chase opera Mad Max: Fury Road as the most ferocious cinematic experience of the year thus far. [Chris Fyvie]

Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)

In 2003, Tsai Ming-liang announced the death of cinema with Goodbye, Dragon Inn. However, his latest, Stray Dogs, distorts time and memory to singlehandedly resuscitate the medium he declared DOA over a decade ago. A masterpiece of social realism, this requiem for Taiwan's marginalised and displaced demonstrates the power of cinema to embody the spiritual dissonance of a society. Examining the definition of home, Tsai’s investigation into the poor’s right to their own city is a transcendental experience like no other. [Patrick Gamble]

Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu)

Riggan Thomson is a Hollywood has-been turned theatre thespian on a desperate quest to claw together a stage adaptation of Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. With an alcoholic egomaniac for a co-star, a recently rehabbed daughter for a PA and a nihilistic alter-ego whispering unsweet nothings in his ear, watching Riggan's attempt to hold his mind, his life and his play together simultaneously is like watching a man spinning plates – but all the plates are on fire and covered in bees. [Ross McIndoe]

Ex Machina (Alex Garland)

Brooding with iPod-white techno fear, Alex Garland’s behind-the-camera debut is as impressive as his earlier screenwritten efforts. Set in a luxury Scandinavian lodge – a pressure cooker of symmetrical interior design – Garland pits a lowly programmer against a tech billionaire and his artificially intelligent android, and steadily lets things come to the boil. Ex Machina is smart, tense, gorgeous, timely, and thought-provoking far beyond its running time. Plus, it boasts what will surely be 2015's best dance scene (sorry, Magic Mike XXL). [John Nugent]

Listen Up Philip (Alex Ross Perry)

An eloquent love letter for an era where writers dominated the cultural conversation, Alex Ross Perry’s acerbic literary comedy Listen Up Philip is like stepping back to a time where art was judged on merit rather than box office figures. Witty and delightfully sardonic, Perry’s dialogue feels like it’s been torn from the pages of an undiscovered Philip Roth novel, with this pastel-shaded New York comedy a refreshingly misanthropic alternative to the recent deluge of blithe indie comedies. [PG]

Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland)

Peter Strickland's follow-up to Berberian Sound Studio is like a sensual, intoxicating fragrance; a modern spritz of glorious kink with base notes of 70s European erotic á la Jess Franco. It’s at once deliciously sexy and interrogates the nature of sexual dominance, while meditating on the rhythm of butterflies’ wings. Beneath the stockings and silk is a tender love story and it’s only made more potent by the dizzying rapture found between Sidse Babett Knudsen's legs. [Ben Nicholson]

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Writers’ Individual Pics:

Jamie Dunn

1. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
2. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell)
3. While We’re Young (Noah Baumbach)
4. Phoenix (Christian Petzold)
5. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
6. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
7. Slow West (John Maclean)
8. Whiplash (Damian Chazelle)
9. The Overnight (Patrick Kack-Brice)
10. Les Combattants (Andy Goddard, Thomas Cailley)

Looking forward in the second half of 2015: Trainwrech (Judd Apatow), Carol (Todd Haynes), Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams)

Chris Fyvie

1. The Look of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer)
2. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)
4. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
5. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson)
6. Mommy (Xavier Dolan)
7. Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
8. Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund)
9. Blackhat (Michael Mann)
10. John Wick (Chad Stahelski, David Leitch)

Looking forward in the second half of 2015: Jane Got a Gun (Gavin O'Connor), Macbeth (Justin Kurzel), Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams)
Stinker of the year so far: Home (Tim Johnson)

Patrick Gamble

1. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
2. Mommy (Xavier Dolan)
3. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell)
4. Catch Me Daddy (Daniel Wolfe)
5. Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)
6. Listen Up Philip (Alex Ross Perry)
7. Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivia Assayas)
8. Kumiko the Treasure Hunter (David Zellner)
9. Girlhood (Celine Sciamma)
10. Maidan (Sergei Loznitsa)

Looking forward to in the second half of 2015: Arabian Nights Volume 1 (Miguel Gomes), Arabian Nights Volume 2 (Miguel Gomes), Arabian Nights Volume 3 (Miguel Gomes)
Stinker of the year so far: Wild (Jean-Marc Vallée)

Ian Mantgani

1. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson
2. American Sniper (Clint Eastwood)
3. Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako)
4. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell)
5. Listen Up Philip (Alex Ross Perry)
6. Dreamcatcher (Kim Longinotto)
7. The Falling (Carol Morley)
8. Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev)
9. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
10. Chappie (Neill Blomkamp)

Ross McIndoe

1. Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
2. The Boy and the World (Alê Abreu)
3. Ex Machina (Alex Garland)
4. Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)
5. Listen Up Philip (Alex Ross Perry)
6. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
7. Appropriate Behaviour (Desiree Akhavan)
8. While We're Young (Noah Baumbach)
9. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
10. John Wick (Chad Stahelski, David Leitch)

Looking forward to in the second half of 2015: The Look of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer), Southpaw (Antoine Fuqua), Pan (Joe Wright)

Ben Nicholson

1. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Contemplating Existence (Roy Andersson)
2. The Tribe (Miroslav Slaboshpitsky)


3. Selma (Ava DuVernay)


4. The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland)
5. A Most Violent Year (J.C. Chandor)
6. Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu)


7. Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)
8. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell)
9. Girlhood (Céline Sciamma)
10. Home from Home (Edgar Reitz)

Looking forward to in the second half of 2015: 45 Years (Andrew Haigh), 
Macbeth (Justin Kurzel), Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams)
Stinker of the year so far: 

Taken 3 (Olivier Megaton)

John Nugent

1. Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)
2. Mommy (Xavier Dolan)
3. Song of the Sea (Tomm Moore)
4. Ex Machina (Alex Garland)
5. Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako)
6. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
7. Shaun The Sheep The Movie (Mark Burton, Richard Starzak)
8. Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund)
9. A Most Violent Year (JC Chandor)
10. The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland)

Stinker of the year so far: Mortdecai (‎David Koepp)

Josh Slater-Williams

1. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
2. Selma (Ava DuVernay)
3. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
4. The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland)
5. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
6. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Isao Takahata)
7. Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)
8. Ex Machina (Alex Garland)
9. Shaun the Sheep The Movie (Mark Burton, Richard Starzak)
10. Blackhat (Michael Mann)

Looking forward to in the second half of 2015: Macbeth (Justin Kurzel), Taxi (Jafar Panahi), Straight Outta Compton (F. Gary Gray)
Stinker of the year so far: Mortdecai (David Koepp)