All action movies are Bond movies now
How weird was it that Spectre should feel like the least impressive spy movie of the year? With their globe-trotting plots and insanely complex action sequences, both Furious 7 and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation were twistier and fresher than Sam Mendes’s official 007 adventure, which was so tied up in its big villain reveal that it forgot it had just done the whole shadow-brother thing with Javier Bardem in Skyfall. Meanwhile, Paul Feig’s Spy goofed spectacularly on the tropes of secret-agent movies and accidentally created two fantastic new characters. I’d be happy to see Jason Statham’s cranky CIA operative get the 007 assignment, hopefully with Rose Byrne’s Eurotrash villain now forced to work for the good guys. NORMAN WILNER
Everything old is new again
Jurassic World was this year’s biggest earner, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens is already looking to top next year’s charts – and it’s not a coincidence that both films are sequels to properties that are two and four decades old. Nostalgia drives every decision in contemporary Hollywood, from which franchises are developed to which actor plays the new Uncle Ben in the next Spider-Man reboot. Even a movie like Steve Jobs winds up trading on the audience’s fondness for old Apple products, and The Martian, set in 2035, comes packing a soundtrack of 70s hits. When it pays off, it’s great… but when it doesn’t, we get an unholy miscalculation like Jem And The Holograms. NW
The year of the lesbian
If ever there was proof of the movie industry’s resistance to female-centred movies, it’s the length of time it’s taken to see more than one very good lesbian-themed film in one year. Historically, by comparison, even though the trans movement is in its relative infancy, we’ve seen more mainstream trans-based pics – and Oscars to go with them, to Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry) and Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) – than dyke-driven dramas.
But 2015 was different. Freeheld featured great performances by Julianne Moore and out actor Ellen Page as a couple fighting for lesbian rights Lily Tomlin finally played a lesbian in Grandma – and got a Golden Globe nom for her performance and the brilliant Todd Haynes’s Carol is an Oscar frontrunner.
The question remains, however what took so damned long? SUSAN G. COLE
Kick-ass women
This will go down as the year that women kicked major ass onscreen. Charlize Theron’s one-armed Furiosa stole an 18-wheeler full of escaped women slaves and sought major revenge in Mad Max: Fury Road, while Shu Qi took on corrupt government officials to settle a family score as the sword-wielding title character in The Assassin. Meanwhile, in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Rebecca Ferguson proved she was the equal of Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, not just your typical arm candy. And in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, newcomer Daisy Ridley showed she could get out of an intergalactic dust-up without holding the male lead’s hand, thank you very much. GLENN SUMI
Domhnall dominates
Domhnall Gleeson, that scrawny ginger from the Harry Potter movies, has grown up and enjoyed the most eclectic year of any screen actor. He won’t get nominated for any awards, but he deserves credit for diversity: he played a modest, self-effacing love interest in Brooklyn a captain trying to maintain order amidst brutal violence and cold in The Revenant (opening January 8) a programmer who deciphers a tech billionaire’s master plan in Ex Machina and, finally, a general who tries to keep it together in front of the scariest boss imaginable in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. GS
Canadian cinema is cool again
Heavy hitters like Cronenberg and Dolan didn’t release anything this year, but Guy Maddin and his new co-director, Evan Johnson, stepped up with their delirious festival hit The Forbidden Room and the antic experimental short Bring Me The Head Of Tim Horton, a puckish look at the making of Paul Gross’s Hyena Road. Philippe Falardeau’s My Internship In Canada and Anne Émond’s Les Êtres Chers are two of the best movies to come out of Quebec in years. And right here in Toronto, Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant, Sarah Goodman’s Porch Stories, Pavan Moondi and Brian Robertson’s Diamond Tongues, Albert Shin’s In Her Place and Lindsay Mackay’s Wet Bum brought Canadian drama back to its roots with small, emotionally complicated character studies that get under your skin and stay there. The wave continues in the new year with Igor Drljaca’s The Waiting Room and Kazik Radwanski’s How Heavy This Hammer. NW
Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse
Go big or stay home
Remember a few years ago when Universal flirted with making its Ben Stiller/Eddie Murphy comedy Tower Heist available on demand to home viewers and theatre chains rose up in protest? Well, that’s now common practice among a number of distributors, to the point where a movie like Anton Corbijn’s Life opens on a single Toronto screen, basically as advertising for its simultaneous VOD release, and Paramount can release Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse and the new Paranormal Activity movie on hundreds of screens just six weeks before they hit iTunes. This time next year they’ll likely be doing it for good movies, too. NW
Miss out on any of these films? Find out where you can watch them in our Holiday Movie Survival Guide, or click on each title to see where you can still catch each one.
