50/ NO ESCAPE
Though perhaps overshadowed by Pierce Brosnan always turning up when his character was needed, Owen Wilson proved himself in a serious role far away from his usual schtick in this exciting movie which rarely let up, despite the ‘throwing the kids off the roof’ being one of the most absurd scenes of the year. Sadly director John Erick Dowdle still thought he was making a Found Footage film, with eye-hurting shakycam that got progressively worse and worse as the film went on. 7/10
49/ MINIONS
Being a big fan of Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2, I was a little disappointed by Minions, which, in a similar manner to The Penguins Of Madagascar, showed that perhaps the little yellow fellas are better as supporting characters than the main protagonists in a movie, while nothing in the film really matched for laughs the hilarious trailer showing the Minions accidently killing off master after master. It was still highly inventive and often clever fun. 7/10
48/ THE WALK
I don’t tend to go in for this 3D malarkey very much – I generally consider it a waste of money and not very convincing- but the final third of The Walk undoubtedly used the format expertly [though wouldn’t there have been more wind up there?] and was genuinely edge of seat stuff. The rest was a slight, simple but enjoyable piece of fluff of the kind which just doesn’t appear to draw audiences in these days, though I went away not understanding Philippe Petit any more than when I went in. 7/10
47/ THE GUNMAN
Though the film bombed, proving that he’s not at all a box office draw, to my eyes Sean Penn was rather convincing in his attempt to do a ‘Liam Neeson’ and resurrect his career as an middle aged action hero, while the story made some attempts at intelligence despite not making enough of the lead character’s disease, and the action, well handled as usual by Pierre Morel [if only he’d done the Taken sequels], managed to be exciting but not overly silly. 7/10
46/ SOUTHPAW
Jake Gyllenhaul seems to be giving delivering great performance after great performance these days, and he was typically brilliant here, though truth be told the movie wasn’t entirely worthy of his efforts, being basically a remake of Rocky 3, and I couldn’t help laughing at things like a boxer being able to change his style within a few months. Still, it ended up being rousing in the right way, and the boxing was certainly thrilling, if not always very believable. 7/10
45/ JOHN WICK
While there were many ways in which John Wick could have been better, and I reckon that if had been come out in the 80’s or the 90’s I doubt it would have got much attention, directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch still deserve much credit for actually letting us see the action properly [a rare thing these days], and even before a sequel was announced, it was obvious that there was a lot of potential for a strong action franchise that can explore further this interesting world. 7/10
44/ MAGGIE
Though disappointing to many, I rather liked the way Maggie cheekily didn’t deliver the expected mayhem you would expect from Arnold Schwarzenegger being in a post-apocalyptic zombie movie, and instead took the form of a leisurely paced intimate emotional drama. Though a little lacking in power, Henry Hobson’s very melancholic debut feature attempted an arty approach and was certainly rather beautiful at times. Imagine if Terence Malick made a zombie film. 7/10
43/ TOKYO TRIBE
Both satirising and celebrating hip hop culture, this Japanese future-set gangster movie where all the dialogue was spoken in rap sounded wonderfully crazy, and, while the result wasn’t quite as entertainingly bonkers as you’d might expect, it was still quite infectious [and I’m not really a rap fan, though looking at my high placing of a certain other 2015 film you’d possibly think otherwise] with a vibrant energy running through it and rather charming idealism at its core. 7/10
42/ THE SALVATION
One of those films that pretends to be deeper than it is, The Salvation still managed to be a solid and commendably bleak revenge western with Mads Mikkelsen in excellent form as the troubled hero and Eva Green showing what a screen presence she has as an almost mystical character with no dialogue, while director Kristian Levring, despite not quite being able to make his movie seem fresh enough, really showed a feel for this genre. 7/10
41/ REGRESSION
Though undoubtedly a film which begun to lose its way after around half way through, and suffering from an often poorly constructed script which had things like one character not bothering to reveal something that would have helped his case until near the end just so most of the movie can happen, Alejandro Amenabar’s very stylised handling of his inspired-by-true-events material still created some genuine chills and maintained a very unsettling atmosphere. 7/10
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