This is a pretty masterful documentary about Robert Durst, the son of a New York real estate baron who inspired the fictionalized film All Good Things and who was accused of murdering three people. I saw All Good Things sometime after this came out. But, fortunately, I waited something less than eight years to watch …
Category: 2015
Magic Mike XXL (2015, Gregory Jacobs)
I was pleasantly surprised by the first Magic Mike, a movie that was both funnier than I thought it would be and much more about the Great Recession than I thought it would be. But this is an entirely different movie.
Hamilton Live at the Princess of Wales Theatre, March 1, 2023
We had tickets to go see Hamilton in April or May 2020 (if I’m not mistaken). Obviously, we didn’t get to go. So nearly 3 years later, 8 years after the hype machine began, we finally saw it. I mention the hype machine only because I don’t know how much of my experience of this …
Trapped (2015)
This is an unusual police procedural TV show, set in a small town in Iceland, and bearing lots of thematic similarities to Fortitude, a show which is more unique and original, if not superior. SPOILERS!
Undisclosed (2015)
Undisclosed ended in March. I found out more recently because I’m perpetually behind in my podcast listening. It’s kind of hard to sum up this podcast, because there are so many cases and I cannot remember all of them over the last seven years, but I wanted to mention something about them for the simple …
Penny Dreadful (2014)
This is a slightly campy (but somehow very serious) British horror fantasy show with the rather old, but somehow not tired conceit of a bunch of characters from famous 19th century history novels exist in the same universe. (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen of horror, basically.) It’s a show that sometimes works well for what it …
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (2015) by Philip Tetlock, Dan Gardner
This is a fascinating book about how human beings can potentially get better at predicting the future and the types of people who are probably better at predicting the future. (Not pundits, I’m sure you’re shocked to hear.) I suspect I would have liked it more had I not already been familiar with Tetlock’s work.
Science Vs. (2015)
I find that I have caught up to Science Vs. having begun with their first episode and listened, once a week for years. I have decided not to continue with their new season so I guess that means it’s time for me to write a review. Science Vs. was purchased by Spotify a little while …
Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air (2010) by David J.C. MacKay
This is an excellent, detailed analysis of what we need to do to got sustainable. It is currently available online for free and I strongly recommend reading it.
Jurassic World (2015, Colin Trevorrow)
I have no idea who was clamouring for yet another Jurassic Park sequel over 20 years after the original movie but somebody must have been. My memory is that this movie got some pretty good reviews, certainly better than the reviews for the last sequel. But I imagine the pitch meeting was “This film will …
Parks and Recreation (2009)
This is a good-hearted but often hysterical situation comedy that it took me entirely too long to watch. I’m not sure exactly why but I guess I was at least slightly aware that it was a little bit wholesome and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t into wholesome in, like, 2011. Anyway…
Crimson Peak (2015, Guillermo del Toro)
This is a series of set pieces in search of something more. It’s kind of mystifying how uninteresting – and specifically how unscary – the whole thing is given some of the reviews. This one is a big shoulder shrug from me.
Fortitude (2015)
So this is a hard show to review for me because we watched the first season a few years ago, we watched the second season maybe at the beginning of the pandemic and we just watched the abbreviated final season this week. My memory of both the first and second season has faded and it’s …
The Final Girls (2015, Todd Strauss-Schulson)
This is a reasonably clever and inventive horror comedy which doesn’t have enough laughs and which has a few too many continuity problems whenever you start thinking about it.
High-Rise (2015, Ben Wheatley)
I have read only one J.G. Ballard novel though I have seen a couple of films adapted from his books. I thought I had seen more than one of Ben Wheatley’s movies, but it turns out I’ve just seen one. On paper, I think I can probably see the Ballard-Wheatley pairing as a match made …
Vitamania (2015) by Catherine Price
This is a fascinating and entertaining overview of the American obsession with vitamins and supplements as a proxy for healthy eating. It’s a quick and fun read with lots of information, but it did lead something to be desired.
The Leftovers (2014)
This is a well-made show with at least one fatal flaw. (And possibly two. I didn’t get that far.) Recommended as ideal for watching during the pandemic we found quite the opposite: that the pandemic actually made the whole thing seem far less believable than it might have seemed when it first aired.
Final Girl (2015, Tyler Shields)
This is one of the movies with a title that appears to have been chosen to trick people into watching it. And, friends, I regret to inform you that I thought it was Final Girls and that is why we watched it. Alas…
City of Gold (2015, Laura Gabbert)
This is a fascinating and affecting portrait of famous LA food critic Jonathan Gould, someone I had just learned about on the most recent season of Top Chef. (Or, at least, this is when I remember hearing about him for the first time.) Think of it as a New Yorker profile but in a movie.
Hannibal (2013)
In 2014, when Hannibal was in its second season, four different publications listed it as the best show of the year. It made many other Top 10 lists. The first season had made some Top 10 lists as well. In 2015, it was again declared the best show of the year by at least three …
BoJack Horseman (2014)
There’s something about animation that gives TV shows (and some movies) a freedom of tone which is not accessible to live action movies and TV. Something about animated characters lets us humans be more accepting of tonal shifts and sight gags. At least I think so. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered another show more …
All Who Go Do Not Return (2015) by Shulem Deen
This is an excellent, heartbreaking and infuriating memoir of a man’s loss of faith and subsequent expulsion from an extremist religious sect. I stumbled upon this book due to a Reply All episode (which I would also recommend) and I’m so happy that happened. This is not a world I know anything about so I am happy …
A Christmas Horror Story (2015, Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban, Brett Sullivan)
This should really be called Christmas Horror Stories as it’s sort of an omnibus film, featuring four different stories, which take place in the same town but not in the same universe. That sounds confusing, doesn’t, it? SPOILERS
Riley’s Best Films of the 2010s
I am an avid movie watcher. I have seen something like 5,000 movies in my life as well as countless hours of movie-quality TV. But my pace has slowed somewhat in the last decade, as life has gotten in the way. Moreover, because I see so few movies in theatres outside of my annual TIFF …
Toast of London (2012)
This is a very, very stupid show about an arrogant and not very good actor and his foibles trying to stay employed in London. But it knows it’s really dumb, and it leans into it fully; it can be very, very funny.
Intelligence: All That Matters (2015, Stuart Ritchie)
I am of a generation where skepticism over IQ was widespread. I don’t know where it comes from exactly but I know that it is everywhere. Essentially I was raised with the idea that IQ had been “debunked”. The reason I read this book is because I got into an argument with someone and afterwards …
Chevalier (2015, Athina Rachel Tsangari)
I am somewhere in the middle when it comes to “people being awful” or “people being dumb” movies. I generally find them amusing but my degree of amusement doesn’t just depend upon the quality of the film, it also regularly depends upon my mood and where I watch them – if I am in a …
Danny Says (2015, Brendan Toller)
This is a fascinating documentary about a journalist/publicist/manager/etc. from New York who was tangentially involved in the careers of a number of major bands, from the Beatles to the Ramones. If you’re interested in the history of popular music, particularly punk, or if you’re interested in New York in the late 1960s and the 1970s, …
Censored Voices (2015, Mor Loushy)
This is a compelling and moving documentary with a relatively novel format, which may not initially seem compelling but which is well worth your time. The film tells the story of Israeli soldiers’ experiences during the Six Day War through audio recordings made just after the war, which were suppressed by the Israeli government for …
Rak ti Khon Kaen aka Cemetery of Splendour (2015, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
There are certain types of films which require patience. I am almost always better able to appreciate films which require patience in the theatre where I don’t have distractions. At home, I’m liable to find my way to my laptop pretty quickly if a movie is deliberately paced. It’s less bad with English language films …