When the sun sets tonight, we’ll have all survived the first three months of 2015. Congratulations to you all. 10 points to Gryffindor, etc. In case your memory isn’t what it used to be, here’s a handy recap of the year’s first quarter. If you’re an American reading this, most of the films discussed here probably came out yonks ago in your town, so you only have yourselves to blame for being bored.
Great year for fans of plot and sexual equality but not sexual equality in plot: For what seems like the 100th year on the trot, movies with plots are dominating both the box office and critical lists again (which no doubt all the Boyhood haters are happy about). Finally though, despite inconsistencies around salary, there is an equality between the sexes in their ability to make money for, predominantly, rich white men. Four of the current top ten earnings of the year are female fronted films (50 Shades of Grey, Cinderella, Insurgent/Divergent/Blah (totally the official title), Jupiter Ascending) and seeing as two of the top ten focus on weird monstrous creatures that you wouldn’t invite into your home in real life (Paddington, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water), my always accurate maths suggests that leaves a 50:50 man/woman split of the box-office. And what’s great is that these films have great empowering messages like, “be nice and marry a prince”, “don’t sign sex contracts from sociopaths” and “you can beat up Eddie Redmayne”. Yeah, still getting there with that I suppose. At least, (Ins/Div)-urgent! (ooh, I like that as a title, exclamation points have got to be in again soon, right?) has Shailene Woodley saving the world instead of waiting for a half-dog Channing Tatum to do it.
What sort of manager would get the best out of you? If you were looking for a mentor to aid you in reaching your potential, you’ve got plenty of choices from the year’s releases so far. If Ayn Rand and Charlie Parker are your spirit animals, you might want to go the Whiplash route. Obviously, a department ran by JK Simmons’ Terrance Fletcher won’t be scoring high in any morale questionnaires, but the guy can get results, especially if you don’t mind getting your hands bloody. Perhaps a second career on Wall Street will beckon him, seeing as there’s not much money in jazz any more. On the other hand, maybe you prefer a manager with whom you can get stoned or travel to exotic locations, maybe you’ll get on with either Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen, The Interview) or Dan Trunkman (Vince Vaughn, Unfinished Business). Aaron Rapoport managed to effortlessly coax tabloid interview Dave Skylark (James Franco) into pursing real journalism, while Dan Trunkman…well, who can say? It’s not like anyone saw that movie, even though it also had a Franco in it. So you can either have a friendly manager or an utter hard-ass provided you succeed. We can all agree that the worst manager would be a real creep who had no experience in his chosen profession, AKA John du Pont (Steve Carell, Foxcatcher). Sheesh.
How do you settle conflicts? Yeah, we all know the right answer to this involves contemplation, negotiation, setting aside your differences and sharing some malteasers, but at least the movies provided us with a few more novel answers to seeking resolution. What do you do when Edward Norton is sabotaging your Broadway debut? You punch him and especially hard if he’s just in his tighty whities. What do you do when you’re an absurdly buff hacker being outsmarted by a far more l33t computer nerd? You hunt him down with your big Michael Mann muscles.Is S&M not keeping your love happy anymore? Buy her a (*ahem*) human toilet. Who said films weren’t realistic?
Predictions for next quarter: Some scientists will work out whether Takeshi Miike and Terrance Malick took part in some shady Freaky Friday hi-jinks (seriously, 2 films from Mr Malick in one year?); John Wick will start its Oscar campaign and go on to sweep the acting categories; Avengers: Age of Ultron opens to the worst income per screen average since Ishtar, after a real life catastrophe involving robots dominates the front pages, though this strangely doesn’t impact Transformers rentals because people are consistently terrible.
Top Five so far:
1) Whiplash
2) Blackhat
3) The Duke of Burgundy
4) The Tale of Princess Kaguya
5) Inherent Vice
Auteurs' Hors D'oeuvres 