10 Fantastic Movies You May Have Already Missed In 2015

2015 is half over, and while that means we’re still six months away from our official ‘Best Of’ lists it also means it’s time to point out several great movies that you may very well have missed so far. By their very nature these tend to be smaller movies — films that bowed in limited release, VOD or even straight to DVD instead of getting the nationwide roll-out — so we’re taking this opportunity to shine a light on them so they don’t get lost in the summer shuffle or the end of year awards frenzy.

Landon Palmer and I have once again selected ten fantastic films from the past six months that we think deserve more attention than they’ve received. These aren’t necessarily the ‘best of the year’ material, but they’re still great movies well worth remembering into the next six months.

 

About Elly

The success of writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s 2011 drama, A Separation, announced him to the Western world as a major talent, but he had already made four feature films prior to that award winner including 2009’s dramatic mystery, About Elly. The film made the festival rounds in 2010 but only just received an official U.S. release earlier this year. Set in Iran, the tale follows a group of college friends spending a weekend by the sea along with a newcomer to the tight circle brought along as a possible romantic interest. There are no dark dramas or portents or doom here, just friends and families having a good time, but when Elly goes missing the orderly construct begins to crack beneath the pressure. Blame is tossed around like sand on the beach, small lies grow in size and number, and the mystery of Elly’s disappearance becomes compounded by the mystery of her life. Intensely engaging performances, striking cinematography and a smart unraveling of the truth combine for a film that’s every bit a beautiful piece of international cinema as Farhadi’s later works. – Rob

Where can you see it? Currently unavailable

 

Clouds of Sils Maria

Olivier Assayas’s talents have shown a remarkable range in recent years, as his films have covered an enormous swath of territory across genre, tone, scope, and subject matter, from a biography of an international terrorist to a nuanced family drama around what to do with an estate. But Assayas’s work is also resonantly his, each bearing the delicate touch of a truly thoughtful filmmaker deeply interested in the worlds of his characters. That’s why Clouds of Sils Maria is one of the filmmaker’s best works to date, for it uses an enduringly familiar scenario – an aging actress (Juliette Binoche) risks being upstaged by a charismatic rival (Chloe Grace-Moretz) a la All About Eve – but enacts this scenario as neither homage nor pastiche, with Assayas using this framework to explore territory about the tenuous, often obscure elements of personality that constitute human relationships and personae. Binoche’s graceful yet vulnerable tête–à–tête with Kristen Stewart’s headstrong assistant is divine. – Landon

Where can you see it? Currently in limited theatrical release, coming to DVD on July 14th, 2015

 

The Duke of Burgundy

Peter Strickland’s playfully enigmatic and intricately stylized The Duke of Burgundy brims as an evocative, haunting, and resonant sensory experience that builds upon the enormous talents he displayed in his previous ‘70s homage, Berberian Sound Studio. The film opens with a maid (Chiara D’Anna) who has just come into the employ of a cold, distant aristocrat (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a situation that is cleverly upended early in a deft reveal that shows the maid/aristocrat scenario as part of a thoroughly realized game of sexual domination. The exact power dynamic within the relationship between these women unravels layers of complexity as one partner wants to go deeper into their games while the other grows ambivalent. Strickland fascinatingly plays with context, sight, and sound towards a film that always leaves the viewer questioning what before them is real, a performance, or even perhaps a dream. – Landon

Where can you see it? Coming to Blu-ray/DVD on September 29th, 2015

 

Hard to Be a God

Renowned Russian auteur Aleksei German’s final film (and a project he worked to get to screen for decades), Hard to Be a God will likely prove to be, on a visceral level, the hardest film to stomach of any new commercial release this year. But the film is less interested in the spectacle of shock than in bringing to life a stark, disturbing, yet beautifully rendered vision of a society without enlightenment. Depicting an Earthling scientist (Leonid Yarmolnik) trapped on a foreign planet currently enduring its Dark Ages who must attempt to protect the culture’s burgeoning intellectuals from execution without revealing himself an Earthling, Hard to Be a God constructs a horrifying, immersive, yet stunning glimpse into a world that knows neither beauty nor art nor civility. This is what daily life in the world of Game of Thrones or Mad Max: Fury Road might be like. – Landon

Where can you see it? Currently on VOD, coming to Blu-ray/DVD on June 30th, 2015

 

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

Sibling filmmakers David and Nathan Zellner use the urban myth surrounding the death of a Japanese woman who died in rural North Dakota in 2001 and was believed (likely erroneously) to have been in search of the suitcase of cash hidden on the snowy roadside by Steve Buscemi’s character in the Coen brothers’ Fargo. Motivated by Fargo’s similarly playful approach to the relationship of film and fact, the Zellners choose a “print the legend” pathway to this strange scenario, devising a character study about a solitary office functionary (Rinko Kikuchi) who encounters a worn VHS tape of Fargo that motivates her travel across the Pacific in search of the famed suitcase. Along the way, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter stages a wry, subtly realized dark comedy about the alienating nature of cultural distance, and also manifests what may be cinema’s strangest travelogue of the Upper Midwest. – Landon

Where can you see it? Currently on VOD, coming to Blu-ray/DVD on June 30th, 2015

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