TrustMovies' best (and most overlooked) movies of 2015 -- independent, foreign language and documentary films

What do you know? One of the first movies I covered in 2015 turns out to remain the best of the year. That would be Still Life (my original review of which appears here), a wonder of beauty with a subject that movies almost never get near. The result is, as a good friend of mine observed, "Haunting. It has stayed with me ever since I watched."

The remaining 51 films are listed in the order in which they opened -- or at least in which I finally viewed them. (You can click on each one to go to my original review.)  I am not including any big-budget, mainstream movies this year. There were plenty of good ones, but this blog is devoted to the less-seen and under-marketed films, so let's honor that intention.
Here we go....

Still Life (see above), the great Eddie Marsan in what may be his greatest role, in the most beautiful (theme, cinematography and total execution) movie of the year. Unforgettable.

Timbuktu: A look at the Muslim world like little you'll have seen. It probably should have won Best Foreign Film last year. In any case, it's a keeper.

Girlhood: Céline Sciamma's look at French youth in the banlieues of Paris turns out to be ever better than I initially thought. And that was already damned good.

The Voices: Another film that, having viewed it twice, grows in stature. Alternately ugly and funny, it's a movie I wager you won't have seen anything quite like.

Matt Shepherd Is a Friend of Mine: This warts-and-all doc turns the late poster-boy-for-gay-hate-crimes into a full-bodied, sad and memorable person.

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem: How to get a divorce (a "gett") in Israel. A quiet shocker of major proportions.

What We Do in the Shadows: Vampires and comedy do not have a storied history. This movie changes all that. A riotous, non-stop delight.

Queen and Country: Shockingly bypassed by too many critics and most audiences, this is one of John Boorman's best films.

The Best Offer: I'm late in catching up with this riveting, much-overlooked psychological drama from one of my favorite directors, Giuseppe Tornatore. It's a "must."

Predestination: and Spring: Exceptional and very different kinds of sci-fi/fantasy films, both executed supremely well, and in the case of the latter, very strangely.

A Wolf at the Door: This Brazilian film is every bit as dark and believable as any you'll have seen. A quiet, unsettling shocker that deserves a much wider audience.

Ned Rifle: the final piece of Hal Hartley's Henry Fool trilogy. A "must" for his fans, and at least a "maybe" for all others.

5 to 7: The year's best love story juxtaposes French and American culture with a fine eye, while offering juicy performances and an ending that is just about perfection.

Chic! This barely-seen French comedy about fashion, creativity and romance is a delicious, subversive surprise. Seek it out if you can find it. Good luck.

About Elly: Finally being released here in the USA, this one is the best of all from that much-lauded Iranian filmmaker. Asghar Farhadi.

Like Sunday Like Rain: Another overlooked gem about an odd relationship that somehow works quite beautifully. Pitch perfect, quirky, funny and finally extraordinarily moving.

GÜEROS -- From darkest Mexico come an exhilarating movie that is -- can you believe it?! -- not about kidnapping.

Gemma Bovery: An unusual "take" on Flaubert's famous tale that proves a comic delight.

Sunset Edge: Kids spend a day in an abandoned trailer park. One of the least-seen but best filmmaking debuts of the year.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence: Another Roy Andersson amazement. 'Nuff said.

10.000 KM: A long-distance relationship via laptop makes for a smart, surprising relationship movie.

Phoenix: A post-Holocaust mystery that explores guilt, shame, denial -- and hope -- in intriguing ways.

Listen to Me Marlon: Marlon Brando as you've never seen (nor heard) him in a fascinating documentary based on the actor's private recordings.

The Kindergarten Teacher: Israeli drama exploring art, creativity and hypocrisy -- among other things -- in that country today.

Counting: Terrific cinematography and allusive meaning highlight this provocative and beautiful-to-behold documentary about time and place and... what?

A Little Chaos: Alan Rickman's splendid look at Louis XIV and his court and garden. Perhaps the most overlooked and under-rated of all the year's films.

Rosenwald: How the Academy overlooked this fine and important documentary about one of America's great businessmen/philanthropists is a mystery indeed. Don't you do the same.

Guidance: The year's most glorious comedy -- oh, so wonderfully politically incorrect!

The Second Mother and I Touched All Your Stuff: Two underseen Brazilian films -- the first a narrative, the second (a still from which is shown above) a documentary -- both of which deserved a much wider audience.

Blind: An original exploration into the mind of the non-sighted, this is one hell of a trip.

Home from Home: An amazing movie from one of Germany's least-known (but ought not to be) filmmakers.

Closer to the Moon: a terrific little based-on-fact tale filled with nonstop fun and irony (and Vera Farmiga and Mark Strong).

The Fool: The darkest, bleakest, black comedic look at today's Russia that you can imagine. Beats out even last year's Leviathan

The Farewell Party: The end-of-life movie to end all of 'em, this Israeli comedy/drama is spectacularly well-done.

Movement + Location: Brilliant, low-key sci-fi that's about a whole lot of things -- especially the immigrant experience.

The Creeping Garden: It is almost unimaginable how interesting, enjoyable, educational and fun this documentary about slime mold turns out to be.

Taxi: The Iranian provocateur Jafar Panahi takes us into his life as a taxi driver in this hybrid of documentary and narrative.

Walter: This little-seen Canadian film is a winner in all respects -- especially in the way it confounds our ideas about religion, ghosts and god.

Tab Hunter Confidential: The story of one of Hollywood's most popular 1950s stars is laid bare in this excellent documentary.

Why I'm Not on Facebook: This must-see doc tackles everything from that social network behemoth to narcissism and the way we live today.

Suffragette: The struggle for women's right to vote in England becomes a major work of sacrifice and upheaval.

Mustang: France's BFLF submission is a fine tale of Turkish sisters struggling for their freedom from fundamentalist Islam.

Brooklyn: One of the year's best, with a fabulous lead performance from its star, Saoirse Ronan.

Stink!  A fine activist doc about safety, corporate power and greed that needs to be seen.

Hitchcock/Truffaut: The film-buff doc of the year, a treasure-trove of info about (nearly) everyone's favorite director.

My Friend Victoria: From France, and the movie of the year so far as race, class and the building of character are concerned.

Chi-Raq: Spike Lee and Kevin Willmott's updating of Lysistrata to present-day Chicago proves Lee's best movie in a long, long while: funny, smart, and sporting a crack cast. music, dance and rap poetry.

45 Years: A love story, the likes of which we rarely see, in which a long-time marriage threatens to unravel before our -- and its participant's -- eyes.

Youth: Paolo Sorrentino does it again in this, the most visually arresting film of the year. Gorgeous.

(Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies. Sure, lying is only human, but this fine doc shows us why and how to keep this particular characteristic in check.

Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram story -- done with enough wit, style and passion to create a memorable minor classic.

Faults: Cults and deprogramming get a look-see like nothing you will have thus far encountered. This one's a humdinger!

Sebastian Dehnhardt's KLITSCHKO focuses on a pair of boxing "greats" who fascinate

Just so you know, TrustMovies doesn't consider boxing a sport at all. More like gladiatorial combat in which the antagonists beat each other to pulp for the edification of blood-thirsty masses. He understands the popularity of it, however, just as he does the old-time public executions, tossing-the-Christians-to-the-lions, and our eventual televised and/or cable-ready return to all this. That said, TM was held in rapt attention by the new boxing documentary KLITSCHKO, named after two brothers -- Vitali and Wladimir -- who hail from the Ukraine but seem to have made Germany their second and more permanent home. (They still hold some affection for their native land, however: Vitali has his own political party and has run for Mayor of Kiev in the Ukraine.)

It helps, of course, that these two guys are among sports' most gorgeous specimens: handsome (but not pretty) faces sit atop tall, lean-but-muscular bodies that seem made to hand out (and withstand) a good bruising. Documentary director Sebastian Dehnhardt, shown at right, seems every bit as taken with the pair as I was (and you will be), and if he tells their story as a tad too much hagiography, you will admit, I think, that there's an awful lot to be impressed with. Saints they ain't, yet you come away from the film feeling a real fondness for the pair.

We learn of their early history (they're shown above, as kids -- Vitali is center left, Wladimir at right -- with mom and dad), and later when events such as Chernobyl affect their lives and their father's health. That's mom today (below), full of life and energy; dad was a little weaker, though still vital and kicking for quite some time (he died this past summer, after the film was completed).

We learn how the two came to the fight game, how they train, and about their differing styles. Older brother Vitali (shown above, fighting Kevin Johnson in 2009) simply comes out punching every which way to victory. Wladimir (shown below), we are told, treats the ring more like a game of chess.

We hear views about the pair from their trainer (above) and manager (below), and from other fighters, too -- mostly good things, but not always (this helps detract from the hagiography).

If the Klitschkos have not quite ascended to the throne of America's boxing royalty, it may be, we learn from at least one other fighter, because there are two of them. This is perceived as somehow unfair. Except at the very beginning of their career, the brothers never fought in place of each other, but still, the whole idea may seem a little too Doppelgänger for us everyday Americans.

To know who's really the best, insists one other fighter, the brothers must fight each other. (That's the pair sparing, above.) Will they? Do they? When you see the film, you'll find this out, along with a lot of other interesting stuff -- like Don King, the pianist, and why our boys didn't sign with him;

who this lovely lady is (above), whom I wish we had seen a little more of and heard a little more from; and which gorgeous Klitsch is shown below (I'm not telling).

Klitschko, running 110 minutes (yes, for this kind of documentary, it's maybe a tad too long), from Corinth Releasing, opens today in New York City at the AMC Empire 25 and the Cinema Village and in the Los Angeles area at Laemmle Theatres' Sunset 5 & Encino Town Center Five, with additional weekend showings at the Monica 4-Plex, Pasadena Playhouse 7 and the Claremont Five.

Oliver Laxe's hybrid documentary YOU ARE ALL CAPTAINS gets week-long run at AFA

Budding filmmaker Oliver Laxe has only one film to his credit so far, but YOU ARE ALL CAPTAINS (TODOS VÓS SODES CAPITÁNS)--a combination of narrative and documentary techniques filmed in stunning black-and-white (by Ines Thomsen) at the service of a very slight tale that nonetheless seems to offer a lot of buried possibilities-- has already attracted some attention on the critical front (it won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes).

Mr. Laxe, shown at left -- who wrote, directed and appears in his movie as one of the leading actors -- has quite an interes-ting history. I sug-gest clicking on this "history" link and reading what the filmmaker has to say about himself and his project -- though maybe after you've seen the film. His words explain quite well where he comes from (literally & figura-tively) and what he was attempting. You'll then be able to determine whether he has succeeded.

His film tackles various ideas: the western European filmmaker in North Africa, latter-day colonialism in action, film as narration and documentary, and the lives of children (in this case disadvantaged ones). The movie begins, with perhaps its best scene, as the kids watch a plane arriving, first in the distance and finally right above them. We learn first that a filmmaker is here to work with the kids and teach them filmmaking. Then their school-teacher begins with some instruction on the meaning of various hand signals/signs.

We see a bit of the children's lives and group home, then some would-be filming, and midway, problems seem to arise (we don't really see these), and the filmmaker begs one of the older kids (shown below) -- or maybe a younger adult -- to be his assistant. The guy refuses, and then, it seems that he and the kids take over the film themselves -- shooting some of the very things that the kids have stated they wanted to film all along. The movie ends with a very, very long shot (in both meanings of the word) of them all walking into the distance. And that's it.

What's missing most here is any sense of the genuinely organic. You Are All Captains seems fractured into layers of ideas that don't really coalesce. Instead, they clunk. For all we see of these children, only their faces register with much individuality. Laxe does not choose incidents that would give us clues into their personalities. Likewise, certain important things are more often told than shown -- particularly the question of whether or not the filmmaker is treating the kids well or properly.  The kids evidently have said that he is not, and other adults say no, but we don't really see this in action.  "Benign neglect" maybe, but little more than that.

The films pacing is also jagged. Certain scenes go on and on, while others seem unnecessarily abrupt, adding to the movie's sense of fracture. Ideas are here, all  right, but they are not brought to the kind of life that good narrative filmmaking can offer, yet neither does the movie work as a documentary because it is so clearly not a doc in many ways. It exists finally as an idea on a page -- full of glorious images (for example, the one below) provided by cinematographer Thomsen -- that never quite takes flight.

And yet, for many of those images alone, I would sit through the film again.  They are simply stunning. And Mr. Laxe himself is easy to watch. As are all the kids, and particularly that fellow, below, whom the director begs to assist him.  The scene is which he refuses, constantly smiling but saying no, is a ironic, culture-clash delight.

As another in the burgeoning array of hybrid docs, You Are All Captains is a flawed original. I hope to be there when Mr Laxe, who clearly has a lot of ideas and  talent going for him, finds a way to blend these into something more of a "whole."

Meanwhille, the film -- distributed by Northwest Film Forum (NWFF) -- opens for its week-long run this Wednesday, October 19, at New York's Anthology Film Archives. Showings are daily at 7:15 and 9pm, with 5:30pm matinees on Saturday and Sunday. Click here for directions to AFA; here to purchase tickets. The film will also play at NWFF in Seattle this November 18 through 23. Click here for more information on its Pacific-Northwest run.

The "girl" is back: Stieg Larsson's Dragon Tattoo follow-up PLAYS WITH FIRE

You want more of Lisbeth Salander? Judging by the USA box-office take from the first film in this continuing series -- approaching $12 million, making it by far the most successful foreign-language film of the year -- you do. So head out to your art multiplex this Friday and settle in for another relatively wild ride as Lisbeth tackles... relatives and other problematic people.

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, number two in the trilogy that is now rumored to be a quartet, has a different director from that of its predecessor, and the difference, while immediately apparent, is not necessarily for the worse.  Director Daniel Alfredson (pictured at left), the new boy on the block, has worked more in Swedish televi-
sion, and this shows. "Fire" looks, sounds (except for the foreign language, of course) and feels like something that you might stumble upon while surfing cable television and -- if that stumble occurred at the show's beginning -- that you would watch, entran-
ced by its bizarre plot and fine acting, right through to the end.
(The screenplay this time is by Swedish TV writer Jonas Frykberg.)

In fact, I enjoyed "Fire" a bit more than "Tattoo," if only because it is finally less florid (don't worry: it's florid enough, but no serial killers or Neo-Nazis in the closet) and more legitimately down-and-dirty.  It remains, as is Tattoo,  mystery-moviemaking-by-the-numbers -- as practically every mainstream hit of this sort must be. There are plenty of coincidences and last-minute "saves."  Fire is shorter, too: only 129 minutes to Tattoo's 152.

That said, there's not a whole lot more than needs detailing without spoiling things.  We continue to learn of Lisbeth's history from this film, and it's as grim as you'd imagine.  (You don't grow up to be a character like this without a closet full of ugly skeletons.)  Noomi Rapace (above) once again plays Lisbeth, and she's even more pivotal to this film's success because co-star Michael Nyqvist (below) is less seen, and so their relationship appears to be on hold.  Lena Endre (whom I mis-labeled in my post on the earlier film), Yasmine Garbi  and Peter Andersson (as the indelibly nasty Nils Bjurman) are on hand for an encore, now joined by Scandinavian stalwart Per Oscarsson -- who, via his thoughtful, quiet appearances, rolls out a ton of exposition. The most memorable cast member, though, may be the beefy, burly blond shown at bottom, played by Micke Spreitz, whose identity and character gimmick both prove interesting.

Whatever critics say, fans are likely to turn out in droves, though they may be somewhat disappointed at this less-glossy follow-up: shorter, grittier, and with an aspect ratio of only 1.85: 1, as opposed to Dragon's widescreen 2.35: 1.  But since it's Lisbeth they love, they'll hang on -- and probably beg for more. (Which they'll get: The third part of the trilogy is on tap for this coming October.)

The Girl Who Played With Fire, from Music Box Films, opens Friday, July 9, beginning one of the largest "limited" runs of a foreign-language film all year.  By the end of August it will appear in more than 100 theaters in over 50 towns and cities.  Click here (and then click on IN THEATERS) to learn if, when and where the film will be playing near you.