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!

Overlooked winner: Tommy Lee Jones' THE HOMESMAN, now on Blu-ray, DVD & digital

THE HOMESMAN is the fourth film that Tommy Lee Jones has directed -- two for the home screen (The Sunset Limited and The Good Old Boys) and two for theatrical release (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and this new one). As well as being a first-class actor who can handle both comedy and drama, Jones continues to grow as a filmmaker. The Homesman is such a fine and intelligent piece of work on so many levels that it constitutes a "don't miss" effort --
which many of us unfortunately did.

The story -- of a trek from Nebraska to Iowa a century or so ago by a young woman and the maybe-not-so-trustworthy man she recruits to help as they take three women from her town, all gone mad due to the severity of the region in which they live and what they have had to endure there -- is a very good one (from that generally excellent late writer Glendon Swarthout). Even better is the manner in which Mr. Jones (above, right) -- as director, co-writer (with Wesley A. Oliver and Kieran Fitzgerald) and leading actor -- has managed it.

He has cast his film about as well as you could imagine or want, with Hilary Swank giving one of her best performances as the woman in charge -- and actors the likes of James Spader, Meryl Streep, Tim Blake Nelson (above, left) and William Fichtner in small but choice supporting roles. The three mad women are played quite specifically and well by Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto and Sonja Richter.

The movie is drained of sentimentality but never of humanity, and this becomes its great strength. It is also quite beautiful to view, with fine cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto. The sense you have of time and place is always correct, while the behavior of every character on view seems believable, if sometimes wanting. The movie is really a one-of-a-kind in so many ways that you'd be foolish to let it pass you by. It's available now on DVD and Blu-ray and probably streaming via several of the usual sources.

Where the hell are THEIR Oscar nominations? Chadwick Boseman in Tate Taylor's and John-Henry & Jez Butterworth's superb GET ON UP

If we must have -- and apparently, after so many decades of them, we still must -- more movie biographies of the famous, they should only be as rich, vivid and startling as GET ON UP, the movie bio-pic of famed singer/ songwriter/performer James Brown. As portrayed by Chadwick Boseman (of 42 and The Kill Hole), this perfor-mance is so incredible in terms of capturing Brown's energy and moves, his charm and nastiness, that you simply cannot imagine any other actor doing it better. Why Mr. Boseman (below and at left) was overlooked for an Oscar nomination (was it because he lip-synched?) is an embarrassing question.

A role like this may not come around for this actor (or anyone else) again, and as much as I like the work of David Oyelowo, Boseman 's Brown wipes the floor with Oyelowo's MLK. And yet, all we hear about is how the Academy snubbed Oyelowo, with nary a mention of Boseman. Is this because Martin Luther King is such a "safe" subject, while James Brown was so transgressive? Very probably. That, and the fact the Get On Up didn't set the box-office on fire, in the manner of a nitwit patriotic slough like American Sniper (Boseman's work also wipes the floor with that of  Bradley Cooper).

The other big surprise offered by this movie is the very fine, brave and sophisticated directorial work of Tate Taylor, who earlier gave us the pleasant, enjoyable but unsurprising The Help. What Mr. Taylor and his screenwriters have done is to fracture the storytelling here so that we get relatively short scenes of Brown's life and work that never linger too long. This means that many of those moments that could stand out as cliched and obvious in so many other bio-pics here move by with grace and speed, helping to tell the story without weighing it down in pablum or sentimentality. One prime example is how the film handles the demise of Brown's manager/promoter (beautifully played by Dan Aykroyd, below, left). We get a brief and sudden glimpse of a coffin and a Jewish star, then cut to another sharp, fast moment of the man's dead face in close-up on a golf course. It's all quick but quite moving -- and a lovely example of Taylor's fine and pointed work here.

Scene after scene sparkles and resonates beyond what we get from the usual biopic. If Taylor is using cliches, and of course he is because these are endemic to this genre, he manages to make them seem fresh and new via the fast-pacing, the flipping back and forth in time, and some supremely fine editing (Michael McCusker) that allows no unnecessary fat in the fire. The movie lasts a lengthy 139 minutes yet seems to fly by.

The movie's screenplay is by brothers John-Henry and Jez Butterworth, and it cracks the usual bio-pic mold wide open, allowing us to catch the kind of smart glimpses into character, time and place that combine to make a powerful whole. The movie is full of fine scenes, but the one between Brown and Little Richard (a terrific Brandon Smith) comes close to classic.

In addition to Mr. Bosman, the huge cast includes the usual excellent work from Viola Davis (above, as Brown's mom), Octavia Spencer (below, right, as the madame of the local brothel who takes him in when his parents have left), and Jill Scott (as one of his several women). Also fine is the work of Nelsan Ellis as Brown's longest friend and partner.

Normally, I would try not to over-praise a movie like this, but since Get On Up -- despite mostly favorable reviews -- never found the audience it deserved, I'm going to call it a "must." If it were an independent, rather than a big-studio movie, I'd also have added it to my last year's movies-to-see list. In any case, it is out now on Blu-ray, DVD and various streaming sources.

Stream the Michael Hoffman/Coen Bros' GAMBIT and discover the comedic abilities of Colin Firth

TrustMovies has run warm and cool to the films of Michael Hoffman -- liking some (Restoration and Some Girls) and disliking others (The Last Station). But I find no excuse for the reception -- a bare theatrical run that provoked a pretty terrible critical drubbing -- to this remake, GAMBIT, which turns out to be quite a charming little lark about art and connivance. While the original was nothing to write home about, the new version gives a very fine actor, Colin Firth the chance to prove himself an excellent comedian in that rarely-seen-anymore deadpan British style.

The screenplay (from Joel and Ethan Coen) is smart and genuinely interesting as it explores everything from fine art and the art of scamming to the current job market and a highly unusual new security system. Cameron Diaz (above), a game and more-versatile-than-you-think actress, is charming and funny as the Texas lady who must be included in the con, while those fine British actors Alan Rickman (above) and Tom Courtenay (below, right) are used wisely, too.

It's Firth, however, who shines brightest. His singular ability to bring absolute, unwavering, British stiff-upper-lip-hood to each and every scene -- including one hilarious and hugely extended set piece in which he parades around in his underwear, still managing to keep that lip and all else intact -- is enormously funny in a way Ive seen no other actor manage it in a long while. (That scene, by the way, includes the only fart joke in a film that's actually works in a manner that subverts its own crassness.) Firth is a small miracle here, and you really must catch his act.

The much-vaunted "chemistry" that critics felt did not exist between the two stars does not exist for good reason. Instead, Firth and Diaz feint and parry, all the while trying to determine what the other really wants. The spark that indeed exists is kept from bursting into anything stronger so that we and they can enjoy the ever-changing "game."  When, at last, we realize how it is to be for these two characters, the moment is beautifully rendered by both actors. Can British reserve and American openness ever truly bond?  If not right now, maybe someday.

As director, Mr Hoffman serves the Coens' smart screenplay well, while giving the actors their rein to deliver what they do best. Everyone wins, especially us viewers. You can catch Gambit now via Netflix streaming and elsewhere, as well as on DVD.