The Movie Mensch is rolling through the Best of 2015 and today it’s time to shine a light on the films that maybe escaped your attention, but deserve to be front-and-center. After revealing our Top 10 Trailers of 2015 and our Top 10 Comedies of 2015, it’s time to debut our Top 10 Underrated Films of 2015.
10. Pawn Sacrifice
Believe it or not, there has not been a definitive biopic done on the incredible true story of how chess prodigy Bobby Fischer did the impossible and beat a Russian champion in Boris Spassky, who represented a dynasty of winning that seemed unbreakable in the 1970s.
Director Edward Zwick did just that with his Pawn Sacrifice and scored in the casting of Tobey Maguire as Fischer and Liev Schreiber as Spassky in the triumphant film from earlier this year. Zwick managed to make the game of chess edge of your seat suspenseful and Maguire brought a humanness to a man that has eluded all previous portrayals of him. It is a stunning work that unfortunately flew under the radar.
9. Southpaw
Jake Gyllenhaal deserves to be in the Oscar discussion for Best Actor for his turn as a boxer battling his demons as he tries to keep his family together and forge a career out of the ruins of his life.
Southpaw will have you cheering in the aisles, much as the lauded Creed would do later in the year, but this is a true rags to riches story that finds our hero going back to the rags before he can rediscover his riches, and by that we mean his emotional and moral compass.
8. Mr. Holmes
The idea of Ian McKellen playing the famous Sherlock Holmes later in life should have been a magnet drawing in movie goers to the theaters to see Mr. Holmes. It was also a reunion of director Gods and Monsters helmer Bill Condon and McKellen, a pairing that earned the actor an Oscar.
The story about the great crime solver having one last case that eluded him his whole entire life and his commitment to solving it before his time ran out is electric, emotionally satisfying and features one of the greatest portrays of the legendary sleuth we’ve ever seen.
7. No Escape
It may be a thriller you feel that you have seen before, but there was some6thing about the Owen Wilson/Lake Bell starring family drama No Escape that captured our hearts.
It was powerful. It was resonant. It was everything you’d expect a good thriller to be. Maybe coming out the last weekend of August killed it?
6. The Visit
M. Night Shyamalan is back, only not all that many people turned out to see it. The Visit was a found footage film that found The Sixth Sense helmer teaming with Blumhouse Productions for the first time in a match that was made in heaven.
Imagine a story of two kids heading to the woods to visit their grandparents, who they have never met previously due to family strife, and things slowly, but surely, unraveling. It’s a haunting tale and through a (rare) believable use of the found footage format, The Visit was one of the more haunting movies we saw this year.
5. The End of the Tour
Another actor who should be hearing his name in the Best Actor mix is Jason Segel for his turn as author David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour. The true story of how Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky followed Wallace around for the final days of his book tour and the relationship that the two shared was a stunning piece of filmmaking that celebrates the art of the written word.
Segel was sensational and Eisenberg met him note for note in a film that could not have been better written. Two esteemed writers talking about writing? Please, how could it not be?
4. The Last Five Years
The musical The Last Five Years hit the big screen and charmed us like no other musical did in 2015. Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan star as a couple that we follow for, yes, five years and in the process we see that maybe, just maybe, they are not meant to be together in a heartfelt journey of the soul.
The film’s story is told only in song and as such, prepare to be singing its praises when you finally get to enjoy this underrated and underseen gem.
3. Black Sea
One of the best thrillers of 2015 made a splash for The Movie Mensch, but not so much with audiences with Black Sea.
Jude Law stars as a down on his luck submarine captain who takes a rag-tag crew of unemployed seamen into the titular waterway in search of a rumored Nazi sub that could possibly contain hundreds of millions of dollars in German gold. Finding it could be the easier task. Trusting each other with it on the way up, now that could be a serious problem.
2. The Walk
Robert Zemeckis did an astounding thing with his capturing of the true tale about the Frenchman who walked across The Twin Towers in the early 70s. He literally took us out on that tightrope and gave many vertigo in the process in the best of ways.
Many, including The Movie Mensch, believe that The Walk is one of the best pictures of the year. But, for some reason, it didn’t register much beyond its opening few weeks and has since disappeared from pop culture awareness. Hopefully it will find a life on home video.
1. Inherent Vice
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of our favorite filmmakers. His Boogie Nights is a classic. And frankly, so is his latest, Inherent Vice. The story of a private eye (Joaquin Phoenix), trying to find a missing girl in 1970s LA is stylized, moving and reminds us why we adore the art of film in the first place.
Great performances abound, from Phoenix, to Josh Brolin and Katherine Waterson (who makes quite the talent announcement with her role). Inherent Vice is an important movie that will be taught in film schools for decades, so watch it and prepare to be entertained… and enlightened.