It’s easy to look back over the past 12 months and try to find a common thread, a trend or recurring idea that can make sense of the mass of films unloaded for public viewing. Everyone loves a good narrative, and in a world where chaos reigns, it’s nice to see some order. Indeed, look at the list of our 20 films below and you can see similarities pop up all over: stories of struggles both internal and external, whether it’s fighting the patriarchy of the past, present and postapocalyptic future, facing down the most powerful institutions in the world or the narrative of history itself, escaping captors, making it through wars both sensical and nonsensical, trying to just pay the bills or unshackling oneself from the past. They all share a common bond of people trying their damnedest to succeed, overcome and survive.

But this theme doesn’t apply to every film here, nor does it apply to everything that came out in 2015. Our list also has films that melted our minds, dragged us through the mud, awed us with their grace, and entertained us with their pure, visceral delights. Summing up the year through a neatly packaged narrative is nice, but it’s also far from a true representation of what cinema brings. It’s a messy, chaotic world of movies, and when we put together a list like this the real unifying aspect is their high quality.

From the big, daunting universe of cinema in 2015, Way Too Indie is proud to present what we think are the 20 best films of the year.

Way Too Indie’s 20 Best Films of 2015

#20. Room

In Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, there are no limits to love. A film as simple as it is emotionally sweeping, there are few films released this year that evoked such a visceral emotional response from its audience. The film is an exhilarating thriller portraying a modern nightmare of captivity—a scenario that never ceases to grip the public’s attention when it pops up in the news—but is entirely focused on the will of the human spirit, and the ways we not only survive in such heinous situations but thrive. In the story of Ma (Brie Larson, a career-best performance), and the world she builds for her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay, also mesmerizing) within the walls of a tiny room, we are given an example of the purest sort of love. One of sacrifice, fierceness, and audacity. By seeing the universe through the eyes of a small child—a universe at first only four walls wide and then suddenly much, much larger—it’s impossible not to form a renewed appreciation for the simple things in life. But more than that, it’s impossible to walk away from Room and not find oneself profoundly introspective about what it means to actively live and actively love. [Ananda]

#19. Steve Jobs

Somehow, Steve Jobs became persona non grata this fall. Between the box office performance, the fatigue surrounding the subject matter and the behind the scenes issues exposed by the Sony leak, nothing seemed to go quite right for the film. Do not be mistaken, though: Steve Jobs should not be missed. It’s a biopic with an utterly unique structure and breakneck pace. Aaron Sorkin’s script commands the spotlight even more than Michael Fassbender’s stirring performance. The three-day approach proves effective as Sorkin intelligently navigates the inherent limitations, managing to capture the essence and scope of one highly influential man’s life. His conversations are verbally balletic, never ceasing to surprise in their wit, but never stooping to overly showy, self-serving writerly panache. Steve Jobs is a whirlwind of a film, exploding with thunderous brio and making its piercing impact with the ink-dipped arrowhead of a skilled writer’s pen. Its imperfections don’t change the fact that it’s a landmark in biographical filmmaking. [Byron]

#18. Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

In Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, Ronit Elkabetz stars as the title character, a woman seeking a divorce from her husband. It sounds simple enough, but the Amsalems are Israeli, and in Israel there is no such thing as a civil marriage; all marriages are granted by Orthodox rabbis in a religious ceremony. Ergo, all marriages must be dissolved the same way. That means the husband give his full consent for a marriage to be dissolved. If he doesn’t want it, she doesn’t get it, and Viviane’s husband doesn’t want a divorce. This turns the film into a fascinating courtroom drama, but not in the traditional sense; rather, it becomes a drama that takes place almost entirely in a courtroom, with the occasional scene occurring in an adjacent waiting room. This gives the film contrasting feelings of intimacy and claustrophobia. Elkabetz is superb as Amsalem, conveying the frustration of a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage and finds herself trapped again, this time in a system that stacks the deck against women and all but ignores them in the process. [Michael]

#17. Hard to Be a God

Rarely have I seen a film’s atmosphere so gorgeously and meticulously realized to the extent of Aleksei German’s final masterwork. Hard to Be a God follows a civilization of men and their out-of-sorts, peculiarly human god. They represent man as a whole, embodying his struggle through the early stages of primality. When do we leave behind beasts and garner the right to call ourselves men? More pressingly, do we ever, or have we been kidding ourselves for the last few thousand years? Hard to Be a God works so well chiefly because it cements itself into a primal world, one dominated by sludge, blood, and shit, so unbelievably well. Furthermore, in lieu of the film’s obvious rejection of sentiment, it is intriguing how it integrates the idea of God into its narrative. It doesn’t suggest that he doesn’t exist or has neglected us, but that he is struggling alongside us and, even more frightening, that he’s just as helpless. German’s magnum opus is a rattling, maddening three-hour journey into the depths of man’s darkest sensibilities. [Cameron]

#16. The Assassin

The moving image is rarely as entrancing as it is in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin, the Taiwanese master’s first film in over seven years. Expensive in its design, methodical in its every graceful move, the film penetrates the mind as swiftly and silently as Shu Qi’s Nie Yinniang disposes of her first target in the picture’s opening moments. Shot on film by Ping Bin Lee and designed by Huang Wen-Yin, Hou’s regular collaborators, The Assassin has a mise-en-scene that’s second to none this year. The subtle phenomenons of nature play a vital supporting role, one in which animals and flora are treated as sharing the same atmosphere with humans. More than any other film of the year, The Assassin shines the brightest light on the unique and boundless nature of its artform. It is spellbinding in every sense of the word. [Nik]

#15. Son of Saul

Son of Saul is a wonderful debut film of filmmaker Laszlo Nemes, which tells the story of Saul (Geza Rohrig), a prisoner and Sonderkommando member at Auschwitz who his searching for a rabbi so he can give his son’s body a proper burial. The film is incredible, from Rohrig’s outstanding performance to Nemes’ fantastic direction (all the more impressive considering it’s his first feature film). But I want to pay special attention to the work of cinematographer Matyas Erdely and the team behind the sound design of the film. Erdely beautifully shoots the film in a tight 4:3 frame, often putting Saul at the center and keeping the eye focused on his actions with most of the settings around him hard to fully take in visually. This is where the sound design is key, as it forces us to imagine the horrors around Saul. Together these elements create a truly unique experience adding up to one of the most powerful films to be released this year. [Ryan]

#14. The Forbidden Room

Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s sensational hodgepodge of silent-movie storylines are maniacally cut up into dozens of threads, then re-assembled by two drunk, blindfolded men with a brilliant sense of humor. The Forbidden Room is unlike anything you’ll ever see. Ever, not just in 2015. Studded with stars from all over the world, from the well-known like Charlotte Rampling, Roy Dupuis, and Geraldine Chaplin, to more local faces like Louis Negin and Gregory Hlady, the film is full of greedy volcanos, aswang bananas, catchy musical numbers, delusional doctors, scorned lovers, men breathing oxygen through flapjacks, and mustaches with a life of their own. Relentless with its pacing and editing, it’s not something that’s easily recommended (it broke the record for walk-outs when it screened at Sundance earlier in the year). But, it’s on here for a reason: through the unique structure and absurdist tone lies one of the most heartfelt odes to the wonders of cinematic storytelling. [Nik]

#13. The Look of Silence

The Look of Silence is every bit the masterpiece its companion piece, The Act of Killing, was. Joshua Oppenheimer returns to the residual horror of the Indonesian genocide, this time through the eyes of a victim. An optometrist named Adi Rukun confronts his brother’s killers under the pretense of testing their failing vision, and through his careful questioning the remorseless thought process of a monster is slowly dismantled. If there is any surreal sensibility left over from Oppenheimer’s last film it is in the shadow of death that haunts an eerily quiet land teeming with ghosts crying out in vain. The “silence” of the title is all around, both in the insightfully observed environment and the empty murmurings of men submerged in denial. The capacity human beings have to rationalize and normalize wickedness is on full display, and it’s mesmerizing in a terribly morbid way. Powerful, sobering and absolutely essential. [Byron]

#12. Inside Out

Inside Out is a tearjerker, which comes as no surprise—Pixar has been making us cry like babies for two decades. That’s sort of their whole deal. What makes this particular movie so special is how impossibly elaborate it is, conceptually. To represent one cognitive experience, visually, is a feat in itself. What Pixar’s done here is visually represent dozens and dozens of cognitive experiences and made them work in concert. It’s a tender, inventive, entertaining study on human emotion that speaks to the heart despite being so brainy. It’s also unique in that someone can watch it at five years old and then again at forty and have two wildly different and yet equally profound experiences. Next year, Pixar’s engaging sequel mode again with Finding Dory, but they took a big risk with an out-there movie like Inside Out and proved that there’s no shortage of new ideas coming out of the trailblazing East Bay studio. [Bernard]

#11. Mommy

Young Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan came into filmic fruition when he was only nineteen with the release of I Killed My Mother. Almost seven years and five films later, one of the youngest directors in the industry has created one of the most moving films of the 21st century. Despite its 2014 premiere at Cannes, the film did not receive a proper US release until January of 2015, meaning most people didn’t get a chance to experience its profundity until this year. Mommy focuses its narrative on the widow Diane (or “Die,” for short) and her difficult son, newly discharged from a behavioral rehabilitation facility and potentially suffering from a number of psychological disorders that cause him to have angry, violent outbursts. It’s shot in the unique 1:1 aspect ratio, which at first may seem like a peculiar decision, but once you’ve fallen deep into the emotional abyss of this heartbreaking tale, you’ll understand how a stylistic choice can transform into an emotive choice within a matter of seconds. [Eli]

#10. Phoenix

Christian Petzold’s Phoenix is perhaps the best film since the post-war era that deals with the holocaust, even though it’s not as interested in dealing directly with the images and happenings of the holocaust as that statement suggests. Instead, it’s about the scars of tragedy, and how great tragedy has the terrifying power to rob individuals of their identity. The film follows Nelly, a Jew from Berlin, as she returns to her home and her husband after living through the concentration camps. We never see flashbacks of what she went through. She tells us all through the expression stained onto her reconstructed face. Floating through the frame like a ghost, Nelly attempts to piece together her past, and Phoenix is a harrowing testament to how emancipation from tragic circumstance doesn’t erase the psychological wounds said tragedy has inflicted. It also deals with the idea that friends of those affected have absolutely no idea how to respond. How does one respond to such an atrocity? Though not technically a ghost story, Phoenix registers as an emotionally draining portrait of a wandering soul knocking on the door of a world from which she’s been exiled. [Cameron]

#9. Buzzard

Accurately describing Joel Potrykus’ Buzzard is a difficult task. The film doesn’t really fit into a specific genre, and the loose storytelling structure only complicates things on that end. Still, there’s something undeniably captivating about the tale of a millennial burnout that decides to rebel against his routine life. It’s not that the film is particularly relatable—Marty, the protagonist, is the embodiment of the worst society has to offer—but Buzzard takes viewers on a journey that gets far too real at times. Marty’s frustrations with his dead-end job, the boring people around him, and his way of living have the ability to cut very, very deep. From the beginning, Potrykus views a mundane subject with a bizarre lens, and Buzzard only gets weirder and weirder as it progresses. By the conclusion, it’s apparent just how effective the film is, despite its relatively low-key nature. Unlike any film you’ve seen this year, Buzzard is strangely comedic, unexpectedly dark, and certainly worth checking out. [Blair]

#8. Beasts of No Nation

Beasts of No Nation is a special convergence of extra-textual information. Being the first major fiction feature release from streaming outfit Netflix is a big deal, especially since they clearly had aspirations for awards with its purchase. More fitting, it is the first feature film from writer-director Cary Joji Fukunaga following his incredible breakout success with the first season of True Detective. Those already following Fukunaga’s career, however, know just how talented of a storyteller he is. Beasts of No Nation is his highest effort production, an absolutely beautiful film with often intense subject matter. The film studies the rise of young boy Agu (Abraham Attah) through a rebel group of fighters in an unnamed, nondescript African country. Through the eyes of Agu their war is truly unknowable—and the film purposefully makes no effort to help the audience understand what this group is really fighting for. This can be frustrating at times, but Fukunaga is persistent in his focus on tone and the specific actions of its main character. This creates a more ethereal movement, which is all the more frightening given the film’s horrendous nature. Along with Attah, who gives a fantastic and difficult performance for a young and inexperienced actor, Idris Elba’s towering role as the rebel group’s Commandant is among the most complex characters of the year. [Aaron]

#7. The Duke of Burgundy

Love is love, and few films express that statement as strongly as Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy. Starting out as a cutesy homage to the European erotica films of the ’70s (Jess Franco fans need to run, not walk, to this movie), Strickland explores the BDSM relationship between Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna), two women whose “roles” in the relationship don’t exactly match their true selves. With cinematography, production design, and a mood that feels lifted straight out of a dark fairy tale, Strickland’s dreamlike elements work together to heighten the universal truths at his film’s center. Here is a film that understands the work and compromise that comes with a relationship, the constant push and pull between selfishness and selflessness that can threaten to tear people apart, and it’s all shown through a hazy realm that leans more on the side of fantasy than reality. Yet Strickland puts emotions at the forefront, and by doing so lets the strength of Cynthia and Evelyn’s undeniable feelings for each other overshadow the luscious world they reside in. Love stories this original and beautifully realized are so rare, we should feel lucky we even have the chance to see them. [C.J.]

#6. Sicario

After directing a slew of extraordinary films who would have thought cinematic genius Denis Villeneuve’s latest effort would be his strongest and most politically resonant film to date? Well, maybe some, but it’s going to be a daunting task for Villeneuve to keep his streak of brilliance up for much longer; if he does, he’ll be reaching the unspeakable heights of consistency only names like Kubrick and Kieslowski have attained. Sicario concentrates on an FBI agent (Emily Blunt, in a gorgeously realized performance) who pulls herself into quite the plight when she accompanies a government task force on an enigma of a mission along the United States/Mexico border. To say any more about the plot and the manner in which it unfolds would be a disservice to a film with such an airtight narrative structure and masterful pacing. It’s a socioculturally relevant thrill-ride that you’ll have to experience for yourself, but its shocking and increasingly tense nature may be too extreme for some viewers. [Eli]

#5. It Follows

What can be said about It Follows that hasn’t already been said a million times before? It’s one of the greatest horror films to come along in years and a movie that works on multiple levels, with a new discovery being made upon each new viewing. A sexually transmitted monster has all the potential in the world to come across as cheesy, tacky, and otherwise ineffective, but director David Robert Mitchell approaches the subject matter with such a level of genuineness that it’s impossible not to take seriously. Featuring excellent, naturalistic performances from its young, often inexperienced cast, there’s a subtle nature to almost everything about It Follows. From the romance to the horror and even the humor, it’s all downplayed, which makes it all the more effective in the end. Many horror movies fall apart because their characters aren’t relatable, but in the It Follows universe, teenagers behave like teenagers—not like horror movie characters—and the film is all the more impressive because of that. From top to bottom, it’s easy to see why It Follows has been so well-received by audiences and critics alike, and its theatrical success serves as a beacon of hope for the future of independent horror. [Blair]

#4. Carol

There are so many exquisitely composed elements to Todd Haynes’ achingly beautiful new movie Carol that it becomes difficult to single out the aspects that make it so great. There is Phyllis Nagy’s delicate script, adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel The Price of Salt, which allows the film’s central romantic plot to unfold in a patient and deliberate way. There are the wonderfully ornate period sets and costumes, with bold red accents that jump off the screen thanks to Edward Lachman’s stunning cinematography. And, of course, there are the performances—not just from the always-excellent Cate Blanchett or Audrey Hepburn-esque Rooney Mara—but an earnest Sarah Paulson, a scorned Kyle Chandler, and a sleazy John Magaro, as well.

The first of Haynes’ six feature films in which he didn’t contribute to the script, Carol is the director’s most precise work to date—from its production details to the performances. While the filmmaker’s movies often focus on LGBT identity, the striking thing about the intimacy in Carol is its universality. Therese and Carol are more than women in a lesbian romance affected by the obstacles of a bygone era; they’re people stifled by the expectations placed on each of them.

As Blanchett stares across at Mara over a cocktail or a shop counter, you’ll want to lean in closer, too. The pair’s carefully chosen words tease out the affair. Watching them slowly go back-and-forth, with alluring smirks and guarded looks, is among the most entrancing pleasures in film this year, as is the sound of Cate Blanchett simply saying, “Therese.” [Zach]

#3. Ex Machina

The trio at the heart of filmmaker Alex Garland’s directorial debut, Ex Machina, represents an intricate blend of old and new. Invoking memories of past great fictional characters like Doctors Frankenstein and Moreau, Pinocchio’s creator Geppetto, and even Willie Wonka, is Nathan (Oscar Isaac), the inconceivably wealthy and immeasurably intelligent inventor of a fictional Google-like search engine. Representing the future is Ava (the spellbinding Alicia Vikander), an artificially intelligent robot created by Nathan. Caught between creator and creation is Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a whiz of a programmer whom Nathan recruits to test Ava’s believability as an AI, but a simple man nonetheless and the pivotal completing part of this most bizarre of love triangles. As Caleb studies Ava and gradually becomes taken by her, so too does Ava study, and fall for, Caleb. Watching them both is Nathan, whose motives for recruiting Caleb become cloudier as the days pass. What first presents itself as a futuristic drama laced with themes of morality and anchored by a peculiar alpha-male (Isaac is terrific as the genius recluse), gradually becomes a riveting psychological thriller that keeps the viewer captivated and drives to a bold ending. Sci-fi noir is alive and well and is not to be missed with Ex Machina. [Michael]

#2. Spotlight

Tom McCarthy has done the unthinkable. Just one year after directing the horrific flop The Cobbler, McCarthy turns in a film that not just rinses the bad taste out of our mouths from his previous effort, it puts him in the conversation for one of the best films of the year. Spotlight is a gripping newsroom drama based on the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal uncovered by the Boston Globe. Though despite the grim subject matter, watching Spotlight unfold is utterly entertaining. That’s because the film keeps its foot on the acceleration for the whole ride, providing plenty of energy and tension without wasting a single moment.

Spotlight is a well-oiled machine firing on all cylinders. Not only does the electrifying pace carry the neatly arranged script, but the ensemble cast puts on a clinic on how to act as a team. It also doesn’t hurt that the cast is comprised of A-listers like Stanley Tucci, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, and Rachel McAdams, each performing at the top of their game. Any one of them could have stolen the show by flexing their acting muscles; instead, they show discipline by working together, creating incredible chemistry and making the entire film better in the process. Without being exploitative (which would have been easy given the subject), Spotlight exceeds by focusing on the teamwork of its investigative journalism case. The film doesn’t just do a few things right, it does everything right, which is why Spotlight is one of the best procedurals in years. [Dustin]

#1. Mad Max: Fury Road

There are many things I expected from George Miller’s long-awaited next installment/reboot of his Mad Max series. I knew there would be explosions. I knew there would be cars embellished with crazy apocalyptic garnishments. I knew there would be a lot of sand. And I figured there would be a fair amount of zooming vehicles flipping and being walked on as though the laws of physics don’t apply in this futuristic world. I did not expect there to be larger themes than your garden variety hero tale. And I certainly did not expect the hero to not be Mad Max. Waiting 30 years to create the next vision of his gasoline-fueled future, Miller proves he has ungodly amounts of patience. Patience to ensure that technology would catch up with his vision, and patience to ensure that when he told his next story it would be to an audience who could fathom that even in a world of chaos, the significance of equality is fundamental to our humanity and worth fighting like hell for. Not everyone has embraced the surprising themes of Fury Road, but those tickled by just how exciting, fun, and road raging this action film is can’t help but admit that what raises it to perfection are the kick ass ladies leading the charge and the deeper issues they face. Mad Max: Fury Road closes with a quote from the future: “Where must we go…we who wander this Wasteland in search of our better selves?” Miller pushes us to consider our place and responsibility, no matter the wasteland we call home. And like his War Boys, his mouth shiny and chrome, Miller presents his film as though to say “Witness me!” Turns out an action film can be a visual extravaganza and hold itself up with a stiff backbone of ethics and morality. Witness the bar being raised. [Ananda]

2015 has been an interesting year for film to say the least. Unlike years past, there haven’t been those one or two landmark films that cast a shadow on the rest of the field, no Birdman, Boyhood, The Tree of Life, or There Will Be Blood for the film critic intelligentsia and wider moviegoing audience to rally behind in unison.

The filmic pillars of the past twelve months have been not films, but actors. Towering, career-defining performances from surging newcomers and refined Hollywood mainstays alike have wowed audiences in great numbers. Some belong to the best movies of the year; others are transcendent, standing a cut above the movie that harbors them.

With respect and admiration, Way Too Indie presents what we feel were the Best Performances of 2015. Be the roles leading or supporting, male or female, these twenty performances made the biggest impression on us.

Way Too Indie’s 20 Best Performances of 2015

Christopher Abbott – James White

We’re perpetually in close proximity to Christopher Abbott in James White, in which he plays the titular party boy/mama’s boy who flirts with self-destruction as a habit. Death breathes down his neck as he copes with his father’s recent death and prepares for his terminally ill mother’s departure. Abbott is a fireball of anger, frustration, love and regret that director Josh Mond always keeps in plain view, uncomfortable as that can be sometimes. Whether it’s with his slumped-over posture or with the twitch of an eye, Abbott bares James’ soul incrementally, with subtle physical tics and tells that hint at a raging internal war he can hardly contain. This is the kind of role actors live for, and this is the kind of performance that indicates greatness. [Bernard]

Joshua Burge – Buzzard

When Buzzard begins, Joshua Burge’s protagonist Marty is trapped by apathy, and by its finale, he’s fleeing in desperation. Burge characterizes Marty as a deadpan loser, a lower class user trying to milk the system to continue fostering his unimpressive existence. But as Buzzard unfolds, we begin to question exactly why Marty does what he does. Where did his poverty come from? Is the system he abuses perhaps partially responsible for his careless mentality? Burge forces the audience to finally sympathize with Marty long after they’ve (likely) dismissed him as an insolent dweeb. He carves complexity on a face we so easily prejudge and misclassify. Buzzard is a testament to the ability shoe-string budget features have to be meaningful, and Joshua Burge is responsible for a significant amount of its success. [Cameron]

Suzanne Clément – Mommy

In Xavier Dolan’s award-winning Mommy, Suzanne Clement plays the film’s most enigmatic character, Kyla, who lives across the street from the film’s two protagonists, the behaviorally inept Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) and his single mother, Diane (Anne Dorval). Kyla is a complex and potentially traumatized character who has trouble verbalizing herself, symptomatic of the pain of losing a young son, which is revealed through subtle, visual queues early on in the film. Though Clement may not receive as much screen time as Pilon or Dorval (especially during the first half of the film), her understated performance is just as resonant, and for that, she deserves immense recognition. [Eli]

Benicio Del Toro – Sicario

Benicio del Toro has shown us so many dimensions of his gift that he seldom surprises us onscreen. Likewise, he seldom disappoints—he’s one of the best character actors we’ve got. But in Sicario, he changes up his game, playing a Mexican cartel land assassin who’s intimidating in the most frighteningly peculiar way. He doesn’t just beat up his victims and hostages; he invades their space, extracting information by leaning into them with his shoulder (and, in extreme cases, his crotch). His interpretation of the classic hitman archetype is one of the most interesting I’ve seen in years, a more psychologically sick and quietly menacing killer than what we’re used to seeing at the cinema. He isn’t a death machine, but a damaged, tired man who takes no pleasure in the chase but is nevertheless driven to kill by his obsessions. We’ve seen Benicio before, but not quite like this. [Bernard]

Leonardo DiCaprio – The Revenant

In critical assessments of a performance, the lengths to which an actor physically challenges himself can often be the sole takeaway from a film; however, Leonardo DiCaprio’s work in The Revenant goes beyond simply suffering for one’s art. As the vengeance-fueled Hugh Glass, DiCaprio is a constantly compelling force. He crawls through snowbanks with bloodstained hair, strains while climbing up snowy mountainscapes, and practically foams at the mouth while tied to a stretcher during the moment where he’s betrayed. It’s an assaulting experience for both actor and audience. Yet, DiCaprio is such an emotive, vulnerable performer that he never loses sight of the human beneath the flesh wounds. In the nearly three hours of The Revenant, much of which features DiCaprio alone and engulfed by nature, you get a sense of Glass’s thought process from the little hesitations and panicked glances over his shoulders. You see it on his face and in his body language. He’s a man that is beaten and battered, but immensely strong of will. Bringing humanity to the bleakest circumstance in remote locales is among the actor’s greatest achievements in a career full of notable roles. [Zach]

Anne Dorval – Mommy

In Mommy, Anne Dorval delivers one of the best lead performances of the year as a mother struggling to care for and understand her violent son amidst the more common struggles that lower-middle class families face. It’s a performance filled with such power and honesty that it makes this heartbreaking struggle (and the even more heartbreaking moments of fleeting happiness) all the harder to swallow. And like all great performances, Dorval is able to turn on a dime with the material, like when she finds the moments of humor in Xavier Dolan’s wonderful script and nails them. Don’t let this be a performance you miss this year. [Ryan]

Michael Fassbender – Steve Jobs

How does someone step into the shoes of an icon and leave his own indelible impression? It certainly helps to be aided by the staccato rhythms of an Aaron Sorkin script, but in Steve Jobs, Michael Fassbender portrays the late Apple CEO like Silicon Valley’s Gordon Gecko—impossibly charismatic despite a ruthless streak of narcissistic tactics. As Steve Jobs, Fassbender doesn’t quite walk as much as glide from scene to scene. It’s easy to imagine a version of Sorkin’s play-like three-scene structure feeling too “start and stop” but Fassbender expertly throttles the film’s momentum like Travis Pastrana jumping dirt mounds at the X Games. Steve Jobs is an actor’s movie, but it’s Fassbender who handles the brunt of informing relationship through his actions. The magnetism of his performance both makes this movie enthralling and embodies the alluring aspects of Steve Jobs, the man. [Zach]

Nina Hoss – Phoenix

Nina Hoss’ subdued, tour-de-force performance in Christian Petzold’s post-Holocaust psychodrama Phoenix will leave viewers with their jaws firmly planted on the floor. Indeed, the final scene of Phoenix is so breathtaking and cleverly cathartic that it feels like the perfect end to a slow-burning cinematic puzzle. It’s primarily because of Hoss’ restrained performance as Nelly Lenz, the facially-disfigured and unidentifiable concentration camp survivor, that the gradual expansion of the film’s intensity works so well. And her eventual explosion, her emotional release that concludes the film, is simply one for the ages. [Eli]

Oscar Isaac – Ex Machina

While maybe not on the level of his work in A Most Violent Year or Inside Llewyn Davis, Oscar Isaac is always reliable for a good performance, and that doesn’t change here. One moment Isaac’s Nathan can be filling the audience with a sense of uneasy tension before quickly lightening the mood and filling it with laughter. Isaac brings so much charm and mystery to the role that he nearly steals the show from the wonderful Alicia Vikander. Isaac has quickly established himself as one of the better actors working today with a string of great performances; hopefully that streak will continue with his next film, another sci-fi movie called Star something or other. [Ryan]

Richard Jenkins – Bone Tomahawk

As Chicory, the old and seemingly useless town deputy, Richard Jenkins initially appears to be little more than comic relief in Bone Tomahawk. But as time goes on, and our characters make their trek to a shocking and brutal destination, Jenkins slowly but surely walks away with the film. Some credit has to go to S. Craig Zahler’s excellent screenplay, which gradually reveals a more complex character underneath Chicory’s buffoonish surface, although Jenkins’ ability to create such a genuine and sympathetic character from the page is what helps elevate Bone Tomahawk from a low-budget genre pic to a future cult classic. You can see the power of Jenkin’s performance already; despite a small release with little to no fanfare, he managed to get an Indie Spirit Award nomination, a surprising and—for those who’ve seen it—deserving pick. [C.J.]

Brie Larson – Room

The year’s most heart-wrenching film is anchored by one of 2015’s best performances. A young mother kidnapped and locked inside a shed for several years while raising her son, Joy (or “Ma”) is a tangled knot of trauma waiting to come undone. Beginning the film as a warm, protective woman doing whatever she can to shield her boy from their terrible situation, Larson often underplays the predicament. She imbues her character with the belief that if she can provide a sense of normalcy, her son might avoid permanent mental scarring. In the breathtaking moments when Larson has a raw, emotional reaction to the threat against her son, or the hope she retains for his future, her performance elevates Room to a special level of stories about family. When she collects her inevitable Oscar nomination, the broadcast may play a clip of her louder, more dynamic performance from the film’s latter half; however, Larson’s ability to balance emotional pain, world-weariness, naiveté, hopelessness and hope in one role is what makes this performance remarkable. [Zach]

Rooney Mara – Carol

The language of Carol is one communicated through gestures and expressions. Words are held back in almost every line of dialogue, so it’s up to the actors to divulge the psychology of the people they are attempting to embody. Rooney Mara, whose role in many instances is wrongly being credited as supporting, is astonishing in her ability to sculpt depth and humanity within Therese. If she’s hesitant, her hands and eyes will move a certain way. If she’s curious, her eyes will light up. Whether she is speaking or silent, we can always follow the emotional narrative occurring within Therese’s mind, and if that doesn’t speak to the caliber of her performance, I don’t know what does. [Cameron]

Elisabeth Moss – Queen of Earth

Elisabeth Moss’s performance in Queen of Earth is something out of a classic Hollywood melodrama—the kind of performance you would see from Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. From the first frame of the film (a close-up of the actress’ mascara-run face), Moss dominates the screen. Even while she is a wholly exaggerated person by the end of the film, almost animalistic, Moss leaves just enough humanity to ground herself. Director Alex Ross Perry helps give the performance the variance it needs with an out-of-time structure, jumping between past and present, showcasing the many levels of her depression. It’s the highest stakes role of the young actress’ career and she takes the opportunity by both hands, strangling it to unconsciousness. After her highly praised supporting role in Perry’s Listen Up Phillip, their follow-up together shows a fantastic working relationship and hopefully a pairing that will grow over the years. [Aaron]

Cynthia Nixon – James White

The highly underrated Cynthia Nixon provides the backbone to Josh Mond’s stunning debut feature. Nixon casts a strong shadow over the film even when she’s absent from the screen for extended periods. Her performance as a woman suffering from cancer is so fully realized that it’s almost too painful to watch (and probably will be for some). Another great element to her work here is how well she complements Christopher Abbott’s strong work in the title role, giving him so much to work off of. This is truly one of the strongest performances of the decade so far and will hopefully lead to even more equally interesting roles for Cynthia Nixon. [Ryan]

Mark Ruffalo – Spotlight

Mark Ruffalo has spun a pretty interesting career for himself. From his indie beginnings to becoming America’s favorite Hulk, Ruffalo perfectly blends a leading man’s charm with a character actor’s sensibilities. That plays well into his role as Mike Rezendes, a key member of the Boston Globe’s investigative reporting team. The film beautifully creates the team dynamic, but Ruffalo sticks out with the most dynamic emotional moments. The ticks and vocal choices may turn some off, but Rezendes is a fully-formed character. You believe his inner-struggle with the information he has uncovered and his passion for digging deeper. His scenes with Stanley Tucci, playing an attorney who possibly has incriminating evidence against a church official, are a highlight of his performance. They build an important relationship by the end of the film, but it is certainly a process, as the two veteran actors play a game of give-and-take across the film to prove themselves to each other. Above all, Ruffalo portrays the kind of journalist we wish every journalist could be—compassionate, hard working, intelligent, willing to take on the impossible story and push to find the difficult answers. This all comes out of Ruffalo’s workmanlike performance. [Aaron]

Michael Shannon – 99 Homes

When Rick Carver is first seen in 99 Homes, he’s callously insulting a man who just committed suicide moments earlier. At first glance Michael Shannon’s character appears to be a walking symbol of the heinous capitalist practices that created the housing crisis, but Shannon helps complicate things to the film’s benefit. Carver is fully aware of how immoral his actions are, but as he repeatedly points out, he’s merely playing by the same rules as everyone else. He is, much like the film’s protagonist, simply trying to survive and succeed within the system, albeit through more questionable means. It speaks to Shannon’s talents that he can take such an unlikeable character and, by portraying him as a ruthless pragmatist, turn 99 Homes into a more powerful and effective cri de coeur. [C.J.]

Kristen Stewart – Clouds of Sils Maria

The loveliest thing about Kristen Stewart’s performance in Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria is that it hardly feels like a performance. It feels like Kristen Stewart playing herself, only a slightly altered, slightly more cinematic version of herself named Valentine. She has such a natural presence onscreen, speaking and reacting like a normal human being while acting as the voice of reason for her boss and good friend (played by Juliette Binoche). In Clouds, Stewart is not only the most likable character, she’s also the most mysterious, albeit in a very simple way; for most of its runtime, there’s very little mystery to Valentine at all. Then, suddenly, a shift in the third act forces viewers to think about the significance of her character’s presence (in the context of the film’s themes) and, as a result, Clouds’ enigmatic nature multiplies. [Eli]

Mya Taylor – Tangerine

A lot of attention has been paid to Kitana Kiki Rodriguez’s lead performance in as Sin-Dee in Tangerine, and rightly so; it’s a brash, uncompromising and great turn from a first-time actress. But if Rodriguez is the ball of furious energy that keeps Tangerine going, then think of Mya Taylor as the film’s beating heart. Playing Alexandra, the more subdued friend of Sin-Dee, Taylor acts with a confidence and naturalism that prevents the film from veering too far off the map. Rodriguez may dominate the screen, but Taylor is the perfect, sensitive yin to her boisterous yang, and by the end it’s impossible not to recognize how vital Taylor’s performance is to the film’s success. [C.J.]

Alicia Vikander – Ex Machina

We might look back at 2015 as the year of Alicia Vikander. Overall, she had four great performances this year, including the romantic sidekick in the pulpy The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and two finely tuned dramatic turns in Testament of Youth and The Danish Girl. It’s her role as an A.I. in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina that leaves the biggest impression, though. Her role in the film is to basically prove the Turing test through a sequence of interviews with lonely programmer Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson). Ex Machina‘s wonderful character design and effects go a long way, but nothing would work without her central performance. Vikander plays Ava with a softness and fragility that makes her completely irresistible to both Caleb and viewers. Her curiosity pierces through the usual robot affectations that Vikander wears well. She has to be both human and machine, hero and villain, and convincing enough to work within the film’s plot conceit. Her ability to effortlessly manage all of these complex layers is one of the most impressive feats we’ve seen all year. [Aaron]

Kōji Yakusho – The World of Kanako

In The World of Kanako, Kōji Yakusho portrays a man living in a perpetual state of dazed anger. He drinks himself half to death and has a long list of pent-up regrets and fears that orchestrate his emotional instability. When his daughter, Kanako, goes missing, he finds a direction in which to point his abstract fury. What Yakusho gives us in bringing this character to life is a master class in expressive body acting. Twitching, howling, and never failing to interact with his environment, Yakusho pulls no punches, diving into the core of his character’s deranged headspace and demented patriarchal rage. [Cameron]

]]> http://waytooindie.com/features/20-best-performances-of-2015/feed/ 0 http://waytooindie.com/news/movies-to-stream-this-weekend-december-11/ http://waytooindie.com/news/movies-to-stream-this-weekend-december-11/#respond Sun, 13 Dec 2015 00:26:09 +0000 http://waytooindie.com/?p=42245

As we are often reminded, there are so many great streaming services out there which cater to a variety of different interests. One particular site that hasn’t been mentioned in this weekend streaming series is SundanceNow Doc Club, which offers hundred of documentaries, including exclusives and hard-to-see films. One of the best attractions to their site are the collections they offer, including picks from guest curators like Anthony Bourdain, Dan Savage and Susan Sarandon, to collections by theme (“Black Lives on Film,” “Artists at Work”) and spotlights on documentary legends. This week features prolific documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, who picked 12 of his personal favorites. The collection includes recent Oscar-nominated 5 Broken Cameras, Wim Wenders’s dance doc Pina, classic European art doc The Sorrow and the Pity, Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, Errol Morris’s seminal crime doc The Thin Blue Line, and more. If you are crazy about documentaries or want to broaden your film watching horizons, you should sign up for a free trial at SundanceNow Doc Club now. For other documentary (and non-documentary) picks fresh on streaming services this week, check out the recommendations below.

Netflix

Phoenix (Christian Petzold, 2014)

You are likely to see Christian Petzold’s German drama Phoenix pop up at Way Too Indie a few times over the next few weeks, as it is one of our favorite films of the year. Nina Hoss turns in a phenomenal performance as a Holocaust survivor who undergoes major facial reconstructive surgery and returns home unrecognizable. She finds her husband, a sleazy night club musician, who uses her as a stand-in for his (thought to be dead) wife as a scheme to collect on her inheritance. Phoenix is riveting, expertly acted and directed, with one of the best endings of the year. The taught and tense dramatic thriller is also a unique post-WWII Holocaust story, which is refreshing for the stuffed genre. To get all the hype coming from awards season, you can now check out Phoenix on Netflix.

Other titles new to Netflix this week:
Dinosaur 13 (Todd Douglas Miller, 2014)
The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid, 2014)
Phineas and Ferb (series, Season 4)
The Ridiculous 6 (Frank Coraci, 2015)
Xenia (Panos H. Koutras, 2014)

Fandor

Almost There (Dan Rybicky & Aaron Wickenden, 2014)

You may remember a few weeks back when the weekend streaming feature included a story about a partnership between Fandor and documentary production stalwart Kartemquin Films. Among the fruits of that deal is Kartemquin’s most recent film, the unusual artist profile doc Almost There. In the film, filmmakers Rybicky and Wickenden befriend a lonely elderly man named Peter Anton, who happens to be a prolific, but completely undiscovered underground artist. For years, Anton has painted hundreds of photographs (many of which are self-portraits) and assembled these remarkable scrapbooks from his life history. As Anton lives in a decrepit house with little support, the filmmakers intercede in his life—but ultimately discover a secret that dynamically changes their relationship. Almost There begins as a rather standard, breezy artist bio-doc before changing into a very complicated and sad story.

Other titles new to Fandor this week:
The Element of Crime (Lars von Trier, 1984)
Fifi Howls from Happiness (Mitra Farahani, 2013)
The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin, 2015)
Stinking Heaven (Nathan Silver, 2015)
The Vanishing (George Sluzier, 1988)

MUBI

War Work (Michael Nyman, 2015)

Not long after releasing Paul Thomas Anderson’s music documentary Junun, MUBI has come back with their next streaming exclusive, though this one has decidedly less fanfare. Directed by composer Michael Nyman, War Work is a 65-minute avant-garde film that edits silent-era archive footage together with classical music. Though it doesn’t have much of a specific through-line, the film (as the title suggests) is mostly a montage of different individuals’ work during wartime—from plane makers to doll makers. War Work isn’t an educational or historical document, however, as the scope of footage used and Nyman’s editing give the piece a poetic and sometimes brutal point-of-view. The footage is coupled with eight pieces of music, which was played as live accompaniment for the film at a series of events in 2014. War Work won’t be for everyone, but its exclusive push from MUBI highlights the streaming service’s intent to bring a wide variety of films that you can’t see anywhere else, no matter how esoteric. If you want to see War Work, you have until January 10.

Other titles new to MUBI this week:
Abuse of Weakness (Catherine Breillat, 2013)
Le Joli Mai (Chris Marker & Pierre Lhomme, 1963)
Steamboat Bill Jr. (Buster Keaton & Charles Reisner, 1928)
The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira, 2010)
Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)

Video On-Demand

Ant-Man (Peyton Reed, 2015)

Of the two Marvel Studios films released this year, there is no doubt that Ant-Man had fewer expectations. It may also have been the more wholly satisfying film. In the film, ex-con Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is hired by scientist Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) to steal a prototype suit that allows its wearer to shink to the size of an ant while increasing strength. With a story and screenplay that passed through the hands of Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay and Paul Rudd, Ant-Man has a wonderful comedic voice and fun heist plot—director controversy be damned. Peyton Reed may not be the beloved cult figure, but he is an accomplished comedy director, and he brings a personal style to the smaller-scale superhero epic. Audience response and ticket sales were good enough for Marvel to announce an originally unplanned sequel and more Ant-Man ties within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Other titles new to VOD this week:
Dixieland (Hank Bedford, 2015)
One Eyed Girl (Nick Matthews, 2014)
Pawn Sacrifice (Edward Zwick, 2014)
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (Christopher Landon, 2015)
The Transporter Refueled (Camille Delamarre, 2015)

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Here at Way Too Indie, we have plenty of love for foreign language films. Not only do foreign films provide an easy way to travel to new lands and learn about different cultures, but they can also push boundaries, provoke new ways of thinking, and offer unique views from what we’re generally accustomed to. Some of the best films of 2015 came from places like Argentina, Israel, Spain, and Hungary. So if you’re looking to explore new boundaries and look beyond what’s available in English, be sure to check out the following list of diverse films.

Way Too Indie’s Best Foreign Films of 2015

10,000 KM

It’s hard to believe 10,000 KM was a debut feature considering how Carlos Marques-Marcet’s film is so mature and expertly crafted . Right off the bat, Marques-Marcet demonstrates his filmmaking abilities with a remarkable 20-minute take that follows a couple from room to room around their cozy Barcelona apartment. This single scene isn’t just impressive from a technical standpoint, it also provides exposition on their relationship and introduces the central conflict of the film. Just when they decide to settle down together, one partner receives a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity in Los Angeles. But they won’t let geography put their intimate relationship on hold, especially when modern technology allows them to be just a click away from video chat, Facebook updates, and instant messaging. However, Marques-Marcet illustrates the frustrations from a lack of a physical presence, and how being digitally connected simply isn’t the same. It’s an up close and personal film, with both characters confined by the interiors of their apartments and bound by their laptop screens. 10,000 KM features a simple yet universal love story told in a bold, unapologetic, and genuine way. [Dustin]

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

A pressure-cooker courtroom drama for the ages, Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz’s Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem is both a direly important film and a stunningly artful one. The story is one of frustration, frustration belonging to the eponymous Viviane, an unhappy Israeli wife desperate to be free of her marriage. The injustice is this: In Israel, divorce can only commence if the husband consents; the wife has no say. The film takes place entirely within the cold walls of the Rabbinical courtroom in which Viviane’s pleas for separation are squashed over and over again. Few films are as frustrating, and few films are as inspired. Ronit Elkabetz is transcendent as Viviane not just because she’s a great actor, but because the pain she’s expressing is same pain felt by thousands of women in Israel today, ones who can’t escape the horror when the camera stops rolling. [Bernard]

Hard to Be A God

Conceived in the 1960s, shot in the 2000s, and finally finished in 2013, Aleksei German’s magnum opus Hard to Be a God could easily claim the title of filthiest movie ever made without anyone batting an eye. German’s sci-fi adaptation takes place in the future, but the setting is a recently discovered planet that’s just like Earth, except the planet’s civilization is currently living out its pre-Renaissance era. The camera, always moving and in deep focus, captures it all with a realism and sense of immersion that few films have achieved before, making Hard to Be a God a simultaneously grueling and exhilarating experience. Not many people will be up for German’s challenge here, but those willing to roll around in the mud will find themselves awestruck at the staggering, groundbreaking vision on display. Some films are hard to shake off, but Hard to Be a God is in a class of its own; this is a movie you have to scrub off. [C.J.]

Mommy

Xavier Dolan’s emotional tale of a single mother’s struggle to raise her troublemaking teenage son is one of the most unexpectedly intense films to come along in quite some time. Utilizing a strange yet aesthetically pleasing 1:1 aspect ratio, Mommy feels contained and dangerous. The teenage boy, Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon), has a tendency to grow uncontrollably violent, giving the film a suspenseful aura. The bizarre nature of the mother/son relationship, led by a fantastic lead performance from Anne Dorval makes Mommy an absolute must-see and one of the best of the year. The remarkable soundtrack is merely a bonus. [Blair]

Phoenix

German filmmaker Christian Petzold and the always stunning Nina Hoss have already collaborated with one another on multiple cinematic endeavors, but it seems their developing actor-director chemistry has, at long last, culminated in a masterpiece. Petzold’s post-Holocaust psychodrama is a slow-burner focusing on the fragile and traumatized Nelly Lenz, a facially disfigured (and essentially unrecognizable) concentration camp survivor who emerges from the War as the sole survivor of her family. From there, the audience follows her on a covert journey not only to discover whether her husband—in her “previous existence”—might have given her up to the Nazis, but if so, whether she’d be able to accept that fact and readjust to the exhausting task of simply living again. Hoss’ tour de force performance is a behemoth exertion of emotionally realized acting ability, and the film concludes on a such a remarkable note that you may need a fellow viewer to help peel your jaw from the floor once the end credits start rolling (unless they, too, are stuck in the same predicament). [Eli]

The Assassin

Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s wuxia masterwork is one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen. Its detractors accuse it of being unbearably slow, but I found myself unable to keep up with it. Each image contains so much content to observe and digest, from the props and costumes to abstract items like the placement of shadows or the nuance of facial expressions. Shu Qi’s marvelously restrained performance anchors Hou’s limitless vision. The cinematography is unspeakably gorgeous, and some of the shots are all-timers. The artistry is so unfathomably gorgeous and immersive that, unless one is an expert at cinematic self-discipline, unpacking its narrative and how the characters precisely relate to one another will require multiple viewings. The Assassin is the only film released this year I’ve had the pleasure of watching four times, and each time the experience was equally rich, if not richer, than that first overwhelming, borderline spiritual experience in theaters. This is the kind of film that reminds me why I love cinema — its ability to transport the viewer to exotic, wondrous realms, its power to make ancient characters immediate, and it’s breathtaking ability to leave me in a state of borderline paralysis. [Cameron]

The Look of Silence

Three years ago, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing was a complete revelation—a cathartic, powerful documentary about a genocide told from the perspective of those who perpetrated it. When I heard about the follow-up project, called The Look of Silence, I doubted it could possibly recapture the unique quality. It’s true, The Look of Silence isn’t as big as The Act of Killing, but it is just as (if not more) visceral. The new film lacks the other-worldly personalities of the gangsters, but turning the perspective to the victims allows for Oppenheimer to tone down the style for a straight-forward emotional gut punch. The film absolutely keeps Oppenheimer’s edge, though, by bringing together the victim subjects face-to-face with the men responsible for their personal loss—this happens a few times within the film with different groups, but each play out in different and surprising ways. The Look of Silence isn’t just a supplement; it stands on its own, captures new voices in this larger story, and creates a number of incredible moments of emotional release that stand apart from the original. [Aaron]

When Marnie Was There

In 2014, people endlessly praised Studio Ghibli’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya as yet another masterpiece from the slowly dwindling company (after Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement, Ghibli announced they would be taking a bit of a break). But in my opinion, this year’s When Marnie Was There blows Kaguya and other recent Ghibli titles out of the water. Adapted from Joan G. Robinson’s novel, Marnie follows depressed adolescent Anna as she spends the summer with relatives of her adopted mother. Feeling alienated and alone, Anna’s expectations of a dismal summer change when she meets Marnie, a mysterious girl who lives in an isolated mansion right next to the sea. By Ghibli standards director Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s visual style is subdued, but it’s still stunning in its naturalistic beauty, and the film’s honest portrayal of depression is both welcome and seemingly unprecedented for a children’s movie. When Marnie Was There may not showcase the same fantastical imagery of Kaguya or classics like Spirited Away but its story, a supernatural tale of friendship that travels through time, has just as much imagination and power as the company’s best work. [C.J.]

White God

Rare is the film whose animal actors are more compelling than its human ones, but such is the case with the brutal, rousing, sharply allegorical White God, written and directed by Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó. The beating heart of this arresting tale of doggie rebellion is the collective canine presence, dogs playing deadly, desperate revolutionaries in a more convincing, emotionally stirring manner than the throwaway fodder in most wartime period pieces. It’s hard to imagine a revenge fantasy wilder and more unique than Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, but Mundruczó’s film is exactly that. Suspenseful, powerful, sentimental, technically honed—few moviegoing experiences were as rich in 2015. Watching the dogs rip and claw at each other for the sake of their despicable owners’ entertainment isn’t an easy thing to stomach, but through a parabolic lens, there’s a profundity to all the thrashing and gnawing, particularly when fang meets human flesh. [Bernard]

Wild Tales

A 2014 Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film, Wild Tales didn’t receive a U.S. theatrical release until early 2015. Typically, films released that early in the year don’t come up around award season—usually because films are often dumped there, but even the good ones are easy to forget over time. Wild Tales is an unforgettable exception. Made up of six independent short films, Damián Szifrón’s film packs a darkly-tuned punch, exploring revenge and retribution in a variety of situations. Each of the segments aren’t created equal (ranking them seems to be a necessary part of every review), but they bring together a similar style and tone that ties them all into a cohesive unit which builds upon it self from beginning to end. The standout piece is the opening scene, the shortest and most clearly defined by the film’s theme. From there, Wild Tales explores corrupt bureaucracy, personal slights, sexual infidelities and even more with humor and a definite dark streak. It might not have the emotional resonance of the other films on this list, but you won’t find a more entertaining one in the bunch. [Aaron]

Honorable Mentions

With a ton of exceptional foreign films to choose from, there are going to be some worth mentioning that just missed the cut. For instance, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s emotional sister confinement film Mustang, and Jafar Panahi’s Taxi fell just a couple votes shy of making our main list. And it would be shame not to acknowledge the efforts of Céline Sciamma’s fresh coming-of-age drama Girlhood, the beautiful sensory experience of Blind, the Icelandic black comedy Of Horses and Men, and remarkable Holocaust drama Son of Saul.

Another year, another collection of unforgettable films, and another collection of unforgettable moments. Our list of unforgettable films is still on its way, but like last year we feel compelled to single out some scenes from 2015 that bowled us over and stayed in our brains. Some of these scenes are moments we cherish from our favorites this year, and others are great highlights from films that might not have been able to squeeze into our top tens. But as varied as this list may be, everything on it is another reason why we still love watching movies (even if that means watching a lot of duds). Read on to see what we loved from this year, and be sure to let us know what moments or scenes you couldn’t forget.

45 Years – The Anniversary Party

I’m a little hesitant to go into much detail on the anniversary party scene of Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years, as it is the culminating scene of this fine film, but it without a doubt deserves recognition. By the time the characters and audience have arrived at this scene, so much emotional turmoil has been quietly digested. In a typical film, this would finally boil over, acting as the ultimate breaking point that the film was literally building to from the beginning. Here, however, it becomes a beautiful and very sad interplay between its celebrated couple. Charlotte Rampling is particularly stunning here, all the way up to the film’s final shot—she has gone through so much internal struggle that you almost want her to explode, but for the actress’ better judgment, she gives the scene so much more complexity when the cracks begin to show. [Aaron]

Arabian Nights: Volume 2 – The Desolate One – The Tears of the Judge

Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights trilogy is filled with highlights and lowlights, but of the many stories told over the trilogy’s combined ~6.5-hour runtime, this bravura 40-minute segment in Volume 2 is by far the best part of all three films. Taking place in an outdoor courtroom, a judge (Luisa Cruz) presides over a case involving apartment tenants selling furniture belonging to their landlord. The judge declares it to be a simple case of theft, but when she decides to probe further (“to share thoughts and moralities with you all,” she explains to the crowd watching the case) she triggers a convoluted blame game. The defendants argue that their landlord is a vile person, which leads to testimony saying he abuses 911 operators, and from there genies, cows and polygamy get thrown into the mix. This is blunt, on-the-nose political filmmaking of the best kind, with Gomes increasing the absurdity of the situation at an exponential rate with each new development. It’s smart, hilarious stuff, and the story’s bookending sequences—involving the judge’s daughter losing her virginity—adds the kind of sting that turns good satire into great satire. [C.J.]

Bone Tomahawk – Meal Prep

Bone Tomahawk opens with the image of someone getting their throat slit with a dull knife, a grisly scene that helps establish writer/director S. Craig Zahler’s preference for brutal, realistic violence. But that opening won’t prepare anyone for what comes much later (almost 90 minutes later, to be precise), well after Zahler’s film has settled into a pleasantly poky groove. Our four heroes, on a trip to save their friends and loved ones from cannibalistic cave dwellers, find themselves captured by their foes, and Zahler shows what happens when one person gets selected to be the next meal. It’s a horrifying sight that’ll have viewers covering their eyes and plugging their ears (God only knows what was used to create those sound effects), and Zahler puts splatter filmmakers like Eli Roth—who tried his hand at cannibal horror this year with The Green Inferno—to shame. Just remind yourself to watch this film on an empty stomach whenever you get the chance to see it. [C.J.]

Eastern Boys – Home Invasion

The opening minutes of Robin Campillo’s Eastern Boys shows middle-aged Daniel (Olivier Rabourdin) approaching young male prostitute Marek (Kirill Emelyanov) and propositioning him for sex. Marek agrees to meet Daniel at his apartment the next day, but Daniel has no idea what he’s in for once there’s a knock at his door. Instead, almost a dozen people come pouring into his apartment one at a time, all of them part of Marek’s gang run by the charismatic and intimidating Boss (Daniil Vorobyev). It’s a surreal sequence running just over 20 minutes in length, and it’s all the more fascinating by Daniel’s unorthodox reaction to the situation; he quietly lets Boss and his underlings steal everything out of his place, and when the boys start an impromptu dance party in his living room he joins in. It’s a remarkable experience watching it all unfold, with Campillo oscillating between the intensity of the scenario (culminating in an unexpected act of violence) and how alluring it is for Daniel to be surrounded by so many objects of his desire. The rest of Eastern Boys doesn’t maintain the same quality, but Campillo has created an undeniable mini-masterpiece with this one sequence. [C.J.]

Entertainment – The Heckler

Rick Alverson, who’s quickly established himself as a master of cringe humour, creates yet another masterpiece of discomfort with this scene in Entertainment. While doing a show at a tiny bar somewhere in the California desert, The Comedian (Gregg Turkington, aka Neil Hamburger) gets interrupted by what he thinks is a heckler (Amy Seimetz, making the most of her brief screentime). But Alverson shows what Turkington’s character didn’t see: that the heckler was getting harassed by a man at the bar, her outburst directed at the man beside her and not on stage. That doesn’t stop The Comedian from tearing into her, hurling a barrage of nasty (and funny) insults her way. The sequence works so well because of the way Alverson constructs it within the familiar framework of a drama or character study; take away the context behind Seimetz’s “heckling” and the scene can look like Turkington defiantly taking down a critic. Instead it’s something much uglier, going against expectations and turning the protagonist into a villain. Alverson’s films are never easy, but that’s what makes them great. [C.J.]

The Forbidden Room – “The Final Derriere”

A musical interlude about a man’s addiction to female rumps (and the bizarre method he chooses to overcome it) would be strange in most any film, but it even stands out in Guy Maddin’s wackadoodle masterpiece The Forbidden Room. In the scene, the great Udo Kier plays a man tormented by a whip-wielding “Master Passion” (a fine cameo by Geraldine Chaplin). The song is incredibly catchy, a mix of styles just like the film, with a bit of a Beach Boys sound, a bit of Queen’s theatrics, a bit new wave and even a bit heavy metal—but it is without a doubt a singular piece, telling a singular story. It’s also an incredibly catchy tune; I’ve been humming “a little more off the top, a little more off the top” since I first watched the film. This plays beautifully off how morbid and grotesque both the song’s content and Maddin’s images are, tapping into the absurdity that The Forbidden Room wears so well. [Aaron]

Girlhood – “Diamonds”

From the outset, Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood establishes the hard conditions of its main character Marieme (Karidja Touré). She’s doing poorly at school, stuck in an abusive situation with her family, and feeling alienated. It’s only when she meets a group of three outspoken girls who eventually befriend her that she starts to feel a sense that she belongs somewhere, and Sciamma beautifully shows the precise moment when Marieme finally embraces her new identity. The girls rent out a hotel room for the night, a means of escaping their problems, and Marieme watches as her new friends sing along to Rihanna’s “Diamonds” under a blue light. Marieme sits back watching before finally joining in on the fun, and Sciamma (who lets the song play out in its entirety) lights the scene to make all four girls look like they’re glowing. It’s a touching, celebratory moment, where Sciamma gives her characters the opportunity to break free from their lives and truly be themselves, even if it’s only for a moment. [C.J.]

Mad Max: Fury Road – The Bullet Farmer’s Final Charge

Pulling a cartridge from his mouth, the villainous leader of the Wasteland’s arms faction croons: “One angry shot…for Furiosa!” Decked out in a bullet belt headdress, perched atop a golden tank tread vehicle and literally armed to the teeth, he speeds into the night. Meanwhile, our tough band of defectors and escapees struggle to pull the stalled War Rig out of the mud, their ears perking up as distant shots ring out. In a film loaded with explosive, go-for-broke chase sequences and wildly eccentric displays, the Bullet Farmer’s solo charge might be my favorite combination of both elements. The character’s blind machine gun spray (perfectly accented by an impassioned appeal to the heavens and Verdi’s booming “Dies Irae”) is a gloriously mad affair. However, the sequence is grounded by a wordless interaction between Furiosa and Max in which Furiosa uses her comrade to stabilize her rifle, making a perfect shot and shattering the Farmer’s searchlight. The foggy atmosphere and deep blue day-for-night lighting only add to scene’s deliriously intoxicating effect. [Byron]

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation – Vienna Opera House

The Vienna Opera House sequence is the “Burj Khalifa moment” of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. It may not be as spectacularly white-knuckle or as death-defying in its stunt work, but for my money, it’s the biggest show-stopper in a thriller boasting several great candidates. Partially set to an emotionally stirring performance of “Nessun Dorma,” the scene offers intense hand-to-hand combat and a mysterious cat-and-mouse game. Christopher McQuarrie’s intricate direction closely details a number of moving pieces, Tom Cruise does a solid job of conveying his character’s conflicted feelings, and everything builds to an intelligent climax. It’s one of the best set pieces of the year. [Byron]

Mustang – The Soccer Game

More of a plot point than a specific scene, the events that lead to and come from the attendance of a soccer game really scores the special quality of Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s female-driven Mustang. Due to violent hooliganism, Turkish officials decide that all men will be barred from an upcoming match. This sparks soccer fan Lale to enlist her sisters (who don’t care too much for the sport) to sneak out from their small town and sheltered lives and take part. It’s really a minor part of the first act, a short sequence that could probably be the greater plot of another film, but it encapsulates the spirit of its characters so incredibly well. What’s more, it leads to a wonderful and surprising action from the girls’ aunt in what soon after becomes a very haunting and serious film. [Aaron]

Phoenix – “Speak Low”

There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the ending of Phoenix, Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss’ latest collaboration. For most of its runtime, Petzold’s film is a narratively straightforward and psychologically complex tale of disfigured Holocaust survivor Nelly (Hoss) trying to regain her old identity after receiving facial reconstruction surgery. But when Nelly finally accepts the reality of her situation and rises from the ashes, Petzold closes Nelly’s story with a breathtaking wallop. Without going into specifics (seriously, stop reading and go watch Phoenix already), Nelly sings the song “Speak Low,” and through her performance the story unravels and resolves itself in a way that inspires chills. It’s by far the best ending to any movie this year, and could easily go down as an all-timer. [C.J.]

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence – The Third Meeting with Death

Roy Andersson’s filmmaking style makes for easy inclusion in lists like this, as his work often takes on an episodic quality. Many of the funny, poignant or disturbing scenes in A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence could make the cut, but it’s the third in the film’s opening trilogy of scenes (marked as three meetings with death) the leaves the biggest impression. The first two scenes are brief bits of physical humor: a man who collapses while struggling to uncork a bottle and a woman on her death-bed desperately clutching a handbag. These are audacious and quite funny, but the third scene adds Andersson’s incredible dryness. To set the stage: a man has died while in line at a cafeteria. While three obnoxiously stiff officials wonder aloud what they should do with the body, the nearby cashier pipes in with a question: what should she do with the food he purchased? The matter-of-fact, monotone response, thought out way too meticulously, and the reaction of the gathered crowd of diners are wonderfully characteristic examples of Andersson’s odd look at human nature. [Aaron]

Steve Jobs – John Scully vs. Steve Jobs

A showcase of a writer at the height of his powers. this scene can be classified as a verbal set piece. Just moments before taking the stage to introduce the NeXT Computer, Jobs is challenged by Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), about the myths surrounding why Jobs was ousted. What follows is a bravura sequence seamlessly weaving between past and present at breakneck speed. Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue is sharper and more acidic than ever, and the sequence has dips and climaxes that are more potent than most action movies. For a scene that is essentially two men standing in a room and talking, it’s overwhelmingly energetic and the performances really help viewers invest in the words being spoken. [Byron]

Wild Tales – Pasternak

Anthology films are rarely as successful as Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales. The film’s six shorts are thematically linked, but I would argue their strongest connection is in tone, which is beautifully set by the film’s opening segment. Without giving too much away (because there is a brilliant twist in there), we open on an airplane where a man makes small talk with a beautiful woman across the aisle. They realize, through what seems like blind luck, that they have a common acquaintance—a failed composer who used the date the woman and studied under the man. You won’t believe what happens next. Once the scene ends, anyone watching Wild Tales is ready to know just how dark the film is willing to go, and just how creatively it can get there. Of all the films within the film, the opening is the most wildly enjoyable and the most successful in marrying the film’s themes with its point-of-view. Without this segment or its placement in the film, Wild Tales wouldn’t click so well as one of the best films of the year. [Aaron]

What else?

We’d be foolish not to give some sort of shout out to other terrific scenes throughout the year, like the hilarious funeral sequence in Li’l Quinquin, which had us doubled over from laughter; both the border crossing and night vision sequences in Sicario; the ending of Carol, which should get an emotional response out of even the coldest souls; the opening long take in Buzzard, a painfully funny experience much like Entertainment; the bonkers final act of Jauja; a scorching scene from The Fool where the town mayor lays into her corrupt staff; everything that happens at Mamie Claire’s house in Mistress America; the intense argument between Gerard Depardieu and Jacqueline Bissett in Welcome to New York; the tightrope sequence in The Walk, and much, much more.

It’s a giant show this week as Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer joins us to talk about The Look of Silence, his follow-up to his critically-acclaimed 2013 documentary, The Act of Killing. Also joining the show is filmmaker Perry Blackshear, talking about They Look Like People, his new film about love and nightmares, as well as sharing his Favorite Bloodless Horror Scenes with Bernard and CJ. All that, plus our Indie Picks of the Week, on this very special edition of the Way Too Indiecast.

This week’s Way Too Indiecast is sponsored by MUBI, an curated online cinema that brings its members a hand-picked selection of the best indie, foreign, and classic films. Visit www.mubi.com/waytooindie for a free 30 day trial.

Topics

• Indie Picks of the Week (1:45)
• They Look Like People (7:15)
• Favorite Bloodless Horror Scenes (18:00)
• The Look of Silence (32:55)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

Phoenix review
Christian Petzold interview

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It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the collaboration between Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss is one of the best things cinema has going for itself right now. Since 2003, Petzold and Hoss have worked together on six films, and over time the two have established themselves as a dramatic force to be reckoned with. It wasn’t until recently that their work became more popular with Barbara, a dramatic masterwork by Petzold about a woman trying to escape Eastern Germany. Both Petzold and Hoss, along with Barbara co-star Ronald Zehrfeld, return this year with Phoenix, their latest film.

The film could be easily described as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo transplanted to post-WWII Germany, although that only gives away some of the story. Hoss plays Nelly, a Holocaust survivor who had her face disfigured during her time at a concentration camp. Her friend Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) finds her after the War, and with the help of a plastic surgeon gives Nelly the opportunity to go under facial reconstruction surgery. Lene and the doctors suggest Nelly should get an entirely new face, but she refuses. She wants to look exactly like she did before the War.

The struggle between clinging on to the past and letting go is Phoenix’s major theme, and Petzold finds one hell of a psychologically twisted way to explore it. Once Nelly recovers from her surgery, she hunts down her husband Johnny (Zehrfeld), hoping to reconnect with him. Johnny, thinking that Nelly is dead, doesn’t recognize his wife at first, but he sees a resemblance. He gets an idea to use Nelly as a lookalike, passing her off as his wife so he can claim her family’s large inheritance. Nelly agrees to go along with the plan, and we watch Johnny give his wife directions on how to play herself (or, more accurately, his idea of who she is). It’s a traumatizing situation for Nelly, but she continues to go along with it, hoping it will lead her back to the way things were.

Hoss, giving one of the year’s best performances so far, delves straight into her character’s complexities with ease, and Petzold’s direction is the definition of pure class. And while Phoenix may be more of a slow burn compared to Barbara, the film’s ending, where Nelly finally rises from the ashes, delivers the kind of stunning wallop that continues to prove why Hoss and Petzold are an unstoppable pair.

We had a chance to sit down and talk with Christian Petzold just after the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. Read on for the full interview, where Petzold talks about his longtime collaboration with late filmmaker Harun Farocki, his interest in portraying people as ghosts, what makes his collaboration with Nina Hoss so strong, and why he prefers to work with film over digital.

Phoenix releases theatrically July 24th.

Could you go into the genesis of Phoenix? How did you and co-writer Harun Farocki discover Nelly’s story?
At the end of the 1970s, I was living in a little suburb and the revolution failed. My personal revolution failed. There was a very important magazine at this time called Filmkritik, and there was an issue by Harun Farocki on Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In this issue there was an essay about the theme of men who create women, like Pygmalion or Frankenstein’s bride. And in this essay, he is writing about a book called “Return from the Ashes” by Hubert Monteilhet. 5 years later, when I was a member of a football team in Berlin, I met Harun, who was also a football player. This is when we started our collaboration, and we thought about how we can realize the plot of “Return from the Ashes” in Germany. We think we can do it, and we can make this connection between Auschwitz and Hitchcock. And we’re always interested in the theme of [people as] ghosts. People who have lost their work or who are unemployed are ghosts. After we made Barbara, Harun said to me [about Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld] that we have a couple strong enough to play the protagonists of this story.

With Phoenix and Barbara, you’ve made two films back to back about some of the darkest moments in Germany’s past. What drew you focusing on these time periods?
12 years ago, I said to myself that I can’t stand stories anymore where there are big problems in the world, but love solves problems. I am interested in complex situations where love is complicated, and it’s a mirror of the situation. I said I wanted to make 3 or 4 films about love in oppressive situations. Barbara was one of them, Phoenix is the second one, and the third one will be made in 2 years. It’s in Marseilles in 1940, and it’s about refugees waiting to go to the US.

You’re putting a heavy emphasis on identity in the film, along with the theme of rebirth versus re-creation. What interested you in focusing on these ideas?
The word “person” comes from the Greek word “persona,” and it means mask. You have to have a mask to be a person, to have an identity, to be a part of society. When you lose your persona, your mask, you’re nothing. And in Nelly’s case, she has also lost her body. But what she didn’t lose is her memory, and this little bubble of memories was like a survival kit during her time at the camps. She wants to get her body back, she wants to get her identity back, and she wants to materialize herself. She doesn’t want to be a ghost anymore. This is the main energy of the film.

I was noticing the performance aspect of the film. Nelly is knowingly going along with something she knows is false, and is letting Johnny direct her. For me, it was interesting to see her slowly come to realize that she’s really putting herself in a fiction.
Right. There’s one thing I remember now. There is an autobiography by a political essayist in Germany. It was 1933, and he was a studying to be a lawyer. He’s sitting in a court 2 days before the Nazis have won the election. He’s reading something where someone has betrayed another person. Then he heard shouting and crying in the whole building because the [Nazi soldiers] are coming into the courts in this building in Berlin. They take all the Jews out and start beating them. He’s sitting there, and he’s German, not a Jew, and he’s hearing all these cries and shouts. He says to himself that he’s in a tunnel, and he doesn’t want to hear this. Then the door opens, and three [Nazis] come in with sticks shouting at him “Are you Jew or are you German?” He said that he is German. The man said that, in this moment, he betrayed human beings. This was very important for Nina during rehearsals, because she says “This is not my mask. This is not my identity. I am not a Jew.”

This is your sixth film with Nina Hoss. What is like for the two of you to work together after all this time? Is it a foregone conclusion for you that, when you make another film, she will be in it?
Not all movies, but for the next one or two films. For the last six movies, I always knew she would play the main character. And from this moment on she’s a collaborator. This is totally different from other actors I’ve worked with. She will take all the material I give her: all the movies, photos, comics, ideas, and the script, and she puts it in a suitcase, goes out to smoke and never comes back until we start shooting. And when she comes back for shooting, she makes something with the material that is not what I wanted from her. She’s working a little bit against me. She’s working for herself, and this is a very good collaboration, because on the other side of the camera there’s someone who is not my projection.

You shot this on 35mm?
Yes.

Do you want to keep working on film?
In the last 2 or 3 years, my friends have changed their minds. They say digital is great. For me, Kodak 35mm is the best material for human skin and nature. We lost something with digital. We want to re-create it with digital things, and for me I need one analog step in the procedure because it starts living. I’m really sure that this will be my last film on 35mm, because we don’t find material. Everyone says digital is less expensive, but it’s more expensive. The film camera is not expensive. 100 years of people’s inventions are in this material. The editing suites are cheap, and there’s no big post production because the negatives are fantastic. I’m really sad about digital. And another thing is that there are monitors all over the set, and everybody is looking in the monitor. So you start directing on the monitor, and when you direct on the monitor you stop talking to the actors. You talk to the monitors. I don’t like this kind of filmmaking, but I have to do it.

It has been 70 years since World War II ended, and yet the subject, its periphery, and its aftermath remain a collective fertile ground for modern filmmakers. From documentaries to adaptations to fictionalized dramas, the war that was fought and won by the greatest generation continues to mesmerize people on both sides of the camera. The latest dramatic entry to leverage World War II is Christian Petzold‘s superb drama, Phoenix.

Nelly Lenz (Nina Hoss) is a concentration camp survivor who has returned to Berlin after the war, but that survival has come with a cost: her face has been horribly disfigured. Only her confidante, Lene Winter (Nina Kunzendorf), knows she is even alive (the rest of her immediate family is dead). When Nelly pursues reconstructive surgery, she is insistent on remaining as true to her original appearance as possible. Her goal is to find, and reunite with, her husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld). This is despite Lene’s suggestion that Johnny might have been the one to turn her over to the Nazis in exchange for his own freedom.

Nelly remains undaunted, but when she finally finds her husband, he doesn’t recognize her; her appearance is different enough that there is a resemblance to her past self and nothing more. More alarming, she realizes she doesn’t recognize the person he has become. When he asks her to pose as his wife in an effort to claim an inheritance, Nelly becomes as scarred emotionally as her face was scarred physically.

With cowriter Harun Farocki, director Christian Petzold adapts Hubert Monteilhet’s novel “Le retour des cendres” (“Return from the Ashes”) into a haunting film about love, betrayal, and how one woman’s identity becomes the ultimate casualty of war.

There is a pall of desperation that hangs heavy over Nelly Lenz. She is a woman reeling from what she has been through, and desperate to cling to any semblance of her past. She cannot get back the family she once belonged to; they are dead. She cannot recoup the money she has lost; it is gone. She cannot reclaim her dignity; that was left in a camp that is better left forgotten. She’s even in denial about her faith. The only thing she has left that can define her are her looks and her husband. One face and one person. Without either of those, as she so sorrowfully puts it after visiting a bombed-out building from her past, “I no longer exist.”

That Johnny doesn’t recognize her anyway is the diabolical twist of Phoenix: neither her face nor her husband (or who she thought her husband was) can ever be quite what they used to be. There’s a resemblance in both cases, but they are ghostly.

Petzold is clever to not show what Nelly looked like before her ordeal. This, coupled with whatever the ravages of imprisonment may have done to her body, makes acceptable the fact her husband doesn’t recognize her. Mostly. The notion troubled me, to be honest. I wondered how a man—a man who has no confirmation his wife is dead—could see a woman who so closely resembles her that he would use her in an inheritance scam, yet not wonder if it could possibly be her? The question is answered with a wonderful subtly that I dare not reveal here. The final scene, one of deep, sincere, incredible drama, not only brings the film to a remarkable close, it solidifies who Nelly is and that she knows who she is now. Other than that final reveal, the film simmers but never boils, which at times can be frustrating.

Hoss is tremendous here—a perfect blend of haunted and hopeful, letting those two things slowly shift in dominance as her character’s circumstances evolve. Her scenes in the film’s second half are better still, as she is forced to further struggle with identity, being reduced to pretending to be someone that is learning to be her, all while coping with her husband’s lack of recognition, and all in the name of an inheritance scam. Her performance is devastating.

If every WWII or WWII-adjacent film is going to be this caliber, filmmakers can leverage the war for the rest of time if they want. Phoenix is an exceptional film thanks to strength of character and might of performance, and it shouldn’t be missed.

Phoenix opens theatrically July 24th. 

With Toronto now in our rearview mirror, we’ve had time to reflect on which films at the festivals left the greatest impression on us as well as ones that left us with a bad taste (check out our coverage hub). Unlike last year’s 12 Years a Slave or Gravity, the lineup this year seemed to lack a headliner film that everyone flocked towards, but this allowed us to put on our exploring gear to discover some hidden gems. And we certainly found some surprises. We compiled our favorite and most disappointing films of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, listing any films we already saw at other festivals like Cannes and SXSW as part of our honorable mentions.

Favorite Films of TIFF 2014

Bird People

Pascale Ferran’s film defines whimsy, but don’t take that as a red flag. Split into two parts, Bird People (review) tells a similar story through two slightly connected lives. An American businessman on a trip in France makes a major, life-changing decision in the first part, and in the second one of the cleaners at the hotel the American stays at has a life-changing decision made for her. It’s best to go into Bird People not knowing too much, because the shock of where Ferran takes her film is a large part of what makes the experience so pleasurable. By finding an utterly audacious way to tell the same story twice, Bird People serves as a reminder of the limitless possibilities of storytelling. [CJ]

The Duke Of Burgundy

Wonderfully acted, sumptuously shot, vibrantly edited, Peter Strickland’s The Duke Of Burgundy (review) was one of those festival films that floored most critics, and became the unofficial recipient of the “Critic’s Choice Award.” You can count me among those who fell ecstatically in love with this intoxicating and deliciously spirited picture. Tracing the waning stages of a relationship, it may sound conventional on paper but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single conventional frame here. Chara D’Anna and Sidse Babett Knudsen play lesbian lovers Evelyn and Cynthia, deeply involved in a relationship founded on BDSM and Cynthia’s profession in lepidoptera, and the emotional core of the film is the lovers’ attempt at holding on to the passion that binds them. It’s creative in every imaginable cinematic way, and with US rights secured by IFC Midnight, I urge readers to keep a look out for release date because this is one you won’t want to miss. [Nik]

In the Crosswind

Director Martti Helde’s debut, based on Stalin’s purge of Baltic residents to Siberia, was one of the fest’s more surprising discoveries. Shot in black and white tableaux vivants, the camera slowly floats around each meticulously staged scene (each shot took months of preparation) while the protagonist narrates her experiences. It’s a bold stylistic move that pays off in spades, providing one moving image after another. At its worst, In the Crosswind (review) can be admired for its exquisite cinematography, but it’s much better than an excuse to show off some terrific camerawork. Helde merges the story’s emotional impact with the meticulous staging, delivering something completely unique and awe-inspiring. [CJ]

La Sapienza

Eugène Green’s newest work sounds trite on paper. When a famous architect loses the passion for his livelihood, along with his marriage, he sets off with his wife to study a famous Baroque architect’s work in Italy. A stop along the way has them crossing paths with two young siblings, and their experience with the brother and sister cause the couple to fall back in love again. But leave it to Green, whose formal approach is something entirely his own, to make La Sapienza (review) a thought-provoking, altogether pleasant experience. Even if one can’t adjust to Green’s habit of placing the camera directly in front of his actors, the inventive and evocative ways he films Baroque architecture will surely wow viewers. [CJ]

Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a creepy thief who stops at nothing to earn himself a buck in Dan Gilory’s directorial debut Nightcrawler. Shot by the extraordinary Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood, Magnolia), the film shows a side of Los Angeles that you’ve never seen before. Eager to get into any job field that will accept him, Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal) stumbles into the dark and dirty world of racing ambulances to crime-scenes to capture gruesome footage for local television stations. Gyllenhaal plays a perverse anti-hero who somehow has us rooting for him in more times we care to admit. Nightcrawler keeps you on the edge of your seat with twists and turns down to the very end. For my money, it’s a better version of American Psycho. [Dustin]

Phoenix

Christian Petzold returned to the festival circuit this year, to remind us why he’s one of Germany’s most accomplished and leading directors working today. In a sixth collaboration with his muse Nina Hoss, he has directed the most sophisticated film I saw at TIFF. Phoenix (review) tells the story of Nelly, a Holocaust survivor who returns to her native Berlin to try and piece her broken life back together. She searches for her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld, also fantastic) who may or may not have betrayed her to the Nazis, and in an intricate narrative, ends up pretending to pretend to be herself. It’s a brilliant storytelling move by Petzold, who explores an identity crisis and symbolizes it in the context of post-war Berlin. The ending is probably the greatest thing Hoss and Petzold ever achieved together; it will eat you alive. [Nik]

A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence

Featured in our Top 15 Most Anticipated films for TIFF, it’s safe to say that Roy Andersson’s Golden Lion winner did not disappoint in the slightest. With a title you just want to hug, A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence begins in typical Andersson style; a stationary camera angled at a beige-colored museum room, and a pasty-white overweight man walking around, looking at fossils and relics, with his wife impatiently waiting in the background. One of these fossils turns out to be a dusty pigeon, sitting on a branch, frozen in stuffed reflection. A series of vignettes proceed to flow and connect in Andersson’s philosophizing world full of contemplative, existentialist, and often hilarious, characters and actions. Some of the scenes, including one where two eras meet in a café, are reminiscent of the superior Songs From The Second Floor in their astounding choreography and technical fortitude. For the third part of his trilogy about “being human,” Andersson has proved yet again that he is one of the most fascinating directors working today. [Nik]

The Theory of Everything

Here’s a challenge for you. Try watching the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything (review) without shedding a tear. Based off the memoir of Jane Hawking, the film chronicles the life of famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking from the time the two met at Cambridge and the difficulties they faced after Stephen was diagnosed with the paralyzing Lou Gherig’s disease. Most people only hear the scientific side of Stephen’s achievements, but this film sheds light on his personal life and the emotional struggles he and Jane went through trying to raise a family while battling a vicious disease. Don’t be surprised if you hear Eddie Redmayne’s name called come Oscar time. Portraying Stephen Hawking before and after the disease required a difficult physical transformation that Redmayne brilliantly performs. It may be a little sappy and conventional at times, but The Theory of Everything remains an incredibly uplifting film about love and hope. [Dustin]

Tokyo Tribe

Sion Sono tops himself yet again which his biggest and most ambitious film to date. Taking place over one night in a dystopian Tokyo run by 23 different gangs, Sono’s hip-hop musical/action/comedy/horror/whatever-you-want-to-call-it throws everything it can on the screen at once. At times overwhelming and exhausting, Tokyo Tribe (review) is nonetheless frequently hilarious and twisted, filled with incredible scenes and violence galore. This might not be the best introduction to Sono’s insanity (last year’s Why Don’t You Play In Hell? might work better for that), but fans of the Japanese madman have no need to worry. Sono continues to fire on all cylinders, and for all we know this could be his masterpiece. [CJ]

Wild Tales

The Argentina film Wild Tales (review) was easily the most fun experience I had at the festival. Consisting of six completely insane short stories, director/writer Damian Szifron takes these episodic segments to hilarious levels by combining pitch-black humor with creative ways to show vengeance. Each story begins with an ordinary situation most people can relate to, but as they unfold Wild Tales shifts into overdrive with exaggerated circumstances filled with irony. For example, one of the stories involves a slow driving hillbilly who serves across lanes so that they only other car on the country highway can’t pass him. When the guy finally manages to pass the slow driver, he makes an explicit gesture towards him and speeds off, only to get a flat tire a few miles later. The scene becomes chaotic and ends on an epic note. Wild Tales is packed with a lot of laughs, claps, visual style, and plenty of shock value that you would expect from a film produced by Pedro Almodóvar. [Dustin]

Most Disappointing Films of TIFF 2014

Cub

Ever read a synopsis for a movie and thought “that sounds so fantastic, it’s almost impossible to mess up,” only to walk away totally disillusioned and disappointed? That’s pretty much exactly what happened to me and this promising Belgian horror film about a 12-year-old boy scout caught in a booby-trapped forest with his troop, trying to avoid the fatal antics of a “wolf-boy” called Kai. Playing in the Midnight Madness, promoted with a tasty festival trailer, Jonas Govaerts’ Cub is, sadly, a neutered, declawed and defanged puppy, completely harmless in terms of true horror. With a unique setting in the woods, in the context of scouts and their “be prepared” motto’s, and the deliciously-sounding booby trap techniques, Cub has all the potential to be an inventive, visceral, experience. It’s nothing of the sort; relying on conventional scares, uninteresting characters, and a painfully flat finale. [Nik]

Mommy

Xavier Dolan wants you to know he’s a serious director. The Quebecois filmmaker with many job titles to his name (including actor, director, writer, producer, and editor, to name a few) made a huge splash this year when Mommy received a rapturous response at Cannes, getting a 12-minute standing ovation and a Jury Prize. Count me as someone who doesn’t get the fervent support around Dolan. With almost no plot or story, Mommy follows a mother and her troubled teenage son around as they befriend their new neighbor. Dolan shoots in a 1:1 aspect ratio, a completely useless gimmick, and tends to repeat a formula of shrill, violent fights between mother and son before dancing the pain away to a poorly chosen pop song played in full. Mommy is bad melodrama, plain and simple, a surprising step down for Dolan after his previous two features, Laurence Anyways and Tom at the Farm, showed a lot more promise. [Nik]

The Voices

The only time I felt the urge to walk out of the theater at the festival was during incredibly underwhelming The Voices. Unfortunately, I didn’t leave early thinking (nay hoping) the film would get better, a decision I would later regret. Jerry Hickfang (Ryan Reynolds) plays a seemingly normal blue-collar worker, but his home life reveals a dark secret behind this disturbed man. He hears the incredibly silly voices from his evil cat and angel-like dog who convince him to do unthinkable things. None of the performances are especially good in the film, which is disappointing considering Ryan Reynolds, Anna Kendrick, and Jacki Weaver were involved. The tone of The Voices is completely inconsistent, beginning with an overly playful musical then shifting into a dark comedy, and eventually ventures to nonsensical horror, without an ounce of cohesiveness. During moments when the film was trying to be funny I found myself laughing at it instead of with it. Despite being a rather stylish film, The Voices is an awkward mess of genre mashing gone horribly wrong. [Dustin]

Honorable Mentions

Other films that are definitely worth checking out that played at TIFF (and other festivals): Adam Wingard’s rapturous and playful The Guest, Palm d’Or winner Winter Sleep, latest from master filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne Two Days, One Night, 3 and a half hour epic Li’l Quinquin, harrowing street life portrait Heaven Knows What, ambitious and transcending Jauja, and Mike Leigh’s exemplary Mr. Turner.

Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss return for their sixth collaboration in Phoenix, a well-done post-WWII German drama. Hoss plays Nelly, a Holocaust survivor with severe damage to her face. The only survivor in her family, Nelly inherits a large amount of money she uses to have facial reconstruction surgery. Nelly’s close companion Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) suggests Nelly get a new face entirely, but she insists on wanting to look the same as before. This is where the film’s major theme of identity gets explored. Lene and other Jewish survivors in Germany want to start new lives and move to Palestine, while Nelly stubbornly fights to get back her old life.

Of course, that old life can never come back. Nelly hunts down her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), only for him to not recognize her due to the surgery. He does notice she has a resemblance to his wife, though, prompting him to ask her to pose as Nelly so he can try to get her massive inheritance. That’s when Phoenix begins to pick up. Hoss and Zehrfeld brilliantly highlight the intense complexity of their interactions, and Petzold continues to show his immense skills behind the camera.

Phoenix may not live up to the excellence of Barbara, the last collaboration between Hoss and Petzold, but it’s still an admirably well-told story. What does come close to matching the quality of Barbara comes at the very end of Phoenix. In a showstopping scene, Petzold finally delivers the film’s big moment, and the result packs the emotional power of a sledgehammer to the chest. It would have been nice if the rest of Phoenix matched the standard of its final minutes, but with the talent on display throughout it’s hard to really complain.

Yes, it’s that time of year again. As the summer begins to wind down, cinephiles begin to flock to Canada as the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off another year. With almost 300 feature-length films playing over 11 days (along with over 100 shorts), for some people this is more of a marathon than a festival. And for film-obsessives like ourselves, it’s like being a kid in a candy store.

Now, we won’t lie: when we saw this year’s line-up we weren’t as excited as we were in the last few years, but there’s still a lot to watch. There aren’t as many films coming in with the levels of hype as 12 Years A Slave or Gravity, but that’s because it’s a different year. The Oscar race is wide open at this point, and a lot of films this year are wild cards rather than sure bets. Could it mean another out of nowhere discovery like Slumdog Millionaire or The Hurt Locker?

We got a bit of a head start on TIFF this year with our coverage at Cannes, so myself, our editor-in-chief Dustin and fellow WTI writer Nikola put our heads together and came up with our 15 most anticipated films at TIFF this year. We’ve got some new discoveries, films we couldn’t get to at Cannes, exciting follow-ups, legendary auteurs and more in our list, so take a look below to read what we picked and why. And if you happen to be in Toronto between September 4th and 14th, be sure to check out one of these movies at the festival.

Our 15 Most Anticipated Films of TIFF 2014

Bird People

I don’t know much about Bird People, and yet it’s something I’m dying to see this year at TIFF. Why? Well, back when Bird People premiered at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard sidebar, it wasn’t on my radar. Then the reviews started coming in, with people comparing it to In the City of Sylvia. I adore that film, and even wrote about it for the site earlier this year. Anything similar to In the City of Sylvia will immediately pop up on my radar, and when critics also said the film has a major surprise that people should avoid finding out about before watching, I was sold. I haven’t read anything about Bird People since, and that mystery is largely why I’m making sure I watch it at TIFF. [C.J.]

Eden

I was completely enamored with Mia Hansen-Løve’s previous film Goobye First Love, which perfectly captured relationship quarrels. In her third feature film, Hansen-Løve recalls the rise of French electronic music that gained popularity in the 1990s. While EDM is at the heart of the story (and likely the soundtrack too), Eden also contains a relationship-observation vantage point we come to expect from Hansen-Løve. The other reason we’re excited for the film is it stars two indie darlings, Brady Corbet (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Simon Killer) and Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha, Lola Versus). This is one of those films that might not have a lot of attention before the festival, but could have people buzzing afterwards. [Dustin]

Goodnight Mommy

Before the official lineup for TIFF came out, some of the early rumors predicted Ulrich Seidl’s In the Basement to be at the festival. Being a huge fan of the director, I was saddened to learn the film would show in Venice instead. But Seidl will still have a part in this festival, credited as a producer of the bizarre looking Goodnight Mommy. The film is about two young twins who begin to question their mother’s identity when a cosmetic surgery leaves her buried beneath bandages. All cooped up in an isolated countryside home, the two boys become restless and out of control. It sounds equal parts absurd and nerve-wracking, a combination we don’t mind here at Way Too Indie. [Dustin]

Horse Money

Pedro Costa has scuffled around the arthouse circuit since the 80s, but it’s the Fontainhas trilogy (Ossos, In Vanda’s Room and Colossal Youth) and their subsequent Criterion packaging, that perked up people’s ears and opened up most cinephiles’ eyes on this Portuguese master’s mesmerizing works. This is cerebral, poetic cinema of the highest order, choreographed mise-en-scene fit to be framed and admired in the most respected of museums. Costa mostly focuses on the bottom-of-the-barrel lost souls in impoverished surroundings of his home country, and this year we will finally see his follow-up: Horse Money. The movie continues to follow Ventura, the main person of interest from Colossal Youth, as a revolution is bubbling. He’s already won Best Director at the Locarno Film Festival, which is a good sign as any that Horse Money is much of the same cinema magic as his indelible trilogy. [Nik]

It Follows

First making a splash at the Critics’ Week sidebar in Cannes, It Follows now makes it way over to North America for a midnight premiere. Writer/director David Robert Mitchell’s horror film deals with a 19-year-old girl receiving a sexually transmitted curse (yes, you read that right). Her curse is an entity taking the form of any person, an apparition only she can see, who begins slowly following her. When it catches up to her, she’ll die. She can outrun it, but it’ll always be following. Mitchell’s premise sounds like wondrously creepy fun, an American take on something that sounds like it came straight out of J-horror. Buzz has been building steadily on this one since May, and we can’t wait to check it out during TIFF. [C.J.]

The Keeping Room

Brit Marling is one of my favorite upcoming actors, so any film with her name attached to it instantly sparks my interest. In The Keeping Room, she and Hailee Steinfeld are sisters who must defend their farm during the end of the American Civil War. Fighting along their side is their family’s young slave (Muna Otaru) as two Yankee scouts aim to ravage their land and prosperity. The Keeping Room is based on a screenplay that ended up on the esteemed Black List back in 2012. And it’s easy to see why considering the powerful subject matter. This remarkable story touches on several important historical events; the Civil War, women’s rights, and slavery. American History films tend to sit well with Academy voters (Lincoln, 12 Years A Slavery), so don’t act too surprised if The Keeping Room ends up being an early Oscar candidate. [Dustin]

Luna

Admittedly this one might fly over many people’s heads, and with 143 World Premieres at TIFF this year, it feels like Dave McKean’s Luna is destined to be seen only by the major McKean fans. I count myself among this crowd, as many a night his art in comic books and graphic novels (particularly those written by Neil Gaiman,) kept me permanently stuck to the pages, jaw-dropped in a mixture of horror and awe. Check out Batman: Arkham Asylum written by Grant Morrison, or the covers of Gaiman’’s Sandman series, to get the idea. MirrorMask was McKean’s debut as a filmmaker, and it’s a visual feast with art direction as darkly intriguing as some of his best artwork on print. Luna’s trailer gives some cause for pause when it comes to the dialogue and performances, but there’s a taste of what the story will look like, as it surrounds the death of a child and the re-imagining of said child’s death through batshit fantastical scenarios. Sounds about right. Those of you following McKean will likely have been waiting for this one, but those who are yet to discover the man’s artistic prowess are strongly advised to take a leap of faith with Luna. [Nik]

Miss Julie

Everyone knows Liv Ullmann as one of Ingmar Bergman’s main muses during his peak years, since she’s helped make films like Persona, Shame, and Cries and Whispers some of the greatest from Bergman’s canon. But, she’s also pretty handy behind the camera as well. With the help of Bergman’s natural talent for scriptwriting, she’s directed Private Confessions and Faithless into compelling and potent chamber pieces. Now, after 14 years, Ullmann makes her comeback with a film adaptation of infamous Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Set in Ireland, starring on-fire Jessica Chastain and fired-up Colin Farrell, the film details the power struggle between a countess and her valet, wrought with sexual tension. Austere Swedish cinema, two wonderful actors (say what you want about Farrell, then watch any of his arthouse roles and you’ll see he’s pretty great), Ullmann directing a Strindberg play, gorgeous Irish landscapes. Is it possible for this movie to be anything but absolutely fantastic?  [Nik]

The New Girlfriend

Toronto absolutely adores François Ozon. And there’s no reason to blame them. The French auteur has shown fourteen of his films at the festival and his newest film The New Girlfriend marks his fifth in a row. Ozon tends to explore taboo topics and The New Girlfriend is no exception. A young woman (Anaïs Demoustier) discovers the husband (played by Romain Duris of Mood Indigo) of her late best friend enjoys cross dressing. Needless to say, we won’t be surprised if the lines are long at TIFF for this film. [Dustin]

Nightcrawler

Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler wasn’t even supposed to make my list. But after reading more about it and, especially, after watching the trailer, the movie skyrocketed into my must-see list at TIFF. Apologies to Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye To Language 3D which I’m sure is awesome. Gilroy’s film deals with the underground world of freelance crime journalism, and it stars Jake Gyllenhaal. Sounds like ol’ Dan stepped into a world designed by David Fincher, you say? Not so; Dan is the younger brother of Tony Gilroy, the director behind political super-thriller Michael Clayton and writer of the three original, adrenaline-injecting Bourne movies. Dan is a successful screenwriter in his own right, and now Nightcrawler is his directorial feature debut (he’s also the sole writer credited.) Sounds like he’s got more than enough pedigree and experience to tell a suspenseful crime story, and I for one am really excited. Just watch the trailer again, you’ll see what I mean. [Nik]

Phoenix

Personally speaking, all I needed to see were two names before deciding to put Phoenix high on my most-anticipated list: Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss. This pairing of director and actress might be one of the best ones in cinema right now. If you haven’t seen Barbara, their last collaboration, do yourself a favour and watch it as soon as possible to understand why Phoenix is one of TIFF’s more anticipated titles. Hoss plays Nelly, a Holocaust survivor undergoing facial reconstruction surgery after getting injured while imprisoned in a concentration camp. Nelly returns home after surgery searching for her husband, and in the process learns her husband might have been the one to hand her over to the Nazis. Petzold knows how to create brilliant drama, and with a plot like this it’s hard to think Petzold will go wrong here. Phoenix will have its World Premiere at TIFF, and we’re excited to be one of the first people to see it. [C.J.]

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

It’s finally happening you guys. Roy Andersson is back after seven long years, and his latest is getting its North American premiere at TIFF. After the news of no Inherent Vice softly devastated me, I practically jumped up like a bona fide film geek when I heard that the other Andersson (the extra s means he’s Swedish) will be coming to Toronto with A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence. Yep, still my favorite title of the year. I’m expecting the usual dose of existentialism and sandpaper-dry humor that made his Songs From The Second Floor (2000) and You, The Living (2007) such joys to watch. Though Andersson is mostly popular with reclusive cinephiles like myself, it’s nice to see that Pigeon has been garnering hype since it’s been on festival prediction lists for a few years now; hopefully this means more people will get to experience the bizarre, hilarious, and foppish world Roy Andersson so meticulously crafts with his distinctly angular, motionless camera style. Yum. [Nik]

Spring

While fellow writer Bernard Boo wasn’t a big fan of Resolution, I thought it was one of the best horror debuts in years. A smart, clever and refreshingly self-aware film, Resolution found a way to craft a compelling mystery while breaking down horror tropes and audience expectations – think of it as a cross between Cabin in the Woods and Funny Games, except with less finger-wagging and more creepiness. Spring is directors Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead’s follow-up, and it sounds like an interesting change of pace from their first film. After a young man’s (Lou Taylor Pucci) mother dies, he heads off to Europe and ends up falling in love with a woman while visiting Italy. Sounds romantic, but this is a horror film, and it looks like this mystery girl has some sort of dark secret. Colin Geddes, the programmer who selected Spring for TIFF, calls the film “Before Sunrise with a supernatural twist.” Maybe it’s just me, but that alone has me looking forward to Spring. [C.J.]

Tokyo Tribe

I’m an unabashed fan of Sion Sono all the way back to when I first saw Suicide Club. Last year at TIFF I reviewed Why Don’t You Play in Hell? and thought it was a fun time. Tokyo Tribe looks like Sono has, once again, outdone himself. The incredible trailer, incomprehensible and so batshit-crazy you can’t help but grin, looks like it’ll be an uber-violent story about gang warfare with hip-hop musical numbers thrown in for good measure. May sound crazy to you, but it’s par for the course in Sono’s off-kilter imagination. Tokyo Tribe opens Midnight Madness this year, and it’ll be one of the hottest tickets to get in that programme. Midnight Madness crowds love Sono (Why Don’t You Play in Hell? won the audience award for the programme last year), so if you can snag a ticket be sure to go. [C.J.]

While We’re Young

Noah Baumbach schmoozed Toronto audiences two years ago with his delightful indie comedy Frances Ha, so it’s no surprise a lot of attention surrounds his newest film While We’re Young. While the previous film focused on an free-spirited twenty-something dancer who was anything but mature, Bamubach’s latest focuses from a different perspective. Here a middle-aged couple (Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts) begin to question themselves after meeting a much younger and hip couple. Using New York City as his backdrop once again, Baumbach explores how relationships and ambitions can fade with age. If While We’re Young is even remotely as good as Frances Ha, we’ll be in for a real treat. [Dustin]

Yeezus. Reflektor. Random Access Memories. mbv. If you feel like you’ve heard these names far too often recently, you’re probably not alone. These seemingly ubiquitous names have appeared towards the top of many “Best Albums of 2013” lists, but many, if not all of them, rank so highly only due to critical hype. Way Too Indie’s Top 20 Albums of 2013 list cuts through critical buzz and picks out twenty thoroughly enjoyable, moving, infinitely replayable albums released this year…well, somewhat. Even after clearing the critical fog, frequent picks Settle, Days Are Gone, Modern Vampires of the City, and The Bones of What You Believe remained compelling enough to place on this list. Despite the appearance of these albums, there should be some surprises that lie ahead, some wonderful albums that went relatively unappreciated this year. Let’s begin.

Also check out our Top 20 Songs of 2013

Way Too Indie’s Top 20 Albums of 2013

#20 – Moderat: II

The dreary nature of II is best observed on tracks such as “Versions” and “Ilona,” movingly dark pieces that affect with each synthetic spike. Of course, Moderat is somewhat aware that this formulation will eventually turn stale if repeated to precision on each track, so they occasionally invite in a guest vocalist to mildly brighten the mood. The flicker of hope in the vocals of tracks “Damage Done” and “Bad Kingdom” ever so slightly disguise the thoroughly desolate instrumentals below them.

More vocal bits might have helped Moderat craft a better album, actually. Only four songs contain guest vocals, and, although each of the remaining tracks is perfectly enjoyable, it can be easy to confuse one with the other (“Therapy” and “This Time” are almost interchangeable). Luckily, Moderat seems to understand the similarities running through their songs, as evidenced by their decision to stick the brilliant ten minutes of “Milk” close to its center. “Milk” is the track that transforms II from a great album to an excellent one. Its repeated synths fluctuate in and out of focus, and the clicking drums haunt just as thoroughly as the thinly veiled vocal samples comprising the song’s perimeter. It’s mildly more upbeat than the rest of the album, striking a balance with its thorough darkness; this balance allows II to succeed in spite of its notable flaws.

#19 – Saint Pepsi: Hit Vibes

Indeed, DeRobertis is a pretty funny guy. Check out the dialogue that begins the album: opener “Hit Vibes” starts with a seemingly arbitrary bit of dialogue before spending just under a minute fleshing out a brazenly funk-indebted track. The next track, “Have Faith,” boldly announces, “It’s Saint Pepsi, bitch!” and then releases a slew of mid-70s dance sounds, as though the first track weren’t already fully devoted to this era.

Really, Hit Vibes is a modern take on the disco and funk themes of 70s music. Album highlight “Better” mixes brass and bass to maximize the level of retro-worship, resulting in a fast-paced dance anthem; “Skylar Spence” is as outright an embrace of funk as is the much-better known Daft Punk song “Fragments of Time”; “Together” echoes the era’s slow jams, embellishing the music with soul influences to fully achieve this effect. Even when Saint Pepsi includes more modern sounds, he sounds like the past: although the heavily processed vocals on “Strawberry Lemonade” are altered to fit the tradition of instrumental hip-hop, the instrumentation belongs to, again, the 70s. Forget being a champion of the internet in 2013; Saint Pepsi is happily anchored forty years in the past.

#18 – Boxed Wine: Cheap, Fun

This group’s upbeat, foot-shuffling sound echoes Matt & Kim, albeit with a greater polish. For a band with such limited resources and exposure, “First Time” features a surprisingly professional sheen, enhancing the already ecstatic themes of the music. Indeed, Boxed Wine writes songs that border on dangerously high-key; if they keep at it, their presence in the world of music may match that in their songs.

#17 – Jagwar Ma: Howlin’

In theory, the description of Jagwar Ma’s style reads like that of so many other groups, yet the band’s success lies in their unparalleled exuberance. These three simply sound happy to be making music, and their delight is infectious. Even on songs as lyrically upsetting (although commonplace) as “Man I Need”, Jagwar Ma threaten to fully absorb listeners with their hookiness. But nowhere do they compel as greatly as on third track “The Throw”, which thrusts forward over seven unforgettable minutes. It’s an early statement of Jagwar Ma’s greatest powers; the rest of Howlin’ follows in suit.

#16 – Mister Lies: Mowgli

Opener “Ashore”, a thinly dim affair, starts Mowgli unassumingly, but by the arrival of third track “Align”, clearly the most house-influenced track here, it’s no longer plausible to apply the word “tiny” to this album. “Lupine” continues the ice of past tracks, its paranoid synth screeches accentuating the subdued horror; the Exitmusic-featuring “Hounded” cries soulfully, its ethereal vocals providing a disconcerting yet gorgeous contrast to the cold instrumentation. A generally dismal work of art indeed, Mowgli‘s bare nature enchants from its opening moments rather than merely emulating its predecessors.

#15 – Glasser: Interiors

Yet even though the actual sounds heard on Interiors skillfully balance dread and beauty, nothing on this album is particularly new. Interiors inevitably draws comparison to Björk’s music because, well, it sounds exactly like the space between Homogenic and Vespertine, two of the Icelandic goddess’ best works. Whereas many musicians might bore by so transparently emulating their idols, Mesirow instead so boldly wears her influences on her sleeve that her gorgeous songs never get lost in pure reverence.

For instance, the frozen synths and flickering percussion opening “Design” provide a thrilling segway into an even more chilling track; the minimalist opening notes of “Exposure” allow its huge chorus to blindside listeners, sweeping them with emotion; the short segments of “Forge” that consist only of Mesirow’s singing are nothing short of harrowing. Glasser excites without truly innnovating: although Interiors exists in the shadow of its progenitor, it sparkles gorgeously.

#14 – Boards of Canada: Tomorrow’s Harvest

The dreariness of first track “Gemini” sweeps into “Reach for the Dead”, a bleak picture of desolation; the emptiness continues over the entirety of Tomorrow’s Harvest, each track adding more to the theme. Indeed, Boards of Canada haven’t lost their talent for extending an idea across a whole album; in fact, moreso than ever before, they’ve released a work that, in its hour-long runtime, conveys one mood so precisely. Although a couple of standout tracks do exist (“Jacquard Causeway” and “Nothing Is Real”), Tomorrow’s Harvest succeeds wonderfully as the sum of all its parts.

#13 – AlunaGeorge: Body Music

Generally, AlunaGeorge’s music is “future soul”: Francis’ delicate croon permeates warbled electronic beats, delivering what could be mistaken for 90s radio R&B sent to the 2030s for plastic surgery. Francis and Reid explore the more aggressive side of this style with upbeat, radio-ready tracks such as “Attracting Flies” and “Superstar”: exuding typical pop song structure, these tracks wouldn’t sound horrendously out of place on commercial radio if not for their futuristic, atypical synths. Elsewhere, the music exudes sensuality and intimacy: “Outlines” and “Your Drums, Your Love” soften the heavy blow of Body Music‘s many in-your-face pop tracks, delivering sensitive love tunes with familiar themes.

If anything, Body Music only falters for how familiar it feels. Even on this album’s best tracks, formulaic approaches can be pinpointed. For example, “Kaleidoscope Love” changes key for its final chorus, a technique that might come off cheesy if this duo weren’t so damn good. Lyrically, it’s firmly precedented: themes of love and lust are no fresher than a McDonald’s salad. Sure, Body Music have flaws, but AlunaGeorge are excellent architects of sound, and it’s tough not to enjoy their music, even with its faults.

#12 – Phoenix: Bankrupt

It’s not like Phoenix have never focused on synths before. “1901”, their best-known song, backs its verses with absolutely monstrous keyboards; however, for its incredibly distinct, catchy chorus, guitars lead the charge. On Bankrupt!, though, the synths control everything. The album’s most cathartic moments — the rushing post-chorus of “Entertainment”, the bright flourishes of “S.O.S. in Bel Air”, the mid-song transition in “Drakkar Noir” — ever so slightly elevate the synths above the guitars, to the point where distinguishing the two proves somewhat challenging. The increase in synthetic elements dictates the sound of Bankrupt!, which isn’t as outrightly sunny as the bright-skies-over-everything Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Not to fret, though; the glory days of upbeat, positively exuberant Phoenix are not yet over. For now, though, they’re disguised by somewhat darker shades, an exciting switch-up from a band so well-respected for their skyward enthusiasm.

#11 – Disclosure: Settle

Truth be told, the fourteen tracks on Settle can be difficult to power through in one sitting, but the album’s saving grace is how enthralling each track is on its own. “F For You” is a front-foot-forward, handclap-driven jam that’s relatively low-key for something that bumps so heavily. “White Noise” broadcasts the precious voice of Aluna Francis (yes, the same one from AlunaGeorge) and berserk clicks of icy synths. “Stimulation” pounds forward on giant percussion, thick, computer-generated murk, and sampled vocal snippets. “You & Me” fuses Eliza Doolittle’s soulful, pleading voice with percussive shuffle and moody yet quick synths. “Confess to Me”, perhaps the most exciting of all the guest-featuring tracks here, uses Jessie Ware’s breathy vocals to great effect, establishing a longing ache in the verses before exploding into dancefloor mania in its chorus.

Amongst all the guest features and straightforward compositional techniques, the tracks on Settle hit surprisingly hard. There’s not a weak track to be found here, and each song has a moody underbelly hidden beneath the dancing drums and high-paced synth attacks. What a deceiving name for an album: on their debut, Disclosure’s fire never Settles.

#10 – Baths: Obsidian

It’s ultimately tragic that Wiesenfeld’s despair makes for such chilling music. Wiesenfeld discusses his absolute lack of respect for his current live-in boyfriend on “Incompatible”, a hapless situation indeed, yet the bare instrumentation and harrowing percussive click of the chorus inevitably strikes an emotional chord. It’s even easier to resonate with the statement that initiates the comedown from the chorus: “You don’t do anything with your life/fascinating, terrible, your stupid idling mind/I could prod your hurt all night.” Although the particular situations Wiesenfeld finds himself in may not be commonplace, his sentiments ring home.

Further compounding the themes of “Incompatible” is “No Eyes”, perhaps Obsidian‘s best instance of giving equal emotional weight to the music and the lyrics. A desperate tale of loveless sex, it bravely commands, “come and fuck me!” during its quavering, uneasy chorus. The lyrics are as uncomfortable as the instrumentation, which feels glaringly obvious during the disturbing, minimal interlude following the second chorus. Barely a synth tone flickers in unison with some sort of metal objects making contact in the distance, until a massive, unexpected, three-second glitch burst disrupts the quiet. Or, rather, it disrupts the disquiet; on Obsidian, the two are equal. When the darkness of the lyrics and the music are also equal, which occurs frequently and alarmingly, Obsidian succeeds as a bold statement from an artist who, despite finding his place musically, still has many more issues to sort out.

#9 – Fuck Buttons: Slow Focus

Naturally, Fuck Buttons being Fuck Buttons, Slow Focus doesn’t eliminate its rave and noise precedents entirely. Lead single “The Red Wing” closely approaches the transcendent, sky-reaching roar of Tarot Sport, although final track “Hidden XS” does so even more obviously. However, the twosome’s newfound horror-house sound makes for intense listening over this album’s seven, mostly-longer-than-six-minute tracks, even when the music approaches the Buttons’ prior optimism.

No, these guys conscious decision to restrict the soaring brightness of past works does not bore. In fact, moreso than ever, the music is driving and forceful; rarely over the course of these lengthy songs does the weight of the album fail to demand attention. Fearsome though it is, Slow Focus enthralls throughout its fifty-two minutes, and is one of the year’s best instrumental experiments.

#8 – The Virgins: Strike Gently

There’s a retrospective haze clouding Strike Gently‘s instrumentation, manifesting particularly strongly in its guitars and vocals. Many other acts have attempted similar styles and felt forced rather than natural, but The Virgins approach past sounds wonderfully (although these past sounds belong to other artists and not themselves — no “Rich Girls” will be found here). The relatively soft, almost-ballad “Figure on the Ice” instantly brings to mind the sparkle of 70s high school proms and the associated slow dancing, but never sounds cheesy; “Wheel of Fortune” takes on a comically lackadaisical vocal attitude to emulate the personality of the era’s performers, resulting in a wonderfully moving composition; “What Good is Moonlight” extends the band’s retro-reverence into quasi-arena rock, and is the album’s most outrightly fun number.

In the interspace between these tracks lies “Flashbacks, Memories, and Dreams”, the track that best demonstrates how The Virgins’ backwards-looking approach succeeds when it could so easily fail. It’s tough not to at least crack a smile when first hearing the tone the song’s vocal takes, although the glam guitars opening the song are already amusing enough. “I think that cool kid broke my jaw!” begins the second verse, a line that instantly recalls the glory days of the Brat Pack. “Flashbacks” takes a striking pose, although it does so gently, clinching the album’s mission statement.

#7 – Savages: Silence Yourself

A rolling, ominous bassline tends to dominate the direction of these tracks’ verses, with stadium-sized guitars overtaking the choruses. Even when massive distortion rips these songs open, the guitars somehow manage to recede into the background by the arrival of the first verse, giving priority to the bass. “I Am Here”, “City’s Full”, “Strife”, and “She Will” all use this exact same approach. Rather than cursing the songs with staleness, though, this formula enthralls. Perhaps, though, this success is only due to the saving grace that is the Siouxsie-esque voice of vocalist Jehnny Beth. Equally capable of both breathy pleading and unhinged terror, Beth’s distinct voice empowers Savages with an absolutely undeniable force.

Although the fear induced by Beth’s voice holds the key to “She Will”‘s riotous, triumphant outro, the comfort it induces on tracks like “Marshal Dear” also deserves a mention. Ending the album, this track stands alone from the rest: rather than just post-punk instrumentation, it also brings pianos and what might be horns into the mix. It boldly states just how flexible Beth’s voice is, and makes it clear that, despite how gigantic the rest of the band sounds, this element is what drives the band to such great heights so early in their career.

#6 – CHVRCHES: The Bones of What You Believe

“We Sink” follows “The Mother We Share”, and further hints at the vast, skyward sounds the album will achieve. “I’ll be a thorn at your side/’til you die/I’ll be a thorn at your side/for always” coos Lauren Mayberry during the chorus, and these lyrics stick not due to their sentiments, but rather due to the impact of their surrounding synths. Like “We Sink”, “Lies” and “Recover”, probably the two best tracks on the album, also burn lyrically due to the instrumentation enveloping the words rather than their inherent meaning. On the former track, “I can sell you lies!/You can’t get enough!” scalds listeners rather than just passing them by as some sort of love-lost metaphor; the much more transparent “and if I recover/will you be my comfort?/or it can be over/and we can just leave it here” feels important and desperate when wrapped in the latter track’s humongous, optimistic synths.

There’s a definite relation between composition and lyricism in CHVRCHES music’, and it’s the interplay between the two that makes The Bones of What You Believe such an enjoyable listen. “I am gonna come for you/with all that I have,” threatens Mayberry during the first verse of third track “Gun”‘s chorus, and it’s a good summary of what CHVRCHES do best. Using all their possible instrumental and verbal talent, CHVRCHES have brewed an incredibly potent album, one whose unrestricted buoyancy provides an incredible, addicting release each and every time.

#5 – Haim: Days Are Gone

Take the title track, for instance: the subdued, bluesy guitars recall Fleetwood Mac (really, everything this band does recalls Fleetwood Mac, but just roll with this example), while the pleading vocals of the chorus might not sound terribly out of place in a 90s R&B jam. Elsewhere, “My Song 5” advances on both computerized arena rock percussive stomp and similarly thick, bluesy guitars, and “If I Could Change Your Mind” employs Danielle Haim’s soul crooning in combination with affecting guitar flicker. Haim thrills by fusing their influences with tradition, a surprisingly valid approach.

Perhaps the best example of how Haim boldly balance admiration for the classics with modern pop structures is their best known song, “The Wire.” Opening on a power chord and an arena rock drum pattern straight out of a Billy Squier tune, the song quickly rolls into a verse dominated by palm-muted guitar riffing, fluid but subtle bass, and deep, breathy vocals courtesy of Danielle Haim. Its chorus sparkles only mildly in comparison to the verses, yet it sounds impossibly larger than the verses surrounding it. After the first chorus, the song plays a trick on unfocused listeners: Danielle hands lead vocal duties to her younger sister Alana for the first half of the verse, and then to older sister Este for the verse’s second half. Each sister’s voice bears a notable amount of soul and attitude; confidence appears to be a genetic trait, as does infectious pop songwriting.

#4 – Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Mosquito

Very few other bands, if any, could make such an indecisive album a success; really, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are getting away with murder. But this trio have a certain magic to their songwriting regardless of what shape it takes: the brutally tenuous “Subway” stings just as harshly as does its following track, the searing, frivolous “Mosquito.” The latter track contains one of the most useless, outrightly stupid sets of lyrics to ever appear in this band’s catalog (and this is coming from a band responsible for the words of “Black Tongue”); rather than bringing this song down, though, its simplicity lets the bonkers instrumentation shine. It’s a similar approach to some of the music on M.I.A.’s Matangi: let’s make the music thrilling enough for the possibly vapid lyrics to take second fiddle.

Of course, this approach is bound to fail at some point, as it does on the inane, worthless “Buried Alive.” But when you’ve also got lyrics as gorgeous and affecting as “Despair”, “Subway”, and “Sacrilege”, it’s easy to forgive the occasional slip-up. These songs all encompass dramatically different musical palettes, yet each burns with longing and passion. The victories on this album completely negate its weaker moments, and although Mosquito is no Show Your Bones or It’s Blitz (really, how many other bands write near-perfect albums in two distinct genres?), it’s still just as potent.

#3 – Foxygen: We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic

Take “No Destruction” as an example of how Foxygen distinguish their art from that of their musical parents’. The lightweight, giddy sound achieved here settles in some unexplored gap between The Rolling Stones and The Velvet Underground, fleshing out this space with Sam France’s narrative storytelling. His voice varies from half-assed and uninspired to borderline broken (this latter state mimics Mick Jagger to near perfection), and the fusion of barely overdriven guitars and faint pianos recall the late 60s all too well. Of course, it’s impossible to discuss this song without mentioning the stellar jab, “There’s no need to be an asshole/You’re not in Brooklyn anymore”; France’s wicked, characteristic sense of humor pervades his words and their delivery constantly on Ambassadors, and “No Destruction” is only the duo’s most notorious example.

The precious way France sings the opening lyrics of “San Francisco” is bound to incite at least a chuckle from the attentive listener, as is the chorus: “I left my love in San Francisco” is followed by a high-pitched, distantly mocking “That’s okay, I was born in L.A.” Oddly laughable lyrics outline “Shuggie” as well: “I met your daughter the other day/well, that was weird/She had rhinoceros-shaped earrings in her ears,” France sing-speaks as nonchalantly as the surrounding guitars and strings slump forward. The lyricism originates from predecessor Lou Reed, whose recent passing makes his influence on this album even more apparent than it already was. Indeed, even when employing their own unique sense of humor, Foxygen recalls prior greats; their backwards gaze provides an amazing template for the success of Ambassadors, an album that’s simultaneously clever and trifling, and as reverent as it is irreverent.

#2 – Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City

From the opening moments of “Obvious Bicycle”, it’s evident that Modern Vampires of the City is far more restricted in its dynamics than past albums…well, for the most part. “Diane Young”, “Finger Back”, and “Worship You” are boisterous, energetic standouts that show the band hasn’t entirely left their frenzied, wild past, and while these tracks all strike as diligently as the rest of the album, it’s the stark, depressing tracks that chill most strongly. “Unbelievers” contains Vampire Weekend’s signature instrumental flourishes, although they’re far more moderate than ever before. The intertwinement of the track’s organ-esque keyboards (I saw them live, I can assure you it’s not a real organ) and pushing percussion screams Vampire Weekend, yet these parts sound far bleaker than ever before, and thus more afflicting.

“Step”, “Everlasting Arms”, and “Ya Hey” also flourish on this same trick: these songs don’t sound like any other band could have created them, yet their darkness is newfound for this foursome, and their tone startlingly resonant coming from a band who once sang about Decembers spent looking psychotic in a balaclava. In general, the songs on this album are undeniably evocative and bone-chilling, but it’s impossible to discuss MVOTC without mentioning the brutal, heart-shattering “Hannah Hunt.” Critics and fans alike agree that this song is the best Vampire Weekend has yet released; from the opening whir of washed-out bass and faded human chatter, it’s instantly clear that something greater is at work here. Almost three minutes in, a cathartic, emotionally destructive climax emerges, fulfilling the song’s disquieting tension with a tragic, painful swell of pianos and Ezra Koenig’s aching, pleading vocals.

Throughout Modern Vampires of the City, one might be as likely to cry as to jump in excitement. Although it sounds soft when compared to past work, it strikes a blow so massive that it makes this band’s already excellent previous work seem like child’s play. Even if this album doesn’t feel right at first, give it a few more listens; if you have a heart, the human core of this album will eventually overtake you, and you’ll never look back.

#1 – Youth Lagoon: Wondrous Bughouse

Turning a deaf ear to such soaring guitar fills as the ones driving “Mute”, “Attic Doctor”, and “Pelican Man” must take some sort of supernatural skill. As devastating as they are kooky, the sounds on Wondrous Bughouse might at first feel confusing and trifling, but Powers’ mental troubles are entangled with his compositions. When faced with the prospect of losing someone he cares about, he writes “Dropla”, driven by its doubtful claims of “you’ll never die” and its nostalgic sentiment. “Raspberry Cane” also contains the repetition of a straightforward statement likely not believed by its speaker: “Everybody cares,” Powers tries to reassure himself, only to quickly admit, “They say love exists/but what happened to it?” The bare instrumentation surrounding these thoughts soon ascends into a hallucinogenic, childlike array of alien-sounding synths that’s oddly irresistible.

In general, the songs on Wondrous Bughouse are trippy and juvenile, but it’s this very description that also accounts for how striking they are. On “Attic Doctor”, for example, Powers introduces haunted mansion synths and MGMT-like psychedelic gait, a bit funny in their silliness, but also deeply keen and acute. “Third Dystopia” is trapped underwater, but its affecting guitars and longing chorus thrill and invigorate. “Sleep Paralysis” actually sounds like a dream for a while, but when it picks up the pace, it truly sounds like a nightmare.

Naturally, the inane basis of these songs’ instrumentation can be easily perceived as rubbish; its oddball, off-kilter tone isn’t for everyone. For listeners able to connect to Powers’ eerie songwriting, though, Wondrous Bughouse is a thrilling ride, often fun in its instrumentation, but always depraved in its sentiments. A psychedelic playground, but only for those willing to spend some time on the monkey bars.

It is doubtful that the folks running Lollapalooza are pulling an extravagant April Fools day joke, joining sites such as Google and Microsoft, by announced the lineup today ahead of the previously scheduled date of April 9th. The lineup announced change was likely due to the poster that leaked online last week that actually proved to be true for once. One can only hope that in spirit of April Fools is the reason why Daft Punk is not on the list.

The headliners for the 2013 Lollapalooza music festival are; The Cure, Mumford & Sons, The Killers, Nine Inch Nails, Phoenix, The Postal Service, and Vampire Weekend. The Postal Service is continuing their come-back festival tour and this marks the first U.S. announced show for Nine Inch Nails come-back.

Stay tuned as Way Too Indie will be attending and providing coverage of this years’ festival. See below for the rest of the lineup.

2013 Lollapalooza Lineup

Last night saw the release of the lineup of this year’s edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Headliners are The Stone Roses and Blur for Friday night, Phoenix hold their own on Saturday night and the Red Hot Chili Peppers close out the festival on Sunday night. Some of the notable undercard includes: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Lou Reed, Modest Mouse, newly reformed Jurassic 5, Grinderman on Friday night. Saturday night’s subheadliners are the XX, The Postal Service, Sigur Ros, New Order, Hot Chip and Grizzly Bear. Helping the Chili Peppers close out the fest are Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Vampire Weekend, Social Distortion and The Wu Tang Clan.

I’ll be sincere, when I first saw the lineup I thought I was being punk’d. First of all, I can deal with The Stone Roses and Blur, but as headliners? I’m not entirely sold. Phoenix is another band that I’m really not that into. I watched part of their set the last time they played Coachella (2010) and it was fine, but again. Headliners? But to be honest, it’s the Red Hot Chili Peppers that bothered me the most. This to me feels like a contingency plan. If the Rolling Stones rumor (that Golden Voice, Coachella promoters, were courting them and failed) is true, then they must’ve called up Kiedis and the boys to fill in. I don’t hate the Chili Peppers, but this is their third time headlining now and let’s face, they’ve become kind of boring.

But this was all last night. All the sadness and anger I had for this lineup needed to be slept on. Ironically, I had a dream that the Chili Peppers were doing sound checks at my house. I woke up this morning and looked at the lineup. I’m becoming more open to this lineup as the time wears on.

Enough crying from this writer, what bands am I excited to see? Being a big Trent Reznor fan, I could never contain my school girl giddiness for the debut performance of his newest group How to Destroy Angels. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bassnectar, Dog Blood, Beach House, New Order, Knife Party, Moby, Benny Benassi, Simian Mobile Disco, Yeasayer, Spiritualized, Ritchie Hawtin, Major Lazer, Dropkick Murphy’s, Bat for Lashes, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Pretty Lights, Tame Impala, The Faint, Paul Oakenfold are the artists I’m looking forward to the most.

Over the course of the next couple of months I’ll be dividing my time between Spotify and Youtube, checking out which artists I may want to entertain as well. One of the best parts of Coachella is checking out some random artist in some tent that you’ve never heard of before and they turn out to be one of your favorite sets.

The festival this year runs over the course of two separate weekends in a row. April 12th-14th is the first weekend and April 19th-21st is the second weekend. I’ll be in attendance during weekend two. Expect another article about my “planned” itinerary for the festival a few days before weekend two. I’ll do my best to report from the festival on a daily basis, but odds are leaning towards a full festival wrap up when I get back. If you want immediate updates during the festival, you can always follow me on Twitter @WayTooIndie.

See the full 2013 Coachella lineup poster of bands below.