Countdown to the Oscars: 5 Moments That Made the Movies in 2015

A few years ago my favorite film critic, David Thomson, put out a book titled “Moments That Made the Movies”, a compilation that focused, as you might surmise, on specific moments from specific films. In keeping with its spirit, the venerable web site Indiewire asked the incredibly esteemed Mr. Thomson to digress on the five moments that made the movies in 2013. He did not, however, appear to take up the same task for 2014 or 2015, which is where Cinema Romantico comes in.

To be sure, taking this torch from Mr. Thomson is an act of pure idiocy. I am essentially Nicholas Sparks to his Leo Tolstoy, and yet, like the fool I am, I must forge ahead, even as I suspect he’d look at my moments, his eyebrows raised quizzically, and query: “Those?”

5 Moments That Made the Movies in 2015

The American Dream probably was never much more than a huckster’s slogan to begin with considering that F. Scott Fitzgerald was taking it apart way back in 1925. Yet its myth survives because for so much cynicism inundating culture we nonetheless remain inherently romantic, the dueling notions at play in Brooke Cardenas (Greta Gerwig), protagonist of Noah Baumbach's Mistress America. She is introduced descending the staircase at the TKTS stand in Times Square, arms spread wide to greet her soon-to-be sorta protégé , exclaiming in the manner of a New World tour guide “Welcome to the great white way!” Alas, she’s misjudged the number of stairs and with several still to go is forced to wobbly maintain her starlet facade. And she does. She never relents; she never gives up on the persona; she will grin and bear it in the face of all obstacles. And in that moment, in Gerwig’s immaculate visage, we see The American Dream itself laid bare. She’s wholly sincere; she’s also full of shit.

When Carol Aird finds herself with a hilariously incredulous facial expression in lieu of taking forced council with the asinine, eager beaver salesman Tommy Tucker, whose motives, it turn out, are tied directly back to an insecure male, I thought of Hillary Clinton at the Benghazi hearings. And I thought about how incremental change in America really is, and how even if we may well be on the verge of having a female President, we have not advanced all that far from 1952. In fact, the only detail missing from this moment in “Carol” is the titular character being told “to smile”. But then, that’s because she already is, with a spectacularly haughty derision I swear Hillary would have been copying if the movie had already been out.

When I left Colin Trevorrow's box office thresher Jurassic World in June I wondered if anyone else had noticed that moment when “Jurassic World's” titular theme park had fallen under attack and some nameless extra had made sure to save his two precious margaritas while fleeing the digitized terror. Sure enough, the next day while listening to Pultizer Prize winning film critic Wesley Morris discuss “Jurassic World” on a podcast he mentioned the Margarita Guy. Then I Googled “Margarita Guy” and learned not only that he was Jimmy Buffet, but that Margarita Guy was a social media sensation, shared by thousands in the form of GIFs and hashtags. And I realized that Margarita Guy beheld the future - one in which our most memorable movie moments are no longer organically built to or even emotionally palpable, but just deliberate little inserts designed less for the silver screen than social media afterwards. #WeAllLose

Throughout Frederick Wiseman’s astonishingly humane three hour documentary In Jackson Heights, about a New York neighborhood threatened by gentrification, two men go from small business to small business, explaining the big business threat and what their options are, which aren’t many or optimal. In one of these scenes, as a business owner details his helplessness, you become aware of a fashion magazine sitting on the desk in the foreground of the frame. Penelope Cruz is on the cover. It’s never mentioned; it’s just there. I have no idea if Wiseman put it there on purpose or just happened to wind up there as some sort of cosmic coincidence. I’d like to believe the latter because I’m a sentimental fool. But then, I’m also not, because the shot is a necessary reminder that for as much as we all love the movies and the stars who inhabit their fantastical worlds, often times those stars and their worlds are the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.

But movies are still movies and their power still holds sway, pulling us out of our respective mundane, miserable existences to allow communion with the Motion Picture Gods. Never was this more evident than in the most anticipated movie ever, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Lord, this thing could’ve gone so wrong in so many ways. But it didn’t. And as I realized it wouldn’t, a kind of exultation peacefully erupted within me, and I realized where I was and what I was watching and that I had waited so long to be back here, right where I was, and that movie magic, contrary to what the grinches eating gruel (and Tweeting) might claim, was real. And I didn’t want to leave, not ever, because soon there would be another Star Wars and another one after that and spin-offs, and the whole thing could buckle. And when Rey, that feminist Jakku scavenger rock 'n roller, took flight in the Falcon (oh, old Friend, how I’d missed you) and suddenly put the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy into free-fall so her new friend Finn could squeeze off a shot from his gun turret at the dastardly TIE fighters.....that free-fall spoke to my heart, my heart which was about to burst. I just wanted to hang with Rey and Finn and the Falcon in that instant forever and ever. FADE OUT

A Few More 2015 Shots I Loved

I always write a lengthy diatribe about my favorite movie shot of the year (see: yesterday & the day before) but once again I have gone one further by paying homage to (ripping off) my friend Ryan McNeil at The Matinee who annually puts up a hella awesome post in which he submits a few of his favorite movie shots of the year with no additional commentary. So here are a few of my favorite movie shots of the year with no additional commentary.

In Jackson Heights

Not long into Frederick Wiseman’s multi-faceted, tirelessly-comprehensive documentary “In Jackson Heights” we see a group of gay senior citizens meeting to discuss moving their community center from the titular neighborhood situated in Queens, New York to another locale. One man proffers an understated if impassioned soliloquy about how welcoming Jackson Heights has been to its LGBT populace for so long, and as he speaks, you can’t help but notice but another man a couple chairs over, hanging on every word, and then raising his hand, like he wants to be called on in class, to speak next. We never hear from him, unfortunately, because the camera cuts to another moment. Yet it’s telling of the innumerable faces that Wiseman captures on camera, whether they speak or not, or are just glimpsed, and how they all have a story to tell. And even if “In Jackson Heights” is a little long and occasionally repetitive at three hours and ten minutes, you’re simultaneously left with the feeling of wanting more, to wander in this neighborhood forever. And while Wiseman eventually hones in on the idea of gentrification being Jackson Heights’ inevitable doom, his film never feels like a funeral; or, if it does, it feels like a New Orleans funeral. This is an eloquent, moving, beautiful, joyous celebration of a place, its way of life and those who make it so. It’s one of the best films of the year.

There are no talking heads, no voiceover stabilizers and no sequences in which the lay of the land is laid out in precise fashion. Instead it’s as if we’ve just hopped off the “7” train in a place we’ve never been with no guidebook except our eyes and ears. Wiseman favors a camera that feels like a friendly interloper, wandering in and out of places, listening and observing, routinely catching people in motion and activities in progress, cycling through so many shots of people and places, of lives being lived, of produce being sold, of music being played for free, of prayer being ministered to strangers, and the sound of the train, always the train, rattling, rumbling on, indifferent to the lightning of a thunderstorm and the noise of police protests, carrying people where they need to go. Ah, but that omnipresent train is also a harbinger, perhaps of doom, seeing as how it rides straight into Manhattan, the place where everyone needs to get even if they need to live some place more affordable.

It’s not simply the environmental atmosphere that Wiseman observes, because while the neighborhood is rightfully loud and proud of its heritage, of being a place where 127 languages are spoken, of the way it opened its arms to so many people of different creeds and lifestyles when others wouldn’t, “In Jackson Heights” acutely captures a neighborhood in transition, in looming danger of being Brooklyn-ized, of having its unique cultural multiplicity squashed by the standard-issue “gringos” priced out of Williamsburg and Long Island City.

At times “In Jackson Heights” suggests non-fiction John Sayles, the camera simply settling down and listening to people talk civics. At one point we receive a five minute, at least, everyday elucidation of gentrification. It’s notable for both its candidness and seeming inevitability; the guy doesn’t really offer any suggestions about what can be done because it’s being done. A guy listening suggests they contact their local politicians. People are adamant about going to meetings. But no one sounds optimistic. It’s tempting to quote Walt Whitman but I kept thinking of Terence Mann: “America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again.

“In Jackson Heights” isn’t Sayles, however, because Wiseman is not a true dramatist. Yes, he often uses the form to edit seemingly disparate sequences to foster specific ideas, like going directly from a study meeting for a US Citizenship test in which the instructor cites her students offering the “vote” as their answer for why they want to come to America to a scene of locals in danger of having their small business run off by Home Depot being told that voting is their most crucial weapon. There are also meetings regarding treatment by police, and midway through Wiseman records local Colombians watching their country win a World Cup match before taking to the streets to celebrate where we see a moderately heavy police presence and certain revelers being carted away. But adhering to the doc’s tendency not to get involved, the camera feels more like someone watching while leaning against a wall, taking it in, filing away. It passes no judgment; it’s just a fact of life.

And life is what Wiseman is going for, which sounds maddeningly jejune, but which comes through with an impassioned pulse. More than anyone else Wiseman documents, I keep thinking of the 98 year old woman who confesses that she was happy until her husband died. Now she has no one left, days just passing by, and though she’s still got plenty of money, she doesn’t really even know what she’d do with it. What does it matter? Not that much in the long run, I suppose, since this is where we’ll all end up in one form or another anyway. That sounds bleak, yes, yet I did not feel sadness watching her, not exactly. Another woman asks for the secret to her longevity and the 98 year old replies, “If I find out what it is, I’ll tell you.” Of course, Wiseman seems to know that there is no secret, that there are merely moments of serene reflection and occasional transcendence situated between all the policy and debate and unyielding mundane tasks that consume us. I thought of Jackson Browne: “Nothing survives but the way we live our lives.”