Mini-ish Monday: A Girl Like Her

You know, the good thing about a mockumentary is that you can have all of the hard hitting emotion and exploitative trickery of a normal documentary without any of the actual real life nonsense getting in your way. Amy S. Weber's A Girl Like Her really ramps up the real factor and, by the end, completely alienates you with the absolutely fantastical, pie-in-the-sky butt-fuckery that is it's concluding moments. It sounds like I hate this film at the moment but really I'm so in two minds about this movie, because it is pretty great. It's well made and emotional and really nails the peaks and troughs of high school life; but at the same time it's fucking dumb, nauseatingly idealistic and inadvertently satirical to great unintentional comedic effect. OK, this is going to be hard to do in three paragraphs, so we'll go good then bad. Ahem.

"This tiny thing...is my opinion. And I'm going to shove it down your throat."

One sentence blurb: A Girl Like Her is a mockumentary charting a top-ranking American high school as it deals with the attempted suicide of one of it's students (Jessica, played by Lexi Ainsworth), exploring the very real US bullying epidemic and such like. We start the film with Jessica popping hella pills and going into a coma, as you do with all that hydrocodone you just so happen to have lying around your house. It very quickly transpires that she has been suffering some pretty intense bullying from the popular girl, Avery (Hunter King) and has been encouraged to start recording the abuse by her friend, Brian (Jimmy Bennett). The acting from King and Bennett, as well as the majority of the supporting cast, is spot on and hard hitting; King is a suitably vile beast from the stygian abyss, revelling in the torture of Jessica, who sadly doesn't get a great deal of screen time due to the aforementioned coma. The documentarian style of candid cameras and talking heads works very well in the context of the narrative and keeps things grounded nicely as events unfold and we dip into the beating heart of the school. Plot itself very quickly takes a back seat in favour of developing our antagonist and pushing the very forward, but very necessary, anti-bullying message of the film, which on a whole is well intentioned and correct. OK, um, here's the bad bits.

The person we're meant to give a shit about, doing what she does for the entire run time of the film.

I have the weirdest feeling that Amy S. Weber is trying to make up for something with this movie. Very quickly do we curtail any pretence of this being about Jessica and focus solely on her harasser, Avery; an act which worryingly parallels the way in which modern media obsesses over the accused in cases of sexual assault and the like, leaving the survivor as a footnote. I know this breaks my three paragraph rule but I think it's important that you see who we're dealing with here. I apologise in advance to anyone whom this might awaken awful high school memories for; King is too perfect as the archetypal evil popular girl.

That is a face only an icepick could love.

I don't care if this is a movie about redemption and accepting that "hurt people hurt people" and all that lovey dovey nonsense. It works in theory, yes, but in theory alone; and that's exactly where this movie resides, in that magical fantasy world where the school bully would eventually see the error of their ways and apologise rather than dig their heels in like a cantankerous mare and double down on the bitch-factor. I've witnessed events very similar to these myself and in my experience no-one ever admits to being the one to blame, usually the exact opposite to tell the truth; everyone else in the school will feel guilt before the actual perpetrator will. No, it shouldn't be like that, and yes, it should be more like what happens in this film, but it feels unfair to those who suffer to assume that an apology and some tears is ever going to be enough to make up for what the victim has been put through. It is a noble message, but a heavily misguided one. Misguided would be a way to describe some of the choices of filming at a few points in the story as well; documentaries are voyeuristic and exploitative in their very nature at the best of times, but when you're secretly filming crying students and shoving a lens in the face of a grieving father you might be taking the biscuit a little.

Crew needed for new documentary. Stone heart absolutely necessary.

You don't line up a shot like that without thinking about a little thing called subtext, so this is what I think this movie is really about, and one more little aspect of A Girl Like Her lends it some credibility: the maker of the film's fake documentary and the woman who conducts the interviews throughout is actually Amy S. Weber herself. I think this film might be Weber acknowledging her past as either a bully or an accessory to someone who did these kinds of things when she was at high school. I think she understands and accepts the shallowness of these kinds of documentaries and, in likeness, of trying to apologise to a person whose life you have so thoroughly ruined. I think she never did apologise and this is her way of saying that, in a better world, this is what should have happened, but even then how much weight does that even carry? In the end, whatever you do is forced and manipulated either out of self preservation or guilt, and attempting to humanise and justify the actions of the person who did these things merely serves to trivialise the suffering of those she has affected. How do you come to terms with the fact that you did something that is irredeemably bad? I don't know, and neither does this film; but I think it sincerely wishes it did.

Either way, the sequel is gonna make for one hell of a revenge slasher.

Mini Monday! - Love

The show is about as interesting as its poster.

This new Netflix Original is a pile of self indulgent garbage.

Gillian Jacobs is great. In Community, she played Britta's ball of lovably misguided but well-intentioned self-righteous anger spectacularly well. Britta was by no means a good person (nor is the rest of the show's cast, which is half the point) but by god was she trying, and we loved her for it. This new show, Love, has her cast in a somewhat similar role as Mickey, a heavy-drinking twenty-something with no direction in life who works in a radio station. Oh wait, no, that's nothing like Britta and more like a bingo card for "most unimaginative, contrived, bullshit Judd Apatow comedy character ever". Hold on...holy crap. It is a Judd Apatow comedy! It all makes sense now.

Each episode's script: *30 minutes of fart noises*

Mickey starts out as a reasonably relate-able but barely functioning human being and gradually descends over the course of ten episodes into a forced caricature of every type of addict in existence. She starts out by drinking too much, like every goddamn twenty-odd year old in existence, then gradually graduates to heavier drugs before miraculously realising out of nowhere in the last episode that she's not only an alcoholic and drug addict, but also a sex addict too, because I really don't know. This doesn't occur over the space of months or years by the by, the whole series takes place in a couple of weeks, so we're meant to assume that she was like this from the beginning, but maybe all of these addictive behaviours just went on holiday for the first few episodes or something? It's stupid, really really stupid. Oo, and then there's Paul Rust's Gus. Heh. My god... Have you ever wanted to watch a grown man snivel and whine his way through 5 Christ-fucking hours of your life like a ten year old with Tourette's? Maybe you would like to watch him systematically ruin his perfectly good career because he's a completely useless human being who throws tantrums at his boss and has absolutely no concept of what he should and shouldn't do. He's not funny, he's not sympathetic; he is the single worst, most horrifyingly written pile of steaming turd that has ever dropped unceremoniously out of the imagination of another human being like a frozen stowaway falling out of the landing gear of an Airbus A380 at 30'000 feet.

I do not like this show.

My final paragraph will be about the show's writing; if you would like to save time, it's pretty much more of the above. Imagine if you fast-forwarded into the future to the age of about 60 and, along the way developed severe head trauma or some kind of brain defect. Now imagine trying, with your limited intellectual capacity and horrifyingly outdated concepts of what is and isn't hip/cool/happenin', to write a television show that appeals to the current generation of penniless students and man-children. Congratulations, you just wrote the remake to the criminally despicable Netflix show Love. The characters have an inexplicable obsession with taking Ubers and some other unnecessary and already outdated cultural phenomenon that I can't be bothered checking to see what it was. Point being, pop culture buzzwords replace actual characterisation or comedy and awkward Mexican standoffs and arguments replace comical timing or wit. It's everything I expect from a US comedy and less. I'm done here.

Overall Ben Equivalence Rating

I Don't Even Know... - Nothing compares to how disappointingly awful Love is. Although, maybe that was the cynical point they were trying to make all along... Nope. It's just plain shit.

The Martian: A Review

So, there's a new Ridley Scott movie coming out starring Matt Damon. In fact, it comes out today. What a crazy random happenstance! Sadly it's not being shown anywhere near me so I can't do a release day review like I was hoping to...buuuuuuuuuuuuut I did, in my excitement about the movie, buy the original book by Andy Weir and devour it in 48 hours. For that reason and absolutely nothing to do with getting Google pings for The Martian, the new Ridley Scott movie with Matt Damon in it, I thought I'd let you know how the book is before you go off to see the movie adaptation with Matt Damon what was directed by Ridley Scott.

I hear there's this film based on this book...

OK, enough tomfoolery; to the review! I actually first heard about The Martian, book or otherwise, from our good old friend Randall Munroe, who writes xkcd:

This is the second most informative site I read.

Naturally I looked up the trailer and lo, it was awesome. Then I promptly forgot about the whole thing until the beginning of the month when I finally decided to buy the book before the film came out, cause I'm that asshole who likes going to a movie and whispering to my neighbour "actually, in the book, they did this..." in every scene. I go to the cinema on my own a lot now, no idea why...

The story is very simple: Mark Watney, a botanist and engineer on the third manned mission to Mars, ends up stranded on the planet and presumed dead after an evacuation during a sandstorm goes wrong. That's...it really. The book follows his, wait for it, desperate battle for survival (aw yeah, I'm a super original journalist) against the harsh Martian environment armed only with spare parts and lots of duct tape. Think of either the bit in Apollo 13 that the comic mentioned or that part in Castaway when he opens all the FedEx parcels to make tools, then spread it over 300 pages. It's awesome. Really, in retrospect, Watney's part was made for Tom Hanks, not Matt Damon, but y'know.

There's even loads of occasions for him to pee on screen again. 

Now, the premise of a scientist tinkering with pipes and machinery for a whole book either sounds like the best thing ever or your worst nightmare; but have no fear, Little Miss I-Hate-Cool-Things, cause Andy Weir has your back. In the hands of many writers, describing constant problem solving, no matter how life-or-death-high the stakes may be, would eventually stagnate into a tedious "he did this, then that happened" rhythm. Weir manages to counteract this, firstly, with a splendidly witty yet realistic character: Mark Watney is quite simply the most charming young man ever to get stranded in space. He can be rattling off back-of-the-napkin calculations about how soon his food is going to run out while simultaneously pondering the mammal-wrangling capabilities of Aquaman and how silly Dukes of Hazzard is. Weir has managed to create a character with all the background and knowledge he'd need to survive his ordeal while making sure he's as relatable as possible to the audience.

The long and short of it is he's wonderful; and I have a feeling a lot of that comes from Weir himself, who is the nerdiest human alive (a computer programmer born to a particle physicist and an electrical engineer, with a love of role-playing games) and simply adorable. Lookit him!

He looks like Stephen King got fused with a 19th century chimney sweep.

Watney makes all the big science jumbo digestible for us plebs, but even so a whole book of one guy tinkering might tire after a while. Weir has countered this by chopping up the big long sections of sciencing with what's going on back home on Earth. And what's going on is everyone is losing their collective shits, that's what. Imagine that reaction when someone realises they've left their pram at the supermarket, but exponentially larger.

"MY BABY!!!"

You might recognise this extract from the movie's trailer:

"If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it's found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don't care, but they're massively outnumbered by the people who do."

Every story has a moral to it, and The Martian's is certainly that when it really comes down to it, people can put aside their differences to help someone who is really in need. Yes, it's a bit hokey and sentimental, but... Yeah, it's just plain hokey. Even so, it's nice to see someone having a bit of optimism in their writing, and the parts of the book showing Earth knuckling down together to get Mark home are some of the most satisfying parts of the novel. We're all too bloody cynical and it's about time we enjoyed a bit of gultless pie-in-the-sky idealism; I take back the hokey thing. I'm sorry, Andy.

"S'alright, guv."

What about the meat of the book though? The science in a hard sci-fi novel has to be good; and golly, it is splendid in The Martian. I mentioned a minute ago that Watney acts as a bit of a filter for the audience to help understand everything that's going on, but that's really just a round-a-bout way of saying that Andy Weir should get a job as a lecturer. He's a wizard when it comes to explaining the complexities of biology, engineering, space flight, programming, and god knows what else. You'll finish the novel feeling like you could apply for a job at NASA (note: maybe don't) with the way he manages to gradually lay more and more complex information on you like a delicious knowledge sandwich.

"Mmm, science."

Right, I think I should stop there. This book is fun, interesting, and even surprisingly touching at points. The science is understandable but meaty, and Andy Weir is wonderful. That is all.

Dear Zachary: Nought to Blubbering Heap in 90 Minutes

"I don't like documentaries." It's a phrase that, as a film fan, you will likely have heard from countless people. It comes from the same place as "I don't like subtitles/black and white films/fun," where either laziness or simply an unwillingness to put a little extra effort into an experience to get something back leads to a broadly dismissive statement. You can, however, see the logic in the argument: if you wanted to have to read along with your entertainment, you would have picked up a book; and black and white movies are, like, old... And documentaries feel a bit like homework; you're given lots of facts and arguments and are expected to think and have opinions. Ugh!

"Move me from the fire, I'm burning."

It pains me every time I hear these kinds of things; not just because it means people are missing out on some great stuff. The blanket lack of acceptance of subtitles by the general populace has led to any and all foreign film being consigned to a single award in the Oscars rather than being allowed to run for the main prize. I have friends who don't like Psycho or pretty much anything before the 1950s because it's "not got any colour in it"; actual quote. But I think the complete dismissal of documentaries as a genre has to be the most agonising to hear.

There are few types of film more varied and more capable of actually affecting a person than a documentary (although fair's fair, they're also some of the most untruthful, manipulative bullshit possible), and yet so many will point blank refuse to give them a chance because they think it's boring, or don't like sad stories, or are uncomfortable facing nasty truths. When you don't want to experience things that have changed lives and altered the course of human society (for better or worse) because it seems like too much effort, you are in dire need of an encouraging kick up the backside.

The crux of that whole introduction? You people stop whinging and watch some documentaries; they're amazing pieces of art and culture and you're doing yourself a disservice by not giving them a chance. As you might have already guessed, today's film is a documentary; a very good one at that. May I introduce you to Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About his Father?

It's just behind that ocean of tears there.

Now this isn't, to be perfectly honest, a very original documentary. It does the typical "we started out planning to make one thing but we actually made it about something else in the end" bit, it's blunt, it's emotionally manipulative, it's very opinionated, it tells rather than shows... But you still need to watch it. Why? Because it is one of the most sincerely emotional pieces of film I've ever seen, and I think the main reason for that is down to how personal the subject matter was to the director, Kurt Kuenne.

On the right.

The man on the left, Andrew Bagby, is the initial subject of the documentary. In 2001, Bagby was murdered by his ex-girlfriend Shirley Turner. That, right there, is the happiest part of the whole sorry story, and the reason Kuenne began filming. He decided to commemorate Bagby's life as best he could by interviewing family members and the such, and that's where we come in as the film opens. From there, Kuenne goes on a blistering emotional crusade that's about as agonising to watch as being forced to ride a flaming motorbike. Naked. While being tattooed. By rattlesnakes...made of dirty needles... That analogy ran away from me a tad.

Point being it only goes downhill from there, with each turn of the tale (un)lucky enough to have been caught at the time it happened by Kuenne (or so we're led to believe; we have to stay sceptical when dealing with documentary chronology). This means we get to see Bagby's family and friends go through some pretty harrowing stuff with the candour that most "this is what happened" after-the-fact documentaries often lose, all at the hands of this monster:

That baby's got fucking motives, man...

That's the aforementioned Shirley Turner, and boy do we hate her. I mentioned before that Dear Zachary is a rather opinionated documentary. Much of that opinion is that this woman is evil, and Kuenne expends a great deal of effort portraying the disgust and fury he and Bagby's family feel towards her. Imagine if someone did something so unthinkably cruel to you and the people you love that you're simply overwhelmed with debilitating anger and frustration at the situation. Now imagine you were able to capture that sensation and put it on film; that's the level of powerful emotion Kuenne manages to invoke in Dear Zachary.

It's untidy, messy even at points, but so bursting with absolutely visceral passion that you can't help getting swept up in the family's ordeal. I can't remember who said it (help me if you can) but someone once said that you should leave a documentary angry, hungry for change, and Dear Zachary delivers on that ravenous desire for righteous justice in spadefuls.

If you say you don't like documentaries or don't see the point in them, I implore you to put this on. If you feel anything by the end, then you can understand what these films are for.

Overall Ben Equivalence Rating

Screaming at a Slasher Movie Victim to Fucking Notice the Monster!!! -

Like a train wreck in slow motion you can see exactly what's coming but, much to your dismay and frustration, there's absolutely nothing you can do to to stop it.

Felony

Gosh, it's been a wild few weeks hasn't it? Okay, good news: I've not killed myself due to stress ... yet. Bad news: I neglected Pop Culture Cynic. But in my defence, I couldn't handle the workload I was dealing with for university, let alone try and keep up with weekly posts on top of it. But that's all in the past now! Well, at least for summer, so let's get back to Pop Culture Cynic-y goodness, shall we?

Today I am reviewing a film called Felony, released in 2013.

The casting call for this film was "slightly disgruntled
straight, white man."

So, in a sentence, Felony is an Australian film about three detectives (in the picture above). We have Detective Malcolm "Mad Mal" Toohey. Next we have Detective Carl Summer, which leaves his partner, Detective Jim Melic. When an incident leaves a nine year old boy in critical condition, the three detectives are swept up in web of secrets, lies and workplace politics.

"Yeah, the McDonalds is just down the road, take a left, can't miss it."

After celebrating a big bust and being hailed as a hero, Mal puts himself behind the wheel despite the previous scene showing him doing shot after pint after shot after shot. I feel like you guy's can guess where this is going. "An incident leaves a nine year old boy in critical condition" paired with "hero drunk cop drives home". Don't worry this isn't spoiler, you see it coming less than two minutes into the film. Mal hits the youg boy on his paper route with his car, and screeching to a stop, we see Mal wait and weigh up whether or not to just drive off and leave the boy, or to intervene and help.

Mal leaves the boy, the credits roll and the film lasted about twelve minutes, okay folks, i'll see you next week with a brand new review!

Nah, Mal gets out and helps the boy, phoning for an ambulance and shoddily avoiding questions about his involvement in the accident. 

Then up rolls Jim and Carl.

Something witty perhaps?

Carl, the more senior officer in command, is more than willing to just brush things under the carpet and move on, he is a strict follower of the code of "police officers have got each others backs." A quick, "did you run over the boy?" ".........Noooooo?" is enough for him. However this doesn't fly for Jim, the younger detective new on the scene. Despite the fact that he is meant to be focusing on a different case, the details of the hit and run just can't seem to settle in his mind and he decides to push things further, which exposes Carl's real lack of authoritative power.

*sad trumpet plays in background*

First things first, I actually did enjoy this film. It wasn't quite what I thought it would be and I really liked some of the style choices and directorial decisions, but I'll go into those in a minute. However, just because I liked it doesn't mean I don't think there was a fair bit wrong with it.

Firstly, the previously mentioned case that Jim is supposed to be focusing on however is much more interesting than this story. I'd much rather have a film about Jim and Carl pursuing the people involved in the abduction and rape of a young girl rather than this hit and run thing. Rule number one, don't make the side plot more interesting than the main plot. In fact the other case isn't even a side plot, it's briefly mentioned and explored in the beginning before it's totally thrown out the window in favour of the main plot. 

You're gonna wanna get used to this angle.

Secondly, no-one in this film is particularly likeable? Like, I wasn't really rooting one way or another. I never feared for Mal getting caught, or cheered in triumph at the prospect of him getting found out. I didn't really care about Jim and Carl either. I thought Jim and Carls dynamic was good at the beginning of the film ... when they're investigating the abduction case. Their dynamic is interesting, but it quickly spirals out of control towards the end of the film, which leads me on to my thirdly.

Side eye game is strong.

Thirdly, I feel like the first half of the film is great. It establishes a good tone and a consistent atmosphere, but it loses its steam about halfway through. The story begins to fall apart and everything starts to get out of hand, which is slightly farcical at points I felt, which isn't exactly in keeping with the rest of the film.

I'm bad at writing captions, let me die.

Criticisms aside though, I thought that from an aesthetic standpoint, the film looked great. I also got an ever so slightly David Fincher vibe from the director Matthew Saville. He wasn't afraid to just let things happen. We could watch a character go from point A to point B with no cuts, and if he could avoid it, he did. Conversations played out without cutting from face to face to face, and instead things were allowed just to unfold naturally. I think the cinematography is great, and the script also has some fantastic lines in it.

So basically, if you're looking for style over substance, then yeah, go ahead and watch it, but if you're looking for more, it may not be the film for you.

Till next week!

Cucumber Banana Tofu

Well, it's been a bit of a bumpy month in terms of posting, hasn't it dear readers? Let's not revisit the time where I said I was going to be committed to posting regularly and to a higher quality of writing, and instead, let us mark this as the beginning of a new leaf.
Today, I shall be discussing a series (or, well, three, I guess?) which I have recently finished watching: Cucumber, Banana, Tofu.

I could try and say that this poster isn't what it looks like, but then I'd be lying.

Right, I'm going to briefly explain what all of this is about and then go into more detail for each segment for the review-y part of this post, cause isn't that what I'm meant to do? Review?

Cucumber is a 45 minute long episode following the same characters (primarily Henry and Lance, but I'll get to that in a minute). Banana is a series of 20 minute self contained episodes which focus on different characters within the LGBT+ community which have usually appeared within the previous episode of Cucumber. There is overlap between the two shows, so watching them in succession is important, but not crucial I'd say. Finally, Tofu is a 10 minute documentary series featuring the cast and crew of Cucumber and Banana, as well as other guests, to talk about sex. 

Right, have we got that?

Cucumber

The aforementioned Henry (left) and Lance (right).

Like I say, Cucumber focuses on the life of long term partners Henry and Lance, featured in the picture above. It is very much about the middle aged, middle class gay. Having been together for nine years when the audience is introduced to them, you just know something is going to go wrong. And it does. Because what's interesting about a happy couple going about their happy couple ways? Exactly. So when things do go awry (and in quite a spectacular way), the couple see themselves no longer together and having to navigate the world by themselves for the first time in nine years. Henry finds himself somehow living (or squatting, we're never quite sure), in an abandoned loft of sorts with two young men from his work, Dean and Freddie, however their stories are more prominent in Banana, as that's where the two shows differentiate. Cucumber (like I say) is the middle age, middle class gay, and Banana is the young LGBT+ community, using Grindr and Tinder and Facebook, all on their iPads and smartphones, knowing at any given point where the closest shag is available. Lance remains the voice of reason (mostly-ish), who stays in their house and tries to get Henry to see how much of a bloody arse he is being.

We watch as Henry and Lance's relationship changes and evolves, stretches and strains. We see the power balance tip, and the two scramble for control in a relationship quickly spiralling out of hand. The characters are wonderfully human as well. Henry and Lance are by no means perfect people. They are both inherently flawed in their own individual way, and you will find yourself identifying with at least one of the characters (if not a little bit in all of them). This can sometimes be a touch worrying, when you can see yourself in the awful character before you, doing and saying horrible things and yet you know you to would do that. Or have already done something like that, I don't know your story.

Banana

The women in the yellow and brown jackets half dancing, half hugging are my faves. Their
episode was great.

I've already talked about how Banana manages to peel (ha! gettit?) away from Cucumber, but another obvious way that I've touched upon is how diverse the characters are. Cucumber is about older gay men. And that's fine, the show follows these specific character throughout its run, so it makes sense that as far as LGBT+ goes, it's only really the G (and a little bit of the B) is explored. Which is why I'm happy Banana uses it's time to really explore the community. We are also given episodes dedicated to Dean and Freddie, Henry's new found flatmates, which gives them a well needed back story and development. And although some episodes do revolve entirely around romantic relationships, it's not what the whole show is about.

One explores the way friendships evolve after highschool, one explores the way OCD can impact a persons life, one explores how people deal when faced with horrifying news and how they want to help. I know that last one was a bit weirdly worded but I don't want to ruin the episode, so in the name of not divulging spoilers, do forgive me. But yes, for the most part, being gay, lesbian, trans etc. just so happens to be part of the character and not their entire personality, which is refreshing. As is the complete lack of coming out stories. 

Tofu

Your American accents are so jarring within this series.

There's not really much to say on Tofu. Soz. Each episode deals with a certain theme which was present in either Cucumber or Banana previously, such as dating apps and first time having sex and (despite what I just said about coming out stories) coming out. Everyone is very frank about what they are talking about, no-one really holds back, which is fun for someone as nosey as me. Another fun thing in Tofu is that usually in an episode, little dramatised stories are interspersed throughout.

All in all, I think the whole series works exceptionally well, stand alone and as a complete package. Now that all the episodes have been released, it's time to binge watch them all on 4oD. And although watching it in succession (Cucumber > Banana > Tofu) isn't perhaps absolutely life and death important, I'd highly recommend doing so.

Until next week, dear readers! 

Top 5 "Oo, That Might Not Be Shit" Movies of 2015

Happy New Year everybodily! I hope all of you had a lovely Christmas and spent much time and money getting cataclysmically hammered, as is tradition. Let's all hope 2015 is an amazingly awesome year full of joy and other such sappy guff what like that.

And flying time trains; just like Back to the Future III promised!

I'm a creature of habit; I can't help it. I get up in the morning, put the kettle on, feed the captives, clean my teeth. I like routine. That means when I do something that has the potential to be a yearly occurrence, I'll likely take that opportunity. As such, in a follow-up to 2014's of the same ilk, I've gathered together a bunch of films coming out in 2015 that I'm penning into my diary as possible sources of enjoyment or, after the outcome of some of the items on last year's list, the least disappointment. Seeing as I'm already a week late on this post, let's not hesitate any further. Here we go!

5. Wild (Release: 16th January)

I'll let you in on a secret: I pick all of the films for this list by going onto the "Coming Soon" section of IMDb and scrolling through the whole year. It gives me a general outline of some of the stuff I might be interested in, but sadly there's a lot that'll be announced later in the year or that's simply been omitted that I won't spot as a result. As such, don't consider this list a definitive account of everything I want to see: it's the taster board of the year to come. Despite that, I think I've still found five movies coming out this year (in the UK, anyhoo) that look genuinely interesting either as a result of unique story, the presence of a director/actor who's recent work I've enjoyed, lots of those squiggly award logos at the beginning of the trailer, or any mixture of the former.

The Palme d'Or: The PornHub logo of wanky cinema.

So the first new release of the year that has piqued my interest stars Reese Witherspoon (who looks way different to what I remember her like in Legally Blonde a mere...14...years...oh god, I feel old) in Wild, the new film by Jean-Marc Vallee, director of Dallas Buyers Club (where we got the unique pleasure of watching Jared Leto dress as a woman and slowly die). Technically this came out last year, but it's global commercial release ain't till 16th January, so as far as us common Joes are concerned it just got released.

This movie looks pretty standard as far as a plot of a "true story" film goes: someone suffers a horrific ordeal and decides to go on a life-altering journey to re-find themselves; cue personal struggle and uplifting montages. What makes me a little more interested in this one than any other coming out this year is the pairing of writer and director.

I've not been so excited about writer/director duos since this guy started doing both. Oh, wait...

Dallas Buyers Club was pretty darn good, and any person in their right mind would be buzzing to see what Vallee was up to next; but the addition of Nick Hornby (writer of the novels-cum-movies High Fidelity and About a Boy) as the writer gives me high hopes for how good this movie is going to be at really getting you to care about its characters. Many a heart string shalt be plucked when this one comes out, methinks, and I don't doubt I'll be one of them.

4. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (Release: 20th February)

I see me some squiggly award logos!

This one's been making the rounds of film festivals all over the shop in the past year and won't be seeing a proper release until next month, but I want it NOW. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter looks absolutely fascinating. It follows a Japanese woman who mistakes a copy of the Coen brothers film Fargo for a treasure map and decides to go find the bag of money buried in the snow in the movie.

Little does she know that they actually dug it back up and fed it to Peter Stormare as his payment.

I love Fargo. That would be enough for me to want to see this film. But the fact that it's both an independent movie and has all like Japan stuff in it just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. This movie is designed to ensnare hipstery wankers like me, and I'm totally cool with that.

The trailer and synopsis give very little away about what's actually going to happen to the titular Kumiko (played by Rinko Kikuchi; Pacific Rim's Mako) whilst on her journey, but it does a stellar job of building a foreboding and unwelcoming atmosphere. I have a feeling this movie ain't gonna be the cheeriest romp ever.

And not one giant robot to be found.

Understated, ponderous and oozing with potential; even if it doesn't blow my mind I have a feeling Kumiko will at least be memorable.

3. Chappie (Release: 6th March)

After Elysium turned out to be a bit of a wet fart of a movie (albeit a fun one), Neil Blomkamp looks to have got his awesome District 9 momentum back with his new film about a humanoid CGI mo-cap creature that is unfairly ostracised by the human community: Chappie. The difference here is that it's a robot instead of an alien.

Your mind right now.

Voiced and mo-capped by the beloved Shartlo Copley (the main guy in District 9 or, alternatively, the mental one in The A-Team), Chappie looks like the most adorable mix of Robocop and Number 5 ever imagined and the film appears to approach similar questions to those movies too. What if we were to start relying on robots in our armies and police forces and what if a robot were to develop the ability to feel?

And, of course: "How much can we rip off the design of the ED-209?"

Just from the two trailers currently released at time of publishing it looks like we're in for the full shabang of Blomkamp staples: civil unrest, shady government organisations, military forces that can't be trusted, thinly veiled metaphors for racial discrimination. In short: this movie is going to rock the balls off that awful monster in that one Transformers film; which, incidentally, also appears to be the only robo-sci-fi Chappie doesn't seem to have lovingly taken themes and inspiration from. It feels like the greatest Frankenstein's creature of Robocop, Short Curcuit, Ghost in the Shell and iRobot (the book, not the film. Ew.) ever created.

And just to top it off, we're going to get to watch Hugh Jackman finally fight the robots he trained to box years ago. Score!

Here's the link to the second, very different, trailer.

2. Mad Max: Fury Road (Release: 15th May)

This poster actually smells of gasoline and burned flesh. HOW?!

I didn't like the original Mad Max. By my modern, desensitised standards it felt dull and rather lifeless for an Australian apocalyptic action film that was exceptionally over-hyped to me. Never watched the third one, but Road Warrior was pretty good. Anyhoo, there's a new one coming out this year, Mad Max: Fury Road, and boy does it look sweeeeeet. 

By order of the Court of Awesome, henceforth all films shall be required to contain desert car pole-vaulting.

Despite obviously being a Mad Max movie, Fury Road somehow managed to also channel the same sense of psychotic abandon and danger that I last felt while playing Borderlands; a game which is about an entire planet of maniacal murderers driving about in stupid cars and beheading each other. A planet. That's like six Australias or some shit. Also they've replaced that terrifying anti-semitic guy with the muscle-bound Adonis that is Tom Hardy; hoorays all round for that casting choice.

Ladies, start your engines. *vroom*

Explosions. Stupid car chases. Sexy people causing both of the former. Cool setting and costuming. Sure, it's not going to be a ground-breaking piece of art; but if all goes well, we might just see the live action 18-rated version of that bit in The Lego Movie when Emmet uses his own head as a spare tyre. That's good enough for me.

Add crunching neck sound effects at your own discretion.

For me, the real clincher will be how much of the stunts are physical effects and how much they choose to magic up with a compyater. It shouldn't matter, but it does. Here's the trailer:

1. Inside Out (Release: 24th July)

How could I not put this on my list? A new Pixar film written and directed by the guy who did Up? Sign over my first born son, cause I'll be going to see Inside Out enough times to have to sell him into slavery the moment he comes out.

"Sure, he's cute, but can he build a pyramid?"

Now I'll admit, the story following the adventures of the feelings that live inside the head of a human being certainly isn't that original. Two times come to mind in particular: firstly, one of the best Beano strips ever; The Numskulls; something which I do not take kindly to being imitated so brashly. More worryingly though is the second example: this animation by Walt Disney made back in 1943 called Reason and Emotion. It was Academy Award nominated short about the battle between emotion and reason and how being at all emotional is very wrong and that we should obey our superiors for the sake of the war effort to stop the highly emotional Hitler. Also, just so you know, women can't be trusted because they're too emotional and whatnot.

It really is a terrible cartoon.

Of course we've come a long way since those days, but the fact that a major studio would decide to make a film that so closely resembles a part of their past that they really shouldn't be proud of is still somewhat worrying. That and the advert does seem to stray a little too closely into the tired and frankly offensive gender stereotypes I thought we'd started to grow out of. Either way, the ad does appear to show the kind of humour and meaty characterisation that we've come to expect from Pixar, so if anyone could handle this kind of hot potato it'd be them.

They're so ruddy adorable!

If you liked Up, then do yourself a favour and pencil this one in. And don't be afraid to demand your money back if your shoes ain't squelching with tears by the end; I'm expecting no less.

Honorable Mention - Pixels (Release: 14th August)

Why would someone make such an awesome poster for such a guaranteed awful film?

I'm sorry to finish on a downer, but I need to mention this film, simply for the soul-crushing disappointment I feel every time I hear something new about it. The first time I head about Pixels was when the absolutely epic poster art started to circulate, and I was all like "Woah!" and "This'll be so awesome!" and stuff. A movie directed by Chris Columbus and based on a wonderfully imaginative short all about video game characters wrecking shit in the real world? And it has Peter Dinklage in it? How could it possibly go wro-

No. No. NO NO NO NO NO!

Yup. Written by the genius minds behind such classics of modern cinema as Happy Gilmore and Big Daddy (films so loathsome I've omitted even italicising them or linking to their IMDb pages) and starring the anal prolapse that was in the former films, Adam "Really-Does-Deserve-All-The-Hate-He-Gets" Sandler, Pixels is going to be a disaster. Turns out the story is an ever so original tale of aliens mistaking old video games as a declaration of war and inexplicably deciding to attack the Earth with said game icons, leaving the fate of the planet in the hands of a ragtag bunch of gamers. That is the most mind-numbingly unoriginal plot I have ever heard.

Also, Futurama totally already aced it.

This movie could have been great. It could have been another Scott Pilgrim or Wreck-It Ralph (both good enough to get two links to their IMDb pages). An ode to the glory of gaming that doesn't just use it as a shorthand for pulling in geek money. But alas; it is being made by some of the most consistently awful film makers of our generation. And Chris Columbus for some reason. A moment of silence, if you please, for a great film that will never be.

Any movies you'd like to see this year? Let us know!