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Joyless Creatures

Best Movies of 2015

15/1/2016

by Joyless Staff

Any list is just the sum of its parts, and in the case of Joyless Creatures' Best Movies of 2015, those parts include ten cinephiles whose tastes run the gamut of what the year had to offer. Ten lists from ten individuals produced a staggering 70 titles, a virtual cage match between a seductive lesbian love story and a rousing boxing throw-back, and a number of eclectic ties (check out the three movies tied for the number three spot) that raised our top ten to sixteen. See our individual lists here. Enjoy!

The 15 Best Scenes of 2015

31/12/2015

by Joyless Staff

Writing about film is often an exercise in self-restraint: for the sake of objective analysis, we're taught to be impartial and to seek cohesion and quality craftsmanship, applauding movies in which the whole is sometimes greater than the sum of its parts. But there's no denying that cinema is an art form given to euphoric moments and jolts of briefly-sustained adrenaline, exuding a joy and creativity that no pseudo-objective analyst could dare refuse. With this in mind—and with a few more weeks until we unveil our Best Films of 2015 lists (thanks mostly to the January Twin Cities releases of Anomalisa and The Revenant)—we'd like to highlight the greatest movie moments of 2015. Some of the following scenes are of a high quality that define the movie as a whole; others might be glimmers of greatness within films that are not deserving of such brilliance. In any case, the following 15 scenes (listed alphabetically by film title) make these movies worth the price of admission (or an Amazon rental) alone. (WARNING: some spoilers may be found below.)

Our 10 Best Worst Films of 2015

16/12/2015

by Joyless Staff

For many moviegoers, the review exists to answer the question, "Do I really want to spend ten bucks on this?" We at Joyless Creatures put ourselves on the frontline, subjecting ourselves to a wide swath of movies every year. Some are really bad. (S e r i o u s l y) But then, among the most critically maligned there are a few diamonds in the rough, misunderstood films that slip through the cracks and fall into undeserved critical disdain. Here is our attempt to rejuvenate a few of those films that were wrongfully condemned as stinkers. Here they are, 2015's best of the worst.

Sound Unseen 16 Preview

10/11/2015

by Joyless Staff

Sound Unseen 2015 runs this week, November 11-15. Truly one of Minnesota's most unique cinematic forums, Sound Unseen pulls in a variety of films for, by, and about musicians. From conventional documentaries to narrative films starring musicians to films directed by musicians, Sound Unseen delves into what it means to be a music film. The Joyless Creatures staff took a look at a sliver of what the festival has in store.

The 2015 Academy Awards: Predictions & Exclusions

16/2/2015

by Joyless Staff

This Sunday marks the 87th Academy Awards, an event so hyped that it's hard for even the least involved cinephile to ignore. (As noted in the New York Times this past weekend, 43 million Americans watched the Oscars last year—seven times the number of people that saw Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave.) Below are our forecasts for who will win, who should win, and who should have been nominated. Notably underrepresented this year are Selma, Gone Girl, Inherent Vice, and Under the Skin, making for a monochromatic group of acting nominees and an all-male set of directorial and screenwriting nominees—a problem endemic in both Hollywood and the Academy. If there can be any silver lining, it is that Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater, two filmmakers who have previously only been nominated for screenwriting awards, may be taking home more well-deserved Oscars than they can carry.

Best Movies of 2014

1/1/2015

by Joyless Staff

Like any other year, 2014 is a bag of mixed pleasures—some we generally agree on and others that spawn incredulity. Our top movies of the year, as voted on by the Joyless Staff, reflect this diverse range of material making an impact. Although the Twin Cities has yet to see some of the year’s biggest films (most notably Selma and Inherent Vice), we have chosen our top 25 movies, taking up 13 spaces, accommodating four ties. Check out our individual lists here. Enjoy and happy New Year!

Scary Creatures: 8 Halloween Picks

23/10/2014

by Joyless Creatures Staff

As we all don our costumes and load up on candy, we should take a moment to remember what the Halloween season really means. This is the time of year for watching heart-stopping, spine-tingling, hair-raising movies. Toward that end, the Joyless Creatures staff has a few spooky Halloween picks to round out your sleepless nights. From terror to schlocky gore, camp to existential dread, these eight movies will haunt your dreams.

Reports from The Clock

4/8/2014

by Joyless Creatures Staff

Christian Marclay's The Clock began its worldwide tour in 2010, bouncing around galleries and museums in Europe and the US. After four years of waiting, it's finally made it to the Walker Art Center.

The Clock is a 24-hour installation piece made entirely of found footage, much of which is taken from feature films both familiar and obscure. Marclay has assembled a functioning clock, synched to the local time wherever it plays, that uses film clips that correspond to whatever time it is in real life. While many environments seek to remove our sense of time (think casinos and nightclubs, whose lack of clocks and natural light lulls visitors into a secure calm in which they can spend unknown hours frittering their money away), The Clock does the opposite. A moment never passes at which you don't know what time it is.

Best of 2014 So Far: Twin Cities Edition

4/7/2014

2014
so far

Taking stock in the year’s offerings in December while happily gorging on prestige flicks that have graced Cannes and Toronto seems habitual even if you don’t partake in the Wide World of Film Criticism. But undertaking the same kind of survey in June while suffering through summer bonanzas like Transformers or Godzilla and enjoying the pleasures, as major or minor as they may be, of movies like 22 Jump Street and Edge of Tomorrow feels a little more counterintuitive. Have we really seen anything good so far in 2014? Most definitely. Although our choices might differ, I think we can all agree that there were many gems in the first half of 2014 hiding under the buzz or right in plain sight.

Making our survey specific to films screened in the Twin Cities between January 1 and June 30 encompassed a number of anomalies, including late releases to our no-coast market from 2013 (Her, which opened January 10, locally scored big) as well as a large slate of early looks and undistributed films in April’s Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival (Boyhood earning standout marks). Other top tier movies in our accumulated votes--The Grand Budapest Hotel, Stranger by the Lake, Under the Skin, and Ida—will no doubt resurface in six months with our year end assessment.

Without further ado, our collective list scored via ranking and our individual ballots. Eight ballots resulted in 51 movies.

Alain Resnais: In Memoriam

4/6/2014

Many directors switch styles and thematic interests from film to film, but few are as fascinatingly chameleonic as Alain Resnais. In a career that spanned seven decades—from his initial short documentaries of the 1940s to his final film, Life of Riley (2014), made at the age of 91—Resnais refused to succumb to audience and critical expectations, instead prioritizing ceaseless innovation in narrative, form, and subject matter. An only child born in 1922 in the small Brittany town of Vannes, the asthma-stricken Resnais was home-schooled and quickly developed a voracious appetite for reading, from comic books to the surrealism of André Breton. It was, perhaps, this eclectic self-instruction in the history of literature that instilled in Resnais a love for the unpredictable and polysemous. Though he initially studied acting, Resnais became attracted to film editing in 1943 under the tutelage of Jean Grémillon, though his education was interrupted when he served in the French military during World War II.