Worst:
Vacation
Honorable Mentions in no particular order:
The Gift
Krampus
Spring
Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation
Straight Out of Compton
Turbo Kid
What We Do In the Shadows
Magic Mike XXL
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
We Are Still Here
Top 10:
10. Bone Tomahawk
9. Sicario
8. Chi-Raq
7. Ex Machina
6. Mad Max: Fury Road
5. Spotlight
4. It Follows
3. Love & Mercy
2. The Hateful Eight
1. Creed
Let's talk a little about my number one pick. I generally try not to get too personal online, but I gotta do so a bit here, so expect a fair level of incoming schmaltziness.
From the day I saw it until the day after Thanksgiving, I thought Love & Mercy was a lock for my top spot. While I love a lot of Beach Boys music, I was mostly unfamiliar with Brian Wilson's story (I basically knew just enough to get the references in the Barenaked Ladies song "Brian Wilson") and I only went to see the movie because I knew my dad wanted to, if he hadn't I probably would have skipped it until it hit home video. We went together, and to my surprise I was completely swept up in it from the very opening frames. Two hours flew by in what felt like the length of a single Beach Boys song, and by the time the end credits rolled (over footage of the man himself singing the title song) I had tears of pure joy running down my cheeks (warning: this may become a theme here). It touched me in a way that's rare, and I've since become a tremendous fan of Wilson and gained a new appreciation for his genius on a level that I had never been able to comprehend before. Over the span of two hours, I fell in love with Brian Wilson.
My dad, on the other hand, didn't think much of the movie. He wanted less time spent on all the Dr. Landy stuff and more time spent in the studio in the Pet Sounds era. I was a little bummed that the movie didn't connect with him the way it did with me, but I was still happy that we had the opportunity to see it together.
Cut to the day after Thanksgiving. I had the day off from work and I'm not the Black Friday shopper type, so I decided to go see Creed. It was my dad who introduced me to the Rocky series so many years ago (around the release of Rocky III, circa 1982), and while I knew he'd want to see it, he was out of the country so I went on my own figuring that if it was any good I'd go see it again with him when he got back. I certainly wasn't expecting much from it. I love the Rocky movies, but the thought of a spin-off centered around a character who never existed before seemed like it was destined to be a forgettable, cynical cash-in at best.
Sometimes movies can surprise you.
A funny thing happened during that first screening of Creed. Those Love & Mercy tears? They ain't got nothin' on what Creed did to me (told you it would be a running theme). I had tears streaming down my face for a solid half of the movie, completely caught up in the passion co-writer/director Ryan Coogler poured into every frame. At first I didn't understand why it was so emotionally overwhelming, but then I realized what it had to be. I needed my dad to see this movie. I needed to share it with him.
My father is a good man, and I love him, but we didn't always get along. When I was a kid, I was often afraid of him (not physically, he wasn't abusive or anything like that, just very intimidating) and as I got older, there were times I resented being compared to him. Times when I felt there was no real me, that in most people's eyes I wasn't Josh, I was just Bob's son.
There's a scene in Creed, a very small moment but also my favorite single moment in any movie this year, in which Adonis Creed is watching a YouTube clip of his father, Apollo Creed, in a title fight with Rocky Balboa. The clip is being projected onto a wall so that it's practically life-size, and Adonis stands up and begins to shadowbox. What struck me about the moment isn't the imagery of this conflicted man fighting alongside the father he never knew, it's the fact that he's not fighting alongside Apollo, the moves he's matching are Rocky's. He's fighting against his father, against his legacy, against his very name.
Shortly afterward, when he meets Rocky and they begin to slowly form their own familial bond, I couldn't get the image of him fighting against his father out of my head. The whole movie revolves around Adonis deciding how to make his own way without either embracing or besmirching his father's legacy. To suggest this might have hit a nerve with me is to suggest the sky might, at times, be blue.
A short while after my dad got back from his trip we went to see Creed together, and I've never been more grateful for the darkness of a movie theater, because it meant he couldn't see that I cried through the entire movie that time. I didn't even know I had that many tears in me. I don't think he knows why the movie resonated so deeply with me (at least not until now, because he's one of the three people who will read this) but there are tears welling in my eyes as I write this.
Adonis Creed learns to take pride in his father's legacy rather than shun it. It took me a long time to learn the same thing, but over time I did learn it. Sitting there with my father, watching this tale of fathers and sons, watching a man struggle with the intimidation of living up to his revered father, was the best two-plus hours I spent in a theater all year.
I love Rocky Balboa, and I have ever since my dad introduced me to him when I was seven years old. I could never have imagined back then that someday I'd be 40 and I'd still have a new Rocky movie to share with my dad, much less one that helped me appreciate him and his love and support that much more. As proud as Adonis becomes of his father's legacy, it can't even touch how proud I am of mine.
And I don't even have to wear star-spangled shorts and punch other people in the face repeatedly to show it.
