Roundup of summer 2015

This was a fine season for film

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When it comes to cinema, there is no such thing as dilution. No matter how many times a franchise is rebooted, a classic remade or an individualistic work of art sequalized, cinema will always remain as singular and potent as those who make it.

Just don’t tell that to the handwringers and death criers who closed the books of summer 2015 only noting that some didn’t make as much as they should’ve (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl; Ant-Man) or mediocre ones that made too much (Jurassic World). And while summer 2015 grossed more than the summer of 2014 ($4.1 billion versus $4.05 billion) the wealth wasn’t spread around.

That’s missing the point entirely. Cinema is about what is available, not what is profitable, and as far as movie seasons go, the summer of 2015 was about as singular and potent as it gets.

None were more groundbreaking than the positively electric Tangerine. Following two transgender prostitutes on Christmas Eve Day in LA, Tangerine depicts a marginalized society rarely seen on the big screen, and does it with life and laughter. Writing in the New York Times, Manohla Dargis deftly points out, “Unlike a lot of white directors … Mr. Baker hasn’t simply looked in a mirror for his inspiration, but into that infinite world of possibility that is other people.”

Tangerine was made for peanuts, used real locations, non-professional actors and filmed with iPhones. Mad Max: Fury Road was none of those things, yet equally powerful. The Australian block-buster took a barebones Hollywood plot and directly subverted it by overthrowing the white male ruling class with the very women the regime sought to imprison. The result was a breath-taking, and gratifying, kick to the head that ought to change the course of future blockbusters.

As should Magic Mike XXL, a movie that places female pleasures at the heart (and genitals) of the matter. As The Dissolve’s Tasha Robinson pointed out, “It’s daringly inclusive about the women it puts onscreen, and daringly feminist in claiming that there are many ways to express masculinity simply by treating women well.”

Cobain: Montage of Heck, Love & Mercy and Straight Outta Compton all explore the creative process behind three of the 20th century’s loudest, most personal and, ultimately, political pieces of pop music. Amy focuses more on the artist than the art, but still hits every note and arranges them in a way that was both profound and deeply disturbing.

And the list goes on: 3½ Minutes; 10 Bullets; Call Me Lucky; Cartel Land; Cop Car; Grandma; The Look of Silence; The Nightmare; People, Places, Things; Phoenix; Queen of Earth; Shaun the Sheep Movie; The Tribe; etc. each serving a different audience, and each serving them well. And while none of these movies held a candle to the box office of Jurassic World or Minions — both grossing over $1 billion — the lack of a cohesive box office for these movies isn’t a negative; it’s a positive. Diverse cinema points to a more diverse audience, one that David Foster Wallace alluded to in his essay, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”: “[P]eople tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.”

There will always be dumb and vulgar and prurient interests in cinema, but in the summer of 2015, cinema found room for something more.