2016 Calvin Awards: Best Overlooked Film
By David Mumpower
February 24, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
BOP celebrates the movies that fall into these categories with Best Overlooked Film, one of our staples since the beginning of The Calvins. Previous winners that have later become accepted cinema classics include The Hurt Locker, The Last King of Scotland, Mulholland Drive, Spirited Away, and Shaun of the Dead. Ones we wish people appreciated a bit more include Exit through the Gift Shop, In Bruges, Murderball, and Whale Rider. Come on, folks! We should have earned the benefit of the doubt by now!
This year’s competition was interesting to say the least. A few major releases that disappointed squared off against a couple of films you may not even realize exist. Our staff was, as usual, divided between voting for films that deserved a better fate and films that didn’t receive the attention their overall quality merits. In the end, an ill-fated major studio release overcame an international sensation that struggled domestically and a trio of small-scale releases.
Part of the fallout from the Sony hack was that the media learned that the studio was shaky regarding the prospects of Steve Jobs. Despite featuring an acclaimed Aaron Sorkin script and a dynamic cast, later deposed studio boss Amy Pascal always worried about its prospects. Due to the uncomfortable reminder of the hack, Sony’s new bosses acted the same as the old ones. They never got behind the film, which is unfortunate.
Steve Jobs is a truly great movie. Sorkin didn’t structure the story as a standard biopic. Instead, it covers a few key moments of the Apple co-founder’s life, tethering all of them to seminal Apple product releases. Sure, it sounds odd, and that’s probably why two different Sony regimes never warmed to it. Their miscalculation is frustrating since the acting performances in Steve Jobs are universally fantastic.
The story itself plays out as a de facto sequel (or prequel?) to The Social Network. It’s another tale of an ethically empty tech genius struggling to relate to his co-workers on a human level. And the interaction between Jobs and his illegitimate daughter is as poignant as anything Sorkin has ever written. Based on true events, it reveals how Jobs knew the girl was his yet constantly treated her mother like a liar for saying so. It’s an astounding piece of back story about one of the most famous men of the past century. Steve Jobs is a defiantly inscrutable movie, but it’s also a brilliant one. It’s our choice for Best Overlooked Film of the year.
Long-time readers of BOP are well aware of our devotion to Aardman Animations. We’ve celebrated almost all of their work (Sorry, Flushed Away!) going all the way back to The Wrong Trousers. Last year, they released Shaun the Sheep to international acclaim and slavish critical devotion. It earned the highest Rotten Tomatoes score of 2015, with 99 percent of critics recommending the film. For whatever reason, North American audiences didn’t care, which is our loss as a society.
Shaun the Sheep is a wonderful story that spins a Wallace and Gromit character into his own film. It’s based on the series of the same name, albeit with a much broader target audience, which makes its box office failure all the more puzzling. The story sees Shaun and his buddies from Mossy Bottom Farm wind up in the city, where they try to act human enough to avoid animal lock-up. Simultaneously, The Farmer somehow becomes an amnesiac celebrity hairstylist. In other words, a lot of nonsense happens, all of it wrapped in the gentle embrace of Aardman humor. Shaun the Sheep is so universally recommended that it almost feels like a cheat to name it as the second Best Overlooked Film of the year. Still, you should watch it immediately if you haven’t already done so.
The quickest way to kill any movie’s box office potential is to describe it as an African war drama. Given that constraint, it’s understandable why Beasts of No Nation failed to capture a larger audience. Had movie goers paid more attention, however, they would have realized that Cary Joji Fukunaga, the genius behind True Detective, wrote and directed the film. It also features a fearless acting performance by Idris Elba that caused a lot of headlines during the Academy Awards too-Caucasian controversy. If you see the film, you’ll understand why it’s a hard role to vote for. That makes me even prouder that our staff chose it as the third Best Overlooked Film this year.
Two different kinds of horror films comprise the rest of our top five. It Follows is a psychological drama that plays into the teen slasher trope about oversexed teens dying. The conceit here is that a woman has a one night stand with the boy of her dreams. Little does she know that he only does this to get a demon off his back, a literal one that follows a deflowered teen until they die. It’s a tense drama disguised as a low budget horror film. Somehow, Room is even creepier even though it’s not technically a horror film per se. In it, a kidnapped woman raises her young son in the shed where she’s spent the last seven years as a kidnapping victim. Brie Larson is the heavy favorite to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance, and that alone justifies the presence of Room so high on our list.
Indie films about highly praised authors coincidentally take sixth and seventh place this year. Trumbo tells the story of the legendary screenwriter responsible for the creation of Roman Holiday. Alas, history remembers this as Ian McLellan Hunter, and the explanation is that Trumbo was one of the blacklisted writers during the age of McCarthyism. The film explores how he was persecuted for his political beliefs, offering the happy bonus of a wonderful Bryan Cranston performance. It’s also an especially timely story at a time when fear drives much of the political conversation in our country.
The End of the Tour is somehow even sadder in the end, although most upbeat in tone. It displays the relationship between late author David Foster Wallace and David Lipsky, who once spent time on the road with him as part of an interview for Rolling Stone. Jason Segel delivers a stunningly nuanced portrayal of the tortured artist who eventually lost his lifelong battle with depression. None of this sounds like enjoyable subject matter, yet the dynamic between Segel and Jesse Eisenberg, who plays Lipsky, is incredibly entertaining. They’re at times guarded strangers, bestest buddies, and competitive egomaniacs. The End of the Tour is one of the best movies ever in its evaluation of how similar people can develop combative relationships.
Our final three nominees this year are Love & Mercy, Mr. Holmes, and The Danish Girl. Love & Mercy offers a similar structure to Steve Jobs, describing the life of Brian Wilson by showing two critical points in his career. Mr. Holmes skips to the end of the life of the world’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes. While suffering from dementia, the formerly sharpest mind in London tries to reconstruct the details of his final case, one that bothers him all the way into his 90s.
The Danish Girl is possibly the most topical film of the year. It explores sexual identity through a demonstration of a strained marriage between a happy wife and her confused husband. Even though he loves his bride, this man always felt more comfortable dressing as a woman, and he eventually attempts to become the first successful recipient of sex reassignment surgery. The damage this does to their otherwise joyful relationship makes for gripping storytelling.
As a group, our staff has always demonstrated the most passion toward the category of Best Overlooked Film. This is the place where we can do the most good by championing worthy films that somehow failed to register with mainstream movie audiences. Over the past year, there were many titles we felt qualified that didn’t quite earn a nomination. The closest to selection this time were Anomalisa, Clouds of Sils Maria, The Walk, Tangerine, Grandma, Legend, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Son of Saul, American Ultra, The Gift, The Look of Silence, Macbeth, and Amy.
Calvins Intro
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Album
Best Cast
Best Character
Best Director
Best Overlooked Film
Best Picture
Best Scene
Best Screenplay
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Best TV Show
Best Use of Music
Breakthrough Performance
Worst Performance
Worst Picture