The Top 10 Films of 2015: Boxers, Hipsters, Doof Warriors and STDs
2. Mistress America (Noah Baumbach)
Obviously Frances Ha is the Baumbach/Gerwig collaboration for the ages, but Mistress America, with characters landing on either side of that film’s mid-twenties strivers, may be even funnier and lighter on its feet. Gerwig, with her blithe confidence, nails the hustling desperation of passing thirty in New York without a clear success to your name, and Lola Kirke gives youthful opportunism an understated spin. Their screwball takeover of a posh Connecticut home in the movie’s back half may be the most sustained high-wire act yet from a terrific writer who’s also, secretly, an excellent director.
1. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell)
Death stalks a group of suburban teenagers, as often happens in synth-scored horror movies from the early eighties, among other eras. But the enemy here isn’t a marauding slasher but an unstoppable force that trudges inexorably toward its victims; the only way to not-really-stop it is to get someone else on its agenda first by having sex and passing the demon to your partner. David Robert Mitchell’s horror movie evokes the changing of the seasons and, simultaneously, a transition into adulthood, from the warm nostalgia of summer to the chilly dread of fall.