The Danish Girl (2015)
★ ★Reading about the film afterwards, it seems the biggest sin was not doing due diligence of having discussions with transgendered people, choosing to make up motivations for Lili's internal struggle and getting a lot of the basic psychology wrong. This was made by cisgender people and made for them and since I'm one I thought this was being respectful and sensitive, which shows how much we just don't know yet. On a level I'm more comfortable discussing - cinema - this isn't the dry Oscar bait I had assumed, though it skirts along the line. I've never had a problem with director Tom Hooper, choosing him over Stephen Daldry any day. Redmayne gonna Redmayne, but this is the best performance I've seen by Alicia Vikander. She's easily the best part of the film.
American Grindhouse (2013)
★ ★ ★ - Very GoodInitial ReviewI debated writing about this again because my first review largely holds up, but I know this Board gets the most attention is this is a criminally underseen Doc. I had to think of something negative to say and I settled on it rushes through history too quickly, acting as more of a glossy overview of exploitation through the ages, when a longer deep dive (like Martin Scorsese's 4 hour docs) would fill in the details wonderfully. Once again, I love how Grindhouse isn't looked at as a movement in the 60s and 70s but something that started in the earliest short films, pushed up against the Hayes Code and spent years hiding in Noir before knocking down the barriers and letting all manner of sex and violence break loose. One of the decade's best.