The SeedSing (half) Year in Pop Culture: The Top Five Movies of 2015

Time to fire up the projector

Being that the new year is coming up on Friday, I'll be doing my best of 2015 all week. Today, I'm going to start the week off with my top five movies of the year. Everyday I'll do a different top five and today I want to start with movies.

I see a lot of movies. Some I see in the theaters and others, I watch at home. I love movies and this has been a pretty good year for movies. So good in fact, movies like "Inside Out" and "Me and Earl and The Dying Girl" and "The Wolfpack" didn't make my top five and I really, really liked those movies quite a bit. So, on with the countdown.

Coming in at number five, we have a tie. My number five movies are "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and "Kingsman: The Secret Service". These are both blockbustery type movies, "Avengers" way more so. "Avengers" was fantastic. Go back and read my review. This was an absolutely breath taking super hero movie. There was action, adventure and even a bit of a love story. We also got Hawkeye's back story, and that made me like a character I once never really cared for. My favorite scene was when the Avengers were fighting Ultron and his army of robots and everything was in slow motion and we got to see each hero fight in super slow motion, it was excellent. "Avengers" Age of Ultron" is one of the greatest superhero movies of all time. "Kingsman", on the other hand, was a gory, action heavy, hand to hand and weaponry combat movie for the ages. This movie was criminally under the radar. I heard almost nothing about it while it was in the theaters and I didn't watch it on DVD for about five months. But, I'm so glad that I took the time to watch because this movie was incredible. My review was put up fairly recently. I loved pretty much everything about this movie. The opening fight scene with Colin Firth and the bar patrons was phenomenal. The fight scene in the church, once again featuring Firth, was one of the coolest things I've seen in a long, long time. The tests given to the future Kingsman were heart racing and incredible to watch. The main character, Eggsy, was expertly played. Samuel L Jackson was excellent as the villain. "Kingsman: The Secret Service" is the perfect summer action movie. Go check it out if you haven't seen it and I promise you, you'll love it.

My number four movie is "The End of the Tour". This is one of the most quiet, yet most poignant movies I've seen. Jesse Einsenberg is great as Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky. He plays the jealous, yet enthralled writer perfectly. I cannot picture anyone else in this role. Jason Segel, as David Foster Wallace, is absolutely phenomenal. He plays Wallace so realistically, it's almost like watching a documentary. He shows vulnerability, anger, sadness and genius all very, very expertly. He one hundred percent deserves an Oscar nomination for this role. This movie is basically just these two talking for two hours, but it never seems boring or dull. I was into the story and the movie the whole time. "The End of the Tour" is great.

Coming in at number three, I have "Ex Machina". This movie was so creepy and eerie because something like this could very well happen in the very near future. I mean, honestly, how far away are we from having robots walking amongst us? It's going to happen. Some rich, eccentric genius is going to create a humanoid robot and it will only grow bigger and bigger from there. Oscar Issac plays that eccentric genius billionaire so well. He is every bit creepy as he is lonely in this movie. He has his own lush home in the woods and he invites an employee, played by Domhnall Gleeson, to come out for what seems to be a vacation. It couldn't be more different. He is thrown into a type of lab project to see how he interacts with a female robot played so well by Alicia Vikander. This is another movie small in structure, but huge in story. As I said, something like this is going to happen very soon and this movie made me terrified for that future. It was haunting and terrifying and I'm not looking forward to the robots taking over. The final scene, I won't spoil it, was one of the scariest things I've seen in a movie in a very long time. It still aunts me. "Ex Machina" was the best horror movie of 2015, even though it's categorized as science fiction.

My number two movie is "What We Do in the Shadows". This was the funniest movie of the year by far. "WWDITS" follows the lives of vampires living together in a flat in New Zealand. Being that it was made by Taika Waititi, one of the "Flight of the Conchords" primary directors, it was so funny. It was done mockumentary style and it was perfect. Jermaine Clement, playing Vlad the Poker, was so great. A once powerful vampire, he now was not so powerful after his break up with "The Beast". He was excellent in this movie. Taika Waititi played Viago, the pretty boy vampire, and he was great as well. He was worried about keeping the flat clean and he longed for his lost love that was now in her mid to late 80's. The scene where he lays paper down to keep the blood of a victim off the couch, then hits a vein and bloods spills everywhere, is hilarious. The star of this movie, to me, was Johnny Brugh who plays Deacon. Deacon was a German vampire during the reign of the Nazis and he fled to New Zealand after stating, "if you are a Nazi, people hate you. If you're a vampire, people hate you. If you're a Nazi vampire, forget about it. I had to get out of there and flee to someplace safe". His character had me in stiches the whole movie. "WWDITS" is the best comedy of the year by far.

My number one movie should come as no surprise to anyone, "Mad Max: Fury Road". What else is there to say about this movie that hasn't been said already? It's the best action movie ever. It has the best social commentary. It lets a female be the lead badass. It has the best imagery in a movie in about 30 years. I mean, this movie is perfect from start to finish. Tom Hardy is excellent as Max. He's just as understated and hard core as Mel Gibson was in the original "Mad Max". Hugh Keys-Byrne was so creepy and so good as the ultimate bad guy, Immortan Joe. His breathing apparatus he wore still scares me when I watch the movie. Nicolas Hoult, playing war boy Nux, was surprisingly badass and totally cool. All the young ladies that played Joe's wives were awesome for many different reasons. But, Charlize Theron as Furiosa was absolutely phenomenal. She was the biggest badass, the toughest fighter and the smartest person in the whole movie. She was so great. Much like Segel for "The End of the Tour", Theron one hundred percent deserves not only an Oscar nomination, but she deserves to win. She was so perfect in this role. She beat so much ass and won at the end of the day. Theron was incredible. "Mad Max; Fury Road" is not only the best movie of 2015, it's probably the best movie I've ever seen. It's that good.

So, there you have it, my top five movies of 2015. Tell me what I left out in the comment section and come back tomorrow for my top five albums of the year.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man podcast. He is lover of movies and a passionate lover of good movies. Feel Ty's love by following him on twitter @tykulik. 

Place the Face with the Voice and Watch Eugene Mirman's Netflix Special "Vegan on His Way to the Complain Store"

With so many good things on, it is time to grab the extra tvs

Yesterday I finally got to watch Eugene Mirman's stand up special on Netflix entitled, "Vegan on His Way to the Complain Store".

Now for those of you out there that don't know who Eugene Mirman is, maybe you're familiar with his voice acting on the fantastic TV show, "Bob's Burgers". He plays the voice of the male child, Gene. He's my personal favorite on that show. Mirman's voice acting is absolutely hilarious. To give you a taste of the dialogue, Gene says to Bob, "that's channel five news, they'll finger anything with a pulse. Bob replies, "I think their slogan is, our finger is on the pulse", then Gene replies, "I'm pretty sure it's, we'll finger anything with a pulse, look they're fingering us right now!". That's hilarious.

The first place I saw Eugene Mirman was on the great, underrated TV show, "Flight of the Conchords". He played Bret and Jermaine's landlord named Eugene. He was used sparingly on the show, but when he was on, it was always funny. There's one scene in particular where he's stuck in an elevator with Jermaine and he's showing him the new faucets for the apartment building. Jermaine tries to use the faucet, complaining to Eugene that it doesn't even work. We all know it doesn't work because it's not hooked up to anything, but these two play this scene to big, big laughs. It's small in stature, but huge in hilarity.

I started to get into Eugene Mirman more after "Flight of the Conchords" went off the air. Mirman and Kristin Schaal were the two people outside of the main characters that I needed to know more about. So, I bought Mirman's two comedy albums and they are comedic gold. He's an excellent stand up. He's was on the cusp of the alternative comedy scene. Hell, he might have been one of the first. He has a great bit on one of his albums about whale watching in Maine, I believe, and he talks about how beautiful it is, but all he could think of doing was going from person to person to ask them, in a whisper, if they had any condoms. His first four albums are all great, especially, "God is a 12 Year Old Boy with Aspergers" and he has his own sense of humor and how he performs it to an audience is, uniquely, Eugene Mirman. He does bits where he reads open letters that he's written to town magazines or papers. He does stuff about art, and then he'll present his crude drawings with funny stories behind them. He loves to take pictures and then explain a weird occurrence involving himself or a group of friends that said occurrence happened to, holding the picture up the whole time. He creates new slogans for companies. My favorite thing he does in his act, he signs up on dating websites, or websites like LinkedIn and writes crazy stuff in his bio.

All of these bits are in "Vegan on His Way to the Complain Store", and it's all very funny. For instance, he has a LinkedIn bio bit, where he says he's the VP of Pee Pee at Verizon. He explains that it's still on his personal bio page because, "no one fact checks anything on LinkedIn". He also said that, to further hammer home his point about no one fact checking anything on LinkedIn, he gets a lot of calls about open VP positions at different companies due to what they saw on LinkedIn. It's really funny. He does an audience Q and A during his set, and it's found out during this, that he will answer questions from his fans on Facebook, as long as it's not something weird like, "I'll wash your shoes". We also learn that he likes to ask celebrities very absurd questions on Facebook, hoping that one day they'll respond. Listening to him talk about the ridiculously hilarious things he asks politician John Boehner is wonderfully absurd. It's great. He does the art thing during this special, explaining that he contacted Whole Foods, asked if he could put art in their store, and they begrudgingly said yes. His artwork is hilariously childish, on purpose of course, and his titles for his pieces are really funny. My favorite thing he did in this new special was, he explained how he got a parking ticket while he and his girlfriend were sight seeing in New Hampshire. I won't go into the whole bit, but he got a ticket for "parking the wrong way". He backed into a spot, apparently that's illegal in New Hampshire, and he goes into a whole story about a letter he wrote that will be published in the New Hampshire Summer Guide. He's obviously very angry about the ticket and he felt the best way to get back at them was, to write an angry, yet very funny letter about it. Watch the special for this bit alone, it's fantastic.

"Vegan on His Way to the Complain Store" is another excellent addition to Eugene Mirman's already large body of stand up specials. He's an awesome comedian and people need to know about him, if they don't already. Fans of his will love this special, and this special should also bring him some new fans. Yes, "Bob's Burgers" and, to a lesser extent, "Flight of the Conchords" made him better known, but stand up is where he's gained his notoriety.

So, watch "Vegan on His Way to the Complain Store", it's really, really great and comes highly recommended from yours truly.

Ty 

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the co-host of the X Millennial Man podcast.