A Note on my Work

On Sunday, August 9th, I did something I've always wanted to do - screen a few of my short films for my friends in Austin. I've had a chance to show these movies on the big screen in New York over the years, but never in my hometown. I was honored to have a small gathering of dear friends join me at the Violet Crown Cinema for the screening, which also served as my belated 31st birthday party.

In preparation for the event, I wrote down a few thoughts about the films themselves, hoping to provide some insight into what I've been trying to accomplish with my film work. I thought I'd share those thoughts here on this blog.

Thank you all so much for being here, and I hope this isn’t too self-aggrandizing. This is something I had wanted to do last year for my 30th birthday, but that wasn’t possible due to COVID-19.

I thought I’d offer a little context for what you’re about to see. These are three short films I made, preceded by sort of a throwback joke trailer I made in high school. The first film, You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory, was my senior thesis film at NYU, which meant it was a script workshopped for a semester in our Advanced Production class. That semester ended with students pitching their films for an allotment from the school, as not everyone gets to make a thesis (at least not with the resources and equipment NYU has available). I was lucky enough to get the allotment, and as we were still students, I didn’t have to pay my cast and crew. Even still, the shoot was costly, and so many of you contributed in some way to make it possible. That's one of the primary reasons I wanted to do this, to thank you and also show you that we did actually make something. I don’t know if it’s good, but we didn’t go on vacation - your money was definitely spent on a movie.

The last two films, Jack and Lucas Go to a Wedding and Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue, are independent projects I wrote and directed after college. The main difference on these shoots was that most of our crew members were working professionally and we weren’t operating with the support of a university, so everyone had to be paid and all camera gear and equipment had to be rented. I did fundraising campaigns for both films, and again, so many of the people in this room helped out, for which I am forever grateful.

Of these two post-grad films, the first is a movie I made with my old friend Lucas Loredo, which we shot entirely in a hotel room. The second was a collaboration with the lead from my thesis, an excellent actor named Mike Wesolowski – so you’ll see him in two different movies.

Looking at these films now, I see a lot of things that I didn’t necessarily see at the time. The primary one being judgment – which is not to say the movies themselves are judgmental of the lead character, but rather the character is often very judgmental and critical of himself.

I can’t say that any of these films are autobiographical – despite the fact that the character I play in one of them is named Jack – but they do to a certain extent reflect versions of things I've felt over the years in an exaggerated way. But I see myself toeing the line here between trying to have an empathetic protagonist while also presenting a character with some pretty extreme qualities. Sometimes the challenge was - how far can I take it before the audience says, "This guy is out of his mind!" A film of mine I was going to include in tonight’s line-up but ultimately didn’t, Jake the Cinephile, was described by one of my professors as an empathy dare – as in, I dare you to empathize with this character. He’s so off-the-wall. And I don’t think he meant that in a positive way. With that particular short, though, I’m getting the chance to sort of get a do-over, as I’ve developed it into a feature film which we’ll be shooting at some point this decade (production isn't easy these days).

A question I got once when someone watched one of the films was, is this really how you see yourself? And the answer is no. But that comment stuck with me, and a progression I’ve noticed in the projects I’ve been developing since making these shorts is a kindness and – I hope - a more multi-dimensional quality to my lead characters that acknowledges their positive, engaging attributes alongside their less-desirable ones.

That being said, I’ll always be attracted to losers, for lack of a better term. They’re just more interesting than winners. And I am proud of the movies you’re about to see. Theoretically, they should get better with each one, but I can’t promise there won’t be some regression.

So thank you for letting me make films where I was able to refine my style and articulate what I was feeling at the time and learn a lot about how I want to make movies - which ultimately you can only do by making them.

It feels weird to say this at a screening of my own work, but if you have cell phones, it’d be pretty cool if you silenced them. My attitude toward talking during movies is sort of well-known at this point, too… but again, I feel weird saying this at my own screening. Thank you all so much.

Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue

Over the course of the past year and a half, I’ve been doing everything I can to make my latest film, which I first wrote in September of 2015. I wanted my friend and collaborator Mike Wesolowski, who played the lead role in my thesis film You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory, to not only star in the film, but also to help me re-write and refine the piece. Together, we embarked upon the creation of my sixth film, Harvey’s Last Night on the Avenue.

Last summer, after going through dozens of drafts with Mike – meeting together in all corners of New York City to get the script right – I launched an IndieGoGo campaign and officially announced pre-production on the film, with the intention of shooting in October 2016. You can view our promo video below.

As hard as I’ve tried to stay in the ‘short film’ arena these last few years, I’ve reached a point where the themes I want to explore no longer fit within the confines of a twenty-minute-or-less story. Thus, Harvey’s Last Night On The Avenue is my largest scale project to date. A five-part web-series, the story takes place over the course of one long night, as we follow a sensitive young man named Harvey, who joins a group of his friends on a bar crawl the night before he moves from New York back to his hometown in Texas. The picture follows him and this ever-growing group as they hop from bar-to-bar in Brooklyn.

Harvey, an obsessive and socially awkward person, ruminates over many of his minor social faux pas that he perceives as huge errors. As the night goes on, he accrues more and more faults in his mind, and becomes increasingly unable to connect with the people around him. He even keeps a tape recorder in his backpack, and frequently retreats to the bathroom to confess his ill-advised behavior into the recorder.

But Harvey’s Last Night on the Avenue isn’t only about the outcast – it’s about the dynamic of the entire group. Each character has his or her own unique set of goals — we have fun watching the whims and aspirations of a large number of twenty-somethings out on the town, struggling to function in their own way.

Stylistically, this film has the feel of hang-out movies such as Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused (1993) and Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) – films that are built around a large number of vivid supporting characters, rely on a small number of varied settings, and take place over a short span of time (in this case, one night). Despite these influences, Harvey’s Last Night on the Avenue is unique in that it’s a story told from the perspective of someone on the outside of the fun. As the film goes on, we fall further away from connecting with the charismatic supporting characters. And as Harvey becomes increasingly removed from the situation, we gain more and more insight into the psychological factors behind his behavior.

In many ways, this series is a continuation and expansion of the character from my thesis film - someone who feels so bad about every single action he takes, he can only survive by confessing to another person (that film concerns a young man who compulsively confesses every detail of his anti-social behavior to his mother).

I think Mike and I both responded to the intense morality of the character he played in my last film. Naturally, we wanted to return to this character and explore him beyond the confines of a twenty-minute short film – and in particular explore why this person feels the necessity to confess his behavior. Where did this compulsion come from? What psychological factors are present when someone can’t get through an evening with friends without obsessing over their sometimes harmless and sometimes inappropriate social errors? Whereas my thesis film took place largely in an apartment with Charlie and his mother, Mike and I thought we should put our new character out in the wild for the entirety of this project. Let it all take place in social settings, where this character feels deeply anxious and trapped – which is why we ended up with a bar-crawl script.

So there's this tension the whole movie - between wanting to be part of the fun, and needing to reckon with the part of ourselves that questions each and every decision on a deeply moral, micro level.

And we felt strongly that a web-series was the right format for this idea. Because the screenplay moves from bar to bar throughout the course of one night, we realized that the story breaks up very nicely into individual episodes. And we weren't familiar with a web series in which each episode returns to the same, long painful night again and again. We felt this could be a very unique way of telling this particular story, especially as our lead character continues to return in his mind to events from the same ongoing night.

Originally, my producer, cinematographer and I estimated that the film would cost close to $30,000.00. We were planning to shoot over a period of two weeks in October, with ten shooting days and two rest days. But even though the shoot was planned in a relatively inexpensive way, it was clear I couldn’t quite raise enough money to make it happen. The IndieGoGo campaign brought in over $5000.00, but I was trying to raise as much as $15,000.00. Much of the budget came from the sheer length of the shoot – renting camera gear, grip/electric equipment, and production vehicles adds up significantly over the course of two weeks. And that doesn’t include food, which, for a crew of more than ten people and a cast of fifteen, is a significant expense. And then there were the locations – seven of our ten shooting days were at bars.

Despite our limited budget, I wanted this series to feel energetic and alive, and pulse with the intensity of the lead character's emotions. What we lack in resources, we will make up for in pure energy – that was my motto. Even as an October shoot date seemed foolhardy, I soldiered on – thinking that somehow we would be able to do it.

Before long, it became clear that we would be better served and prepared by shooting in the spring, and so I made the decision to move our dates. This would allow us a little more time to find the proper locations and to plan the logistics of the shoot – and, ideally, find more money.

During the winter, Mike and I scaled back the script to fit a more modest budget, and we were ultimately thrilled with the result. Through tightening the script to a leaner thirty pages, we found a way to shoot the series in five days rather than ten. Suddenly, the shoot seemed viable – we could make the series in a more cost-effective way that fit our budget.

But there were further complications ahead. In January, I lost most of my original crew to other jobs and circumstances beyond their control, which was a major setback. Luckily, I had a cast who was dedicated to the script and wasn't going anywhere, and so there was still a team behind this thing pushing it forward, by any means necessary. Along with Mike, we had some of the finest young actors in New York City – including Justin Danforth, Matthew K. Davis, Connor Delves, Aubrey Elenz, Allison Frasca, Taylor Marie Frey, Michael Galligan, Justine Magnusson, Max Pava and Jamie Wolfe. Many of them came directly from the Atlantic School of Acting at NYU, where Mike studied alongside them.

Then, I received some wonderful news in January that helped us immensely - I was one of four recipients of the Richie Jackson Artist Fellowship, which includes a mentorship from the very successful producer Richie Jackson and a $5000.00 stipend, which went straight to this web series. You can view my bio for the Fellowship here, and read more about the fellowship here. Suddenly, the shoot didn’t seem so crazy. My mom, Gretchen Kyser, made a huge contribution to total up the funds needed. I wrote my contributors and let them know we were a full go for our spring shoot! (In case I haven’t said it before, I cannot thank the contributors to my IndieGoGo campaign enough. They helped make the series possible.)

As soon as I could, I found a new team – the extraordinary producer Alex Fofonoff (director of the feature film Blood and Thunder, in which I starred) had already been helping me scout locations during the summer, and his stepping in and taking charge of the project really saved us. Then, the immensely talented cinematographer Kevin Dynia joined the crew, along with assistant director Matthew James Reilly, sound mixer Nick Chirumbolo, and script supervisor Lain Kienzle.

In the months leading up to the shoot, I storyboarded the entire film and met with Kevin consistently to shot list the film. Alex and I locked down locations, insurance and all other logistical challenges – and I rehearsed with our large, magnificent cast (Mike now lives in Chicago, and so we did a large cast rehearsal without him before he arrived, and then individual, smaller rehearsals once he was in town).

In the end, we had a terrific shoot - four different bar locations (Beauty Bar, The Starlight, Phoenix and Syndicated), an extraordinary night of exteriors, and an on-set energy unlike any I've ever seen. We scheduled and planned the film the right way, and the work paid off - it was as smooth a shoot as you could hope for, especially considering the scale and ambition of the series.

I am so deeply honored and humbled by the hard work of our cast and crew members. We had two actors, Mike and Taylor Frey, fly in from Chicago and Los Angeles specifically for the shoot, and we called upon the talents of many local actors and filmmakers to help tell this story. We had two amazing actors who were part of the beloved Austin High theatre department, Aubrey Elenz and Zach Gamble, and renowned filmmakers running the set at a remarkable pace.

I feel confident in saying that this will be the strongest work I've made to date, and I owe so much of it to the extraordinary ensemble of actors in this piece. Every one of them added such vitality to this project, and I find myself cracking up and genuinely moved while watching the dailies.

Mike and I first started working together on this script well over a year ago, and almost exactly a year ago, we embarked upon casting the project. I can’t thank those who stuck with us from the beginning enough. It wasn't an easy road - from postponing our original shoot dates in October, to reassembling much of the team earlier this year - but I wouldn't have changed a thing about the way we pulled off the shoot in the end.

I will start working on editing the picture as soon as possible, and I feel confident, given the effort put into the film, that we will have a fantastic final product. Expect many more updates to come.

In addition to all of this news about Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue, I also want to share some news about my previous film, Jack and Lucas Go To A Wedding. Last year, this short film was named an Official Selection of the 2016 Black Cat Picture Show in Augusta, GA, and the 2016 Hudson Valley International Film Festival in upstate New York. The movie screened at both festivals in August, and Lucas Loredo won Best Supporting Actor in a Short Film at the Hudson Valley International Film Festival!

In June, the film will screen at NewFilmmakers New York at Anthology Film Archives, which is always an amazing place to screen a movie (I screened my film Jake the Cinephile there three years ago on probably the largest screen on which I’ve seen my work).

In addition, a clip from Jack and Lucas Go To A Wedding screened on WJBP NewsChannel 6 in Augusta, Georgia, as part of the promotion for the Black Cat Picture Show. You can see the clip (featuring my co-star and dear friend Lucas and me) here at 0:34!

I Just Want to Fight Like Everyone Else

My senior thesis film You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory has had a great recent run at film festivals over the last few months. On Saturday, August 8th, my film screened at the 9th Athens International Short Film Festival Psarokokalo in Athens, Greece. Please take a look at the festival's program here, which gives a nice run-down of the film.

On Saturday, August 15th, I drove up to Monroe, New York with lead actors Mike Wesolowski and Mary Goggin to attend the Hudson Valley International Film Festival, where You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory screened at 10:35 AM in Theater 3. Here is a link to the festival schedule, where you can see a nice write-up about the film. To the right, you'll see a picture of us on the festival's red carpet. We enjoyed a nice day of seeing the film in a lovely new theater, attending a few other films and enjoying the charm of small-town Monroe.

The next weekend, on Saturday, August 22nd, my film screened at the Black Cat Picture Show in Augusta, Georgia at 6:00 PM (here is a link to their full schedule). Le Chat Noir, which hosted the event, did a wonderful job promoting the festival and championing the movies, including posting about our film on Facebook with a great write-up - I truly wish I could have been there. You can see pictures from their excellent screening below (here's a link to one of their posters they had up for the festival, which you'll see prominently features my crayon drawing poster for the film)!

And then, on Sunday, You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory actually won the Best Student Film prize at the Black Cat Picture Show at their award ceremony!

Here's an article from Metro Spirit about the Black Cat Picture Show, and a picture of their awards before the festival began.

On Thursday, October 1st, You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory screened at the Santa Monica Independent Film Festival at 7:30 PM at the Santa Monica Playhouse. Here is a link to all of their Official Selections and their screening schedule, as well as our film's page on their website, where they posted an extremely kind write-up about our film:

"This delightful short hailing from Brooklyn, New York opens with a great little visual hook and just gets better from there. Director Jack Kyser pulls off some exceptional filmmaking while exploring the deeply flawed character of Charlie, expertly portrayed by actor Mike Wesolowski. Cinematographer Benjamin Dewey shows off his formidable camera skills and helps shape Kyser’s vision with some pretty cool stuff. An NYU Tisch School thesis film, You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory is a true cinematic achievement and we can’t wait to see what comes next from this talented director." Thank you so much, SaMo Indie!

I sadly wasn't able to be in Los Angeles for the screening, but my friends and loyal supporters Bolton Eckert and Laura Donney attended the opening of the Santa Monica Independent Film Festival, and they said You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory played to an awesome, enthusiastic crowd. You can see some of Bolton's pictures from the festival to the left and above (and check out more of the SaMo Indie website here).

By Sidney Lumet, the great film on which I'm honored to be an Associate Producer and Assistant Editor, continues to have an incredible film festival run. The film will screen at this year's Austin Film Festival at the Paramount Theatre on Friday, October 30th at 2:00 PM. Director Nancy Buirski will be there for a Q&A. I'm thrilled to go back to Austin for the screening and see many of the other films at this year's festival, including Todd Haynes's Carol, Paolo Sorrentino's Youth, John Crowley's Brooklyn and Brian Helgeland's Legend. It will be particularly exciting to see By Sidney Lumet at the Paramount, a theatre where I've seen countless films and enjoyed many of the seminal theatrical experiences of my life - Lawrence of Arabia, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Godfather among them.

By Sidney Lumet also screened on Sunday, October 11th at the Hamptons International Film Festival for its North American premiere, followed by a Q&A with Buirski, Jenny Lumet (Sidney Lumet's daughter and writer of Rachel Getting Married) and the great actor Bob Balaban - all of this after premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in May! Here's a great write-up from the East Hampton Star about the film. It was a lot of fun to travel to the Hamptons, as I had never been, and see the picture there with a large audience.

To the right, you'll see a picture of our editor Anthony Ripoli (Margaret) and me in the edit room preparing the cut for our latest screenings. Like our Facebook page for more information, and I'm excited for everyone to get to see this movie about one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, whose work - from Dog Day Afternoon (1975) to Network (1976) to Prince of the City (1981) - has inspired me for years.

Throughout June and July, I put the finishing touches on my new film Jack and Lucas Go To A Wedding. My wonderful collaborators Benjamin Dewey and Bobb Barito did a remarkable job, as they always do, with the color correction and sound design of the picture. We finished the film in late July after completing the color, sound, visual effects and titles - check our IMDB page for the film!

On the evening of Friday, September 11th, my friend and collaborator Lucas Loredo and I screened Jack and Lucas Go To A Wedding for the first time at NYU. Before the screening started, Alex Fofonoff premiered an exclusive trailer for his feature film Blood and Thunder, in which I have the honor of starring. In that sense, it was a night showcasing some of my acting and directing. We had an incredible turn out, with almost every seat filled in the theater. Thank you so much to everyone who came out to see Jack and Lucas Go To A Wedding - you are all the best! Lucas and I appreciate it so much.

Speaking of Blood and Thunder, we had our final day of ADR in September (see the picture to the right). I've had the chance to watch the final film, and I am very proud of the work we've done - Alex has made a really extraordinary first feature, and I'm honored to be a part of it.

Near the end of July, I visited Los Angeles for the first time in seven years, and I had the chance to spend a lot of time with my lifelong friend Bolton Eckert, who now lives in Los Angeles and recently graduated from the Art Institute of Santa Monica. I started the trip off by meeting up with an awesome group of close friends from NYU, including Spencer Jezewski, Jeremy Keller, Lauren Ciaravalli, Stevo Dwyer and Auri Jackson at Bulgogi Hut, where we ate some Korean BBQ. After dinner, Spencer took Bolton and me on an excellent hike along hills overlooking Griffith Park and a truly incredible nighttime view of Los Angeles.

The next day, we had lunch with a friend from high school and then travelled with our moms down to the Hollywood area, taking a guided tour of the Dolby Theater (where the Oscars are held), walking along the Hollywood Walk of Fame and visiting the handprints outside the Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Though I visited this same area seven years ago, it was much more fun this time around, particularly having a guide who knew the area - not to mention the added tour of the Dolby.

That evening, Bolton showed me around the Art Institute of Santa Monica campus, and then we paid a late-night visit to The Piano Bar in Hollywood, where we heard some great live music (followed by some In-N-Out Burger). On Saturday, Bolton, his mother and my mother took a tour at Warner Bros. Studios, led by our high school friend Eden Gallagher, who is now an Official Tour Guide. It was fascinating not just to hear the history of the great studio (the home of Clint Eastwood, all of the Batman films, as well as many of the greatest Scorsese and Kubrick pictures), but to hear it from an old friend as she drove us around the studio backlot with other guests.

After a mid-day visit to Venice Beach (and the chance to meet up with Spencer again at a nearby restaurant), we had dinner Saturday night with our friend from high school, Elizabeth Lefebvre, in West Hollywood.

On Sunday, Bolton and I drove out to Universal Studios and enjoyed an awesome day there. Because Bolton's wonderful grandmother, Myr, kindly bought us Front of Line passes for the day, we were able to ride almost all of the Universal rides without any wait, including the rides for Jurassic Park, The Simpsons, Minions, The Mummy and Transformers - not to mention taking the official studio tour, where we went through the Universal backlot and were treated to recreations and tributes to films such as Psycho, Jaws and King Kong. As with Warner Bros., Universal has such a rich cinema history, with Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg among the iconic filmmakers who help define the studio.

I was particularly enamored with one particular section at Universal Studios - The Simpsons World, which was full of life-sized characters from The Simpsons and classic Springfield establishments such as the Kwik-E-Mart, Krusty Burger and, of course, Moe's Tavern, where Bolton and I enjoyed some fine beverages (specifically, a Flaming Moe and a Duff). I truly felt like a kid here, and probably could have spent days in The Simpsons World section alone.

On Sunday evening, Bolton and I met up with Stevo and Auri at the New Beverly Cinema, which is owned by Quentin Tarantino. The New Beverly was showing a beautiful film print (from Tarantino's own collection) of Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) that evening, and it was a joy to get to see Tarantino's all-time favorite movie in his own cinema. I've been hearing about the New Beverly for years, and I'm so glad I finally got to see a picture there.

In May, I took a weekend trip to Boston with my friends Ben, Sally, Morgan and Catie. We stayed at Morgan's beautiful house in Winchester, Massachusetts, which overlooks the Mystic River. Over the weekend, we played games, went swimming at Walden Pond and enjoyed the beginning of summer - it was a blast.

I turned twenty-five in August, and to commemorate it, here's a throwback video to my first birthday party in 1991, a now-1990s-period-piece at Waterloo Ice House in Austin with memorable appearances from the late, great John Kyser, Richie Donnelly, Hazel Smith and Cathy McElroy.

Jack's 1st Birthday - August 5th, 1991 from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

Also, here's a video of the Kyser family in New York in 1996, including my father, mother and me on top of the World Trade Center.

The Kyser Family in New York - 1996 from Jack Kyser on Vimeo.

Shortly before my trip to Los Angeles, I attended a conversation at Videology between film critic Matt Zoller Seitz and the great filmmaker Ramin Bahrani, where they discussed the films of Oliver Stone, followed by a screening of Stone's Natural Born Killers. I was fascinated by the discussion, as Stone is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers and someone whose work I haven't heard critically discussed as much as some of his contemporaries. I was excited to see the reverence both Seitz and Bahrani have for Stone's work, and their analysis of some of his greatest films.

Back in June, I very much enjoyed attending the High School Film Film Festival, organized and curated by Blood and Thunder cinematographer Oliver Anderson. It featured a lot of early films made in high school by NYU graduates, including a fun short I directed called Brokeback Santa. Here's the link to the full slate of shorts - you can see Brokeback Santa at 3:55.

Although I'm sure I'll write about many of these films more in depth in my end-of-year top ten list, I've seen several outstanding movies over the last few months worth mentioning. Ridley Scott's The Martian is an electric piece of cinema. It's one of the best Scott films and Matt Damon performances, and that's saying a lot. Damon has starred in many of the best films of the last twenty years, and his performance in The Martian is up there with his best work in The Departed (2006), True Grit (2010), Margaret (2011), Syriana (2005), The Good Shepherd (2006), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Good Will Hunting (1997).

On Saturday, October 3rd, I attended one of the centerpiece screenings of Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs at the 53rd New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. The film is masterful, and in a strange way, it almost feels like Birdman in terms of its energy and pacing. With Boyle's stunning direction and Aaron Sorkin's breathless dialogue, the film is almost sensory overload - there's no way to see this film once and fully absorb everything that's happening. It does so well what many biopics fail to even attempt - Steve Jobs give us the experience of being inside the mind of its subject, and the result is a frenetic masterpiece.

On Thursday, October 8th, my friend Jess Mills and I attended an early screening of Steven Spielberg's excellent new film Bridge of Spies, which was followed by a Q&A with Spielberg and Tom Hanks. I have never had the opportunity to see Spielberg live before this event, and it was a thrill to see one of the greatest filmmakers and actors discuss their excellent new film.

Last week, Lucas invited me to a secret early screening of Charlie Kaufman's Anomolisa, his highly anticipated stop-motion animated picture. Lucas contributed to Kaufman's Kickstarter campaign for the film back in 2012, and the screening was held at Village East Cinema exclusively for its Kickstarter backers. Anomolisa is Kaufman's first film since Synecdoche, New York (2008), one of the best films of the last ten years, and his new picture has remained with me ever since I saw it - it's an extraordinary work of art that feels like something I might have dreamed. I suspect I'll be seeing Anomolisa again and hopefully become more articulate about its effect.

Scott Cooper's gangster picture Black Mass is stuffed with masterful performances, particularly from Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Peter Sarsgaard, Rory Cochrane, Kevin Bacon and Julianne Nicholson. Depp's performance in this film might be the best of his career, right alongside Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994) and Mike Newell's Donnie Brasco (1997). This is a great, bleak and haunting film that only gains in power upon multiple viewings - and as someone who loves their gangster movies, this is a really great one.

Noah Baumbach's Mistress America is one of my favorite films of the year and absolutely guaranteed to rank high on my end-of-year top ten list. In August, I saw an early screening of the film at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, followed by a Q&A with Baumbach and star and co-writer Greta Gerwig moderated by Kent Jones. Mistress America does everything right - it has masterful staging of actors, it is shot precisely how a comedy should be filmed, and it's every bit as funny and moving as Baumbach and Gerwig's previous collaboration (and masterpiece) Frances Ha (2013). Man, I would love to be friends with them. They are making the kinds of movies I want to make.

James Ponsoldt's The End of the Tour is as moving and perceptive as movies come. As someone who has never read any of David Foster Wallace's work, I didn't know how I would respond to the film. While watching the movie, I found myself constantly identifying with Jason Segel's Wallace, but in retrospect, I of course recognize that I'm much closer (in terms of the way I live my life) to journalist David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg). There's that moment in the film when Lipsky goes into Wallace's bathroom and starts writing down the names of every pill bottle in his cabinet. And we don't realize the beauty of that moment until the end, when we see Wallace alone with the tape recorder. While Lipsky was trying to get the story - obsessively detailing the small things - Wallace was living in the moment. We want to be Wallace, but I think most of us are living our lives as the Lipsky character.

I connected deeply with Lipsky's need to document everything about his experience near the end - scrambling around Wallace's house with his tape recorder and describing every detail. Even if he didn't fully realize it at the time, the weekend meant something profound to him, and he was frantically trying to capture it before it was over.

Wallace is a deeply lonely character, and it seems to me that if Lipsky wasn’t trying so hard to get the story, the two of them could have been good friends, without any other journalistic objective in the way. When they’re spending time with the two women they meet in Minneapolis, Julie (Mamie Gummer) and Betsy (Mickey Sumner), simply hanging out and enjoying their company is enough for Wallace. When Lipsky tries to turn it into something else, it makes Wallace uncomfortable. Just be a good guy, he says to Lipsky. Even though Lipsky thinks Wallace is just putting on an act to appear like one of the "regular" people, Wallace really does feel that way - he's trying his best to remain uncorrupted. Eventually, he says, the technology will be good enough that we can be alone all the time and never have to experience anything authentic with other people.

Talking with Lipsky late at night in his bedroom, Wallace gives him a brief, honest look at his depression, which really isn’t a salacious Rolling Stone story at all - it doesn't involve heroin, as Lipsky seems to think. The next morning, when Lipsky says he doesn’t want to leave, Wallace says he knows how he feels. The End of the Tour is so perceptive in these small moments, and it has the richness and feeling of a memory pulled from one's own life. Without any real context for the film and its subject, I walked away as moved and enlightened from a film as I have in some time.

I am happy to report that Nancy Meyers's The Intern features Robert De Niro talking to himself in the mirror and Anne Hathaway making a Rachel Getting Married joke. But seriously, I loved this movie - show me De Niro in a leading role and I'm there. Speaking of De Niro, he turned seventy-two this August. With this year marking the twentieth anniversary of Michael Mann's Heat, there have been some excellent pieces written about one of the greatest of all films, including one from Variety about how the film should have been a major Oscar contender, and another with Mann speaking about the film. Mann released his first film in six years earlier this year, the masterful Blackhat, which was as artful an action film as you'll find and criminally overlooked by audiences.

Also worth checking from this fall and this summer are Woody Allen's Irrational Man, with great performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone (I don't think I've written about how much I liked this film, as well as Allen's picture from last year, Magic in the Moonlight, with Stone and Colin Firth as charming as they've ever been - here's an excellent interview with Allen from the The Wall Street Journal); Maya Forbes's very moving Infinitely Polar Bear, featuring another wonderful performance from one of the best actors alive, Mark Ruffalo; Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, which may surpass all other Mission Impossible movies as the best one yet, and, for my money, the best action movie of the summer; The Wolfpack, a documentary that made want to compare 30-best lists with the Angulo brothers (I love that multiple brothers agree that Oliver Stone's JFK is #2) - here's an excellent article from The New Yorker on The Wolfpack, a piece on watching Goodfellas with the Angulo brothers, and a video of the brothers meeting their hero, Robert De Niro; Joel Edgerton's The Gift, which scared me enough that I let out a loud yelp in the cinema; Inside Out, which may very well be my favorite Pixar movie and brought me such joy that I now own a Bing Bong action figure; Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World, which has hilarious Vincent D'Onofrio hovering and iconic Chris Pratt riding with his Velociraptors (the only thing Jurassic World is missing is Jeff Goldblum emerging from the darkness in the old Jurassic Park bunker, channeling Tim Robbins in War of the Worlds or something - "So you kids want to learn about the original Jurassic Park, eh? Follow me."); Thomas Vinterberg's beautiful Far from the Madding Crowd; Shira Piven's darkly hilarious Welcome to Me, with a great performance from Kristen Wiig; Stevan Riley's extraordinary documentary Listen to Me Marlon; and, lastly, David Wain and Michael Showalter's Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, which, as its own four-hour movie, is one of the funniest comedies ever made.

On a side note, after four consecutive film experiences earlier this summer without anyone talking or being an annoying-ass moviegoer, the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin has my heart. Particularly in New York, there are fewer and fewer cinemas where you can find a respectful and quiet audience serious about watching cinema (or theatre managers even remotely willing to police their audiences), so I'm grateful to the Alamo for doing what they're doing at a time when audiences only seem to intensify in their disrespect.

It's been a great year for one of my heroes, Al Pacino. He turned seventy-five this year, and you should celebrate it by seeing one of his three masterful recent performances: Dan Fogelman's Danny Collins, which I saw twice in cinemas, has beautiful performances not only from Pacino but also Bobby Cannavale and Annette Bening; Barry Levinson's The Humbling, an unheralded treat from 2014 written by Buck Henry and featuring excellent work from Pacino, Greta Gerwig, Charles Grodin and Dianne Wiest (I can't believe this film didn't get a huge theatrical release); and David Gordon Green's Manglehorn, shot in Austin and a truly remarkable triumph of mood and feeling.

Here's an article from Film Comment on the greatness of Pacino's recent work, and here's my ranking of Pacino's performances on MUBI. John Lahr wrote a great New Yorker article on Pacino last year, and here's an excellent video accompaniment to Lahr's article. In an interview with The Talks earlier this year, Pacino said, "You can't let your skin get too thick." It's a welcome return to the screen for Pacino, who I last saw onscreen in 2013's Stand Up Guys, a very enjoyable hang-out movie with Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin.

I haven't written about my reaction to this year's Academy Awards yet, but I was truly hoping to see Richard Linklater onstage winning Best Director. Boyhood was almost unbelievably overlooked by the Academy. It's a strange feeling, because on my original end-of-the-year top ten list, I ranked Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's Birdman as my favorite film of last year - and it walked away with Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography Oscars (but, infuriatingly, not with the Oscar it deserved above all others - Best Actor for Michael Keaton). However, upon watching Boyhood again, I cannot help but feel that time will reveal it to be my favorite film of 2015 over Birdman. I cannot complain, though, because Birdman is easily the finest and most inspired choice, in my mind, for Best Picture since No Country for Old Men (2007). Still, a Birdman-Boyhood Best Picture-Best Director split would have made me very happy.

In a perfect world, Linklater, Iñárritu and Wes Anderson all would walked away with Oscars this year, and a truly inspired script would have won Best Adapted Screenplay, such as Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, Damian Chazelle's Whiplash or Gillian Flynn's not-even-nominated Gone Girl.

But, as always, the best way to enjoy the Oscars is to just not visit the internet, where everything is an outrage and people actually don't like movies. And to anyone claiming that the Oscar winners this year didn't have enough box office appeal, remember, as Sam Adams wrote in this great IndieWire article, "the Oscars haven't abandoned movies with mass-audience appeal... it's theatrical audiences who, with rare exceptions, have abandoned anything but big-budget spectacle."