13. (Tie) Ricki and the Flash; Danny Collins
Another movie and TV trend of 2015 was aging actors playing aging rock stars. Meryl Streep stars as Ricki, a average bar singer who left her family years ago to pursue her rock-star dreams. She returns to Indiana to attend to her mentally unstable daughter (Streep's real-life daughter Mamie Gummar). In one scene, thefamily (including her ex, played by Kevin Kline) bonds over a joint. Streep can sing, but she's no rock star in Jonathan Demme's overwrought film. Still, her portrayal of a musician significantly tops Al Pacino's.
Dan Fogelman's movie is a sentimental wreck and Pacino's Danny Collins can hardly sing a lick. In a plot contrivance, the film connects Collins to a letter John Lennon once wrote him, and hence uses Lennon songs liberally. In one scene, he uses coke.
