My Best of 2015

I toyed with a million ways of posting this list - charting where I diverged from Oscar, a post of nothing but gifs, Tweet-length opinions - but in the end, nothing seemed to satisfy me as much as a good old-fashioned fully written-up LIST. I'm just sorry it took this long!

I kind of wanted to do the "Top 15 of '15" thing, but then I would feel compelled to do a similar thing every year, and it would just get ridiculous after a while (is anyone going to do the "Top 21 of '21"? Really?) so I decided to keep it at an even 10. But if you're a completist, you can look at my entire list of Best Films of 2015 on my Letterboxd page here.

Yes, there are a few notable exceptions. Despite half a dozen tries, I just could NOT get myself to go see The Revenant. It just wasn't a story that interested me, and reviews generally confirmed that it was not the way that I would most enjoy three hours on any given day. I also didn't see Creed (I haven't even seen Rocky yet - boxing movies just aren't my thing) or Bridge of Spies (again, the subject matter just doesn't interest me enough, despite the presence of Tom Hanks, who I love, and my idol Mark Rylance). I know I SHOULD see them at some point. But time and money are at a premium recently, and I'm very careful how I spend mine.

So with that said, let's get to the runners-up, shall we? Hovering just outside the Top Ten, in ascending order, are Guy Ritchie's easy-breezy-sexy-cool The Man From U.N.C.L.E.; Christopher McQuarrie's stellar entry in the Mission: Impossible series, Rogue Nation; the best sequel in many a year, Magic Mike XXL; Alex Gardner's astonishing debut Ex Machina; and of course the year's biggest blockbuster Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

...and then there were TEN...

10. Tangerine (Sean Baker) Taking indie film back to its punk roots, making it feel alive and vital again, Sean Baker's trans hooker Christmas comedy tears through the screen just like Kitana Kiki Rodriguez's Sin-Dee Rella tears through the streets of Los Angeles looking for her cheating boyfriend/pimp Chester. Which is to say, this is the most raucous, wild, touching comedy of the year. And it was shot entirely on an iPhone with two non-professionals in the leads.

9. Spy (Paul Feig) The Melissa McCarthy-Paul Feig collaboration reaches its apex in hilarious fashion. A note-perfect spy spoof from its first frame (complete with an inspired Bond-ian theme song and credit sequence), Spy is minute for minute the year's funniest film. The script is standard-issue spy stuff (as befitting a spoof), but it's the cast that really makes this great. McCarthy finds the perfect way to make Susan Cooper feel like a complete character, Jude Law makes a case for himself as the next 007, Rose Byrne develops her comic gifts even further (on a second watch she was even funnier than I remembered), and Jason Statham steals the show by leavening his bad-ass persona with a grand sense of comic timing. Spy is a perfect example of the modern style of improv-based comedy and deserves a spot in the annals of great spoofs, as well.

8. The Martian (Ridley Scott) It's easy to write off just how difficult it is to make a film as breezily entertaining as The Martian, especially one with such comparatively tiny stakes as this film has (come on - did you really think they were going to let Matt Damon die?), but director Ridley Scott knows what he's doing, and he had a hell of a helping hand from pop-savvy screenwriter Drew Goddard, who took Andy Weir's very science-heavy novel and turned it into a near-perfect slice of entertainment. Matt Damon gives a central performance good enough to restore your faith in movie star charisma, and the rest of the ensemble perfectly fills each of their stock roles with just enough personality to make you root for them. Is The Martian a bit slight? Maybe. But then again, what was the last mainstream Hollywood blockbuster that valued resourcefulness, intelligence, and our common humanity as much as this?

7. I'll See You in My Dreams (Brett Haley) There is so much in Brett Haley's touching, gentle film that feels anathema to movies today: Senior citizens, late-in-life love, quietness, female friendship, women in general... If that were all it had to offer, we should be grateful. But it also boasts a spectacular turn from Blythe Danner in the lead, a rich, sympathetic, lived-in performance that reminds us that neither talent nor beauty fades with age. I was far more charmed by this than I ever would have thought, given the film's title and subject matter, and I will continue to recommend it to everyone I meet, regardless of age. Because good films know no boundaries.

6. Chi-Raq (Spike Lee) The most boisterous, outright messy film on this list, but also the most potent, important film of the year, from a director whose prime seemed long past. I have been saying for YEARS that the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata, about women who put an end to war by withholding sex from their husbands, was due a modern retelling, and lo, it turned out to be Spike Lee who gave it to us. The script is as perfect an adaptation as we could hope for, capturing the raunchiness and profundity of the original while updating it to modern-day Chicago, known as Chi-Raq because of the prevalence of guns and shootings there. He even keeps the rhyming poetry of the speech without it feeling put on. Samuel L. Jackson pimps it up as the Greek Chorus narrator, Teyonah Parris and Nick Cannon spit fire as Lysistrata and her gang leader beau, and Angela Bassett gives the film the rage it needs as the leader of the elder generation. Chi-Raq is perhaps the least great of the year's best films, but it's far and away the most important, and a film that is impossible to sweep under the rug.

5. Inside Out (Pete Docter) The most creative, ingenious film of the year. The most colorful film of the year. The most "best scenes" of any film this year. The most surprising film of the year. Pixar's latest triumph is all of these things, and features a perfectly cast ensemble of voices giving indelible performances. Its whole may not be as great as the sum of its parts, but moment to moment it is incredible, and I probably remember more of this movie than any of the others in my Top Ten.

4. Grandma (Paul Weitz) Lily Tomlin is an absolute knock-out as the title character of this film, giving the quirk of Paul Weitz's script (written specifically for her) just the amount of acid-tongued realism it needs to land potently. Tomlin's Elle may have a lot of baggage, and she may have lived a lot of life, but when her granddaughter comes to her needing money for an abortion, the aging lesbian feminist puts all that aside - as much as she can, anyway - to help the cause. And make no mistake, it is a cause, for Elle and Sage and thousands of women across the country, to have the power to make their own decisions about their own bodies without any authority other than their medical professional telling them otherwise. That the film treats the abortion as a mostly not controversial thing is revolutionary in its own right, but Grandma is just as much about one generation passing on its torch to another, and learning from each other. It's about what family means in this day and age, when we're "more connected" but somehow even farther apart. And it also happens to be one of the funniest films of the year, too.

...and now, my holy trinity of 2015.

3. Carol (Todd Haynes) Immaculate, crystalline perfection. Every frame of Todd Haynes's masterpiece is crafted to such brilliant beauty that I almost feel inadequate talking about it. Perfectly cast, deliciously designed, and swoonily scored, Carol had me from its very first frame. Some may call it chilly, but that's only because it so perfectly captures the feeling of New York in the winter. Elsewhere, Carol is full of warmth - watch the ice surrounding Rooney Mara's heart slowly melt, watch the fire spewing forth from Kyle Chandler's and Sarah Paulson's eyes as they battle over Cate Blanchett (who has never looked better thanks to genius costumer Sandy Powell), watch how Haynes makes a simple touch on the shoulder mean the world. Queer desire has never been this fragile, this impactful, this romantic, this... beautiful. Carol is the truth.

2. Room (Lenny Abrahamson) Nothing in 2015 makes you feel as much as this, and nothing was made with such tight constraints of space and perspective. A model of adaptation, Emma Donoghue's script of her own novel retains the unique voice of young Jack, born and raised in an 8'x8' room where his Ma has been held prisoner for years, even without him narrating the whole thing. The actors develop an incredible shorthand when in Room and believably navigate new sensations and relationships in the tricky world outside it. And in between those spaces is the most tense, electrifying scene of the year, as Jack makes a thrilling escape. Lenny Abrahamson had the most difficult job of any director this year and pulled it off with style, aplomb, and lots of heart.

...BUT BEFORE WE GET TO NUMBER ONE!

I must announce the winner of my "Jury Prize". That's a special citation I always give the film that I am in awe of as one of the most well-made films of the year, but that I had trouble actually enjoying all that much, thus making it impossible to properly "rank" the film. For context, previous winners include: Under the Skin, Before Midnight, and Amour. This year's winner is:

Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra) Completely unlike any film you're ever likely to see, Guerra's trek through the Colombian Amazon in search of a legendary plant follows two white explorers thirty years apart, led by the same man. Utterly mesmerizing and stunningly shot in black and white, this is one of those films that shows you a world you wouldn't be able to see otherwise, and in some cases, maybe shouldn't see. At times equally a ripping adventure tale, a vicious anti-colonialist screed, a squeamish psychological horror film, and a study of the emptiness and loneliness that comes from being the last of one's kind, Embrace of the Serpent is, in many ways, why we go to the cinema.

AND NOW! The moment we've all been waiting for...

1. Brooklyn (John Crowley) I make no bones about it, this one meant more to me personally than any other film this year. It is perhaps inevitable that John Crowley and his team of designers and technicians and craftspeople got little love for this, the most deeply felt film of the year. Brooklyn is a film that practically begs for the label "old-fashioned", but happens to be the rare film for which that descriptor isn't in any way a bad thing. This is solid, old-school Hollywood filmmaking of the first order, in service of a story that only seems slight because it was released in a year full of louder and more overtly Important films. But I ask you: In the current political climate, what is more Important than reminding everyone that ALL of our ancestors were immigrants once, and that it is possible to love your new home even more than your place of birth? Nothing. And Brooklyn is the most beautiful, heartwarming reminder of that.