Top 10 of 2015

By /

*Click on the ‘Lists & Logs’ tab to see lists from previous years.

This list will be updated each time I see a film which had its world premiere in 2015 that is better than at least one of the films already on the list.

  1. Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick)
  2. The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson)
  3. Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
  4. Blood of My Blood (Marco Bellocchio)
  5. Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One (Miguel Gomes)
  6. The Hateful Eight (Quentin Tarantino)
  7. Sixty Six (Lewis Klahr)
  8. Entertainment (Rick Alverson)
  9. Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One (Miguel Gomes)
  10. The Treasure (Corneliu Porumboiu)

 

Polls Top 10 (eligible titles appear/will appear here)

  1. The Forbidden Room (2015, Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson)
  2. Horse Money (2014, Pedro Costa)
  3. Phoenix (2014, Christian Petzold)
  4. Approaching the Elephant (2014, Amanda Rose Wilder)
  5. Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One (2015, Miguel Gomes)
  6. The Hateful Eight (2015, Quentin Tarantino)
  7. Entertainment (2015, Rick Alverson)
  8. Li’l Quinquin (2014, Bruno Dumont)
  9. Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One (2015, Miguel Gomes)
  10. Anomalisa (2015, Charlie Kaufman)

 

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2015 (only first-time viewings of films made before 2000 are eligible)

  1. Chelsea Girls (1966, Andy Warhol & Paul Morrissey)
  2. My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument (1996, Arnaud Desplechin)
  3. Le Million (1931, René Clair)
  4. A New Leaf (1971, Elaine May)
  5. Le Garçu (1995, Maurice Pialat)
  6. Soft Fiction (1979, 
Chick Strand)
  7. Kiss Me, Stupid (1964, Billy Wilder)
  8. Wanda (1970, Barbara Loden)
  9. The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, Jean Epstein)
  10. Magnificent Obsession (1954, Douglas Sirk)

 

Other 2015 films I’ve seen

  • Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman) – 7.2
  • Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs) – 7.1
  • The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle) – 7.1
  • Happy Hour (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi) – 7.0
  • Arabian Nights: Volume 3, The Enchanted One (Miguel Gomes) – 6.9
  • Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (Stephen Cone) – 6.7
  • Tangerine (Sean Baker) – 6.7
  • Office (Johnnie To) – 6.7
  • Results (Andrew Bujalski) – 6.6
  • Valley of Love (Guillaume Nicloux) – 6.6
  • Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo) – 6.6
  • Love (Gaspar Noé) – 6.6
  • One Floor Below (Radu Muntean) – 6.5
  • Lost and Beautiful (Pietro Marcello) – 6.5
  • Kaili Blues (Bi Gan) – 6.5
  • James White (Josh Mond) – 6.5
  • The Nightmare (Rodney Ascher) – 6.5
  • Neon Bull (Gabriel Mascaro) – 6.4
  • Uncle Kent 2 (Todd Rohal) – 6.4
  • Disorder (Alice Winocour) – 6.4
  • Blackhat (Michael Mann) – 6.4
  • The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien) – 6.4
  • Sweaty Betty (Joe Frank & Zack Reed) – 6.4
  • The Other Side (Roberto Minervini) – 6.3
  • Demolition (Jean-Marc Vallée) – 6.3
  • Bone Tomahawk (S. Craig Zahler) – 6.3
  • (T)ERROR (Lyric R. Cabral & David Felix Sutcliffe) – 6.3
  • Experimenter (Michael Almereyda) – 6.3
  • In Jackson Heights (Frederick Wiseman) – 6.3
  • In the Shadow of Women (Philippe Garrel) – 6.2
  • Field Niggas (Khalik Allah) – 6.2
  • Afternoon (Tsai Ming-liang) – 6.2
  • Inside Out (Pete Docter) – 6.2
  • Bleak Street (Arturo Ripstein) – 6.2
  • Rio Corgo (Sergio da Costa & Maya Kosa) – 6.2
  • The Fourth Direction (Gurvinder Singh) – 6.1
  • Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg) – 6.1
  • The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Marielle Heller) – 6.1
  • Louder than Bombs (Joachim Trier) – 6.1
  • The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (Ben Rivers) – 6.1
  • Western (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross) – 6.1
  • Afterthought (Elad Keidan) – 6.1
  • The Apostate (Federico Veiroj) – 6.0
  • My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin) – 6.0
  • Kid (Júlio Bressane) – 6.0
  • Twenty-Eight Nights and a Poem (Akram Zaatari) – 6.0
  • Joy (David O. Russell) – 6.0
  • Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller) – 6.0
  • The Trouble with Dot and Harry (Gary Walkow) – 6.0
  • Cosmos (Andrzej Zulawski) – 5.9
  • Aloha (Cameron Crowe) – 5.9
  • Tharlo (Pema Tseden) – 5.9
  • Mistress America (Noah Baumbach) – 5.9
  • High-Rise (Ben Wheatley) – 5.9
  • Story of Judas (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche) – 5.9
  • House of Mothers (Philippe Costantini) – 5.9
  • Invention (Mark Lewis) – 5.9
  • Meurtrière (Philippe Grandrieux) – 5.9
  • Marguerite & Julien (Valérie Donzelli) – 5.9
  • The Movement (Benjamin Naishtat) – 5.9
  • Things of the Aimless Wanderer (Kivu Ruhorahoza) – 5.9
  • A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino) – 5.8
  • 88:88 (Isiah Medina) – 5.8
  • Son of Saul (László Nemes) – 5.8
  • Sector IX B (Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc) – 5.7
  • The Fits (Anna Rose Holmer) – 5.7
  • Behemoth (Zhao Liang) – 5.7
  • The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos) – 5.7
  • The Pearl Button (Patricio Guzmán) – 5.7
  • Minotaur (
Nicolas Pereda) – 5.7
  • Creed (Ryan Coogler) – 5.7
  • Slow West (John Maclean) – 5.7
  • The Witch (Robert Eggers) – 5.7
  • Stinking Heaven (Nathan Silver) – 5.7
  • Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke) – 5.6
  • By the Sea (Angelina Jolie) – 5.6
  • Microbe and Gasoline (Michel Gondry) – 5.6
  • 45 Years (Andrew Haigh) – 5.6
  • How Heavy This Hammer (Kazik Radwanski) – 5.6
  • The Royal Road (Jenni Olson) – 5.6
  • The Money Complex (Juan Rodrigáñez) – 5.6
  • Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams) – 5.6
  • Yakuza Apocalypse (Takashi Miike) – 5.6
  • Over the Years (Nikolaus Geyrhalter) – 5.6
  • Songs My Brothers Taught Me (Chloé Zhao) – 5.5
  • Campo Grande (Sandra Kogut) – 5.5
  • The Event (Sergei Loznitsa) – 5.5
  • Despite the Night (Philippe Grandrieux) – 5.5
  • Chevalier (Athina Rachel Tsangari) – 5.5
  • The Chinese Mayor (Hao Zhou) – 5.5
  • Tired Moonlight (Britni West) – 5.5
  • Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier) – 5.4
  • Chappie (Neill Blomkamp) – 5.4
  • Prison System 4614 (Jan Soldat) – 5.4
  • Sleeping Giant (Andrew Cividino) – 5.4
  • Shaun the Sheep Movie (Mark Burton & Richard Starzack) – 5.4
  • Maggie’s Plan (Rebecca Miller) – 5.4
  • Il solengo (Alessio Rigo de Righi & Matteo Zoppis) – 5.3
  • The Walk (Robert Zemeckis) – 5.3
  • The Measure of a Man (Stéphane Brizé) – 5.3
  • Sunset Song (Terence Davies) – 5.3
  • Ex Machina (Alex Garland) – 5.3
  • Tale of Tales (Matteo Garrone) – 5.3
  • Cronies (Michael J. Larnell) – 5.3
  • Les Cowboys (Thomas Bidegain) – 5.3
  • Listen to Me Marlon (Stevan Riley) – 5.3
  • Carol (Todd Haynes) – 5.2
  • The Wait (Piero Messina) – 5.2
  • Neither Heaven Nor Earth (Clément Cogitore) – 5.2
  • On Football (Sergio Oksman) – 5.2
  • Ten Thousand Saints (Robert Pulcini & Shari Springer Berman) – 5.2
  • Macbeth (Justin Kurzel) – 5.2
  • Chi-Raq (Spike Lee) – 5.1
  • The Grief of Others (Patrick Wang) – 5.1
  • Hong Kong Trilogy: Preschooled Preoccupied Preposterous (Christopher Doyle) – 5.1
  • Junun (Paul Thomas Anderson) – 5.1
  • Diamond Tongues (Pavan Moondi & Brian Robertson) – 5.1
  • Fresh Dressed (Sacha Jenkins) – 5.1
  • Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven) – 5.0
  • Toponymy (Jonathan Perel) – 5.0
  • Ma (Celia Rowlson-Hall) – 5.0
  • My Mother (Nanni Moretti) – 5.0
  • Nahid (Ida Panahandeh) – 5.0
  • Where to Invade Next (Michael Moore) – 4.9
  • The Martian (Ridley Scott) – 4.9
  • Taxi (Jafar Panahi) – 4.9
  • Trainwreck (Judd Apatow) – 4.9
  • The Gift (Joel Edgerton) – 4.9
  • The Revenant (Alejandro G. Iñárritu) – 4.9
  • Paulina (Santiago Mitre) – 4.9
  • Dheepan (Jacques Audiard) – 4.9
  • Spotlight (Tom McCarthy) – 4.9
  • The Overnight (Patrick Brice) – 4.9
  • Evolution (Lucile Hadžihalilovic) – 4.8
  • London Road (Rufus Norris) – 4.8
  • Faire la parole (Eugène Green) – 4.8
  • Best of Enemies (Morgan Neville & Robert Gordon) – 4.8
  • Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (Brett Morgen) – 4.8
  • Santa Teresa & Other Stories (Nelson de los Santos Arias) – 4.7
  • Station to Station (Doug Aitken) – 4.7
  • Room (Lenny Abrahamson) – 4.7
  • Standing Tall (Emmanuelle Bercot) – 4.7
  • Francofonia (Alexander Sokurov) – 4.6
  • Cosmodrama (Philippe Fernandez) – 4.6
  • Hitchcock/Truffaut (Kent Jones) – 4.6
  • Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) (Eva Husson) – 4.6
  • Our Little Sister (Hirokazu Kore-eda) – 4.6
  • Elixir (Daniil Zinchenko) – 4.5
  • Sicario (Denis Villeneuve) – 4.5
  • Amy (Asif Kapadia) – 4.5
  • The Club (Pablo Larraín) – 4.5
  • From Afar (Lorenzo Vigas) – 4.5
  • Digging for Fire (Joe Swanberg) – 4.4
  • Don’t Blink: Robert Frank (Laura Israel) – 4.4
  • Youth (Paolo Sorrentino) – 4.4
  • Journey to the Shore (Kiyoshi Kurosawa) – 4.3
  • The Big Short (Adam McKay) – 4.3
  • 7 Chinese Brothers (Bob Byington) – 4.3
  • Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle) – 4.2
  • The Shameless (Oh Seung-Uk) – 4.2
  • Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie) – 4.1
  • Peace to Us in Our Dreams (Sharunas Bartas) – 4.1
  • Closet Monster (Stephen Dunn) – 4.1
  • Incident Light (Ariel Rotter) – 4.1
  • Our Brand is Crisis (David Gordon Green) – 4.0
  • Two Friends (Louis Garrel) – 4.0
  • I Am Michael (Justin Kelly) – 4.0
  • Queen of Earth (Alex Ross Perry) – 3.9
  • Dope (Rick Famuyiwa) – 3.9
  • Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra) – 3.9
  • Brooklyn (John Crowley) – 3.8
  • Unexpected (Kris Swanberg) – 3.8
  • The Anarchists (Elie Wajeman) – 3.8
  • The Thoughts The Once We Had (Thom Andersen) – 3.7
  • The High Sun (Dalibor Matanic) – 3.7
  • Accidental Love (Stephen Greene [aka David O. Russell]) – 3.6
  • 11 Minutes (Jerzy Skolimowski) – 3.5
  • Mon roi (Maïwenn) – 3.4
  • The Sea of Trees (Gus Van Sant) – 3.3
  • The Lure (Agnieszka Smoczynska) – 3.2
  • Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon) – 3.2
  • Nasty Baby (Sebastian Silva) – 2.8
  • Take Me to the River (Matt Sobel) – 2.6
  • Every Thing Will Be Fine (Wim Wenders) – 2.5
  • Zipper (Mora Stephens) – 2.5
  • Last Days in the Desert (Rodrigo Garcia) – 2.2
  • Chronic (Michel Franco) – 2.0