The 10 Must See Movies of 2015

2015 was a big year for movies.

There were almost 400 releases by the leading studios, generating close to $24 billion dollars in revenue worldwide. Four of this year’s movies cracked the Top 10 all-time highest grossing films (including the number one spot) and assuming The Force stays strong, it will soon be five. For those of you fumbling for your calculators, that’s half of the Top 10.

From the crop of 2015, there are a lot of movies you probably should see. As usual, however, there are only a handful of movies you must see. Amongst the mess of Martians, Minions and Mockingjays, here are the 10 films of 2015 that you absolutely cannot miss if you’re a sucker for the silver screen.

1. Inside Out
Yes, it’s a Pixar movie; yes, it looks like it’s for kids; yes, it’s the best movie of the year. If you’re in it to laugh out loud, cry in silence or just have fun, you’ll love it. If you’re in it to understand human psychology through a series of astonishingly insightful metaphors, you’ll be flattened. As good as Pixar has always been at delivering their own special brand of age-intersecting entertainment, this is probably their best work to date. And boy, will it make you think.

2. Spotlight
How Director & Writer Tom McCarthy leading a stacked cast of A-Listers (Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Stanley Tucci, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber, Billy Crudup) managed to tell a fact-based story about a Boston reporting team (uncovering a massive scandal no less) without overstating or understating a single thing, while somehow keeping everybody on the edge of their seats for two hours, is still beyond me. Spotlight has the educational and disciplinary merits of a documentary alongside the artistic merits of a beautifully told and perfectly paced film. The cast is nothing short of flawless too. There’s a good chance this wins Best Picture.

3. Ex Machina
Take one brilliant and reclusive male engineer in a remote location, add a male computer programmer with a fragile emotional psyche, and then trick that programmer into performing a Turing Test on a beautiful female robot with advanced artificial intelligence. What you get is the most original and uniquely intense movie of the year. As usual, Oscar Isaac is excellent and there is pretty much no point during this movie at which you know what’s coming.

4. The Martian
As we pointed out earlier this week, a lot of time and budget has gone into saving Matt Damon. Thankfully, most of those rescue missions were successful; this is the best movie Damon has done in a while. This is one of those immediately ambitious films where after a certain point  you can’t help thinking, “I can’t believe they made this so well – how did they make this so well?”every five minutes. Between Ridley Scott’s direction, Drew Goddard’s slick adapted script and Matt Damon’s spot-on performance, this is big-budget film making at its best. It’s also really, really funny.

5. Room
In 1979, Justin Henry was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Kramer vs. Kramer. He was eight years old. Jacob Tremblay, a native of Vancouver, is nine years old, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up with the very same nomination for his role as the heroic Jack in Room. If you haven’t seen it yet, I’ll only tell you two more things: One, the movie starts with a mother and son “celebrating” their fifth consecutive year being confined to life in a single, tiny, locked room. Second, everything about this movie is heavy. Everything about this movie is also exceptional.

6. Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens
Whether you were previously invested or not, this movie is a hell of a lot of fun. It’s a seamless treat for life-long fanatics and a wildly entertaining popcorn flick for newbies. Not to mention the fact that Daisy Ridley might be the next Natalie Portman. And I mean in that in the most professional/unprofessional way possible…

7. The Big Short
Yes, the 2008 financial crisis has been done before, most notably with the eye-opening documentary Inside Job (2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature) and the “day-before-the-bust” dramatization Margin Call. The Big Short, however, impressively manages to be like nothing you’ve ever really seen while exploring an event about which there’s very little you haven’t already heard. From the brilliant battering of the fourth wall to the countless laugh-out-loud moments, and all the way to creative teachings of the nuance behind the nonsense, this is entertainment value you don’t get very often.

8. Amy
It’s hard not to love and miss the musical genius of Amy Winehouse. It might be even harder not to appreciate the beauty and honesty with which her unfortunate story is told in what is probably the best documentary of the year. Simultaneously summoning celebration and censure, this film is as much a must-see as its subject was a must-hear.

9. Kingsman: The Secret Service
Every once in a while an action movie comes out of nowhere and rebrands stereotypical heroes, recalibrates the style of the broader genre, and does so while keeping its promise to kick a whole lot of ass. In 2015, that movie was Kingsman: The Secret Service. There is a point in the movie where it just pounces into its R-rating while Free Bird blares in the background, and from that scene forward it’s hard to be convinced that you’re not watching something pretty damn special. Colin Firth and Samuel L. Jackson are just fantastic in their roles.

10. Creed
It’s kind of a Rocky movie but it’s kind of not. It’s kind of a movie about boxing but it’s kind of not. It’s kind of intense and overly dramatic, but then again, it’s kind of not. Sophomore director Ryan Coogler doesn’t commit to any one angle, tone or style in this story of a rapidly aging Rocky working the corner for Apollo Creed’s illegitimate son. Surprisingly, though, as in the featured sport itself, while the moving pieces are hard to put a finger on, they come together beautifully and hit hard enough to keep you gladly glued to your seat for the entire two hours and 12 minutes. This movie is also a blunt reminder that Sylvester Stallone is in fact an excellent actor when he needs to be.

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