Part of what makes film criticism so alluring is how subjective it is. I mean just do a Google search for “best movies of 2015” and you will be presented with about 1,360,000,000 results. That is because everyone has their own opinions and criteria for what they consider a good film. I am going to add my opinions to the mix. I really hope that you will add your voice as well, because I am not saying that I am right, just that this is my opinion. I will defend my opinions, but I am also very open to other points of view.
When I think about the best films of 2015, I look at 4 things:
What do people say?
I consider IMDb to be the place to go for user ratings of movies. Most of the users that actually post ratings and reviews are more than just casual filmgoers. That is one of the main reasons that I am trying to go through their top 250. They have taken the films with the top user ratings that have over 50,000 votes, according to that, the best films of 2015 are:
| Rank | Movie | Rating | # of Votes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Inside Out | 8.3 | 248,121 |
| 2 | The Revenant | 8.3 | 101,289 |
| 3 | Mad Max: Fury Road | 8.2 | 426,188 |
| 4 | The Martian | 8.1 | 284,060 |
| 5 | Straight Out of Compton | 8.1 | 70,297 |
| 6 | Kingsmen: The Secret Service | 7.8 | 343,193 |
| 7 | Sicario | 7.8 | 114,324 |
| 8 | Me and Earl and the Dying Girl | 7.8 | 53,095 |
| 9 | Ex-Machina | 7.7 | 221,077 |
| 10 | Avengers: Age of Ultron | 7.6 | 375,656 |
There are definitely some notable films missing from this list, like Spotlight or Room but they missed this list because even though they both have a 8.3 rating they only have 25,649 and 17,794 user ratings respectively. So, this list tends to skew to the more wide release and popular films and leaves off many independent films that are worthy of acclaim but aren’t seen by the masses (until after awards season).
You might ask, why don’t you just put the movies with the best user rating despite the number of votes they received? If that were the case, then the top movie of the year would be Felix Manalo, a Philippine movie with a 9.3 rating but it only has just over 3,000 votes. It is like the proverbial tree in the woods, if a great movie is produced, but no one watches it, did it really exist? Perhaps this is the reason that the Academy has chosen to have separate categories for best documentary and foreign film because their viewership is inherently smaller.
What do critics say?
I struggled here with what list to provide you. There are so many film critics out there that I admire and respect, but I tend to listen to the collective community because those voices that are different from my own cause me to be stretched and that is good for all of us. If I didn’t listen to what critics said I would have never watched some of the films that have had the greatest emotional impact on me. A critic should be rooted enough in film history to be able to provide perspective on the quality of a film in comparison to hundreds of other films in the same genre and style. I appreciate critics because it is so easy to become enthralled with the newest technology or the best effects, but although film is a visual art form, its true beauty lies in its ability to reach past the physical and to touch the very center of our being.
With that being said, there are a number of good aggregators out there which will take the numerous different scoring systems that critics use and convert them into a uniform system that can be used across the board. Sites like MRQE (Movie Review Query Engine) assign a film a letter grade, while Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic assign scores from 1-100. I think this works well.
I chose to show Metacritic here because Rotten Tomatoes lists Selma as the #3 film of the year when it was clearly released in 2014. The question of which year a film belongs in is a post all for itself, but it really comes down to what release date you look at. Rotten Tomatoes tends to use a films wide release date over a limited or foreign release date when determining a year. I don’t understand this, so I tend to like and use Metacritic to read reviews instead. For the best of the year list on Metacritic, they keep a running tally of the films most frequently mentioned by individual critics on their year-end Top Ten lists through December and January. Their points system works as follows: 3 points for each 1st place ranking, 2 points for each 2nd place ranking, and 1 point for being ranked 3rd – 10th, or for being included on an unranked list.
| Rank | Movie | # 1st Place | # 2nd Place | # Other | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mad Max: Fury Road | 58 | 26 | 93 | 319 |
| 2 | Spotlight | 29 | 18 | 80 | 203 |
| 3 | Carol | 24 | 19 | 83 | 193 |
| 4 | Inside Out | 8 | 16 | 84 | 140 |
| 5 | Brooklyn | 12 | 8 | 68 | 120 |
| 6 | Ex Machina | 2 | 4 | 70 | 84 |
| 7 (tie) | Anomalisa | 5 | 9 | 39 | 72 |
| 7 (tie) | 45 Years | 7 | 5 | 41 | 72 |
| 9 | Son of Saul | 8 | 6 | 32 | 68 |
| 10 (tie) | The Assassin | 12 | 4 | 23 | 67 |
| 10 (tie) | Room | 5 | 3 | 46 | 67 |
The other big factor when it comes to critical success comes down to the awards season. The Oscars rules allow them to choose up to 10 films to nominate as Best Picture, but this year they only nominated 8 movies.
- Bridge of Spies
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The Revenant
- Spotlight
- The Martian
- The Big Short
- Room
- Brooklyn
Historically they have snubbed many great films and actors and honored lesser films. There are political and emotional factors that go into the Academy members voting habits, but to win or even be nominated for an Academy Award is often considered the highest honor in the movie business.
What made money?
This one is tough for me because I believe that how a movie performs at the box office is less a picture of how good the film than how good the marketing for the film was. Back in the studio days, the best films of the year were the ones that made the most money. But as the medium has developed and independent film labels have popped up and production has become less expensive, we have seen many low-budget films that don’t make much money far outperform the blockbusters during awards season. It is still very telling to see what movies America and the world is spending its money. The best sites for this type of information are Box Office Mojo and The Numbers. Both of these sites have some issues with their dates, but Box Office Mojo is more user friendly and provides more than enough data for a spreadsheet nut like me to drool over.
| Rank | Movie Title | Total Gross | Theaters | $ per Theater |
| 1 | Star Wars: The Force Awakens | $856,944,841 | 4,134 | $207,292 |
| 2 | Jurassic World | $652,270,625 | 4,291 | $152,009 |
| 3 | Avengers: Age of Ultron | $459,005,868 | 4,276 | $107,345 |
| 4 | Inside Out | $356,461,711 | 4,158 | $85,729 |
| 5 | Furious 7 | $353,007,020 | 4,022 | $87,769 |
| 6 | Minions | $336,045,770 | 4,311 | $77,951 |
| 7 | The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 | $279,503,868 | 4,175 | $66,947 |
| 8 | The Martian | $227,089,040 | 3,854 | $58,923 |
| 9 | Cinderella | $201,151,353 | 3,848 | $52,274 |
| 10 | Spectre | $198,924,613 | 3,929 | $50,630 |
The last time one of the top 10 highest grossing films of the year won the Oscar for Best Picture was 2003 when The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King took home the little golden man. This streak has a chance of being broken this year with Ridley Scott’s The Martian sitting in 8th place.
What do I think?
This is the most important question for myself and any critic. We don’t determine which film was the best through a cold and calculated formula or by copying a list from another well respected critic. Instead, my best films of the year (and yours) should be chosen because of the impact they had on you as you watched them and pondered them for weeks after. While I really enjoyed watching Kingsmen, I can’t say that it made any kind of lasting impression on me, so it will not find a place on my end of year lists. I’m still finishing watching all of the movies to make my decisions about the best of the year. I will post my thoughts on the movies as I watch them and then pick my favorites and make my choices for which films I think will take home Oscars. I feel like I have missed out on so much this year. I am behind on the number and quality of films that I have normally seen by this time of January.
The films that I have seen which are in contention are (in no particular order):
Jurassic World
The Martian
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Intern
Room
Ex-Machina
Ant-Man
Inside Out
Trainwreck
The Gift
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Bridge of Spies
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
Kingsmen: The Secret Service
Southpaw
Black Mass
Tomorrowland
Insurgent
Fantastic Four
Jupiter Ascending
Pixels
Home
Focus
The Danish Girl
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
The Big Short
Joy
The Revenant
Spotlight
The Good Dinosaur
I Still Need to See (*Must see before voting):
The Hateful Eight*
Sicario
Creed
Concussion
Anomalisa*
Legend*
Spectre
Carol*
The Man from UNCLE
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
Brooklyn*
The Walk
Straight Out of Compton
Steve Jobs*
Trumbo
45 Years*
Suffragette
Self/Less
Entourage
The 33
Tangerine
Son of Saul*
Mr. Holmes
Love and Mercy
Are there others that I need to put on my list? How does your list look? If anyone would like to sponsor me so I can do this full-time just let me know. That would be a dream, to do nothing but watch and talk about movies. We’ve only got 3 weeks left until Oscar night. So I need to get a move on. I watched Room tonight and frankly, I can’t imagine another movie topping it on the emotional scale, but that is what keeps me coming back, that search for the next film that will take me for a ride I could not imagine on my own. Join me.