Mad Max
1) Mad Max: Fury Road
Fantastic, turbo-charged imagery and steely, humanistic characters make for the one true epic of 2015. 100% unforgettable. Go Team Furiosa!
2) Victoria
Filmed in a single, 138-minute shot and mostly improvised, this is hyperkinetic, Berlin-based chaos at its best.
3) Son of Saul
A Holocaust movie like no other. Director László Nemes and lead Géza Röhrig make the horror intimate and personal.
4) Chi-Raq
Spike Lee updates Aristophanes'
Lysistrata for our death-heavy, gun-crazy age with raging panache and an iconic Samuel L. Jackson.
Spotlight
5) Spotlight
Remember those scrappy, underdog newsrooms of yore?
Spotlight nails the true story of
The Boston Globe vs. the pedophile priesthood.
6) Tangerine
A pair of bestie trans prostitutes wander L.A. noir on Christmas Eve. Sisterhood is powerful, hilarious, and human.
7) The Look of Silence
This sequel to 2012's
The Act of Killing doubles down on the Indonesian genocide, seen here through the eyes of the survivors.
8) Youth
Youth may be wasted on the young, but Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel have a helluva nice Swiss spa.
The Tribe
9) The Tribe
Life, death, and sex at a ravaged Ukrainian school for deaf kids. Devastating without a single word spoken.
10) Phoenix
No one's who they seem to be in the rubble of post-World War II Berlin. The best new Hitchcock film in ages?
Near Misses
The Duke of Burgundy, Macbeth, The World of Kanako, Carol, Mustang
Most Overrated
Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, Anomalisa, The Good Dinosaur
Most Underrated
The Diary of a Teenage Girl, It Follows, Paddington
Wild Card
Best Kiwi Black Metal Horror-Comedy:
Deathgasm has heart, soul, Satan, and the augmented fourth chord of the damned. Really, what else do you want?
Acting Kudos (Male)
Jacob Tremblay (
Room), Elias and Lukas Schwarz (
Goodnight Mommy), Sylvester Stallone (
Creed), Jacir Eid Al-Hiewtat (
Theeb), Paul Rudd (
Ant-Man)
Acting Kudos (Female)
Laia Costa (
Victoria), Charlize Theron (
Mad Max: Fury Road), Bel Powley (
The Diary of a Teenage Girl), Rinko Kikuchi (
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter), Nina Hoss (
Phoenix)
Best Director
George Miller (
Mad Max: Fury Road), Tetsuya Nakashima (
The World of Kanako), Paolo Sorrentino (
Youth)
Best Original Screenplay
The Gift (Joel Edgerton),
Sicario (Taylor Sheridan),
Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (David Zellner, Nathan Zellner)
Best Adapted Screenplay
The Martian (Drew Goddard, based on book by Andy Weir),
Mr. Holmes (Jeffrey Hatcher, based on book by Mitch Cullin),
The End of the Tour (Donald Margulies, based on book by David Lipsky)
Worst Film
Entourage. A blatant cash-grab that was universally viewed, correctly, as painfully ill-advised in this terrific Netflix/Amazon streaming moment.
