The Best Films of 2015

10 min readDec 26, 2016

by Tomas Trussow

Without further ado, these are my top twenty films of 2015. The following films (#20–11) just missed out in making my top ten, even though all of them were excellent in their own ways:

20. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (dir. Roy Andersson)

19. Creed (dir. Ryan Coogler)

18. Tu dors Nicole (dir. Stéphane Lafleur)

17. Taxi (dir. Jafar Panahi)

16. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (dir. David Zellner)

15. The Look of Silence (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer)

14. Spotlight (dir. Tom McCarthy)

13. When Marnie Was There (dir. Hiromasa Yonebayashi)

12. Mistress America (dir. Noah Baumbach)

11. Brooklyn (dir. John Crowley)

And now, my top ten:

10. Anomalisa (dir. Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson)

Anomalisa is not a complicated film — in terms of narrative, it may even be the simplest film on this list. It doesn’t demand much of you (outside of the fact that Tom Noonan voices every single character save for the leads, which really is fun conceit to run with), but in a way it demands the world, for this is a film that deals with the aimlessness of identity and the existential ennui that forces us to question why we should still live on a planet that can be so devoid of anything meaningful. These are heavy topics to grapple with, and there are no straightforward answers to be found. Yet this is a film that offers a lifeline, and it never seeks to judge those who will not — or cannot — take it. In that lifeline is the sweetness of trust, the gentleness of unguarded souls, the heartwarming blush of an unexpected song continued… in a word, the promise of an anchor to keep us from floating into the darkness. And all of this is made all the more tangible through the art of stop-motion animation, where the illusion of artifice meets with the tenderest humanity.

9. Youth (dir. Paolo Sorrentino)

Even though The Great Beauty won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2013, Paolo Sorrentino’s latest feature hasn’t been able to capture the same amount of critical adulation, which is a shame because Youth manages to encapsulate a lyricism that the sprawling and bloated Beauty could never quite attain. It’s true that Youth’s thematic strands are neither original nor especially exciting, but I say, so what? Sorrentino still conveys his ideas with an affecting grace and flare that the glossy Euro-arthouse aesthetic can only serve to compliment, and much of the film’s brilliance lies in letting its style wash over you as it sets its own pace and tone. And it’s evident that Sorrentino cares for his characters. They’re a collection of misfits and broken spirits, but the twinkle is nevertheless still in their eyes, and they still have dreams and desires to fight for and hold on to. When Michael Caine’s Fred Ballinger uses the natural setting of the Swiss spa as a way of reconnecting with his love of music, it’s not only haunting in the sense that the music his mind makes is still so symphonic: it’s also haunting because it’s a passion of his that has never died, contrary to what we’re initially led to believe when he continually rebuffs the Queen’s emissary. In Youth, nothing ever really dies, and whether you’re young or old, the artistic surprises that life has in store will always find a way to dazzle the soul and reinvigorate the definition of the liberated self that we continually search for.

8. The Duke of Burgundy (dir. Peter Strickland)

As soon as the dreamy, phantasmagorical opening credits — my favourite credits of the year, in fact — began to roll to the haunting Cat’s Eyes theme track, I knew for certain that The Duke of Burgundy was going to be my cup of tea. Aesthetically, it looks like a bygone relic of some short-lived European softcore porn studio from the 1970s, and on the outset, the kinky and sadomasochistic relationship between its leads makes you think that that’s the point. Yet underneath the sex, lust and domination lies a tale of hidden fragility and unspoken sacrifices, where the power dynamics are unbalanced and teeter precariously towards destruction. And in that imbalance is something profoundly compelling, for we are never sure when the daily routine will wear thin, or whether one lover’s demands will push the scales towards heartbreak. We watch with baited breath as these two women create a delicate pas de deux of bewitchment and constant unease, hoping that they will not end up caught in the net of rejection and disillusionment. Though mysterious in essence, The Duke of Burgundy is, at its core, a paean to the thrills and the trials of our most erotic desires.

7. 45 Years (dir. Andrew Haigh)

In the span of seven days, Andrew Haigh slowly unravels a marriage in both the literal and figurative sense. The Mercers have been married for 45 years, but not even time can show them mercy in their relative comfort. It is a cruel mistress, placing no premium on security or devotion. It knows the buried secrets of the past, and it can reveal them without batting an eyelid. And who is left to suffer but those whose happiness depended on time’s silence? On time’s deepest chasms? Once time flicks open the undesirable truth, the chasms are no longer intangible, but rather in the heartbroken pupils of the incomparable Charlotte Rampling, whose quietly devastating performance still haunts my thoughts. The thing is, time is not only content on wreaking havoc with the Mercers. Oh, no. The brilliance of 45 Years is in its power to seep into the spaces of your time so that its imprint is ghostly. If there ever was a film that knew how to steal into your very marrow and never let you go, it’s this one.

6. Tangerine (dir. Sean Baker)

The life of a trans sex worker is never easy. You’re out on the street being paid to have sex with strange and lascivious men. You’re vulnerable to every type of harassment and hate crime imaginable. You’re always on the fringe of the law, making it all too easy to be targeted by the police. Yet despite these hardships, there is still something redemptive about such a life. It’s almost liberating, because you can be your own person without having to answer to the constraints of heteronormative drudgery. The world becomes malleable and filled with endless possibilities, and this is why Tangerine is such a blissful romp and one of the year’s best features. In its artistic ruggedness and screwball-like playfulness lies an irresistible exuberance for life without borders, and this exuberance becomes the beacon of empathy that we hold up to its characters: characters that are flawed and damaged, but characters that are still capable of magically transforming every craggy nook of their existence into a kernel of beauty.

5. Mad Max: Fury Road (dir. George Miller)

Watching George Miller’s masterful road opera is akin to being caught up in a sensual maelstrom. You are rendered immobile as the camerawork, the graphics, the sounds, the colours, and the actors toss you left and right without giving you a chance to breathe… or remember the real world. Whereas most films have me checking the clock and counting down the minutes, Mad Max: Fury Road was an adventure that I never wanted to leave. It was a slice of cinematic nirvana, where everything coalesces to produce a thrilling and engaging sense of rapture. The whys and the hows are almost immaterial when all is said and done, because we’ve been blessed with the end result. As a love letter to the capacities and capabilities of cinematic achievement, I’m not surprised that this film has very few detractors. It was made for cineastes of all stripes and colours, and these very same cineastes — myself included — bow down in admiration to what is unquestionably the most daring, kinetic, and innovative film of 2015.

4. Bridge of Spies (dir. Steven Spielberg)

Bridge of Spies is comfortably old-fashioned and as handsomely-mounted as we can expect a Spielberg film to be. Some would yawn and pass on to something more adventurous, but I’m perfectly happy being in this world, which is fraught with conflicts both continental and conversational. Indeed, this is a film that always has a chair waiting to be sat in beyond the frame — a film where the most action we see is a cigarette being lit, a leather glove being removed or a paintbrush stroking a canvas. The worlds of espionage and diplomacy are not always full of flying bullets, exploding cars and frenzied shouting matches across stately hallways. They can be subdued and enigmatic, as Mark Rylance’s brilliant portrayal of Rudolf Abel is. Yet there is still a whirring in the air here. A discreet metronome furiously tick-tocking as the threat of catastrophe looms large. Spielberg captures it beautifully without needing to resort to florid bombast and spectacle. From the first minute to the last, Bridge of Spies is enrapturing, and sometimes that’s all a film needs to be in order to work wonders.

3. World of Tomorrow (dir. Don Hertzfeldt)

This may not be a feature-length film, but it’s still one of the best films that I’ve seen this year period, so why shouldn’t I include it? The fact of the matter is: Don Hertzfeldt understands more about the way we live than any other animator alive, and the fact that he can floor you within the span of 15 minutes is just incredible. The way he poignantly magnifies one girl’s childlike innocence by having her older, jaded cloned self give her a firsthand tour of the depressingly bleak future allows for endless possibilities to impress, and Hertzfeldt never wastes a single moment. Every piece of dialogue and set-piece cuts you to the quick, the voices (including Hertzfeldt’s own niece) are perfect, and the ending is probably the most devastatingly beautiful thing you’ll experience for some time. And to top it all off: there is absolutely nothing fantastical about any of it. Seeing this, you can almost think that Hertzfeldt is some kind of prophet, and maybe he is.

2. The Forbidden Room (dir. Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson)

I don’t know how to describe The Forbidden Room. It’s like a nesting doll to be sure, with stories being embedded within dreams, anecdotes, memories and free associations that go up and down a master chain of narrative. I guess it’s one gigantic digression in the end, but a digression that feels culled from the heads of sleeping dreamers. Has there been any film that has so willfully tried to capture the ineffability of dreams? Their uninhibited landscapes and almost arbitrary momentum? Because that’s what Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson have done here. It’s a brave, enigmatic, yet extraordinarily funny trek through the mind of an incomparable cineaste, where everything is framed like a fragment from some forgotten film from the early days of cinema. Stories move with the crackle and bulge of worn celluloid, with some looking as though they’re on the verge of complete breakdown. Intertitles haunt the screen like insistent phantoms. The sound is frequently warped and elusive. Nothing is ever quite what it seems. Yet it’s all so beguiling and clearly in a league of its own. And what makes it all the more remarkable is that it’s a comedy at heart, and it had me laughing in so many places. What a marvel this film is.