Every year seems to end with the same collective thought: this year was actually a great year for movies. The law of averages calls for that. Every year we will get a collection of quality, a collection of disasters, and the vast majority meandering in the middle to be forgotten. Getting a list to ten did prove to be more difficult than in previous years, but that is a wonderful problem to have. How sad would it be if you had to pad out your list to ten?

Since this was a great year, some films did not survive the chopping block and just missed out on the list, but they are still good films that should be seen. Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America was the funniest film of the year, delivering a much needed resurgence of the highly scripted comedy. Inside Out presented a return to form for Pixar. Son of Saul and The Stanford Prison Experiment were arresting gut-punches of drama. And Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation was just straight up fun, and I am thrilled Christopher McQuarrie is coming back for the next installment.

Now, we get to the best of the best, the crème de la crème, the maple syrup on a stack of fluffy buttermilk pancakes, the top ten films of 2015.

Categories: Top Ten ListsTags: Anomalisa, Carol, Ex Machina, Mad Max: Fury Road, Room, Spotlight, Steve Jobs, The Hateful Eight, The Last Five Years, top ten, Youth