Ranking Every Movie of 2015 (yes, all of them)

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Jennifer Lawrence in "Joy"

The Manifesto has already delivered its list of the top 10 movies of 2015. Now, it’s time to look at the rest. What follows is a ranked list of every 2015 theatrical release that I’ve seen up to this point. It’s far from comprehensive—as ever, there are a number of films that I’ve failed to see, whether through lack of theatrical distribution, laziness, or bad luck. (The only movie that I truly regret being unable to include here is Son of Saul; I’ll be seeing it this weekend, but I just couldn’t hold off on publishing that long.)

As for the movies I did see, well, there were still quite a few. And while this post is just a pure list, I’ve added hyperlinks to the 56 different titles that I formally reviewed, so you can click over to those for more detailed analysis. Per my custom, I’m also including each film’s director in parentheses, as well as its respective scores on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, so you can see whether I confirm with or diverge from the critical consensus.

I’ll dispense with the usual rhetoric about the arbitrary nature of list-making (besides, I already did that yesterday for the top 10). But please, when you find yourself tempted to exclaim, “How could this idiot possibly rank [X] ahead of [Y]!” just bear in mind that the list is more of a guideline than a firm set of rules.

That should do it. Here are the Manifesto’s rankings of every movie we watched in 2015:

  1. Inside Out (directed by Pete Docter, 98% Rotten Tomatoes, 94 Metacritic)
  2. Brooklyn (John Crowley, 98% RT, 87 MC)
  3. Carol (Todd Haynes, 93% RT, 95 MC)
  4. Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 93% RT, 81 MC)
  5. Room (Lenny Abrahamson, 96% RT, 86 MC)
  6. Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg, 91% RT, 81 MC)
  7. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 97% RT, 83 MC)
  8. Mommy (Xavier Dolan, 89% RT, 74 MC)
  9. Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 92% RT, 78 MC)
  10. Steve Jobs (Danny Boyle, 86% RT, 82 MC)
  11. Z for Zachariah (Craig Zobel, 78% RT, 68 MC)
  12. Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, 96% RT, 93 MC)
  13. White God (Kornél Mundruczó, 89% RT, 80 MC)
  14. Sleeping with Other People (Leslye Headland, 63% RT, 64 MC)
  15. Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie, 93% RT, 75 MC)
  16. The Big Short (Adam McKay, 88% RT, 81 MC)
  17. About Elly (Asghar Farhadi, 99% RT, 87 MC)
  18. Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs, 62% RT, 60 MC)
  19. Wild Tales (Damián Szifron, 95% RT, 77 MC)
  20. Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, 91% RT, 87 MC)
  21. Star Wars: Episode VII—The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 92% RT, 81 MC)
  22. Phoenix (Christian Petzold, 98% RT, 89 MC)
  23. Creed (Ryan Coogler, 94% RT, 82 MC)
  24. The Revenant (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 82% RT, 76 MC)
  25. The Gift (Joel Edgerton, 93% RT, 77 MC)
  26. The Martian (Ridley Scott, 92% RT, 80 MC)
  27. ’71 (Yann Demange, 96% RT, 83 MC)
  28. Goodnight Mommy (Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, 83% RT, 81 MC)
  29. Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (Shlomi Elkabetz and Ronit Elkabetz, 100% RT, 90 MC)
  30. The End of the Tour (James Ponsoldt, 91% RT, 82 MC)
  31. Love & Mercy (Bill Pohlad, 90% RT, 80 MC)
  32. Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako, 99% RT, 92 MC)
  33. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 97% RT, 89 MC)
  34. Mistress America (Noah Baumbach, 82% RT, 75 MC)
  35. The Hateful Eight (Quentin Tarantino, 75% RT, 68 MC)
  36. The Walk (Robert Zemeckis, 85% RT, 70 MC)
  37. Human Capital (Paolo Virzì, 80% RT, 63 MC)
  38. The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Marielle Heller, 94% RT, 87 MC)
  39. Trainwreck (Judd Apatow, 85% RT, 75 MC)
  40. Joy (David O. Russell, 60% RT, 56 MC)
  41. Spy (Paul Feig, 93% RT, 75 MC)
  42. The Salvation (Kristian Levring, 70% RT, 64 MC)
  43. Mississippi Grind (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, 90% RT, 77 MC)
  44. Dope (Rick Famuyiwa, 88% RT, 72 MC)
  45. Bone Tomahawk (S. Craig Zahler, 90% RT, 72 MC)
  46. Grandma (Paul Weitz, 91% RT, 77 MC)
  47. The Danish Girl (Tom Hooper, 70% RT, 66 MC)
  48. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Guy Ritchie, 67% RT, 56 MC)
  49. Pawn Sacrifice (Edward Zwick, 70% RT, 65 MC)
  50. Predestination (Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig, 84% RT, 69 MC)
  51. Alleluia (Fabrice Du Welz, 84% RT, 72 MC)
  52. When Marnie Was There (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 89% RT, 71 MC)
  53. Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 71% RT, 59 MC)
  54. 45 Years (Andrew Haigh, 96% RT, 94 MC)
  55. Crimson Peak (Guillermo del Toro, 69% RT, 66 MC)
  56. The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland, 93% RT, 87 MC)
  57. The Good Dinosaur (Peter Sohn, 77% RT, 66 MC)
  58. Chi-Raq (Spike Lee, 82% RT, 77 MC)
  59. Queen of Earth (Alex Ross Perry, 91% RT, 78 MC)
  60. While We’re Young (Noah Baumbach, 84% RT, 77 MC)
  61. Faults (Riley Stearns, 89% RT, 70 MC)
  62. The Visit (M. Night Shyamalan, 63% RT, 55 MC)
  63. Slow West (John M. Maclean, 92% RT, 72 MC)
  64. Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story (Michael Almereyda, 88% RT, 81 MC)
  65. Black Sea (Kevin Macdonald, 80% RT, 62 MC)
  66. 24 Days (Alexandre Arcady, 79% RT, 59 MC)
  67. Straight Outta Compton (F. Gary Gray, 88% RT, 72 MC)
  68. Far from the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg, 86% RT, 71 MC)
  69. Tangerine (Sean Baker, 96% RT, 85 MC)
  70. Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 89% RT, 78 MC)
  71. Ant-Man (Peyton Reed, 80% RT, 64 MC)
  72. The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid, 74% RT, 68 MC)
  73. Tomorrowland (Brad Bird, 49% RT, 60 MC)
  74. Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 74% RT, 66 MC)
  75. The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 78% RT, 80 MC)
  76. Pitch Perfect 2 (Elizabeth Banks, 65% RT, 63 MC)
  77. A Wolf at the Door (Fernando Coimbra, 82% RT, 67 MC)
  78. Black Mass (Scott Cooper, 75% RT, 68 MC)
  79. Kingsman: The Secret Service (Matthew Vaughn, 75% RT, 58 MC)
  80. Spectre (Sam Mendes, 64% RT, 60 MC)
  81. 99 Homes (Ramin Bahrani, 92% RT, 76 MC)
  82. Blackhat (Michael Mann, 34% RT, 51 MC)
  83. Eden (Mia Hansen-Løve, 82% RT, 82 MC)
  84. Focus (John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, 57% RT, 56 MC)
  85. Beasts of No Nation (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 91% RT, 79 MC)
  86. Cop Car (Jon Watts, 79% RT, 66 MC)
  87. Cinderella (Kenneth Branagh, 84% RT, 67 MC)
  88. Jupiter Ascending (Lana Wachowski and Andy Wachowski, 26% RT, 40 MC)
  89. Furious 7 (James Wan, 81% RT, 67 MC)
  90. Cymbeline (Michael Almereyda, 29% RT, 54 MC)
  91. Terminator: Genisys (Alan Taylor, 25% RT, 38 MC)
  92. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, 83% RT, 74 MC)
  93. The Overnight (Patrick Brice, 81% RT, 65 MC)
  94. Southpaw (Antoine Fuqua, 60% RT, 57 MC)
  95. Heaven Knows What (Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie, 84% RT, 75 MC)
  96. In the Heart of the Sea (Ron Howard, 43% RT, 47 MC)
  97. The Voices (Marjane Satrapi, 72% RT, 58 MC)
  98. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (David Zellner, 88% RT, 68 MC)
  99. James White (Josh Mond, 92% RT, 83 MC)
  100. Paddington (Paul King, 98% RT, 77 MC)
  101. Mr. Holmes (Bill Condon, 87% RT, 67 MC)
  102. Results (Andrew Bujalski, 83% RT, 73 MC)
  103. American Ultra (Nima Nourizadeh, 43% RT, 50 MC)
  104. The Water Diviner (Russell Crowe, 63% RT, 50 MC)
  105. Chappie (Neill Blomkamp, 31% RT, 41 MC)
  106. Tu Dors Nicole (Stéphane LaFleur, 100% RT, 79 MC)
  107. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 (Francis Lawrence, 70% RT, 65 MC)
  108. Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 25% RT, 46 MC)
  109. Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg, 60% RT, 67 MC)
  110. The Face of an Angel (Michael Winterbottom, 38% RT, 37 MC)
  111. Aloha (Cameron Crowe, 20% RT, 40 MC)
  112. Der Samurai (Till Kleinert, 100% RT, N/A MC)
  113. Insurgent (Robert Schwentke, 29% RT, 42 MC)
  114. Felt (Jason Banker, 59% RT, 54 MC)

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