I saw more than 300 new movies in 2015. That’s well ahead of my usual quota for a 12-month period, by something like 10 percent. I’m not entirely sure how I did that. Anyway, I had lots of memories to cull from this year’s crop. I do this post every year, and I try to limit myself to one per film. Here are the striking visuals, hilarious one-liners, powerful dramatic moments, and bits of general weirdness from the good, bad, and indifferent films from this past year. As always, links to the footage are included where available.
• The opening sequence of White God, with a young girl bicycling furiously through the streets of Budapest, being chased by a few hundred wild dogs.
• The opening sequence of Krampus, a slow motion study of a toy store on Black Friday turning into retail hell.
• The unbroken opening shot of Spectre, snaking through a Mexico City street, a hotel staircase, and a rooftop.
• The opening sequence of Son of Saul, with Géza Röhrig shutting the gas chamber door on a bunch of his fellow Jews and listening to their dying screams.
• The Doof Warrior! Mad Max: Fury Road.
• Horses carrying a burning carriage and a dead driver down the road in The Keeping Room.
• “God, I have killed a man. I know that I have committed the worst sin. And still I am knowing it is the right thing to be doing.” — Beasts of No Nation.
• A bored jihadi with a bullhorn lists all the things that are now forbidden in Timbuktu: “Est interdit…”
• Colin Firth excuses himself from a racist church in Kingsman: The Secret Service: “I’m a Catholic whore, currently enjoying congress out of wedlock with my black, Jewish boyfriend who works at a military abortion clinic. So hail Satan, and have a lovely afternoon, madam.”
• Greta Gerwig crumbles during her restaurant pitch in Mistress America: “I’m tired of running towards people. I want to be the place that people come to.”
• On a cocktail of drugs, Seth Rogen makes a video letting loose all his fatherhood anxieties in The Night Before: “She’s going to wreck my life, and I’m going to wreck her life, and she will go out and murder people! Fuck you, baby!”
• Jason Statham waxes supermacho to intimidate Melissa McCarthy in Spy: “Nothing kills me! I’m immune to 179 different poisons! I ingested them all in an underground poison-ingesting ring!”
• A little Chinese boy does a comedy riff imitating the train’s PA system to while away a long train trip in The Iron Ministry. “If you have any bombs or other explosive devices, please be sure to detonate them in crowded areas. Help our nation’s population control efforts.”
• “I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.” — The Martian.
• A ferocious-looking dinosaur describes his cuddly woodland creature guardians in The Good Dinosaur: “This is Fury. He protects me from things that crawl in the night. This is Destructor. She protects me from mosquitos. This is Dreamcrusher. He protects me from having unrealistic goals.”
• LeBron James asks Amy Schumer, “Do you see his face in a cloud? Do you hear his name when you listen to the wind?” — Trainwreck.
• A pissed-off student who has his phone taken away from him in The DUFF: “Great, I just thought of something funny, and now no one will ever know what it was!”
• On vampires’ preference for virgin blood in What We Do in the Shadows: “If you were going to eat a sandwich, you would just enjoy it more if you knew no one had fucked it.”
• The ayahuasca ceremony in While We’re Young. “Is that the shaman’s scooter?”
• Kristen Wiig keeps telling Alexander Skarsgård, “You porked my daughter” in The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Bel Powley says, “Stop saying ‘pork’!”
• Amy Winehouse looks starstruck at the Grammys in Amy: “It’s Tony Bennett!”
• Joe Manganiello dances to the Backstreet Boys in a convenience store, Magic Mike XXL.
• A little boy’s father plays him a tune on the flute, and the notes float away as orange dots into the air in Boy and the World.
• Meryl Streep plays “Cold One” for her ex-husband and daughter in Ricki and the Flash.
• N.W.A. defy the Detroit cops and rap “Fuck Tha Police” in Straight Outta Compton.
• Margot Robbie sits down at the organ in a ruined church and plays what sounds like the saddest melody in the world in Z for Zachariah.
• A wolf princess sings a musical number about an aswang in The Forbidden Room.
• Anna Kendrick sings “A Summer in Ohio” in The Last Five Years, with her acting career in tatters but her marriage in clover.
• Lola Dueñas kills her boyfriend’s wife and then bursts into song over the naked corpse in Alléluia. Then she takes out a hacksaw and starts sawing off the dead woman’s foot.
• A sexually charged tango between a gay man and his deceased ex’s homophobic brother in Tom at the Farm.
• Oscar Isaac and Sonoya Mizuno dance to “Get Down Saturday Night” in Ex Machina. Domhnall Gleeson looks creeped out, as he should.
• Four black French girls lip-sync to Rihanna’s “Diamonds” in a darkened hotel room in Girlhood, and some essential part of adolescence is tapped into.
• A sex therapist gets through to a patient by dancing around to “Macchu Picchu” in She’s Lost Control. Makes sense that a sexual surrogate would listen to The Strokes.
• Jason Schwartzman and Adam Scott get in touch with their penises in The Overnight.
• The most realistic sex scene in all of 2015’s movies: Anomalisa.
• Steve Carell can’t stop talking about real estate while getting a lap dance from a stripper in The Big Short. The stripper freaks out: “I own five houses and a condo!”
• Jason Sudeikis uses an empty Snapple bottle to teach Alison Brie how to masturbate in Sleeping With Other People.
• Stoners Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart freak out over finding themselves in a spy plot in American Ultra. “When you see a gun and the bad guy doesn’t see it, you don’t say, ‘Hey, gun!’ ”
• The exquisitely orchestrated farce that climaxes Tangerine, with transgender sex workers, an Armenian family, and a pissed-off Korean doughnut shop owner being brought together.
• Superhero cocktail party, Avengers: Age of Ultron.
• The toy train falls off the track, Ant-Man.
• Channing Tatum falls back down into the cellar in The Hateful Eight.
• Mom eats the cockroach in Goodnight Mommy.
• Will Smith makes a series of increasingly insane bets at a football game in Focus, Margot Robbie gets more and more upset, and you’re not sure who’s conning who.
• Blythe Danner’s moment of grief is interrupted by a persistent rat in I’ll See You in My Dreams.
• Jennifer Lawrence stands backstage at QVC with her triumph washing over her in Joy.
• A possessed Olivia Wilde starts saying her husband’s pep talk along with him in The Lazarus Effect.
• The 911 operator suddenly seems to be in on the chaos in Unfriended.
• After a bloodbath in a general store, a terrified girl points her gun at an unarmed Michael Fassbender in Slow West. He calmly raises his hands and just says, “Breathe.”
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens — “Stop taking my hand!”
• The fight in a single unbroken take in Creed, seeming to be everywhere at once in the arena, including with the boxers as they whale away at each other.
• The spaceship fight above the Chicago skyline in Jupiter Ascending.
• Three assassins backstage at the opera in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation.
• The bear attack, The Revenant.
• Benicio Del Toro gets his last measure of revenge in Sicario.
• Owen Wilson tosses his daughter off the roof, No Escape.
• The chase up the half-topped skyscraper in Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.
• The African refugees weather a storm at sea in a barely seaworthy boat in Mediterranea.
• The final fight on the streets of Gangnam in Veteran.
• Maika Monroe comes face to face with It in her kitchen in It Follows.
• An empty lot on Long Island looking like a corner of paradise in Brooklyn.
• King Charles XII of Sweden casually drops into a modern-day bar for a drink in A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence.
• One & Two: Two 19th-century farm kids jump in the lake by teleporting themselves above the water.
• Juliette Binoche watches the fog snake through the valley and Kristen Stewart disappears in Clouds of Sils Maria.
• John Cusack’s blood-and-thunder eulogy for a murdered girl in Chi-Raq, a furious indictment of America’s gun culture and the people who give into it.
• The extended mortification given to the spoiled hipsters in the second half of Fort Tilden, where even their attempts to rescue some kittens come to grief.
• Michael Fassbender confronts Jeff Daniels over his firing in Steve Jobs.
• Elisabeth Moss finally unloads on poor, insensitive Patrick Fugit near the end of Queen of Earth: “You are why people betray one another. You are why there is nowhere safe or happy anymore. You are why depression exists.”
• A deaf Ukrainian girl screams in pain during her illegal abortion in The Tribe. There is no one to hear her.
• The whole spiraling whirl of trouble that concludes Nasty Baby.
• James Franco turns around and winks at Jonah Hill and reveals the cold truth in True Story.
• The heroine of Metalhead gets unexpected redemption when she gets a phone call. “Some pilgrims are here to see you.”
• The heroine of Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter leaves her pet rabbit on a train and bids it a tearful farewell.
• Christopher Abbott cradles his dying mom on the floor of her bathroom in James White and spins a fairy tale about the great stable life he’s going to lead without her.
• Lou Taylor Pucci holds Nadia Hilker near the end of Spring, tells her what it’s like to be a human being, and waits for her to change shape.
• Jacob Tremblay agrees to cut off his long hair and send it to his Ma in the mental hospital in Room.
• Jafar Panahi’s niece becomes the heroine of her own student film in Taxi.
• Sadness finally gets to Riley and saves her at the end of Inside Out. We all cry with her.
• Tom Hiddleston cries a single bloody tear near the end of Crimson Peak, and Jessica Chastain howls in grief.
• The little boy says his sister’s name, Stations of the Cross.
• Cate Blanchett cracks in Carol and says, “I love you.”
• Charlotte Rampling dances with her husband of 45 Years to “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and realizes her marriage is over.
• With his exposé about to break in Spotlight, Mark Ruffalo comes across two more kids who have just been molested by a priest. A lawyer who has trouble expressing gratitude tells him, “Keep doing what you’re doing.”
• The warring street gangs rap about putting aside all their beefs and making peace in Tokyo Tribe.
• Kevin Costner makes up with his daughter for missing her 15th birthday by giving her a traditional quinceañera in McFarland, USA.
• A fitting, wordless tribute to the Twin Towers in The Walk.
• A young African-American high-school student pens his Harvard application essay in Dope and comes into his own.
• The terrible final scene of Breathe, as a bullied girl hyperventilates in her living room. “She’s upstairs. I’m sorry.”
• Two lovers watch the apocalypse come in These Final Hours. “It’s beautiful!”
• The final scene of Phoenix, as Nina Hoss sings “Speak Low” and her husband belatedly realizes who she is.
