A little over 300 films have debuted in the United States so far in 2015, and one can presume that anywhere from 300 to 450 more will see release before the end of the year. That’s a lot of movies – up by about 150 releases since 2010 - and really only a handful of those are sequels or franchise monoliths like Jurassic World or Avengers: Age of Ultron. Though superheroes, dinosaurs, and cartoons still rule the box office, the cinephile event of the year was an auteur-backed action film with minimal use of CGI, namely Mad Max: Fury Road, one that still managed to land in the top-ten grossers of the year. That being said, and as great as George Miller’s wild tempest of a film is, there’s no denying that it also benefitted from name recognition, as did 4/5 of the films that comprise the top 25 box-office grossers of 2015.

As the aforementioned number suggested, however, there were plenty of other fish in the sea, depending on how close you live to a major metropolitan area. And considering the advances of VOD, even that isn’t necessarily a factor anymore. Regardless of how they’re been released and seen, the best films of 2015 hinge on challenging perspectives on everything from nationalism (Red Army) and masculine control (Ex Machina) to femininity (Spy) and emotional maturity (Inside Out), each one unafraid to touch on abstract concepts or bypass mainstream ideas of morality. Above all else, these films showed genuine ambition in their writing, aesthetics, and, often enough, both, as did the other films our staff picked out as the very best films of the year thus far. And with another 300 or so films yet to see release this year, there’s a pretty solid chance that these remarkable films might not even make our end-of-year lists, which is a sure sign of a great year at the movies. – Chris Cabin

Mad Max: Fury Road

We’re now two months into the 2015 Summer Movie Season, and there’s only one film I keep hearing people talk about: Mad Max: Fury Road. When opening weekends are life and death to a studio, I know people who are making time to go see the movie even though it’s been in theaters for well over a month. That’s because word of mouth is strong, and this movie sticks with you.   Unlike so many blockbusters where everything has been sanded down until its soft and palatable, Fury Road is nothing but sharp edges, and it cuts to the bone with its mind-blowing action, strong characters, confident themes, and outrageous setting. We’re talking about the movie now, and I’ll bet we’ll still be talking about it at the end of this year and years to come. – Matt Goldberg

Inside Out

Inside Out marks Pixar’s triumphant return to form after five years of releases that fall somewhere on the scale of mediocrity, and it’s a spectacular way to reclaim the throne. Director Pete Docter’s exploration of emotion is complex, layered, and intricate in a way that honors the human mind. It’s not only staggeringly empathetic and universal, it’s damn fine filmmaking, complete with wildly imaginative production design, cleverly executed set-pieces, and perhaps the most human, relatable stakes of all time. It also has Bing Bong - the candy-crying embodiment of the hope, innocence, stupidity and joie de vivre that makes childhood so special, and ultimately, so heartbreakingly ephemeral. Inside Out is a charming, gorgeously animated, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny film for all ages. – Haleigh Foutch

It Follows

I watch a lot of horror movies, so when I see something insanely creative that values an ingenious core concept and character development over jump scares and gore I get pretty excited. So excited, in fact, that I might have a gigantic It Follows poster hanging in my living room. Not only is the idea of contracting a sexually transmitted disease that conjures a ghost-like being that follows you until it kills you wildly creepy and fun to consider all on its own, but then writer-director David Robert Mitchell makes the situation exponentially more suspenseful by letting you peel back the layers of the condition with a group of grounded and very likable main characters. The film also excels when it comes to the visuals and the score. I’ve got a good feeling the beach sequence will wind up being one of my favorite scenes of the year and how about that theme song? Similar to horror classics like Friday the 13th and Halloween, from now on, whenever that tune kicks in, I will instantly get a burst of energy because I know it means It Follows is coming. – Perri Nemiroff

Ex Machina

Writer/director Alex Garland puts the glut of “sci-fi” blockbusters to shame with an intimate, involving, and truly unnerving entry in the sci-fi genre that doesn’t sacrifice character for spectacle. At its heart the film is really a character piece, but it works on a number of different levels simultaneously. It’s a thrilling escape story, a heady sci-fi pic, and a feminist character drama all rolled into one, with three impeccable performances to boot. Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson eschew the clichés of the tech villain and noble savior, respectively, but Alicia Vikander is the real standout here with a tremendous performance as the film’s true hero, Ava. After a few years of disappointing entries in the “original sci-fi” genre, Ex Machina is the masterful film we’ve been waiting for. – Adam Chitwood

Results

For those who have been following Andrew Bujalski’s career since Funny Ha Ha, the fact that the Austin-based director was able to make his first excursion into the realm of professional actors and mainstream-baiting romantic comedy is miracle enough. Beyond that, however, this strange, sublime comedy about sex, money, and fitness in Texas counts as one of Bujalski’s most succinct and wise films to date, not an easy triumph considering this is the man behind Computer Chess and Mutual Appreciation. Results is anchored by the incomparable Cobie Smulders and a terrific, physically inclined performance from Guy Pearce as a popular trainer and her boss-trainer working at an independent fitness studio, but the ever-percolating ideas about the corruptive yet seductive power of money in both business and art is all Bujalski. He lets his shots hang on his characters, which also includes Kevin Corrigan’s overweight, shallow millionaire, to catch the distinct, intimate tics and quiet moments alone that bring out revealing details of the odd beings at the center of this stellar comedy. – Chris Cabin

Cinderella

Director Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella is an unabashedly old-fashioned swoonfest firmly rooted in classical sensibilities. Unlike so many of Disney’s popular contemporary fairytales (Frozen, Once Upon a Time, Enchanted), Cinderella doesn’t deconstruct the fantasy, but embraces it whole-heartedly. There’s no irony or meta self-reference, just a heroically simple fairytale brought to life. Branagh makes no efforts to conceal sentimentality; the film is so sweet it falls just on the right side of cloying. Lily James is a flawless choice for sweet Ella, only matched by the perfection of Cate Blanchett as the wicked Lady Tremaine.  While classically-minded, Branagh's Cinderella is delivered with such verve that it narrowly escapes the troubling gender politics inherent to Cinderella’s tale. Instead of subservient helplessness, Cinderella's thorough goodness and small acts of defiant kindness demonstrate a quiet strength. In a society that tends to place too high a value on ambition and cleverness, Cinderella espouses the virtues of yore - courage, kindness, modesty, and gratitude. On top of all this loveliness is a grand spectacle. The entire film is painted in rich, gleaming colors, and with the help of Sandy Powell’s ornate costumes and Dante Ferretti’s lavish production design, it’s a dazzling affair. – Haleigh Foutch

Red Army

I said it my review, and I’ll say it again: Red Army is one of the best sports documentaries I’ve ever seen, and I love me a good sports doc (I’d say buy the 30 for 30 box set, but all those docs are now on Netflix). Red Army is exceptional in how director Gabe Polsky looks at the unique history of the USSR’s hockey team through the lens of exceptional player/raging ass-hole, Viacheslav Fetisov. This doesn’t fit into the traditional “heroes and villains” mold of competitive sports documentaries. It’s about how simplistic characterizations of the Russian team as villains obscured a fascinating story that’s now finally being told, and in an incredibly entertaining fashion to boot. – Matt Goldberg

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Call me crazy, but I still maintain that Age of Ultron is a better movie than The Avengers in almost every way, and thus is one of 2015’s best blockbusters. With the pressure of doing something that had never been done before behind him, Joss Whedon set out to make a follow-up that was stranger, darker, and intensely more intimate. The result is a massive summer blockbuster in which Whedon hits “pause” on the action to focus on a series of character-centric scenes set on a farm that showcase “Hawkeye the Family Man” and delve deep into the doomed relationship between Hulk and Black Widow. Sure the movie ends the same way all Marvel Phase Two movies do, but underneath all the set pieces and explosions there’s some really great—and really weird—stuff that makes it feel like Whedon got away with something. – Adam Chitwood

Timbuktu

How does one follow up something like Bamako? Abderrahmane Sissako’s previous feature was one of the great unclassifiable masterworks of the aughts, a avant-garde consideration of the effects of the World Bank and IMF on Africa, and his follow-up, Timbuktu, is easily one of the best films of the decade thus far. A wildly empathetic and dramatically rich look at the titular Mali city under the rule of the Jihadists, Timbuktu goes beyond the political outrage for such groups and finds something more personal and stunningly human in these actions. Like, say, City of God, the narrative covers a variety of storylines within the city, and Sissako works with the actors to bring out the musical liveliness of the inhabitants and godless inertia of the Jihadist soldiers. The clear intimation is that these Jihadist members want to be gods rather than serve one, and Sissako depicts their brutal crime without passion or music to deplete the actions of any higher meaning. Despite all the death and torture that is seen in Timbuktu, the feeling that you come away with is of irrepressible life, tarnished but never totally smothered out by the self-obsessed, violent, and psychotic whims of true believers. – Chris Cabin

The Voices

This movie is crazy. It’s great, but crazy. Director Marjane Satrapi’s dark comedy literally takes us inside the mind of a psychopath, as the film unfolds through the eyes of an unassuming, upbeat man named Jerry who just so happens to imagine full conversations with his dog and cat, with the latter convincing him of doing very, very bad things. Visually this thing is gorgeous; Satrapi visualizes Jerry’s world with bright, delicious colors that evoke a carnival of sorts. But the key to The Voices is Ryan Reynolds, who reminds us that, when given a solid script, he’s a genuinely fantastic actor. – Adam Chitwood

Spy

I knew Melissa McCarthy and Paul Feig were both capable of delivering great work, but Spy is above and beyond what I was expecting from the duo. It isn’t just a silly comedy with a handful of hilarious jokes. The film clocks in at 120 minutes and every single one of them will put a smile on your face, if not have you laughing out loud. Feig gives McCarthy an especially strong, capable character to work with and she certainly rises to the occasion, making Susan Cooper a woman you can both root for and laugh with. Spy is also packed with unforgettable supporting characters. As one might expect, Rose Byrne is remarkable as Rayna Boyanov, but Jason Statham is the surprise scene-stealer as Susan’s colleague-turned-competition, Agent Rick Ford. The movie delivers a wealth of one-liners, a number of successful repeat jokes that build throughout (favorites being the rat/bat gag and that wonderfully ugly cupcake necklace), and also had a surprising amount of impressive, visceral combat. In fact that kitchen brawl between McCarty and Nargis Fakhri might be one of the best fight sequences I’ve seen all year. Spy is studio-level comedy at its best. It respects techniques that have worked in the past, but improves upon them in ways that both service the story and make the film a standout.  – Perri Nemiroff

Hard to Be a God

Aleksey German’s final film is a masterwork, a tough and uncompromising political allegory for Mother Russia, and not, by any stretch of the imagination, for the weak of heart. The place is some far off planet called Arkanar, where a group of scientists devolved into self-mythologizing false kings ruling over a medieval society going nowhere quick. Our guide is the barbaric, shit-and-snot-covered Don Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik), who trudges through miles of hell to search for something like life, and finds only long stretches of muddy, stink-ridden poverty and unrelenting butchery. German shoots the film in crude black-and-white, utilizing long takes and close-ups to often dazzlingly intimate effect, and the dialogue is immensely involving in its unlikely ideological avenues. The brilliant filmmaker behind Trial on the Road and Khrustalyov My Car! didn’t hide from the ugliness and the stink of the Russian he left behind when he passed away recently, and in fact made his pickled perspective on the wayward societal path his homeland is still on the subject of this bewitching opus. – Chris Cabin

Paddington

Never judge a movie by its trailer or by its release date. These superficial markers almost steered me away from Paddington, but positive word of mouth got me into my screening, and I’m so glad I didn’t skip this one. What seemed like “Yogi Bear Goes to London” from the trailers was actually a very sweet movie with a charmingly British sensibility both in its mannerisms and especially its comedy. It’s the perfect kind of family film where kids will always be entertained, and adults can get caught up in the whimsy without any embarrassment. I’d definitely like to see more adventures of the clumsy, polite bear. – Matt Goldberg

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

I’ve seen Me and Earl and the Dying Girl twice now. Once at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it was undoubtedly the “breakout” hit of the fest, and a second time just a few weeks ago. While not as emotional on second viewing, the film remains a smart and sweet twist on the YA genre with a cinephilic bent, and while the movie could be viewed as a tale of a narcissist who spends time with a girl dying of cancer to make himself feel better, I think it’s more complex than that. Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon frames the picture from a strong point of view that in turn elicits a strong audience response, but that’s the point—we’re seeing things through Greg’s eyes, and Greg is quite frankly a self-absorbed jerk for much of the film. Gomez-Rejon brings things around in the end to culminate in a moving finale, but it’s that complex POV that makes Me and Earl standout from other like-minded teen dramas. – Adam Chitwood

Jauja

If you see one Argentinian quasi-acid Western this year, well, you’ll almost certainly be watching Jauja, because I’m pretty sure there are scant movies that could be given that description. Even if there were more than one or two, chances are they’d never be quite as eerie, effective, or hypnotic as this latest whatsit from Argentinian master Lisandro Alonso, which pits Viggo Mortensen’s chauvinistic Danish military commander against an imposing, brutal landscape—the price for attempting to capture and “save” his daughter after she runs away with her lover. The myth of masculine paterfamilias is grilled by Alonso, in both the commander’s bitter sense of ownership over his daughter and his career of ridding terrains of indigenous people for, well, white overseers. More than that, though, Jauja is Alonso’s breakout masterwork, a hauntingly gorgeous journey into a surreal vision of abandonment, regret, and total alienation, and an ambitious step forward from Alonso’s previous provocations like Liverpool and La libertad. – Chris Cabin

Kingsman: The Secret Service

There have been plenty of attempts to riff on the James Bond genre over the years, but with Kingsman: The Secret Service, co-writer/director Matthew Vaughn may have crafted the most delightful one yet. This is a movie that adores the spy genre while at the same time subverting it, offering up a refreshing twist on the traditional villain and also nailing a Pygmalion-esque story between mentor and mentee. The action is masterfully executed, and Vaughn takes advantage of audience expectations by constantly keeping viewers on their toes. The entire cast is terrific, but newcomer Taron Egerton is the true standout here as the street youth turned gentlemen spy. I’d argue the “Freebird” sequence and Bubsy Berkley head explosions alone are enough qualify Kingsman as one of the best moviegoing experiences of 2015 thus far, but the fact that the rest of the film is just as great is icing on the cake. – Adam Chitwood

Heaven Knows What

Ben and Joshua Safdie have proven to be fanatical documenters of the more alien crevices of New York City, whether following the exploits of the world’s worst father in Daddy Longlegs or catching up with a failed would-be basketball star in Lenny Cooke. For Heaven Knows What, they dive headfirst into the workaday lives of dedicated heroin addicts, who scrounge hard to keep a good constant high and keep away from the shelters or, God forbid, the police station. Arielle Holmes co-wrote the script with regular Safdie collaborator Ronald Bronstein and gives a stirringly effective lead performance as Harley, a young addict stuck between a polite, easy source, Mike (Buddy Duress), and Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones), the monstrous, manipulative death-metal obsessive who demands Harley kills herself over her love for him. Her dependency on the drugs mirrors her powerless reliance on the city and Ilya, and the film provides a shattering reckoning for such unshakeable addictions. – Chris Cabin

Chappie

I might be in the minority on this one, but I fell hard for Chappie in March. Per usual, Neill Blomkamp delivers a curious futuristic scenario loaded with timely concerns and intriguing tech and characters, but what makes this movie strike a particularly strong chord is the incredible amount of humanity he manages to pack into his self-aware robot. Chappie (Sharlto Copley) strikes an instant connection through his childlike wonder, kindness and innocence, ensuring that everything he goes through is especially meaningful. Pair that strong emotional core with Blomkamp’s signature gritty-yet vibrant-visuals and a handful of stellar music cues from Die Antwoord and you end up with a unique feature loaded with heart, energy and a ton of entertainment value. – Perri Nemiroff

'71

Sometime in the hopefully-not-too-distant-future when Yann Demange is directing wildly successful, box office smash hits, we’ll point back to ‘71 to show he’s been great since the start. Demange’s astoundingly confident and exhilarating feature directing debut is a masterful work of historical drama. The story of a British soldier (played by the excellent Jack O’Connell) stuck in hostile territory in 1971 North Ireland is intense, insightful, and constantly surprising. Hopefully we won’t have too wait too long for Demange’s follow-up. – Matt Goldberg