20 Off My Head: Siri Says 2015

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Well I knew this was going to happen eventually, and we're gosh-darn lucky that Siri picked a day where I was in the mood for it - today I asked Siri to choose a number between 1 and 100, as I do (nearly) every Tuesday, and the little lady who lives inside my phone told me back, "15." And since I don't know squat about the movies of 1915 we are forced to tackle The Movies of 2015 instead.

We have let our annual awards, The Golden Trousers (aka The Pantys) fall into disarray over the past couple of years - they hit their height in 2012 when I did nearly 70 posts (!!!) over the span of a week but that apex was too too high; it was like climbing Everest by starting at the bottom and just running straight up. I fell, oh how I fell, after that. It hurt my brain to even think about doing them again. Oh sure, you're saying, couldn't you have just lightened the load? Well I did, Mr. Sassypants - I did a much lighter list for 2013. (I haven't done one since, though.)

And you'll see that 2013 list didn't post until well into March anyway - I was also starting to be of the mind that we need to give a year some room to breathe before we go naming its best. Oh it's fine if somebody feels the need to write up the best on January 1st, I will read it every darn time. I just don't think I can do it myself anymore.

So this is actually sort of perfect. Here we are a full 19 months away from 2015... I think I know how I feel about 2015's movies now? But with this comes a couple caveats.

One, this list is obviously different than it would've been on January 1, 2016. Two, I haven't seen some of these movies since I saw them in 2015, so my memory might be vague here and there. And three, I relied entirely on the Wikipedia page for the movies that were released in 2015 - there's a good chance I saw some movies that year that Wikipedia's not mentioning (at a film festival or something)... but if I start fidgeting with specifics we'll never get this done. 

So we're just doing it. And unlike the usual 

"Siri Says" list, we're ranking them! I give you...

My 20 Favorite Movies of 2015

20. Sicario

(dir. Denis Villeneuve)

19. Mississippi Grind

(dir. Boden & Fleck)

18. Mustang

(dir. Deniz Gamze Ergüven) 

17. Krampus

(dir. Michael Dougherty) 

16. Mistress America

(dir. Noah Baumbach) 

15. Son of Saul

(dir. László Nemes) 

14. Spy

(dir. Paul Feig) 

13. Room

(dir. Lenny Abrahamson) 

12. Far From the Madding Crowd

(dir. Thomas Vinterberg) 

11. Inside Out

(dir. Pete Docter) 

10. Tangerine

(dir. Sean Baker) 

9. Steve Jobs

(dir. Danny Boyle) 

8. Crimson Peak

(dir. Guillermo Del Toro) 

7. Embrace of the Serpent

(dir. Ciro Guerro) 

6. The Diary of a Teenage Girl

(dir. Marielle Heller)

And the Top 5 of 2015...

5. Ex Machina

(dir. Alex Garland) 

4. Max Max Fury Road

(dir. George Miller) 

3. Anomalisa

(dir. Charlie Kaufman) 

2. Carol

(dir. Todd Haynes) 

1. The Lobster

(dir. Yorgos Lanthimos) 

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Runners-up: 45 Years (dir. Andrew Haigh), The Hateful Eight (dir. Tarantino), Joy (dir. David O. Russell), Macbeth (dir. Kurtzel), Slow West (dir. John Maclean), Youth (dir. Sorrentino), Magic Mike XXL (dir. Gregory Jacobs), Beasts of No Nation (dir. Cary Fukunaga), The Club (dir. larrain), The Final Girls (dir. Todd Strauss-Schulson)

What are your favorite movies of 2015?

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