2015 Top 10

This year I set myself the task of seeing two films a day.

I accomplished that mission a couple of weeks back. We're into the bonus round now.

That has meant a lot of time on the couch (1,271 hours to be precise). Some nights after work I'd barrel through three films. Some weekends I'd pull a seven or eight film stretch.

Hard drive has been cleared. Directors have been focused on (I had a lot of Jarmans floating around at home). And the Netflix queue is more manageable. But there is always something else to watch and I really have to rein in my obsession.

Among the the 736 (and counting) films I've indulged in this year, 180 I've caught in cinemas, on general release, at previews and in Melbourne's ever expanding feast of film festivals. And the best of those have found their way onto this list via my head or my heart. Actually, to get here they've somehow found a way to make their way into both simultaneously, which is a difficult feat.

As always, this list has been compiled with flagrant disregard of release dates. If I've seen it this year, it was eligible. That means some films here you may have seen last year; some you may not be able to see till next year. Such are the vagaries of film distribution. Indulge me.

In a year where gender parity in the film industry has been front of mind, I'm pleased to announce that three of my top ten films have been directed by women. I know that's not much to bray about but it is something in world where Cannes can barely muster up two female director for its competition, even when they are putting their back into it. Interestingly, many of my other favourite films, though directed by men, directly engage with gender and gender equality. I noticed quite early on this year that it had become a bit of a critical preoccupation of mine. They are the films that have resonated most strongly.

There are quite a few other hummers though. Sitting just outside the top ten are the newest films from Pablo Larraín, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Jafar Panahi, Peter Greenaway and Paul Thomas Anderson. So we can say it was a good year for cinema.

Some other cinema experience highlights that should get a mention. Like that time that woman fainted in the cinema and was carted out three quarters of the way through Miroslav Slaboshpitsky's "visceral" boarding school drama The Tribe. Or that time that Gaspar Noé got super aroused by the possibilities of 3D (I'm a staunch defender of Love).

The biggest surprises? Ethan Hawke's soul nourishing documentary about Seymour Bernstein; MQFF's closing night comedy, I Feel Like Disco, which struck a very personal chord; and George Gittoes' meta-documentary Snow Monkey, which took The Act of Killing to the streets of Jalalabad.

Do you want dishonourable mentions? I don't like to put much effort into engaging with those films that disappoint. My least liked film of the year I disliked enough to only spare time for two sentences. I threw out a couple of paragraphs on Tangerine, which I didn't much care for, and somehow managed to collect a spray of Letterboxd commentary that exceeded the length of my initial post many times over.

And of course, I have to give a shout out to the middling spectacles delivered to us this year by Jurassic World, Spectre, Terminator Genisys and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. Fuck you all for shitting on my childhood. Thankfully, Star Wars is keeping the dream alive (and I might add that the Force finally awakened in my husband, thanks to the despecialised editions of the original trilogy - not something I was expecting this year).

Like I say, time (and motivation) has been in short supply this year, so the writing has suffered. Even checking these favourite films for pull quotes I'm struck by how difficult it is to find a snappy line in what I've served up this year. That said, I finally finished that director focus on Satyajit Ray (which I started in February of 2014) and I got back into the swing of those retros. I've covered off on the works of Derek Jarman as well as the back catalogues of Apicahatpong Weerasethakul and Claire Denis.

What I do have sitting in my draft folder is a collection of half-mused musings on some of my most personal films, which I've found it hard to put finger to keyboard for. On the upside, I've had the chance to see a lot of them on the big screen, some for the first time. I will get around to them very soon. Promise.

Anyway, enough with the excuses. Here's what floated my boat in 2015...

You can check out the full rankings on Letterboxd.

And you can check out previous years here: