Nathan Weinbender: Top 10 movies of 2015

There’s a common misconception that film critics don’t like anything designed for mainstream consumption, that the only movies critics will recommend are the obscure, obtuse titles nobody but film critics would ever see. But of the 160 or so new releases I sat through this year, it certainly seemed like I enjoyed most of them.

For every box office triumph that left me cold (looking at you, “Jurassic World” and “Spectre”), there were plenty of others that I liked unreservedly –“Furious 7,” “The Martian,” “Straight Outta Compton,” “Creed,” the latest entries in the “Mission: Impossible” and “Star Wars” series. I even kind of liked “Pitch Perfect 2.” Maybe I was just in a good mood.

Although I’ve yet to see a handful of anticipated films (“The Revenant,” “Anomalisa,” “The Danish Girl”), I’ve managed to piece together a list of the year’s movies that moved and absorbed me the most. I hope it appeases the multiplex crowd as well as the art house crowd.

1. “Mad Max: Fury Road” – I think the word “visionary” gets tossed around a bit too indiscriminately, but there’s no better adjective to describe “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Director George Miller makes a triumphant return to the vivid post-apocalyptic universe he introduced in 1979’s “Mad Max,” and it’s not only the best entry in his influential series but the finest mainstream action film in years. Tom Hardy has effectively taken over the role made famous by Mel Gibson, but it’s Charlize Theron, playing one-armed vigilante Imperator Furiosa, who confidently emerges as the true hero of the film. “Fury Road” is feverish, operatic, dementedly inspired and relentlessly entertaining, the kind of movie that has you leaning forward in your seat, eager to see what lunatic invention it’s going to throw at you next. It’d be easy to place a more “important” movie at the top of my list, but no other movie this year provided me the same sense of cinematic euphoria.

2. “Phoenix” – In post-WWII Berlin, Nelly, a former lounge singer and concentration camp survivor, emerges from a hospital following facial reconstructive surgery. She learns her estranged husband, a nightclub musician named Johnny, betrayed her to the Nazis, and she goes to confront him. But Johnny, under the assumption that Nelly is dead, doesn’t recognize her, and Nelly soon finds herself roped into a scheme in which she’s impersonating herself to collect her own inheritance on Johnny’s behalf. That might sound like a pulpy, potentially lurid premise, but “Phoenix” turns out to be a devastating, beautiful and impeccably crafted melodrama. And if another movie this year boasted a better, more emotionally gratifying final scene, I didn’t see it.

3. “Carol” – Like his Douglas Sirk pastiche “Far from Heaven,” Todd Haynes’ delicate, sumptuously photographed love story “Carol” ponders the sexual mores of the 1950s through the prism of a then-scandalous relationship. Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, the film lovingly details the romance that blooms immediately and intensely between two women – one a wealthy housewife in her 40s (Cate Blanchett), the other a wide-eyed young woman (Rooney Mara) working behind the counter in a department store. It’s a movie about images, memories and furtive glances, one that, like its title character, maintains a seductive pull while explicitly saying very little.

4. “About Elly” – One of the year’s most potent, enthralling releases was actually shot in 2008: It’s another masterpiece from the great Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, which was made before his Oscar-winning breakthrough “A Separation” (2011) but played for the first time in most American markets this year. In a plot reminiscent of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Avventura,” a group of friends tries to piece together the sudden disappearance of a young woman they’ve invited along on their seaside vacation; allegiances shift, blame is assigned and then retracted, relationships fracture and psychological violence erupts. It’s beautifully written and constructed, a portrait of guilt, trust and forgiveness that functions as a locked-room mystery and as an examination of class struggles in modern day Iran.

5. “Inside Out” – Pixar’s best films seamlessly blend high concept storytelling with as much humor as melancholy, and “Inside Out” is a masterful example of why so many of the studio’s releases are cherished. Directed by Pete Docter (“Monsters, Inc.,” “Up”), the film is set mostly inside the brain of an 11-year-old girl, where her personified feelings (Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust) work to keep her content in the face of turmoil. Although it adheres to the traditional hero’s journey plot that Pixar has utilized many times before, it’s a surprisingly sophisticated, consistently hilarious story about the importance of emotion and the mysteries of growing up.

6. “Spotlight” – Though it doesn’t employ traditional dramatic fireworks or all that much visual flair, Tom McCarthy’s journalistic procedural is as propulsive as it is absorbing. It’s primarily an exhaustive dramatization of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, but it’s about a lot more – about the ethics of journalism, the status of print media at the birth of the Internet and, perhaps most potently, a community harboring a horrible secret. It’s the rare journalism film that earns comparisons to “All the President’s Men.”

7. “Ex Machina” – First-time director Alex Garland has engineered a lean, relentless piece of science fiction, a chamber play involving an eccentric tech millionaire (Oscar Isaac), a wet-behind-the-ears coder (Domhnall Gleeson) and an alluring robot (Alicia Vikander in a breakout role) locked inside a secluded, ultra-modern home. The characters are never quite sure who they can trust, and neither are we: Garland’s engrossing, tightly controlled screenplay is always playing a game of bait and switch with our loyalties and emotions, as the plot develops logically and inexorably into violence.

8. “The Look of Silence” – A companion film to the remarkable “The Act of Killing,” Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary peers deeper into the horrifying recent history of genocide in Indonesia. This sequel is far more intimate than the lavish portrait of violence that preceded it, soberly observing as an Indonesian optometrist confronts some of the men who orchestrated the brutal murder of his brother 50 years ago. “The Act of Killing” was a grandiose portrait of evil; “The Look of Silence” is a disquieting howl of grief.

9. “Room” – This adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s bestselling novel neatly separates itself into halves: The first centers on a woman (Brie Larson) and her young son (Jacob Tremblay), who have been held prisoner in a soundproof tool shed for years; the second involves their re-acclimation into the real world after an opportunity for escape presents itself. “Room” is a moving portrait of trauma and recovery, anchored by a pair of striking and authentic performances from Larson and Tremblay.

10. “Brooklyn” – There are a number of excellent movies I could have included here (consider the titles on the “honorable mentions” list in a tie for 11th place), but I fell pretty hard for John Crowley’s “Brooklyn.” Like “Carol,” the film is a swooning romance set in 1950s New York, as a young Irish immigrant (the brilliant Saoirse Ronan) finds herself stuck between two countries and two men. It’s the kind of unabashedly sentimental, effortlessly charming movie Hollywood doesn’t really make anymore.

Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order): “The Big Short,” “Bridge of Spies,” “Creed,” “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “The End of the Tour,” “It Follows,” “The Martian,” “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” “Queen of Earth,” “Sicario,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Tangerine,” “The Tribe,” “White God.”