All of the Movies I Saw in 2015, Ranked
This is not a “best-of” list. It’s an “all-of” list.
I see a lot of movies, and am the rare millennial who seems to still enjoy going to the movie theater. Admittedly, I’m spoiled by living near a multiplex with leather recliners in all the theaters… but still! Going out to movies is underrated.
Here’s what I was able to catch in theaters this year, and how it stacks up to the competition. I explain my methodology at the bottom.
1) Spotlight
2) Inside Out
3) Whiplash
4) Ex Machina
5) Love & Mercy
6) The End of the Tour
7) Birdman
8) Star Wars: The Force Awakens
9) Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation
10) Selma
11) The Martian
12) Creed
13) What We Do in the Shadows
14) Brooklyn
15) Red Army
16) The Theory of Everything
17) Sicario
18) Interstellar
19) The Imitation Game
20) Spectre
21) Trainwreck
22) Mad Max: Fury Road
23) The Man From UNCLE
24) Meru
25) The Hateful Eight
26) It Follows
27) Bridge of Spies
28) Avengers: Age of Ultron
29) Jurassic World
30) The Night Before
31) Into the Woods
32) Ant-Man
33) Big Hero 6
34) Steve Jobs
35) Chappie
36) American Sniper
37) The Good Dinosaur
38) Tomorrowland
39) Unfriended
40) Leviathan
41) Crimson Peak
42) Kingsman: The Secret Service
43) Entourage
Methodology
To steal a phrase from the Mythbusters, “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” I wasn’t satisfied with the idea of a normal top-10 (or top-whatever) list because it felt too ordinary and unscientific.
So, I created a Swiss tournament bracket using Challonge and plugged all 43 movies in as “participants” in the tournament. Then, after randomizing the seeds, I pitted those 43 movies against each other in 29 rounds of 1v1 comparisons. I didn’t have to evaluate a movie’s holistic merits — I just had to make several hundred gut checks about whether one movie was better than the other, and the automated bracket did the rest.
In each matchup, a win counted for 2 points. In a tie, each movie got 1 point.
Here’s what the final bracket looked like in Challonge:
I was pleasantly surprised with how some of the rankings turned out. Left to my own devices, I likely would have ranked “Spectre,” “Avengers” and especially “Star Wars” higher out of a sense of nostalgic obligation. But reduced to a simple win-loss ratio, it’s easier to see what I liked more.
There are several movies that weren’t eligible for this tournament because, well, I haven’t seen them yet. So “Revenant,” “The Big Short” and “Room,” among many others, will have to wait until next year’s list. Unlike The Academy, I don’t wave in films that only opened in two theaters in New York and L.A.
And I decided to cut out movies I saw on DVD/Blu-Ray/Netflix/etc. because damn it, wasn’t this complex enough already? Gotta draw a line somewhere.
I hope you’ve found this interesting, especially if you know me and are one of the people who asks me for movie recommendations. In closing, I’d just like to say: “Kingsman” and “Entourage” really, really, sucked.
Thank you, and happy new year.
