Because I’m not very smart, the end of the year finds me scrambling not only to catch up with the deluge of high quality late 2015 releases, but also a whole slew of films from 1965, in preparation for our annual end of the year episode of The George Sanders Show. With all these movies to watch (and they pile up faster than I can watch them), and a couple of as yet unpublished projects, there hasn’t been much time for writing actual movie reviews. I do have a few over at Seattle Screen Scene: Takashi Miike’s Yakuza Apocalypse, Robert and Monica Flaherty’s Moana with Sound, and Nelson George’s A Ballerina’s Tale, along with George Sanders Shows on Major Dundee and The Heroes of Telemark and Star Wars and Turkish Star Wars, along with a handful of capsule reviews linked in the list below.

This is of course the beginning of award season (and a reminder that when it comes to this time of year, be careful not to fall prey to the Intended Ignorance of the awards bloggers). The Endy Award Nominees for 2015 will be announced at the same time as the nominees for the Academy Awards, and I’ll be live-tweeting the winners during the Oscar telecast as I did last year. At the end of this month I’ll have a few year-in-review posts here: a list of my Top Film Discoveries (older movies I saw for the first time) of 2015, a list of my Top Films of 2015 by New York-release date reckoning, along with a list of the Top Films of 2015 that haven’t been released yet, according to that system. Depending on how much I’m able to see between now and the end of the year, I may have an actual Best of 2015 list as well. Or I may save that for Oscar week (when we’ll have our 2015 episode of George Sanders as well). Of course, all lists and awards here at The End are subject to change, because I’m never finished watching movies.

These are the movies I’ve watched and rewatched over the past few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings. Links are to capsule reviews over at letterboxd.

A Girl in Every Port (Howard Hawks) – 12, 1928
A Day in the Country (Jean Renoir) – 4, 1936
French Cancan (Jean Renoir) – 5, 1954
Hatari! (Howard Hawks) – 2, 1962
Tokyo Olympiad (Kon Ichikawa) – 4, 1965

Major Dundee (Sam Peckinpah) – 7, 1965
For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone) – 9, 1965
Not Reconciled (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet) – 15, 1965
Samurai Assassin (Kihachi Okamoto) – 16, 1965
Tattooed Life (Seijun Suzuki) – 18, 1965
The Heroes of Telemark (Anthony Mann) – 35, 1965

Star Wars (George Lucas) – 2, 1977
Moana with Sound (Robert & Monica Flaherty) – 16, 1980
The Man Who Saves the World (Çetin İnanç) – 45, 1982
Rocky V (John G. Avildsen) – 58, 1990
Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) – 36, 2006

Here’s to the Future! (Gina Teliroli) – 29, 2014
Carol (Todd Haynes) – 6, 2015
Spotlight (Tom McCarthy) – 12, 2015
In Jackson Heights (Frederick Wiseman) – 13, 2015
Creed (Ryan Cooler) – 19, 2015
Hitchcock/Truffaut (Kent Jones) – 26, 2015

By the Sea (Angelina Jolie-Pitt) – 47, 2015
Brooklyn (John Crowley) – 50, 2015
Ex Machina (Alex Garland) – 54, 2015
Aloha (Cameron Crowe) – 55, 2015
The Peanuts Movie (Steve Martino) – 57, 2015
Judy Judy Judy (C. Mason Wells) – 60, 2015