A lot of 2015 films in this rankings update, as I spent the last month trying to catch up at the end of the year. There’s more to come over the next six weeks or so (or really, forever, it’s not exactly impossible to actually catch up, as there are a finite number of films that were released in 2015, but it’s functionally so), leading up to the Endys/Oscars at the end of February (Endy nominations will be out this week).

Since the last update I’ve written a few reviews: Creed, Spotlight, and Brooklyn, Macbeth, Sisters, Mojin: The Lost Legend, Concussion, and Mr. Six at Seattle Screen Scene; and John Woo’s The Crossing Parts 1 & 2 here at The End. We’ve done George Sanders Shows on Alexander, Nightmare Alley and Our 2015 Discoveries, The Force Awakens, Help!, A Pistol for Ringo and the Best of 1965, and Noroît and The Black Pirate.

I polled a bunch of local critics and programmers for the first annual Seattle Screen Scene Seattle Film Poll, listed the Best Older Movies I Saw in 2015, handed out the Endy Awards for 1965, and posted a Top 50 Films of 2015 (More or Less).

These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.

Grand Display of Brock’s Fireworks at Crystal Palace (George Albert Smith) – 1, 1904
The Black Pirate (Albert Parker) – 8, 1926
Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding) – 23, 1947
Help! (Richard Lester) – 23, 1965
A Pistol for Ringo (Duccio Tessari) – 26, 1965

Duelle (Jacques Rivette) – 5, 1976
Noroît (Jacques Rivette) – 8, 1976
Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand) – 11, 1983
Eddie Murphy: Delirious (Bruce Gowers) – 24, 1983
The Phantom Menace (George Lucas) – 51, 1999

Attack of the Clones (George Lucas) – 27, 2002
Alexander (Oliver Stone) – 11, 2004
Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas) – 7, 2005
Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell) – 75, 2012
Girlhood (Céline Sciamma) – 44, 2014

Arabian Nights (Miguel Gomes) – 4, 2015
Heart of a Dog (Laurie Anderson) – 9, 2015
Mistress America (Noah Baumbach) – 10, 2015
The Force Awakens (JJ Abrams) – 13, 2015
Baahubali: The Beginning (SS Rajamouli) – 14, 2015

Tangerine (Sean Baker) – 22, 2015
Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) – 24, 2015
The Hateful 8 (Quentin Tarantino) – 30, 2015
The Mend (John Magary) – 37, 2015
Experimenter (Michael Almereyda) – 49, 2015

Bone Tomahawk (S. Craig Zahler) – 52, 2015
Pitch Perfect 2 (Elizabeth Banks) – 56, 2015
Sisters (Justin Moore) – 59, 2015
Chi-Raq (Spike Lee) – 64, 2015
Macbeth (Justin Kurzel) – 67, 2015

The Revenant (Alejandro González Iñárritu) – 71, 2015
The Crossing Part 2 (John Woo) – 72, 2015
Far from the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg) – 74, 2015
Mr. Six (Guan Hu) – 75, 2015
Amy (Asif Kapadia) – 83, 2015

Wild Card (Simon West) – 89, 2015
Concussion (Peter Landesman) – 93, 2015
Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs) – 96, 2015
Mojin: The Lost Legend (Wu Ershan) – 100, 2015

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