Wow, and I thought that 2014 had been pretty great. It's been another fantastic year for cinema in 2015, a fairly consistent quality (bar a few stinkers) interrupted by soaring highs at frequent intervals, from films that have showcased new talent in-front and behind the camera to films that prove there is still life in long-running or dormant franchises. Box office be damned, we're talking pure quality here, and it's worth being able to know which films you should have seen in 2015.
As such, below is a list of films that I would consider the "Must See" films released in the UK in 2015. These aren't necessarily the best films of the year, the most artistic or the most "worthy" - these are just great films that I can see having a certain amount of longevity to them, films that impress in a variety of different ways by doing something or multiple things so well that it would a crying shame to have missed out on them.
Bearing in mind that I haven't seen every film released this year, in release date order...
Whiplash
A film about both the risks and rewards of extreme ambition, Whiplash follows aspiring jazz drummer Andrew Neiman as he is tutored by esteemed conductor Terence Fletcher at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory. With brilliant performances from both Miles Teller and J K Simmons, a great jazz soundtrack and a director who manages to make an extended drum solo one of the most captivating sequences of 2015, Whiplash was an early addition to this list and has firmly remained here ever since.
You can read my full review of Whiplash here.
Part Gothic romance, part supernatural horror and part Downton Abbey-esque period drama, Crimson Peak isn't an easy film to classify beyond "it's a Guillermo Del Toro film". Set around the turn of the 20th century, we follow Edith Cushing, aspiring writer and daughter of a wealthy American businessman as she is introduced to and falls in love with Sir Thomas Sharpe, an English Baronet who is desperately in need of funding to better extract the valuable red clay that resides under his family home, the dilapidated Allerdale Hall. The two of them are soon married, and Edith accompanies her husband back to England with his sister, Lucille Sharpe, to live in Allerdale Hall.
