From the early, eerie, unquestionably haunting images of a young nun traipsing through a barren, snow-covered Polish countryside going who knows where, to a moment of communal redemption hidden under the shroud of unthinkable secrecy and unimaginable sacrifice, The Innocents is a consistent triumph, achieving an overwhelming aura of brilliance that it manages to sustain first second to last.

The film’s 92 minutes pass by so quickly it’s all over almost as soon as it begins, everything building to a smashing conclusion that had me wanting to leap from my seat and give Stillman, his production team and his entire cast one long, rousing, vigorous cheer. Love & Friendship is magnificent, and anyone saying otherwise is in my eyes one gouty attack away from objectionable ignominy.

Here is all you need to know about 10 Cloverfield Lane: It’s awesome.

Knight of Cups is writer/director Terrence Malick at his most lyrically esoteric. If his last film, the atmospheric, if claustrophobically nondescript saga of love and woe To the Wonder was the acclaimed filmmaker’s attempt to pick away at cinematic convention, it is with this one that he abandons traditional narrative constructs entirely.

While this story is smothered in tragedy, there is something poignant and cathartic about what Saul is attempting to achieve, all of it speaking to a form of spirituality and faith that crosses religious barriers to become something universal and timeless.

[45 Years] is a tale with no heroes, no villains, just one filled with life, loss, understanding and, most of all, love, Kate and Geoff’s journey towards their anniversary party as universal and as human as any that has ever graced the screen.

High on the list of words I never thought I would write in 2015? How about something along the lines of proclaiming a sequel/spinoff to 1976 Academy Award-winner Rocky, a movie that’s already had five proper sequels, one of the year’s best motion pictures?

McCarthy makes this investigation personal, universal, its intimate vivisection of this complex, destructively abhorrent tale impossible to turn away from. But the real glory is how the filmmaker shapes things into a chronicle of inspiration and hope, Spotlight giving center stage to unsung warriors for truth who understood telling the story right, without embellishment, without melodramatic editorial excess, was the greatest victory of them all.

The movie is a trick, of that there is no doubt, Schipper’s storytelling precision coupled with cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen’s detailed handheld camerawork beyond impressive. But if it were only this trick, only a visual device utilized to get curious cinemagoers inside the theatre, then the movie would be good, maybe a bit better than that, but not extraordinary, and that is exactly what Victoria (2015) is.