Armond White's Eleventh Annual Better Than List 2015

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January 8, 2016
The year’s best films versus the overrated worst

In 2015 more movies were released than ever (an average of a dozen a week). And while many of them offended one’s sense of truth, beauty, and politics, mainstream media (both conservative and liberal) promoted them nonetheless — as if only newness mattered, and not quality.

Commerce smothered art in 2015, disguised as movie love. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t still excellent, satisfying films — the best, Queen and Country, released in early January by British master filmmaker John Boorman, remained unsurpassed. You could still have a good time going to movies in 2015, but it required discernment, personal taste, and political rigor. Thus, this year’s Better-Than List reminds filmgoers that in cinema as in politics, quality and integrity are more important than popularity. It’s never too late to vote for the better movies.

Armond White, a film critic, writes about movies for National Review Online and received the American Book Award’s Anti-Censorship prize. He is the author of The Resistance: Ten Years of Pop Culture That Shook the World and the forthcoming What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about Movies

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/author/armond-white