What we consider to be the best of this year represents a combination of the movies that had the greatest emotional impact on us, matched with movies that felt innovative or groundbreaking. Here are the films Jasper considers to be this year’s best:

What we consider to be the best of this year represents a combination of the movies that had the greatest emotional impact on us, matched with movies that felt innovative or groundbreaking. Here are the films Ryan considers to be this year’s best:

"Perhaps more than any other year, 2015 represents the industry facing growing pains with fewer people going to theaters yet more movies being created than ever before. Because I saw more movies this year than I have in the past, this list represents a more unusual curation of cinema".
What we consider to be the best of this year represents a combination of the movies that had the greatest emotional impact on us, matched with movies that felt innovative or groundbreaking. Here are the films Nelson considers to be this year’s best:

As each fall season brings the year’s Academy Award-vying Oscar hopeful films, so to brings AFI FEST 2015 presented by Audi, which CINEMACY attended this former weekend. Held in the heart of Hollywood at (formerly Grauman’s) TCL Chinese Theatre, the film festival features an impressive range of diverse films and special events, where new American Independent films play alongside documentaries from the Netherlands and feature-length narratives from China, and beyond. The festival’s opening night film this past Thursday was the highly anticipated drama 'By The Sea', directed by Angelina Jolie who also co-stars alongside her husband, Brad Pitt. READ MORE...

'Grandma', a Sundance alum that opens on August 21st, is the story of a teenager who goes to her eccentric grandmother (played by Lily Tomlin) for money to get an abortion. Her grandma is also broke, so they endeavor to collect the money they need by the end of the day. You can read my review here and I highly suggest skipping the trailer, which unfortunately gives away some great moments better experienced in context. This piece is not a review: instead it’s a look at why this feels like a pivotal contribution to the pregnancy subgenre. READ MORE...

For years, I passively took the old adage that Jaws represented the birth of the modern blockbuster at face value, never considering that the film’s impact was anything beyond financial. Due to its massive box office success, Hollywood took note and launched us into an enduring era of bloated budgets and event pictures that continues stronger than ever today. Re-watching the film again for its recent 40-year anniversary, I was more interested to note how the perfectly realized storytelling elements of Jaws have become the template for modern big-budget filmmaking. READ MORE...

74 feature films. 60 short films. 50+ new media works from 35 countries. This year's Los Angeles Film Festival is about to get real. Monday's pre-festival screening of Dope kicked off the Los Angeles Film Festival, setting the bar high for the rest of the week. The Rick Famuyiwa-directed, Shameik Moore-starring high school comedy not only continues to draw praise from the critics- it premiered at Sundance- but it also drew a large number of celebrity attendees. And despite what you've read on gossip sites, it was not all about Kylie Jenner. READ MORE...