12 Surprisingly Good Movies From 2015 (So Far)

7. The Age Of Adaline

What Everyone Expected: From the way it was marketed, this one was clearly aiming to capture a large share of the Nicholas Sparks crowd, and so why would anyone expect anymore than a movie of similarly shoddy quality? It was sold as schmaltzy, overly sentimental tragedy porn and not a whole lot else. What It Was: A moving, well-made and solidly acted romantic drama that, while asking audiences to accept a flagrantly ridiculous premise, actually works surprisingly well if you're able to follow the filmmakers down that crazy rabbit hole. The real surprise here is Blake Lively, who up to this point hasn't really given a single stand-out performance in her entire career, but commands the screen throughout as the paranoid protagonist who cannot age. It is, in fairness, a little bit too long and there's nowhere near enough Harrison Ford (but he's great when he does show up later in the movie), but it deserves better than to be lumped in with all those Sparks adaptations, because it actually boasts genuine, believable emotion throughout.