20 Best Films Of 2015

12. The Theory Of Everything

While the movies that felt like Oscar bait from this awards season have turned out to be just that (The Danish Girl, Truth, although Suffragette at least had some edge to it), last year (in a release that hit in the UK in 2015) gave us something utterly unthinkable - a deeply affecting prestige picture built about a famous Brit that didn't let awe of the subject get in the way of telling a great story. The Theory Of Everything was the Steven Hawking biopic, and thus expectations hung in a very "Oh, great..." part of the spectrum. Thankfully, James Marsh didn't just rest on showing the debilitating disease or a marriage ripped apart by stress - he used this as a jumping off point to present a touching portrait of love (the everything of the title) that didn't flinch in its complications. We see the characters, neither of whom are bad people, torn apart by powers beyond their control without ever losing the ability to care for the other. It's a tricky thing to convey, but the filmmaker did it brilliantly, even brining in some very specific filmmaking tricks that could only work when looking at this great man. Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones were on equally top form; Redmayne may have won the Oscar, likely due to the physical edge to his performance, but Jones was just as apt in her tortured internal portrayal of love. It'll be interesting to see them go up against each other in the Winter 2016 spin-off/prequel box office battle - Redmayne in Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, Jones in Star Wars: Rogue One.