Falling well behind Spotlight are the leaders of the second tier of voting, The Revenant and The Martian. They finished in fifth and sixth place, respectively, but neither one was ever a serious contender in the category. Still, we loved Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s follow-up to Birdman for its viciousness and verisimilitude. Meanwhile, if there were a category of Best Novel at The Calvins (and a few of our voters have begged for it), The Martian would have dominated a couple of years ago. As such, it’s no surprise that we loved the movie as well. Like The Big Short and Spotlight, it features a who’s who list of A-list Hollywood actors all dialing back their egos in order to work together on an amazing ensemble piece.

A robot and Steve Jobs finished in seventh and eighth place this year. The jokes pretty much write themselves. Our staff adored Ex Machina for its nihilism as well as its exploration of mankind’s recent attempts to play God through robotics. Ex Machina, like Primer before it, isn’t attempting to answer any big questions. It simply wants to raise them in hopes that somebody else will decipher the answers one day.

Steve Jobs is also a hard movie to love but for different reasons. The movie works due to the incongruity of the man himself. From nothing, he built Apple into a powerful corporation. Then, they fired him and when he returned, he came back half-evil genius and half-mean bastard. Somebody with that personality combo is just as likely to enslave humanity as they are to invent the iPhone. So count your blessings, folks. Anyway, we felt the same way about it as we did about previous category winner, The Social Network. The moral bankruptcy of the lead character only increased our engagement with the story.





Our final two selections this year are Bridge of Spies and Room. If you’re keeping score at home, this means BOP’s top ten includes all but one of the seven nominees for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards. Way to go, Oscar voters! You finally got it right! As for the film we left out, tough luck, Brooklyn. We still love BBC Films and Nick Hornby, we swear! Anyway, we already selected Mark Rylance as Best Supporting Actor and Brie Larson as Best Actress, so those were huge clues about how much we love each movie. Bridge of Spies is a wonderful throwback tale about espionage and hardliner negotiations during the Cold War, while Room includes one of the most harrowing escape attempt sequences since Clint Eastwood tried to get out of Alcatraz.

As always, Best Picture was extremely competitive at the bottom of the list. Roughly 60 films earned votes in the category. The titles that came closest to nomination include Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Carol, Straight Outta Compton, The Hateful Eight, It Follows, Brooklyn, and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Below, you can see the full list of our favorite 25 movies released during the last year.

Calvins Intro
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Album
Best Cast
Best Character
Best Director
Best Overlooked Film
Best Picture
Best Scene
Best Screenplay
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Best TV Show
Best Use of Music
Breakthrough Performance
Worst Performance
Worst Picture

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