I know it is very fashionable to complain that cinema is not what it used to be – that it is all formulated franchises and dreary blockbusters. Actually, back in July, Hollywood star Dustin Hoffman complained cinema was at all-time low, and at its worst in all the 50 years he had worked in the industry.
Sorry to disagree, Hoffman, but if you think modern cinema has nothing of interest to offer, you are looking in all the wrong places. The films that played in UK cinemas in 2015 ranged from black and white to colour, from Persian to French, from action-adventure to art-house, drama to documentary. Frankly, it is hard to remember a more diverse year.
As always, the year kicked off with award season and, rather than with one movie running away with all the gongs, they were scattered among several films. Here in the UK, the BAFTA for best film went to Richard Linklater's Boyhood, an astounding movie filmed over 12 years in which we watch Mason literally grow up in front of our eyes. In America, Boyhood was beaten at the Oscars by Birdman, in which Michael Keaton plays Riggan in super-hero proportions.
Other 2015 winners included Eddie Redmayne, who won an Oscar and BAFTA for his starring role as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Redmayne is in the running for awards again next year for his role in The Dutch Girl, in which he plays one of the earliest recipients of gender reassignment surgery. However, when it comes to the Best Actor category all eyes are on Leo DiCaprio, who was famously snubbed when Titanic matched Ben Hur's 11 Oscar wins, but he wasn't even nominated. However, he is now the front-runner for his beady role in The Revenant, a tough drama from Birdman's director Alejandro González Iñárritu, that opens in UK cinemas in January.
For me the most hotly contested category at the Oscars was Best Animated Feature. The award went to Big Hero 6, but the others in this category were among two of my favourite films to be released the UK cinemas. From Japan's Studio Ghibli, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, a sublime version of the 10th-century folk story, told in soft-water hues. You can almost feel the brush strokes on the fibre paper, as the proudly hand-drawn story unfolds.
Also in contention for the Oscar was Tom Moore's Song of the Sea, a breathtaking animation from the director of The Secret of Kells. Rooted in folklore, this was a ravishing story of giants and fairies, which blended memorising visuals with music to touch the heart of those young and old alike. It opened in July and provided yet further evidence we are in golden age of animation.
Despite the fact no animation film has won the Academy Award for Best Picture, animation continues to be most the exciting and adventurous type of cinema, consistently pushing the boundaries of the art form, with storytelling values new and old.
Indeed, my very favourite film of the year is an animation, which I have watched over and over and never fails to bring laughter and tears – Pixar's brilliant Inside Out. Taking place nearly entirely in the head of its young protagonist, Inside Out is like a supercharged version of the comic strip The Numbskulls, but with emotional and psychological insight that turns into something entirely profound.
When it came to blockbusters, 2015 saw Ridley Scott back on the top of his game with The Martian, an adaption of Andy Weir's book about an astronaut stranded on the Red Planet trying to stay alive using his supersonic skills. Matt Damon was terrific in the title role, providing laughter and empathy in equal measures.
Elsewhere, we had the usual comic strip-inspired movies, from the money-spinning Avengers: Age of Ultron, which opened here in April, to the summer flop revival of the Fantastic Four, which became disowned by its director. Then there was Ant-Man, which many believe would have been a much better film if the original director, Edgar Wright, had not been replaced by Peyton Reed.
On the plus side, the most talked-about action fantasy of the year was something much more remarkable – Mad Max: Fury Road. It may technically be a revival or reboot, but there is something very modern and original about George Miller's dystopian movie, which showed Tom Hardy's character upstaged at nearly every turn by Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa.
There were several films released in the UK 2015 that suggest cinemas well-established gender bar may be starting to crack. The theme of this year's London Film Festival, which opened with The Suffragettes, examined women's role in film. There is no doubt film has suffered a male bias –it took the Oscars eight decades for a women to take the top prize – so take heart that many of this year's best films have been directed by women. One of my favourite films of the year was The Fallen, an electrifying British tale written and directed by Carole Morley. From France came Céline Sciamma's Girlhood, a vibrant and colourful tale of girls in the hood, which redefined both the look and gender of Parisian streetwise cinema. Most unexpected of all, from Iran via America, came A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, a remarkable, boundary-crossing work from writer and director Ana Lily Amirpou, which was shot in black and white in America with a Persian-speaking cast, and was described by its creator as "the first Iranian vampire Western".
It is also worth mentioning one of the most commercially successful films was written and directed by women. Fifty Shades of Grey may not have won much praise among the critics, but this E.L. James adaptation was written by Kelly Marcel and directed by Sam Taylor Johnson, who sadly will not be returning for the sequels. It may not be a good film, but it did prove a film can be a success without being aimed primarily at teenage boys. More importantly, of the films released in the UK in 2015 many of the best performances were by women. In recent months we have seen Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett do career-defining work in Todd Haynes' The Carol. Back in February, Julian Moore picked up a Best Actress BAFTA and an Oscar for a woman with early on-set Alzheimer's in Still Alice.
Then, of course, Saoirse Ronan dominated the screen in Brooklyn, as a woman torn between her past in Ireland and her future in America. As for Charlotte Rampling, she has been hailed for what has been called a career-best performance in 45 Years, a film about a marriage threatened by ghosts of the past. From Italy we had Mia Madre, in my mind Margherita Buy's most rewarding film to date, carried shoulder-high by her performance of a filmmaker trying to make a political drama while facing up to the loss of her mother. And let's not forget Emily Blunt, who took the leading role in pulse-racing Denis Villeneuve's Sicario, about an FBI agent unwittingly brought into a cross-border conflict with Mexican cartels.
While Sicario was a work of fiction, Matthew Heineman's documentary Cartel Land was an even more dramatic account of the war on drugs, with its up-close-and-personal portrait of vigilante groups of both sides of the American/Mexican border. Produced by Kathryn Bigelow, Cartel Land was one of the highlights of exceptional year of documentary filmmaking.
This was also the year of Asif Kapadia's Amy, an intimate and personal documentary of singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse. It has became the most successful home-grown documentary in UK cinemas. Personally, my favourite documentary of the year was Jeanie Finlay's Orion, The Man Who Would Be King, an unexpectedly moving account of Elvis sound-a-like Jimmy Ellis. Julien Temple's terrific The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson, is a film with its subject facing his own mortality and the telling, intermittent prospect of death, which makes him feel more alive than ever. Despite a terminal diagnosis, he survives, apparently never having felt better since the days in Dr Feelgood.
Another screen hero who also refuses never to die is, of course, James Bond, in fine form this year in Spectre, with Sam Mendes directing Daniel Craig once again. Although it seems to have divided audiences, I must admit I am a fan. In terms of ticket sales it is always a sure-fire hit, but when it comes to expectations JJ Abrams' Star Wars had the edge – when tickets went on sale websites crashed due to the volume of traffic. The Force, it seems, was not with them.
All in all, 2015 has been pretty an impressive year for film, but remember that to get the best out of cinema you need to venture outside of the mainstream, to the art-house and independent cinemas, which are normally showing the most interesting films around. Meanwhile, streaming sites such as Netflix are making waves with films like The Beasts with No Nation, featuring another remarkable return by Idris Elba.
One final point: a few years ago industry insiders confidently said it was the death of celluloid, and that films would be shoot in digital only. Yet Star Wars director JJ Abrams is just one of a growing group who are committed to shooting on film. Todd Haynes' Carol, one of the best films of 2015. was shoot on Super 16, to give it the grain and texture it required. And if you want to see Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, you will have to track down a 70mm roadshow presentation, which is apparently the filmmaker's preferred method.
I will leave you with the trailer for Terence Davies's Sunset Song, an adaption of the classical novel by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon, shot on a mixture of digital and 65mm celluloid – the past and the future hand-in-hand.
Review of the Year in Film 2015 is on BBC News on Monday 21 December at 2:30pm and 8:30pm.
