Sam Woolf’s Top 10 Films Of 2015

1) The Duke Of Burgundy

I prefer to think it an indication of how enchanting The Duke of Burgundy is, and not an indictment of 2015’s film slate, that the best movie I watched this year is still the one I first saw at a festival 15 months ago.

Maybe it was unfair to the rest of this year’s crop for a picture to always loom in the back of my mind the way this one did, the standard against which all other films were inevitably measured. Could any other 2015 offering ensnare you with opulent eccentricities and psychosexual intrigue as completely as writer/director Peter Strickland’s third feature? Could it toy with your perception of a relationship as nimbly as Evelyn and Cynthia’s tantalizingly affected, but resonantly affecting love affair did? And was it anywhere near as singular of vision, sensuously conceived, or deviously funny as The Duke of Burgundy?

The more the answer came back “no,” the clearer it became that The Duke of Burgundy was a rare specimen, one worth studying and adoring for years to come.