Richard Brody’s roster of the 30 Best Films of 2015 is, of course, a partial joke. How else to describe a list that completely ignores The Revenant and Love & Mercy but includes Woody Allen‘s Irrational Man (a so-so film that was certainly thrown off balance if not poisoned by the sight of Joaquin Pheonix‘s enormous pot belly), Andrew Bujalski‘s mildly engaging-but-nothing-to-write-home-about Results and Angelina Jolie‘s By The Sea (which isn’t half bad in a certain light but which hardly belongs on anyone’s best-of-the-year list…c’mon), and which gives a last-place slot to the terminally awful Fifty Shades of Grey. I could assemble a list like this if I wanted to, just to fuck with people’s heads. Then again what can you expect from a guy who seems to genuinely believe that Alfred Hitchcock‘s Marnie is an under-appreciated masterpiece?

As I haven’t seen (and am in no hurry to see) Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, I have no comment about New Yorker columnist Richard Brody calling it his #1 film of 2015.