With three months left to go in 2015, we have a new contender for the best movie of the year, and the name of that movie is Sicario. This movie is a fantastic ride that will keep you thoroughly engrossed and guessing throughout. Like many great movies over the last couple of years, the less you know about the movie going in, the more you will like this movie. For me, this has been the case recently with films like Ex-Machina, The Drop, The Gift, and Chef. All of these were surprises, and each is a movie that I plan on watching again in the future.
The same can be said about Sicario. Once you know how the movie ends, you’ll want to watch it again to try to see it through a new set of lenses. It’s intense. It’s filled with drama. It will leave you with your mouth hanging ajar. That is, if you let it. This is a movie that requires your attention. If you doze off for even a couple of minutes, you might miss something important. If you miss something important, you might feel lost. If you feel lost, you might get frustrated. But if you are willing to work as hard as the movie does, you’ll be rewarded with one of the most exciting, well-crafted, and original movies that you are likely to find this year (or any year, for that matter).
I know I am in a significant minority when I review this movie, and I know many will wonder what I’m talking about. Everest just wasn’t a very good movie. I realize that many have never seen a mountain climbing movie or, worse, have only the likes of Vertical Limit to compare it to. But before I get too far into my review of Everest, let me mention a few mountain climbing movies that I would watch a dozen times again before forcing myself to watch Everest. The most notable one to me is a recent one that most people have never heard of. Depending on who you ask, it’s the 2008 (or 2010) German release 
Black Mass? More like Black Mess. This movie wasn’t just a story most of us couldn’t care less about; it was boring. It reminded me of 
While I am not the biggest fan of foreign language films, I am the first to admit that when a foreign movie is excellent, you get to the point where you don’t even notice you are reading subtitles anymore. You become so gripped by the film that it’s not just a great foreign film you are watching… but rather a great film. However, on the flip side, when a foreign film is terrible, it tends to drag and drag and drag. Part of that reason is that you’ve tuned out the movie so much that you have no idea where you are in the film when you do glance back. As a result, it becomes a dreadful movie experience. Almost all the foreign films I watch are recommended to me. Rarely will I be perusing Netflix, seeing a movie, and adding it to my queue because it’s a “foreign movie.” I am far more likely to skip a film with subtitles than to watch it. As a result, I rarely find a foreign film to be mediocre. I usually end up either liking the movie a ton or feeling like I just wasted two hours of my life. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, and that is precisely what Two Days, One Night is. It is a mediocre movie in every sense. It had nothing to do with it being a foreign film. Had it not had subtitles, it would have been equally mediocre.
Straight outta Compton and straight into the Oscar buzz. It’s early, and this movie will be forgotten by Halloween (just like most of the great films released in the first eight or nine months of each year). Still, for now, this movie is hot with audiences (over $100 million grossed in its first eight days) and critics (89% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), like just about any other movie of the year. As I will explain in my review below, Straight Outta Compton didn’t do anything (besides the music itself) that was amazing on its own, but it did do just about everything well. I wouldn’t call it the surprise hit of the year, as many other movies flew further under the radar (