With our mid-year top 10s rolling on, below you’ll find Ernie Trinidad‘s picks for the best of the year so far. Unsurprisingly, Mad Max: Fury Road takes the No. 1 spot, a film that I imagine will be landing on the top of many year-end lists and deservedly so.
Mad Max: Fury Road – This unexpected masterpiece delivers the goods, and director George Miller has schooled modern-day filmmakers on just how to film a kinetic and propulsive action film.
Ex Machina – This is a great science-fiction tale that has you questioning just where the line between artificial intelligence and sentient beings can be drawn and just who has the authority to make that determination.
Jurassic World – Now, this film is far from perfect, but man did I have a grand old time from beginning to end.
Avengers: Age of Ultron – This solid sequel wasn’t as good as the first Avengers film, but it was still a great conclusion to Phase 2.
‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’
Love & Mercy – This unique biopic about Brian Wilson features great performances by two different actors playing the same person. Nicely told and directed and worth a look.
Wild Tales – This is a funny and sometimes mean-spirited anthology about revenge. Each vignette raises the stakes as the film progresses, and its final story is a laugh-out-loud doozey.
Kingsman: The Secret Service – Matthew Vaughn’s thrilling adaptation of the graphic novel would make a fine addition to the Bond franchise if not for its propensity for violence, but then again, often times that’s the best part.
Spring – This is Linklater’s Before Trilogy plus a monster. This unexpected horror-romance puts films like the Twilight series to shame.
‘Spring’
’71 – This thrilling race-against-the-clock drama follows a man caught behind enemy lines and his effort to get out alive.
Kung Fury – This is 30 minutes of sheer ’80s homage that is frequently nostalgic, often hilarious and so totally off that wall that, by the end, you just want to start it over again.
Let us know in the comments how this compares to your list and be sure to check out our other top 10s by clicking here.