With such a glut of cinematic choices, Worst Lists have almost become passé. For one, people can successfully skip movies that wouldn’t be to their tastes; even film critics can skillfully avoid some of the truly dreadful flops. For two, given the amount of mediocre movie dodging we have to do, not everybody sees the same bad movies. Reaching a consensus on what movies are the worst of the year is near impossible.

Instead of making a worst film list (or, maybe in addition to), I’m going to do something that most people frown upon, I’m listing the most popular movies you couldn’t drag me to if my life depended on it. I’ve read the reviews for some of them, and listened to you all talk about some of the movies in the comments. Some people were pretty happy about a couple of these. Others with severely disappointed with others. But, with 702 movies a year, I’m pretty satisfied with what I decided to skip.

10. X-Men: Apocalypse
Current Box Office Ranking: 13
Gross: $155m

This list is unsurprisingly heavy in franchises and sequels. I supposed what surprised me most is that I only saw 3 of the most popular movies according to the top 10 at the box office; only one of those three was a non-franchise entry (The Secret Life of Pets). The thing is, I don’t even remember X-Men: Apocalypse coming out. That’s how much I don’t care. I walked out of Days of Future Past midway through the movie (I saw the live-action re-enactment of the Futurama time delay scene). I’ve only seen X-Men 2 and 3. I just can’t bring myself to actually care about the series.

9. Star Trek Beyond
Current Box Office Ranking: 12
Gross: $158m

The best Star Trek movie ever made was Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, a seemingly extended episode of the original series complete with campfire songs, fan dances, and meeting God. Well, maybe not God. When J.J. Abrams made Star Trek Babies, I skipped it because I don’t like J.J. Abrams’ storytelling methods. When he made Star Trek Babies 2: The Wrath of WAAAAAAHN, I shrugged. After skipping the first two in the series, why would I see Star Trek Beyond?

8. Jason Bourne
Current Box Office Ranking: 11
Gross: $162m

I ‘member the first Bourne movie in a half-assed hazy kind of happy memory of a post-9/11 action movie. That was 14 years ago. Apparently, the series is still going and is kind of popular.

7. Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them
Current Box Office Ranking: 10
Gross: $204m

I never finished the Harry Potter books because #4 was a bloated structural mess of a novel, overselling the amount of time I want to read about a fictional sportsball game. I don’t even watch much sportsball in real life, why would I want to read hundreds of pages about some fictional tournament that seems to have little to do with the actual plot? I also never finished the Harry Potter movies because I couldn’t make heads or tails of the plot in #5. Things happened, and I think somebody explained how some fireplace scene with Helena Bonham Carter fit into it, but I still don’t get it.

Anyways, here’s a belated something-quel about some half-remembered book in the Harry Potter universe.

6. Suicide Squad
Current Box Office Ranking: 8
Gross: $325m

Oh hey there gritty dark Hot Topic inspired comic book origin story. Your origin story doesn’t make sense, and I don’t need to see you.

5. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Current Box Office Ranking: 7
Gross: $330m

Seriously, the only way you’re going to drag me to another Zack Snyder film is if he directs an all-nude sequel to Magic Mike (yes, I’m that shallow).

4. Deadpool
Current Box Office Ranking: 5
Gross: $363m

Oh look, another comic book origin story. This one is actually X-Men #88923897, but its a new character for the franchise. Guys, listen. I’m tired of origin stories. Marvel dishes out one like every other month, it seems. Yet, of all the movies on this list, Deadpool seems to engender the most praise and the most disappointment. The most praise for being a snarky Scream-inspired self-referential take on comic book movies, and the most disappointment for still managing to be formulaic as all hell. It’s an origin story! Of course it’s formula!!!

3. The Jungle Book
Current Box Office Ranking: 4
Gross: $364m

Finally, an original movie not based on an existing franchise or fitting into some expanded universe. Sure, it’s a live-action re-adaptation of a beloved children’s classic, but it’s still refreshing to have a stand-alone movie based on something original. …Wait, what? They announced plans for The Jungle Book 2 a week after the movie opened, and the movie was specifically designed to be the start of a new franchise? #&$^*(#)&(&*^^(

2. Captain America: Civil War
Current Box Office Ranking: 2
Gross: $408m

What is this? Marvel Cinematic Universe Entry #37643? How is it that we haven’t finished Phase 3 yet? I’m really so over the superhero genre, because of such market saturation. It’s not just that there’s like 30 of them coming out in a year, but that they’re always accompanied by months of advertisements, specials on television, side bar advertisements, articles that are really just ads, movie theater stand up displays, and even marketing masquerading as controversy. Is somebody too Asian, too Black, where are all the female directors, why aren’t you watching our movies?!

This year, I saw one comic book movie: Doctor Strange. While the visuals were cool, the story and acting were lacking any rhyme or reason or self-justification. Ho hum, here’s another person for the Avengers lineup. During the screening, my friend leaned over and asked if this was in the Avengers universe and I had to map out the gigantic plan which is an undertaking I shouldn’t have to do given how much I don’t give a shit about the MacGuffins … Gall Stones … Infinity Stones. I don’t really need to see any more of these, thank you.

1. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Current Box Office Ranking: Unknown
End of Year Gross: Unknown

J.J. Abrams killed the franchise for me. I thought that Episode VII was an underdeveloped and underwritten entry in the Star Wars universe that is entirely too dependent on fan service and nostalgia to justify its entry in the series. That was last year. Now, less than a year later, we’re getting a Star Wars spin off “event” movie? One that even the fans of The Force Awakens seem to begrudgingly like with a lot of caveats? No thank you. I’m perfectly happy to sit this movie out, as well as any future entries in the Star Wars universe.

For the first three months, the biggest money maker was a movie that technically came out in 2014: American Sniper. In 2015, that movie made $350m, $150m more than the next biggest money maker: the remake of Cinderella. When the summer blockbuster tent poles started rolling in April, Furious 7 grabbed #1, followed by Avengers 2 and then Jurassic Park 4 (or 2 depending on who you ask). Of the top ten movies at the box office, I can only see three of them under that vow: Inside Out, Home, and Fifty Shades of Grey.

Even with the basic-but-surprisingly-limiting vow, I managed to see 40 movies that were released this year, either in theaters or on VOD. In addition to those 40 movies, I also saw a fair number of smaller straight-to-video releases that are far more difficult to track. With these movies under my belt, I present:

Julius Kassendorf’s Top Ten Films of the First Six Months of 2015

10. Far From the Madding Crowd

This adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s first novel of scorned lovers spares no character in its rush to make a classic novel palatable for modern tastes. Hardy was never a speedy writer, having once been paid by the word to fill in space in newspapers and magazines. For this adaptation, Thomas Vinterberg speeds up the process, streamlining and cutting to the bone almost to a fault. Seasons change almost without notice, and Vinterberg pulls us through a tale of soap opera level dramatics in a bodice-ripper that seems to scorn every bodice-ripper that came before it. Leading the best of the changes, Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba Everdene is a strong independent woman holding her own in a world dominated by men. Still, she wants nothing more than to be whisked away by a strong-willed man and tamed to be a willing partner. Her three beaus fare a bit worse as she plays with everybody’s hearts, but is never judged for it. This comedy is fast, sexy, and frequently hilarious.

9. The Boy Next Door

The Boy Next Door is the best worst movie to come down the pike in ages, and I am positive that director Rob Cohen intended to make the stupidest most Lifetime-y movie that has ever graced the silver screen. J.Lo is a high school teacher going through a separation from her husband, when she sleeps with the 26-year-old-playing-a-19-year-old-high-school-student who just moved in next door. A lot of stalking happens. In the TV-friendly Lifetime fashion, The Boy Next Door doesn’t get its R-rating from nudity, but from a copious amount of violence at the end, that even has a great usage of an epi-pen. Cohen’s film is downright risible and pure hilarity, as he careens from cliche to cliche stringing along hilariously blunt dialogue including a bonding over a first edition of The Iliad. This is the greatest descendant of Showgirls in years.

8. Creep

Somehow going straight to VOD, Patrick Brice’s directorial debut is the best comedy-horror mindfuck to use the found footage conceit. Brice plays a videographer hired by a guy (Duplass) off Craigslist to film a video for his unborn son, whom he’ll never see before he dies. Is Duplass just a jerk with no boundaries? Is he a creep? Is he more dangerous than that? Brice and Duplass keep you guessing, as much as they play on the razor’s edge of whether Creep is a comedy or a horror. If you roll with it, Creep provides a lot of roller-coaster thrills for the adventurous.

7. The Little Death

Despite being confused for a romantic comedy, The Little Death is a blistering black comedy about what happens when couples mistake kinky sex for communication. Following four couples who discover their fetishes and use them to bolster their relationships, and a fifth who discovers how sexy communication can be, The Little Death spares nobody in its decimation of our inability to listen. Men and women both act badly and with good intentions, and The Little Death avoids being sexist by giving men and women a variety of nasty pleasures they can indulge in. Spiraling out of control, The Little Death is a black comedy that dives deep into the abyss.

6. Blackbird

In recent decades, Hollywood has profited on Christian films that have a certain style originating from Southern morality plays where the religiosity is the point. Frequently these films and plays have a character leaving the flock to go to Gomorrah to have their morals tested, only to fail and be rescued by Jesus. In this milieu, Patrik-Ian Polk makes a film that explicitly takes these tropes and turns them on their head without making the style the butt of the joke. A black teenager with a missing little sister struggles between his homosexuality and his devout Southern Baptist homophobic upbringing while dealing with his sexually active friends and a crazy bible-spouting mother. If you’re in tune with the style, Blackbird is both an insightful middle finger to the haters of the church with a tone and message that reflects the movies that they have been brainwashed with and an emotional movie about growing up in a small town surrounded by oppression.

5. The Duke of Burgundy

Somebody once said, “subs are really the ones in charge of any D/s scene.” This has never been so beautifully illustrated than in The Duke of Burgundy, a Jess Franco-throwback about a lesbian couple engaged in a near constant state of D/s compromise and role play. An older woman is the matriarch of the house and makes demands of the younger submissive woman, but eventually we find out that this is all an established role play demanded by the sub, who needs things to be precise in order to get her jollies out of it. By making the film about a Sapphist relationship, the potentially risky dynamics of male/female D/s sexuality is avoided so one can take in exactly who’s controlling what. Rendered with a 1970s flare, it’s really one of the most beautiful and honest movies about that kinky dynamic.

4. White God

Let’s go see a movie about dogs! The overall plot sounds reminiscent of other children’s fare films: a dog is forcibly abandoned by his owner and has to learn how to survive and/or find his companion. But, this is a brutal movie about how the world treats outcasts and immigrants. More than that, it is also a genre mashup film watching the dog go through various film genres, from the immigrant story to the horror genre, to the mafia story. This is an ode to film, using dogs to make overrun tropes feel fresh and exciting. But, it’s also a kind of grueling picture about what we make people do to survive.

3. Ex Machina

Ostensibly, Ex Machina is a sci-fi film about a guy who is conducting a Turing Test on a female android. Some unknowing sap wins a contest and is flown to the bunker of his company’s rich bro owner, who has developed a perfect female. The sap has to figure out if the android is self-conscious. By the end of the movie, Ex Machina has turned everything on its head, and is actually about male and female relationships, and how men see women. This is a film that demands to be seen twice if not more: once without knowing more than anything, and another time from a point of view not taken. Plus, it’s one of the most visually arresting sci-fi movies in awhile.

2. Inside Out

Pixar’s edition of Herman’s Head is so much more complex than that pithy description belies. Inside Out is an attempt to make a simplified metaphor for how our emotional brain functions, and how memory affects our life and decision processes. In the middle of an emotional crisis – the girl whose head we’re in has to move from Minnesota to San Francisco at the age where she’s growing out of her childhood – the emotions Joy and Sadness are thrown out of the control room, and go on a journey back home. The journey doesn’t develop the child so much as continually complicate the matters of the brain, and how our mind functions. Sure, it doesn’t get everything right, but it gives us the building blocks to come to terms with our emotions. Everything is useful and has its purpose. Well, except for that damn Triple Dent Gum jingle.

1. When Marnie Was There

I didn’t watch a single Studio Ghibli film until about 4 years ago when I started with Spirited Away on DVD. Shortly after that, I heard that Ghibli had a film tour going around, and I devoured that whole tour for a week in July. Just as I was saying hello to this whole beautiful world of animation, suddenly I was having to say goodbye. Last year, Hayao Miyazaki’s final film, The Wind Rises was released in America. This year, When Marnie Was There says goodbye to longtime producer Toshio Suzuki, who is moving from producer to general management.

The best way to say goodbye is to remember everything that happened, and how you got there. Such is the story of When Marnie Was There, about a girl who doesn’t quite fit in with the crowds, and her connection with another girl in a castle. Director Hiromasa Yonebayashi uses a watercolor painterly style to evoke a wistful longing for a life not yet experienced. The final act twists further deepen the heritage of the story, creating an extremely touching hello-goodbye.