Regrets, I have a few...

There were a lot of extremely good films that didn't quite make the cut for my top 30 of 2015 list and I just wanted to mention three of them. I'm already regretting failing to put The Diary Of A Teenage Girl (trailer below) into the main list and on another day, with me in a different mood, it would probably have strolled right into the top 20. It's one of the best coming-of-age movies I've seen in a long time and contains a fantastic central performance from young Bel Powley that I sincerely hope wins her an Oscar nod. You will have already heard many good things about Inside Out and all of them are well deserved - it's probably my favourite Pixar film since The Incredibles and is easily the most mature and complex work the company has attempted so far. It probably works even better on DVD and Blu-ray than it did at the cinema because there is so much going on and you constantly want to rewatch little bits and pieces of it in case you missed an idea or visual gag. Dope - a sort of Boyz N The Hood with nerds - is a lot cleverer than it has been given credit for. Rick Famuyiwa's film plays with and comments on black stereotypes in movies while explaining why such stereotypes persist. It contains some genuinely very funny moments, too.

So, that's your lot; 2015 finally done and dusted. Let's see what 2016 has to offer... which brings me rather neatly to the future of As Human As The Rest Of Us in this, it's second year. To be honest, things are going to continue pretty much the same as last year with a few small tweaks. There will still be a preview of the week's films on TV, DVD, VOD etc every Monday morning (look for that from January 11) but it will be shorter and snappier – more a diary of events than anything in depth. That will give me more time to write reviews – long and short – of cinema releases but also DVDs and VOD stuff too. I'm also hoping to introduce a couple of semi-regular features that I've been meaning to get around to for months. One of these may even be something I throw open for other people to contribute to but let's not run before we can walk at this stage.

Next up on this blog, though, will be reviews of at least one of the following new movies I'm hoping to see this week: The Danish Girl, Sleeping With Other People, and Joy.