Movies that most exceeded your expectations in 2015

[octagon]

caveat: I don't go to theaters so there's a lot of 2015 I haven't seen yet

Ex Machina - I'm always a little surprised when something lives up to the kind of hype/buzz this got here but in this case I even thought 'wow, they were actually kind of underselling it'.

Jupiter Ascending - I was expecting a visually impressive trainwreck but this was really, really good. It's a shame nobody else thought so cause I wouldn't have minded more.

The Force Awakens - In one sense this an obvious cheat since my expectations were so high. It's also a bit of a cheat because I wasn't 1000% totally blown away while watching it. So in that way it was almost a bit of a letdown. But in the roughly 24 hours since I've seen it I haven't been able to stop thinking about what this line of dialogue might have meant, where this plot point might go, am I too old for Dai...never mind that one...the point is it's engaged my imagination in a way I really didn't expect and that hasn't happened since Empire.