Speechless. 

Now this is something unusual for me, I started watching it for the shock value and finished watching because it was fairly intriguing.

Note: I inadvertently watched the cut version (for UK release maybe?), and a few of the most notorious scenes were heavily cut i.e. the baby rape scene, the beheading while raping a woman scene, and the face-fucking a woman with her teeth pulled out scene - all much tamer than the normal release. As such it really wasn't all that graphic and grotesque, although I guess I didn't get the full effect of it. HOWEVER I would say the cut version actually makes a better film, as it works better with an omnipresent atmosphere of perversion and dread rather than relying on and thus being overshadowed by a few moments of shock value.

And it is actually a pretty decent and pretty well made film. The pacing is good, the sense of "WTF am I getting into" from the main character comes across well, the contrast between his semi-gentle "vintage porn star" style and the modern and blandly cruel Eastern bloc group he gets tangled with is done neatly with a good soundtrack. The way it escalates to the end kept me watching, and some of the subtle moments are downright menacing.

However I do feel the concept was a bit weaker than the execution. The "villain" didn't have much depth and the....circle he belong to was rather vague, not in a "ominously mysterious" way but in a shallow and vague way. There could have been a stronger point - but hopefully not overly-moralistic - point about the depths porn can sink to and how far it can be detatched from eroticism, and people's motives in that environment, but it didn't really happen (obviously I know there is a political message / analogy to Serbia conflict there but that seems less crucial to me?). 

If you don't mind and have the time ... can you name the 5-10 most interesting movies you've seen in the last year?

(doesn't matter the age of the film)

I'm desperate for something I've haven't seen that is of high quality. 

Don't take the fact that I happened to watch ONE highly notorious and slightly esoteric film and find it actually okay to mean I have any sort of film-buff tastes. I don't, at all. Ask someone like nitin.

The only film I can recall really enjoying this year was The Martian.

Previous years have been the cluster of top quality sci-fi / action / thriller stuff that has happily come to pass in the last few years or so, including but not limited to: Interstellar, Pan's Labyrinth, Edge Of Tomorrow, District 9, Watchmen, Let The Right One In, Looper, Chronicle, Troll Hunter, Inception, Batman trilogy, The Machinist, The Orphanage, Source Code, Gravity, The Cabin In The Woods, Adjustment Bureau, The Others, Oblivion, Triangle, The Prestige, The Road, Contagion, Total Recall, World War Z 

Haha, 99% overlap.

I was hoping your critical thinking would lead to some rather overlooked works, hehe.

Well, in that case I will make a suggestion:

Nightcrawler. Best movie made in the last 3 years. But I'm sure you've seen it ;-) 

That list is missing Prisoners!

Just watched Star Wars and fucking loved it. Excellent 3D. Don't worry about spoilers too much, there really are no huge surprises, things built up nicely. 

any specific genre?

That was a great list Shambler. It's missing a few on the more pretentious end of the scale, yet still within my pretentiousness tolerance:

Antichrist, Under the Skin, Ex Machina, Melancholia
(interestingly these all feature a mysterious and sinister, potentially apocalyptic, female lead)

Nightcrawler was good. Elysium was pretty good, though not as good as District 9.

Getting away from scifi/horror, the neo-western genre has had a real revival in the last 10 years: No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, The Assassination of Jesse James, The Proposition, are all masterpieces, and some of the films of lesser stature (B-movies, remakes, stuff Tarantino makes) have been entertaining also. 

Melancholia looked nice in the trailer, Ex Machina and Under The Skin have both been reccommended to me, and No Country For Old Men was pretty cool. 

You've thrown a few different names in there I haven't seen, which should be some help.

(I've seen anything obvious like There Will Be Blood or Elysium and such. I look for under-the-radar stuff, which is ever scarce these days.) 

Sicario is well worth watching.

Also saw new Star Wars yesterday, decent but the first 30 min are the best part IMHO. 

I try to keep this going, although there hasnt been as much updating this year due to RL health issues:

http://www.imdb.com/list/ls008123820/

Change the sort to Date Added if you want to see more recent additions (although it will be a combo of new films and old films I have watched this year).

Also I should say, although it will be fairly obvious, that it is a list that has a lot of films that are not going to appeal to casual movie watchers. 

Sam Peckinpah's "Cross of Iron" (1977)

"The Young Lions" (1958) starring Marlon Brando and Dean Martin 

Cross of Iron is really good. Havent seen Young Lions yet. 

Those look worth a try. 

Starring Ethan Hawke.

Just watched about an hour ago. It's brutally real, just like a mirror. My wife got a little sad after watching. 

Yeah Antichrist is really good but I found Melancholia to be a snoozefest. The main character is horrid and actually a bit unrealistic. Nice visuals but those and Lars' name are all that carried it.

But his next film Nymphomaniac really took the cake. That's a terrible film. Seems like just a bunch of sex scenes trying to top one another to shock the viewer. It had great potential. I won't ever be able to look at Charlotte Gainsbourg in the same light again after seeing her in so many grotesque sex scenes.

A Serbian Film is great. Though, sadly, if you want more gore/torture/shock horror you've already seen the best one. The rest mostly don't even have a plot. 

Antichrist .. pah. My ex-gf made me watch it trying to psyche me out maybe, laugh. Pretty ordinary. Weak plot and just dollars for the shock-value.

Mad Max was a slick thrill, but with a decent plot it would have been ace. Charlize in particular was woefully boring/underused. Loved the costumes, that guitar guy. Better than the others but obviously i'm not a fan.

More PK Dick and Clarke movies ? Yay.

I seen a couple of old great chinese martial arts. If you have the time , take in Bruce Lee's average but classic Fist of Fury first, but the sequel Legend of the Fist is great period stuff. Another great martial-arts with a good plot is Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame.

Watching Miyazaki over christmas for a bit of a chillout :) 

Yeah I just watched Spirited Away last night actually. Not as good as I was expecting, certainly not as good as Princess Mononoke, just a little weird with odd scenes that drag on a long time and then it's finished. Good but just not the 31st best movie of all time. 

Should be higher than 31st. 

Is the best animated film of all time IMO 

Mad Max Fury Road was the best film of 2015. 

Apart from being just behind The Martian and Ex Machina, of course. 

I watched Fury Road, the first part any way. There were lots of cars zooming around and people apparently trying to kill each other. I had no idea of the importance of anything, or why I should care about what was happening. I guess I'm stupid, I just didn't get it. After about an hour, I shut it off. Never was much of a Mad Max fan anyway. At least the color was pretty good, no serious white balance issues like so many recent movies. 

^ Description of a seventies' road movie. 

are you pretending that color grading is a "white balance issue" because you don't like it or do you actually think color graded movies are just poorly exposed?