More than any other year this decade, 2015 had a sufficient amount of prestigious films that had distinct narratives about women being considerably perplexed and troubled with their particular situations. Perusing the films on my list, I started to realize that a vast number of them contained women longing to attain an ideal, a passion, or a faint semblance of hope that the future can and will be brighter. From all over the globe these individuals sought love and respect only to encounter threatening obstacles, some that could be overcome and others that could barely be comprehended, let alone endured.

The atmosphere that Harley found herself in in Heaven Knows What was beyond volatile and dangerous, but it didn’t prohibit her from dreaming of a better existence for herself and her lover. A lethal assassin is summoned back to her homeland to carry out a murder but is unable to do so due to her growing consciousness in The Assassin. Two women who fall spellbindingly in love in Carol each possess desires to create a lasting bond with each other despite society’s unbending morality. Looking to move up in the ranks of the FBI and make a name for herself, Kate unquestionably steps too far out of her comfort zone where she quickly meets the most ruthless of men in Sicario. And the women of Mad Max: Fury Road are acquainted with an impossible to comprehend evil but are willing to go through an unrelenting gauntlet to attain their ideal.

Here are my Top 30 Movies Of 2015…

This week, YouTube‘s new subscription service, tech execs flee Yahoo! in droves, Gamergate at SXSW, some idiot Tesla drivers, and does filming the police contribute to crime? All this and more on The Drill Down podcast!

Remember when you were super excited that True Detective season one director Cary Fukunaga was working on a new two-part movie adaptation of Stephen King’s It? Well, after multiple years of development, Warner Brothers passed that project along to New Line Cinema, and Fukunaga didn’t like how things were going so he got up and walked away from years of work. Now Mama director Andy Muschietti is working on the adaptation of King’s novel.

But Fukunaga isn’t completely disappearing, if that was a fear of yours. He also made an original movie for Netflix titled Beasts of No Nation. The movie stars Idris Elba (Star Trek Beyond, Pacific Rim) as the leader of a mercenary group of fighters who take in a young West African boy (played by newcomer Abraham Attah) and train him to become a soldier.

Netflix has released the first teaser trailer for the movie, and you can check it out below.