The Best Movie Scenes of 2015

Trips to the theater in 2015 included star-studded entrances from the likes of Robert De Niro, gritty battles with Leonardo DiCaprio, and special effects-filled action sequences complete with dinosaurs. Check out the year's best movie scenes, ahead.

Only the one-inch steel braided cable and the man are real, but when Philippe Petit (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) steps onto the wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center, you feel the gravity yanking at you from 110 stories below. Director Robert Zemeckis digitally created the 1974 New York City skyline that became the coliseum for Petit’s highwire stunt. The extraordinary, unhurried 17-minute scene is the most majestic simulation of a real event since the sinking of the ship in Titanic. —Joe McGovern

Early in David O. Russell’s kinetic comedy-drama based loosely on the life of Joy Mangano, the woman who invented the Miracle Mop, we get quite an introduction to the family of the title character (Jennifer Lawrence). Joy’s father (Robert De Niro) has shown up after being tossed out by his girlfriend, so Joy brings him to the basement, where we see her ex-husband (Édgar Ramírez) crooning into a microphone. The men begin to bicker, and Joy’s solution — a line of toilet paper to separate them — makes for one of the film’s most uproariously funny moments. —Sara Vilkomerson

After everything Mark Watney (Matt Damon) has done to survive on Mars (using his own feces to grow potatoes, getting impaled by shrapnel, enduring hours of disco music), there’s no way he’s going to die on the way to his own rescue, even if he is blasting himself into space in a rocket with only plastic tarps for windows. Even though we had a good idea of how it would end, there wasn’t a more suspenseful sequence at the movies this year. —Kevin P. Sullivan

A loonily inspired blend of action and insult comedy at 30,000 feet, this showdown between an undercover American spy (Melissa McCarthy) and a pageant-haired Bulgarian villainess (Rose Byrne) rises and falls on the chemistry of its two stars. (Okay, so it also rises and falls according to the rules of aerodynamics. But it’s still fantastic.) —Leah Greenblatt 

It’s 1988, and Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) is confronted backstage at the product launch of his NeXT computer by Apple CEO John Sculley (Jeff Daniels). Flashing between their (unapologetically fictional) conversation and the dark, stormy night several years before when Jobs was fired by Apple’s board of directors, the scene delivers the movie’s full smorgasbord of dangerous writing, florid directing, and pyrotechnic acting. —Joe McGovern

Hyperintelligent velociraptors, a time-ravaged T.rex, an all-powerful lab-created mutant, and a 15-ton sea monster battle it out while a group of puny-by-comparison humans — Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Nick Robinson, and Ty Simpkins — just try their best to stay out of the way of flying debris and tumbling dino-bodies. The melee culminates with a nonsensical but satisfying splash. But who was the real winner of the fight? Universal Pictures, for banking more than $1.7 billion worldwide from the summer’s biggest blockbuster. —Stephan Lee

The game-changing moment arrives at the 40-minute mark of Lenny Abrahamson’s riveting Room: the breathless, life-or-death escape of 5-year-old Jack (Jacob Tremblay) — and of us in the audience as well. Up until that point, Jack, his mom (Brie Larson), and we the viewers have been held captive in a tiny, claustrophobic shed. Rolling himself out of a rug in the back of a pickup truck, Jack sees the sky and trees and electric power lines for the first time in his life, and we experience the awe and bewilderment — knotted together with dread — right along with him. —Joe McGovern

At the end of a barrage of retina-blasting chase scenes in George Miller’s propulsive adrenaline-fest, one elegantly choreographed set piece tops them all. Imperator Furiosa (a fierce Charlize Theron), after hurtling across miles of desert, realizes she has no choice but to make a U-turn, abandoning her plans of finding a lush, green home in a barren wasteland. That’s when the Polecats come. The Cirque du Soleil-inspired aggressors vault themselves from car to car, snatching beautiful virgins from their seats while trying to noose Furiosa. Like the rest of the film, the Polecats combine graceful acrobatics with primal savagery. It’s a singular, visceral cinematic experience. —Nicole Sperling

Before the fame and the Grammys and the calamitous downfall, there was just a girl pouring out her soul a cappella in a dingy walk-in closet of a studio. It’s a thrilling accident that someone happened to capture the off-the-cuff recording of the unforgettable title track of Back to Black — a perfect storm of romantic pain and pure catharsis. —Leah Greenblatt

The much-talked-about bear mauling in The Revenant is worth every bit of hype. As fur trapper Hugh Glass, Leonardo DiCaprio becomes a mama bear’s chew toy as she whips his rag-doll body around, flips him over, and rips mounds of flesh from his body. (Despite erroneous reports, no “rape” occurs.) The vicious assault finds the beast — called “Judy” by the filmmakers — tearing at his neck and dragging him around the dirt before smothering his head. And then, to cap off the brutality, director Alejandro G. Iñárritu pulls back for a glorious wide shot of her body collapsed on top of his. It’s a terrifying wonder, made all the more impressive by this fact: Judy is largely a digital creation. —Nicole Sperling