Digital cinema uses wavelet compression - intra-frame only JPEG2000 at hundreds of Mbps. It seems that at high resolution and bitrate it actually performs similarly to or better than h264, e.g. this paper and its references: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~shiboxin/files/Shi_ICME08.pdf
Digital cinema uses a resolution that is much higher than H.265's targeted sweet spot.
Their quality needs are also a lot higher.
Motion compensated video cannot give them the desired quality.
Hence intra frame only wavelet based compression.
Also, note that JPEG2000 which uses wavelets implies that for still images, wavelets can be made to work better.
JPEG which preceded JPEG2000 was 8x8 DCT based.
