Top 20 Movies of 2016

Top 20 Movies of 2016

Okay... so here we go with the annual, scary to put together list of the best movies of the year. Despite popular opinion, I don’t think it’s been a bad year for movies and my cinema visits seemed a little more frequent than usual as a result. Perhaps my biggest disappointment of the year is the fact that we had both a new Star Trek and a new Star Wars movie and neither of them were good enough to make it into my list. And nobody is more upset about that than me, I reckon. Still, without further ado, here’s my list for this year in reverse order. Hope you like...

20. Mermaid (aka Mei Ren Yu) 3D
Directed by Stephen Chow, this large budget comedy telling a charmingly small moral fable is more hit than miss and it’s one of the more unusual movies to be released at British cinemas this year. My full review can be found here...

19. Green Room
This taut, gritty and harrowing drama about a bunch of musicians trapped in a nightclub is made even more poignant in light of the death of one of its leading actors, Anton Yelchin (who played Pavel Chekhov in the last three Star Trek movies). Another long term Star Trek stalwart, Patrick Stewart, appears here in a role in which he manages to be absolutely downright villanous. Not a movie I could sit through again but that’s no reason not to proclaim it one of the best of 2016. My review is here.

18. The Nice Guys
Funky, 1970s set action thriller/comedy written and directed by one of the great screenplay writers in Hollywood, Shane Black. The music by John Ottman and David Buckley alone is worth looking at this one for. My review here.

17. Doctor Strange
The second best of the many superhero movies released this year sees Benedict Cumberbatch breath life into the quirky, psychedelic 1960s Marvel character that the movie is based on. He’s well supported by the always watchable Tilda Swinton and the always listenable Michael Giacchino. My review can be found here...

16. Train To Busan
In a year perhaps less likely than some, we have three first class zombie movies coming along at once. The first of my picks in this category which make it into my list is the darling of the FrightFest, Train To Busan... which is about as good a ‘zombies on a train’ movie as you’re likely to see. My review can be unearthed here.

15. Women Who Kill
This witty and acerbic comedy with an edge is all about two ex-lovers who put out a radio show about their favourite female serial killers and the depths their obsession with these kinds of people takes one of them. I really hope that this gets some kind of Blu Ray or DVD release over here because I think more people should know about this one than they do. My review can be found here...

14. Respectable - The Mary Millington Story
Simon Sheridan’s documentary about the life and tragic death of Britains most famous porn star was more or less, apart from the odd one off showing, a straight to DVD movie over here. This is a shame because it well deserved a proper cinema release, as far as I’m concerned. My review of this one is here.

13. Sadako VS Kayako
This is what happens when a company jokes about making a movie combining the main monsters from their Ring and The Grudge franchises and the Japanese public buy into this bizarre idea so much that it’s decided to make the movie for real, after all. This is a cheesy but very fun take on the two franchises all rolled up into one outrageous confection. I just hope it can get some distribution either here or in the US sometime soon. My review here.

12. Paterson
What can you say about Jim Jarmusch? Still very much an independent spirit and still churning out non-commercial films which he somehow manages to get financed. One of the great artists of American cinema and this is another movie that demonstrates why. My review of this one can be found here.

11. The Conjuring 2 - The Enfield Case
Although this is not the masterpiece that the original The Conjuring was, this movie still has a certain charm to it... not least in the personalities of the two, true life protagonists and the actors who bring them to life. This one is set not too far from where I live so I was really chomping at the bit to see this (especially since the first movie is so wonderful). This one manages to link the famous tale of the Enfield poltergeist to the events surrounding The Amityville Horror... which I don’t believe for a second but it’s a nice little movie. My review is here...

10. 10 Cloverfield Lane
This claustrophobic tale of a serial killer and two potential victims under lock down dovetails into the same cinematic universe as the original Cloverfield... both as the thing the writer uses to set up the scenario of the main movie with and then, big time, for the last quarter of an hour or so of the story. This one is all about the performances and the way the director shoots the small environment in which the majority of the tale takes place. My review is right here...

9. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Wasn’t expecting this potentially one joke wonder of a novel (which I’ve not read) to be the basis of such a strong movie but this one is a real joy to watch. It’s smart and it has a lot of fun with the parallel world created by the cast and crew. Well worth a look and the second of this year’s three unexpected zombie entries on the list. My review here.

8. Zoology (ala Zoologiya)
It’s to be seen as to whether this Russian/French/German production about a woman who grows a tail and loses her inhibitions art the same time will get a proper release in English speaking countries but, if it does come out next year and you get the opportunity to see it... just go. My review is here...

7. Spotlight
Again, true this story about the investigative efforts of a small team of journalists is probably not something I could watch that often... but it is a quality production to rival some of the greats of that genre such as All The President’s Men. It would be tempting to overplay the subject matter and make it a much more syrupy production than is necessary but, luckily, the writer and director steer clear of going down that route. My review is here.

6. Deadpool
Probably the most popular superhero movie made in a long time, Deadpool, like the comic it’s based on, breaks the fourth wall continuously and still manages to let the audience feel comfortable with it dropping itself into the main cinematic X-Men timelines (which, to be fair, are so screwed up and out of any serious continuity with each other that it hardly matters at this point). My review of this gem of a masked vigilante movie can be found here.

5. I, Daniel Blake
This completely depressing and genuinely moving film is, if anything, a little more glossy and glam in its portrayal of the kinds of poverty and injustice I have seen going on in this country. That being said, this one really drives all its points home and, if the ending is just a little bit of a cliché, you can only forgive it that indulgence in the light of the kind of everyday tragedies it’s talking about. My review of this one is here.

4. The VVitch
This movie had the most bizarre and abusive audience reaction I’ve ever seen... with people laughing and shouting back at the screen or leaving in droves throughout. And my understanding is that this audience interaction with the film was far from an isolated incident. Either way, I kinda loved the slow burn and the very rewarding ending to the movie and I think this one will get the odd revisit by me over the years to come. Here’s my review.

3. Hail, Caesar!
I don’t know why this one seemed to fail with audiences, from what I can gather, but I think this is one of The Coen Brother’s greatest movies... right up there with The Big Lebowski and The Man Who Wasn’t There. It’s absolutely wonderful for people who are into the history of American cinema and... well if you’re reading this blog then that must include you, right? My review of this gem is here.

2. Prevenge
Alice Lowe wrote, starred in and directed this black comedy about a woman driven to serial murder on the instructions of her unborn child while she was, herself, pregnant. Which is surely no mean feat. It’s a bit of a masterpiece and I really hope this gets a proper cinema and home video release (so I can repeat watch the thing) sometime very soon. My review is here.

1. The Girl With All The Gifts
And so, against all the odds, a low budget zombie movie takes my top spot of the films of the year. This isn’t just any zombie movie, however. It’s British made and it manages to be genuinely suspenseful for what is, essentially, a post-apocalyptic road movie. It also manages to have an unexpected story arc to fulfil before the movie is done with and it honestly feels like what would have happened if somebody had asked the late British science fiction writer John Wyndham to have a crack at writing a zombie novel. There’s a little more to this evocative concoction than you may, at first, suspect or realise. My review of this gift of a movie is here.

And that’s me done with this for another year. In a couple of weeks, when I’ve finished evaluating the contenders, I’ll post my favourite movie score releases of the year. Some of these may overlap with this list and... well... I suspect some of them really won’t. So maybe come back and have a read of that at some point. In the meantime, it’s still not quite too late to enter my annual, cryptic movie quiz (just click here) and there’ll be some more reviews coming soon.

10 Cloverfield Lane

Under The Hood

10 Cloverfield Lane
2016 USA
Directed by Dan Trachtenberg
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Mild spoilers plus some clearly marked large spoilers towards the end of the review.

You know, contrary to a lot of people I know, I really enjoyed the original Cloverfield when it was released back in 2008. I know some of my friends were put off by the found footage format (one of my friends, to this day, still refuses to watch it in case it gives her motion sickness) but I thought it was a truly excellent use of the shooting style in the choice to make an American kaiju eiga. In fact, I still feel it out-Gojiras the US Godzilla movie made just two years ago in being a much more fun and terrifying movie.

You could be forgiven, though, for not even realising that the new movie, 10 Cloverfield Lane, was  upon us since it was put together under such a veil of secrecy that it wasn’t until the trailer appeared less than two months ago that people outside of the studio and crew officially knew it existed at all. That producer J. J. Abrams was able to get this made in secret in this day and age of intrusive media saturation, perpetually fuelled by the studios themselves (more often than not, I suspect), is pretty unbelievable.

Okay, now first let me address issues about whether this is an actual sequel or not to the original Cloverfield because, I had a much better ending for this movie in my head after seeing the trailers and, unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Yes, we know the film is a self contained thriller (not a horror movie until the last 20 minutes or so) that started life as something slightly different and had some new ‘Cloverfield’ scenes tacked on to the end. Unfortunately the film does seem like that too, a little, and I know one of my friends is going to love it up until the last act, where he’ll probably get really angry with it... so that'll be an interesting conversation. However, as far as I’m concerned, the film is a direct sequel to the original Cloverfield, even though I’ve seen people arguing about it on message boards as to why it certainly isn’t. Yes, there are elements about the last act which make no sense in terms of having the information about the original that we already have but... that was always one of the main points about the original movie... but there’s also a big link to the ‘baby monsters’ aspect of that original too and I think, since the clue is kinda in the title, people should maybe ponder more about why it’s called that and enjoy the ‘gaps’ in the story which allow for the movie to fall under the Cloverfield umbrella. After all, there are big gaps in Abrams’ own Star Wars: The Force Awakens (reviewed here) and nobody complained about that... oh wait, yes they did. Still, he’s obviously a producer who’s not against leaving something for the imagination and in this movie, he doesn’t seem worried about the director leaving it for the audience to fill in the blanks as best it can. I’ll come back to this last sequence, with spoilers, a little later in this review.

Okay, so I have to say right up front that I really loved this movie, almost as much as the monster fuelled carnage of Cloverfield itself, although it’s probably not fair to the writers and director to directly compare the two as they are vastly different kinds of movies. This one starts off with what, for me, is the best sequence in the film... the pre-credits and opening credits sections which, seriously, I think should be required textbook viewing for people studying movie making. Starting out with the always excellent actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead playing the film’s main protagonist Michelle. She’s someone who I’ve seen in a few of these genre pieces and, frankly, the opening of this movie is fantastic as she plays in what is, essentially, a  mini silent film. We see her breaking up with her boyfriend but just from her point of view and by long distance... we never see her boyfriend even once in the film, just hear his voice near the end of the movie and, really, that’s no spoiler because the context of that says very little about the status of the characters.

This is all accompanied by Bear McCreary’s amazing tour-de-force of a score and it’s edited so beautifully, as is the title sequence where Michelle's car is wrecked, probably deliberately, and the sound design drops out strategically to accompany title inserts cut in to freeze the action in your mind and enhance the trauma of it as the noise of the crash keeps returning. It’s a visceral piece of film making, very intense and quite wonderful. Now the rest of the film certainly lives up to this opening but, for me, this three or four minutes at the start were worth the price of admission on this thing. Absolutely what cinema is all about and the reason why I’ll definitely be picking up the Blu Ray release somewhere along the line.

Okay, so then we get to the rest of the film where Michelle is ‘rescued/imprisoned’ by John Goodman’s character Howard and has to live with him and a guy called Emmet, who has found his way to the bunker (for other reasons I won’t reveal here), played by John Gallagher Jr. And you don’t know what’s coming next people! If you’ve seen the trailer, that whole climactic moment where Michelle breaks the bottle on Howard’s face and goes to open the bunker doors to the outside world is... actually within the first third of the movie, more or less. So don’t go in thinking you know what’s going to happen next because... you more than likely just don’t.

As I said, Winstead is cool in this (like she always is) and Gallagher Jr does a good job with a half sympathetic character. John Goodman, though, is extraordinary as the ‘unhinged’ antagonist of the film... I don’t want to say too much about his character and his slowly revealed past but, honestly, this is not the kind of guy you want to stay locked in a Cloverfield-proof bunker with. Not by a long shot.

And the film continues on in a fashion which is quite intense, wonderfully acted, wonderfully shot and with a genuine sense of skill and competence shown by the director. The editing is really beautiful too... latching on to something Steven Spielberg seems to do in his work also, which is to manipulate both time and visual space, truncating and lengthening specific parts of certain scenes to wring the maximum amount of suspense out of them. This is especially true of the ‘mad rush’ to the bunker door set piece which I highlighted earlier... as the director stretches and compresses certain parts of that chase which will have most audience members on the edge of their seats, I suspect. And this tension keeps going all the way through the movie.

I noticed that, for the last 20 minutes of the movie, for instance, the guy in the audience siting next to me had his hand clamped over his mouth in fright the whole time... which is a pretty impressive reaction, in my book. And that last part of the movie, post-bunker, is where the film connects up properly to Cloverfield... and I’m going to reveal that here now so I can discuss it... so if you don’t want to know, stop reading now...

Big spoilers start here!

When Michelle gets out of the bunker she is chased by a smaller Cloverfield monster and also what look like Alien spacecraft. Now much argument surrounds the identity of both the monster and the spacecraft but it seems pretty clear to me that the creature is a slightly grown version of the ‘spawn of Cloverfield’ mentioned, or heavily implied, in the first movie. The aliens could be something to do with them but the way they release gas makes me think that they are possibly wanting to tranquilise the monsters so... either the monsters and aliens are coincidental to each other and are natural enemies or... the aliens have released the monsters on the planet. Either way, it’s clear to me that the monster is similar in style to the creature in the first movie and that’s good enough for me. The whole fun comes from rubbing the two story elements together from each film and speculating on the connection... at least until a third project maybe comes to light.

Spoiler ends here.

And there you have it. An incredible film and, did I mention Bear McCreary’s score being an absolute masterpiece? It certainly is, at least in the context of the film itself. I’ve yet to hear a CD of it but I’ll snap it up as soon as it gets a non-download release because it was absolutely amazing. This composer goes from strength to strength and I hope he gets a lot more high profile films because of this one. Truly brilliant.

So there you go. 10 Cloverfield Lane is, in many ways, a bit of a future classic. The acting, editing, music and story elements are all superb and I even didn’t mind the tacked on nature of the Cloverfield element, grafted a little clumsily but not as badly as it could have been. This movie is a definite recommend from me and I can’t wait to see what director Dan Trachtenberg does next. Nor to see another Cloverfield movie, to be honest. Catch it in the cinema, which is the perfect venue for this kind of movie, before it goes.