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.

Spotlight

A Priestful Of Dollars

Spotlight
2015 USA
Directed by Tom McCarthy
UK cinema release print.

So Spotlight, directed by actor, writer and director Tom McCarthy.... is not the kind of movie I would normally take a look at in my local cinema, to be honest. With the subject matter being the 2002 scandal of numerous Catholic Priests molesting children that the church was covered up or, more properly, the investigative team on The Boston Globe who brought it to light, the Spotlight of the title, it's really not something I would usually go for.

However, the trailer was pretty good for this one and it had a couple of actors in it, Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo, who I happen to think a lot of in terms of giving strong performances. I could tell from the trailer that the studio were trying to pitch it as a kind of modern equivalent, in terms of atmosphere, to the classic Watergate scandal movie All The President’s Men and I guess, yeah... that’s exactly what this is, in some ways. Although, if I’d known that the film was directed and co-written by the same guy who had written and directed The Station Agent, one of the great modern classics of American cinema, then I would have rushed to the cinema even faster.

Now, this is not a perfect film here, in my book, but it’s pretty close to being one and I have to say that if you want to be on the edge of your seat with a movie that’s based on real life events then this one’s a pretty good choice. It’s apparently fairly accurate to the original events and situations too... as much as a Hollywood movie could be, I guess. According to some quotes from various people who found themselves being played by some pretty great actors, that goes for the accuracy of the portrayal of the personalities in question too, by all accounts.

Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo knock it out of the park, just as I would expect form them. Liev Schrieber, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci and Brian d'Arcy James are all pretty darned amazing too, it has to be said. If you want believability and credibility... not to mention a sense of naturalism that can carry a drama of this emotional weight while still accenting it enough to give it all a broader sense of entertainment value, then this group of actors are very much people who you are in good hands with. If you admire films which can flow forward breezily as you follow the characters in the course of their investigation then this is definitely one for you. It’s the kind of investigative movie that does what it should do... explain what the Spotlight team are after, explain the individual's assignments and then follow through on their detective work with well put together montages punctuated by key excerpts from their interviews. So that’s all good.

One thing which didn’t sit well with me, however, were some scenes... not all that many of them but enough for me to sit up and pop out of the experience somewhat... where the editing of the footage didn’t seem all that great. Not necessarily the fault of the editor, by the way, it might have been the only way to sort out the footage in some sequences. Those sequences in question being some of the back and forth conversations which litter the movie in several places. These are often treated with static shots and the standard TV style of editing where we cut from one shot to the reverse is very much a present constant in some kinds of scene. I also thought the placement of the focus of the eyes on those shots and their reverse equivalent was conflicted and it was the contrast of forcing the eye to suddenly jerk between different areas of the screen at speed in a few places which really started distracting me from what I was supposed to be looking at. Not throughout the whole movie, for sure, but I did find it quite gruelling on a few occasions in there.

The other minor thing, and it is a minor thing, was that I felt that Mark Ruffalo’s passionate, hot headed reporter was somewhat bereft. His wife or girlfriend is mentioned a couple of times but, though we see him in something like a home environment on a number of occasions, we never catch sight of the lady in question. This is even when we see him working on stuff at home at night... when you would think the lady of his life would be present in some way. Maybe I missed a detail in the dialogue to explain that but I think it would have given Ruffalo’s character a little more context if we’d had seen the lady in his life, to a certain extent.

But yeah, minor grumbles at best in a film which delivers the tone and passion you would expect from people being forced to confront the truth of a story rapidly expanding in scope as the Spotlight team discover more about the unwritten conspiracies which have kept the story from breaking in the press over the decades that this kind of abuse had being going on. Their initial story began with just one priest and, by the end of the investigation, there were around 87 priests who had been uncovered.

The film is very sparsely spotted in the musical content and I would have expected this kind of movie to have no score at all but certain key montages and highlights are given a certain emotional presence by Howard Shore’s piano dominant score. At  points it maybe felt a little heavy handed in contrast to the many scenes without music but that’s always a hard balancing act to get right and, where some of these scenes reach for the music in a less naturalistic accompaniment... there’s always another scene where the score gets it dead right. I’ve been a big fan of Shore over the years, especially with his scores to the early David Cronenberg films and Kevin Smith’s Dogma and it’s not a bad match for the movie in most scenes. People who are only familiar with his brilliant scores to the less than brilliant adaptations of Tolkiens works by Peter Jackson may be a little surprised at the modest scope of this piece but, frankly, anything heavier may well have undermined a movie of this nature and even this one threatens that on occasion. I know I wouldn’t normally argue for this, being as I love movie music so much, but maybe the mix was a little more prominent than it could have been in certain scenes but... yeah, for the most part it’s pretty good and it may be a good stand alone listen too.

And that’s what I thought of Spotlight. A pretty amazing movie with some things which irritated me but which in no way put me off the movie as a whole. A brilliant cast and some nice dialogue make for pretty compulsive viewing, in my book, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if there isn’t at least one Oscar nod to this one sometime soon. Definitely worth a watch, as far as I’m concerned.