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.

The Conjuring 2

Warren Piece

The Conjuring 2 - The Enfield Case
2016 USA Directed by James Wan
UK cinema release print.

With special thanks to my good friend Doctor Rob Wilson for providing the exclusive ‘behind the scenes’ pictures while The Conjuring 2 was filming last year, three of which are pictured above.

When I reviewed The Conjuring, also directed by James Wan, a few years ago... I proclaimed that it was essentially one of the all time great, classic horror films (you can read that review here). There was a spin off film about the spooky doll who featured in that film, Annabelle (review here) but this was not exactly the classic that The Conjuring was, to be fair. As far as the original film goes, though, I still believe that it’s going to be even more well thought of in, say, 40 years time, than it is now. Definitely it will be hailed and remembered as one of the all time greats of the genre... I'm pretty sure about that.

Now The Conjuring 2, which has the subtitle The Enfield Case, at least for the British public, is also not quite the classic that the first movie was and, frankly, how could it be? That being said, it certainly doesn’t stop lightening from striking twice in that it’s still a beautifully put together horror movie and it lives up to the high standards of that first outing pretty well. If you go and see this next adventure from the real life files of Ed and Lorraine Warren’s case books, played charmingly again by the wonderful duo of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, it really won’t leave any bitter taste in your mouth and it’s a true, spiritual sequel to that first, opening movie a couple of years ago.

I had an extra reason for wanting to catch this sequel as soon as possible and so I went on the Monday night it opened in my local cinema, which is an unusual day to release a movie on over here in the UK. That reason being that the main narrative of the movie is actually set (and also shot) not very far from where I’ve been living the last 40 years. I moved to the Enfield of the story back in 1976, after surviving a mind bogglingly strange car accident, which I won’t go into here. The stuff which was happening in this film started happening a year later in 1977 and it was a bit of a local myth around town at the time. I personally didn’t hear quite so much about it because I spent two years being home schooled due to the accident I had but it was featured on a lot of TV shows at the time... the late 1970s in Enfield was the zeitgeist of the poltergeist, I guess.

The movie starts off completely differently to how I thought it would... actually picking back up with the Warrens’ not long after we left them in the last movie, when they were going to investigate a certain, extremely famous haunting which was also one of their cases. So things pick up here with a seance style session within that investigation around what many people now know as... The Amityville Horror. In fact, the set designers choose to pick up on the architectural design of the 1970s movie but, instead of seeing those big ‘eye’-conic windows from the outside, we see them from inside the house. This opening sequence which has Lorraine leaving her body and going through some disturbing visions isn’t just to remind us who the characters are, either... but I’m trying to do this without spoilers so I won’t go into too much detail here.

Once again, James Wan and his crew prove themselves to be absolute masters of this kind of genre horror movie, with long lingering shots that dwell at places where you can either see or imagine details which may or may not be important. Everything is timed pretty perfectly, which anyone who has seen some of the horror movies coming out over the last few years knows isn’t a given, and the movement of the camera combined with the slow discovery by the actors or the frantic mad dashes for escape or engagement with various evil forces, does a lot to help the director ratchet up the tension to almost unbearable levels at some points.

And, of course, one of the best ingredients of the first film is carried over into this one... in that all the human characters are really nice people who you would not wish to see any of this stuff happening to. Farmiga and Wilson excel at playing these two characters and their level of charm is completely off the scale. They portray the couple as so ‘in love’ and that really helps ground the horror film and also, of course, increases the emotional stakes. The scene where Wilson plays the guitar and imitates Elvis is such a great scene which might have slowed down the whole film in the hands of another director and editor... but presented as it is here, it does wonders for the movie. The two leads are coupled with a bunch of actors and actresses who are absolutely faultless, with special shout outs to Madison Wolfe and Frances O’ Connor, as the main troubled daughter and her mother. In fact, the whole cast manage to accurately bring to life the stresses and camaraderie that living in this particular town at this particular time was like and it really rang true for me. I remember people like this from my childhood. They even got Franka Potente in there as a sceptical researcher and it was good seeing her on screen again.

So, of course, you totally fear for them all.

Especially when the writers fling further tension at the audience in an earlyish part of the picture involving Lorraine’s vision of Ed’s death in a specific manner which you are just waiting to half happen all the way through the movie. You know there’s going to be a high stress moment coming at some point in the movie and... well... yeah, the iconography from the vision certainly comes into play at one point in the running time.

There’s one thing which I did find silly in that the girls are reported here as going to Enfield Grammar School, and it seems to have been shot there too. I know because that’s my old school and I recognised quite a lot of it. However, I should probably point out that, in real life, the girls didn’t go there because, well... it was an all boys school. So I did find that kinda curious but I guess it was done to give something with more recognition value for audiences, in terms of the name of the school and reminding the audience where the majority of the movie is set when transitioning between countries at certain points for establishing shots.

However, this is really the only thing I noticed as maybe not ringing true, well, apart from all the ridiculous, over the top stuff which is part and parcel of these kinds of films. And the movie does, of course, benefit from having another of Joseph Bishara’s marvellously effective horror scores. It’s got a slightly different tone from most of his other horror work, as did the score to the previous Conjuring movie he worked on and he really does quality and supportive work in this field. I just wish somebody would give him some other genres to work in so we can hear what else his compositional voice is capable of. Great score though and you can bet I’ll be snagging a CD when that’s released (in fact, it turns out it's only available on a proper physical format from US amazon so... head over to their website if you want a credible version of the music).

And that’s all I’ve got for this one. A generally spooky film which, although not quite as great as the first one in the series, certainly lives up to the former film’s reputation and it deserves the success it’s already garnering at the box office. Hopefully a rich box office will mean we can see Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprise their roles as Ed and Lorraine sooner rather than later. It’s like they were born to play these characters and I certainly want to see more of them. If you liked the first movie or even you didn’t see that one, The Conjuring 2 - The Enfield Case is well worth some of your time if you’re a horror movie afficionado. A masterful approach to the subject material and I hope James Wan also comes back for a third go with these characters.