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.

Zoology (aka Zoologiya)

A Tall Tail

Zoology (aka Zoologiya)
2016 Russia/France/Germany
Directed by Ivan I. Tverdovskiy
London Film Festival screening, October 8th 2016

And so my 2016 London Film Festival adventures begin with Tverdovskiy’s low key but gently stunning movie Zoology. The film’s central concept intrigued me enough to add this to my ticket applications for this year’s festival... or bookings I guess, since they’ve all gone on-line and become computerised these days, which I hate.

The story, such as it is, tells of a frumpy, late/middle aged woman called Natasha, played by an amazing actress who doesn’t seem to have done much film work at all in her time, Natalya Pavlenkova. Not long after the film has started, we find that Natasha, who works in her local Zoo, has somehow grown a full fledged tail. Naturally, she is somewhat concerned about this and so goes to see her doctor, who then sends her to get an x-ray done. The man who takes her x-ray... and a second visit after the first one turns out to be blurry... is Pyetr, played by Dmitriy Groshev, who becomes Natasha’s romantic interest, despite what looks to be a fair age difference between the two of them and, of course, despite Natasha’s tail.

The film is a gentle study of Natasha as she begins, over the course of the movie, to embrace the idea of having her tail and we see her transformed into someone who starts to enjoy her life as her new appendage seems to see her blossom into the person she always had the potential to be. It’s a lovely little study of her coming to terms with her tail as the rumours and whispers about ‘the devil woman with the tail who can fix you with her eye and make you die with her stare’ become more abundant in her small community.

Perhaps part of the reason it’s so engaging, besides the absolutely incredible performances put in by the two central leads, is that the director seems to be using hand held camera for everything. There are a lot of shots which follow the actors around almost reactively, like a visual version of a film score 'Mickey Mousing'* the on screen actions... but even with the seemingly static shots in the movie, there’s still a lot of slight camera movement infecting the 'still' shots like a ‘slow shake’ and it’s very much the kind of methodology which some American TV shows, like Firefly or the Battlestar Galactica reboot, have been using recently to give a more ‘documentary-like’ feel to the proceedings. It’s kind of interesting, actually, because I noticed this happening pretty much all the time throughout the movie as I was watching it without being aware of who the director was and what his previous movie making exercises had been. However, at the screening, we were lucky to have lead actor Dmitriy Groshev on hand, with a translator, to talk a little about it and to answer any questions from the audience afterwards... some of which were quite awkward and, therefore, quite interesting. He explained that the director was actually a documentary director so that immediately made sense to me because he is obviously using that approach to make what seems to be (and the IMDB isn’t much help on this, it seems) only his second fictional feature length film.

It’s not a particularly unusual approach to making a movie, especially nowadays, but it does serve to give the film a kind of voyeuristic, fly-on-the-wall, kind of feel to the proceedings and, consequently, helps to legitimise what might be considered a fantastical story element by grounding it in a style which you might not associate with that kind of subject matter. Right away, you are sympathising with the main character because you forget that you are watching actors and are, instead, watching a slice of life, to a certain extent.

The film treats it's central theme less than seriously, most of the time, especially for a study dealing with the alienation of a person through a sudden physical transformation. It also doesn’t judge, like the local community and church, who condemn the phenomenon as the sign of some Religious demon, the existence of the appendage in question and, in fact, leaves the origin of the mystery of this new member unexplained... which is refreshing and, although this has been happening a little more lately in the odd American movie, is something which helps dispose of a lot of exposition and allow the writers and director more time to concentrate on just what it is they want to say about the phenomenon.

The comedic element of the movie, which includes a really fun scene where the lead actress is using her very flexible tail to masturbate in her bathtub, is very broad and the myth of Russian films being humourless and very bleak is pretty much busted throughout, most, of the running time here. I’m no stranger to Russian movies but at least two people had warned me, before I went to see this, that is was Russian and, therefore, bound to be a bit miserable. Imagine my surprise, then, when in the last few minutes of the movie, this actually turns out to be correct and we have a tragically dark but, also, beautifully executed ending which actually took me by surprise during the last minute or so of the film. I really don’t want to give away any spoilers here, especially since it was revealed at this screening that the movie will, in fact, be getting a UK release at some point in the future, but the ending of the movie both startled me in the unexpectedness of just where it leaves us while at the same time being absolutely brilliantly timed. The best thing I could liken it to would be certain types of music. When I was in my 20s and 30s I used to listen to a lot of music by contemporary minimalist composers and two of them, Michael Nyman and Philip Glass, would often end a piece quite abruptly but, simultaneously, at the exact natural point it should be ended. The result was a passage of music which finished before you realised it would (on first listen) but at the same time brought a sense of unconventional resolution to what you had just been listening to. The ending of this film is just like that... but on visual terms with the editing, which is always said to be an element of film which is similar to music anyway and, if you want to see that analogy demonstrated perfectly, then the ending of Zoology gives you that chance.

After the screening there were a fair few questions, one about the portrayal of female stereotypes, which I guess was kind of valid but which the actor admitted, presumably because he, like me, can’t see anything wrong with using stereotypes as short hand to get a message across... especially when these people do exist in real life. Another was very telling in that the lady who asked a question obviously saw the tail in the tale as a penis and some kind of misogynistic attitude towards women in the message of the film and, although there is that analogy made a couple of times to set up a couple of jokes, I think the question said more about the person asking it and the baggage she brought to the screening, rather than any inherent negative attitude to women... especially for a film which has such a strong, female character as the central role (and not some kind of male fantasy female, either). The lead actor pointed out that perhaps the lady was confusing somebody moving closer to maleness (which isn’t the case, anyway, I think) with somebody becoming just generally more alien and therefore not accepted but I can kind of see where the lady in the audience was coming from, even if I don’t agree with that subtext being present in the film, myself.

And there you have it. Zoology is a great little movie which has an intriguing premise and which plays it, mostly, for comedy with a lightness of touch which, perhaps, allows the bleak reality of the situation to come crashing down on the audience at the close of the film. One of the better films I’ve seen at the cinema this year and one I’d definitely recommend catching in screenings or on some kind of home video format if you get the chance. A movie which deserves a lot of recognition, I think.

*A term for film composition where the music catches and illustrates particular actions or dialogue highlights etc.


2016 London Film Festival @ NUTS4R2

Zoology (Zoologiya)
Women Who Kill
Mifune - The Last Samurai
Prevenge
Spaceship