2016 in film.

Top ten box-office films of 2016:

1. Captain America: Civil War
2. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
3. Finding Dory
4. Zootopia
5. The Jungle Book
6. The Secret Life of Pets
7. Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
8. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
9. Deadpool
10. Suicide Squad

What are your top three films for 2016? We will keep a running tally and eventually have some sort of bracket. For me it would be:

1. Manchester by the Sea
2. Toni Erdmann
3. Moonlight

What are some of the forgotten gems from the year? What is overrated? What did you discover at a young age and what did you discover later?

YEARS IN FILM • forum.chorus.fm

 

The Lost City of Z, Personal Shopper, Nocturama, and Aquarius were all close.

 

1. La La Land
2. The Neon Demon
3. The Handmaiden

4. Sing Street
5. Manchester by the Sea
6. Moonlight
7. A Silent Voice
8. Endless Poetry
9. Swiss Army Man
10. The Edge of Seventeen

Also love Hunt for the Wilderpeople, American Honey, The Nice Guys, Antiporno, Nocturnal Animals, Toni Erdmann, Arrival, Deadpool, Hacksaw Ridge, 20th Century Women, Your Name, Captain America: Civil War, Train to Busan, Lion, Zootopia, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Kubo and the Two Strings, Captain Fantastic, Elle, Cameraperson, Divines, Wiener-Dog, A Bride for Rip Van Winkle, Paterson, Blue Jay, and My Life as a Zucchini.

Feels weird having La La Land in this year as it was a 2017 movie for me.

 

Moonlight
Arrival
The Handmaiden

HM: Raw, Manchester By The Sea, The Wailing, Popstar, Train to Busan, Hell or High Water, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, The Nice Guys

 

1. Moonlight
2. The Wailing
3. Neon Demon

 

1. Certain Women
2. Moonlight
3. The Handmaiden

Really strong year. Manchester by the Sea, Personal Shopper, Toni Erdmann, Elle, Silence, A Quiet Passion, and Everybody Wants Some!! were close. Shin Godzilla, the Nice Guys, Raw, Your Name, Hail Caesar, Train to Busan, and I Am Not Your Negro are in the next tier.

 

1. Manchester by the Sea
2. Moonlight
3. The Wailing

Manchester is the most personally affecting depiction of depression I've seen in a movie, easy pick there. I only just saw Moonlight for the first time last year and it completely lived up to the hype and then some, beautiful and understated. The Wailing might be my favorite horror movie at this point, incredibly good looking visually and it builds such a palpable sense of dread. The double exorcism scene is absolutely wild.

Really strong year, feel bad about leaving out The Handmaiden and Hell or High Water, both of which would easily make my top 3 in most other years.

 

La La Land
Hell or High Water
Manchester By the Sea

Also enjoyed: The Nice Guys, Don't Breathe, Popstar, Lion

 

1. Manchester by the Sea
2. Moonlight
3. Silence

Honorable mentions:

Nocturama
Paterson
Everybody Wants Some!!
Hell or High Water
Popstar
Hail, Caesar!
Arrival
The Nice Guys
10 Cloverfield Lane

 

Fuck I forgot Paterson. That would be really close to my top 3

 

Hail Caesar may not be among the Coen's all-time greats, but they somehow always manage to get a couple A+ scenes in every movie they do.

"God doesn't have children. He's a bachelor and he's very angry."

 

Probably my favourite year of the '10s looking through this.

1. The Handmaiden
2. Raw
3. The World of Us

The Handmaiden is a brilliant psycho-sexual period thriller from Park Chan Wook. Feels like a Hitchcock movie with twists and turns, betrayals and double agents. A gripping watch, and I'm surprised that Kim Min-hee hasn't gone on to bigger things outside of many Hong Sang Soo films.

Raw is Julia Ducournau's fabulous coming of age horror about a young woman going away to Vet school, and uncovering some secret cravings. The scene where she nibbles on the finger, peeling back the sinews is one of the most brilliantly disgusting things I've ever seen. Very much looking forward to her new film, but I don't think it's getting a UK release for a few months.

The World of Us is a really sweet and sort of heartbreaking little Korean film, about a group of 12 year olds. It's about a little injustice and friendship, petty grievances that mean everything to 12 year olds, and give you, watching it now as an adult that sinking and sad feeling in your stomach. Director Yoon Ga-Eun never tips her hand too much, never feels tempted to turn this into something more, there's no horrible tragedy here, just kids being kids. But I don't think I've seen a better depiction of 12 year olds on film. Really, really poignant - and absolutely worth watching.


Honourable mentions;

Some great stuff from Korea, including one of my favourite Hong Sang Soo films, the playful Yourself and Yours, which exists in a grounded and yet impossible reality, like many of his films. The Wailing is an excellent, slow-burn folk horror about faith and trust.

Train to Busan is a very fun Zombie movie, that doesn't do much different to other Zombie movies, but does it extremely well, using the claustrophobic train carriage to full effect. I saw a film called Tunnel while on a long haul flight and half drunk (and that very specific flight drunk way), and I thought it was beautiful. I haven't seen it since, as I'm not sure it was really that great, but it really worked for me then.

From Japan, there's Sion Sono's demented and colourful deconstruction of Roman Porno films, Antiporno, a mess of colour, sex and violence, that lives up to it's title. Shin Godzilla is a great bureaucratic version of the Godzilla story, making explicit references to the Fukushima meltdown. The first version of Godzilla also has big Googly eyes like a sock puppet.

Two very different family dramas, Kore-Eda's After the Storm with all the compassion and tenderness that Kore-Eda can bring out, and then Koji Fukada's Harmonium, which feels like it's heading in the same direction, and then absolutely is not.

From China, I Am Not Madam Bovary is a great film about bureaucracy, as a woman tries to prove her husband has tricked her into getting a divorce. The frame of the film is circular, which is a bit of a novelty, but the imagery it gets out of that is often fascinating.

Moonlight is fantastic, one of the few "Best Picture" winners to feel like it deserved it. Paterson is a great, relaxed Jim Jarmusch film about a week in the life of a bus driver, writing poetry.

I, Daniel Blake is a furious Ken Loach film about the benefits system in Britain, which obviously ends in tragedy. Julieta is a return to form from Almodovar, about two periods in a woman's life.

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki, is a really sweet film about a Finnish boxer, who's fallen in love.

 

1. Raw
2. Nocturama
3. The Neon Demon

 

1. Arrival
2. Train to Busan
3. Manchester By The Sea

 

Moonlight
Silence
Jackie

The VVitch would be my actual third choice over Jackie, but its release was weird. Sundance 2015, fall festival circuit 2015, finally released in Feb. of 2016.

Following those three/four--

The Lobster
American Honey
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Green Room
Paterson
Everybody Wants Some!!
Hell or High Water
La La Land
Manchester by the Sea
Arrival
Toni Erdmann

It was such an outstanding year for movies. Honestly, there was an incredible few year stretch in the mid 10's where cinema was crushing it.

 

1. Manchester by the Sea
2. Lost City of Z
3. Hell or Highwater

Manchester by the Sea maybe the only on that deserves its spot, they're quite a few notable movies I haven't seen yet, and I watched Nice Guys, Moonlight, Arrival, on a plane and my vague memory is that I liked them and in that order.

Neon Demon sees Refn try a story with women, but they end up looking like props in his pretty shallow critic of the fashion industry. They looked good though, great visuals as always, maybe being props was the point.

Sauage Party was the worst movie I saw, I watched it on a bus with nice low bus expectations and it didn't meet any of them, that bus trip got delayed at the border for 8 hours and I was more disappointed in how unfunny and shit Sauage Party was.

 

1. Moonlight
2. Hell or High Water
3. Lost City of Z

 

1. Moonlight
2. Personal Shopper
3. Toni Erdmann


Raw was great too

 

1. Personal Shopper
2. Certain Women
3. Moonlight

Arrival, Hell or High Water, and the Nice Guys are all very good and were tough to leave out. Swiss Army Man is absurd and I love it. Sing Street is a really good coming-of-age musical. Train to Busan, as already said, is simply an excellent rehashing of something that's been done to death. Rogue One is the best Star Wars film since the OG trilogy. Hidden Figures is a rare Oscar-bait biopic that I actually enjoyed. I don't remember enough of Hail, Caesar to comment on it, which for the Coen Bros. is pretty damning. Terrible year for blockbusters, Star Wars aside.

 

1. 20th Century Women
2. Cameraperson
3. Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Another top heavy year for me...also 4.5-5 stars for Manchester by the Sea, Arrival, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, The Nice Guys, Moana, and American Honey. Have not seen Your Name, Train to Busan, Raw, Paterson.

 

1. The Edge of Seventeen
2. Everybody Wants Some
3. Manchester by the Sea

 

Really need to see Manchester by the Sea.

 

1. Personal Shopper
2. Moonlight
3. Manchester by the Sea

I saw Personal Shopper knowing nothing about it and thinking it would be some kind of typical rom com or coming of age drama and I would highly recommend going into it like that if you haven’t seen it yet

 

@Nathan had it as his avatar for forever so I finally watched it.

 

everybody wants some is great