This might be a strange one. This blog was started in 2016, and I never did my favourite movies of that year because.... well to be honest I just hadn't seen enough. And last year, my blog turned three, and I didn't celebrate it at the time because I just couldn't think of anything to do. But these are strange times we're living in, with coronavirus causing the cinemas to be shut and the reviews to slow down for the time being. So instead of letting the rants and ravings dry up completely, what if I went backwards? I'm going to kill two birds with one stone, celebrating the best movies of 2016 while also celebrating my blog's third year. In the last four years, I've seen lots of movies from the year my blog was born that are undoubtedly excellent, and in the interest of having a proper celebration, I've decided to take my top ten and double it, to present, for your self-isolation reading pleasure, my top 20 films of 2016. Obvious rules apply, it's my opinion, I haven't seen everything, I'm a squid disguised as a human, I've got a load of honourable mentions, the usual stuff. My big blind spots here are American Honey, Eye in the Sky, Silence and The Neon Demon. As for the stuff I love that just about missed the cut, there's Hunt For the Wilderpeople, Under the Shadow, The Edge of Seventeen, Zootopia, Ethel and Ernest and High Rise. So with that out of the way, let's rewind with my top 20 movies from the year I became The Scoundrel of the Screen!
20. Nocturama
As premises go, Nocturama's is inherently troubling. A group of radical teenagers commit a series of terror attacks in Paris and hide out in a department store, yet director Bertrand Bonello refuses to oversimplify. It's a film that is small but expansive, transforming a specific, contained space into a world that contains multitudes. It combines sharp thrills with some really powerful commentary, and the result is utterly hypnotic. Deliberately paced and meticulously plotted, it takes a little patience to really get on it's wavelength, but if you surrender yourself to the specificity of Bonello's vision, it's a singular experience that's tough to shake. Nocturama doesn't concern itself with explanation, almost like the cinematic equivalent of a dare that urges you to follow it to a conclusion that it might not even reach. It's stylistically dense and surprisingly fun, even as the world within in it threatens to teeter into total destruction
19. Weiner
Weiner is a masterclass of cringe-inducing observation. Essentially it follows disgraced mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, whose attempts to get re-elected are derailed by the exact same circumstances that caught him out first time around. It's as natural as documentaries get, and the real joy of watching this film is realising just how batshit crazy this absolutely true story is. Weiner himself is a fascinating character, someone who is absolutely their own worst enemy but is impossible not to understand through observation. It's a fantastic political doc, and just a great study of an utterly unfortunate self-destruction. In a way it feels like Kreigman and Steinberg are testing the limits of the fly-on-the-wall style, leaning further and further into candour until it seems irresponsible. There's a lot that's revealed through this approach, and in many ways the sheer chaos that is observed in this film feels like grim foreshadowing to the current political climate
18. 20th Century Women
Mike Mills is such a gentle, non-judgmental observer of people, and this passionate tribute to the women who made him is pure everyday magic. The cast is utterly stunning here, with a triad of incredible female leads played to perfection by Annette Benning, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning, along with a remarkably confident turn by Lucas Jade Zuumann. It's a wonderfully sensitive film that celebrates the specific and the small, zeroing in on the tiny moments of insight that all too often go unnoticed. It's reflective without ever buckling under nostalgia or swelling with sentimentality, and the clear-eyed approach that Mills takes leads to another poignant step on his journey to the centre of his soul that he's been embarking on with each film. It is so authentic that even using that word to describe it feels wrong. It is a film crafted in memories, made of the details that remain even when everything seems different; maybe it's a song, maybe a moment, maybe just a miscellaneous piece of information. 20th Century Women is a film that never feels like it's telling a story so much as remembering a time and a place, shimmering with the kind of warmth and honesty and empathy that reminds us why we need Mike Mills in the first place
17. La La Land
It's weird to talk about La La Land on a list like this, because it's become a film that everyone knows and loves in the four years since its release. Hell, it's weird to think that it's four years old to begin with. Damien Chazelle's bittersweet ode to the musicals of old is obviously brilliant, and if I can't say too much about it that everyone else hasn't already, well then I can still sing its praises. The music is wonderful and performed with real brio by the two on-point leads, but what really makes La La Land special is how much the musicality is baked into the film itself. Like everything Chazelle does, there's a real rhythm propelling every minute of this film, and the way Chazelle can command every moment of romance, humour and emotion with such elegance will always be hugely impressive. Its enduring appeal is hardly surprising, because under its elegant, slick exterior is a real beating heart that is unafraid to dispense hard truths. It's an intricate beast, almost clockwork in its construction, but it appears so smooth and seamless, and this is its uniquely powerful spell
16. Sing Street
John Carney has become rightfully celebrated for his ability to craft these wonderfully heartfelt stories that are fuelled by the uniquely heartfelt power of song. Sing Street is such a joyful film, so sincere in how it perfectly captures its hero's quest for musical and romantic greatness. It's sprirted and warm and funny (cartwheeling priest!), perfectly balancing the bitter and the sweet without ever comprising its natural likability. I've watched this film a lot, and each time I watch it I become more and more drawn to Jack Reynor's character, the perfect mentor figure who sets the screen ablaze with his natural charisma. One advantage of doing a list in retrospect is that the impact that these movies had is a lot clearer, and since this came out he's made good on the massive potential he showed here, a showcase of his wonderous abilities and a pure example of a supporting role who just absolutely defined what the whole film was about
15. Nocturnal Animals
Tom Ford doesn't make many films, but when he does, he imbues them with a dark, complex magic that borders on the irresponsible. Nocturnal Animals is a beguiling blur of tones and moods that float around a dense, labyrinthine plot that is rife with symbolism. It's raw and wrought with pain, yet so visually stunning that it's impossible to rip your eyes from. It's tough to watch and but impossible to resist, effortlessly brought to life by a masterfully cast ensemble. It's a film about pain and how we express it, the forms it manifests itself in and the decisions we make when we act on it. Ford finds beauty in discomfort, teasing the murky truths of one narrative from the serene, almost artificial facades of the other. It's disturbing and dense and packed with meaning, and while unraveling it may be a deeply disturbing task, impossible in one viewing, it also reveals a piece of cinema that is unique, haunting and utterly singular
14. Green Room
With every film he makes, Jeremy Saulnier is cementing himself as one of the modern godfathers of genre cinema. In many ways, Green Room is his best work to date, fast and aggressive and mercilessly tense. What's interesting though, is the sheer amount of depth Green Room hides under its deceptively simple grindhouse surface. Where lesser thrillers would stop at the punks vs. neo-Nazis premise, Green Room keeps going. This is a film about recognising the enemy and overcoming them, about escaping from pure, suffocating evil, and as such, Saulnier displays a massive amount of intelligence with every beat he deploys, and every time he cuts, the examination deepens. It's a film that feels hardcore while actually demonstrating masterful restraint; Saulnier frequently rejects a focus on the gore in favour of a relentless mounting tension, and the result is blistering, thumping, and utterly vicious poetry
13. Hail, Caesar!
The somewhat polarizing response received by the Coen Brothers' seventeenth film will never not perplex me. True, Hail, Caesar! doesn't hit the lofty heights of Fargo or Miller's Crossing, but I don't think it was trying to. This is a film that isn't aiming upward as much as it is moving inward, turning its attention back on the film industry and telling a tale of one of its most revelatory eras. It's wonderful stuff, offset by period-accurate analogues and a charmingly meandering plot fueled by the golden gruffness of an on-point Josh Brolin. It's made from Coen fundamentals, and if that proves anything it's that the brothers have these elements down to an absolute science, able to remix them with playfulness and reliable instinct. It's a clear indicator of just how versatile the Coens have become at communicating through the utterly singular style they've been cultivating since Blood Simple. Hail Caesar! sees them play with this formula to luminous effect, and their vision of old Hollywood is an utterly fascinating place to visit
12. Kubo and the Two Strings
In many ways, Kubo and the Two Strings is trademark Laika: a lovingly woven tale of a child on a fantasy adventure that features a somewhat unorthodox family unit. If you thought that that was what it was going in, well Reader, you aren't wrong. But I think what Kubo proves (and what Missing Link slightly disproved), was that every film they make seems to bring Laika closer to perfecting their uniquely magical formula. It's a film with an immediately grand feel and an impressive grasp on its mythology, but what makes it special, particularly in an age where mainstream animation is perhaps dominated by CGI, is that every frame of Kubo is crafted with so much love. There's an obvious care put into this film, to the point where it might be the Oregon studio's best looking film, and that level of compassion extends to the story, too. Kubo finds love in an unusual place and celebrates its utterly transcendent power, and does it in a way that feels refreshing and rare. To remember is to love, to love is to defend, and to watch Kubo and the Two Strings is to recognise the genius of Laika
11. Moonlight
Following his debut, Medicine for Melancholy, Barry Jenkins went on an eight year hiatus. His comeback was Moonlight, a film that could nearly be described as poetry. The difference is that Jenkins isn't interested in putting feelings into words in Moonlight, instead he keeps them pure, treating them with the delicacy and care to ensure that they reach the screen with maximum potency. It's a film that tells the story of a life in the way that a life is lived, every scene a memory that is tied to how that experience felt. It is powerful, powerful cinema that smashes through the whole idea of showing vs. telling, because really it's doing neither. Instead, Moonlight is relating, presenting the events of the story with so much empathy that it's impossible not to identify with it on some level. In doing this, Jenkins is giving the world art that seeks to bring us together, to make us realise that these feelings unite us, an act of rebellion against a world that's constantly trying to define us by our differences. And if that's not special, I don't know what is
10. Manchester by the Sea
Manchester by the Sea is about grief. More specifically, it's about a certain kind of grief, the kind that comes from a loss that will never fully heal. Kenneth Lonergan isn't interested in exploiting this feeling too much, instead playing it absolutely straight with patience and honesty that's seldom seen in this kind of awards heavy-hitter. This is a film that avoids misery-porn at every turn, always opting for realism over worthiness. It avoids diluting its subject matter and it's all the better for it; the simplicity of Manchester by the Sea is precisely what allows Casey Affleck to deliver such a marvelously nuanced performance that was absolutely deserving of the Oscar. It's a film that is supercharged by that reservoir of pure emotion at the centre of it, and although to watch it is to observe unfiltered, bone-deep heartbreak, Manchester by the Sea ensures that, by its end, it's found some sort of solution in the face of grief: to just keep living
9. Your Name
2016's best animated film was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a Makoto Shinkai production. Your Name is Shinkai at his absolute best, telling a story of love and bodyswapping with boundless, breathless energy. Don't be fooled by the steady pace and the focus on day-to-day life: this is a piece of pure emotion. Your Name sees Shinkai soar to some spectacular heights, before performing expertly calculated dives into some of the most gut-wrenching emotional lows that anime has to offer. Your Name is a masterful deconstruction of its concept, constantly unfolding into something more beautiful with every heart-stopping reveal, but what makes it work, what makes it such a special piece of cinema, is how deeply felt everything in this film is. Your Name plays like a constant flow of emotion, a heavy stream of feeling that Shinkai has shaped into a piece of art that somehow becomes more beautiful with each passing moment: a shimmering beam of pure love that celebrates the act of connection
8. The Love Witch
With The Love Witch, Anna Biller proudly blasts the horror genre back about 50 years or so, delivering a sublime romp that resonates so much more than its candy coloured surface might initially suggest. Yes, this is absolutely a kaleidoscopic journey through a dreamscape that blends the trippy horror of Mario Bava with the stunning melodrama of Douglas Sirk, but a closer inspection reveals something much more powerful. The Love Witch confronts ideas of love and sexuality through a refreshingly feminist lens, and Biller's evaluation of womanhood and feminine sexual identity is every bit as timely as the film is stylish. In a world where mainstream horror threatens to blur into an endless sea of grey and brown franchise fare, The Love Witch stands out, especially in the year of The Boy, Blair Witch and The Purge: Election Year. It's so refreshing, not because it feels new, but because it doesn't: bringing horror back to a time of camp sensationalism as a way of making the past address the present, and the result is intelligent, hypnotic bliss
7. The Wailing
There is no clearly established formula to making great horror, and no sweeping statement that can accurately define the whole genre. That said, the majority of horror films tend to be on the short side. This makes sense; shocks can only be sustained for so long before the fear runs dry. At a hefty 156 minutes, The Wailing is a definite subversion of the rule, but this does nothing to dilute its utterly stunning exploration of evil. It's a veritable epic executed with incredible scope, unfurling slowly but deliberately, trading in the steady drip of evil and the gradual build of dread. It's a hugely disturbing meditation on religion, mortality, parenthood and justice, before finally looking directly into unimaginable evil in its brazen climax. How it is able to cover so much ground is a valid question, and how its dark magic seems to extend outside of the celluloid itself is a downright mystery. The Wailing is pure terror in a crime procedural disguise, and by the time it sheds its skin and reveals its true form, there can be no doubt about it: it's a modern genre classic
6. Hell or High Water
Hell or High Water seems to present itself in two different forms that work together in absolute harmony. The first, and most obvious, is that it's very much a Taylor Sheridan thriller: gritty, lean, and deeply concerned with contemporary issues lurking under the surface of modern America. The second comes from the fact that this is far and away one of the best Westerns in recent memory. Steeped in blood, sweat and dust, Hell or High Water is Sheridan and director David McKenzie's rumination on the lives of outlaws, but just like The Wild Bunch and Unforgiven before it, it suggests that these are figures living in a world that is rapidly ticking towards destruction. It is a story of necessity, of responding to circumstance and doing what needs to be done, always keeping the humanity of Chris Pine and Ben Foster's fraternal thieves firmly at the centre. That it's done in this way is uniquely fitting, using the cinematic language of the most American genre to comment upon the country's repeated forsaking of its own people
5. Don't Think Twice
The world is awash with films and shows where comedians present fictionalised versions of their world and experiences, but few capture the unique vulnerability of performance like Mike Birbiglia's masterful second feature. Given the talent on display, the fact that it's so consistently hilarious is no surprise, but what really makes Don't Think Twice feel so special is how incredibly assured Birbiglia is as a filmmaker. This is the film, the one that establishes him as a storyteller with a grasp on articulating neuroses and insecurities that rivals Woody Allen at the height of his powers. It's a pure love letter to the feeling of being a struggling comedian, of performing improv in the hopes that someone notices, and by splitting it up into six, Birbiglia is acknowledging that, when it comes to comedians, no two stories are the same. There's real vulnerability here that undercuts the quips, almost like an empathetic sigh that understands that this kind of self-presentation is a double-edged sword. But that's all a part of the experience that this film creates, acknowledging that there's highs and lows, laughs and heartbreaks, and by embracing them and celebrating them and painting them with this kind of depth and fluency, Birbiglia is building a monument to struggling performers everywhere
4. The Handmaiden
There's a sudden shift about 50 minutes into Park Chan-wook's ninth film that changes everything; just when the plot looks established, the roles set and the film well into its runtime, the story totally inverts itself, and everything you've seen up to that point suddenly proves to have been an elaborate move in a wicked game. This is indicative of what The Handmaiden is: a slinky, kinky, sadistically intelligent labyrinth of identities and gambits and cons that revels in its ability to reinvent itself. Park is a filmmaker notable for his brutality, his ability to dive headlong into the extreme without apprehension, and while The Handmaiden is certainly uncompromising, it's also his most deeply human film since 2006's I'm A Cyborg But That's Okay. The Handmaiden is playfully cruel, but Park is careful to steer the story towards a hopeful conclusion; with every piece that clicks into place, it becomes clear that this is a love story, albeit one involving erotic literature, mercury poisoning, and a very large octopus. It's a film about con artists that ultimately tells a story about the cruelty of love, spinning an irresistible web of pain and manipulation that utterly entrances. It's Park Chan-wook's romantic comedy, and is every bit as beautifully nasty as that sounds
3. Swiss Army Man
Great films are like good friends, in that the most important ones usually come out of the strangest circumstances. Swiss Army Man, the story of a man escaping from an island with the help of his best friend, a seemingly magical, farting corpse, is one of the most powerful portraits of loneliness, connection and hope that's come out in recent memory. It's a film about a wounded mind, and spends its runtime gently unraveling it, and what comes out of that is truly remarkable. There are no neat, obvious answers here, and the film is as jagged and messy as its hero's anxiety riddled mind. This results in an utterly singular viewing experience, where the entire thing feels subjective; every line of dialogue, every gesture, even the score of the film sounds like it's coming straight out of the brain of Paul Dano's lonely castaway. Its portrayal of mental illness feels true, forgoing the clear narrative signifiers that hold lesser films back and going for something far less accessible but infinitely more poignant. There are times where it seems like it shouldn't work, but marvelously, miraculously, it does. The film excels at finding tiny moments of insight and mining them for huge amounts of resonance, consistently hilarious but also deeply moving. It's a work of pure idiosyncrasy, of the unorthodox magic of the human brain, and it is truly unlike anything else I've ever seen
2. Train to Busan
The top two were tough to separate, but eventually I settled on an order, and so Yeon Sang-ho's beautifully assembled zombie thriller comes in at a respectable second place. There is a misconception that horror is nasty, that it seeks to tell awful stories of awful people being awful to each other. Train to Busan is a very clear example to the contrary: a story of ordinary people in the face of terror that seeks to remind us that sometimes we're better to each other than we realise. The story of a train hijacked by a legion of the undead, Train to Busan is a study of how we cope with crisis, slowly breaking down its wonderfully realised cast of characters while putting them through some white-knuckle thrills. It's one of the most honest looks of how this species might act in a doomsday situation, and although it's never afraid to show the selfishness and cruelty that its characters are capable of, it's clear that this is a film that is trying to find the best in humanity amid the panic. 2016 saw global developments that seemed to push us further to the brink of destruction than ever before, setting the ball rolling for everything that's going on now, but Train to Busan suggests that even in the face of impending doom, there is an inherent human goodness that is worth believing in. Its scares are masterfully conducted and rife with emotion, and the furious pace makes for an escalation of tension unlike anything else in 2016. It puts us against the worst to see us at our best, and in the end that pays off; there is great hope for the future in a little girl's song, and that's the conclusion that Yeon wants us to take away from this. An absolute game changer for horror
1. Arrival
It's weirdly fitting, and entirely unintentional, that my favourite film of 2016 came out the same weekend that I started this blog. Cinema is a universal language. It holds up a mirror to the world and uses its imagery to show us what we are, and what that could mean. Science fiction has been one of cinema's greatest tools for reflection since the invention of the medium, and with Arrival, Denis Villeneuve is absolutely honouring this. It is broadly a film about communication, about how we might interact with the other despite our inability to deliberate amongst ourselves. It translates complex theories on language and behaviour through the codes at work onscreen, exploring the different ways we might seek to understand the unknown
But like any message, there's another meaning at work in Arrival, a resonant truth that asks one very simple question. The key dilemma at the centre of Arrival is so uncomplicated, so basic in how it is presented to the audience, that it would almost seem totally ponderous... if it wasn't so viscerally human. Arrival is, more than anything else, a work of pure emotion. It's an incredibly intelligent piece of work, but instead of employing its intricacies to signal some kind of intellectual superiority, Arrival uses its brilliance in the most constructive way possible. It sees the potential of its concept to unlock something that is so human it is almost impossible to articulate, and without any kind of cool detachment, plunges headfirst into an infinite, incredibly specific universe of emotion. It doesn't provide any concrete answers, but it doesn't need to. Its aim is to explore the most human instinct: the urge to connect.
Of course none of this would mean anything without Amy Adams, who delivers an absolute masterclass of acting, so deeply, almost uncomfortably human. She takes everything at work in the story and turns it into pure emotion, softening the heady sci-fi into something that is so rare and so precious. Arrival is the best film of 2016 because it is cinema. I don't mean that as some pretentious statement meant to highlight a certain set of criteria for what does or doesn't make a valid piece of art, but that it's cinema because it couldn't be anything else. It is one of the purest and most persuasive arguments for cinema as a medium for connection and empathy that I've ever seen. It's glorious. It's beautiful. It makes me cry if I think about it too long. It's Arrival, and it's my favourite film of 2016
