TOP TEN of 2016

2016 has been a very bizarre year on a personal level. Celebrity deaths, political divisiveness, and social tensions have been incredibly thick all around. It has also been a pretty damn fantastic year for film. It started off with a pretty big bang and just never seemed to let up straight on through the Holiday Season.

10. Train to Busan

9. Captain America: Civil War

8.  Doctor Strange

7. VVitch:

6. Don’t Breathe

 

5. Deadpool:

 

4. Kubo and the Two Strings:

An amazing and original story featuring some very beautiful stop-motion animation. The use of new 3d printing technology was used to create brand new faces and animation effects. 

3. Rogue One : A Star Wars Tale

The Dirty Dozen of the Star Wars universe… yes please.

2. Green Room:

Patrick Stewart is absolutely the highlight performance in this grim film about a punk band in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a very layered film, very brutal, and extremely gritty. Stewart is the leader of a Skinhead gang in the Northwest and a very intense role for one of our lost celebrities, Anton Yelchin. Also notable is the performance of frequent Saulnier collaborator Macon Blair as a skinhead whose confusion and regret is a perfect balance to Stewart’s chilling performance.

1.      Moana :

What can I say? I’m not normally the kind of guy who puts an animated Disney film onto his list but Moana maybe the most effective use of the medium I’ve seen since Beauty and the Beast. I haven’t been this emotionally moved by a Disney Animated film in a long time, the voice acting was done very well and music from Lin Manuel Miranda hit all the right spots.

* And here are some honorable mentions: 

Scherzo Diabolico, They're Watching, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Shallows, Light's Out.