Top Ten Movies of 2016
1. La Noche Del Virgen (The Night Of The Virgin)
Utterly deranged Spanish horror movie that took me completely by surprise. Imaginative, disgusting and perverse in equal measure. Nothing matches the complete joy of unearthing a truly original horror movie and Night of the Virgin is a total degenerate pleasure.
2. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
The first Star Wars movie since Jedi that doesn’t have to be qualified with an ‘if’ or a ‘but’. It isn’t really a stand-alone movie in as much as it’s an appendix to the original trilogy. It looks incredible and does its utmost to be as authentic as possible. I also love K2SO.
3. Green Room
Anton Yelchin delivers his best performance just prior to his untimely passing, in Jeremy Saulnier’s uncompromising punk siege movie. A violent, uncomfotable horror film that gives Saulnier a 100% hit rate so far.
4. The Neon Demon
Nicholas Winding Refn’s art-o treatise on beauty and ego. Horrific and beautiful at the same time, much like the characters themselves.
5. The VVitch
Effective old tyme creeper, as a disgraced young family ups sticks and moves next to a maligned forest. Favouring slow build tension over outright shocks, it twists your comfort zone into knots, as their God-fearing existence starts to look a lot less parochial than at the outset.
6. Baskin
Can Evrenol’s occult horror dreamscape really delivers the goods as a bunch of ill prepared cops stumble across a bloodthirsty cult. Bringing to mind Lucio Fulci at his most surreal, Baskin keeps it weird and visually challenging. A beautiful obscenity.
7. Hunt For the Wilderpeople
Taika Waititi gives you a gigantic cinematic hug with the tale of adolescent tearaway Ricky Baker and his Uncle Hec. Funny, sad and always uplifting.
8. Sausage Party
Despite suffering considerable fatigue with Seth Rogan et al, nothing can diminish the fact that Sausage Party is a flat out riot. Just when you think the laughs have climaxed, they insert you into a place you were sure they’d never go. Very filthy and very funny.
9. Everybody Wants Some!!
Linklater’s movies are by-and-large a masterclass in why character is everything. Even when the plot isn’t moving anywhere, you remain riveted because you want to spend as much time with these people as possible. Dazed and Confused comparisons are apt, but Everybody Wants Some more than holds its own. The Big Boys are on the soundtrack too.
10. 10 Cloverfield Lane
Another of the year’s best surprises. A tense, claustrophobic horror movie that keeps you asking questions right up until the end. John Goodman cranks the nutbag dial all the way to the top, as Mary Elizabeth Winstead grasps for any remaining threads of sanity.
The Other Best Movies of 2016
The irresistible good intentions of
Rosalie Blum charmed their way into my heart; The bizarre and sweet magical realism of
Swiss Army Man made it one of the best movies of the year; Ben Wheatley’s brutalist yet stylish tackling of
High-Rise was an essential watch; and the compelling, salacious true story of American gutter politics made
Weiner the best documentary of the year.
The Worst Movies of 2016
The Lobster
The oddball premise was not the cause of the Lobster’s undoing, its excruciating delivery and characterisation were. An über bore.
Suicide Squad
Spectacularly unimaginative in just about every conceivable department. It boggles the mind to think that DC believed they would be giving Marvel a run for its money with this. It’s not that it was bad – it was not anywhere near as grating as Man of Steel, for example - in so much that it set a new bar for the definition of average. Utterly predictable and it reeked of committee filmmaking.
Elle
If Paul Verhoeven is refusing to make sci fi anymore then frankly he should just get retired. Elle opened to limited but generally positive reviews but I utterly hated it. From its lazy depiction of gaming culture, to its generic 90s thriller tropes. Worst of all was its reprehensible attitude toward sexual violence. Verhoeven made some of my favourite movies of all time, but Elle is hot garbage.
Blair Witch
With Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett on board, Blair Witch should have been great. The result was a muddled disaster that relied exclusively on cheap sound effect scares and, most criminally of all, missed the point entirely about what made the original so exceptional.
Movies that came out at the tail end of 2015, or bypassed Australian cinemas altogether so I was unable to include them on last year’s list a.k.a. everything that Kurt Russell has done lately.
The Hateful Eight
Tarantino’s gripping chamber play pitted a motley assortment of travellers against each other, as paranoia and suspicion take over. It had more in common with The Thing, then just the soundtrack.
Bone Tomahawk
Top drawer cannibal western, with Kurt Russell leading a superlative cast off in search of Patrick Wilson’s kidnapped wife. It burns slow at times, but it’s simply prepping you for an unforgettable denouement.
Movies I wanted to see but missed
Don’t Breathe
Arrival
Hell Or High Water
Mechanic: Resurrection
The Nice Guys
Midnight Special
Vincent (Kyan Khojandi) is a perennial nice guy, living alone with his cat. He is unassuming, shy, and tied to his mother’s aprons stings. She lives in the apartment above him and he looks after her since his father passed away. A chance encounter leads to Vincent meeting grocery store proprietor, Rosalie (Noémie Lvovsky). Overwhelmed by a feeling of deja-vu, Vincent is compelled to follow Rosalie in an attempt to find out more about her. But she quickly cottons on to Vincent’s crude attempts at espionage, and deploys the services of her unemployed niece, Aude (Alice Isaaz), to follow Vincent in return.
