2016 Was A Shitty, Shitty, Shitty, Shitty, Shitty Year Except For The Films That Came Out, Of Which Some Were Shitty, Sure, But Many Were Not

Last year I wrote a whole post about how little I went to the cinema in 2015, but also about how it turned out I saw way more than three films of the year, and pledged to myself to do better in 2016. I did better this year, in some respects. I still didn’t see many films specifically directed by non-white non-dudes, but I saw more films with creative input from non-white-non-dudes, so it was a pretty good year.

THE FILMS OF 2016, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER BUT THE ORDER IN WHICH I REMEMBER THEM:

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

I’m going to all-caps this statement because I feel so confident I won’t immediately go back on it like I did last year: FILM OF THE YEAR.

Green Room

NO, WAIT, FUCK

This is a film about a shitty punk rock band fighting nazis and look, ladies and gents and people who don’t fit into that binary, this is all I really want from a film.

“Have you seen Hell Or High Water?” you ask, before hastily adding: “It’s not about a shitty punk band fighting nazis.” I’ve already stopped listening.

I don’t give a shit. I don’t want to hear it. Every film would be better if, instead of being whatever it’s about, it was about a shitty punk rock band fighting nazis. I’m going to write about a bunch of other films in this post, but I want you to know that in my heart I’m disappointed they weren’t about a shitty punk rock band fighting nazis.

Hey, remember back in May when we all thought there was a chance that literal nazis wouldn’t be a problem we’d be dealing with in 2016? Remember that? Because I don’t really remember. Please tell me about it. It sounds great.

Rogue One

I —

I don’t know, man. I kind of hated Rogue One. I thought it was predictable, meandering, and ultimately just fucking boring, but a lot of people like it so much and I can’t understand why. I’ve been reading reviews and asking around but I feel like I’ve been taking crazy pills.

It’s getting a lot of attention for showing the quote-unquote dark side of the rebellion and for being the first Star Wars movie to acknowledge the “war” part of its title, but I don’t know if I agree with those points, particularly. Nobody gets anything concrete in the way of character or characterisation, everybody we meet is Super Important so there’s no innocent bystanders, the horrors of war get no screen time besides maybe that shoehorned-in scene with the kid, nobody gets any characterisation oh my God —

An example: in the beginning, Diego Luna straight-up shoots a loud rebel informant in the back before he can attract even more attention. What a badass! What a great character, willing to do terrible things in the name of the rebellion! Maybe someone will even spell out that exact motivation in dialogue later in the film! Anyway, later, he can’t shoot Mads Mikkelson because — I assume, because this isn’t very clear, not a lot of stuff in Rogue One is very clear— he just can’t bring himself to kill a man. I don’t know what the fuck to do with this. That’s not a character. That’s just a guy you made up because everyone loves Han Solo.

The sassy robot at one point tells Felicity Jones that her behaviour is “continually unexpected,” which, how does he know? Nobody does things for any reason in Rogue One. You can’t expect any sort of behaviour from a nothing person, you know? Why is she even here? I guess her dad was involved. It’s not super clear why she’s involved, or why she was in prison, or why she looks and sounds so clean when everything around her is greasy and yellow-toothed. You can’t just tell the audience that she’s doing something unexpected.

The sassy robot is funny… outside of the context, because Rogue One doesn’t know when it’s time to tell a joke or how to construct one. The score is pretty great… as long as you don’t mind when it kicks in, because it’s like someone just pressed the play button at the top of the film and forgot about it. The space battles are exciting… but you don’t care for the characters stuck in them, so they come off like a video game your friend’s playing and you’re half-watching.

I’ve been hearing a lot of “hey, it’s a great film! [That part at the end] was fantastic! It’s like a war movie from the 1960s! I didn’t care about the characters or the story, but it’s nice to see a different side of the Star Wars universe!” so basically it’s a failure, right? Characters and story are all you have. Right?

Am I taking crazy pills?

We’re getting another Star Wars film every year until there’s nobody left to see them. I’ll see every single one. God help me, I love a Star War. I know this reasoning is how we’re getting five Harry Potter spinoffs, but at least I’m aware of the problem and I accept my part in it.

Hush

Okay so this is on Netflix and it’s not amazing, per se, but you should see it if you’re into slasher movies even in theory. This one’s about a deaf woman dealing with a home invader.

Let that sink in. That’s a fucking great premise, fuck you. It’s also about 80 minutes long. That’s awesome, fuck you.

This year my friends also introduced me to Absentia, Mike Flanagan’s maybe-first feature, and like Hush it wasn’t what you’d call stellar but it’s still impressive and original and — this is important — human. Both these films treat their subjects with a kind of empathy missing from a lot of horror films, which we’ll talk about more in a few entries, which brings everything a few levels above the low-budget limitations.

More like this, please.

Fuck you.

Moana

When I was a kid I used to fastforward through the songs in Disney films, and while I’m out of that habit as an adult I still quietly groan a little bit when they start up. Moana is the first Disney musical where I actively love all the songs.

Hail, Caesar!

When people refer to something as a lesser Coen Brothers movie, I think what they mean is that it’s a Coen Brothers comedy. Every Coens movie is a little bit funny regardless of genre, but the more divisive entries in their filmography — your Burn After Readings, your Raising Arizonas, your Big Lebowskis — are all out-and-out comedies, and I love all of them.

Hail, Caesar! is kind of disjointed but its storylines interlock in some amazing ways, its characters are as memorable as they are multifarious, and the whole thing’s just outrageously funny. This would be one of my favourite films of the year based on “No Dames” alone, just watching Channing Tatum’s face throughout that scene, but there’s so much more going for it.

Dr. Strange

Dr Strange, like almost every Marvel film, is a lot like the other Marvel films, so you can kind of add and subtract points from the baseline of “it’s pretty good.”

Dr Strange gains points for:

1. climactic battle not a giant energy beam into the sky
2. stellar, and I mean seriously just amazing, visual effects
3. Chiwetel Ejiofor

Dr Strange loses points for:

1. how does Big Trouble in Little China have more Asian characters

Enclosure

Mike visited this summer during FrightFest, which is exactly what it sounds like, and we figured we’d expand our boundaries a little bit and go see something completely at random, pick something out of the programme, let the winds guide us, you know?

Enclosure is what we saw, and it’s terrible. Never again. Safe predictability from here on out for the Drew-Morris dream team.

Here’s the thing: Enclosure, as a synopsis, isn’t bad. A couple take a camping trip and get trapped inside their tent by something that will rip them apart if they step outside. That’s pretty solid. I can’t take that way from Enclosure. Where it falls apart is in its characters, who are locked in their roles without much space to step outside it. You know, doting rockstar boyfriend, introverted buzzkill girlfriend, a sweet and perfect relationship. Enclosure gives a lot of time to try and develop them, but absolutely fails. You’ve seen this before. You haven’t seen this specific monster hunt these characters, but you’ve seen a monster hunt these characters, and you can guess the rest of the film from there.

The best, top-tier horror stories, I think — like I’m some kind of authority on the subject — are stories about human beings put through the figurative and/or literal wringer, but horror has a way of throwing stereotypes at the screen and calling it “the genre.”

It’s true of any bad genre work, and Enclosure definitely isn’t the worst offender. I’m just thinking about it in relation to this film. I spent my teenage years watching awful horror films, and there’s definitely a slim part of the spectrum of bad that Enclosure occupies: not bad enough to be funny, but too bad to be mediocre. It sucks, but not in any interesting ways.

A Bunch Of Short Films At FrightFest

I’ve gone back and forth on including this part but, yeah, actually, let’s talk about this, guys. Sit yourselves down.

[CONTENT NOTE]

What the fuck is wrong with horror?

Let’s start off like the programme did, with a two-minute film about the rape and murder of a man’s wife. No, seriously, that’s it. That’s the whole film. From there: ritual murder of women, mean-spirited jokes about the rape and murder of women. I’ve never seen so many blood-soaked tits as I did that day, I swear to God. It was like 1970 up in there. It’s like we’ve decided that this is just kind of “part of the genre” and — guys, I love horror movies, I’ve made horror movies, and we have to get our shit together.

[END CONTENT NOTE]

THAT BEING SAID: I saw two things you should absolutely check out! Ryan Spindell’s ultra-sleek and surprising The Babysitter Murders and the oddball Tanatopraxia by Víctor Palacios. Both outstanding.

Everyone else: get your shit together.

Lights Out

Look, I’m going to level with you here: I heard about this film, I was warned about the ending, and I literally only watched it so I could yell about it.

And yet: it’s worse than I thought it would be.

Lights Out, based on a “yeah, okay, that’s kind of a cool premise I guess” short film that did the rounds a couple of years ago, is a confusing, tedious, unoriginal mess of a film and it was already the worst thing I saw this year even before that horrific, insensitive, super-offensive ending.

[THE SECOND CONTENT NOTE OF THIS POST, IN QUICK SUCCESSION]

[ALSO SPOILERS, I GUESS, EVEN THOUGH I’M DOING YOU A FAVOUR]

So it turns out the ghost is the manifestation of a mother’s mental illness and at the end of the film she kills herself so the ghost will go away.

Look: I know director David Sandberg suffers from depression, I know this. But that ending’s beyond “unfortunate implications” and well into the realm of stupidity. Every story says something, even if you don’t mean for it to say anything. Lights Out treats its mentally ill central character as a burden throughout, then suggests it’s a good idea to off herself so her family don’t have to deal with it any more.

And — it gets worse, I’m so sorry — she does it with a one-liner.

No drama! No slow piano music! Just a fucking John McClane sign-off.

[END CONTENT NOTE AND SPOILERS]

Awful. One star, but only because I don’t fuck around with zero-star ratings. Fuck this movie.

The Forest

Why do I keep watching shitty horror films? Am I — am I part of the problem?

That’s not entirely fair. The Forest is fine but aggressively generic. Natalie Dormer ventures into Aokigahara, Japan’s “suicide forest,” to find her twin sister. There, she suffers from either hauntings or hallucinations, and you know the rest of the story here. The Forest does some interesting stuff within those tight confines, like Dormer’s slow descent into madness, but ultimately it doesn’t really try that hard.

Arrival

I have two degrees in linguistics and a more than passing interest in slow, ponderous science fiction. Arrival was made for me.

Ghostbusters

This Halloween I saw a lot of tiny, adorable kids dressing up in the new Ghostbusters’ overalls, and I’m not just talking about tiny, adorable girls, so I don’t think my opinion of the new Ghostbusters matters at all.

But I do think it’s a real victory for women, like, just in case there was any doubt in your mind that women can make middling action-comedy movies just as well as men do.

Bad Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising

Oh God, did I… did I tear up at Bad Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising? I did. I teared up at Bad Neighbours 2: Sorority Rising. Right at the beginning, when Dave Franco gets engaged to his boyfriend and all his bros are singing and celebrating and accepting it without jokes or even questions, it just happens because it’s 2016, but being a queer-identifying guy, even in 2016, means that sometimes a gunman opens fire in an Orlando gay club or homophobic attacks in your country rise by 147% as part of the general rise of the far right, and you’re reminded that to a lot of people you’re still not welcome or accepted and you may never be welcome or accepted.

But then there’s a moment in a fucking Seth Rogen movie, of all things.

Both the Bad Neighbours films— or just Neighbours, depending on where you are — are a lot better than they have any right to be, honestly. There’s nothing in the second film to rival the air cushion prank in the first one, but that’s a very high bar to clear.

Mascots

Mascots was… fine? It’s not Christopher Guest’s best film, but it’s probably not the worst. I enjoyed my time with Mascots. It’s got a great cast. I have nothing against it, but I also don’t have any specific praise.

Don’t Think Twice

I’m a big fan of Mike Birbiglia but his new film about Keegan-Michael Key finding great success while the rest of his improv group plug away at their failing careers, scrambling to make rent for the flat they still live in, somehow, in their 30s and looking for ways up and out while trying to be happy for their friend, is far too close to home and I would appreciate it if you didn’t make me think about it any more.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

“Hey Jamie, what did you think of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice?”

BLAARRRG — I spent the whole morning after I watched Batman v Superman vomiting — WHAARB — now, I’m not saying these two things are connected, necessarily — WHARRGARBL — I’m just saying it feels like pertinent information.

“Cool, cool. So did you watch the extended cut or the theatrical cut?”

High Rise

I’m going to be honest here: I didn’t 100% understand what was going on in High Rise and I’m trying to decide whether that’s a good thing or a bad one.

On the one hand: the real spectacle of High Rise, despite all its meticulous horrible beauty and timely class warfare theme, pivots around a second act that never happens: what it gives you is a small apocalypse in a dreamy, mid-sized montage, then follows that up with a grand and deliberate third act, leaving you the viewer to wonder what the hell just happened.

On the other: the movie hinges around a second act that never happens.

Kubo and the Two Strings

There was no way Kubo and the Two Strings wasn’t going to disappoint me a little bit, because I think ParaNorman is one of the best animated films ever made. Still, I love and appreciate Kubo’s weirdness, which swings both ways: it’s exciting and unpredictable and full of the nightmare fuel I crave, but some of the story beats — especially the ending — don’t seem to fit with the rest of the film.

The Shallows

I’m a simple man of simple pleasures and if you’d told me that in 2016 I’d watch a film in which at a climactic moment, Blake Lively and her sassy seagull sidekick watch as an enormous shark leaps out of the ocean and the shark is somehow on fire, I would be so exited. “How does the shark come to be on fire?” I would wonder. “The Shallows sounds hilarious!”

The Shallows is not a comedy.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

You know, every time there’s a film like Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping I feel like something’s wrong with me because the film might be very funny (to be clear: this one’s very funny) but I get burned out by the pace of the jokes after about half an hour. Every time, this happens.

It was the same with Hot Rod, it was the same with Anchorman. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m from the North. My facial muscles can’t maintain a smile for 90 whole minutes.

The Invitation

Celebrated author Sarah Perry recommended The Invitation to me on the grounds that it was “perfect.” I don’t agree, Sarah. I’m sorry.

I get what it’s trying to do, that slow build-up before the inevitable violence of the climax, the careful focus on its cast of characters, but those characters feel like they’re drawn too thin and the build-up is this repetition of “something’s happening!”/“Oh no it isn’t!” and it gets tedious after a few cycles.

Still, though: The Invitation boasts one of the greatest final shots of the year, a twist so beautifully written as to suggest horrors beyond your imagining. Maybe I should give it another chance in 2017.

They Look Like People

I’d never heard of Perry Blackshear or his first film until I’d already started writing this list and it came up on a few “best of the year” lists and, shit, I loved it. They Look Like People is a super-low-budget affair, less about supernatural horrors than wordly ones; more about the horrors of watching your best friend slowly lose his grip on reality and not knowing what to do about it.

What I love to see in stories is a good tonal range; They Look Like People is creepy, funny, and sad — and unlike, say, Rogue One, it has a good grip on when to do those things, even if the execution doesn’t 100% work for you. But it worked for me.

Star Trek Beyond

Yeah, okay, Star Trek Beyond hits a lot of marks. I’m not here to rail against it. It’s a solid film. It’s not as funny as it thinks it is. Nice lip service to LGBT stuff. Anton Yelchin is a real loss.

FULL MARKS FOR “SABOTAGE.”

Finding Dory

I’m sure it was fine but I really don’t remember Finding Dory.

Under the Shadow

Last year everyone was on about The Babadook and it was kind of disappointing to me, personally, but a lot of non-horror types loved it and I’m not here to take that away from anyone. I’m glad you liked it, non-horror types! Stop recommending The Babadook to me!

And when Under the Shadow came out this year it got a lot of comparisons to that film; they’re both mother-and-child-versus-the-paranormal type films, I guess, but where The Babadook follows a standard format Under the Shadow takes its time with an incredibly slow burn, draws horrors from the Iraq-Iran war, and paces out its weird supernatural scares to heart-stopping effect.

It’s really good, you guys. The effects aren’t brilliant, sure, but who gives a shit? In films as in magic, you don’t notice the kinks when your attention is elsewhere.

Babak Anvari gave a Q&A when I saw this, months after it came out, as part of the Picturehouse “ghost stories for Christmas” series. It was like looking at an Iranian version of me, so thanks Babak for giving hope to short, bespectacled nerds with uncontrollable hair.

Oxenfree

Okay, Oxenfree isn’t a film, but I had to listen to you people go on about Stranger Things all year so just you sit down and watch me give a fuck.

Night School’s first game is about five hours long, if that, and it’s this subtly creepy thing about a bunch of teenagers on a haunted island. You play as Alex, a young girl presented with three dialogue options whenever she speaks. You choose one of those options and change the story in subtle ways — the main thrust of it, the haunted island parts, remains largely the same across playthroughs, but the interpersonal character elements change with your decisions. It’s wonderfully simple and incredibly diverse: the Oxenfree you experience isn’t the same as your friend’s Oxenfree.

What makes Oxenfree special, to me, is some of the best dialogue I heard this year in any medium. It feels real, feels familiar to me as a former teenager. These pesky teens, these idiot kids who I love so much, make fun of one another, use words they don’t understand, articulate their problems badly, and even talk over one another. When your time with Oxenfree is over, it’s like you just had a traumatic experience with old friends, and that’s a wonderful thing.

Zootopia

It’s an kids’ film about systemic racism. Zootopia is a complex and wonderful thing and we should show it in schools.

The Nice Guys

The thing about Shane Black is that you can’t really judge him for doing what he does, and has been doing since Lethal Weapon, and it’s always great. But I think your favourite Shane Black film is always going to be the first one you saw, and everything else after that, you’re going to compare to it.

So, The Nice Guys: it’s great but it’s not Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Swiss Army Man

Just like The Lobster last year, I’m still not sure what to make of Swiss Army Man. I’m erring on the side of saying that this film, where Daniel Radcliffe plays a farting, talking, fully erect corpse, is sublime.

Captain America: Civil War

On the one hand, Civil War is a great film for that hour in the middle where everyone remembers what jokes are; on the other, this is the second Marvel film to come out this year, you know? I’m tired. I thought it would never happen but I’m bored of superheroes.

Captain America: Civil War hinges on the assumption that you care so much about Cap’s sidekick-slash-nemesis that you’ll accept the Avengers could be torn apart over it. This is a dangerous assumption; nobody cares about Bucky apart from the people writing slash fiction about him.

Maybe I’m not tired of superheroes, exactly. I guess I’m tired of watching the same film again and again. I’m tired of every summer tentpole movie being a prequel to next summer’s tentpole movie. Marvel have the monopoly, sure, but every other studio’s spotted the billions of dollars being poured into the Marvel offices and followed suit. We’re getting a Universal Monsters cinematic universe if the new Mummy does well. We’re probably not getting another Ghostbusters, but you’d best believe there’s a whole cinematic universe mapped out for it.

“But what about Deadpool, Jamie? Deadpool was nothing like the other superhero films coming out!”

Deadpool

Deadpool is exactly the same superhero film as the others, it’s just conscious of that fact. It’s the same thing. It’s a rote origin story with some funny parts — and those parts are great. They’re self-aware, they’re new, they’re interesting. It’s just the other parts, the parts it took seriously, which let it down, and there’s far too many of them.

Here’s Deadpool, summarised, like I’m a jackass who hates your joy: maybe 30 minutes of Deadpool and then 90 more of some guy who will become Deadpool, and how will he become Deadpool, so suspenseful, my gosh, will there be a science experiment gone awry, will there be a British bad guy, will they make surface level jokes about how there’s all these clichéd elements but ultimately do nothing to subvert them, instead just leaning into the cliché for most of its running time? Who’s to say?

Me. I am to say, and I say: yes.

The Witch

I don’t know why people hate The Witch so much, but I think it’s something to do with it being billed as a straight-up horror film (which, sure, it’s kind of creepy) rather than as what it is: an extremely accurate pilgrim folk tale, with story and dialogue lifted from first-hand accounts of the time. If nothing else, it’s a hell of an achievement.

X-Men: Apocalypse

I had a long conversation with Carl the other day; he thinks X-Men: Apocalypse was worse than Batman v Superman because at least BvS was trying to do something, even if Zack Snyder is too inept to actually achieve it.

X-Men: Apocalypse is boring, but hey, listen: none of the X-Men films are good. None of them.

10 Cloverfield Lane

I’ve been a fan of Mary Elizabeth Winstead since Final Destination 3; lately she rarely pops up but when she does it’s an invariably great film and a great performance. You obviously saw Scott Pilgrim but did you see Smashed? Man.

10 Cloverfield Lane would another contender for “film of the year” if not for its ending, which has divided my friend group all year. Was it good? Was it terrible? Was it the good kind of terrible? Only you, dear reader, can say for yourself. But the film preceding it was excellent; claustrophobic, quietly terrifying, deeply mysterious.

I’m down for the whole “Cloverfield anthology” thing, too, just an FYI. You slap that name on any film, literally any film, and I’m going to see it. Any film. I can’t stress that enough. Just fuck me up.

Keanu

I love Key and Peele. Love them. I love their sketches. I’m sort of glad Keanu was just a feature-length sketch, but it was stretched out a bit too much and nothing got going until the final act, which is glorious.

Midnight Special

Man, I don’t know. Midnight Special really wanted me to love it but I only kind of liked it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a self-centred person and I love it when the nostalgia train rolls into Jamie Station, but some of these throwbacks come off desperate.

The Purge: Election Year

It’s my favourite procrastination website, so I think a lot in TV Tropes language, and here’s the thing about The Purge: it’s wall-to-wall Narm Charm.

Which is to say: I don’t know why I like The Purge series, I can never pin it down exactly, and I know they’re terrible, but I like them anyway. I always have a good time. The Purge: Election Year is more of the same.

Although it’s been announced as an upcoming TV series, my hope for the Purge franchise was that it would pull a Fast and Furious and after five instalments, suddenly get really good. I still hope that’s going to happen.

In many ways I hope for the Purge franchise what I hope for myself. One day I’ll be great, for some reason, and that’ll be the reality we live in. “Jamie Drew: he’s actually good now.”

And Obviously This Is Cheating, But:

Optimus

Last year we made a film, Optimus, a short sci-fi movie about trying to be an adult in a futuristic dystopian London. I edited it, so I’ve seen it a lot, but we had a couple of screenings this year so it counts, fuck you.

People seem to like Optimus, but film festivals have had a hard time with it. It’s got a runtime of 13 minutes, a little bit too long to screen as part of a shorts programme, and genre-wise it’s all over the place. I see it as pretty old-school science fiction, but there’s a light scattering of jokes in there too. It’s a mumblecore comedy from the future.

Anyway, here it is. Please clap.