The Top 10 Movies of 2016 (in my opinion)

2016 has been a pretty rough year. How bad was it? David Bowie died in January and that was just the beginning. This was such a bad year that the joke about 2016 being a terrible year got old by summer. This has been a year of riots, mass shootings, natural disasters, celebrity deaths, societal and political turmoil, and the world at large losing its collective shit. But there have been a few bright spots among all the dread, fear and paranoia, and one of those bright spots was a surprising amount of good movies. Sure, there have been a couple flops and failed franchises here and there, but there were tons of new talent, hidden gems and even a couple crowd pleasing blockbusters that made for some great viewing experiences. Thankfully I got to go see more movies in the theater than I normally get to, which means I was able to put together a solid year-end list for the first time in a while. Full disclosure: this isn't some definitive list, just a list of my personal favorites ranked in the order of how much I liked them. I'm not a professional critic, I'm just some random asshole from Cleveland who really likes watching and talking about movies, so my opinions only count for so much. Plus, since I just started this blog about two months ago, this list should give you a good idea of my personal taste. With that said, these are my top 10 favorite movies of 2016.

La La Land - Here's To The Fools That Dream

In many ways, La La Land's identity as a modern Hollywood musical is a perfect reflection of its overall themes. A lot of people say that Hollywood musicals are dead, but really they're about as dead as westerns or film noir. Which is to say they're not dead at all, just in a state of cultural dormancy, only coming out of hibernation every couple years to remind us why it was once a dominant cornerstone of the movie system. Most musicals of the last decade or so have been adaptations of well established Broadway shows (Trust me, it's only a matter of time before Hamilton inevitably gets the Hollywood treatment), but there hasn't really been a recent one that I can think of that is unique to film. La La Land fills that niche and then some with this love letter to Old Hollywood that romanticizes everything that makes the movies so great, while anchoring everything to its disappointing reality, even during the moments when its characters literally fly.

Assassin's Creed - Why Can't We Have Nice Things?

It really sucks that we don't have any good movies based on video games. It's been about forty years since the medium was born and every attempt to bring it to the silver screen has been guilty pleasures at best and downright unwatchable at worst. Hell, we've had three video game adaptations this year and none of them were really any good. (Well, The Angry Birds Movie and Warcraft weren't at least. I didn't even bother seeing Ratchet & Clank, but let's be honest, neither did you.) I think a major problem they all share is that the writers were tasked with adapting a story from an interactive medium to a passive one, but even then there is still a plethora of stories in gaming that are pretty hard to mess up. And with Ubisoft, one of the biggest game developers in the world, forming its own movie studio with the intent of bringing some of its biggest IP to the silver screen, we might have a good video game movie in our future. Granted, Ubisoft is one of the kings of horrible business decisions, so my optimism should be taken with a grain of salt. But the Assassin's Creed series has a deep lore that can make for an interesting movie, and it's got some legitimately talented people working on it. So how does Assassin's Creed hold up as the studio's cinematic debut? Can it rise to the challenge and break the curse?

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - I'm One With The Force, The Force Is With Me

Disney acquiring the rights to the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas back in 2012 was a decision that turned quite a few heads and had more than a few people tugging at their collars. On one hand, it was a good thing that the series was being taken out of Lucas' hands after his unquestioned creative control lead to the prequels becoming one of the most disappointing spectacles in cinematic history. On the other hand, people were afraid that the series was going to become overly sanitized under the control of Disney, and while The Force Awakens was well received and made all the money, they did play it a little too safe by making the plot a retread of A New Hope, which didn't assuage any of those fears. While I have faith in Disney since they were able to turn Marvel into a well oiled machine with a track record so good that even its missteps are easily glanced over, it's way too early to be making judgments on the future of Star Wars after only two film. But Disney has other plans for the galaxy far far away. While we are looking at a future with a new Star Wars movie nearly every year, they're trying to keep things fresh by pulling double duty and maintaining two storylines. Even years will present the main story with Rey, Finn, Kylo Ren and BB-8, while odd years will contain stand-alone tales within the Star Wars universe. And this Christmas, we were given the first chapter of this anthology, Rogue One.

Moonlight - I don't even have a catchy tagline for this. Just go see it.

For the past few years, people have been rightfully making a stink about the Oscars' lack of diversity, both in terms of the people voting for the the nominees to the nominees themselves. When #OscarsSoWhite became a trending topic on social media and Chris Rock made it a running gag during his hosting stint earlier this year, the Academy went into panic mode and has been scrambling to make things right. This is a real shame not just because it's taken so long for the Academy to even acknowledge this problem let alone do anything about it, but because there's a new crop of talented black actors (Lupita Nyong'o, Michael B. Jordan, Chiwetel Ejiofer, David Oyelowo, Uzo Aduba etc.) and directors (Ryan Coogler, Steve McQueen, Ava Duvernay etc.) that deserves accolades. One of the ways they've been trying to make up for lost time is scouring for more representative films. For a while it looked like Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation was going to be the new torch bearer, but it collapsed under the weight of its own hype when it turned out to be a self-indulgent by the numbers biopic. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if we end up doing the #OscarsSoWhite dance again come February, Moonlight will be the movie that the black community will cry foul over.

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them - Akio Cashcow!

Let's start this review off with a little confession: I've never been that big into Harry Potter. That's not to say I'm not a fan. Quite the opposite. I've read the books, saw the movies, and I admire that it's opened an entire generation to the world of reading. The world is a better place because of JK Rowling's creation and she deserves every bit of praise she gets and then some. It was just never an integral part of shaping my adolescence like it was for so many people of my generation. What can I say? The Simpsons and Pokemon got to me first. But franchise building and shared continuity is the name of the game in Hollywood now (a trend that Harry Potter is partially responsible for), and since Warner Bros needs something to fall back on in case the DC Extended Universe doesn't pan out, diving back into the Harry Potter universe seems like a safe bet since it was basically money printing license for a solid decade. Which brings us to Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. With a screenplay by Rowling herself and longtime Potter director David Yates behind the chair, this is the first installment where fans can experience it with fresh eyes without obsessively nitpicking the differences from the source material. 

Arrival - When Smart Sci-fi Makes First Contact

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS!

Arrival is one of those movies that builds up to a huge twist at the end, and how you felt about said twist is ultimately how you felt about the movie. I for one think that this movie is fantastic and everyone should see it regardless of whether the twist works for them or not, but we can't really gauge that without actually discussing it. So I'm going to discuss the movie as a whole first, then put up a spoiler warning before I get into the twist so you know where to stop. We good? Good. Now on with the review.

Hacksaw Ridge - Bloody Hell

It's so easy to get distracted by Mel Gibson's public persona that forgetting what a great talent he is as an actor and director can be easily forgiven. He can be a bit, umm... eccentric, but to me that's what makes him and his work so fascinating. When you get down to it, Mel Gibson is a self loathing masochist with a martyr complex and hyper-masculinity issues that can only be the result of a devout religious upbringing. While these characteristics result in the behavior that made him such a big tabloid magnet, they're also what make him the perfect man to spearhead such films as Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto. And with Hacksaw Ridge, he has found a new conduit to explore his favorite subjects.