Film 2016: Part One

Before lockdown, people used to attend the cinema to see films, and my wife Alice and I were two of those people. From 2016 to 2020 we made notes and privately ranked the new films we saw (effectively leaning into my obsessive compulsive tendencies). Now, in this blog, I plan to present a countdown for each of those years.

In these lists, you aren’t going to find a lot of Oscar winners. In fact, you won't even find every film in that nice picture above. I’m not Mark Kermode or Roger Ebert; I’m not particularly high-brow, I don’t get paid for this, and I don’t go to see anything that didn’t hook me with its trailer.

We watched 43 new films in 2016 (which means I ate at least that many bags of Revels that year):

43. The worst new film we saw in 2016 was supposed comedy Office Christmas Party. Back in 2012, when I went to see the movie adaptation of On The Road, I observed that it's no fun watching other people party; it's like being the only sober person - standing in the corner, forbidden from speaking to anyone. This is true of Office Christmas Party, but that’s not the only reason it's a bad film. Despite the capable presence of Jason Bateman, Olivia Munn and Kate McKinnon, the film is inescapably dumb. Harnessing the dull anarchy and lowest common denominator fart-joke humour of The Hangover and Bridesmaids, Office Christmas Party lands like a turd in 43rd.

42. I think we were all left with a warm glow after the plucky heroes of Independence Day saved the world from landmark-hating aliens in 1996. Twenty years later, the sequel no-one asked for, Independence Day: Resurgence, arrived on Earth. Some of the cast didn’t show up, several phoned it in, others just couldn’t act (i.e. all the dead-eyed twenty-somethings) and a couple remained lovable despite the awful script (Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch). The aliens still looked cool but the overabundance of special effects lost their gravitas when the threat just became ridiculously large. Every time the story appeared to veer off towards something new, it got pushed back towards the same structure as the original. Two creepy, grey harvester thumbs down.

41. Like Independence Day: Resurgence, survival horror The Shallows would have benefitted from much less CGI and a much tighter plot. The action frequently strained credulity and, although I have plenty of affection for Blake Lively, and even more for sharks, I never felt confident that either could carry the film alone. Just watch Jaws again instead.

40. Like many comedies, Central Intelligence put its best jokes in the trailer, so from the beginning, this tedious, forgettable film was bound to disappoint. Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart would later put their big and little schtick to better use in the Jumanji movies.

39. Passengers looked like it could be a cerebral and action-packed sci-fi or a sweet romcom, but it turned out to be neither. Two passengers on a spaceship wake up from hyperspace 90 years early. Then nothing happened for the rest of the film. Also, I quickly lost any affection for Chris Pratt’s character when I realised he selfishly woke up Jennifer Lawrence so she could spend her whole life on a deserted spaceship with him.

38. I’m very fond of the 1960’s Batman TV series (and especially the 1966 movie) and I’ve enjoyed quite a lot of DC’s animated movies over the years, so I had high hopes for Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, an animated film based on the old TV series, with Adam West, Burt Ward and Julie Newmar reprising their old roles. Although the new movie was popular with many fans, the jokes didn’t make me laugh the way the 1960’s show did, the space station stuff felt like a kid’s cartoon, and Catwoman giving Batman ‘Batnip’ to make him aggressive forced Adam West to play against type and introduced unnecessary angst to what should have been an entirely cheerful movie.

37. When I first heard that Tim Burton was making Alice in Wonderland (2010), I pictured a gothic, 15-certificate, hallucinatory experience injected with Burton’s trademark bombastic self-therapy. Instead, it showcased a talented cast acting out a bland story against a dull and unrealistic CGI background. The inferior sequel, Alice Through the Looking Glass, was pretty in places, but it wasn’t wacky and magical; it just felt trite and unnecessarily perilous. I’d recommend foregoing the King of Hearts’ advice of 'starting at the beginning and going on till you come to the end'; just skip this one altogether.

36. In Midnight Special, the magnetic Michael Shannon goes on the run with his alien son. This premise had me excited but, although critics loved the film, I found it insubstantial. It might have worked purely as a family drama or as a low-key science fiction, but in striving to do both with a thin plot, I felt it didn’t succeed at either.

35. I know a lot of people love Illumination’s films (Despicable Me, etc), but I’ve yet to connect with one. The Secret Life of Pets wasn’t an awful way to spend an afternoon, but it didn’t make me laugh much because it was aimed squarely at children. Where Pixar create multifaceted films for all ages, most of their rivals remain content to make the kind of films kids drag their parents to.

34. I haven’t seen My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding or My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding 2, but Alice saw them both. Although she enjoyed the original, she said the sequel was ‘charmless and forgettable.’

33. Although the cast, costumes and locations were beautiful to look at, Café Society was more of a slow drama than a comedy, so I found it a chore to sit through. Woody Allen should be in New York, writing riddles on popsicle sticks. Then he'd be making a difference.

32. The Office was enjoyable in an excruciating kind of way, but the same could not be said of spin-off movie, David Brent: Life on The Road. The trailer and the catchy, hilarious ‘Lady Gypsy’ music video promised a comedy, but the film failed to deliver, veering into increasingly miserable territory instead. It was so depressing that Alice and I both felt like crap for the rest of the day. However, as Brent once said, 'If you want the rainbow, you've got to put up with the rain. Do you know which ‘philosopher’ said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she’s just a big pair of tits.'

31. When I read reviews for modern Western, Hell or High Water, I can’t help but wonder if I watched the same film the critics saw. All I remember about it is Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham drawling a lot and doing very little.

30. When the reboot of Ghostbusters was announced, a lot of people were upset. Misogynists hated that it starred women, concerns were raised over Leslie Jones’ character being the only non-scientist, and fans of the originals were disappointed that the old continuity had been abandoned. Personally, I was distressed at the idea that Paul Feig had been given the keys to a franchise I’ve loved since I was a child; Feig directed one of my least-favourite films, Bridesmaids (2011) which, like Ghostbusters, starred Kristen Wiig and fart-joke mainstay Melissa McCarthy. Nonetheless, I gave the new film a try. It wasn’t a good film, and certainly didn’t live up to the legacy of Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989), but it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. It would have fared better as a Saturday Night Live sketch. The jokes used were very different and far inferior to the kind used in the old films, and many of the ghosts were just embarrassing (e.g. the ghost that’s inexplicably sick on people), but Kate McKinnon played a fun, one-dimensional character and I only began to feel bored towards the end. Chris Hemsworth appears as the Ghostbusters' receptionist; Alice commented that adding Hemsworth to any film markedly improves it.

That's the end of Part One. I'll be back soon with movies 29-11. In the meantime, let me know what your 2016 favourites were, and try to guess what films we liked the most.