2016 was the year of the sad movie.  You’d be hard pressed to find more depressing films in the past several years than Manchester By The Sea or Other People. Both fantastic works of art, but man they treat your gut like a punching bag. To a lesser extent the same can be said of Moonlight and Arrival. Moonlight embodies the life struggle of someone never quite comfortable in his own skin and Arrival is hands down the most emotional “alien” movie of all time. Another concept that spread like a virus throughout the cinematic landscape is darkness. Green Room brought levels of terror that I’ve never seen before on the big screen, with Nocturnal Animals and Don’t Breathe close behind.   Even this year’s Star Wars chapter was the franchise at it’s most grim since Empire Strikes Back and Demolition made a comedy out of a husband losing his wife.

It’s hard to say what measure of the cynical nature of 2016’s film slate was due to the current political climate. These films take years to develop, however most would argue that the situation this country is in was also years in the making. Doesn’t really matter I guess, but it is crazy to me that Arrival came out the same week of the election given how closely the film’s message relates to everything that has happened since. Maybe all of this is why Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some, easily the jolliest film of the year, stuck out to me so much and became my favorite film of 2016 from April onward. For the most part, this spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused is just a bunch of college kids shooting the shit and having a good time. A breath of fresh air, its alternate title might as well be Saturdays Are For The Boys.

If you’ve kept up with my blog posts you’ll recall that I’ve often griped about the quality of this year’s films. But now that the year is over I think I jumped the gun a bit. There wasn’t a movie that absolutely blew me away like Mad Max: Fury Road or Whiplash in years past, but I’ll still put 2016’s Top Tier as a whole on par with the others of the 2010’s. And who knows, much like music albums it sometimes takes awhile for a movie to be fully appreciated, so maybe a few of these will reach new heights down the road. And with that, you can find Rated Greg’s Superlatives below.

Favorite Films of 2016 – Ranked

1. Everybody Wants Some!!
2. Hell or High Water
3. La La Land
4. Green Room
5. Moonlight
6. Other People
7. Manchester By The Sea
8. Nocturnal Animals
9. Arrival
10. Weiner
11. American Honey
12. Rogue One
13. Popstar
14. The Nice Guys
15. 13 Hours

Please keep in mind that “favorite” may not necessarily be widely considered the best.  I fully realize Moonlight and Manchester By The Sea have artistic merits that far outweigh Everybody Wants Some and it makes sense why those are Oscar contenders, but there was no movie I enjoyed more in 2016 than Richard Linklater’s latest.   Also, I have not yet seen Fences, 20th Century Women, Patriot’s Day, Hidden Figures, or Live By Night (it’s annoying that the most acclaimed movies always all come out at the very end of the year or early January).

Best Lead Actress

1. Amy Adams – Arrival
2. Emma Stone – La La Land
3. Ruth Negga – Loving
4. Gillian Jacobs – Don’t Think Twice
5. Margot Robbie – Suicide Squad

Best Lead Actor

1. Casey Affleck – Manchester By The Sea
2. Ryan Gosling – La La Land
3. Ryan Gosling – The Nice Guys
4. Chris Pine – Hell or High Water
5. Jake Gyllenhaal – Demolition

I’m not sure why comedic performances are rarely recognized in the awards circuit, but Gosling’s turn as a slapstick goofball P.I. in The Nice Guys really needs to be applauded.  This is clearly Affleck’s Oscar race to lose but I feel like Gosling did an equally impressive job with the role of Holland March, even if they are two completely different things.

Best Supporting Actress 

1. Molly Shannon – Other People
2. Naomie Harris – Moonlight
3. Huma Abedin – Weiner
4. Riley Keough – American Honey
5. Michelle Williams – Manchester By The Sea

Yes, I fully realize that Weiner is a documentary and Huma Abedin wasn’t acting.  But she’s fascinating in it nonetheless.  Michelle Williams is getting a ton of Oscar buzz for Manchester but it seems like she has about 8 minutes of screen time in the 137 minute movie.

Best Supporting Actor

1. Mahershala Ali – Moonlight
2. Aaron Taylor-Johnson – Nocturnal Animals
3. Shia LaBeouf – American Honey
4. Glen Powell – Everybody Wants Some
5. Ben Foster – Hell or High Water

This is such a loaded category.  Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water), Craig Robinson (Morris from America), Tyler Hoechlin (Everybody Wants Some), Anton Yelchin (Green Room), John Malkovich (Deepwater Horizon), Daniel Radcliffe (Swiss Army Man), and Shia LaBeouf’s rat tail are all also deserving.

Best Action Sequence 

1. The last 30 minutes of Rogue One
2. The apartment complex shootout in Triple 9
3. The car chase towards the end of Jason Bourne
4. The 13 Hours climax
5. The airport fight in Captain America: Civil War (I guess)

This was the toughest category to come up with 5.  Action movies are just in a bad place right now because of the surplus of capes and CGI.  The biggest action movie bust this year was clearly Batman v Superman.  I mean, what the hell are the stakes of Batman and Superman exchanging punches?  Theoretically, couldn’t Superman just grab Batman’s arms and pull the whole “stop hitting yourself” move that every big brother in the history of mankind has used at one point in his life?  I miss the days of Nic Cage’s Ferrari chasing down Sean Connery’s Hummer in the streets of San Francisco, but I guess 90’s movies like The Rock are never coming back.

Favorite scenes in no particular order- Non Action (I’ll be vague)

1. Jeff Bridges and the waitress in Hell or High Water
2. Casey Affleck Michelle Williams scene in Manchester
3. “Embrace your inner strange” –  Everybody Wants Some
4. The beginning of Arrival
5. Star and the three cowboys in American Honey
6. The DMV in Zootopia
7. The highway scene in Nocturnal Animals
8. The TMZ spoof in Popstar
9. “Tell somebody who gives a shit” – Green Room
10. Shirtless Ben Affleck weight training montage.  Unintentional comedy gold.

I could have picked a dozen different scenes from Everybody Wants Some but they all kinda run together just like each day of a fun long weekend tends to run together.

Best Villain

1. Aaron Taylor-Johnson  – Nocturnal Animals
2. Anthony Weiner – Weiner
3. John Malkovich – Deepwater Horizon
4. Idris Elba – The Jungle Book
5. Patrick Stewart – Green Room

Most LOL’s

1. Popstar
2. The Nice Guys
3. Sausage Party
4. Rogue One (all the K-2SO scenes)
5. Keanu

Best Looking Movie (Scenery + Cinematography)

1. Hell or High Water
2. Moonlight
3. La La Land
4. The Neon Demon
5. Nocturnal Animals

Best Use Of Music

1. All of La La Land
2. Deadpool – Chicago’s Your The Inspiration
3. Arrival – Max Richter’s On The Nature Of Daylight
4. American Honey – Mazzy Star’s Fade Into You
5. Sing Street – Up

Biggest Tearjerker

1. Arrival
2. Manchester By The Sea
3. Other People
4. Loving
5. Demolition

Scariest Movie

1. The Conjuring 2
2. Green Room
3. Don’t Breathe
4. Nocturnal Animals
5. The Witch

Best Movie to take a toddler to 

1. Zootopia
2. The Jungle Book
3. Moana

Best Documentary

1. Weiner
2. 13th
3. Amanda Knox

OJ: Made in America is going to win this Oscar even though I don’t understand how it’s considered a movie.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing, but at 8 hours long it’s a mini-series not a movie.

The worst movie I saw in the theaters

1. Independence Day: Resurgence
2. Doctor Strange
3. X-Men: Apocalypse
4. Hacksaw Ridge
5. Money Monster

This most inaccurate Rotten Tomatoes score of the year is Doctor Strange’s 90%. That makes no goddamn sense.  It’s soooo corny.  I also really disagree with Hacksaw Ridge’s 84% but at least in that case I understand why it did well with critics given the past history of Oscar bait movies.  But aside from two very well made battle scenes I found it to be pretty unwatchable.

Revised Top 10 of 2015 

1. Mad Max: Fury Road
2. Creed
3. Sicario
4. The Revenant
5. Straight Outta Compton
6. The Hateful Eight
7. Ex Machina
8. Mississippi Grind
9. The Big Short
10. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

As mentioned in the intro sometimes it takes months or even years to fully grasp how good a movie was.  Hateful Eight and Mississippi Grind are two movies I like much more than I initially thought I did.  Star Wars Episode 7 on the other hand has fallen off.

Most Anticipated in 2017 

1. Dunkirk
2. Blade Runner 2049
3. Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2
4. Okja
5. War for the Planet of the Apes
6. Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Fashion Project
7. American Made
8. The Fate of the Furious
9. Get Out
10. Life