Also, this ranking is solely based on my pure enjoyment of these films in 2016. I am not ranking them based on historical significance or how much I used to like them. This is only based on my 2016 viewing. So while Star Wars: A New Hope may be one of my favorite movies of all time, that doesn't necessarily mean it is going to be #1 in the ranking. I've seen it a million times before, and chances are I probably had a better time watching something else in 2016. It could end up being ranked below something like Green Room, for example. It doesn't mean I think Green Room is a better film. Just that I had a better time watching it in 2016.
Clear? I certainly hope so.
Let's begin.
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#50
This movie gets a lot of critical acclaim, and I can see why. The production values of the film are excellent. The film makers did a great job recreating the wild west and making it very believable. The acting is for the most part pretty spot on.
It is a fine film, but it didn't really "do it" for me. I didn't think the plot was too original. I am not a big Western guy but every time I watch one it seems to be pretty much the same thing. Former bad-ass comes out of retirement to lay down the law. That's pretty much what happened here. I liked the film, I just wasn't jumping out of my seat over it. Hence, the low ranking.
#49
When I initially heard the premise of this film, I thought it had potential to be either really good or really boring. The movie follows Tom Hardy, who is driving a car. And talking on a phone. That's the whole movie - him in his car talking on the phone.
Despite the fact that this sounds pretty dull, I found the movie relatively entertaining. He is trying to juggle multiple crises all at the same time. His work needs him, his family needs him. And a woman that he accidentally knocked up is about to give birth to his illegitimate child. It is interesting watching him make decisions and observe how he handles all of this going on. Again, I wasn't TOO blown away by the movie, otherwise it would have ranked higher. But I enjoyed it.
#48
I had heard mixed reviews coming into this movie. A lot of people online hated it. Critical reviews were all over the place. People I know in person seemed to love it. Despite being a hardcore fan of the original films. I am not opposed to the idea of an all female Ghostbuster crew. So I came into this with an open mind.
I had a good time with the movie. It was funny, it respected the original and wasn't completely stupid, the special effects were nice. I liked it.
But as the year went on, I found that the longer and longer time passed, the more I forgot about the movie. In fact, writing this now I can barely tell you what the plot of the film was. I couldn't name a favorite moment. I liked the movie, but obviously it didn't leave a huge impression on me. And that is important when it comes to these year end rankings I create.
#47
I had the same conundrum with this movie that I had with Ghostbusters. I love the original Evil Dead films (and Army of Darkness). I had read very, very mixed reviews. But I tried to keep an open mind coming into it.
This is a good movie and I was pretty entertained by it. It was respectful to the original Evil Dead movies. It didn't try to be funny (probably would have come off stupid or a cheap imitation if it did). The basic story mirrors the first Evil Dead film, but this movie does its own thing at the same time. It is super gory, super in-your-face. I don't scare easily, if at all (aside from jump scares) so I can't really say the film was scary. But I loved the darker tone.
Ultimately I found it to be entertaining, but forgettable in the grand scheme of things. When I think of Evil Dead I will always think of the original films, not this. Not to say I didn't like this, though. Because I did.
#46
It is perhaps Stephen King's single best book he has ever written. I read It early in the year, and when I finished I immediately wanted to watch the TV movie/miniseries of it to see if it was as good as I had remembered. It is not.
I used to love this adaptation of the book. It is about a group of adults who were friends as kids, who return to their hometown to fight a malevolent creature that preys on the souls of children. The story jumps back and forth between present day, where the friends are reuniting, and the past, where the kids had their initial encounters with the creature they simply call It. The casting is good. The kids look pretty much exactly as they are described in the book (except for Bev). Tim Curry is amazing as Pennywise. The whole film has an eerie feel to it that really adds to the horror of the It creature.
My problem watching it after reading the book, though, is how terribly abridged the story feels. So many key plot points are gone or simply grazed over. The book is over 1000 pages and takes a long time to read. But everything just seems to pass SO quickly in this adaptation. If this had been a ten episode miniseries (which would disqualify it from the ranking) they would have been able to do a more thorough job with the story. But it is a 4 hour, 2 parter. Simply not enough time to tell everything. And it does indeed feel very rushed.
I do like the miniseries. But I can't help but feel this would rank much higher if I hadn't just read the book.
#45
I knew very little about this movie when I started watching it. I had read that it was about a woman with mental illness, but that's all I knew coming in. I think I had this confused in my mind with Still Alice, which is about a woman with Alzheimer's. So I expected Jennifer Aniston to be forgetting things and acting all psychotic half the time. Which she doesn't.
She is eccentric in this movie, but not in a disturbing way. She likes to sleep with guys. She spends money on weird extravagances. She drags her housekeeper out on adventures with her. She is very brash and upfront with people. Demanding. Almost too brutally honest. You can tell by the scars on her face that something bad has happened to her in the past, and that her eccentric behavior is a way of coping with whatever had happened.
I watched this at the very beginning of the year, so I lot of the plot details have escaped my mind. I'm pretty sure she meets a guy that she genuinely cares for, but her behavior drives a wedge between them. Through their relationship you find out what happened to her in the past (spoiler: her only son was killed in the car accident which left all the scars on her face) and eventually she finally begins to accept things and move on with her life.
Good movie, some emotional moments. I think the fact that I saw this way back at the beginning of January and I don't remember much about it is holding the film back in my ranking. But I do remember liking this much more than I thought I would.
#44
I was on a big JFK assassination kick earlier in the year. Of all the movies and documentaries I watched surrounding his death, the one the intrigued me the most was JFK: The Smoking Gun.
This one definitely throws the most thought-provoking facts at you. How the assassination itself with the trajectory of the bullet seems nearly impossible. It highlighted a lot of facts that didn't add up. Like people hearing a different number of shots. How some people smelled the gunpowder of a freshly fired weapon. Which they wouldn't have been able to smell if indeed Oswald up in the window was the only shooter.
This documentary also throws the most theories at you. Some oddball, some plausible. It is information overload with this documentary. Which I didn't mind at all. Some of the other documentaries I watched were slower, or only focused on one aspect of the assassination. This one was all over the place. And it really made me think.
Interesting stuff here, for sure. I would recommend this to anyone with even a passing interest in the Kennedy assassination.
#43
Before watching this, I had read that the movie was terrible. I thought the previews for the movie looked pretty interesting, but because of the poor reviews I put off watching it for a long time.
But being the big gamer geek that I am, I wasn't going to let the bad reviews deter me from ever watching the film. And when I finally did get around to watching the movie, I didn't think it was that bad at all. I enjoyed it.
The basic idea of the film is that aliens are attacking Earth, using representations of classic video game characters as their "weapons". For example, they send ships from Galaga to attack a military base. They drop a giant Pac-Man into New York city to go up and down the city streets and eat everything in its path, etc.
When the government finds out what is going on, they realize the only way to fight these aliens is with video game technology of their own. So they recruit a bunch of ace video game players (Adam Sandler being the main character of the film) to fight the aliens using their own tactics.
I found this movie to be quite fun. It's funny. The plot is cute. I liked the characters (Peter Dinklage is always a treat). The special effects are terrific. But I really liked the nod to all the classic video games. The film is like a love letter to people who grew up in the 80's playing classics like Galaga, Centipede, Q-Bert, Pac Man, and Donkey Kong.
No, the film is not a cinematic masterpiece. But it is fun. And that's really all I look for in a movie is if it is fun or not. If it entertains me. And this one definitely did.
#42
Being a big fan of the show Survivor, I guess it was only natural that I was going to like this movie. Circle is basically like a very compact do or die version of the show.
The movie starts with a group of 50 strangers standing in a circle with no memory of how they got there. They each have a red dot they must stand upon. If they move off the dot, they die. Every few minutes, an ominous tone begins. It is a countdown and when the tone ends, one person dies. Eventually the group finds out that based on their arm movements, they are actually voting on which person kicks the bucket.
Thus begins the Survivor-esque game. If you are a fan of the show, you know that you must outwit, outplay, and outlast to win the game. And that is exactly what one person does. I won't spoil the journey for you though.
The movie is filled with a very diverse cast of characters from many different walks of life. Every age and ethnicity is showcased here, and it is fascinating to see how they all interact and deal with this bizarre situation. The move is nearly 100% conversation based, so without the interesting characters and character interaction, this film would be a dud. But it is definitely not.
Fans of the show, check this out. I am not too overly thrilled with the ending as it leaves a lot of unanswered questions, but maybe we will get a sequel some day.
#41
Call me morbid but I am a fan of movies with lots of death, blood, and torture. When I read the description of this film, my attention was immediately grabbed.
The basic idea of the film is that a group of people have been invited to a dinner party where they will play a game with a chance to win a lot of money. But they don't know what the game is. Once they all agree to play, however, there is no backing out.
It turns out that the game is a sick and morbid one. Players must choose between two options. Would you rather ___ or ____? And neither choice is a very appealing one. Initial choices involve hurting yourself versus hurting someone else. The naive contestants, thinking they will all leave this alive, at first make the politically correct decisions.
But as the game amps up and people start dying, it becomes every man or woman for themselves.
I like the premise of the movie. It has a great cast. Jeffrey Combs is always super amazing and creepy in everything he appears in. Robin Lord Taylor (Penguin from Gotham) is great in this as well. Porn star Sasha Grey is even a character in the movie. I wouldn't say this is as good as some of the early Saw movies, but it is comparable. For a movie that got little to no press, and I didn't even hear about until it hit Netflix, I thought it was pretty good.
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