Wednesday, September 20, 2017

2016 Movies Ranked

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34. Batman: The Killing Joke
D: Sam Liu, Bruce Timm
**********
How could they have gotten this so wrong?  The tragedy of Batgirl’s paralysis is cheapened by the revelation that she sucked at being a superheroine anyway, and not even the voice acting from Mark Hammill and Kevin Conroy couldn’t save it.  The animation seems a bit disappointing and would have been better had they not wasted so much effort on 30min worth of scenes that shouldn’t even exist.  The main reason this movie could have been great was to hear the Joker’s song, but even that was a bland letdown.

33. Independence Day: Resurgence
D: Roland Emmerich
**********
It lacks the effective manipulation of the first.  Without that, the great practical effects, and the nostalgia, it wasn’t worth watching.


32. Underworld: Blood Wars
D: Anna Foerster
**********
Not as much technically wrong with it as the previous movies, but lacks almost every interesting aspect of them.  It doesn't even have a memorable line, which even the others seemed to have some of those.


31. Kung Fu Panda 3
D: Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Alessandro Carloni
**********
Though this year has definitely seen some bad sequels, I think this is the most genuinely disappointing one.  I’ve always thought the weakest aspect of Kung Fu Panda was Po himself.  I’ve always found the supporting cast more likable.  Here the characters I like are pushed even further into the background while Po spends time with a whole village of Po-like characters.  Also, the villain was not as developed or interesting as the previous two.  Lord Shen was a pretty hard act to follow.


30. Zoolander No. 2
D: Ben Stiller
**********
Had its moments, but not nearly as funny or clever as the first.  Apparently, 15 years wasn’t enough to write jokes.  It really looked like it only had enough material for a short sketch which should have been a special feature on a Blu-Ray release or something.  Very clear that some of the jokes were written years ago, but they still kept them in (the Netflix references). 


29. Suicide Squad
D: David Ayer
**********
Massively disappointing.  It would have been better had it stuck to its gritty guns and not had a supernatural force that the Suicide Squad was distinctly ill-equipped to deal with.


28. The BFG
D: Steven Spielberg
**********
Doesn’t hold a candle next to the animated version.  The fart jokes were done with the worst possible delivery. 


27. Star Trek Beyond
D: Justin Lin
**********
Despite what everybody says, this is a bad movie with a bland villain, shameless fanservice, and tedious action sequences.  The one good thing was the beginning in which they talk briefly about how boring deployment is (with a beautiful shot of the Enterprise travelling through warp) and the entrance into the space city.


26. Passengers
D: Morten Tyldum
**********
Really creepy “romance,” even if they movie makes it clear how wrong the protagonists’ actions are.  The only good thing was Michael Sheen’s character, who passes a personhood test for his moral decision to tell the woman the truth in spite of orders.


25. A Cure for Wellness
D: Gore Verbinski
**********
Great cinematography and that’s about it.  The character is unlikeable up till the end of the movie, and that’s not enough time.  Also it subverts its ominous atmosphere to transform into a feel-good action movie at the end. 


24. The Magnificent Seven
D: Antoine Fuqua
**********
A blandly competent and unnecessary remake.  The only part I liked was when the villager couldn’t hit any targets and Chris Pratt says, “I don’t get it.  Statistically they should have hit something.”

23. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
D: David Yates
**********
I had the opposite reaction to this movie I had to Kung Fu Panda.  Po was the character I liked the least, and his arc is heroism handed to him on a silver platter.  Kowalski was the only thing about this movie I liked, and he maintained an effective role as an everyman.  I also liked Kung Fu Panda overall and disliked this movie overall.  It pleases the fans of the book in that it’s full of tedious filler that doesn’t work in a movie (like a front-heavy rhino-thing trying to hump a fatman). 




22. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
D: Zack Snyder
**********
Despite how inept it was overall, there were many enjoyable aspects to it.  Ben Affleck was surprisingly good as Batman, and I have an aesthetic defense for his killing.  Batman has always been depicted as on the edge of becoming a killer, and this movie portrays him as a Batman who has crossed that line.  Hopefully the Justice League would be a redemptive force on him, as the final scene suggests.  Still, Afred’s killing and the possibility of continued killing in Justice League might discredit that theory.  I also like how the forming of the League may be a redemptive event for its members (Wonder Woman seemed to have been in a cynical funk at the time), which is more interesting than having a bunch of people brought together and shoot wisecracks at each other (Avengers).  The score had its moments.


21. Hell or High Water
D: David Mackenzie
**********
Honestly, I thought it was a competent No Country wannabe and not much else.


20. Triple 9
D: John Hillcoat
**********
I checked this out because I never got a chance to see Heat in the theaters.  This wasn’t much of a substitute.  I doubt that an officer down would compel the entire city’s police force to cripple their ability to protect the city be all converging on that one point.

    
19. Finding Dory
D: Andrew Stanton, Angus MacLane
**********
I was a bit distracted by the elements the movie handled well, like Dory’s character arc, to immediately mind the things it didn’t do well.  It took a while for me to finally accept that the octopus character was going to be a player, and the ending dragged on way too much.

 
18. Queen of Katwe
D: Mira Nair
**********
A competent feel-good Cinderella Story.

17. Hail, Caesar!
D: The Coen Bros.
**********
With its visual style and religiously significant themes, this may be the best comedy I’ve seen that isn’t remotely funny. It also shamelessly indulges in a decidedly annoying 50's movie trope: interminable dance sequences.


16. Moana
D: Ron Clements, Jon Musker
**********
A decent cartoon with likable characters and a couple good songs.


D: Byron Howard, Rich Moore
**********
The more I find out about the original concept for this movie, the more I feel cheated out of it.  It’s got some insight, but much of the plot seems formulaic.  I love Nick Wilde and I do identify with him. 


14. Doctor Strange
D: Scott Derrickson
**********
A decent superhero movie that gets some extra points for a great acid trip scene using modern effects and a good score.


13. Hacksaw Ridge
D: Mel Gibson
**********
A solid war movie with a relevant message about conscience rights (although in case it seems both parties refuse to make a reasonable compromise; I mean all he had to do was simply touch a gun and use it as target practice, and all they had to do was just make an exception for this one guy).  It still lacked the edge that Mel Gibson’s previous movies had. 


12. Deadpool
D: Tim Miller
**********
Overall, it was pretty good.  Had the action scenes been better, it would have been the movie Shoot’em Up should have been. 


11. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
D: Michael Bay
**********
I had no idea that Michael Bay was even capable of making a movie this good.  I was surprised he actually pulled off an earnest war movie.  Unfortunately, the movie's one flaw was its failure to depict the Libyans' contributions to the rescue.

 
10. Patriots Day
D: Peter Berg
**********
Refreshingly down-to-earth.


10. Allied
D: Robert Zemeckis
**********
A good paranoid thriller, but Brad Pitt gets too much screentime over Marion Cotillard, who can act circles around him.


9. The Founder
D: John Lee Hancock
**********
A pretty good movie starring the excellent Michael Keaton.

 
8. Kubo and the Two Strings
D: Travis Knight
***********
Amazing stop-motion animation and a refreshingly earnest story. 


7. Arrival
D: Denis Villenueve
**********
A solid cerebral sci-fi movie.  I don’t see how learning an inefficient form of writing, however, enables you to see into the future.


D: Gareth Edwards
**********
Characters could be better, but what the heck.  I love this movie.   The dark atmosphere, the best space battle in the franchise since Return of the Jedi (not saying much, I know), and Darth Vader’s being awesome.  Great that it shows the visceral, bellicose side of Star Wars.

 
5. Deepwater Horizon
D: Peter Berg
**********
Genuinely tense and suspenseful. 


4. The Nice Guys
D: Shane Black
**********
Not quite  as funny as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but I nice love letter to 70’s retro style.


3. Split
D: M. Night Shyamalan
**********
The twist is that M. Night Shyamalan actually made a good movie for the first time in years [canned laughter].  James McAvoy is great in it.  Divisive as it is, I like the twist, which actually makes me look forward to the next Night movie.  Never thought I’d say that for a while.


2. Shin Godzilla
D: Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi
**********
While the CGI on Godzilla is terrible, it’s an interesting movie that feels much more like an authentic Japanese story.  I also liked the pro-human theme of the protagonists using ingenuity to solve the problem.
 

1. 10 Cloverfield Lane
D: Dan Trachtenberg
**********
John Goodman: The Movie.  A good psychological thriller with an actor I love.  I was genuinely frustrated when he didn’t get nominated for an Oscar.  I don’t have much interest in Cloverfield, but I loved this.  I also liked the alien twist because it was like seeing the origin story of a sci-fi heroine, in which her backstory is the movie itself.  Also had a good score.






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