Title: Split (2016) Release date: Jan 20, 2017 (USA) IMDB Rating: 7.5/10 Writer: M. Night Shyamalan Director: M. Night Shyamalan Stars: Anya Taylor-Joy, James McAvoy, Haley Lu Richardson, Kim Director Genre: Horror, Thriller Production Companies: Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, Blinding Edge Pictures Runtime: 117 mins
Review:
Why is it that people seem to have a morbid fascination with dissociative identity disorder? Part of the reason could be the endless possibilities that the condition offers, and this is exactly what Shyamalan has taken advantage of with Split. Clearly McAvoy is in his element here – with a simple pucker of his mouth or raise of his eyebrow, he completely transforms himself. In one moment, young and innocent; a second later, completely monstrous. This is very much a one-man show. That’s not to say that there aren’t other strong performances here – namely from Anya Taylor-Joy, whose characteristically restrained performance strikes just the right chord – but they pale into insignificance when compared to the absolute feast that McAvoy gives us.
However, what starts as an interesting character study quickly descends into sci-fi chaos – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just turns out to be something slightly different to what you’re initially expecting. There’s no denying that Split doesn’t pack quite the punch of Shyamalan’s early work, but it’s pretty damn close.
Although Split is fascinating, tense and creepy to the point of discomfort, its main issue is that it puts all its cards on the table too early. Although Shyamalan does leave us a few characteristic twists and turns right up to the end, some of the reveals are irrelevant to the overall story, making you wonder why they weren’t omitted altogether.
Title: Manchester by the Sea (2016) Release date: Dec 16, 2016 (USA) IMDB Rating:8.2/10 Writer: Kenneth Lonergan Director: Kenneth Lonergan Stars: Casey Affleck, Ben O'Brien, Kyle Chandler, Richard Donelly Genre: Drama Production Companies: Big Indie Pictures, Pearl Street Films, CMP Entertainment, K Period Media, B Story, The Affleck/Middleton Project Runtime: 137 mins Review:
Sometimes we're not sent to hell: We live there already.
Lee Chandler was happy once. He had a wife. Three children. His whole
family—father, brother, the entire brood—lived in Manchester, Mass., a
pretty, chilly community on Cape Ann. Brother Joe owned a boat. And
sometimes, when the weather permitted, Joe would take his own son,
Patrick, as well as Lee out to sea—a bright white boat bobbing between
gray water and gray sky. But then a tragic accident shattered Lee's life. Now he lives alone
in Boston, if you could call it living. He works as a janitor, cleaning
toilets and shoveling snow. He sees each day with the same cold eyes,
greets each moment with the same unsmiling mouth. Then, when work's
done, he heads to his cramped basement apartment, shuts those cold eyes
for a few hours until he must open them again.
He doesn't try to kill himself—not anymore—so he just kills his time, day by meaningless day. Then one day, Lee gets word that Joe's in the hospital again—another
heart attack. He rushes back to Manchester. But by the time he arrives,
it's too late: Joe's gone. The man who for so many years served as Lee's
only light and support in a cold, gray world is now a cold, gray slab
in the hospital basement.
Lee breaks the news to Patrick during his high school hockey
practice. The next few days are a storm of preparations for the funeral,
for the wake, for what comes next.
Title: Moana (2016) Release date: Nov 23, 2016 (USA) IMDB Rating: 7.9/10 Writers: Jared Bush (screenplay), Ron Clements (story by), John Musker (story by), Chris Williams (story by), Don Hall (story by), Pamela Ribon (story by), Aaron Kandell (story by), Jordan Kandell (story by) Directors: Ron Clements, Don Hall, John Musker, Chris Williams Stars: Auli'i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House, Temuera Morrison Genre: Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical Production Companies: Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios Runtime: 103 min
Review:
A feast for the eyes. From Disney, it represents a pinnacle of CG
animation. Its colors are incredibly vivid. The screen is bathed in
bright cerulean hues of the limitless ocean sparkling in the sun and the
lush greenery of tropical-island paradises.
A
delight for the ears. Songs by “Hamilton’s” Lin-Manuel Miranda,
composer Opetaia Foa‘i and Grammy-winner Mark Mancina are at a “Lion
King” level of excellence. The picture’s “We Know the Way” is an
anthemic ode to exploration and self-discovery that has the hallmarks of
an instant classic.
Title: Arrival (2016) Release date: Nov 11, 2016 (USA) IMDB Rating: 8.1/10 Writers: Eric Heisserer (screenplay), Ted Chiang (based on the short story "Story of Your Life" written by) Director: Denis Villeneuve Stars: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Michael Stuhlbarg, Forest Whitaker Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller Production Companies: 21 Laps Entertainment, FilmNation Entertainment, Lava Bear Films Runtime: 116 mins
Review: Denis Villeneuve's latest film may be about aliens visiting Earth but it's the people who hold his interest - he frequently puts the focus on faces and the smallest of interactions is key from the start. Not that its difficult to be smitten by Amy Adams, who since her breakthrough role in 2005's Junebug has shown a knack for bringing an easy smile and instant emotion to characters that is hard to beat. Here she plays Dr Louise Banks, a linguist - although our introduction to her is not via her job, but her humanity, as we see her with a baby girl, her daughter, quickly growing up until, too soon, she experiences loss. "I remember moments in the middle," she says.
Cutting to the present moment, we quickly learn that aliens have arrived at various points on planet Earth in gigantic egg-shaped obelisks and the good doctor is being asked by US Army Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) to join a multinational project to make contact and find out what, if anything, the visitors want. It would be easy to opt for the usual sense of thriller threat and military bombast that normally accompanies such arrivals, but Villeneuve takes a different tack, lending a sense of awe to the way that people are treating the alien craft, even if those in charge are nervous.
Title: Underworld: Blood Wars (2016) Release date: Jan 6, 2017 (USA) IMDB Rating: 6.3/10 Writers: Cory Goodman (screenplay), Kyle Ward (story by), Cory Goodman (story by), Kevin Grevioux (based on characters created by), Len Wiseman (based on characters created by), Danny McBride (based on characters created by) Director: Anna Foerster Stars: Kate Beckinsale, Theo James, Lara Pulver, Charles Dance Genre: Action, Horror Production Companies: Lakeshore Entertainment, Screen Gems, Sketch Films Runtime: 91 mins
Review:
Hey, remember when everyone was obsessed with those ‘Underworld’ movies? I’ll bet you don’t because that never actually happened. Yet here we are, 14 years later, and there are still sequels being made. ‘Underworld: Blood Wars’ is the latest title in the franchise. It’s not particularly better or worse than any of the previous handfuls of nonsense. It’s just the same old crap refried and served up again.
It would be nice to say that this one is so bad that it’ll finally put an end to this ongoing cinematic nightmare. Sadly, this garbage fire will likely keep burning. Why? Who knows? I mean, bellbottoms once made a comeback. Stupid doesn’t die. It just gets stronger.
So what’s this one about? I honestly have no idea. On a certain level, the ‘Underworld’ mythology is brain dead simple. There are vampires and there are werewolves. They fight an ongoing war. Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is at the center because of fate or whatever. She has some sort of halfbreed monster daughter who’s a secret to something or other. That’s important. Just not enough for that character to be in this movie. That would allow the overall narrative to advance and this sequel is all about wheel-spinning. Instead of building new ideas, the flick just replays old ones. Once again, Selene is caught up in vampire politics, which I guess are bad. Once again, she fires handguns at werewolves and jump kicks some naughty vamps. Once again, it’s all pointless. Whatever. Who cares? Clearly not any of the army of ‘Underworld’ screenwriters.
Let’s start by the movies that we thought we would like but didn’t. Every year, Hollywood announces a few movies that we get excited for, but some of them always end up having a rating close to 6 on Imdb. This year’s big winner in this category was... Assassin’s Creed. Undoubtedly one of the flicks that generated the most buzz, not even a stellar cast - Academy-award nominee Michael Fassbender and Academy-award winners Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Irons - could be its saving grace. It’s currently scoring 6.4/10 on Imdb and 31 on Metacritic. Yikes!
Alas, the silver medal in this category goes to another action/adventure/fantasy movie: Suicide Squad. The premise of a secret government agency recruiting some of the most dangerous super-villains sounds good enough, but the plot has been classified as “lazy” and “predictable”. It stars Will Smith, Jared Leto and Margot Robbie. Score: 6.4/10 (Imdb) and 40 (Metacritic).
The bronze medal departs from action movies and moves into noir territory - or at least, what attempted to be noir. The Girl on the Train, based on the New York Times best-selling book, starred English-darling Emily Blunt as a divorced alcoholic who gets caught up in a missing person’s case. Blunt’s performance as an unreliable narrator is surprisingly convincing and has even earned her a BAFTA nomination, but the story unfolds poorly. Overall, it scored 6.6/10 (Imdb) and 48/100 (Metacritic).
Comedies were also a big source of disappointment this year - and just when we needed them the most. Why Him? and Keeping Up with the Joneses, for which we had high hopes, rank 6.6 and 5.8 respectively.
Other movies in this category include The Accountant, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Collateral Beauty and Live By the Night. Of these, Collateral Beauty has taken the hardest blow. With an ensemble cast comprised of household names like Will Smith, Kate Winslet, Dame Helen Mirren or Keira Knightley, it’s currently scoring 23/100 on Metacritic.
Ready for the award season
After talking about the ones we didn’t like, we move on to those movies that have dazzled both the public and the industry alike. They were born ready for the award season, and you can start betting on your favorite!
La La La Land is one of the must-see movies of 2016. And it has received ravishing reviews as well, scoring 7 Golden Globes already. The plot is simple - a jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling) falls for an aspiring actress (Emma Stone) - and it unfolds effortlessly. It’s a marvellous tribute to the Hollywood of another era, one of movies with fewer special effects and more screwball comedies. And like The Artist a few years ago, which produced much of the same nostalgia, it may sweep the Oscars. It currently scores 8.7/100 (Imdb) and 93/100 (Metacritic).
Arrival is possibly the best sci-fi movie of the whole year. It
tells the story of a linguistic professor (Amy Adams) who must interpret the language of apparent alien visitors that appear in 12 mysterious spacecrafts around the world. And with 8.3/10 (imdb), 81/100 (Metacritic) and at least a Golden Globe nod, it’s Adams who seems to be speaking the language of award season. (It’s worth noting that Adams also plays a wealthy gallery owner haunted by her ex-husband’s thriller book in Nocturnal Animals, by director Tom Ford, which was also nominated for numerous awards).
Manchester by the Sea is another strong contender for this year’s award season. Directed and written by Kenneth Lonergan, it’s anchored on strong performances by Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams as an uncle who takes care of his teenage nephew and his estranged wife. It already secured 93 wins and 195 nominations (!), a rating of 8.4/10 (Imdb) and 96/100 (Metacritic).
And thankfully, there’s a strong chance the Oscars won’t be #sowhite this year. Fences, directed by none other than Denzel Washington and written by the late August Wilson, brings a working-class African-American family in the 1950s to the big screen. Washington plays the main role and Viola Davis gives an amazing supporting actress performance that already won her a Golden Globe.
Hidden Figures is another movie capturing the lives of African-Americans. Set in the 1960s, it’s based on the true story of three African-American women (played by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe) who provided NASA with important data that ultimately allowed the U.S. to complete its first space missions.
Also within the 50 best movies of 2016, you should keep an eye out for Lion, Hell or High Water and Moonlight.
Spin-Offs, Sequels and Remakes
“Everything Old Is New Again”, or so the song goes. And perhaps, no other year proved the motto as true as 2016. It was a year plagued with spin-offs and sequels (and there are more announced for 2017, even on TV) - but are they really making cinema great again?
Star Wars is possibly the most successful franchise in movie history. Besides, with the release of Star Wars: Episode VIII scheduled for next year and the death of the original (and irreplaceable) princess Leia Carrie Fisher, it’s has certainly been on everyone’s mind. It’s therefore unsurprising that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story made more money than anyone else in the popular movies of 2016. The story is set immediately after the events of the original 1977 film and stars Felicity Jones in the main role. Score: 8.1/10 (Imdb) and 65 (Metacritic).
Underworld also brought a new installment to light this year: Underworld: Blood Wars is the fifth of the series. And if one wonders why they are still making them, here it is, drawing people to a movie theater near you. But it was universally panned, scoring 6.4/10 (on Imdb) and a meager 22/100 on Metacritic.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a spin-off of the Harry Potter series. Set 17 years before Harry arrives in Hogwarts, it stars none of the series main characters and received a mild reception. It scored just 7.7/10 on Imdb and 66 on Metacritic.
Deadpool was the eighth installment of the X-Men series and was the ninth highest grossing movie of the past year. It’s also the highest grossing R-rated film in History: it achieved an impressive 783$ million revenue at the box office against a 58$ million budget.
Other spin-offs and sequels released this year include Captain America: Civil War, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Inferno (the third installment of the Da Vinci series) and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. There was room for a remake too, The Magnificent Seven, originally shot in the 1960s.
The Blockbusters
And of course, we couldn’t forget about this year’s blockbusters:
Passengers more than doubled its budget at the box office. Moreover, it had a storyline of a true blockbuster: a spacecraft travelling to a distant colony has a malfunction, and two of its passengers (Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt) are awakened 90 years early. It’s not a bad movie, and yet one that doesn’t add anything new to the genre. Score: 7.1/10 (imdb) and 41 /100 (Metacritic).
Deepwater Horizon was another movie designed to be a blockbuster, but its box office sales barely covered the budget. It’s an epic disaster film of American proportions about an oil drilling on behalf of BP gone wrong. As of now, it has 7.2/10 (Imdb) and 76/100 (Metacritic).
Speaking of epic, The Great Wall, a Chinese-American production, had a 150$ million budget. It’s one of the most talked about movies of the year, despite not having premiered in the US yet. The available scores on Imdb (6.3/10), Rotten Tomatoes (44%) and Metacritic (48/100), however, are rather disappointing.
Not For the Faint of Heart
We’ve already covered quite a few thrillers, adventure and action films. But there are others, which won’t be up for major nominations and didn’t spark much anticipation, that still provided us with a few good bursts of adrenaline.
The most noteworthy of them all is the psychological thriller Split, which came out of the Fantastic Fest Film Festival in September and still awaits a mainstream release in a few countries. James McAvoy plays a kidnapper with 24 different personalities against Anya Taylor-Joy and Haley Lu Richardson as his victims. Score: 7.6/10 and 76/100 (Metacritic).
In an unusual theological thriller, acclaimed director Martin Scorsese takes us to Japan, where two priests attempt to locate their mentor and propagate Catholicism in the process. Silence scored 7.6/100 (Imdb) and 79/100 (Metacritic).
Other popular films of the genre include the The Autopsy of Jane Doe and The Girl with All the Gifts, both reviewed in 6.9/10 on Imdb, Collide and Max Steel.
Fantasy and Animation Films
Animation films are crowd-pleasers. And 2016 was no exception. Sing is set in a world of anthropomorphic animals, where an optimistic Koala (Matthew McConaughey) hopes to save his theater with a singing competition. Reese Witherspoon and Seth MacFarlane also star. Score: 7.3/10 (Imdb) and 59/100 (Metacritic).
Moana follows suit. It’s set in Ancient Polynesia, where Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) tries to fix things after a terrible curse. It’s ranked 8.0/10 on Imdb and 81/100 on Metacritic.
Other movies in this category that received a great deal of attention were Trolls, The Secret Life of Pets, Zootopia and The Sausage Party.
Other well-ranked fantasy films include A Monster Calls, the emotional story of a boy coping with the death of his mother with the help of a magical tree, and The Jungle Book. The new adaptation of the famous book stars the likes of Bill Murray and Ben Kingsley.
History Buffs: Lookout!
Besides Hidden Figures, which might be up for some strong awards, there are other three historical movies that we could not ignore in 2016. Hacksaw Ridge finally saw the light of day after 14 years in development hell. Directed by Mel Gibson and set during WWII, it tells the story of the first soldier who won the Medal of Honor without firing a single shot. It’s a successful comeback for Gibson and already one of his highest ranked movies (8.5/10 on Imdb 71/100 on Metacritic).
Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood, is another historical drama recounting the key minutes and wise decision-making of Chesley Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) before he landed on the Hudson River and saved all his passengers and crew.
Snowden managed to be less controversial that its namesake and inspiration Edward Snowden (played by Joseph Gordon Levitt), who’s still seen as a true American hero by some and the worst of traitors by others. It scored 7.4/10 (Imdb) and 58/100 (Metacritic).
Honorable Mentions
Possibly, the best documentary of the year is Dangal. The Indian film about former wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat’s glory at the Commonwealth Games. It has an impressive 9.1/10 on IMDB!
The most well-rounded comedy was The Edge of Seventeen, with 7.9/10 (Imdb) and 77/100 (Metacritic).
Title: The Magnificent Seven (2016) Release date: Sept 23, 2016 (USA) IMDB Rating: 7.0/10 Writer: Akira Kurosawa (based on the screenplay by) Director: Antoine Fuqua Stars: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio Genre: Action, Adventure, Western Production Companies: Columbia Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, Escape Artists, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), LStar Capital, Pin High Productions Runtime: 133 mins
Review:
Antoine Fuqua always feels far away from making a truly great film. It’s been 15 years since he made Training Day, a film that feels just a little dated. Some of us here at Bago Games find that his 2013 White House action film, Olympus Has Fallen, is really entertaining, maybe even good. The Magnificent Seven isn’t going to change anyone’s minds on the director. In fact, it solidified my opinion that he doesn’t know what goes into making a good film, and a good movie this is not. Especially when you compare it to two of the greatest films within their respective genres, Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven (1960). But is there anything redeeming about this version?
