22 Movies I Liked Just Fine from 2016

Here we are right in the middle of the bell curve.

46. For the Love of Spock



I talked more about this on Starmageddon, but the short version is that this is a good, professional documentary celebrating the character of Spock for Star Trek's 50th anniversary. For those who haven't heard a lot of the behind-the-scenes details of Spock's development before, there are plenty of interesting anecdotes presented in a visually interesting way.

But for those of us who already know the origin of the Vulcan neck pinch, I wish there was more about Adam Nimoy's relationship with his father as well as some deeper exploration of Leonard Nimoy's relationship with his daughter. It seems like she had a different experience from her brother and I would have liked to understand that better.

45. Alice Through the Looking Glass



I loved Tim Burton's critically underrated Alice in Wonderland and would have told you that I welcomed a sequel. But the trailers for Alice Through the Looking Glass made me less excited. Burton's version sent Alice on an emotional and spiritual journey that I deeply connected to. For a sequel to be as effective, it was going to have to find a new journey for Alice, but the trailers for Looking Glass made it appear mostly interested in just offering more of what Burton did.

And that's indeed what's going on. Looking Glass is mostly about fan-service. If you liked Burton's Alice in Wonderland, here's some more with these characters and that setting. Alice even repeats her spiritual journey from the first one (a huge no-no for a sequel), just not as powerfully.

The biggest change comes in the form of Sacha Baron Cohen at the personification of Time. He's good in the part, but he's doing essentially the same schtick that he did as the more-enjoyable Station Inspector in Hugo. Adding Time as a character also introduces a time-travel element to the story, but that's all about the fan-service, too. It's just a device so that Alice can witness the origin stories of the Hatter and the Red Queen. These stories are both supposed to teach Alice something about her own life back in her world, but the messages are really trite compared to what Alice learns in the first film. Or maybe I just didn't connect to them as personally. Either way, Looking Glass was amusing enough, but offered nothing new.

44. Central Intelligence



I love The Rock. And this is my first Kevin Hart movie, but I liked him a lot, too. He's pretty much what I expected from seeing trailers for his other films.

Both actors are funny and charming, but they're also both playing super exaggerated characters in Central Intelligence. One of them needed to play it straight. Hart's got the more grounded character, but he's still out there enough that the whole movie feels flighty and rather slight. It has some great things though to say about friendship, bullies, expectations for life, and finding your calling.

43. Manhattan Night



'40s noir by way of '90s sex thriller. Unfortunately, I only like one of those genres.

The mystery is good and it resolves well with some nice surprises, but it's not the surprise classic that I was hoping for.

42. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping



I don't think I'm a prude, but I may have reached the limit of the number of times I need to hear the F-bomb in my life. And I'm pretty sure Popstar doubled it. It's a funny movie with some great cameos, but I'm not connected to the world that it's parodying. This probably just makes me old.

41. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them



I kind of dig what Eddie Redmayne's doing and I very much like Dan Fogler's character, but the rest of the people in the movie are uninteresting. So is the plot: a thin, easy mystery padded with unrelated scenes of Redmayne's collecting creatures. I figured that I could at least rely on some excellent world-building by JK Rowling, but even that's disappointing. Instead of a magical world that I wanted to immerse myself in, Fantastic Beasts takes place in an oppressive dystopia that I couldn't wait to get out of.

Redmayne and Fogler kept me interested and some of the creature designs are fun, so I ended up liking the movie. But I'm also aware that that's largely thanks to a tremendous amount of goodwill created in me by the Harry Potter series so far. I'll likely watch the sequel out of curiosity, but if we didn't get any more of these, I'd be okay.

40. Ghostbusters



Funny enough with some good effects and just enough story to pull it together. Which pretty much echoes my feelings about the original. It's a decent Ghostbusters remake, but my least-favorite Paul Feig movie since Bridesmaids.

39. Arrival



Has some great things to say about life and some truly unique and cool ways to say them. But it can also be on-the-nose and sloppy in the process. I might like it more after another viewing or two, but I was underwhelmed the first time.

38. Passengers



POSSIBLE SPOILER:

Passengers takes the romantic comedy plot formula and wraps it in a mostly humorless science fiction setting. Fortunately, it's got completely charming people to spend time with, a core dilemma worth discussing, and an ending that I quite like. I understand that not everyone feels that way about the ending, but part of what I like about the movie is that it makes that kind of disagreement and discussion possible.

37. Outlaws and Angels



Great idea for a story. A gang of brutal bank robbers invade the home of a pioneer family. When the youngest daughter of the family begins to seduce the gang's leader, it's not clear if she's doing it to save her family or escape from them. There's an excellent thriller here with some interesting characters; I just wish it weren't buried under so much graphic violence and pretentious symbolism.

36. Don’t Breathe



POSSIBLE SPOILER: 

Another unique premise that's very good at being tense. The problem with this one though is that it's not as morally ambiguous as I was hoping for. I wanted it to let me root for the "villain," but it steals that option away and without ever giving me a good reason to root for the main characters. So I ended up very curious about, but not especially invested in, where the story was going to go.

35. Hail, Caesar!



A lot of fun, but I wish I hadn't seen the trailer, which makes it look like more of a single, cohesive story. That's what I was expecting: something along the lines of Raising Arizona or O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

Instead, Hail, Caesar! is a series of vignettes loosely tied together by some common characters. The individual pieces are all amazing and awesome; I just wanted a stronger narrative to pull everything together.

34. The Duel



A lot of cool elements here. It's a Western version of the story where a government agent has to take down the charismatic leader of a religious cult. And that's blended with an interesting murder investigation and a marriage that gradually reveals itself to be something other than it first appeared. Some of those things resolve well and some of them don't.

The two leads are just as uneven. Woody Harrelson is compelling as the cult leader, but Liam Hemsworth doesn't do enough with his Texas Ranger character. He's fine as a ruggedly stoic cowboy, but with everything he goes through, the role needs some emotion that he's not delivering.

33. Love and Friendship



I love Jane Austen movies, but this is a minor entry in the Austen film canon. It's funny and charming and I'm sure I'll revisit it, but when I'm in the mood for Austen I'll still head first to Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility or the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice, with Douglas McGrath's Emma being a close third choice. But, if I'm marathoning Austen films, I'm not skipping this one either.

I also love Kate Beckinsale and she was a huge draw for me, but ironically, I would have liked the movie more if it had focused on her character's daughter instead. That's where the real story is.

32. Swiss Army Man



Strange and beautiful and whimsical and ultimately... deeply disturbing. I loved the journey, but the destination was nowhere I wanted to go.

31. X-Men: Apocalypse



I enjoyed it, even as I was aware that it wasn't doing anything new. It's the same basic story that the X-Men movies keep retelling; counting on my already established fondness for these characters to carry me through. A lot like the X-Men comics in that way, actually, but there's a reason I don't read X-Men comics anymore.

30. Zoolander 2



I almost didn't watch this one because of the universally horrible reviews, but I'm glad I went ahead. It's not as funny or good as the first one, but it's funny enough and I just really like spending time with these characters.

29. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies



Was hoping for something goofy and fun, similar to Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. And it is, in parts, but the movie never forgets that it's based on Literature. It never lets itself get completely silly; going instead for a serious take that's occasionally interrupted by ridiculous moments.

But even though it's not exactly what I wanted, it is a pretty good version of what it wants to be. It's not a great adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but it's an effective zombie movie with an interesting spin on the mythology around those monsters. And Lily James and Sam Riley are pretty awesome as the leads.

28. The Girl on the Train



PROBABLE SPOILERS: 

I was considering reading the book until I saw the trailer for the movie. Whatever blurb I read about the novel made it seem like the eponymous Rachel is a complete stranger to a couple that she sees every day on her commute and then one day she notices something strange and when the woman disappears, Rachel has to solve the mystery.

That's all technically true, but the movie trailer revealed that Rachel is actually deeply connected to the couple and probably somehow involved in the woman's disappearance. I'm much more interested in characters who are drawn into adventure against their will, so I wasn't sure I cared about one who got there because of her own bad choices. But I went to see it anyway and I'm glad I did.

It's a good thriller. It's not great, but it kept my interest and Emily Blunt is awesome in it. Actually, everyone's pretty awesome in it and it has a lot of my favorite actors right now from Haley Bennett (Magnificent Seven) to Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation) to Luke Evans (tons of stuff). There are even great, smaller roles for Laura Prepon, Allison Janney, and Lisa Kudrow. It's a lot of fun to watch and the mystery is compelling for a while as I'm trying to figure out what did happen to Megan (Bennett). Did she run away? Is she still alive?

Unfortunately, once that answer is revealed, Roger Ebert's Law of Economy of Characters makes it pretty easy to figure out who's responsible. It would have been a complete giveaway except that the movie doesn't play fair. It has the character abruptly change personalities as soon as they're revealed. It does this in a cool and clever way, but it's still a trick and it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. I loved watching Rachel's investigation, but felt cheated by the answers she uncovers.

27. Deadpool



The trailers and other marketing for Deadpool didn't make me laugh at all (except maybe for that poster above), so I had decided not to see the movie. But positive reviews from friends and critics made me reconsider and with little else going on at the theater one week, I checked it out.

And it's not too bad. I was surprised at how much I cared about the character even while I found him and his girlfriend super annoying. Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead are great foils whom I enjoyed whenever they showed up. And it was great to see Gina Carano and TJ Miller.

The movie has a great look to it, too, and I enjoyed the way it used music. My biggest problem with the movie is that it's just not my humor. I chuckled twice and both times were at lines that reveal character, not actual jokes. The jokes were just more of what the trailer suggested: references to sex, poop, and other movies. So while I had a pretty good time watching Deadpool, it ultimately didn't feel like it was for me.

Then again, I watched it again later in the year with a different crowd and laughed more. It may be the kind of movie that's best viewed in a living room with a bunch of friends.

26. Neon Demon



Neon Demon presents itself as a commentary on the fashion industry, but it's doing so much more than just that. I found some challenging insights about humanity's relationship with beauty in general. We're seldom able to just appreciate it for the gift that it is. Instead, we have to get all selfish about it: either becoming jealous of it or wanting to own and control it.

This is strange film and I don't always love the visuals that Nicolas Winding Refn chooses, but I very much appreciate what it's saying.

25. Free State of Jones



Bigger in scope than I expected and that's mostly a good thing. It's not so much the story of one event as it is the history of a very interesting part of Mississippi during the Civil War and into the Reconstruction period (and even into the Civil Rights Movement a little).

All based around this one guy, but what a fascinating person. I just wish it had more to say about the experiences of the black characters. That would have made it more compelling and important to me.

Movies I Missed in 2015: Part 3

21. Victoria



I don't know much about the story and even less about the creators, but the whole movie is shot in one, continuous take and I hear it's an amazing experience.

22. The Final Girls



Not to be confused with Final Girl, which also came out this year. Okay, to be totally confused with it, so here's the difference. That one has Abigail Breslin and is sort of Hanna meets The Most Dangerous Game. It looks like an awesome thriller more than a horror movie.

This one is a straight-up horror/comedy in the tradition of Scream and The Cabin in the Woods. Taissa Farmiga and her friends get pulled into a slasher flick and have to survive, using their knowledge of the film and the genre in general. Looks pretty funny and I still want to watch it as a double-feature with Breslin's movie.

23. Our Brand is Crisis



Totally love Sandra Bullock. Often love Billy Bob Thornton. Our Brand is Crisis was really poorly reviewed, but the trailer looked funny to me.

24. The Peanuts Movie



I've heard nothing but good things. I love the Peanuts when they're done right and by all accounts this is them done right.

25. Spotlight



I wasn't interested at first, because I thought that the focus was going to be on the scandal and I'm done processing that story. I didn't think there was a new angle that would make me think about it in a different way. My understanding now though is that Spotlight is about journalism in general and is the best movie in that genre since (and possibly including) All the President's Men. That plus the cast makes me very eager to see it.

26. Trumbo



Another great cast and what looks like a really fun performance by Bryan Cranston.

27. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2



I missed Mockingjay, Part 1 last year due to life and never found time to re-watch everything before this one came out. And... I enjoyed the first two movies, but neither of them grabbed hold of me in a powerful way. Probably because I read the books. This is why I usually wait to read the books until after I've seen the movie. I tend to enjoy both versions more when I do it that way.

Anyway, I do plan to finish the movies, but not until this last one hits home video.

My Top 10 Movies of 2014

10. X-Men: Days of Future Past



I don't know if I like it more for continuing the story of the First Class cast or for rescuing the original cast from the sourness I associated them with after Last Stand. I don't think I like DoFP as much as First Class, but it's a worthy sequel when it could have been an enormous mess. That's faint praise, I know, but I really love both generations of these characters and it was great to see them all treated well. And that Quicksilver scene alone earns it a spot in my Top 10.

9. Noah



I grew up with this story and I know it very well, so I'm extremely impressed and appreciative that Darren Aronofsky was able to make me think about it in a new way. And not just because he threw in some Ents. I wrote a full review of it, but to sum up: the movie makes powerful statements and asks deep questions about the relationship between humanity and nature, the inscrutability of God, and the perils of thinking you've got him all figured out. It has flaws, to be sure, but it moved and provoked me more than any other movie last year.

8. Begin Again



Wow, Keira Knightley had a good year. This is my favorite thing she did though. It looks and smells like a romantic comedy, but it's not. For one thing, though it's funny, it's not really a comedy. For another, though it'll try to fool you a couple of times, romance between the leads isn't the point. The point is about music: both the creation and the business of it. It's only 20% about the music industry though and 80% about what music is and what it means to us. There's a beautiful scene early on - really two different interpretations of the same scene - where Knightley performs a song live and we experience it first from her point of view as the nervous, insecure musician, and then from Mark Ruffalo's point of view as a music producer in the audience. It shows in a powerful way how the same song can give different experiences to different people. There's another moment later on that nails the feeling of putting on headphones in public and letting music change your perception of the world. With such wonderful groundwork laid about what music is, the movie's then able to comment on the way it's commercialized. And it does all this with some great and likable characters, including Knightley and Ruffalo's, but not limited to them.

7. How to Train Your Dragon 2



The first How to Train Your Dragon is one of my favorite animated movies of all time. It's funny, exciting, and emotionally stirring. I had no hope at all that the sequel would top it. And it didn't. But what it did do was go in a whole new direction: an epic fantasy that opened up the world of the first film and raised the stakes. It's a more serious, less joyful film, which means that I didn't enjoy it as much as the first one, but it's just as awe-inspiring in its own way.

6. The Lego Movie



When I was on the Nerd Lunch podcast last year talking about the 75th anniversary of Batman, one of the topics that came up was our favorite Batman movies. I'll never understand how I forgot to rank The Lego Movie just behind Mask of the Phantasm. In fact, since The Lego Movie is actually a Batman/Star Wars crossover, I may have to rethink that number 2 position.

5. Maleficent



I had to see this one twice to appreciate it as much as I do. There are some serious problems with Maleficent, starting with Sharlto Copley's unbelievable character and including some awful CG with Aurora's fairy guardians. That stuff really distracted me on first viewing, but what still stood out was Angelina Jolie's performance as a woman who has been hurt to the point of deeply wanting to hurt back, but hasn't yet lost all capacity to love. It's a powerful struggle and she shows it beautifully and movingly. Meanwhile, Elle Fanning grounds the movie perfectly as the tether that holds Maleficent to... well, "humanity" may not be the right word, but you know what I mean. Anyway, my second time watching it, those are the things I focused on and I loved it.

4. Guardians of the Galaxy



I'd want to call it the Star Wars for this generation if we weren't getting a new Star Wars movie next year. And besides, it's not really the same tone as Star Wars, is it? It's much more snarky and irreverent, but it balances that out with moments of humor, wonder, and just plain coolness. Even though it shares a basic plot structure with many of the other Marvel movies, it does so in its own, joyful way.

3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier



Speaking of plot, that's the reason Winter Soldier nudges ahead of Guardians of the Galaxy on this list. Winter Soldier takes some brave chances, not only by changing the status quo of the Marvel Universe, but also by not being about a bunch of people trying to get the same, all-powerful, cosmic object. Instead, it's a conspiracy thriller and a dang good one. I also love Anthony Mackie and that no one tried to force Cap and Black Widow into a romantic relationship. Boys and girls can be friends! Who knew?

2. Godzilla



I had this at number one for quite a while. It was easily the best time I had at a movie theater last year. A lot of that was manufactured by me and David though. We undertook a massive Godzillathon in the months leading up to May 16, filling in as many holes in our viewing as we had access to. We even made it to a local screening of the 1954 original. When it came time to watch the new one, we had a boys' night out (Diane had a previous commitment) at our favorite theater with the cushy lounge chairs, the Dolby Atmos, and the 30' x 70' screen. We were primed. And the movie didn't let us down. We loved the slow build to the final battle and the epic moments in that battle. When Ken Watanabe says, "Let them fight," we were screaming and whooping and we - and the rest of our audience - just got louder and more excited as the movie went on. The only thing that bumped it down to number two was Aaron Taylor-Johnson. I don't think he's bad in the movie, but he's certainly the only thing about it that I didn't find completely exciting. And that's a bit of a problem when he's the lead actor.

1. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes



A perfect sequel. It continues the story of the first movie, expands on it, raises the stakes, and does all that in a way that's just as emotionally powerful if not more so. Incredibly, it met and exceeded my impossibly high hopes for it. I don't have one bad thing to say about it and that's why it's Number 1.

Twixt (2011)

Who's In It: Val Kilmer (Batman Forever), Bruce Dern (Django Unchained), and Elle Fanning (Maleficent).

What It's About: A struggling writer (Kilmer) arrives in a small town on his book tour and is convinced by the sheriff (Dern) to stay and use a local mystery as the plot of his next book. But the writer's dreams of a young ghost (Fanning) begin to blur the lines between reality and fiction.

How It Is: Francis Ford Coppola is in an interesting stage of his career right now where he's able to just make movies because he wants to and not because a studio finds them potentially profitable. Twixt is a great example of that. Based on a dream that Coppola had, but was unable to finish, the movie feels really small and personal in an idiosyncratic way. Coppola's totally indulging himself, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. Twixt is loose and sloppy, but it's got a cool story and a fantastic cast.

In addition to its three stars it also has appearances by Kilmer's ex-wife (and Willow co-star) Joanne Whalley, character actor David Paymer, and Don Novello (aka Father Guido Sarducci). Ben Chapman (Murder by Numbers) has an especially cool role as the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe who serves as sort of a muse/spirit guide for Kilmer's character.

The movie is funny and charming, but also weird and - depending on your tolerance level - possibly pretentious. There may or may not be vampires, and that's not just me being coy. After Shark Night and Black Rock though, I was in the mood for something strange and daring and Twixt delivered.

Rating: Four out of five gothy ghost girls.