14 Really Good Movies from 2016

24. The Finest Hours



A great, suspenseful film that's really two movies in one. Chris Pine's in a rousing, military story about duty and being tenacious, while Casey Affleck's in a survival thriller. Both parts are equally good, even though Pine's half suffers from a weak romantic subplot. But even that is made better by super cute Holliday Grainger who's totally convincing and touching in her concern for Pine.

23. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows



My new favorite TMNT movie, which - okay - is a pretty low bar. Perfectly captures the ridiculous fun of the '90s cartoon series, and almost makes me curious to watch the 2014 movie. Almost.

22. Suicide Squad



There's some extremely sloppy storytelling around a major plot point, which is laughable, because they actually show it twice and neither time could I tell what the heck was going on. But except for that, I had a pretty great time.

I went in with low expectations and ended up enjoying most of the team quite a bit. I especially like Deadshot, Harley, and Diablo, but Killer Croc also gets a nice story arc. I was disappointed by how little Katana matters, but she was still better than Boomerang and Amanda Waller, both of whom are pretty horrible people. Flagg I can totally take or leave.

But it's surprising to me that I like three or four of these characters. Even though it's a movie about villains, there's more heroism and sacrifice going on here than in either of Zack Snyder's Superman movies. Suicide Squad isn't a great movie by any stretch, but it's easily the best of the three DCU movies so far and I'd love to see more with these characters.

21. Risen



After a disappointing experience with The Young Messiah and a more challenging watch of Last Days in the Desert than I expected, I wasn't sure what I was getting into with the third Jesus film of 2016. (Last Days was technically a 2015 film, which is why I haven't listed it with this year's movies, but it didn't come widely available to watch until 2016.)

I quite liked the procedural investigation angle of Risen though and the actors are mostly very good. Fiennes is excellent and I also quite like Stewart Scudamore as Peter. I want more resolution to Fiennes' journey, but I think maybe that's a positive thing. His story captures my imagination.

20. Keanu



I like Key and Peele a lot, especially Keegan-Michael Key, whom I was introduced to in the final season of Parks and Rec and then started noticing everywhere. I didn't know too much about Keanu going in, but hoped that it would be funny and I wasn't disappointed. I laughed a lot. The plot also messes with expectations in some fun and interesting ways, particularly in how it deals with violence, so not only is it funny, but it's smart, too.

19. The Jungle Book



Visually spectacular and a lot of fun. The voice actors all do remarkable jobs and Neel Sethi is an adorable Mowgli. It won't replace the 1967 animated version for me though, simply on the strength of those songs and my love for Phil Harris, George Sanders, and Sebastian Cabot's voices. It sure is awesome to hear Christopher Walken sing "I Wanna Be Like You," though, and watching the credits is worthwhile purely to hear Scarlett Johansson's sultry version of "Trust In Me."

The new movie also adds some great character stuff that deepens Mowgli as a character and strengthens the emotional impact of his having to leave the jungle.

18. Kubo and the Two Strings



Easily my favorite Laika movie. I always find Laika films cool and visually stunning, but I'm also used to not quite connecting with them as deeply as I want to. They've never punched me in the heart the way Toy Story 2 or How to Train Your Dragon do, for instance. But Kubo comes closest.

I felt the ending was resolved too easily and wasn't really honest with the characters' emotions, but that's a final stumble in an otherwise wonderful, fantastical adventure. This is a great world with great characters and some chilling villains.

17. Zootopia



A lot of fun and also very timely. But while I like and mostly agree with the overarching message of the film, it's presented in such a pointed way that it overpowers everything else. The analogy that compares animal species to groups of humans doesn't always work and the film has a complicated relationship with stereotypes (denouncing them while simultaneously using them for comedy). That makes me work harder than I want to in separating the useful parts from the parts that are just kind of dumb.

16. The Secret Life of Pets



Different from what the trailer led me to expect. Less vignettes about how pets are funny; more adventure. Some of that's good (I appreciate the structure of a traditional narrative) and some of it's not so great (the character arcs are trite). But above all, it's very, very funny and that's enough.

15. Pee Wee’s Big Holiday



Nothing will ever top Pee Wee's Big Adventure, but Big Holiday is super funny and sweet. Makes me want to rewatch Big Top Pee Wee to see where that one went wrong. I don't remember much about Big Top other than being disappointed. No such problem with Holiday; I'll happily rewatch it. Just probably not over and over again the way I do with Adventure.

14. The Nice Guys



A fun movie with a great cast. If there's anyone I want to see Gosling paired up with as much as Emma Stone, it's Russell Crowe. And I always enjoy Shane Black projects. The only thing keeping it this low on the list is that the villains' motivations and plan are ridiculous.

13. Finding Dory



I rate Finding Nemo in the upper-middle tier of Pixar films, so I knew there was potential for the sequel to be good, but I didn't expect great things. And it's not The Best Pixar Movie Ever, but dang it's a lot more entertaining and touching than I expected. I may have even teared up towards the end.

12. 10 Cloverfield Lane



Not the Cloverfield sequel I'd asked for, but an excellent thriller-with-a-twist nonetheless. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a great, relatable hero and John Goodman does an excellent job keeping her and me on our toes. John Gallagher Jr is also compelling as the third major character and I had a good time trying to decide whether he or Goodman (or both or neither of them) was a villain.

11. The Shallows



I'm warming to these survival films with one person stuck in a location for two hours. And it helps when the location is as gorgeous as this one.

Like in Gravity, the main character gets a backstory that's supposed to enhance her experience, but really isn't that meaningful. That's okay though. Her story is plenty thrilling and ends spectacularly. I had high hopes for this movie and wasn't disappointed.

6 Movies I Didn't Like from 2016

Today, we start counting down all the 2016 movies I watched from worst to best. Here's the bottom of the barrel.

52. Mechanic: Resurrection



2016 was a year of ill-advised sequels that no one asked for. I managed to avoid a few of those (like Independence Day 2) as well as some that we definitely asked for, but by all reports turned out to be no good (Jason Bourne). A couple of them got me though. Even though I enjoyed the 2011 Mechanic remake, I wasn't exactly clamoring for more, but I like Jason Statham enough that Resurrection got me to the theater. And for a while, I was really impressed.

The film starts in Rio and uses a landmark that brought Moonraker to mind and put me in the mood for a big, fun action movie. A pretty cool fight and a very cool stunt later, and I was hooked. I was still into it when Statham's character went to Thailand to hang out in some very Man With the Golden Gun-looking islands with Michelle Yeoh (reminding me of the best part of Tomorrow Never Dies). Were were still all good.

But then Jessica Alba showed up.

I don't dislike Alba as an actor; it's the script's problem. Up until her appearance, the movie is about Jason Statham's staying one step ahead of his enemy and refusing to get back into the assassination business. But then Alba reveals that she's been recruited (seemingly at random out of literally everyone on the planet; there's no compelling reason for the villain to have picked her in particular) to seduce Statham so that when she's later "kidnapped" by the bad guy, he'll have leverage over Statham.

Even knowing this, Statham falls in love with her anyway because of a wedding dance and the rest of the movie plays out exactly as Alba predicted it would. You don't even have to have seen an action movie before to know what's coming. Her character literally tells you in the first act. From there, I was just bored.

51. Assassin’s Creed



This is a good-looking movie with great actors who are doing and saying ridiculous nonsense. There are some good action sequences in some cool period settings, but they're completely undercut by constant visual reminders that what's happening isn't real and that there are no stakes.

50. The Young Messiah



A fan fiction prequel to Jesus' story that promises to explore his coming to terms with his role as the Messiah. Sadly, it doesn't actually deliver that. Really it's just his learning the facts around his birth, so that he discovers that he is the Messiah, and then there's a bit of voiceover monologue at the end where he explains what he thinks that's about. I was hoping for something more thoughtful.

Excellent performances all around though and I especially like the character arc given to Sean Bean's centurion. The set up for that story is kind of ridiculous and very contrived: Herod the Great's mad son orders Bean to seek out and murder the legendary child who escaped the massacre of infants seven years ago in Bethlehem. But having Bean's character be one of the soldiers who was in Bethlehem that night makes for a compelling story as he wrestles with his past and has to decide if he's going to repeat it.

49. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2



I was surprised and completely charmed by the first movie in 2002, so this was a sequel I was actually looking forward to, regardless of what the critics had to say (and they didn't say nice things). Besides, there was at least one of other widely maligned comedy sequel in 2016 that I enjoyed quite a bit. Revisiting the original in preparation for this, though, I was concerned by how some of my fondness for it had expired.

The original is still very sweet and often funny, but I think a lot of its surprise was because of how it stood out among other romantic comedies of the early 2000s. Watching it today, when almost all romantic comedies are quirky and low-budget, it doesn't feel as fresh. I still quite like it though.

The sequel, on the other hand, tries to do too much. The first one knows exactly what story it's trying to tell and has no problem focusing on it. This one is sort of about Toula's relationship with her daughter, sort of about her daughter's relationship with the rest of her family, sort of about Toula's relationship with her family and how that affects her relationship with her husband, and sort of about her parents' relationship with each other. As much as I enjoyed seeing these characters again, the movie should have picked one - or maybe two - of those plots.

48. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising



Pretty funny, but the first one had the advantage of surprising me with an actual story. This one tries to do some of the same stuff - to be about something - but isn't as deep (if "deep" is the word I even want to use for the first one). The first one dealt with Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne's crisis about growing older and uncool. The sequel deals with their fears about being bad parents. But the thing is, they really are horrible parents, so I don't care to see them make their peace with that. I'd rather see them learn to become good parents.

I do like the girl power angle of the story though and I found it easy to root for both sides of the war.

47. Batman v Superman: The Dawn of Justice



Speaking of wars, this was better than I expected, but that's a really low bar. It's built on the very shaky foundation of Man of Steel, which presented a brooding, selfish Superman. Because of that, the citizens of this world can apparently only react to him in one of two ways: god or monster. One character in Batman v Superman pays lip service to a third option: that he's just a man doing the best he can. But that's not really explored.

In order to get the fight of the title in, Batman is forced to see Superman as a monster, but in an unconvincing way that makes Batman seem pretty dumb. So most of the movie is a bunch of people acting really shallowly or stupidly. Lex has an interesting point of view - that Superman is a god and therefore must be treated as a monster - but Lex is so clearly insane that it's hard to take him seriously either. He's basically the Joker Lite.

Without anyone to care about, there are no stakes and most of the film is pretty dull. That changes somewhat once Lex's plan finally becomes active though. There's suddenly something to lose (in a contrived and cliche way, but still) and some of the action scenes are pretty cool, if not particularly thrilling.

Affleck makes a fine Batman and I'm interested in seeing a solo film with him as long as Snyder and Goyer aren't creating it. Almost as interested as I am in the Wonder Woman film. BvS only teases what the character will be like, but so far so good (and the trailers give me even more hope). I'm also hopeful about Aquaman's movie, but will need convincing about the Flash and Cyborg.