The 11 movies you need to have seen in 2016

2016’s been a… mixed year for movies. Seemingly sure-fire smash hits like Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad may have done well at the box office, but critics were not so kind. At all. Sequels like Zoolander 2, London Has Fallen and Now You See Me 2 landed with a thud, and a few newcomers even managed an amazing 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes (were you the person who watched the amazingly-named The Disappointments Room?).

That said, there have been some really, really, really good films over the past 12 months, hidden under the bad blockbuster rubble, and here are just 11 of them – kind of – in order of my personal preference. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s been a great year to be an animated movie nerd (which I very much am, by the way).

So without any further ado, here are my top ten movies of 2016. If you missed any of them, you know what to do. Hint: it’s ‘watch them’.

(N.B. While I haven’t watched every movie that’s out in cinemas in December yet, I will tweak this list accordingly should, say, Rogue One, blow me away in a couple of weeks’ time. Watch this space…)

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AKA ‘The Films That Came Out During Oscar Season’. Released late 2015 in the US, early 2016 in the UK, I’m kicking off this list with a total fudge answer. These are the universally-acclaimed Oscar winners (and nominees) that beard-stroking critics have cooed over – but don’t feel quite right in this list. Except they are. Kind of.

Kicking Batman in the pants, shoving Superman’s head in the toilet and throwing Harley Quinn’s beloved baseball bat into the rotating blades of an Apache helicopter is… Deadpool: everyone’s favourite fourth-wall breaking merc with the mouth.

Ryan Reynolds and his unique blend of fart jokes, very bad language and a bit of the old ultra-violence reminded the world that self-aware stupidity can go a long, long way. Remember: this is the highest R-rated movie OF ALL TIME. Take that, The Passion Of The Christ.

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Sometimes you need a film that’s guaranteed to you smile, and Sing Street is exactly that. Set in 1980s Dublin, it tells the tale of a geeky teenager (newcomer Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) forming a band with his new schoolmates to impress a girl (Lucy Boynton).

Cue absurdly catchy pop hooks, plenty of adorable will-they-won’t-they moments and a somewhat surprising slice of brotherly love, with bigger bro Jack Reynor very nearly stealing the show. One for anyone who’s ever wanted to start a band. So, everyone, then.

There have been a few genuinely excellent horror films this year – including, but not limited to, Don’t Breathe, Bone Tomahawk and Train To Busan – but Green Room stands above them all, a thoroughly nasty, uncomfortable, shocking, grim piece of work. Patrick Stewart plays a neo-Nazi who traps a rock band in, you guessed it, a green room.

What happens in the resulting bloodbath is best left unsaid, if only because the film’s stubborn refusal to conform to horror conventions is part of why it’s so damn brutal.

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My documentary of the year – sorry, Louis Theroux – is about tickling. Competitive endurance tickling. And… that’s about all I’m going to tell you. An amazing true story from New Zealand TV journalist David Farrier, it starts off kooky and ends up properly crazy, with the people behind the ‘sport’ being, perhaps unsurprisingly, not at all as they seem.

All I can say is that the less you know, the better. All that matters is that Tickled is fascinating, jaw-dropping and a variety of other positive things. Go watch it.

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A grown-up, thoughtful sci-fi that’s not afraid to throw some pretty big ideas at you, critically-acclaimed director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy, the upcoming Blade Runner sequel) delivered the rarest of things in 2016: a film that actually made you think.

Amy Adams delivers an understated, tear-inducing performance as the linguist tasked with communicating with the aliens that have arrived, out of the blue, in bean-shaped spaceships that hover above the earth. Watch it once, and you’ll want to watch it twice. Yeah, it’s one of those.

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Who doesn’t love a good cops-and-bank-robbers movie? Because that’s what Hell Or High Water is: a good cops-and-bank-robbers movie.

Starring Jeff Bridges as the near-retirement Texas ranger on the trail of two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) as they grab cash across the state to pay off their mother’s debts, there’s not too much actively new to this ‘70s-esque thriller, but it does what it does so well – character development, cinematography, genuine dialogue – that you’re too busy enjoying your new favourite chase film to worry whether it’s reinventing the proverbial wheel.

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Flight Of The Conchords veteran Taika Waititi is the man behind one of my favourite films of the past few years – bat-on-the-wall vampire mock doc What We Do In The Shadows – so I was ready to love his follow-up, Hunt For The Wilderpeople, a story of a young inner-city orphan (Julian Dennison) and his adoptive ‘uncle’ (Sam Neill) going on the run in the New Zealand bush for… reasons. Odd but somehow still reasonable reasons.

Wry, dry and shamelessly weird, this is an utterly loveable adventure movie that you’re nigh-on guaranteed to love.

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When it came to proper, money-on-the-screen, stuffed with good-looking A-listers, explosions a-go-go, special-effects-everywhere blockbusters in 2016, there was nothing that could touch Marvel’s backdoor third Avengers film, Captain America: Civil War.

Sure, the reasoning behind bad guy Zemo’s (Daniel Bruhl) grand plan is… convoluted, to say the least, but the action, and charm, and sheer shiny sleekness of it all put the film (justice) leagues ahead of everything else – all while stuffed to the rafters with complicated superheroes with complicated backstories.

They even snuck in an amazing introduction to the new Spider-Man (Tom Holland) while they were at it, the mad men.

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There have been some BIG kids movies in the past 12 months, notably Pixar’s Finding Dory and the live-action Jungle Book remake, but one stood tall.

Anthropomorphised animal spectacular Zootropolis, aka Zootopia, delivered a message of understanding and tolerance in an utterly loveable package, with overly optimistic bunny cop Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) teaming up with small-time con artist fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) to uncover a secret that will change the animal world of Zootopia forever.

It helps that the film is truly gorgeous to look at, all while being clever, funny, subversive, delightful and paying tribute to classic buddy cop flicks. I promise you, you’ll struggle to find ANYONE who won’t enjoy this.

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Kids movie? Arthouse animation? Somewhere in-between? I like to think of Kubo as a total one-of-a-kind: a stunning, inspirational, magnificent film for all ages, something for anyone who appreciates stories of family, adventure and beetle-men voiced by Matthew McConaughey.

For some reason not enough people watched it in the cinema – perhaps it was the odd title, the origami aesthetic or the strange beetle-man-and-monkey-and-boy-wander-the-earth storyline – but I really hope it enjoys the love it deserves after its home release.

Truly beautiful to look at, this is perhaps the best-looking thing Laika Studios have ever done, and they’re the people behind Coraline. Honestly, it’s hard to explain just how this movie touched me, but I’ll say this: it’s the one and only film this year I watched all the way through to the very, very, very end of the credits.

Yes, it’s that good. You should watch it.