I think it's time for my traditional summary of the year's movies. However, I have to first admit that I have not seen quite as many of the movies that came out this year as I usually do, for various reasons. Therefore such movies as for example A Monster Calls or the new Ghostbusters (likely candidates for the "best" and "worst" cathegories respectively) weren't in the running. Without further ado:

Best Movie of the Year: Hunt for the Wilderpeople - fresh, original, touching and hilarious, it's a superbly directed and acted little gem of a movie. It's no sweeping epic, not milestone to go down in cinema history, but still an immensly enjoyable and also poignant film. The premise is simple- a national manhunt is ordered for a rebellious kid and his foster uncle who go missing in the wild New Zealand bush, but it's the imaginative direction and great cast that make it great. Sam Neill is wonderful as the gruff but likeable Hec, but it's young Julian Dennison who steals the movie, noe mean feat with an actor like Neill sharing the screen with him.

Runner-Up: Free State of Jones

Biggest Positive Surprise: Warcraft- I expected it to be a total disaster, but it turned out to be a immensly fun, if shallow movie. It's just great B-movie fun, with surprisingly great visuals. There are some moments when the CGI still doesn't quite cut it, but overall it's quite impressive, and the film definately felt like Warcraft to me. I could not have went into it with worse expectations, and yet I had a lot of fun. Definately the best video game movie to date. A pity we won't get a sequel due to poor box office.

Runner-Up: The Huntsman Winter's War

Biggest Disappointment: Independence Day: Resurgence- I wasn't expecting much, but I was expecting it to be fun. Big, dumb fun. Well, big and dumb it is, but fun was nowhere to be found. It's boring, bland, full of way to many characters who contribute nothing and unfocused loose threads that never come together. It lacks the fun performances of the original, and doesn't pack nearly the punch and excitment of that movie in scenes of action and destruction. The humor falls flat, the new cast is forgettable, the visuals never really impress. The sad thing is, it really could have easily worked with a better script and cast, but that's not what we got.

Runner-Up: High Rise

Worst Movie of the Year: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children- I'm sure there were some worse, but I have not seen them, and this one is plenty bad. It is in fact I think the worst Tim Burton movie yet, even worse than Dark Shadows and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The book wasn't grea, but it was ok and had some interesting aspects that set it apart from the run of the mill young adult novels. The movie however threw all that out the window, and instead focused on the most unoriginal elements of the book, making it into a bland X-Men copy, messing up characters for no apparent reason along the way. Even forgetting about the book, it's still a hopelessly dull movie, with unimpressive CGI, thinly sketched characters and worst of all- a poorly written plot full of holes that pretty much entirely falls apart in the final act. It's a failure as an adaptation and a fialure as a movie in it's own right, and perhaps for the first time in his career, it's a movie that feels like Burton did not give a shit. It feels like he just wanted it over with, just rolled with whatever the first take was like, with whatever the special effects artists and concept art guys could turn out quickly. An utter waste of everyone's time, and everyone involved seemed to know it.

Runner-Up: Captain America Civil War

Tim Burton hasn't made a truly great movie since "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" and that's no bullshit.

Not true. Big Fish is superb.

I need to go back and re-watch that.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
That was a far better movie that it had rights to have been.

Biggest Positive Surprise: Star Trek Beyond - I wasn't expecting much after Into Darkness left me feeling levels of anger I'd not felt since Attack of the Clones, not to mention the announcement that Justin Lin was directing it. However Beyond really was a very enjoyable and very solid Star Trek film that hit very close to the mark in terms of capturing the feel and spirit of the original series. The acting, writing and dialogue all were excellent, at least for the crew. Of course, the only weak point of the movie was that Idris Elba's Krall wasn't fleshed out as well as he could/should have been.

Biggest Non-Surprise: Rogue One. I expected a highly corporatized and commoditized product dressed up to look like a flashy war movie clothed in Star Wars garb. And for me, it was exactly that.

Seriously? I don't know about the "feel", but the spirit of old Trek was the spirit of exploration. No matter if it was exploration of time and space where "no man has ever gone before" or exploration of societies and cultures, even our own society and culture through the prism of the future generations. Tell me, where is all this in Beyond? Yeah, Spock-McCoy bickering, Kirk being cliche ass-kicker, Scotty being Scotty (well, that's probably a good thing for nostalgia)... but of cause nothing is compareble to Sulu becoming a gay. The only thing I agree with you about. I mean about Krall being just a psycho bent on Federation destruction because, well reasons. Not about this being the only weak point of the movie. So, is it better than Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil? I'm asking here seriously - I haven't watched WarCraft, but saw reviews and thought not very high of it. So maybe it's indeed worht to see.

I'm so tired of arguing with the new Trek haters I'll just quote myself from the other thread

To my great relief, it's actually good, fun and "treky" enough. It's not a masterpiece of cinema, nor among the very best of the franchise, but it's still fun and well acted, and gets a "treky" adventure right. I think Pegg's script really nailed the "voices" of the main characters, striking a nice balance between the "traditional" versions and the way we've seen them in the previous two movies. Pretty much every second with McCoy and Spock together is gold.

There's a number of nice nostalgic nods, and original Spock's death plays a surprisingly important part in the movie, but it never feels forced. In fact most of it is played nicely subtle, and the photograph at the end, even if one might question the "how" and "why" of it feels a fitting tribute to the original cast for the 50th anniversary.

And I'll only add that I went to see it a second time and enjoyed it so much both times that it's probably my second runner-up for the best movie of the year.

The thing is that I was asking another guy about the Beyond Trek. Still, I understand you. You just value different things in Trek, than I. For me Trek is about exploration theme and story and for you it's about fun and characters and their relationships.

Best movie: Train to Busan (Bu-san-haeng).
South Korean movie. I love zombie movies and this is one of the best ones I've seen.
A very interesting concept and great acting.

Worst movie: Suicide Squad Or as I would call it 'The Harley Quinn Story'.
I felt this movie was all about a babe in tights. The whole writing was terrible.Independence Day Resurgence was far more entertaining than Suicide Squad, at least I'd watch Resurgence again.

Biggest disappointment: Captain America: Civil War.
The concept was good but I did not like the execution, the writing. The weakest one in the series.

Biggest positive surprise: X-Men Apocalypse.
It's been a while since I really liked an X-Men movie, and this is one of the good ones in my opinion.

For me Trek can be many things. It's not like every episode was about exploration, and certainly not every movie. Sometimes it would be about exploration, sometimes about war, sometimes a political thriller or even a comedy. There is no exploration of unknown space in Wrath of Khan, and it's the best of the Trek movies and a fan favourite. That's why I always find claims that "Trek is about this or that" which narrow it down to one thing to be silly. Which is why there is nothing wrong or un-Trek with "just" an adventure movie, as long it's good.

I'd definately rather watch Squad again (and I probably will). It's very flawed but it's decent enough as a mindless action flick. At least unlike Resurgence some of the characters (yes, including Harley) and some of the action scenes were memorable.

Maybe not every, but good ones generally are.

Thanks for that recommendation, looks fun!

I can't add anything to this thread, simply can't think of any movies from 2016 that made a positive impression on me, and my level of expectation was low to begin with. I've been watching TV series from past years and classic movies for the most part. so I haven't quite noticed the lack of good movies this year. Surely there are a couple good international movies but I haven't kept myself up to date in that regard and in the mainstream Hollywood category nothing comes to mind, drawing a total blank here personally.

Is that the new Sam Jackson movie?

I'd go see that.