Hmm, I haven't seen all that many movies this year, I thought it was a bit lackluster in terms of releases, but the ones I liked I REALLY liked! :)

My favorite has got to be Neon Demon though. An amazing soundtrack, really cool shots and colors and just overall great cinematography, and Keanu Reeves (for 10 minutes)! This movie was so great and memorable that I'll remember this year as the "Neon Demon Year".

Other than that, I liked Batman v Superman a whole bunch, enjoyed Don't Breathe , annnnnnd.... I think that's it, unfortunately!

Okay out!

I'm serious! GO! :P

B-b-b-b-b-bu-but....!!!
Come on maaaaaaaaan, it's Batman, and Superman, and and and.... MARTHA!

Yes, how could I forget!! The Arrival was wonderful!! I just wish they would have gone more artsy fartsy with it, I really liked the concept and could easily imagine some trippier scenes. I feel like Hollywood held them back a little, but it was still one of the best Sci-Fi movies I've seen in years.

Seriously, it would have been great but for all the dream sequences and flashbacks. Those made the movie hard as hell to follow, made it too long, and worse of all, made it go so slooooooooooow.

You are right, of course. To be completely honest, I didn't really know what was going on, but I guess I was just in a visual kind of mood, and seeing Batman with a sniper rifle shooting at people, and then proceed to run over innocent civilians in his Bat-Tank was a pretty good visual experience.

But yeah, you are right, and I think most comic book movies suffer from too much exposition or too much hyperactive action. Rarely do they find the right balance. I just rewatched the 2002 Spider-Man movie, and I think that one nailed the pacing. It got just enough action and exposition to make it super entertaining.

While I loved „Hacksaw Ridge“ for what it is, I have to disagree with that. Yes, it ups the ante in terms of graphically portraying battlefield carnage, but I also can‘t help but feel that it delivered an oddly sanitized, Spielbergian vision of the war in the pacific. There have been other movies which have been less unflinching in showing that war as the horrific, dirty mess that it was. There‘s a 57 years old film called „Fires On The Plain“ and a 45 years old film called „Under The Flag Of The Rising Sun“, both of them Japanese films, which go several steps further and show things like starvation, malaria, summary executions of POWs („a way to toughen up someone from the home guard“, as they say in Under The Flag) and cannibalism, all of which were rampant during the pacific war. There is also a very interesting documentary called „The Emperor‘s Naked Army Marches On“ about this subject. All of these films are easily superior to „Hacksaw Ridge“, which is ultimately a feel good movie with lots of blood in it. There's a nice video of Terry Gilliam on youtube where he rants about "Schindler's List"'s shortcomings at being an honest portrayal of the holocaust. You could make those same points about "Hacksaw Ridge"'s portrayal of the pacific war.

Good points. I haven't seen any of those so I probably should have worded it "I have never seen a film portray war so horrifyingly". I was referring more to the actual battle sequences though. It's like you could actually feel the heat of battle, and the sound effects mixed with the gore and everything, it was like they were actually charging through hell. Definitely gonna have to check out those you mentioned though. :)

The Innocents

It's about pregnant nuns right after World War 2. Great drama. I really liked the small details of how different they all reacted to their unusual situation.

The Mine / Jättiläinen

It's about a mining company in Finland with a surprisingly adult take on corruption, particularly subtle corruption in all places of human life. I didn't really like the feeling it left me knowing that things are like that everyday but I appreciated the effect the movie had.

Spectral, one of the more original sci-fi action movies in recent years.

Deadpool. Action + humor.

The Shallows. Shark-attack film with a rather unique scenario.

The Conjuring 2. Personally I can't get enough of this stuff, I'm a big Paranormal-horror movie fan. I've seen this one three times already. Not as good as the first movie and Annabelle, but I still like it.

Key of Life or Luck-Key . Korean movie, an interesting set-up with great actors.

Train To Busan or Busanhaeng. Korean zombie movie. People on a train turn into zombies, what to do ? Sounds simplistic perhaps, but it's actually rather complex in it's execution.

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If you have Netflix, you can catch it there. That's what I did for both Zootopia and Cap America Civil War as well.

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Update: I have seen Rogue One, and I think Ghostbusters is the better movie of the two I have seen. I have already mentioned my criticisms of Rogue One in the Rogue One thread (though they're not movie ruining ones; well, maybe the complaint about it lacking turn-based combat and randomly generated dungeons might be), but I think I prefer the majority female cast of the Ghostbusters reboot.

So, my ranking of the videos I saw in 2016 is:
1. Ghostbusters
2. Rogue One

(Note that Rogue One is still a good movie that's worth watching: it just happened to rank a bit lower by my judgement.)