Monday, January 04, 2021

25 Off My Head: Siri Says 2016


I guess this website you're on is nursing some separation anxiety today after two weeks of holiday silence, because my intention to do a new entry in our "Siri Says" series -- where I ask my phone to choose a number between 1 and 100 and then choose my favorite movies from the corresponding year -- came at me with a huge ask this afternoon. One I had been dreading for awhile. See, Siri came back at me with the number "16", forcing me to choose my favorites from The Movies of 2016, and... 

... well I don't know if you remember 2016, but there was a lot happening in 2016. Especially at its stinger of a tail-end. The bottom dropped out, a nightmare swallowed us up, and I couldn't focus on making silly little lists. Or much of anything. It's been four years of this so maybe you can't recall how we all died, a lot, inside right around then... but we did. And so I never awarded my annual "Golden Trousers" awards for the movies of 2016. They just got lost in the mix of sturm und drang and shit. 

And I have regretted this gaping absence ever since, but... well politics aside, 2016 was actually a wonderful, seriously wonderful, year for the movies. Insanely good! (I mean it's even the year where I first heard about Call Me By Your Name, for goodness' sake!) And so the task of actually mounting this list always seemed daunting. Super massive daunting, really. And if there's one thing you know about me it's that I love Jake Gyllenhaal. But if there are two things you know about me there's that I love Jake Gyllenhaal and I am lazy. So this list just kept being put off, and off, and off. 

But now, well, why not? This is one way to put a cap on the past four awful years. And... also I'm just sitting here, trying to get myself back into the blogging frame of mind after two weeks off. Why not set myself a massive task? So usually when I do these "Siri Says" lists I just give you five movies in no particular order from the year in question, but this will not do. It doesn't seem to meet the demand of this moment, this year of movies. So not only am I ranking the films, but I'm giving you a Top 25. 2016 was too good for any less than too much, man!

My 25 Favorite Movies of 2016

(dir. John Lee)

(dir. Martin Scorsese)

(dir. Anna Biller)
(dir. João Pedro Rodrigues)

(dir. Sofia Takal)
(dir. Denis Villeneuve)

(dir. Gabriel Mascaro)

(dir. Jeremy Saulnier)
(dir. Todd Solondz)

(dir. Pedro Almodovar)

(dir. Kelly Reichardt)

(dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)

(dir. Antonio Campos)

(dir. J.A. Bayona)

11. Jackie
(dir. Pablo Larrain)

(dir. Karyn Kusama)

(dir. Travis Knight)

8. Elle
(dir. Paul Verhoeven)
(dir. Luca Guadagnino)

(dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)

(dir. Barry Jenkins)
(dir. Robert Eggers)

(dir. Park Chan-wook)

(dir. Mike Mills)

(dir. Andrea Arnold) 

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Runners-up: The Autopsy of Jane Doe (dir. André Øvredal), Train to Busan (dir. Sang-ho Yeon), Hail Caesar! (dir. Coens), The Light Between Oceans (dir. Derek Cianfrance), High-Rise (dir. Ben Wheatley), The Eyes of My Mother (dir. Nicolas Pesce), Demolition (Jean-Marc Vallee), Nocturnal Animals (dir. Tom Ford)...

... Nocturama (dir. Bertrand Bonello), Under the Shadow (dir. Babak Anvari), I, Daniel Blake (dir. Ken Loach), Things To Come (dir. Mia Hansen-Løve), Shin Godzilla (dir. Cris George), The Shallows (dir. Jaume Collet-Serra), Captain America: Civil War (dir. Russos), Swiss Army Man (dir. Daniel Scheinert), Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn)

Never seen: Sausage Party (dir. Conrad Vernon), Dirty Grandpa (dir. Dan Mazer), Handsome Devil (dir. John Butler), My Life as a Zucchini (dir. Claude Barras), Fire At Sea (dir. Gianfranco Rosi), Snowden (dir. Oliver Stone), Sully (dir. Clint Eastwood), Pete's Dragon (dir. David Lowery), The B.F.G. (dir. Steven Spielberg), Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher)

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What are your favorite movies of 2016?

9 comments:

DCameron said...

Wait a minute. You never saw Nocturnal Animals???

Jason Adams said...

OH LORD good catch, I slapped those two Jake movies on at the last minute and put them in the wrong column! They should've gone under "Runners-up" which I have now fixed. Of course I have seen both that and Demolition, how silly of me. FIXED. Thanks, DC :)

Matheus Leone said...

Good list, but you either never seen Spa Night or don't like it and in both cases it's a big mistake, sir.

Jason Adams said...

SHIT -- there is always something I miss! I only saw Spa Night a few months ago but I really really LOVED it. I'm not re-doing the whole list but I'll add it to the Runners-up! Thanks for catching that :)

Bradley said...

What a year. Moonlight and 20th Century Women because instant all time favourites.

Jason Adams said...

Honestly ask me on another day and that Top 5 could be totally switched around -- those five films are all as far I'm concerned absolutely perfect

Tom M said...

That top 5 is staggeringly good.

joel65913 said...

We're going to be wide apart this time out. Sorry to say several of these-20th Century Women, Moonlight and Neon Demon-I hated. In the case of Neon Demon it was more loathing. But I haven't seen several of them either. I don't have enough from this year to make a list of 25 but my top 10 would be in order:

Jackie
Hidden Figures
Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds
Dawson City: Frozen Time
Sully
Denial
The Lost City of Z
The Slippers
Handsome Devil
Love & Friendship

Adrian Mendoza said...

I will check out some of these out.