A biographical dictionary of the cinema (2025)

[Update 12/31: saw four more movies before the merciful end of 2016, updated below. Nothing to add to the 'best of' lists. And on to 2017...]

(update now in comments--ran out of characters)

This mostly terrible year is nearly over, so time for part 2 of my personal State of Cinema, logging every movie seen in 2016. I’m posting this now as we are heading off to the UK in a few days and I don’t imagine having much computer time over the next two weeks. I’ll edit this at the end of the month with any last flicks seen before the end of the year. Part 1 (Jan. – June) is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
bold = five-star films or nearly so
(r) = a rewatch; all others seen for the first time

KIRK’S 2016 FILM INVENTORY PART DEUX

July
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
and
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
So this has been a particularly rough year, hitting its nadir this summer, and I decided I needed to see some stupid comedies. Popstar is the better choice here, another of those mockumentaries about a fake band. Of course they always get compared to Spinal Tap, and they never measure up to Spinal Tap; but I remember this as pretty funny. Mike and Dave, well, hmmm. The most interesting and positive thing is that the female costars are given equal weight in the script, and they run away with the movie. Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza are terrific. As to Mike and Dave, one is Zac Efron who continues the long line of pretty-but-vacant actors that stretches back to Tyrone Power and Victor Mature; the other is that guy who’s sometimes in Modern Family and I think was on the cover of the March issue of Punchable Face Magazine. Anyway, for the subgenre of movie titles that are also plot summaries, this is better than Zack and Miri Make a Porno but not as good as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

The Story of Temple Drake
Pre-code adaptation of Faulkner’s Sanctuary. Not exactly faithful to the source material but Miriam Hopkins goes to town as the tarnished southern belle. Also this may be the earliest film I’ve seen (1932) that deals frankly with rape. Worth seeing.

Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Really good. Finding a coherent narrative in the history of the Black Panthers is enormously difficult, this documentary did a better job than most. Vivid stuff.

Wings of Desire (r)
I hadn’t seen this in 20 years and wondered how well it would hold up. It’s still one of the best movies of the last 50 years. Everything works, even Peter Falk playing himself is somehow a perfect touch.

Late Spring
Only the second Ozu film I’ve seen, and I can’t deny he’s great but I’m more on the wavelength of Mizoguchi. Both deal with families and the wrenching emotions of life, but Mizoguchi is more willing to twist the knife and has a more specific point of view. But I know I should see several more Ozu films and I plan to. And this is a lovely film about a father and daughter relationship.

Our Little Sister
I’m officially now a fan of Hirokazu Koreeda. Like Ozu he makes unflashy films about families and regular people that have an accumulating power. This one about three adult sisters who find they have a teenage half-sister is just wonderful. Not a lot happens but every moment is interesting and engaging. Highly recommended, and I need to see more of this guy’s back catalog.

The China Syndrome (r)
I saw this the year it came out, 1979, so I may have set a personal record of 37 years between viewings. Yikes. Holds up amazingly well, it’s gripping, has a deft grasp of the politics and attitudes of the time, doesn’t hurry the story or overhype the drama. One of the last great films of my favorite cinematic decade.

Stake Land
Indie horror zombie flick, better than average. Has the hardbitten vibe of The Walking Dead. Sample dialogue: “It’s Sister Agatha. I thought she was dead.” “She is.” “What are you going to do?” “Kill that thing.” “Go with God.” “Lock the door.”

Lights Out
On the minus side, it’s slight and gimmicky, and relies too much on the ubiquitous jump scares. On the plus side, it has genuinely nuanced characters, clocks in at 81 minutes, and has a great ending (at least until they ruin it by making a sequel). Not essential viewing but decent.

August
It’s Love I’m After
Continuing my ongoing quest to see every Bette Davis movie. By now I’ve long since seen all the great and famous, and probably most of the good, so I begin to expect diminishing returns. Which makes this really a pleasant surprise. A sophisticated comedy from 1937, with Bette and Leslie Howard as theatre actors who are also a couple, often bickering due to his wandering eye. An impossibly young Olivia DeHaviland (21!) plays a hilariously demented theatre groupie who stalks Howard. This was a delight beginning to end, and might be better than the more famous Davis/Howard flicks (Of Human Bondage and The Petrified Forest). Trivia: Olivia and Bette became lifelong friends, bonding over mutual heartache—Olivia’s unrequited love for Michael Curtiz and Bette’s similar thwarted love for William Wyler.

Star Trek Beyond
I know some are a bit pissy about the latest Trek movies, but I like them. They’re actually closest in spirit to the original show; people forget, but while Star Trek could be cerebral in its ideas, it was very straight ahead/mixing it up in its narrative approach, and also funny. This one might be the third best of the three, but it’s still good. I’m holding out hope for a Gorn appearance in a future movie.

Dirty Harry (r)
I hate when this happens. I’ve probably seen this four or five times and loved it through the decades, but wow, suddenly the reality of police behavior in the real world became an obstacle to enjoying this the way I used to that I couldn’t overcome. Not to belabor the point, I’ve always known this was an unapologetic pro-vigilante movie, but this time around enjoying it as escapist fare was a bridge too far. Damnit. Still, the filmmaking craft is excellent, Don Siegel was an underrated director. The entire Kezar Stadium sequence is brilliant, and Andrew Robinson is one of the most sublimely despicable villains in film history. Also, to compare to another movie about a rogue cop from the same year of 1971, I still maintain this is superior to The French Connection. A minority opinion, I know.

Train to Busan
Korean zombie flick, epic in scale, deft in narrative, relentlessly paced. Fantastic, blew me away.

(rec)
Spanish zombie flick, also in the found footage genre. Great stuff, bleak, gripping, unnerving the whole way through, with a very engaging lead character.

September
Don’t Think Twice
A strange case of a movie that might be too well observed. This is a comedy/drama about improv comedy and a group of friends trying to make a living at it. Clearly made by people who know this world, and what struck me was how grim a struggle it can be. Full points for capturing this life, and to be sure it is often very funny. But I left the cinema wondering what I’d do if the only two occupations available to me were improv comedy and coal miner. I’m thinking, I’m thinking.

Girlfight
Indie flick about a woman boxer. The movie is ok, somewhat contrived, but as the vehicle that introduced Michelle Rodriguez to the world, that is one hell of an entrance.

I Saw the Devil
Korean thriller about a cop hunting a serial killer. The violence is extreme, and the first half of the movie unnecessarily leers at the female victims, to an extent that really pissed me off. But it is effective as a grim, relentless piece of work. I don’t think watching it makes you a better person though.

Snowden
I mean, it’s fine, competently made and all, but Oliver Stone directed this, and where’s the edge? Where’s the viewpoint to piss people off? I guess the days of Salvador and JFK are long gone.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss
One of those ‘one magical night’ movies, but it’s an indie so it’s two thirds of a pretty rough night and one third magical. It’s not bad.

October
Respire (Breathe)
I seem to have a thing for movies about toxic female friendships (The Dreamlife of Angels; Me Without You; Bedeviled). Here’s another, directed by the actress Melanie Laurent. Very good all the way through and then shattering at the end. Highly recommended.

Cameraperson
Kirsten Johnson is a cinematographer who has filmed many documentaries. Cameraperson is a collection of footage from those films. The clips seem randomly put together, they are not explained, there is no voiceover. So this is fragmentary by design, but it has a cumulative effect and eventually seems to reveal something of who Johnson is. Very offbeat, and memorable.

Son of Frankenstein
The third Frankenstein film (Karloff gave up the role after this one) is overshadowed by the previous two. And it’s not the classic they are, but it’s pretty good. Also, in a cast that includes Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Basil Rathbone, the highlight for me is Lionel Atwill as a one-armed police inspector who chews up any scenery that gets in his way. The ending is demented and hilarious, and I think it was even meant to be.

Tokyo Drifter
Delirious 1966 aesthetics meet a Yakuza film and the result is something bizarre. Not sure what to make of this entertaining mashup. A triumph of style over substance I haven’t experienced since I saw Dario Argento’s Suspiria.

God Bless America
Much like Idiocracy, this takes satirical aim at rampant American stupidity. Fair enough, but the targets are easy and the execution is lazy. Should have been better.

Orphan
This is the type of super-slick and super-polished horror flick that tends to get no respect, but I liked it. Granted it does resemble something on the Lifetime Movie Network, only with better acting, better writing, better production values. But it knows what it’s doing and does it well, plus Isabelle Fuhrman as the sinister child is a knockout.

Command and Control
Or, That Time a Socket Wrench Almost Blew Up Arkansas. Because that really almost happened. A documentary about a staggering near miss nuclear accident. Jaw-dropping.

River’s Edge (r)
The teen alienation movie from 1986, this holds up amazingly well. Based on a real murder in Milpitas, CA I remember reading about at the time. When it came out debate raged whether Crispin (“we’re like Starsky & Hutch”) Glover’s performance was great or awful. I dunno, but it leaves an impression. Vintage Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye, and Dennis Hopper playing Dennis Hopper.

Superfly
I mean, the acting is bad, the story is obvious, the pacing is sluggish. But it does have a certain gritty style and the Curtis Mayfield soundtrack is fantastic. All told, it’s far better than the other two Blaxploitation flicks I’ve seen, the mediocre Shaft and the truly awful Coffy.

Fail-Safe (r)
Still brilliant, still shattering. Makes a good bookend to Command and Control. Even Henry Fonda can’t fix this.

The Girl on the Train
Three-star book, three-star movie.

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell
Don’t ask.

The Creeping Flesh
Brit horror with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Dry and dull.

Halloween (r)
The original, previously unseen by my wife which made for an excuse to see it on a big screen at the Parkway Theater in Oakland. Despite the now-familiar tropes, still very effective. The small scale—essentially set on one street in a small town—and the always reliable gravitas of Donald Pleasance helps immeasurably.

Princess Mononoke (r)
I saw this the year it came out (1997), loved it but turns out I’d forgotten much of it. Still great, probably the most complicated and layered narrative in an animated movie I’ve ever seen. Rich and challenging in the best way. Our dog is named after the wolf called Moro (voiced by Gillian Anderson!).

The Handmaiden
Korean remake of Fingersmith. I probably liked the original miniseries better, but this is still pretty great, lush and delirious.

The Black Cat
Unhinged horror flick from 1934 with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Barking mad, just completely off its trolley. If you’re an American couple trapped in a sinister mansion in Hungary and the person most sympathetic to your plight is Lugosi, you’re not having a good vacation.

November
Black Sabbath
One of those horror anthologies with three separate stories. The first two are simplistic and obvious, the longer third one adds boredom to the mix.

They Live By Night
Great rural noir from 1948, Nicholas Ray’s first movie. Hard-as-nails dialogue, an atmosphere of pervading doom, electric chemistry between the two leads (Farley Granger & Cathy O’Donnell). I’d barely heard of this, but it’s a real find.

Arrival
Excellent cerebral science fiction, succeeds where Interstellar failed. Also it has the first genuinely alien aliens since Monsters. Denis Villeneuve is close to being a can’t-miss director for me, his last five films are all great or near-great.

A Field in England
Ben Wheatley decided the world needed a trippy psychedelic b/w movie about the English Civil War, so he gave it one. I couldn’t make heads or tails of this, but kind of liked it anyway. If nothing else, the guy who did Kill List and Sightseers makes films that don’t look like anyone else’s.

Night and Fog
Alain Resnais’ 32-minute documentary on the death camps. Lyrical voiceover paired with visceral visuals.

Moonlight
An out-of-nowhere sensation, or it deserves to be. A brilliant telling of a poor black kid’s life in three acts, from childhood to early adulthood. A masterfully observed narrative, transcendent acting, luminous cinematography, just stunning all around. One of the best of the year.

Shame
Ingmar Bergman’s 1968 film that predicts our life under Trump. What, you want a serious comment? Fine, I liked it, it has Bergman’s usual virtues, but it also screams ALLEGORY in a not-subtle way. So it’s very good but it won’t be among my favorite of Bergman’s films.

Shanghai Express
The plot’s a bit creaky, but you get to watch Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong and their wardrobes for 90 minutes. There are worse things.

Elle
I should know better than to watch a rape drama by Paul Verhoeven, but I was lured by advance rave reviews and my favorite living actress, Isabelle Huppert. Critics, man. So this is well made and all, and at the halfway point seems on its way to being a great film, but it just goes off the rails. The main character’s actions go from bizarre to ridiculous to laughable. Huppert holds it all together as long as she can, but eventually it just craters. Don’t believe the hype.

MacBeth
Orson Welles’ 1948 version, this is how you overcome a low budget. Apparently they had no money, so Welles went all in on the artificiality of the sets and instead of looking cheap, the master of deep focus had them looking otherworldly, as if the story were set in some Twilight Zone other dimension. It’s not without flaws, the Scottish accents are highly variable, and Welles’ own performance is somewhat monotone, but it’s visually arresting, and Jeanette Nolan is one of the more vital and dynamic Lady MacBeths I’ve seen.

The Edge of Seventeen
I loved this the way I loved Say Anything back in the day. That rare thing, a great teen comedy/drama. Hailee Steinfeld is all kinds of fantastic as the extroverted but insecure and spiraling main character. (Man I hope she doesn’t get Reese Witherspooned into dumb romantic comedies in the next several years.) The writing is great, everyone is nuanced and three-dimensional, even characters you assume will be outright villains, the tone is tightly controlled. Just great stuff, go see it.

December
Nocturnal Animals
A near miss. This has the kind of layered, complex narrative I like, and it’s beautifully made in all the particulars. But…while it’s buried deeply enough to leave plenty of room for deniability for those who want to defend it, for me the film has a nasty vibe that seems to say—Women…see what you make us do?... There’s just a whiff of something distasteful. But this will definitely be talked about by those who see it.

The Long Day Closes
Terence Davies’ elegy to my wife’s hometown of Liverpool. Quite beautiful, but I honestly feel like I’m not qualified to comment much. I think one needs to have grown up in England, or maybe even have grown up in Liverpool, to fully get on its wavelength.

As Tears Go By
An early Wong Kar Wai film, this is so ‘80s you expect Don Johnson to show up and arrest someone. Guys wearing mauve, check. Overbearing synthesizer soundtrack, check. Slow motion gunfights, check. There’s even an instrumental cover of “Slave to Love” and a cover with Chinese vocals of “Take My Breath Away”. All this and a young Maggie Cheung. Damn.

The Thing from Another World (r)
This holds up better than many of the ‘50s sci-fi classics, and oddly I think it’s the dialogue that makes the difference. Instead of pulpy and grandiose it’s low key and naturalistic, which more effectively pulls you into the story. The movie also uses the overlapping dialogue that Aaron Sorkin and Robert Altman’s ‘70s movies are known for. This has aged well.

Loving
The story of Richard & Mildred Loving who got arrested in 1958 Virginia for the crime of marrying each other. The eventual legal case ended miscegenation laws nationwide. In 1967. Because you can’t rush these things. The film is low key to a fault, without big emotional crescendos, and effective. The emphasis is that these were two simple people with no activist intent who just wanted to be left alone.

By year of release
This century: 49
1970s: 8
1960s: 8
1930s: 8
1980s: 6
1990s: 4
1950s: 3
1940s: 3
1920s: 1By country
US: 61
UK: 6
Japan: 6
France: 5
Korea: 3
Turkey: 2
Italy: 2
Poland: 1
Germany: 1
Spain: 1
Sweden: 1
China: 1

I divided Best of Year lists into three, for best movies of 2016, best movies from other years seen in 2016, and best rewatches.

My Best New Films of 2016 (in the order seen)

The Hateful Eight
Mustang
Green Room
Our Little Sister
Train to Busan
Arrival
Moonlight (probably my film of the year)
The Edge of Seventeen

Best Films from other years seen in 2016

Victim (1961)
Frances Ha (2012)
Respire (Breathe) (2014)
The Seven Five (2014)

Best Films I Rewatched in 2016

Fail-Safe (1964)
The China Syndrome (1979)
Wings of Desire (1987)
After Dark, My Sweet (1990)
Princess Mononoke (1997)

Finally, filed under Still No Level Playing Field in Sight: I watched 94 films. Six were directed by women, 88 were directed by men. Three of the six are on my best of lists above: Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven); The Edge of Seventeen (Kelly Fremon Craig); Respire (Breathe) (Melanie Laurent).

A biographical dictionary of the cinema (2025)
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