Top 10 of 2016

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*Click on the ‘Lists & Logs’ tab to see lists from previous years.

This list will be updated each time I see a film from 2016 (world premiere/imdb date) that is better than at least one of the films already on the list.

  1. Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello)
  2. Ossuary (Nathaniel Dorsky)
  3. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
  4. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
  5. Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
  6. Slack Bay (Bruno Dumont)
  7. The Dreamed Path (Angela Schanelec)
  8. Yourself and Yours (Hong Sang-soo)
  9. The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra)
  10. Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater)

 

Polls Top 10 (eligible titles appear/will appear here)

  1. Knight of Cups (2015, Terrence Malick)
  2. Toni Erdmann (2016, Maren Ade)
  3. Cemetery of Splendour (2015, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
  4. Certain Women (2016, Kelly Reichardt)
  5. Elle (2016, Paul Verhoeven)
  6. The Treasure (2015, Corneliu Porumboiu)
  7. Paterson (2016, Jim Jarmusch)
  8. Everybody Wants Some!! (2016, Richard Linklater)
  9. Cameraperson (2016, Kirsten Johnson)
  10. Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (2015, Stephen Cone)

 

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2016 (for first-time viewings of films made before 2000)

  1. Possession (1981, Andrzej Zulawski)
  2. Landscape Suicide (1987, James Benning)
  3. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
  4. Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)
  5. Shadow of a Doubt (1943, Alfred Hitchcock)
  6. The Shop Around the Corner (1940, Ernst Lubitsch)
  7. The Quadrille (1950, Jacques Rivette)
  8. In a Year of 13 Moons (1978, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
  9. Nostos: The Return (1990, Franco Piavoli)
  10. Satan’s Brew (1971, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

 

Other 2016 films I’ve seen

  • Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson) – 6.9
  • Paterson (Jim Jarmusch) – 6.9
  • A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies) – 6.9
  • O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman) – 6.8
  • Four Days in France (Jérôme Reybaud) – 6.7
  • Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa) – 6.6
  • Staying Vertical (Alain Guiraudie) – 6.6
  • La La Land (Damien Chazelle) – 6.6
  • Little Men (Ira Sachs) – 6.6
  • A Dragon Arrives! (Mani Haghighi) – 6.5
  • Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan) – 6.5
  • Safari (Ulrich Seidl) – 6.5
  • The Human Surge (Eduardo Williams) – 6.5
  • Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho) – 6.5
  • Weiner (Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg) – 6.5
  • measuring change (James Benning) – 6.5
  • Kate Plays Christine (Robert Greene) – 6.5
  • Beyond the Mountains and Hills (Eran Kolirin) – 6.5
  • Kékszakállú (Gastón Solnicki) – 6.4
  • Mister Universo (Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel) – 6.4
  • The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi) – 6.4
  • Wiener-Dog (Todd Solondz) – 6.3
  • Short Stay (Ted Fendt) – 6.3
  • Tower (Keith Maitland) – 6.3
  • Homo sapiens (Nikolaus Geyrhalter) – 6.3
  • Being 17 (André Téchiné) – 6.2
  • Salt and Fire (Werner Herzog) – 6.2
  • All the Cities of the North (Dane Komljen) – 6.2
  • Risk (Laura Poitras) – 6.2
  • The Challenge (Yuri Ancarani) – 6.2
  • The Eyes of My Mother (Nicolas Pesce) – 6.2
  • The Park (Damien Manivel) – 6.1
  • Stranger in Paradise (Guido Hendrikx) – 6.1
  • Starless Dreams (Mehrdad Oskouei) – 6.1
  • The Lost City of Z (James Gray) – 6.1
  • Three (Johnnie To) – 6.1
  • Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas) – 6.1
  • The Road Movie (Dmitrii Kalashnikov) – 6.1
  • Hermia & Helena (Matías Piñeiro) – 6.1
  • Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve) – 6.0
  • Happy Times Will Come Soon (Alessandro Comodin) – 6.0
  • Arrival (Denis Villeneuve) – 6.0
  • (re)ASSIGNMENT (Walter Hill) – 6.0
  • Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids (Jonathan Demme) – 6.0
  • Crosscurrent (Yang Chao) – 6.0
  • Christine (Antonio Campos) – 6.0
  • The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (Juho Kuosmanen) – 6.0
  • Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ang Lee) – 5.9
  • Mimosas (Oliver Laxe) – 5.9
  • I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck) – 5.9
  • The Rehearsal (Alison Maclean) – 5.9
  • The Wounded Angel (Emir Baigazin) – 5.9
  • Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu) – 5.8
  • A Decent Woman (Lukas Valenta Rinner) – 5.8
  • Into the Inferno (Werner Herzog) – 5.8
  • I Had Nowhere to Go (Douglas Gordon) – 5.8
  • Operation Avalanche (Matt Johnson) – 5.8
  • Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi) – 5.8
  • Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman) – 5.7
  • Much Ado About Nothing (Alejandro Fernández Almendras) – 5.7
  • David Lynch: The Art Life (Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, & Olivia Neergaard-Holm) – 5.7
  • Raw (Julia Ducournau) – 5.7
  • Welcome (Zhu Rikun) – 5.7
  • The Unknown Girl (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne) – 5.7
  • Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (Werner Herzog) – 5.7
  • Dog Eat Dog (Paul Schrader) – 5.7
  • Morris from America (Chad Hartigan) – 5.6
  • Harmonium (Kôji Fukada) – 5.6
  • Havarie (Philip Scheffner) – 5.6
  • Indignation (James Schamus) – 5.5
  • Daguerrotype (Kiyoshi Kurosawa) – 5.5
  • I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach) – 5.5
  • Le Cancre (Paul Vecchiali) – 5.5
  • The Love Witch (Anna Biller) – 5.5
  • My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (Dash Shaw) – 5.5
  • Café Society (Woody Allen) – 5.4
  • The End (Guillaume Nicloux) – 5.4
  • Rat Film (Theo Anthony) – 5.4
  • Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie) – 5.4
  • Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa) – 5.4
  • The Son of Joseph (Eugène Green) – 5.3
  • Sweet Dreams (Marco Bellocchio) – 5.3
  • Boris Without Béatrice (Denis Côté) – 5.3
  • The Land of the Enlightened (Pieter-Jan De Pue) – 5.3
  • Searchers (Zacharias Kunuk) – 5.3
  • Two Lottery Tickets (Paul Negoescu) – 5.2
  • Tempestad (Tatiana Huezo) – 5.2
  • Of Shadows (Yi Cui) – 5.2
  • The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez (Wim Wenders) – 5.2
  • Author: The JT Leroy Story (Jeff Feuerzeig) – 5.2
  • The Red Turtle (Michäel Dudok de Wit) – 5.2
  • Tallulah (Siân Heder) – 5.2
  • Split (M. Night Shyamalan) – 5.1/li>
  • The Ornithologist (João Pedro Rodrigues) – 5.1
  • Wolf and Sheep (Shahrbanoo Sadat) – 5.1
  • Hail, Caesar! (Joel & Ethan Coen) – 5.1
  • Jackie (Pable Larraín) – 5.1
  • Graduation (Christian Mungiu) – 5.1
  • Julieta (Pedro Almodóvar) – 5.0
  • Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford) – 5.0
  • A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (Lav Diaz) – 5.0
  • The Nice Guys (Shane Black) – 5.0
  • The Untamed (Amat Escalante) – 5.0
  • Diamond Island (Davy Chou) – 5.0
  • Tales of Two Who Dreamt (Andrea Bussmann & Nicolás Pereda) – 5.0
  • Sing Street (John Carney) – 5.0
  • Midnight Special (Jeff Nichols) – 4.9
  • Moonlight (Barry Jenkins) – 4.9
  • Silence (Martin Scorsese) – 4.9
  • Complete Unknown (Joshua Marston) – 4.9
  • By the Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong) – 4.9
  • Pete’s Dragon (David Lowery) – 4.8
  • The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook) – 4.8
  • Life After Life (Zhang Hanyi) – 4.8
  • Ta’ang (Wang Bing) – 4.8
  • Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (Steve James) – 4.8
  • The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn) – 4.7
  • Eldorado XXI (Salomé Lamas) – 4.7
  • Contemporary Color (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross) – 4.7
  • Everything Else (Natalia Almada) – 4.7
  • My Life as a Courgette (Claude Barras) – 4.7
  • Saint Amour (Benoît Delépine & Gustave Kervern) – 4.7
  • Free Fire (Ben Wheatley) – 4.6
  • Tickled (David Farrier & Dylan Reeve) – 4.6
  • The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography (Errol Morris) – 4.6
  • Blue Dress (Igor Minaev) – 4.6
  • Ember (Zeki Demirkubuz) – 4.5
  • The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis (Francisco Márquez & Andrea Testa) – 4.5
  • In Bed with Victoria (Justine Triet) – 4.5
  • Illegitimate (Adrian Sitaru) – 4.5
  • City of Jade (Midi Z) – 4.5
  • Exile (Rithy Panh) – 4.4
  • 13th (Ava DuVernay) – 4.4
  • Neruda (Pablo Larraín) – 4.4
  • United States of Love (Tomasz Wasilewski) – 4.3
  • Una (Benedict Andrews) – 4.3
  • Lily Lane (Bence Fliegauf) – 4.3
  • Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience (Terrence Malick) – 4.2
  • Little Sister (Zach Clark) – 4.2
  • Geographies (Chaghig Arzoumanian) – 4.2
  • Letters from War (Ivo M. Ferreira) – 4.2
  • 31 (Rob Zombie) – 4.2
  • American Honey (Andrea Arnold) – 4.1
  • The Dreamed Ones (Ruth Beckermann) – 4.1
  • Dawson City: Frozen Time (Bill Morrison) – 4.1
  • The Woman Who Left (Lav Diaz) – 4.1
  • Icaros: A Vision (Leonor Caraballo & Matteo Norzi) – 4.0
  • Dark Night (Tim Sutton) – 4.0
  • The Birth of a Nation (Nate Parker) – 3.9
  • From the Diary of a Wedding Photographer (Nadav Lapid) – 3.9
  • Loving (Jeff Nichols) – 3.9
  • The Illinois Parables (Deborah Stratman) – 3.8
  • Ghostbusters (Paul Feig) – 3.8
  • Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Taika Waititi) – 3.8
  • Morgan (Luke Scott) – 3.6/li>
  • From the Land of the Moon (Nicole Garcia) – 3.6
  • Depth Two (Ognjen Glavonić) – 3.6
  • Still Night, Still Light (Sophie Goyette) – 3.6
  • Dogs (Bogdan Mirica) – 3.5
  • Colossal (Nacho Vigalondo) – 3.5
  • Ma’ Rosa (Brillante Mendoza) – 3.4
  • Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey (Terrence Malick) – 3.3
  • [pewen]araucaria (Carlos Vásquez Méndez) – 3.3
  • The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour) – 3.2
  • The Transfiguration (Michael O’Shea) – 3.1
  • It’s Only the End of the World (Xavier Dolan) – 2.9
  • Soy Nero (Rafi Pitts) – 2.9
  • Imponderable (Tony Oursler) – 2.8
  • Message from the King (Fabrice du Welz) – 2.3
  • The Last Face (Sean Penn) – 2.2
  • Fantastic (Offer Egozy) – 1.3
  • Katie Says Goodbye (Wayne Roberts) – 1.0