Caveat – this isn’t a list of movies released in 2016, it’s a list of movies I’ve watched in 2016, some of which are a few years old.  I did elect to remove The Brood and The Quatermass Xperiment from the ratings only because they are movies I’ve watched multiple times over many years.  Feel free to skip to the bottom of the page for the lists.

Having written movie reviews for years, 2016 was the year I decided to evolve things a little bit.  I originally began the year writing for the media site That’s Not Current, but decided to leave after a few months for a number of reasons, none of them to do with the site itself, or the great people who write there.  The truth is, in writing I’m not a team player.  I have been in writers groups in the past but never felt connected.  Writing, for me anyway, is a wholly solo effort – that goes the same whether I’m writing or part of a group of people who write.  I don’t have much interest in being a journalist of any kind, and being part of a media website made me feel like that.  I’m not being paid for my reviews, nor am I asking to be paid for them, but it feels more true to myself to be a solo writer/blogger.

So, what about 2016?  I watched a lot of movies this year – 92, according to the spreadsheet I just made to sort them by ratings!  That includes cinematically and at home.  I used to consider myself a cinema buff, more so than a movie buff, but while I still enjoy watching movies on the big screen, now it’s just the work itself that I focus on.

Early on I adopted a 5 star rating system that I’m currently considering changing to 10, since I already rate in 0.5 increments.  That approach feels okay to me, but the increment feels redundant – by using it, I’m effectively rating out of 10, when you think about it.  Something to mull over for me.

SOME STATISTICS!

I’m a stats nerd, I admit.  I have an endless fascination in looking at, and for, trends, trying to make sense of patterns in data, and the like.  You can slice and dice data any way you like, but I find big data is more entertaining to look at.  On a granular level, there’s a tendency to probe and pull apart numbers in ways that give you numbers you want to see, rather than numbers that allow you to see, if that makes any sense.  Anyway, here is a breakdown of the 92 movies I watched in 2016, by ratings.

5 star – 0%

4.5: 3.3%

4.0: 16.3%

3.5: 15.2%

3.0: 14.1%

2.5: 16.3%

2.0: 10.9%

1.5: 7.6%

1.0: 9.8%

0.5: 3.3%

0.0: 3.3%

A 2.5 rating for me is “Mediocre”, so when you look at at it, 48.9% of movies were better than that for me – not a great stat, but not so surprising I think.

For these Best and Worst lists, I came up with a Top 10 overall, and Top 5s for the following categories: Drama, Sci Fi, Horror, Superhero.  You might not agree with the classifications of the movies, but again, here too you can get too granular.  Is What We Do In The Shadows a horror movie, a comedy, or a horror comedy?  Funny as it is, I considered it horror.  The best thing about lists is that everyone has their own idea about ratings and genre, and there’s no actual solidly-defined empirical measurements.  Movies are what people want them to be, the greatest entertainment form of our age, I believe.

So, without further ado, here are the lists, with links to the reviews!

TOP 10 OVERALL
Captain America: Civil War	4.5
The Big Short	4.5
The Witch	4.5
The Revenant	4
What We Do In The Shadows	4
Midnight Special	4
The Hateful 8	4
The Girl on the Train	4
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night	4
Only Lovers Left Alive	4

 

DRAMA TOP 5
The Big Short	4.5
The Revenant	4
The Hateful 8	4
The Girl on the Train	4
Take Shelter	4

HORROR TOP 5
The Witch	4.5
What We Do In The Shadows	4
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night	4
Only Lovers Left Alive	4
The Invitation	4

SCI FI TOP 5
Midnight Special	4
10 Cloverfield Lane	4
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story	3.5
Hardcore Henry	3.5
Arrival	3.5

SUPERHERO TOP 5
Captain America: Civil War	4.5
Doctor Strange	3.5
Deadpool	3
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice	2.5
X-Men Apocalypse	1.5

And finally …

WORST MOVIES OF 2016
Harbinger Down	0
Batman: The Killing Joke	0
Cell	0
The Legend of Tarzan	0.5
Independence Day: Resurgence	0.5

That’s all for this year – hope you all have a happy and prosperous 2017!