The best films of 2016

From the simple charm of Hunt for the Wilderpeople to the cinematic grandeur of Arrival

It's been an interesting year for cinema; one in which a lack of truly great studio films has led to average ones being over-praised, and a still imperfect distribution model has caused some indie gems to get overlooked.

Ranking movies of disparate genres is an odd thing, so we've stuck to a strictly alphabetised list this year, with four of us picking our five favourites (there was considerable office argument).

By all means tell us we have terrible taste, but before you cry "Where is La La Land?" or "Where is Hell or High Water?", be advised that the former is one of several films that feels like a 2016 movie in the collective conversation but actually its UK release date falls in 2017, while the latter is one of our 'honourable mentions' at the bottom of the list: movies we loved but didn't quite make the top 20.

A Bigger Splash

There are certain films that just hit your sweet spot and you end up batting for them all year, pleading with friends.. family.. shop clerks.. to watch them.

In 2016, for me, A Bigger Splash was the focus of my peer pressure, Luca Guadagnino’s very loose remake of 1969 French film La Piscine. Tilda Swinton plays a Bowie-esque rockstar, Matthias Schoenaerts her new toy boy, Ralph Fiennes her music producer ex-husband and Dakota Johnson his faux ingénue daughter. The four of them end up holidaying on a remote Italian island and, as the wine and tanning oil flows, so does the sexual tension, the narrative becoming not so much a love triangle as a constantly shifting love quadrilateral.

Ralph Fiennes. Is. Incredible. Giving one of my favourite performances of all time, he creates the most charismatic character I have seen on screen in years.

Aesthetically beautiful, tightly scripted (bar the slightly unnecessary final act), A Bigger Splash is a joy, and the most stinging depiction of lust and jealousy since Closer.

- Christopher Hooton

American Honey

Proof that doing your homework really does pay off, Andrea Arnold's intensely-researched look at the lives of the US' travelling magazine crews is a film which unwaveringly captures the spirit of American youth; of its heady idealism and earnest search for connection amongst the most desolate of landscapes.

American Honey boasts the acute sense of detail normally reserved for an anthropologist; it's a British director diving head-first into a country's psyche like she's searching for trunks of gold, and the results are formidable. Indeed, it's remarkable just how deeply she understands the country's obsessions: from the crass enthusiasm towards ideas of teamwork and showy optimism, to the way everyone gets real excited whenever they see a Taco Bell.

Yet, maybe what's most intoxicating about American Honey is just how steadfastly it believes in humanity's good will, though it may feel so at odds right now with the national feeling; with newcomer Sasha Lane's dizzying lead performance seeing her unfailingly hold fast to the flame of idealism, even if there's that melancholic sense that the American Dream will forever remain just that - a dream.

- Clarisse Loughrey

Anomalisa

Charlie Kaufman's stop-motion fantasy is a staggering achievement. It's a film suffused core by both the dull, quiet ache of longing and a nightmarish, claustrophobic sense of surrealism, one that somehow shines in its contradictions, both riddled with deep self-hatred, and a fragile sense of hope.

The film's hook sees Kaufman deliver a spin on the Fregoli delusion, a rare disorder in which someone holds the delusional belief that different people are in fact one – but either change their appearance or are in disguise. Kaufman runs with the idea to its ultimate excess to provide the ultimate visualisation of that debilitating essence of human loneliness.

Here, everyone around him has the same face, the same hollowly cheerful voice. That is, until he comes across a woman in the caverns of a Cincinnati hotel; a woman whose face is her own - as is her voice - thus beginning an almost Brief Encounter-like moment of sudden spiritual unity between two individuals.

- Clarisse Loughrey

Arrival

You'd be mistaken for believing you'd been treated to a new Christopher Nolan film in 2016 thanks to Arrival, Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi thriller that pulled up confidently in the year's late stretch demanding to be viewed as more than just another forgettable genre entry. If you don't yet know that Villeneuve (Incendies, Sicario) is a filmmaker to get excited by, Arrival is the flashing red beacon - the flare gun, if you will - alerting you to the fact.

Take notice - with Arrival, he's crafted a sci-fi puzzle for the ages and one that, In lesser hands, would have been a sprawling mess. Under his skilled guidance, however, the film flourishes in a way that brings the word 'classic' to mind (it's no coincidence he's directing Blade Runner 2049). For maximum effect, watch in a double bill with the sorely underrated Enemy.

- Jacob Stolworthy

Creed

Through tears, he recalls his lost love Adrian, and in doing so - out of nowhere - Sylvester Stallone packs the biggest punch of his career. It's unexpected moments like these - and Michael B. Jordan's spirited performance - that position Creed as not only more than just another boxing film but one that freely exists in its own right, away from the franchise that made Sly such a star.

- Jacob Stolworthy

Everybody Wants Some!!

Everybody Wants Some!! follows a group of baseball players who flit from party to party in the days leading up to college. That's the film.

There's something in the fact that Richard Linklater's latest arrived with no fanfare or expectation - just like, you could say, the approaching adulthood these boys will one day be forced to face. This 80s set coming-of-age tale - a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused - instead hones in on the life period where nothing much matters save for that class you maybe should attend but probably won't.

Linklater has built (half) a career out of depicting snapshots of life - adolescence in Boyhood; relationships in the Before trilogy - and Everybody Wants Some!! is more of the perfect same, only with less tribulation and added nostalgic revelry. The film's unassuming charm is a potent force you won't regret being swept up by.

- Jacob Stolworthy

Hail, Caesar!

Hail, Caesar! is a strange, remarkable slice of precise cinematic engineering: at once a farcical spin on the relentless machine that was the studio system, shifting its talent like cattle and micro-editing their personal lives for the pleasure of the tabloid-reading public, while simultaneously acting as an ode to the Technicolour-soaked, bedazzled visions those same studios produced.

Tucked neatly within the slapdash antics of Josh Brolin's Hollywood fixer as he rushes across studio lots to paint over the ugly truths of his actors' lives, lie the Coens' own films-within-films, from the biblical epic to the aquamusical. Here's where Hail, Caesar! finds itself enamoured with all the old phantoms of cinema, all rendered in lavish, precise detail.

And who can resist the "Would That It Were Simple" scene; which has all the precise timing and infectious interplay between Ralph Fiennes and Alden Ehrenreich worthy of the great classics of Hollywood comedies.

- Clarisse Loughrey

High-Rise

Under-discussed in film discourse and under-awarded at ceremonies, High-Rise was one of the most ambitious films I saw this year, a brilliantly, riotously surrealist film that makes the human condition look alien and yet scarily familiar.

Based on a novel by J.G. Ballard, it imagines a tower block in the 1970s with hierarchical floors - the richest living at the top and the poorest at the bottom - with a new resident played by Tom Hiddleston arriving just as its infrastructure is tearing apart and struggling to make sense of it all.

Visionary director Ben Wheatley finally gets the bigger budget he deserved here, puts it to full use and doesn’t waste a single shot, the building’s kaleidoscopic downfall being characterised by rampant hallway sex, apocalyptic flat parties and blood in the aisles of the Kubrickian in-building supermarket. One scene sees a woman dressed in 18th century regal costume waiting to be “fucked in the arse” while someone rides a horse across her shag pile carpet. Another sees a goat wandering lost through a burning hallway, surrounded by overturned trollies, with a balloon tied around its neck.

High-Rise is a hallucinogen-laced shot of adrenaline in the arm, and the kind of cinematic madness we need in the ‘Spotlight as Best Picture’ era.

- Christopher Hooton

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

In an artistic medium so obsessed by illusion and self-mythologising, there's something so deeply refreshing about Taika Waititi's effusive sense of humanity. Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a film that doesn't have the self-importance to bend itself over to deep critical analysis or intellectual adoration, yet through what he's described as “the comedy of the mundane”, Waititi's managed to so humbly say quite a great deal about human nature.

It's not just that Hunt for the Wilderpeople is hilarious (and boy, is it); this is a film that tells its simple story of a misfit pair of adventurers (newcomer Julian Dennison and Sam Neill), out amongst the New Zealand bush, with so much heart and empathy that it captures – like butterflies in a bell jar – that precise feeling of belonging.

The notion that connecting with each other is like opening a door to the universe, no matter where we come from or where we're headed in life; no matter if we're a foster kid fixated on the 'skux life' or the star of Jurassic Park now sporting a big ol' beard. It's within each other that we find our own salvations.

- Clarisse Loughrey

I, Daniel Blake

Has there been a politically charged film more poignant than Ken Loach’s Cannes-winning film? Daniel Blake’s struggle with the UK benefits system showcases the wonderful kindness of strangers while hitting home the difficulties of 21st Century Britain for regular citizens: the symptoms of this post-Brexit country laid bare for all to see.

Dave Johns, who plays the titular character, gives a fantastic performance, while Hayley Squires's struggling mother will bring tears to anyone with a conscience.

For any fellow Brit, it's a must-watch, either to raise awareness of the current socio-economic problems hitting this country, or to show you're not alone.

- Jack Shepherd

Love & Friendship

There is no more perfect soul on this sweet earth to adapt Jane Austen than director Whit Stillman, the man behind the great masterpiece of yuppie cinema Last Days of Disco. In fact, if I were to ever call upon anyone as the resurrected spirit of the departed Pride and Prejudice scribe, Stillman would be my #1 culprit. And so, Love & Friendship rolls out like the meeting of twin spirits, as Stillman adapts the little-known epistolary novella of Austen's youth, Lady Susan.

Indeed, both operate love with a strange convenience – why is it the one you're always meant to be with just happens to be someone you've largely ignored, or even actively disdained? And always with just the right amount (not too little, not too much) of wealth. Both indulge their characters' bad habits: Lady Susan must be Austen's most manipulative heroine, yet the author shows a level of undue affection towards her, and Stillman equally delights in Kate Beckinsale's utterly charming performance in the role.

Both, also, possess a bristling sense of humour; though with Austen, it's an aspect of the author we've increasingly come to forget, so it's a blessing that Stillman is able to recognise its beats and translate them to screen in a manner so undeniable to 21st century audiences. The only real liberty he's taken also just happens to be the film's great highlight: Love & Friendship's endearing buffoon Sir James Martin, brought to life by Tom Bennett in the funniest performance of the year.

- Clarisse Loughrey

Paterson

As an experience, Jim Jarmusch’s latest film is the antithesis of unlocking your phone and being overwhelmed by endless feeds of information.

It is slow, but never boring, and there is something soothing about the quotidian joys the protagonist bus driver, played exquisitely by Adam Driver, finds in life. A single, cool glass of beer after a shift. A grandiose design on a small box of matches. A packed lunch. A short poem scrawled on the back of a receipt.

Where so many films find ennui in the everyday, Paterson finds meditative pleasure. The film is a deep breath, and might just recalibrate how you approach life.

- Christopher Hooton

Sing Street

With Sing Street, director John Carney (Once, Begin Again) swaps Irish folk and New York busking for inner-city Dublin circa 1982. It's one glance in the direction of Raphina (Lucy Boynton) that changes everything for Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Pello) - one chat later and he's fronting a band with his misfit pals in a bid to sustain her attentions. It's a premise that'll prise open the romance crate hidden inside you, the vibrancy of which will be watered by the brilliantly-composed gems (Human League style track "Riddle of the Model" could well be an 80s number one).

It's an endlessly watchable tale, the underlying melancholy of which becomes apparent with each new bittersweet viewing; as Raphina tells Conor: "That's your problem - you're not happy being sad." Thanks to Sing Street, that's exactly what you'll be.

- Jacob Stolworthy

Son of Saul

This astounding story concerning a Jewish–Hungarian prisoner in Auschwitz shakes you to the core, unflinchingly showing one of the worst atrocities committed during World War 2.

Centring on a father struggling with the loss of his son, the camera barely ever strays from his face, leaving many of the Nazi's acts to the imagination: a truly harrowing experience.

Although the Holocaust has been explored countless times in cinema, László Nemes debut is a shockingly realised project that offers a truly incredible story far beyond what any documentary could offer.

- Jack Shepherd

Spotlight

Your view on whether Spotlight is a deserving Best Picture Oscar recipient lies with whether you believe the story of an investigative journalism team's investigation into child sex abuse within the Catholic church to be worthy of a two-hour plus film. While the story one day will make a thrilling HBO documentary, this (in my view deserving) Oscar-winner works on its own merit thanks to muted but skillful direction from Tom McCarthy and makes a sobering subject so thrilling through simple interplay (it helps when you have Keaton, Ruffalo and McAdams breathing life into your script). An admirably straight-laced piece of work that evokes more emotion than any big-budget Marvel film ever could.

- Jacob Stolworthy

The Big Short

They did it, they made the financial crisis intelligible and entertaining.

Adam McKay’s first real foray into ‘serious’ filmmaking was a huge success, The Big Short being so perfectly balanced when it comes to tone: dramatic when it needs to be, funny when it needs to be, and informative without being a history lesson.

Wisely and brazenly, it tackles the inherently boring nature of its central topic head on, accepting it and using it to comedic effect, with Margot Robbie explaining the sub-prime mortgage crisis as Margot Robbie in a bathtub.

The four leads are excellent, particularly Christian Bale and Steve Carrell, and, while I love The Wolf of Wall Street, I think it’s an even more entertaining and useful indictment of banker arrogance.

- Christopher Hooton

The Neon Demon

The Neon Demon is a silly film. It knows it, and I love it for it. As a satire of L.A. it’s a bit ham-fisted, but that doesn’t matter, this is a film all about luxuriating in aesthetics. It’s the sort of film that should be screened on a 100m tall screen in a vast, darkened warehouse.

Nicolas Winding Refn may never top Drive in terms of creating a film that is the full package, but he is at his visual peak here, with creativity and innovation at every turn in his dark portrayal of the modeling industry. The film looking a lot like a Tron colliding with a Vogue shoot, Winding Refn invites you into his sandpit filled with glitter, lamé and diced organs and pins you in your seat with bold and vigorous cinematography.

- Christopher Hooton

The Witch

"Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?"

Few films this year have so brilliantly blended scare value with thought-provoking depth as The Witch. This 17th century inspired folktale - featuring an incredibly creepy goat and a hauntingly remote setting - raises various questions regarding religion, all gloriously shot by Robert Eggers, making for a phenomenal debut.

Anya Taylor Joy gives a stand-out performance the increasingly strange Thomasin, boding well for her upcoming X-Men debut, while Game of Thrones alumni Ralph Ineson's character manages to be both intimidating while caring.

- Jack Shepherd

Under the Shadow

As Shideh and daughter Dorsa shelter themselves from unrelenting bombing in Tehran, a haunting presence lurks from within the shadows. As the war worsens, so does the pair's paranoia about a curse inflicted on the Persian-speaking family, culminating in a missing doll and horrendously scary nightmares.

By playing off our fear of war as well as the otherworldly, Babak Anvari has created one of the most terrifying films of the last year, all without resorting to cheap jump scares. The timely relevance of Under the Shadow - about bombing in the Middle-East - further establishes the fear factor.

- Jack Shepherd

Zootopia/Zootropolis

The last year has seen some phenomenal animations hit cinemas - Kubo and the Two Strings, Your Name, and Sausage Party to name but a few. However, it was Disney’s Zootopia/ Zootropolis (depending on where you are in the world) that topped them all. This tale of a rabbit turned police officer features a tonne of laughs for the whole family while also providing a message about racism, sexism, and diversity (“I thought in Zootopia anyone could be anything?”), something particularly poignant considering the year that has past.

On top of all that, there’s an absolutely incredible scene featuring sloths that is split-your-sides funny (don't watch the version on Youtube, it's edited weirdly to up the pace): seriously I couldn't stop laughing.

- Jack Shepherd

Honourable mentions

De Palma, Finding Dory, Green Room, Hell or High Water, Kubo and the Two Strings, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, Maggie's Plan, Midnight Special, Nocturnal Animals, Pete's Dragon, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Queen of Earth, Rogue One, Room, Sully, Swiss Army Man, Tale of Tales, The Greasy Strangler, The Hateful Eight, The Nice Guys, Things To Come, Tickled, Weiner