The Year in Film Review

Kermode takes a look back for us at the big releases of the year,

sorting out the crackers from the turkeys in review 2016: the year in

Hello and welcome to this Review of the Year in film.

where for the next half now we will be looking back at some

of the best movies released in UK cinemas in 2016.

2016 was a pretty tumultuous year, what with the "Brexit" vote in June,

and the results of the American election in November proving that

In the world of politics, uncertainty can be alarming.

When it comes to movies, it is the expected which really

While the naysayers can blame that movies today are just

an endless slew of sequels, remakes and superhero franchise

fodder, let's spend some time celebrating the films

Which prove that cinema today really is more

2016 got off to a remarkable start with Room,

Irish director Lenny Abrahamson's film

adapted by screenwriter Emma Donoghue from her bestselling novel.

Room opened in the UK in January to rave reviews,

who went on to win both the Bafta and Oscar for Best Actress.

You're going to help me trick Old Nick.

Old Nick is going to come and take you outside,

and I'm going to be there in your head talking

I'm scared. I know.

The Oscar for Best picture went to Spotlight, a fact-based drama

about the Boston Globe's coverage of a child abuse scandal

But the Oscars themselves were mired with headline grabbing controversy

when the subject of racism in Hollywood and the Oscarssowhite

Of the 20 Oscar nominees for Best Actor, Best Actress,

Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting actress, not one

Oh, and in the Best Director category,

It's a depressing state of affairs and the Academy have taken steps

to ensure their membership becomes more diverse, but, despite such

embarrassing and, there was one area in which the Oscars got it right,

and that was in the foreign-language film category.

Having premiered in Cannes, back in 2015, Laszlo Nemes' searing

holocaust drama Son of Saul took the Oscar for foreign-language

With Claude Lanzeman, the filmmaker behind Shoah,

declaring that this Hungarian masterpiece presented a very real

sense of what it was like to be in the Sonderkommando.

Son of Saul was a deserving Oscar winner, but nominated alongside it

were some of the best films to open in UK cinemas in 2016.

From director Ciro Guerra, Embrace of the Serpent,

a monochrome mix of fact and fantasy, Western exploration

and Amazonian myth that earned Colombia its first nomination

a tale of Turkish sisters imprisoned in their home

Beautifully directed by Deniz Gamze Erguven,

who coached vibrant performances from her ensemble cast,

Mustang also benefited from a terrific score by Warren Ellis.

Ellis is one of modern cinema's most intriguing composers,

alongside the likes of Johnny Greenwood

alongside the likes of Johnny Greenwood and Clint Mansell,

who did superb work on Ben Wheatley's adaptation

of JG Ballard's dystopian novel, High-Rise, his woozy,

sensuous score heavily capturing the film's

I'm so sorry. I'll survive.

I thought you were empty. I just moved in.

High-Rise opened in UK cinemas in March, where it went head-to-head

with the Coen Brothers' splendid throwback Hollywood fantasy, Hail,

Caesar!, one of the most delightfully silly

Why do you say it like that, why do you say "t'were"?

Well, you said "say it like I say it."

Yes, but... You seem to be lingering.

It's interminable, the word, I'm wondering when it will end,

and we shouldn't be wondering, should we, we should be marching

When April rolled around, nothing could touch The Jungle Book,

Disney's reboot of its classic cartoon which became the real

king of the swingers at the UK box office.

Billed as a live action affair, The Jungle Book was almost entirely

CGI with the young star's Mowgli being one of the very few

live-action elements in a movie which cast Idris Elba as a digital

Shere Khan, Bill Murray as a lovable Baloo the bear,

and Christopher Walken as a gigantic King Louie.

and Once director John Carney's Sing Street

of a teenager's pop-tastic adventures in the mysterious world

Meanwhile, over in France, the 69th Cannes Film Festival

offered yet more reasons for rejoicing as Ken Loach

won his second Palme d'Or for the social realist

Having previously claimed the top prize

with The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Ken Loach,

won the judges over once again with his blistering tale

of Newcastle joiner recovering from a heart attack or finds

himself on the wrong end of a bureaucratic benefit system.

Superbly scripted by Paul Lafferty, with outstanding performances

by Dave Johns and Hayley Squires, I, Daniel Blake is powerful

No wonder both Johns and Squires were honoured

with trophies at the recent British Independent film awards.

What I gather now is the decision-maker,

the decision-maker's gonna be sending you a letter

My kids have to start school tomorrow, I've got

All because you can't just calm down and listen to people when they talk,

You know what, I've listened to you, you've created a scene.

No mate, if I was going to create a scene, you'd know about it.

Do you mind if this young lass signs on first?

Now you can go back to your desk and let her sign on and do the job

The jury prize at Cannes also went to a British film-maker,

Andrea Arnold, whose first US-set feature, American Honey,

went on to win best film at the Biffas.

Centring on Sasha Lane's Texan teen who hits the road with a number

of young magazine sellers, American Honey was shot by I,

Daniel Blake's cinematography, Robbie Ryan, who worked wonders

with the square Academy ratio frame which is

Remarkable, too, to see Transformers star Shia LaBeouf doing career-best

work in a film which is the very antithesis of those

bloated blockbuster movies which made him a star.

Of course, those blockbuster movies continue to thrive.

The Transformers franchise was very much in evidence

here in autumn as they shot scenes for the forthcoming Transformers:

The Last Night, which we can all look forward to in 2017(!).

In the mean time, the summer of 2016 was dominated by the return

who made a whale-size splash at the box office

Disney-Pixar's Finding Dory was one of a slew of animated features

which breathed life into UK cinemas in 2016.

I'm coming. Sorry.

Everybody does it, nothing to be ashamed of.

In June, we got the long-delayed release of the anime gem

When Marnie Was There, Studio Ghiblis Japanese

-- In June, we got the long-delayed release of the anime gem

Studio Ghibli's Japanese adaptation of Joan G Robinson's Norfolk set

-- In June, we got the long-delayed release of the anime gem

of Joan G Robinson's Norfolk set novel.

Then there was Zootropolis, or Zootopia as its known in the US,

which is currently shaping up as a strong contender

for the forthcoming animated feature Oscar.

Other contenders include Kubo and the Two Strings,

a sublime stop-motion animation from Paranorman

Yes, he's very powerful, but he still has much to learn.

And Moana, Disney's current cinema offering from the directors

-- was Makoto Shinkai's Your Name, a thrilling body swap anime

which topped the Japanese box office charts for three months before

While films like Finding Dory and Zootropolis delighted audiences

and critics alike other blockbusters proved altogether more divisive.

Take, for example, Zack Snyder's much-hyped Batman vs

Superman: Dawn of Justice, which proved a solid box office hit

despite almost universally negative reviews from sniffy critics like me.

Who were variously accused of being corrupt, idiotic

Now in fact, what the financial success of Batman vs Superman proved

is that reviews have zero effect on box office.

Audiences don't go to see films because critics

they go because they want to see them.

Take note, Alex Proyas, director of this year's

copper-bottomed stinker Gods of Egypt, who took to social media

to call critics "a pack of diseased vultures,

pecking at the bones of a dying carcass",

without realising that in doing so, he was effectively calling

While Batman vs Superman caught its fair share of critical

flak other superheroes did better, with the critics.

Take Ryan Reynolds's Deadpool, Marvel's wisecracking self

reflexive anti hero who took the box office by storm and earned pretty

Captain America: Civil War performed well too,

when that opened in April, in the autumn, Dr Strange offered up

a winning mix of superhero antics and Ken Russell-style

we are not going to see an end to big budget blockbuster comic book

film franchises any time in the near future.

But it was at the other end of the financial spectrum,

and indeed often on the other side of the Atlantic, that the really

Encouragingly, 2016 saw the release of a number of low-budget home-made

features which really put their more expensive counterparts to shame.

Take, for example, Notes on Blindness, an electrifying

adaptation of the memoirs of theologian John Hull,

who made cassette recordings documenting his loss of sight

and subsequent journey from darkness to light.

Getting actors to lip sync to these recordings recordings in a manner

similar to that used by Clio Barnard for The Arbor,

film-makers Peter Middleton and James Spinney created

a film which is informative, empathetic and deeply spiritual,

one of the very best films of the year.

The pictures in the gallery of my mind have dimmed somewhat.

Everything was drifting away, how could this happen to me?

Who had the right to deprive me of the sight

I could no longer remember easily what my wife looked like, what my

daughter, imaging, looked like. -- Imogene.

Notes on blindness was one of several home-made indie pictures

Other admirable oddities included Stephen Fingleton's stripped down

Northern Ireland thriller The Survivalist, Joe Stevenson's

Stevenson's Chicken, superbly shot by rising

and Jane Gull's My Feral Heart, with a brilliant central performance

My favourite film of 2016 was the spine-chilling British

production Under the Shadow, from Iran-born London-based

The UK's entry for the foreign language film Oscar,

under the shadow was set in terrain, shot in Jordan and filmed in faster,

there are not too Roman Polansky and the Guilermo del Toro

but Anvari's superbly creepy chiller conjures an atmosphere

With very strong performances by Narges Rashidi and Avin Manshadi

as the mother and daughter terrorised by falling bombs,

Under the Shadow is a film that you simply must not miss,

believe me, it will take your breath away.

Films like under the shadow and notes on blindness

found their audiences thanks in large part to the efforts

of the UK's still thriving independent cinema circuit,

If you're lucky enough to have a local arthouse cinema,

then make sure you make the most of it.

Multiplexes are fine, up to a point, but without the independents

we will end up with an endless stream of movies which all look

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution makes it

unconstitutional for someone to be kept as a slave. There are

exceptions, including criminals. The loophole was

immediately exploited... Of course, in the age

of the Internet, viewing with more and more people choosing

to watch movies online. This in itself is not a problem

unless the film's online presence prevents people from seeing it

in cinemas and that was kind of the case

with the brilliant documentary 13th, which provocatively teased out

connections between the history of slavery and modern-day

imprisonment in the USA. It's powerful polemical fare

and for me, one of the real highlights of the year but having

been funded by Netflix, 13th was only allowed to play in one

cinema in the UK, this, despite the fact that several

independent cinemas were hammering In an ideal world, streaming

services and cinemas would work hand-in-hand,

not in competition. This beast that is needed to be

controlled. It became virtually impossible

for a politician to run The kinds of kids that

are called super creditors. Millions of dollars will be

designated for jail facilities. As the autumn rolled around,

fans of science fiction welcome the arrival of Arrival,

the beautiful first-contact movie from French-Canadian

director Denis Villeneuve, who made the great thriller,

Sicario, based on a story by Ted Chiang, Arrival starred

Amy Adams as a linguist, recruited to help communicate

with aliens whose nature They need to see me.

Are you insane? A film of ideas rather

than special effects, Arrival played in UK cinemas around

the same time Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals, which also starred

Amy Adams, in a very different role, this time as an LA art dealer,

confronted by ghosts of the past. Other outstanding female

performances in films released in the UK in 2016 include

Isabelle Huppert's wonderful work in Mia Hansen-Love's Things To Come,

a drama about an academic whose life is unexpectedly change when her

husband reveals a dark secret. Then there was Pedro

Almodovar's Julieta, sensibly adapted from the writings

of Canadian author Alison Munro, with award-winning performances

from the younger and older For me, this was Pedro Almodovar's

best work since Volver. I was also bowled over

by Meryl Streep as the so-called Diva of Din industries and free's

and affectionate and funny Florence Foster Jenkins,

a celebration of life of the first Plaudits too to Kate Beckinsale,

who was an acerbic delight in Whit Stillman's Love

Friendship, perhaps -- the most perfect screen

rendering of Jane Austen's And, let's not forget,

Kate Dickie, deeply disturbing in the ultra-creepy new England

folktale The Witch. When it comes to leading men, few

were better than David Oyelowo in United Kingdom, opening the London

Sun Festival in October, directed by a female British director of proud

Ghanaian heritage, the United Kingdom broke several glass ceilings

as it told the story of David Oyelowo, as an African king in

waiting, and Rosamund Pike. Having been overlooked for sterling work in

Selma, David Oyelowo would be top of my award pack this term. We should

not be fighting for segregation, we should be focusing EDF can for

equality, that is where we should be focusing our minds, not on the Wi-Fi

have chosen, who means you no harm, whose only apparent crime has been

to fall in love with me. -- not on the wife I have chosen. -- we should

be focusing on the fight for equality.

Taking inspiration from films like Martin Scorsese's king of comedy,

this is a roller-coaster ride, built on not one but two great

performances, no wonder he is one of the world's most popular movie

stars, excellent work by Shah Rukh Khan. 2016 was also the year we lost

some great stars, from Gene Wilder, to Alan Rickman, who worked wonders

both behind and in front of the camera, to David Bowie, whose man

who fell to Earth got a poignant big-screen rerelease in June. Other

significant re-issues include the 30th anniversary outing for David

Lynch's blue Velvet and a big-screen rerelease of in the heat of the

night as part of the BFI's black star season, celebrating the range,

versatility and power of black -- Blue Velvet. Actors. Perhaps the

most remarkable return of 2016 was of Napoleon, able Gans's Silent

masterpiece from 1927, back on house screen with a magnificent score by

Carl Davis, seen in its most complete form, this reissue was the

result of decades of research and restoration work, and what a

glorious sight it was to see. -- Abel Gance. As the end of the year

rolled around, Star Wars is back in our cinemas in the shape of Rogue

one, a stand-alone anthology instalment set before the events of

the 1977 original. Like its iconic predecessor, it relies heavily on

British talent, from Gareth Edwards, director, to Felicity Jones to the

army of technicians at Elstree Studios where much of the film is

shot. Worth noting as well that another of

the year 's runaway hits, Bridget Jones's baby, was also a home-grown

success story, with Welsh director Sharon Maguire helming the third

series instalment to record-breaking box office success. -- Bridget

Jones's Baby. Maintaining good relationship with ex-husband. And my

love life is showing signs of improvement. May I? It fits! Aside

from one tiny development... I'm pregnant? Everything is completely

under control! Sort of... Whether you like your movies big or small,

down-to-earth or out of this world, there really was something for

everyone in UK cinemas in 2016. Sometimes, you just had to look a

little bit harder to find it. Let me do this, please.