Top Ten Most Anticipated Movies of 2016 - How did they do?

Well, 2016 is coming to an end, and THANK F*** FOR THAT!!!  I'm not going to get too deep into a discussion about this year, I do enough politics on my Twitter, here I'm just going to talk about movies.  So it's time for my regular three-part look at what I anticipated, what I most I enjoyed, and what I'm now looking forward to.  Let's start with my list of what I was looking forward to at the end of 2015 (how young and innocent I was back then!  We all were.).  As always, I'm going to leave out anything from that list that made it to my top ten of the year, so I'm not repeating myself.

10. The Girl With All the Gifts (formerly She Who Brings Gifts)

After getting its name changed back, this adaptation of M.R. Carey's book turned out extremely well, at least partially down to him also handling the screenplay.  This definitely wears its influences on its sleeves, in terms of elements of George A. Romero's zombie movies of course, but the British setting gives it a very strong John Wyndham vibe, there's more than a touch of both Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids in here if you look properly.  It's still very much it's own film, with some striking imagery all of its own, including at least one powerful image towards the end that's actually an improvement on an equivalent scene the book.  It's very slickly made too for a lower budget (about £4 million), with some pretty ambitious scenery that it manages to mostly pull of well.  The cast are all great, all the leads are solid naturally, but I really have to give the nod to Sennia Nanua as the title character, she makes a fantastic feature debut here, I can see big things for her in the future.  This was a superb take on the genre (with some great, almost Fulci style zombies too), with an ending that will have you wondering about it for long after you see it.

9. Godzilla Resurgence aka Shin Godzilla

Each year I have at least one no-show on here, this is 2016's.  This did get released in Japan and the U.S., but not officially over here as the time I write this.  Ah well, it was a bit of a longshot, but I think there's a decent chance that someone will pick it up over here soon (and if not, I have a new region-free blu ray player and know of a good seller on eBay).  From what I've heard of this one, it definitely seems like they took quite a different path with the big G, with a new origin that makes him now a parallel for the Fukishima disaster.  That's a good move, going back to the original way, having him be a stand in for a topical, uniquely Japanese disaster.  Well, I'll save my thoughts for when I can finally get a legal copy over here.

8. Star Trek: Beyond

Hey, what did you know, after all the negativity around that first trailer, I was right to be positive about this one!  This felt by far the most "Star Trek" out of any of these reboot movies, and was by far the most fun a Trek film has been since The Voyage Home.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's now up with my favourites of the franchise; Wrath of Khan is still the top-spot, don't get me wrong, but Beyond's easily in the top four.  Why is down to a number of reasons, mostly in that it gets back to the core idea of the series, showing a positive, utopian ideal in the future, why it's worth fighting for, and what kind of forces would stand against it.  It also has some fun with the characters, spreading them out and making it feel more like an ensemble cast (like what Voyage Home also did come to think about it), so it's not just the same character beats as the last two (Into Darkness' retreading of old ground was one of its many sins).  Above all though, it's just very well made, it's one of the most cinematic Star Trek movies ever, especially in some of the truly unique action sequences based around different relative gravities.  A fitting entry to the series for the 50th anniversary of the franchise, though I must admit it was a bit of a bittersweet experience since this acts as a painful reminder of what a talent and lovely person we lost with Anton Yelchin, taken from us far too soon.

7. The Void

This was my “unsure if it will actually materialise this year” entry, but goody gumdrops, I actually did get to see it, and on the big screen; thanks London Film Festival!  This was an interesting one, the team behind this has, as part of Astron-6, made 80s pastiches before, but those were usually tongue somewhat in cheek, this is 100% dead straight cosmic/body horror, and it works.  The style may remind one somewhat of titles like Hellraiser and/or From Beyond (although the ones it resembles the most are visually The Resurrected, and story wise The Beyond), but the Mythos (to borrow a term) that is this one's backstory is all of its own.  It does what a good cosmic horror story should do, in that it makes clear that we are seeing a tiny part of a much bigger story, and it refuses to explain everything, it lets you draw your own conclusions.  That's something more than a few Cthulhu Mythos writers have gotten wrong over the years; you can't go "these are massive things beyond humanity's comprehension" and then explain how it works, proving that it is within our comprehension.  The Void as a film is a bit rough round the edges in a few ways, but when it gets going, it has such sights to show you.  Such as my name in the end credits since I was an Indiegogo backer; yay!

#6 Hail, Caesar!

This very, very Coen Brothers film is probably one of their most indulgent in quite a while, but when the end results are this fun, that's not exactly a bad thing.   This is a wonderful tribute to old Hollywood, almost an expansion on those elements of Barton Fink, only about a decade later.  All the recreations of classic movie styles may have a slight tongue-in-cheek element to them, but they all feel truly heartfelt, photographed pretty much like they would have been (with perhaps the only main giveaway is the colour scheme not always having that sort of dayglo effect Technicolor had).  A wonderful ensemble cast too, on all levels, with easily the standout being Alden Ehrenreich, who doesn't make a debut here, but this is easily the moment a lot of people have sat up and took notice.  (Disney did; good luck with Han Solo Alden!)  His scene with Ralph Fiennes is worth the price of entry alone.  Overall it's one of the Coens' "shaggy dog story" films like The Big Lebowski or Burn After Reading, but when it's this well made, or features such dry gags as "Vision of the Godhead to be filmed later", that's not a problem at all.


5. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

A most successful experiment!  This was testing the waters to see what kinds of stories can be told within this universe, that still feel like Star Wars movies, and this showed what was indeed possible.  One of the key inspirations for the original Star Wars (I still don't like calling it A New Hope) was The Dambusters, in the climatic raid, so this one also looks to WWII movies for inspiration, and draws from titles like The Guns of Navarone and The Dirty Dozen.  What we get was a decidedly less clean cut tale of rebellion, with characters willing to do more than a bit morally iffy things to get the job done.  No chosen one narratives, no Jedi vs. Sith, this was just the right people bought together to get a vital job done, no matter the cost.  Along the way, we also get a few long running plot holes cleared up, some astonishing battle sequences, scenes that only someone who directed a great Godzilla movie could have made, and a glimpse of "what if Marvin the Paranoid Android was in Star Wars".  Good stuff, however it should be said that while this was a success, this isn't really how I want Star Wars to be all the time by default from now on.  Lets keep the default tone more Force Awakens, shall we?

4. The Nice Guys

Yep, this Shane Black flick was... very Shane Black (though only one scene set at Christmas; odd).  Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling make a highly entertaining double act, with Crowe being superb at a very laid back kind of violent, while Gosling makes for a most amusing utter fuck-up of a PI.  The true heart of the film though does go with Angourie Rice as Gosling's daughter, a rare non-annoying kid sidekick who has just as good dialogue as the male leads, and who gives the film a definite moral centre (she'll be turning up 2017 in Spider-Man Homecoming as Betty Brant).  The actual mystery part of the story I have heard criticism of, but for me the story of the automotive and porn industries worked well to provide a path for the leads to follow, through all kinds of fantastic set-pieces.  Fun action, genuinely superb comedic sections, and a nice touch of satire, this was a blast; shame it didn't do to well at the box office.  I genuinely don't get why, the showing I was at was almost a full house, a very big screen, and it went down a treat, everyone seemed to get it immediately.  Ah well, this is another one that hopefully gets the life it deserves on home formats.

3. Captain America: Civil War

Let’s mention this film's best decision first; there was scarcely a hint of the comics version of Civil War in here, bar one dialogue nod in one scene, not a hint of Mark Millar; good!  Instead, we do get a pretty well balanced look at an issue without a straightforward right or wrong answer, one that the film resists all urges to give us a definite answer on.  In fact, the smartest thing it does in that, though the two sides of the “Sorcovia Accords” debate are embodied by Captain America and Iron Man, even in their final, tragic clash, that doesn’t act as an answer, because in that moment, the two effectively switch around.  Indeed, this is that rarest of things, a blockbuster where the stakes in each big action scene effectively get smaller (they save the world in the second scene!), and more character focused as it goes on, yet still ramping up the intensity.  Now there were a few issues with this one, such as the fact that this wasn't exactly newbie friendly, it sort of assumed that you already had connections with most of the characters instead of building them up (Bucky especially, since we haven't seen any of him as himself properly since the events of Winter Soldier).  Also, some of the roles of the film really did feel pretty forced (like Hawkeye just sort of showing up), and although there were some consequences, it did feel like they may have backed away from rocking the status quo too much.  But it did the job well in introducing the new characters (Tom Holland is a great Spider-Man, but I'm far more keen to see more of Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa), and hey, the sight of Giant Man vs. everyone makes it worth it.

2. Free Fire

Major sense of déjà vu.  Another Ben Wheatley films that was scheduled for release this calendar year, but was pushed back to next instead, which I still got to see anyway because of the London Film Festival.  One of these years, me and Mr. Wheatley are going to sync properly again.  Anyway, this movie was a lot of fun, down to how simple the basic premise is; put a bunch of profoundly stupid people in a warehouse with a lot of guns, and leave them to it.  The film unfolds in realtime and is just the build-up to the gun battle, and the ensuing chaos is effectively an hour long action scene.  What this gets the best mileage out of is the fact that a bullet wound isn't always immediately fatal.  This can be played for horror and/or dark humour depending on the scene, and does lead to some truly inspired sights, as everyone just keeps shooting long after they should have sensibly just said "this is getting us nowhere".  Free Fire is likely to be quite a big splash when it gets released in March, do not miss it!

1. Ghostbusters

Well, after all the ballyhoo after the rather poorly done trailers and the suburban troglodytes panicking over the lack of Y-chromosomes in the main cast, this turned out to be a lot of fun.  Paul Feig definitely delivered the goods in terms of action, laughs, and thrills, in this reboot that has plenty of nods to the original, which still haves the confidence to forge its own path.  The overall feel is a bit less like the first film, more like a well done, larger scale episode of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon; I have no problem with that whatsoever.  Fantastic cast too, which characterwise does a lot to distinguish everyone from the original four (it's hard to really say that any of them is "the Venkman", and the closest to "the Egon" is utterly different personality wise), and in terms of performances they're cool too.  Easily Kate McKinnon steals the entire thing, especially in terms of her flirting with every woman in the audience, although I should also give a shout to Chris Hemsworth, showing again what a natural knack he has for comedy.  Above all, I do love the fact that girls and women have been accepting and loving this too, all the pictures of kids in the costumes warms ones heart on so many levels.  Yeah, box office wise it didn't do well enough for that sequel, but here's hoping the disc sales and streaming viewings turn things around (and there are budget conscious ways to do a follow-up); huh, it's a bit like this year's Dredd in a way.

Erm, wait a second.  All present and correct.  Yes, this means that for the first time since I started doing these things, none of the things I was most looking forward to made the top ten list.  Honestly, I'm surprised as you are about this.  Now this is absolutely nothing against these titles, it's just that in terms of competition, this was an exceptional year for films.  For the record, the titles that were closest to getting onto the main list were Star Trek and Rogue One.  So what could have surpassed most of these?  Pop back tomorrow and find out.