Chasmmi's Top 90 films of 2016 - It is finally here!!! The world is going wild.

[chasmmi]

2 minutes ago, baumer said:

So you are okay with tits (2) and ice cream.

 

That's cheating! 

I also really enjoyed the puppy's story arc in John Wick 

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

54th - Gods of Egypt - 87/100

I really think that Butler knows and embraces the shitness of the films he stars in.

 

Because me and my friends really had fun watching this. It was so stupid, so relentlessly, that all we could do was just sit back and enjoy it. The acting - oh how wooden or hammy, The story - so, so lolsome, and the breasts - so much breasts just taking over the screen that my female coworkers brought up the breastiness of the film before I did.

 

This film is a glorious catastrophe of film making that is everything overblown, bad cinema should be.   

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

53rd - Angry Birds - 87/100

Yeah, Angry Birds somehow shows Warcraft and Assassin's Creed how to adapt a game. 

 

Obviously I am an animation fan and that will show more as the list goes on. However, even I was not expecting this to be any good, but then the trailer ended up being funny. So I saw the film and it was also a lot of fun. It did the best job it could of adapting a 'throw the bird at the pig' game.

 

This is a fun animation that lost in a year of super strong animation. It is still worth a watch and hey, by default it is technically one of the top 5 video game films of all time now.   

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

52nd - Sausage Party - 87/100

Epic highs blended with some dullish lows. 

 

The trailer for this was the funniest trailer of 2016 in my opinion. It made me laugh out loud like crazy. And the film itself had moments that were equally awesome (half of which were aforementioned trailer spots though sadly), but there was also a lot of points where the story seemed to drag and stutter.

 

There was a lot of promise here and I'd like to see more OTT R rated animation. But this was a misfire in too many places that brought down the legitimately great stuff that interspersed it.   

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

51st - XMen Apocolypse - 87/100

How is drunk flying angel guy, one of the four most dangerous mutants alive? 

 

The start of this film was great. Anything Magneto in fact was brilliant, really immersive and at times moving stuff. But outside of this, it just went through the motions a bit too much. Too much of this was a little too Days of Future Past Lite and that hurt it. 

 

I didn't need Wolverine shoehorned into the film or anything (as a major role I mean), but I wanted more Magneto and Xavier and that didn't quite happen. It's a good film, but a come down from the previous installment. 

 

 

[dxmatrixdt]

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Edited May 14, 2018 by Thematrixfilm

[dxmatrixdt]

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Edited May 14, 2018 by Thematrixfilm

[chasmmi]

So the next 4 films consist of two that likely almost nobody else saw and 2 that may upset people. Fun times

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

50th - The Lovers and the Despot - 87/100

I think 82 of those 87 points are due to the story just being naturally interesting. 

 

Documentaries are hard to rate aren't they? Do you rate them on the interestingness of the topic, or what they uncover or teach you? OR do you judge them on the quality of film-making and the style of the documentary?

 

Because on the first count, this is a fascinating story of a Major South Korean director and actress who were kidnapped by North Korea in the 70s and forced to make films for the North (including the iconically disastrous Bulgasari). These documentary has audio conversations between the kidnapees and Kim Jong Il and there is a lot of generally fascinating stuff in this.

 

However the actual product as a film is pretty dull. There are a lot of five minute periods of watching a tape player play away and for non-Korean speakers, obviously a lot of this is in Korean. But if the story given above sounds intriguing it is worth a watch.    

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

49th - A Monster Calls - 87/100

Part Great, part meh. 

 

There is some lovely stuff in this film and some of the animation is damn beautiful. The voice over of Neeson is probably his best bar Aslan too (although is there any other work to compare to out there?). 

 

I did like and appreciate the allegory going on in this film too, it worked well and just overall I can see why people may love this film. However, I do wander who the makers thought was the target audience of this film. It's got a tree monster, but also is a child's story. There is family drama, but also artsy animation flourishes. It does feel a little mixed and confused in that department. 

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

48th - Pet - 87/100

When a film makes an Earth shattering $70 dollars at the box office, how can you not track it down and watch it?

 

First off, how do you make 70 dollars? Surely at least some background character (I know there weren't many) or two would have dragged 4 or five of their friends along to see them on a big screen?

 

So yeah, this film is actually pretty decent. That was surprising. There were good twists and turns and it really isn't anything you think it is going to be. The acting is also good throughout and gives us a strong foundation between the main two characters. 

 

The overall gross may be pretty funny, but this actually turned out to be something worth watching and something that I would watch again. 

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

47th - The Nice Guys - 87/100

First things first, the opening scene of this is all kinds of stupid and it took me about 10 minutes to accept the film properly after that. 

 

Yeah, this film. It got so many great reviews from all over the place, so I wanted to give this a try. And yeah, there is a lot of fun to be had here and it is an enjoyable thing to watch for a lot of its run time. The acting is strong throughout, especially from the young girl.

 

However, overall I thought that this was a good and entertaining film but not a 90+ great film. I would watch a sequel though.

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

46th - Barbershop: The Final Cut - 87/100

I don't know why I ended up watching this, but I was surprisingly glad I did?

 

I don't know what I was expecting from this film. I don't know a lot about it and films aimed at the black American demographic don't exactly have a big audience here in Korea. However it turns out that this is a film that has some good comedy, mixed with actually dealing with some serious issues and doing it well. 

 

The cast is strong overall (even Nicki Minaj does a good job in this) and was just a surprisingly nice surprise to watch. 

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

45th - Storks - 87/100

And speaking of films that came as a surprise...

 

Wasn't this a nice little animated surprise? This film looked less than good in my opinion, but when I actually watched it, it was so much fun. Of course it has the ticklist of things that an animated film needs to have right now... Zany and independent characters (good), crazy or over the top character (The chicken was the only thing that annoyed me), and something comparable to minions (Great - The wolves were a lot of fun). 

 

Of course I will show myself to be quite the animation fan soon enough, but that doesn't stop this being a film that should have got a bigger audience and earned itself a fun sequel. 

 

 

[Plain Old Tele]

On 3/17/2017 at 11:17 PM, chasmmi said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

50th - The Lovers and the Despot - 87/100

I think 82 of those 87 points are due to the story just being naturally interesting. 

 

Documentaries are hard to rate aren't they? Do you rate them on the interestingness of the topic, or what they uncover or teach you? OR do you judge them on the quality of film-making and the style of the documentary?

 

Because on the first count, this is a fascinating story of a Major South Korean director and actress who were kidnapped by North Korea in the 70s and forced to make films for the North (including the iconically disastrous Bulgasari). These documentary has audio conversations between the kidnapees and Kim Jong Il and there is a lot of generally fascinating stuff in this.

 

However the actual product as a film is pretty dull. There are a lot of five minute periods of watching a tape player play away and for non-Korean speakers, obviously a lot of this is in Korean. But if the story given above sounds intriguing it is worth a watch.    

 

 

 

I haven't seen this but I heard a pretty in-depth piece about the story on This American Life (it was an interview with biographer Paul Fischer, who wrote a book in 2015 about Choi Eun-Hee). It's a fascinating bit of history. 

[cannastop]

Just let me know when you get to my favorite movie.

[chasmmi]

20 hours ago, cannastop said:

Just let me know when you get to my favorite movie.

 

I will get back to you in between 3 and 53 films' time

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

44th - The BFG - 88/100

Despite my dislike of two of his most popular films, generally Spielberg is the best in the world.

 

But his last couple of films have been good as opposed to great, which would be fine for a lot of directors but less than one would hope from Stevie. This in fact is a lot similar to my views on his 2015 offering. A good film that was not quite as good as I hoped but Mark Rylance was pretty damn amazing in his role. 

 

This is a nice faithful adaption of the book and the two main characters do a really good job in their roles. In some ways this is possibly as good as a BFG film could be without butchering the source material. But that also suggests that what could have made this film something special would have been a little butchery of the book.  

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

43rd - The Office Christmas Party - 88/100

This was a film I expected to be a lot lower than this on the list. 

 

This was a pretty funny and nice film. It got a little ridiculous near the end, but overall the comedic performances were strong and there was just a lot of fun to be had watching this. I don't really have much to say other than this is a fun comedy, that is better than a lot of Christmas centered stuff of the last few years and is worth a look. 

 

 

 

 

 

[chasmmi]

Spoiler

 

42nd - Star Wars: Rogue One - 88/100

42nd of the year, that might make it the best Star Wars film ever made...

 

It's close between this and Force Awakens. I'd say that TFA is the more consistently entertaining film, but Rogue one has the higher highs but the lower lows too. The last 30 minutes is pretty epic and it was good that they went through with the ending that they should have done instead of choosing for some random bullshit ending instead. 

 

I imagine that if I watched this again, my opinion of it may improve more as once I know that there is nothing of note happening for the first 45 minutes, i can probably try and appreciate it more and be even more happy with the great crescendo. 

 

Also Alan Tudyk needs to be in everything,