Best of 2016

Ten films I liked that came out in Australian cinemas in 2016, in no particular order:

Elle - a confronting film in that it consistently refuses to give the audience what they expect (to the point where several synopses tend to describe a far more conventional film than what we get). This is absolutely a vehicle for Isabelle Huppert to play a character who seeks no sympathy and instead is relentlessly fascinating and engrossing. This asks a hell of a lot of questions about sex, violence and female empowerment and answers almost none of them, but it's fascinating none the less.

The Witch - I had a friend who claimed this isn't a horror movie. As far as I'm concerned, he's wrong. This is creepy, twisted cinema that uses the premise "what if everything the puritans feared was real" and goes with it into disturbingly destructive territory. It's about spreading insanity inside an isolated family as the forces that keep them retreated together tear them apart rapidly once darker thoughts come in.

Zootopia - I love this film unabashedly. It's an unusually political film for Disney, about how fear is used in manipulating people, and it's one of Disney's best thought-through worlds, as every animalistic feature is chosen perfectly for the character. It's a film about a society as much as its protagonists, and if it's ultimately more hopeful than the real world has turned out to be this year... well, that's what filmic fantasy is for. Hope.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople - I love this film so much I recommended it to practically everyone I know - there are some films you only recommend to people who are on the right wavelength, but with this one, you just need to be human for it to work. It's a funky fun film about childhood and family and finding your place in the world with its own unique sense of humour, an adventure with heart and soul and toughness in all the right places. It's got Sam Neill's best performance in ages, it's got a kid whose personality bleeds off the screen in Julian Dennison, and it proves Taika Waititi is absolutely a director to watch out for.

Hell or High Water - A west-texas crime thriller that operates without clear goodies and baddies (all the characters live somewhere in a morally grey area), this has Jeff Bridges in possibly his most Jeff-Bridges-iest performance ever, along with strong work from Ben Foster and Chris Pine as a pair of bank robbing brothers - one responsible, one not. If the ending is slightly inevitable, it's none the worse for that - there's a grim logic to this that really works.

I Daniel Blake - Ken Loach apparently came out of retirement to do this, and if so, it's only because this is the film that absolutely sums up all of his strengths (and precious few of his weaknesses). A personal story that also doubles as an indictment of the uncaring economic forces that crush a working-class man struggling to keep afloat after a heart attack, adrift in a social security system that sees him as nothing more than an obligation they want to discharge. It's funny, it's brutal, it's entirely contemporary and it was a justifiable Palme D'Or winner.

Kubo and the Two Strings - This is pure magic from Laika, a story about a boy facing loss and adversity with bravery and compassion. It's got beautiful production design, with strange exotic creatures and landscapes to be traversed, it's got characters of strength and integrity, it's got humour and it's got a clever ending to wrap up things quite unexpectedly.

Room - This is a film that absolutely commits to its core idea and thereby makes something palatable that should by all rights be incredibly off putting. By taking the kids eye view of a situation that is brutal and unpleasant, we somehow get to know exactly what is happening and how horrible it is without ever being completely crushed by it. This idea of a kid's fantasy world redeeming awful events is a concept that Terry Gilliam notably stumbled in with "Tideland", done completely right. Performances by Brie Larson as the mum and Jacob Tremblay as the kid are the pure centre of this film, and both are gripping. If Lenny Abrahamson can do both this and the completely different but also best-of-the-year "Frank", there's no telling what he'll be up to next.

Steve Jobs - Aaron Sorkin cannot write ordinary people having ordinary conversations, or people doing regular things. Stick them anywhere conventional and his people will inevitably sound like self-important twats over-inflating their own worth. Stick them somewhere where that self-importance is at least somewhat justified, though, and you have magic. This is a classic example of "screenplays are structure" - the three-product-launch structure and the conversations taking place beforehand are, of course, absolutely a contrivance (the film even admits to it) but by keeping everything focussed on a couple of small events rather than trying to get everything into two hours, we get to go a bit deeper into what makes Jobs tick, and I found this absolutely compelling viewing.

Green Room - A simply designed but well-excecuted tight thriller as a punk band ends up besieged in the green room of a neo-nazi club (with the nemeses led by an appropriately skin-headed Patrick Stewart), this is tense, gripping cinema to rattle your nerves, effective in keeping the audience tense for as long as possible.