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The best films of 2016, according to 163 critics

Christopher Hooton

Friday 02 December 2016 11:06 GMT

Father-daughter comedy Toni Erdmann was the most popular film

The BFI has conducted its annual Sight & Sound poll, asking 163 critics and curators to pick their five best films of the year, and coming out on top is a German comedy about a dad playing pranks on his estranged daughter.

Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann was the number one choice, a Palme D’Or competitor that has been quietly attracting strong reviews for its humour, inventiveness and intriguing twists.

European cinema has a good showing in this year’s top 10, with rape revenge thriller Elle, Ken Loach’s eye-opening political film I, Daniel Blake and French drama Things to Come (which also stars Elle’s Isabelle Huppert) all making the cut.

Oscar contender Moonlight was also placed high up, along with dreamy road trip movie American Honey and Jim Adam Driver-starrer Paterson (a favourite here at the Indy).

La La Land, which is likely to win this year’s Best Picture Oscar, came in at no. 16.

The top 26, which includes ties, and their critics abstracts are as follows:

1. Toni Erdmann

49 votes

Maren Ade’s winning daughter-father comedy Toni Erdmann contains some of the sharpest moments of audience blindsiding I’ve ever encountered.

— Nick James, reviewing from Cannes

Apart from being a comedy and a very human delight, Maren Ade’s film is also an intensely angry political statement about the way that capitalism disempowers, dehumanises and alienates.

— Jonathan Romney, reviewing from Cannes

2. Moonlight

34 votes

A film about the complexity of black masculinity and the very human hunger for connection. It is about the fragility that lies beneath a man’s swagger. Thrilling and sensuous.

— Simran Hans, reviewing from Toronto

3. Elle

33 votes

Trust Verhoeven to venture where most wouldn’t dare: a psychological rape-revenge fantasy thriller with jump-out-of-your-skin attack moments orchestated to a pounding score, and laced with comedy throughout. What should be problematic is here more complicated and intelligent than it first appears: rape is never a joke and Isabelle Huppert’s Michèle LeBlanc never a victim.

— Nick James, reviewing from Cannes

4. Certain Women

25 votes

Kelly Reichardt articulates a familiar experience: the suspicion, bafflement or plain disregard met by women who don’t conform to typical notions of femininity, as held by certain men.

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— Sophie Brown

5. American Honey

20 votes

As much spectacle as a Hollywood musical. Within a collage of soaring music, soft light and writhing bodies, this brilliant film draws the outline of a bleak economic landscape.

— Pamela Hutchinson

6. I, Daniel Blake

17 votes

Ken Loach’s film is perhaps the most important film of the year in relation to the situation in a post-Brexit Britain. The fact that it has connected so powerfully with audiences is a tonic for the soul.

— Jason Wood

7. Manchester by the Sea

16 votes

A blue collar high tragedy with wrenching performances that weigh the balance so carefully between the push and pull between guilt and responsibility that the film is emotionally exhausting.

— Nick James

8. Things to Come (L’Avenir)

15 votes

Wry, humane and thoughtful… the film treats its destabilising cluster of crises with extraordinary restraint. It presents the hard, complex business of surviving life in a disarmingly simple way.

— Kate Stables

9. Paterson

14 votes

A quietly utopian film, and a balm to watch. Its minimal narrative and attractively downbeat setting hark back to the Jim Jarmusch of the 80s and 90s.

— Henry K. Miller

10. The Death of Louis XIV

13 votes

Albert Serra has made a film somewhat in the contained, stately, solemn manner of Straub-Huillet. Extremely beautiful and even moving, in a rigorously detached way.

— Jonathan Romney, reviewing from Cannes

=11. Personal Shopper

12 votes

Kristen Stewart is an enigmatic, warily frayed-yet-unafraid presence, almost as if she’d be happy to step over to the ‘other side’ at any moment. She is unquestionably the actress of the moment.

— Nick James, reviewing from Cannes

=11. Sieranevada

12 votes

A film analysing what it means to grow up believing in living-room myths and legends, and the discomfiting mix of terror, disappointment and guilt at realising that being an adult means propagating them at the risk of losing face.

— Adam Nayman

=13. Fire at Sea

11 votes

Moral courage and filmic artistry exist side by side in this essential offering from a director gradually earning the right to be thought of as one of the greats of our era.

— Trevor Johnston

Rosi accounts for the tales of migrants by choosing an unconventional point of view, which acts as a tremendous call for action.

— Nico Marzano

=13. Julieta

11 votes

This tantalisingly open-ended film is Almodóvar’s most sombre to date: it is to his last feature, 2013’s airline farce I’m So Excited!, as Interiors (1978) was to Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971).

— Jonathan Romney, from our September 2016 issue

=13. Nocturama

11 votes

The movie that completely defies binary categorisations of good and bad, the one I have absolutely no idea of whether I loved or loathed, but have pretty much thought about it every day since seeing it.

— David Jenkins

=16. Cameraperson

10 votes

Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson concerns itself with the often idealistic, always knotty human desire to connect through documentary images. She goes through a catalogue of unused material from her long career as a cinematographer to make a kind of self-portrait through scraps, a diary by way of other filmmakers’ unwanted bits… Profound empathy is manufactured by witnessing Johnson trying to find her shots and trying to decide when not to shoot. Scenes of pain and sadness are exhilaratingly edited next to scenes of exuberance.

— Robert Greene

Johnson unifies ostensibly unrelated vignettes through a shared sense of empathy and an ethically inquisitive approach to the vagaries of cinematic mediation.

— Jordan Cronk

If I had to shoot one movie into space to sum up this crazy, chaotic, hurting world in 2016 it would be this one.

— Tom Charity

Which recent movies will become classics?

Show all 21

1/21Which recent movies will become classics?

Which recent movies will become classics?

Birdman - Undoubtedly

Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s masterpiece will surely be remembered for years to come - fiercely original in its concept, brave in its single take(esque) format and the perfect satire of a very specific and bizarre era of cinema we find ourselves in. What perhaps was so astonishing about this Best Picture Oscar winner was that in spite of its experimental format and lofty intentions, it still also managed to be hugely entertaining, and is eminently rewatchable. - Christopher Hooton

Fox Searchlight Pictures

Which recent movies will become classics?

There Will Be Blood - Potentially

Inherent Vice feels like it’s been forgotten already, The Master was great but too weighty for some, but There Will Be Blood is the Paul Thomas Anderson film that comes up time and time again in pub film conversations, whether they’re between cinephiles or more casual fans. A blank yet brutal indictment of lucre, Daniel Day Lewis gave one of his best ever performances as oil man Daniel Plainview, and Jonny Greenwood’s fearsome score is still being performed live several years after its release. But mainly, “I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE! I DRINK IT UP!” - CH

Which recent movies will become classics?

Avatar - Probably not

It’s undeniable that James Cameron’s gargantuan blockbuster Avatar will find its place in the cinematic history books. With a worldwide gross of over 2.7 billion, it’s currently the highest earning film of all time - even Star Wars' The Force Awakens return couldn't topple it. But will it actually be remembered fondly? Its ground-breaking special effects already betray the first signs of aging, and though its use of 3D was revolutionary at the time, it’s now so pedestrian as to be found in a Glee concert movie. What is there to revere then? The patronising narrative re-hash of the plot to Dances With Wolves? Or the bit where two cat-aliens had sex by plugging their hair braids into each other? - Clarisse Loughrey

Which recent movies will become classics?

Whiplash - Within its own genre at least

Whiplash was perhaps the most buzzy, "have you seen it yet?" film of 2014, and winning major Oscars off a budget of $3.3 million was no mean feat. Damien Chazelle managed to make a film about drumming absolutely edge-of-your-seat stuff, and succeeded by not patronising his audience - trusting that even if they didn’t understand the music theory detail, they would still be able to revel in it. Unfortunately, it might just be too small a film to be remembered as a ‘classic’, but will certainly be circling the top of ‘best movies about music’ lists for some years to come. - CH

Which recent movies will become classics?

Skyfall – Depends who’s Bond next

Best Bond of all time? Skyfall’s slick, true, but its status as an icon seems heavily premature. We’re still clinging onto the Craig era, and it’s hard to argue that Skyfall doesn’t do the same; trading its entire dramatic tension on the premise that we’ve long been deeply attached to this grizzled Bond and equally grizzled M. In Silva’s personal vendetta, or in the neat metaphors of Skyfall Lodge’s crumbling exteriors and Bond’s crumbling interiors of a post-Vesper Lynd world; it’s only once the franchise has moved on to new pastures that we’ll truly start to see whether Skyfall can go the distance. Doesn’t help that Spectre was a bit of a disappointment, though. -CL

Which recent movies will become classics?

Mad Max: Fury Road - A gutsy yes

Yes, it’s a madly confident move to already claim Fury Road’s going to a bonafide classic within its first year of release, but Fury Road is a mad movie. 36 years after its original incarnation, George Miller returned to the wasteland to conjure the greatest adrenaline hit of the cinematic decade. Breathlessly edited, hued with the colours of dust and dirt and rage; packed to the brim with practical stunt work unseen in the digital age. Plus, it’s a film that actively dismantles the patriarchy through a gun-slinging, metal-armed Charlize Theron. If it’s not remembered as one of the greatest blockbusters of its time, it’ll certainly be remembered as one of the gutsiest. - CL

Which recent movies will become classics?

The Great Beauty - No, but it damn well should be

It won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2014, but this Paolo Sorrentino masterpiece is still unknown to most. It centres on a group of aging intellectuals partying on rooftops across Rome to Eurodance, and within this frame of superficiality it manages staggering profundity. The dialogue is rich, the cinematography sumptuous, and if Fellini is considered classic, this fellow Italian’s work certainly should be too. - CH

Which recent movies will become classics?

Little Miss Sunshine - Within its own genre, yes

The ‘Sundance Effect’ has unfortunately developed a near plague of insufferable, self-conscious mawkishness over the years. Misfit boys finding new meaning to their existence in the arms of pink-haired manic pixie dream girls; sun-dappled bike rides as the latest band to feature a ukulele solo play softly in the distance. Some have indeed come off this false and cloying (Zach Braff’s Garden State), others smarter and keener (last year’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl); but as the fires of kook devour all in sight, there will always remain one film left standing in the ashes: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ Little Miss Sunshine. One scene that guarantees its elevation above the rabble sees teenager Dwayne (Paul Dano) realise he’s colour-blind, and thus will never be able to achieve his dream of becoming a jet fighter. Dano’s meltdown here is so raw, and so positively tragic, that it’ll be a hard job to ever forget that epic f-bomb as the years pass. - CL

Which recent movies will become classics?

Lost in Translation - I'll still be watching it in my 80s at least

Really a perfect movie. The casting couldn't have been better and Sofia Coppola conveys the choking feeling of an overly air-conditioned hotel room like no-one else. So many of the shots were beautiful in their simplicity. Bill Murray making a nice crisp, clean golf shot before walking off down the course. The flower arranging scene. Bill lightly grabbing Scarlett Johansson's foot and this subtly serving as the film's 'kiss'. It's the unconventional romance at the heart of the film that makes it so great, though, which is as much about companionship as physical and emotional love. - CH

Which recent movies will become classics?

Crash - Hahahahahahahahaha

Seriously, how did it win that Oscar? Even the director doesn't know. - CH

Which recent movies will become classics?

Pan’s Labyrinth - Absolutely

Guillermo del Toro dreams on celluloid; he’s a weaver of fairy tales in an age where innocence is presumed dead. It’s through innocence, through innocent eyes, that we witness the darkest excesses of human nature in a way that so exposes the incomprehensibility of evil committed in the pursuit of power. Through young Ophelia’s perspective we watch the horrors of Franco’s Spanish regime play out, the barbaric cruelty of her stepfather Captain Vidal; she fears not the horned faun who lives in the labyrinth when it’s so clear her own patriarchal figurehead is the true monster. And though its finale may be heart-breaking, del Toro still allows innocence a certain victory. Victory through Ophelia’s eyes, those pure and hungry enough to see beyond the borders of her bleak reality to find an escape from the seemingly unstoppable monstrosities of adulthood. - CL

Warner Bros.

Which recent movies will become classics?

I’m Still Here - When everyone realises its genius

Initially admonished for being exploitative of Joaquin Phoenix’s ‘condition’, it was astonishing that, when this Casey Affleck-directed mockumentary was revealed to be a hoax, most critics didn’t give it a second review, and those who did still disliked it. In hindsight this was so much more than a prank. Phoenix stayed in character as a failed actor turned hip-hop artist for months on end. This dedication wasn’t for nothing either (unlikely say, DiCaprio in The Revenant), I’m Still Here is actually a very funny, moving and subtly satirical film, and definitely original. - CH

Which recent movies will become classics?

Boyhood - I doubt it

While it too was an unprecedented piece of cinema, Boyhood for me faded from the memory very quickly. Dismissing this film as essentially a ‘puberty timelapse’ might be a little harsh, but the set-up did ultimately come off gimmicky and as a coming of age story it failed to resonate. Admirable, but not a ‘classic’ - CH

Universal Pictures

Which recent movies will become classics?

The Social Network - Yes

I was less than thrilled at the prospect of a movie about Facebook, but then pleasantly surprised upon watching it. A holy production trinity of David Fincher (director), Aaron Sorkin (screenwriter) and Trent Reznor (score) told a story that changed all of our lives with such panache. Texting, the internet, social media etc are so prosaic that many authors and filmmakers disingenuously leave them out of their stories, but here they were central and yet still the film was engrossing, stylish and human. - CH

Which recent movies will become classics?

Django Unchained - Hell yeah/hell maybe

Swiping its titular character’s name from a 1966 Spaghetti Western directed by Sergio Corbucci, Tarantino utilised his trademark flair for ultra-violence and nihilistic humour to create the perfect meeting point between revisionism and classicism. Django channeled brutality in the name of righteous fury, allowing the freedom fighting slaves of a pre-Civil War Deep South their own legendary cowboy of the John Wayne or Clint Eastwood type. - CL

Which recent movies will become classics?

The Tree of Life - A few people will kid themselves it’s classic

Terrence Malick’s experimental drama couldn’t really have been more ambitious or tried to chip away at a bigger chunk of existence. As such, it was automatically lauded by many who didn’t really know what to make of it, but looking back, was it worthy of the praise? The Brad-Pitt-is-a-family-man-in-the-50s plot strand was actually pretty unremarkable, and were it not for the brazenness of the extended shots of the universe being formed I doubt it would have made top ten lists the way it did. - CH

Which recent movies will become classics?

Her - Yes, as a historical document

Films depicting the future remain fascinating decades later because they show, in retrospect, how we wanted the world to progress and what developments we simply couldn’t have conceived. As such Her will definitely still be getting talked about in years to come, whether or not we do indeed end up falling in love with our computers. (Also see: Ex Machina) - CH

Which recent movies will become classics?

Any of the space movies? Maybe Interstellar

We seem to get a big budget space movie annually these days, and while none of them really have the creativity of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar stands a chance of staying atop VOD libraries. Gravity and The Martian, while technically brilliant, were pretty forgettable, and don’t get me started on Sunshine. Interstellar was very impressive though, and if a Christopher Nolan film’s going to stand out I’d rather it be this one than… - CH

Which recent movies will become classics?

Inception - Please no

Yes, it’s insanely watchable and the plot zips along nicely, but seriously, can we stop pretending people falling backwards off chairs and out of camp, alpine sub-dream worlds amounts to anything more than an overly convoluted, albeit pretty, action movie? - CH

Which recent movies will become classics?

The Wolf of Wall Street - Not compared to Scorsese’s earlier work

If there’s a burden of the artistic revolutionary, it’s that revolution is only ever momentary in its form; Martin Scorsese made his mark back in 1973 with Mean Streets, and it’s one that’s been difficult to paint over in the 43 years which have since passed. The Wolf of Wall Street faults itself only in being pure Scorsese; it’s a film which trades purely in the breathless, macho style already so entrenched in cinematic culture. Essentially, Scorsese’s own genre-defining genius has doomed to obscurity any latter work which dares to fold into the director’s own natural form of expression; it’s made derivative any work which doesn’t actively rebel against what he’s been most celebrated for. A tough reality, but a reality nonetheless. - CL

Paramount Pictures

Which recent movies will become classics?

Nymphomaniac - Maybe if Part II hadn’t happened

Even the truest of arthouse directors are culpable for the whims of Hollywood franchises. Yes, with his dual Nymphomaniac films, Lars von Trier managed to ruin the potential classic of his career by needlessly stretching his narrative across two films; churning out the NC-17 answer to Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy in the process. Strip Nymphomaniac of the controversy and media hysteria surrounding its use of pornographic actors in its sex scenes; and there’s a torn, throbbing soul at its centre. For all its salaciousness, von Trier’s exploration of the crippling effects of shame society burdens those, especially its women, who dare seek sexual pleasure is genuinely haunting. That’s in Part I, however; by the time Joe’s life story sees her grow from Stacy Martin into Charlotte Gainsbourg, von Trier’s epic dissolves into the bang of a drum in continuous, endless cycles. She’s horny and sad; we got it, Lars. - CL

=16. La La Land

10 votes

Accomplished in every aspect, it’s both a homage to and a rewriting of Hollywood’s classic musicals … Only the harshest cynics will resist this film’s bittersweet charm.

— Fernanda Solozarno

18. Love & Friendship

9 votes

Whit Stillman’s venture into Jane Austen territory for Love & Friendship was a welcome tickle of the costume movie’s well-corseted ribs.

— Sam Wigley

=19. Aquarius

8 votes

An intricate, laser-like vision of where Brazil is today, in its latest, neoconservative re-incarnation.

— Ela Bittencourt

The magnificent Sonia Braga, steadfast in the face of political corruption and greed, may be the defiant heroine to inspire at the moment

— Lizzie Francke

=19. Victoria

8 votes

Victoria is literally an incredible achievement. How they pulled it off remains a delirious mystery

— Gareth Evans

Schipper and his cast have managed to turn a gimmick into a surprisingly subtle portrait of a millennial generation overwhelmed by its own unstoppable momentum.

— Lisa Mullen

=21. Embrace of the Serpent

7 votes

Embrace of the Serpent felt like a rethinking of so much adventure cinema from the last half century.

— Nick James

=21. Everybody Wants Some!!

7 votes

Overlapping conversation, ready laughs and impressively naturalistic performances from a cast free of A-listers give Everybody Wants Some!! the easy charm of Linklater’s best work.

— Pamela Hutchinson

=21. Evolution

7 votes

For Hadzihalilovic, the sense of control is essential to the creation of a complete, self-enclosed world, and to a visual aesthetic with its own stilled, enigmatic quality.

— Richard Combs

=21. Hell or High Water

7 votes

From Wild West to current malaise, there’s a strong sense of Texan cultural history making its imprint on this crime thriller… it’s ultimately a thorough investment in the whys and wherefores of place that makes this particular offering so satisfying and distinctive.

— Trevor Johnston

=21. O.J.: Made in America

7 votes

ESPN’s ambitious five-part study of 1995’s ‘trial of the century’ ran to nearly eight hours, covering the courtroom drama, the fallen hero in the dock and the fallout from the shock verdict. In the New York Times, A.O. Scott called it “a tightly packed, almost indecently entertaining piece of pop realism, a Dreiser novel infused with the spirit of Tom Wolfe,” saying it had “the grandeur and authority of the best long-form nonfiction”.

=26. Lemonade

6 votes

Does Lemonade deserve to be on this list? I’m not sure, but I can’t deny its energising rush, its lightning effect on the culture, its blur of the lines between cinema, music video and album, and how explosively it digested the influence of black cultural history.

— Ian Mantgani

=26. Nocturnal Animals

6 votes

Ford is very effective at capturing the way reading triggers memories, the way it requires the reader to fill in a story’s gaps with their own imagination and the way getting lost in a book creates a kind of vortex in time.

— Simran Hans, reviewing from Toronto

=26. The Ornithologist

6 votes

A fevered reverie, beginning as a National Geographic showreel and morphing with rugged elegance into a fable of erotic transcendence.

— Kong Rithdee

=26. Raw

6 votes

“Examines the dynamics of sisterhood and pressures of female identity, with violent helpings of humour and horror … an energetic tale of cannibalistic desire.”

— Sophie Brown

=26. Neruda

6 votes

Pablo Larraín’s utterly brilliant Neruda needs to be watched more than once. Like a juggler, Larraín keeps in the air all the paradoxes and contradictions of the legend, the folktale, the myth and the man to (de)construct, in his own words, a Nerudian antibiopic of the Chilean diplomat, poet and Nobel prizewinner as working-class symbol, but also as a narcissist and a brothel habitué who is yet utterly in love with his wife.

— Mar Diestro-Dópido, reviewing from the London Film Festival

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