Review of Doctor Strange (2016) by Ross B — 27 Jul 2017

Date: January 11, 2017.

Author: Ross Batchelor.

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Well, 2016 has been.... a year. A lot of it not so great; whether it be political things that have occurred and (in my own opinion) really shouldn't have, deaths of well-loved celebrities, of which there has been plenty, or personal drawbacks such as exam results which have been pretty disappointing and may have led to the disuse of this blog, but there were plenty good things about that happened too. In fact, there were quite a few good things. A lot of great music has came out in 2016, Rocket League's just as good as it was last year (my taste in games isn't too diverse), all my sports teams are playing good, and I have really enjoyed the majority of the films I have seen over the course of 2016. It wasn't as good a year as the last two were for movies, but that would be a tough ask to live up to. It's been my first year where I've gone to the cinema regularly to see movies as soon as possible instead of just waiting to watch them on my shitty DVD player. So now I have a pretty large list of films to sift through to find my favourites.

I should probably note that I have not seen nearly as many films as I had wanted to this year, so I might miss a couple that I would maybe enjoy enough to stick them on.

This list. Some will be eligible for my 2017 list (La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, A Monster Calls, Moonlight, etc) due to their release date in the UK. I've not decided yet, but I will either include these films in my 2017 list, or I will create a list at some point for the top late movies of 2016, or perhaps just redo this list with the others involved, but we'll get to that when we get to that. So without further ado, here are my top 15 favourite films of 2016.

Number 15 - Deadpool:

Deadpool was the first movie that I had watched in 2016 in a cinema, and after leaving the cinema I was pretty damn impressed and happy with what I got. As a fan of the character, I had hyped myself up quite a lot for the film and at the time it had delivered for me in a big way. I loved Ryan Reynold's performance as the titular character, I really enjoyed the comedy throughout the film and probably didn't not smile during any of it, I thought the villain was pretty good in an 'I literally want you to die' kind of way, and I didn't care about how simple and relatively unimportant the plot was, as the film was far too much fun to care about that. This film was to introduce the character, and it did it really well. However, over the past few months, the more and more I've thought about it, the less impressive the movie became to me. I then watched it with my little brother a couple of months ago, and while I still got good laughs out of many of the scenes, I just didn't find myself as sucked in as I had been before. The sheer (and deliberate) stupidity of the film just didn't charm me as much as it had done on first viewing. Nevertheless, the wonderfully thick characters portrayed by some good acting and the amount of jokes that hit made this film still worth the watch, although I'd maybe leave watching it again for while, if ever.

Number 14 - 10 Cloverfield Lane:

Image result for 10 cloverfield lane.

I had not (and still haven't) seen the original short film Cloverfield, upon which this story was based on. Despite this, it didn't effect how much I enjoyed the film when I saw it. Dan Trachtenberg crafts a fantastically gripping psychological thriller in his feature film debut, as he shows a tale of distrust and warped reality that keeps you guessing on what's going to happen next. The performances by those such as Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), John Gallagher Jr. (The Newsroom) and John Goodman (Don't pretend you don't know who he is) are brilliant, and their chemistry really helps show the unease in their bizarre situation. Now, if only I hadn't hated the end of the film, then it would most likely have made it further down the list. In what I assume ties into the original short film, the end incorporates sci-fi elements in a way that annoyed me by seemingly completely changing the mood of the film (although in hindsight maybe not as much). Despite that, I had a real good time watching 10 Cloverfield Lane, though I don't know whether I'll be crazy excited to watch a sequel if it follows how this film ended. Regardless, this was a very good movie.

Number 13 - Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping:

Image result for popstar never stop never stopping.

As an ex-The Lonely Island fan when I was a young(-er) kid, I was definitely curious on how their mockumentary set around a fictional boyband and the result of their splitting up would pan out. Thankfully, I was treated to one of the funniest films I had seen all year. The three guys use their great chemistry and noted absurdist humour to make a mental yet worryingly possible story of how fame can affect people. Conner "4Real" Friel (Andy Samberg) has the majority of the focus, and doesn't waste it with some ridiculous, yet hysterical songs and shocking antics that resemble an OTT version of someone like Justin Bieber. The other former band members (Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone) also have some great lines, and celebs like Sarah Silverman, Bill Hader and many more have really enjoyable cameos. While I felt the film dragged a little near the end, I've got to say that I believe Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is one of my favourite comedy films of the year, if not my absolute favourite.

Number 12 - Doctor Strange:

Image result for doctor strange.

Now I'm no massive superhero film fan, much less a Marvel fanboy, but I found that the Marvel films released in 2016 were of a pretty high overall standard, and there wasn't one that I didn't enjoy to some extent. The best of the bunch however has been Doctor Strange, starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, The Imitation Game). Cumberbatch puts on an expectedly good performance as the titular character, a man who travels the world to find a cure his nerve damage from a traffic collision, but on his journey he discovers a magic known to very few and an evil trying to obtain it for heinous purposes. The sheer fact that it's Marvel makes it obvious that the special effects will look fantastic, and the movie has some really good humour in it. For example, a scene with the Cloak of Levitation and a villainous henchman that had me nearly crying with laughter. But like many Marvel films, I wasn't concerned with whether or not the protagonist would survive (Deadpool kinda did that) and barely remembered the plot as soon as I had left the cinema. Still a good, fun movie that is very nice to look at and is worth seeing.