So how good was 2016 in film?

Honestly, pretty great. La La Land, Moonlight, and Arrival are all-time classics in my book. Silence and Paterson are masterpieces I can't wait to re-visit. O.J.: Made in America is one of the best docs. I've ever seen. And 20th Century Women, The Wailing, Sing Street, American Honey, The Handmaiden, and The Red Turtle are all fucking fantastic, and would all get an 8.5-9/10 for me. The rest of my top 20 is really solid as well. 

It's hard for me to rank it among other years, though, because this is the first year that I've gotten so in-depth in keeping up to date with the year's releases. And even still, I have some that I haven't gotten to yet. 

Something like...

Tower
Storks
Eddie the Eagle
Take Me to the River
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Hell or High Water
Arrival
Blue Jay
Krisha
Train to Busan

Really turned out to be pretty great. Tower and La La Land struck a chord with me and are among my favorites of all time. And then there are string of other brilliant movies like Blue Jay, The Eyes of My Mother, Manchester by the Sea, Jackie, Hell or High Water, Moonlight, The Edge of Seventeen, Arrival and so many others. The last 2 months was such a knockout.

Somewhere around October last year I also found myself not liking the year too much.
But I ended up with a Top 20 I am fairly in love with.

I usually have more Foreign Films in my Top 20, so either this years Foreign Films weren't as good or the English speaking films were just better.

01. Moonlight
02. Toni Erdmann
03. OJ: Made in America
04. The Handmaiden
05. Arrival
06. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
07. Kubo and the Two Strings
08. Moana
09. Zootopia
10. The Edge of Seventeen
11. Jackie
12. Paterson
13. Divines
14. Manchester by the Sea
15. Closet Monster
16. Captain Fantastic
17. Don't Breathe
18. 10 Cloverfield Lane
19. A Man Called Ove
20. Midnight Special

HM: Train to Busan, Green Room, The Invitation, The Little Prince

Meh.

A small selection of great films surrounded by a vast sea of garbage.

An excellent year. It produced two films to get a 10/10 from me (Nocturnal Animals and The Jungle Book), the first year to pull that off since 2004 (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). Two additional solid entries made my top 100 (Rogue One and Florence Foster Jenkins).

SW Rouge One was the best imo.

Easily the worst, and I thought 2015 and 2014 were pretty bad too, but by comparison they're fantastic years. I'm only truly passionate about my top two, maybe three, which is hard to say. And even then I wouldn't call those three best of the decade stuff. Really just not good. Some nice documentaries, but that's all I'll really take away from 2016 in regards to best of the decade (save Casey Affleck probably).

So many disappointments, and most of the stuff in my top ten I saw way back in March anyway. Just really lackluster. 2017 is already more promising and it's only February.

For reference, this is my top ten:

01. Manchester by the Sea.
02. Welcome to Happiness.
03. O.J.: Made in America.
04. The Eyes of My Mother.
05. Swiss Army Man.
06. Café Society.
07. The Handmaiden.
08. La La Land.
09. The Red Turtle.
10. The Lobster.

2016 turned out to be a very good year (and I've a few key films left to see, esp. The Wailing, Twentieth Century Women, and The Salesman):

1. The Lobster
2. The Handmaiden
3. I Daniel Blake
4-9. Julieta, The Witch, Love and Friendship, Toni Erdmann, Spring Street, Zootopia

And while none of the main Oscar-nom'd films really worked for me, LLL, Moonlight, HoHW, Hidden Figures, Lion, Arrival, Manchester all had their strong points and were mostly very watchable. American Honey, Dead Pool, Rogue One also had their moments.

based on my current ratings, it is my favorite this decade, but i guess that will change again.