In compiling this list, I fairly quickly gave up on putting things in any sort of ranked order. Instead, I have three broad sections: Movies I truly enjoyed & would highly recommend, movies that were an excellent way to pass some time, and movies that I saw but wouldn’t necessarily recommend wholeheartedly. Here, then, are those sections, with no concrete ordering within them:
Movies I truly enjoyed & would highly recommend
The Fits
The VVitch
Arrival
Jackie
Kate Plays Christine
Moonlight
A Bigger Splash
Midnight Special
10 Cloverfield Lane
Green Room
(I would especially recommend doing a double feature of Jackie and Kate Plays Christine; likewise with Midnight Special and 10 Cloverfield Lane)
Movies that were an excellent way to pass some time
In Order of Disappearance
Rogue One
The Lobster
City of Gold
Deepwater Horizon
Swiss Army Man
Hell or High Water
Ghostbusters
Don’t Think Twice
Movies that I saw but wouldn’t necessarily recommend wholeheartedly
Author: The JT LeRoy Story
Mavis!
Cameraperson
Love and Friendship
Nuts!
Off the Rails
Weiner
Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made
Hail, Caesar!
La La Land
By Sidney Lumet
Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You
Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru
Note that at least half of the movies in the above category are perfectly fine. They’re just not memorable enough to make me want to urge you to rush out and see them. I guess it’s also worth mentioning that, except for certain extenuating circumstances, we generally don’t go see anything that has below around a 68 metascore on Metacritic.com.
I wish I had the stamina to blurb all of these, or even the top 10. I figure, though, that unlike my favorite albums, you’re probably more likely to have already read, or at least be able to find, ample blurbage about all of these.
There should be a fourth category: Movies that I likely would have loved, had I been given the opportunity to see them. Sigh.