10 BEST FILMS OF 2016 as selected by The Film Corner's Greg Klymkiw - includes Klymkiw's Worst Films of the Year and individual accolades for Best Director, Actress, Actor, Script, Etc.

I had such a great year at the movies that I am forced to cheat a bit with my annual Ten Best List. (You'll also find my individual craft accolades and my Worst of 2016 below.)

Here then are my selections of those pictures and achievements that tickled my fancy in 2016 and yes, there are plenty of ties amongst the lot. Don't like it? Don't read on. It's my list and not yours, but Good Goddamn it's a solid list, so pay attention!!!


Greg Klymkiw's 10 Best Films of 2016
(in ALPHABETICAL order)

THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE (tied with Dog Eat Dog)
Now, just the thought of a movie starring Brian Cox (Manhunter, Adaptation) and Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild, Killer Joe) as father-son coroners slicing and dicing their way into a nude, gorgeous haunted corpse is enough to tantalize the horror buds. That it's the first Engish-language film by the Norwegian Trollhunter director André Øvredal should send all horror aficionados into conniption fits of joy. The Autopsy of Jane Doe is one of the creepiest, scariest horror films of the year. With the uber-talented Øvredal at the helm, brilliantly utilizing the astonishingly-designed single-location set to maximum impact, we are drawn into a gloriously terrifying and happ-happ-happily sickening cesspool of sheer terror.
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE (tied with Suicide Squad)
In spite of myopic no-nothing critics who continue to crap on him, director Zack Snyder's virtuosity as a filmmaker battered me into glorious submission with this epic DC showdown twixt the alter egos of Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent. The picture places us in the realm of myth as it relates to 20th century political realities and beyond, but also brilliantly invokes elements of the Arthurian legends, not unlike Sir Thomas Mallory's "Le Morte d'Arthur". Add dollops of New Testament Golgotha fetishism to the mix and, "Bob's your Uncle!" (or in this case, your Uncle is Zack).
CHASING ASYLUM (tied with O.J.: Made in America)
Using a raft of hidden cameras, Oscar-winning filmmaker Eva Orner chillingly exposes the evil committed by Australia on people who need the country's help, not its disdain. The Australian government, wanting to "protect" political refugees, implement a series of policies designed to "save" lives. That's what they tell us, anyway. The reality is that Australia does not want the bad publicity (and, uh, the inconvenience) of bodies washing up on their shorelines from refugee boats. Most of all, though, the country is run a bunch of ignorant racists who want to keep refugees out of their country - period! What the Aussie rulers have done is tantamount to cruel straight-up incarceration and torture. Orner's film is not only an eye-opener, but a powerful call to action for the rest of the world to speak out against these utterly horrifying, racist actions.
CHRISTINE (tied with God Knows Where I Am)
This is a great movie! The meticulous detail with which screenwriter Craig Shilowich captures the ins-and-outs of a TV newsroom (not to mention the period detail) is a thing of beauty. He expertly charts the trajectory/descent of the title character (a stunning Rebecca Hall as the famed 70s TV news reporter Christine Chubbuck), never allowing us to feel like anything, structurally or otherwise, is familiar or by rote. Director Antonio Campos demonstrates the kind of control and careful virtuosity needed to navigate the waters of Christine's journey as she looks for love, wends through a complex relationship with her mother (with whom she lives), tries to maintain her journalistic principals, generate work that matters, secure a position in a larger TV market and, as if this wan't enough, deal with both psychological and physical maladies.
LA CIEL FLAMAND (tied with I Olga Hepnarova)
Single Mom Sylvie (Sara Vertongen) runs a tidy little brothel with her Mother. Bearing the moniker "La Ciel Flamand" (the almost hilariously oxymoronic English translation is "Flemish Heaven"), the modest house of ill repute, nestled off a grubby highway under the grey Belgian skies, is adorned in red lights and within, it seems an especially cozy refuge for gentlemen seeking womanly release. Still, it is a brothel and Sylvie's six-year-old Eline (Esra Vandenbussche, Vertogen's real-life child) is never allowed inside and instead, spends her time in the car or in the company of the kindly Uncle Dirk (Wim Willaert), a dedicated bus-drivin' man of the hangdog schlemiel persuasion. When the child is sexually assaulted, this kitchen-sink exploration of both motherhood and loneliness leads to a virtual explosion of mad intensity which knocks you flat on your ass, precisely because of director Peter Monsaert's observational eye throughout and the quiet intensity which permeates this gorgeous, love-filled slice of humanity.
DOG EAT DOG (tied with The Autopsy of Jane Doe)
The first few minutes of Paul Schrader's adaptation of Edward Bunker's classic crime novel "Dog Eat Dog" plunges us into a kaleidoscopic, drug-fueled fantasia that juicily ramps up to one of the most shocking acts of violence imaginable and then the picture forcibly butt-blasts us raw into an even more appalling "OH-FUCK-NO-REALLY?" salvo of horrifyingly hilarious carnage. As the screenwriter of Taxi Driver and director of Blue Collar, Hardcore, Light Sleeper, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, American Gigolo, Auto Focus and the insanely brilliant and unfairly-drubbed The Canyons, the very idea of Schrader directing a Bunker adaptation makes the mouth water. The execution goes well beyond anticipatory salivation - Schrader pins us to the floor and fiercely has his way with us. And we cum and we cum and we cum. Following the adventures of three inept, albeit vicious criminals (Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe and Christopher Matthew Cook) yields the best crime picture of the year.
GOD KNOWS WHERE I AM (tied with Christine)
Too many filmmakers forget about the power of poetry in cinema. This is especially endemic in documentary work where far too many pictures simply impart the facts and/or become so wrapped up in "story" that no matter how proficient the films are, they are - as films - all about the issue and/or subject matter at the centre of the work. This does not plague Todd and Jedd Wider's God Knows Where I Am. The picture is an absolute heartbreaker and a good deal of its success is directly attributable to its pace, style and structure which generates a film infused with all the qualities of the sublime. I challenge anyone to not weep profusely at several points within its elegiac 99-minute running time as the picture charts the last weeks of Linda Bishop (beautifully voiced from her diaries by executive producer Lori Singer), an intelligent, sensitive middle-aged woman found dead in an abandoned New Hampshire farmhouse.
HACKSAW RIDGE (tied with Maliglutit/Searchers)
Let's put Mel Gibson's bilious private life aside - God knows we're happy to do it for Roman Polanski and Woody Allen - and let us embrace the fact that he is one of America's greatest living filmmakers. From his populist Oscar-winning historical epic Braveheart, to the numbingly spiritual Passion of the Christ and through to the genuinely insane Apocalypto, Gibson has proven, time and time again that he's the real thing, an artist of uncompromising vision. Hacksaw Ridge puts Gibson right over the top. With this mad, frenzied magnificently impassioned biopic of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Medal of Honor, for service above and beyond the call of duty, Gibson sends the Richter scales of Cinema into nuclear overdrive. Veering from gloriously romantic to gob-smackingly violent, Gibson straps us into a straightjacket and grinds our faces into the beauty of love, the horror of war and the near-Christ-like ascension to faith in everlasting life. And the battle scenes, oh the battle scenes: they have few equals.
THE HAPPIEST DAY IN THE LIFE OF OLLI MAKI (tied with Toni Erdmann)
Is it possible for anyone to have a happy day in Finland? Well, amateur boxer and former Olympic champ Olli Mäki (Jarkko Lahti) hopes so. It's 1962 and he's been entered into a professional bout in Helsinki against the formidable American fighter Davey Moore (John Bosco Jr.), a lean, mean boxer with over 60 wins behind him. Can a sweet, young fighter from the sticks really hold his own in a bout touted as Finland's big shot at boxing supremacy on the world stage? For all intents and purposes, Olli is Finland's "Great White Hope" and the pressures placed upon him seem insurmountable. Worst of all, Olli is severely distracted. He's falling in love. This is one of the best boxing films ever made. Filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen's direction is infused with attention to the smallest details and results in a picture where the stuff of life provides indelible moments of dramatic and emotional resonance far beyond the cliches which litter so many sports films. The love story itself is wildly, deliriously romantic to the point of instilling the most delightful frissons of loving goooseflesh. It's one of the few movies I've seen which manages to create a feeling of butterflies in the tummy which only mad, passionate love can inspire.
HELLO DESTROYER (tied with Werewolf)
In addition to the most Canadian movie never made in Canada, Slap Shot, Canada itself has yielded a number of terrific pictures about its National Sport (Face Off, Paperback Hero, Goon), but none with the genuine force and power of Hello Destroyer. Writer-Director Kevan Funk paints a veritable portrait of Hell; a stylized blend of expressionism and neorealism that keeps us on the edge of our seats. Prince George, British Columbia is often considered Canada's most dangerous city, but in Funk's dazzling feature-length debut, it's not the criminal element anyone need fear, but rather, Tyson Burr (Jared Abrahamson), the newest recruit of the city's minor league hockey team The Warriors. He's a goon, you see. His job is to provide muscle and he delivers the goods with a cool viciousness. Alas, there is something far more brutal and dangerous in the world of hockey than fists and lumber smashed into the teeth - it's politics. When Tyson's enforcing results in a horrifying and tragic incident during a game, our hero meets his biggest adversary of all; shame, shunning and aimlessness.
I, DANIEL BLAKE (tied with A Quiet Passion)
In a world where the poor seem to be better off dying than face the indignity of their supposed benefactors, one wonders what's more evil - the government or its vile, petty bureaucrats who coldly implement policies designed to keep people down whilst supporting the greed of the 1%. Ken Loach, one of cinema's great humanitarians, takes us on a harrowing roller coaster ride of those caught up in the cold-blooded silos of social assistance in contemporary Britain. I, Daniel Blake tells the story of a 59-year-old skilled construction worker (Dave Johns) who suffers a heart-related accident on the job and rightfully applies for benefits. In spite of his serious condition and a desire to get better and return to work, a soulless clerk purporting to be a "medical expert" ticks off a ludicrous series of boxes which deny him basic care. Funny, bittersweet and tear-wrenching, the picture will certainly preach to the converted with aplomb, but should be required viewing for every petty bureaucrat in the world. They kill, you see. They are the minions of the world's true evil.
I, OLGA HEPNAROVA (tied with La Ciel Flamand)
A grim, superbly realized feature-length dramatic biography about the last person ever executed in Czechoslovakia. Writer-directors Petr Kazda and Tomas Weinreb have crafted a compulsive, moving and shocking film about mental illness as a genuine affliction. It can result in evil actions, but the perpetrators are, more often than not, sick in mind, body and soul. Healing and caring has escaped them. I, Olga Hepnarová speaks not just for one, but all of them. The astonishing young actress Michalina Olszanska plays mass-murderer Hepnarová from age 13 to her death 10 years later. She manages to pull off the near-impossible task of a poker-faced intensity that forces us to look beneath the veneer and into her eyes, which alternate between shark-like death stares and deep humanity, ranging from innate intelligence, sensitivity and confusion, to pain and anger, and even, on occasion, humour. She delivers one of the great screen performances of the new millennium and it serves the superb screenplay and austere mise en scène perfectly.
MALIGLUTIT/SEARCHERS (tied with Hacksaw Ridge)
Inspired by John Ford's The Searchers, Zacharias Kunuk serves up one of the most compelling and exciting action-adventure pictures of the year. Set against the backdrop of the Canadian north, a father and son obsessively chase after a group of men who slaughter much of their family and kidnap their women. That's it - on the surface. Below the simple veneer, a tale of family, love and a culture rooted in a land of harsh beauty roils with uncompromising resonance. Kunuk captures the rich tradition of the Inuk people and his visual storytelling acumen reaches a dazzling pinnacle. He paints a portrait of good guys and bad guys, but does so with the kind of deep strokes which reveal humanity on both ends of the spectrum.
MOONLIGHT (tied with She's Allergic to Cats
Written and Directed by Barry Jenkins, this exquisitely unique film in three “movements” stars Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes as a young African-American coming of age. We share his journey through life from childhood (as a sensitive bullied kid living with his crack-addicted mother), adolescence (as a kid discovering his sexuality on the cusp of manhood) to early adulthood (as a man seeking truths which have so far eluded him). We experience this man's life in a cinematic chamber piece that is as poetically musical as it is evocative in ways that are both culturally specific and universal at the same time.
O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA (tied with Chasing Asylum)
Ezra Edelman's epic documentary portrait of O.J. Simpson is no simple biography. Running just under eight hours long, we are, of course, led through the ins-and-outs of the former football/movie star's life: his rise to fame, his criminal and civil trials for murder and his eventual incarceration for armed robbery and kidnapping, but Edelman, deftly weaving existing footage and new interviews, has crafted a work that is so much more. It is ultimately the story of racism, class and justice in America and as such, the film takes one of the most notorious figures in 20th Century American history and creates a tragedy on a Shakespearean scale - one that proves to be as moving and incendiary as anything wrought before on film. It is not simply a film about being "made" in America, it stands as a truly great history of America itself.
A QUIET PASSION (tied with I, Daniel Blake)
Terence Davies is unquestionably the greatest living filmmaker in the UK and amongst the world's best filmmakers - ever. His quietly passionate dramatic film biography of poet Emily Dickinson features his trademark tableaux, gorgeous stately pace and his indelible use of music (here being the music of poetry). Cynthia Nixon knocks the wind out of you with her astonishing performance and an almost unrecognizable Keith Carradine chills to the bone. What might be the films's greatest triumph is that one could go into it knowing NOTHING about Emily Dickinson and emerge with both an edifying cinematic experience AND a reason to get to know her.
SHE'S ALLERGIC TO CATS (tied with Moonlight)
Though there is no official genre called "schlubs who get to successfully seduce babes", She's Allergic To Cats would definitely be leading the charge if such a thing did officially exist - it's kind of like a Woody Allen picture on acid through the lens of wonky, nutty 80s video art. I found the picture endlessly dazzling, deliriously perverse and rapturously romantic. Nebbish hero Mike Pinkney has a dream: to make a feature film homage to Brian De Palma's Carrie - with CATS!!! Amidst the slacker/McJob existence he leads, Mike miraculously hits it off with Cora (Sonja Kinski - Nastassja's daughter, Klaus's granddaughter) a mega-babe who happily agrees to a date. The entire love story is mediated through Mike's filmmaking/video-art perspective. The result is a chiaroscuro-like melange of garish "video" colours, cheesy (though gorgeous) dissolves and plenty of sexy video tracking errors.
SUICIDE SQUAD (tied with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice)
Oh, to be a kid again! What pure, unadulterated joy! And I have writer-director David Ayer to thank for this happy blast into my past. Suicide Squad has cool heroes, even cooler villains, high stakes for the world of the film (and its characters) and most of all, it's infused with sacrifice, sentiment and a big heart. It's also gorgeously shot, snappily edited, overflowing with a great selection of immortal classic songs, an original score that pounds with power and replete with a juicy ensemble cast. Seriously. What's not to like? Or, for that matter, love? What we essentially get here is a comic book remake of The Dirty Dozen - one that still manages to resonate with freshness and originality. The simple idea of villains/criminals being used to fight evil drives the picture and Ayer's wonkily wonderful script offers up a fun first third which provides lively origins for the various criminals who will make up the suicide squad of super heroes. And, Jared Leto's rendering of The Joker manages to leave Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger behind like so much dust in the wind. Leto is: THE. BEST. JOKER. EVER. (Well, Caesar Romero comes close, but Leto even blows the Mad Latin Lover to smithereens.
TONI ERDMANN (tied with The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki)
If you do the wrong math on Toni Erdmann, you might be tempted to assume a 162-minute running time and its country of origin (Germany) will yield an unbearably dreary slog, so whatever you do, don't be a dumkopf in your calculations; Maren Ade's lovely picture yields one of the funniest, most heartwarming and celebratory experiences you'll have at the movies this year. Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek) is a hangdog retired old schlub who perks up his life (and those around him, when they're so willing) with a seemingly endless supply of practical jokes which he pulls off with costumes (including fake buck teeth) and a totally straight face. His adult daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller), a public relations executive in the field of international relations is less amused. Her poker face in the joy department matches Winfried's in the gag sweepstakes. There's clearly a deep love between father and daughter, but also an estrangement as she's tried to move on and create a life and career for herself. Father-daughter relationships have their own unique complexities and writer-director Ade captures this dynamic with considerable artistry.
WEREWOLF (tied with Hello Destroyer)