The counterpart to the Strangelove in the world of EYG is The Liz, named after the beautiful Elizabeth Taylor, and it is presented to the best actress of the year.

Again, before we start, here are the Honorable Mentions:  Ruth Negga (Loving), Vera Farmiga (Conjuring 2), Melissa McCarthy & Kristin Wiig (Ghostbusters), Renee Zellweger (Bridget Jones’s Baby), Emily Blunt (Girl on a Train).

Top Actresses of 2016

#5.  Felicity Jones (Rogue One).  Felicity Jones did a great job leading the first non-trilogy Star Wars flick.  Rogue One was the first stand alone Star Wars movie and, because of that, it took quite a risk. Still, Felicity Jones took on the character of Jyn and made it a character that people wanted to see.

#4.  Hailee Steinfeld (Edge of Seventeen).  Hailee Steinfeld was really good in True Grit, but here she has to carry the whole film.  And she succeeds tremendously.  She is funny, dramatic and very teenage in this wonderful coming of age story.  This was one of the most real performances of the year.

#3.  Amy Adams (Arrival & Nocturnal Animals).  Amy Adams had a great year.  She was the lead actress in two great movies and she brought something different to both of these roles.  In Arrival, Adams brought the intelligence.  She had to do the thinking.  In Nocturnal Animals, the film was made through her POV, so what we saw was how she saw it.  Amy Adams has really taken a step to being one of our finest actresses working today.

#2.  Emma Stone (La La Land).  Emma Stone is just transcendent in La La Land.  She sings.  She dances.  She is the heart of the film.  You hope for the best for her character and you feel for her when things do not go her way.  She has amazing chemistry with her co-star Ryan Gosling and her smile can light up the screen.  She does some magic here.

and our winner of The Liz for 2016 is….

#1.  Viola Davis (Fences).  In the Golden Globes and the Oscars, they submitted her under the supporting actress category, but that is a crime.  Viola Davis is a lead actress in fences and delivers one of the rawest, most powerful performances of the year.  Yes, I found the film itself to have several flaws, but the performances of Davis and her co-star Denzel Washington were awe-inspiring.  Viola Davis has shown herself to be about as big of a powerhouse actress as you are going to find.

We will now be awarding the “Strangelove.”  This is the award given here at EYG to the Best Actor in a Movie.  It is, of course, in honor of the EYG Hall of Famer Peter Sellers and his tour de force performance in Dr. Strangelove.

First:  Honorable Mention:  Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), Chris Evans (Captain America: Civil War), Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool), Michael Shannon (Elvis & Nixon), Ben Foster (Hell or High Water)

#5.  Paul Dano (Swiss Army Man).  Dano had to be able to hold everything together or else this whole movie would fail.  How many farting corpse movies have you ever seen?  But Dano brought the humanity to the role and sold us his desperation to find his way home using whatever means necessary.  He had a great report with Daniel Radcliffe and they made a great film.

#4.  Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge).  Garfield has come a long way since Amazing Spider-man 2.  He shows the full gamut of emotion here and showed us what a real life hero was like.  The second half of this movie is very difficult to watch, but it is incredibly inspiring and a big part of that comes from Andrew Garfield.

#3.  Casey Affleck (Manchester By the Sea).  Casey Affleck’s best performance ever?  Certainly. Affleck is understated and kept his pain from the horrible circumstances of his life close to his breast.  You wondered through the film why he couldn’t just move back to Manchester to raise his nephew.  You found out.  And it was heart breaking.

#2.  Ryan Gosling (La La Land).  Gosling is another one of those actors who has shown us that he can do anything.  His turn as a jazz musician hoping to own his own club and help save jazz is amazing, and his chemistry with Emma Stone is off the charts.  Gosling sings, dances, plays the piano and just knocks our socks off.

and winner of this year’s Strangelove Award is….

#1.  Denzel Washington (Fences).  I was not a huge fan of the movie Fences.  I had certain problems with the plot, the set up, how it felt like a play.  But there was no denying that Denzel Washington was brilliant as Troy, the ex-Negro league baseball player who may not be as good of a guy as he seemed.  The dialogue in this film was electric and Denzel delivered it with as much gusto as you could ever imagine.

Best Supporting Actor

#10. Kevin Spacey (Elvis & Nixon)

#9.  Aaron Eckhart (Sully)

#8.  Jack Renner (Sing Street)

#7.  Stephen Lang (Don’t Breathe)

#6.  John Goodman (10 Cloverfield Lane)

#5.  Alan Rickman (Eye in the Sky)

#4.  Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water)

#3.  Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)

#2.  Daniel Radcliffe (Swiss Army Man)

#1.  Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals)

Best Supporting Actress

#10.  Margot Robbie (Suicide Squad)

#9. Nicole Kidman

#8.  Kate McKinnon (Ghostbusters)

#7.  Leslie Jones (Ghostbusters)

#6.  Naomi Harris (Moonlight)

#5.  Lupita Nyong’o (Queen of Katwe)

#4.  Morena Baccarin (Deadpool)

#3.  Helen Mirren (Eye in the Sky)

#2.  Michelle Williams (Manchester By the Sea)

#1. Tilda Swinton (Doctor Strange)

Our Top Ten Directors for 2016.

#10.  Clint Eastwood (Sully)

#9.  Barry Jenkins (Moonlight)

#8.  Jon Favreau (The Jungle Book)

#7.  Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (Swiss Army Man)

#6.  Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester By the Sea)

#5.  The Russo Brothers (Captain America: Civil War)

#4.  Mel Gibson (Hacksaw Ridge)

#3.  Denis Villeneuve (Arrival)

#2.  Tom Ford (Nocturnal Animals)

#1.  Damien Chazelle (La La Land)

Chazelle seems obvious to me.  What a brilliant job directing this film, with so many great numbers and dance routines.  He has now two consecutive huge winners in La La Land and Whiplash.  Obviously he loves music, jazz in particular.  Tom Ford wove those two (or three) stories together seamlessly in Nocturnal Animals and nearly took that top spot.  Mel Gibson does great battleground scenes and Hacksaw Ridge was a tough second half to watch.  Just ahead of Gibson was Denis Villeneuve whose Arrival was the thinking man’s sci-fi hit of the year.  The Russo Brothers deserve the credit for taking a cast as large as Civil War and still making that film feel like a Captain America movie.

A new category this year to commemorate a skill that is used quite frequently.  A great animated or CGI character requires a great voice performance and the actors many times do no have other actors to play off of.

Giving out the first “I Am Groot” Voice Acting award is going to be great, but before we do, I am going to give out an honorary “I Am Groot” Award for one of the greatest voice acting performance of all time.  The Honorary “I Am Groot” goes to Robin Williams for Aladdin.  Easily one of the greatest performances ever.  I almost named the award after EYG Hall of Famer Robin Williams, but I chose instead the great one line wonder from Guardians of the Galaxy, Groot, voiced by Vin Diesel.

Honorary winner of I Am Groot Award: Robin Williams as the Genie. 

Anyway, back to 2016.

The top ten Voice Acting Performances are…

#10.  Kevin Conroy (Batman: Killing Joke).  Another EYG Hall of Famer, it was great to have Kevin Conroy back for the Killing Joke.  Unfortunately, the film was not as good as it could have been.  The part with Conroy and Mark Hamill was epic.

#9.  Ginnifer Goodwin (Zootopia).  One of the reasons that Zootopia works is because of the great voice work by Ginnifer Goodwin as Judy Hopps.  Goodwin, who plays Snow White on ABC’s Once Upon a Time, brought that female rabbit to life in one of Disney’s big hits of the year.

#8.  Bill Murray (The Jungle Book).  Voice acting is not always animated.  Some times it is in a live action film, with a CGI character.  Murray’s casting as Baloo the Bear was perfect and his singing of “Bear Necessities” was a highlight of that film.

#7.  Jason Bateman (Zootopia).  Zootopia would not have worked without the great chemistry between Judy Hopps and Bateman’s character Nick Wilde.  Bateman had the perfect delivery for the sneaky fox.

#6. Mark Hamill (Batman: Killing Joke).  I don’t know how anyone expects to do a voice for an animated Joker because there is only one.  Mark Hamill is clearly the best Joker voice ever, and his work in the Killing joke proves that.

#5.  Ellen DeGeneres (Finding Dory).  Ellen was able to take Dory, a potentially one-note character, and make her fit a full length film.  Some times those secondary characters cannot carry their own film (looking at you, Minions) but Dory was a huge success.  And a big part of that is Ellen’s great voice work.

#4.  Adam West/Burt Ward (Batman: The Return of the Caped Crusaders).  This brought every last bit of nostalgia from the old Batman series back to the big screen and I loved it.  Having EYG Hall of Famer Adam West and Burt Ward able to be around to do the voices was extra special.

#3.  Dwayne Johnson (Moana).  The Rock as a Polynesian demi-god?  Is that considered type casting?  The Rock does a greta job in my favorite animated movie of the year.  He even sings, the Lin-Manuel Miranda song “You’re Welcome.”  What can’t the Rock do?  The character of Maui certainly took a great deal from The Rock.

#2.  Alan Tudyk (Rogue One).  One of the standout stars of the new Star Wars movie, Rogue One, was K2SO and that former Imperial Droid was voiced by Firefly actor Alan Tudyk.  Tudyk was also Heihei in Moana, Duke Weaselton in Zootopia, and had roles in Frozen and Big Hero 6.  Clearly, if you want a successful animated film, you need to get Alan Tudyk to voice something.  As for K2SO, he was considered by many to be one of the many highlights of Rogue One and I know I was upset when he met his fate.

and our first official “I Am Groot” Award winner goes to…

#1.  Auli’i Cravalho (Moana).  Moana herself was a huge hit.  Her voice was just beautiful and she was amazing with her singing.  This is all the more amazing when you consider that she began her career with Moana.  She wasn’t even going to audition for the role since there were so many amazing entries.  Goes to show you that you should always believe in yourself and give it your best effort.

Well, there is the list for the first ever “I Am Groot” Voice Acting Award.  I wonder if Groot will win his own award in 2017 when Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 comes out?

There was some great music in the movies this year.  The following will be the Best Movie Songs, plus the movies with the best use of music.  We also will be looking at television music as well.

Best Movie Music

#10.  Rules Don’t Apply (Rules Don’t Apply)

#9.  No Dames (Hail Caeser)

#8.  Finest Girl (Bin Laden) (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping)

#7.  The Riddle of the Model (Sing Street)

#6.  How Far I’ll Go (Moana)

#5.  Another Day of Sun (La La Land)

#4.  Up (Sing Street)

#3.  Heathens (Suicide Squad)

#2.  You’re Welcome (Moana)

#1.  Drive It Like You Stole It (Sing Street)

Best Use of Music in A Movie

#5.  Deadpool

#4.  Sing

#3.  Moana

#2  Sing Street

#1. La La Land

TV Music

#6.  “Release Me” by Corrina Repp  (Orange is the New Black)

#5.  “Ain’t It A Sin” by Charles Bradley (Luke Cage)

#4.  “Sour Times” by Portishead (American Crime Story: People vs. OJ)

#3.  “Heroes” by Peter Gabriel (Stranger Things)

#2.  “Bulletproof Love” By Method Man  (Luke Cage)

#1.  “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” -sung by the character Angela (Mr. Robot)

This is the “worst” winners of the year.

Worst Movie:  You have to wait for this one until the Top 30 Worst Movie list.

Worst Actor:  Gerard Butler (Gods of Egypt)

Worst Actress:  Naomi Watts (Shut In)

Worst SPX:  Gods of Egypt

Worst Sequel:  Zoolander 2

Worst Movie I Haven’t Seen:  Norm of the North

Worst Super Hero Movie:  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows

Worst Trailer for Awesome Movie:  Ouija: Origin of Evil

Best Trailer for Terrible Film:  Masterminds

Best Performance in a bad movie:  Will Smith (Collateral Beauty)

Most Overrated:  The Secret Life of Pets

Least Favorite Certified Fresh film at Rotten Tomatoes:  Love and Friendship (98%)

Favorite Movie that is “rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes:  The Legend of Tarzan (35%)

The Star of the Year.

What performer has had the biggest year?  This could be a movie actor, a musician, a tv star, or even a company.

Previous winners:  JJ Abrams, Marvel Studios, Jennifer Lawrence

This year’s EYG Star of the Year:

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Lin wrote and starred in the Broadway sensation Hamilton.  He won a Tony Award for his performance in the musical, which also won the Tony for Best Musical (and 10 other awards) as well as a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  He also wrote several of the songs for the Disney animated movie, Moana.  Miranda has been a huge pop cultural icon for 2016 and is only heading for bigger things.

Runners-up:  Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, The Stranger Things kids, “The Rock” Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Gosling, Kate McKinnon, Emma Stone. 

Here are the top ten best “moments” of pop culture and beyond.  Those moments that might be considered “Geek Moments”

#10.  Glenn, Abraham are killed by Negan on the Walking Dead.  The Walking Dead cliffhanger had made many people upset, but it did place eyes on the season 7 premiere.  Many wondered if the show would kill off Glenn in the same manner as the comic series did…at the end of Lucille.  So when Abraham tasted the barbed wire, Glenn fans everywhere took a sigh of relief.  But it was not over.  As a punishment for Daryl, Negan chose a second victim, and this time, Glenn was killed.  Shock filled the internet.  Many would say that the Walking Dead has not been as solid as it used to be, but they certainly provided quite the season premiere.

#9.  Captain America- Agent of Hydra?  The new series, Steve Rogers: Captain America saw Cap return from old man state back into healthy super soldier state.   However, the end of the first issue sent shockwaves through the comic community after Cap said those two fateful words, “Hail Hydra.”  Anger consumed the comic book fans as people swore to never read another Captain America book.  It was revealed soon that the memories of Cap as Hydra agent as a child were false memories implanted by the living cosmic cube Kobik. I must admit, I am really ready to have this story end. Seeing Cap as the villain is just wrong.

#8.  DC Rebirth. In 2016, DC Comic did another relaunch of its super hero continuity.  Going from the end of the New 52, DC intended to return to its old DC Universe while keeping some continuity from the New 52 books.  No matter what argument you can make about how DC does relaunches way too often, success cannot be debated.  Rebirth has been an extremely successful relaunch for DC Comics as they have seen their books’ sales reach high levels, even surpassing Marvel’s.  Whether or not this can be sustained is another question, but there is no denying that DC hit a homer with this.

#7.  Pokemon Go.  This was a short lived phenomenon that swept the nation, causing people to search for these Pokemon characters using their cell phones.  It was such a wild time that the Pokemon app was crashing, unable to contain the number of participants “Having to find them all.”

#6.  Hamilton.  Broadway got a huge hit this year.  Hamilton is a rap show about Alexander Hamilton and if you thought that was a strange combination, then you are not the only ones. However, with the great music by Lin-Manuel Miranda and word of mouth that was out of this world, Hamilton became the ticket to find.

#5.  Big Budget Summer Films Bomb.  Though there were some really great movies during 2016, many of the big summer blockbusters that we were looking forward to really underwhelmed us.  Independence Day: Resurgence, Jason Bourne, Ghostbusters, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Warcraft, The BFG, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Neighbors 2, Huntsman, X-Men: Apocalypse,  Zoolander 2.  These are all movies that under-performed and trended toward failures.  The small, independent movies still had quite a successful year, and there were some great summer movies (Captain America: Civil War for example) but the blockbuster certainly took its beating in 2016.

#4.  Disney makes all the Money $$$.  Meanwhile, Disney continued to rule the world.  With its studios like Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilms, Disney set a record for highest domestic total at $2.7 billion.  It has also passed $7 billion worldwide.  Both of these are records.  Disney has (currently) the top four grossing movies worldwide of the year with Captain America: Civil War, Finding Dory, Zootopia, and The Jungle Book. Rogue One is still climbing and, as of this post, has garnered $635.8 million for 11th place.  Add to this Dr. Strange (656.5 million) and Moana (342.8 million), the studio’s success is clear.

#3.  Too Many Deaths- #2016MustGo.  At some point, things have gotten too ridiculous.  At first, blaming the year was kind of a joke.  A way to have something to blame when we lost another huge star.  Then, it piled up.  Prince, Alan Rickman, Ali, Carrie Fisher, Leonard Cohen, Debbie Reynolds, Gene Wilder, George Micheal, David Bowie, Anton Yelchin are just a few of the A-list celebs that we lost in 2016.  As of this writing, we have about 2 1/2 days left… let’s hope that the blood sucking year 2016 has taken enough from us.

#2.  The Chicago Cubs win the World Series.  Something happened this year that some people have literally waited their entire lives for.  The Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series.  The last time the Cubs appeared in the World Series was 1945.  And they hadn’t won the World Series since 1908.  That was 108 years.  I am not a Cub fan, but I have to say that I am happy for those long suffering fans who never seemed to catch a break.  Whether it was billy goats or Steve Bartman, the Cubs always found a way to end up on the outside looking in.  But this season was different.  They had a great series with fellow long time losers Cleveland Indians, and the Cubs had to come back from a 3-1 deficit to win the championship.

#1.  Donald Trump, President-elect.  In any other year, the Cubbies winning the World Series would be far and away the number one geek moment.  However, 2016 was not a typical year.  2016 became the year when we elected our first reality star as president as Donald J. Trump was elected to be President of the USA.  This happened despite him losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 3 million votes.  This happened despite his constant Twitter rants that were many times inappropriate and most of the times childish.  This happened despite the release of tape from Access Hollywood where Trump spoke about “grabbing women by the p*ssy” and getting away with it because he was a celebrity.  He insulted women, Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims, other celebrities.  He said he would “lock up” Hillary.  He encouraged Russia to keep hacking into Hillary’s e-mails.  And yet, despite all of these potentially disqualifying events, Donald Trump won the election.  Who knows what is coming next?

Memes have become part of our online social media culture, and they can be a way we cope with the horrible things that happen in our world.  Humor is always a way to deal with pain, and many of these memes do just that.

I have picked my favorite six memes from 2016…

#6.  Evil Kermit

#5.  Ken Bone

#4.  Water Bottle Flip

#3.  Mannequin Challenge

#2.  Harambe

And #1.  Joe Biden!

Presenting our first “FRAME” Award for best animated film of 2016.  We have given the best animated film in the past including such films as Inside Out, Flashpoint, Big Hero 6, but now we have the official EYG FRAME Award to present.

Animation this year was okay.  We have had better years in the past.  I am only placing eight on the list of animation this year, with four making the bad list.  There were several that I did not see.  So when Ice Age’s new film is not on the bad list (or Norm of the North btw), I did not see it.

Two films that fall int he middle between the lists are Secret Life of Pets and Batman: Killing Joke.  Killing Joke could have been so good, but yet had to tack on a first half of the movie that had nothing to do with the story.  Pets was pretty average to below average, but was passable enough to avoid the bad list.

So here is the Top Ten Eight Animated Movies of 2016

#8.  Kung Fu Panda 3.  This was really a good movie but honestly, I forgot all about it until I went back over the other movies I reviewed this year.  I did not have to do that for the other movies on this list and thus, Kung Fu Panda 3 gets the #7 slot.  Still a greta film though.

#7.  The Little Prince.  This was on Netflix and was an adaptation of the beloved children’s story and this was done so well.  I had tears in my eyes watching The Little Prince.  This was an example of adding material to a film that actually fit into the story (hint hint Killing Joke) and made the movie better.

#6.  Sing.  Saw this one late in the year and really enjoyed it.  The story was simple.  I liked the characters.  And the music was engaging and entertaining.  That was about all that Sing was about.

#5.  Finding Dory.  I enjoyed this movie.  It would have been a better film if it hadn’t been constantly compared to Finding Nemo, which was a significantly better film.  Still enjoyed the story and the voice work from Ellen DeGeneres was top notch.

#4.  Kubo and the Two Strings.  A beautiful story with epic animation from the people at Laika.  Great characters on an epic adventure.  I did not love it as much as most people did, but this was really great, no doubt.

#3.  Zootopia.  Disney continued to be making all the money this year as Zootopia was one of the year’s biggest hits.  It also had a very subversive story with plenty of metaphoric moments that adults would understand while kids would laugh at.  Beautifully blended the viewing pleasure for the whole family.

#2.  Batman: The Return of the Caped Crusaders.  A personal favorite of mine because it brought back Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin.  Building off the success from the comics of Batman ’66, The Return of the Caped Crusaders was so full of nostalgia and fun that I had a smile on my face the whole time.  The animation did not measure up to the rest of this list, but I did not care.  It took me back to my childhood when I could watch these episodes and wonder how Batman and Robin were going to get out of this trap.  Loved this.

And our first official winner of the EYG FRAME Award goes to…

#1.  Moana.  So many great things here that, even with what was a very simple story, when put together, something special is created.  It had great music, a great female protagonist and The Rock.  What more do you need?  It also showed the Polynesian culture, something that we had not seen before.  Moana was my favorite animated experience of the year.

Top Four Worst

Again, I skipped out of quite a few animated films this year that looked to be awful.  I did not see the new Ice Age movie, Ratchet and Clank, Norm of the North, The Wild Life, Nut Job 2.  These are the four that made my list.

#4.  Sausage Party.  This was as disappointing as anything else.  I expected a lot of rauchy humor, and, though I got raunch, I did not get much humor.

#3.  Trolls.  Way too saccharine sweet for my taste buds.   It had some good moments, but it really was too much of a good thing.  Plus, it was predictable as heck.

#2.  Storks.  Did not like this one either.  There were so many stupid moments and the predictability of the film was so obvious.

#1.  Angry Birds.  Man this was horrible.  I hated this movie.  Nothing but  a cash grab.  Another example of the video game movie failing.  Dumb and boring.

It is time to present the prestigious Gomer Award for the biggest surprise of the year in the world of movies.  I had a lot of choices this year, actually even coming up with a list of honorable mentions.

Previous winners of the Gomer included:  The Gift, Edge of Tomorrow, We’re the Millers and The Campaign.

This year’s list starts here…

Honorable mention:  The Boy, The Little Prince, Don’t Breathe, Allied.

Top Ten Biggest Surprises for 2016

#10.  Deepwater Horizon.  This was one that the trailer did not sell properly for me.  I was not looking forward to this film and yet it turned out to be one of the best disaster films in many years.

#9.  Swiss Army Man.  I loved this movie.  I did not expect to come out of the farting corpse movie loving it so much.  Great performances from Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe in one of the most original films in a long time.

#8.  Bad Moms.  Most of the time, this type of movie doe snot interest me because it usually is not that funny.  Bad Moms broke that mold and had me laughing.

#7.  War Dogs.  I am not  a huge Jonah Hill fan so I anticipated not liking this movie.  And yet, I found it very entertaining and worth the time.

#6.  Barber Shop: The Next Cut.  Another comedy that I did not expect to laugh at, and yet I did.  I had never seen the other Barber Shop films so I did not hold high expectations for this, but it turned out really enjoyable.

#5.  13 Hours.  It was a film from Michael Bay being released in January.  How could this be anything but a horrid film.  Surprise!  It was really well done.  The Bay-isms were held to a minimum and the story was compelling.

#4.  Bridget Jones’s Baby.  There was no way I was going to like this.  I did not see other Bridget Jones movies and it felt like I was the wrong sex.  Still, this was really funny and I truly liked it.

#3.  The Legend of Tarzan.  Everything I saw about this new rendition of Tarzan looked to be crappy.  And then I saw the film and I found myself engaged and enjoying it.

#2.  Pee Wee’s Big Holiday.  Saw this on Netflix and watched it.  I don’t remember why I watched it.  I have never been a fan of Pee Wee Herman and had not seen his other films.  Still, I loaded up this new film and laughed all the way through it.  I couldn’t believe it myself.

But the 2016 Gomer will be awarded to the following film….

#1.  Ouija: Origin of Evil.  This was certainly going to be one of the worst films of 2016.  The first trailer was atrocious.  This was a sequel to one of the worst horror films of the last few years.  It was just a way to sell a few more Ouija boards from Parker Brothers.  And what happened?  They gave us compelling characters in an engaging and entertaining story and shocked the heck out of me.  As of this day, I cannot believe that Ouija: Origin of Evil was good, let alone on the possible list for my best movies of the year.  This was insanity and a runaway winner for the Gomer!

I do not usually get to see a lot of documentaries.  In fact, I have only seen a handful of documentaries this year.  In fact, over the last 48 hours, I beefed up the resume of docs seen thanks to Netflix, iTunes, Hulu and YouTube.

I do wish I could see more, but the only documentaries that tend to come to the theaters near me are the ones like Hillary’s Evil World and How She Plans to Destroy It.  Okay, that wasn’t the actually title of that film, but I did not see it.  Those types of political hack jobs by people like Dinesh D’Souza do not interest me.  I want to see a real documentarian.

I have a Top Ten list for Documentaries that I have seen in 2016.

#10.  Team Foxcatcher.  This was the real life story behind the film Foxcatcher.  The story of millionaire John E. DuPont and his building of a wrestling group he called Foxcatcher and the tragic end to the story.

#9.  Amanda Knox.  This was the amazing story of an American living in Italy who gets blamed, arrested and convicted of the brutal murder of her roommate.  However, the evidence is not compelling and “Foxy Knoxy” has to go through the Italian court system for years.

#8.  Michael Moore in Trumpland.  This was an interesting evening with filmmaker Michael Moore as he held a show in the heart of “Trump country” trying to convince Trump supporters that Hillary Clinton was the better choice.

#7.  Audrie & Daisy.  This documentary tells the stories of two underage females who had been sexually assaulted and how the community and the schools reacted to the girls.  This was very emotional and the sheriff from Maryville dealing with Daisy’s assault is one of the worst figures I have seen on film this year.

#6.  Beatles: Eight Days a Week. Ron Howard’s love letter to the tour of the Beatles across the USA.  There was very little conflict within this documentary, but the music is always great.

#5.  Gleason.  This was the sad but inspirational story of former NFL football player Steve Gleason who was diagnosed with ALS.  Watching the disease slowly eat away at Steve and seeing how it affected his wife and his father was heart breaking. And yet, he continues to fight to this day.

#4.  13th.  Director Ava DuVernay looks at racial strife and inequality in America and how the overcrowding in American prisons is one more symptom of the racial imbalance in our country.  The stats revealed in 13th are mind blowing.

#3.  The Resurrection of Jake the Snake.  A film focusing on former professional wrestler Jake Roberts and his attempt to get clean and sober.  Roberts got involved with Dallas Page and his DDP Yoga and credits that with saving his life.

#2.  Weiner.  This documentary followed around Anthony Weiner, former congressman who resigned in disgrace after he had sexted pictures of his penis to women.  Weiner decided to try to run for Mayor of New York, and this documentary followed him through that ill-fated campaign as the scandal returned.

#1.  Tickled.  This is easily the best documentary I saw this year, and it will be making my top movies list, somewhere.  Who thought that a fluff story for a New Zealand news program involving “competitive tickling” would devolve into a dark and sordid tale of harassment and online threats and cyberbullying?  There are things that happen in this film that you can not believe.

There are several disappointments from this year.  A disappointment does not have to be a terrible movie… just one that should have been so much better.

Previous “winners” of this award included:  In the Heart of the Sea, Amazing Spider-man 2, After Earth, Dark Knight Rises, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

Here are the runners-up to this year’s Spider-Man 3 Award.

#10.  Batman: Killing Joke.  I liked this film overall, but the first half was just terrible.  They added material in order to stretch the film out longer, but what they added… ugh.  It was very disappointing.

#9.  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  I went into this looking forward to a new entry in the Harry Potter-universe and I came out thinking how “eh” this could be.  Fantastic Beasts was okay, but nowhere near worthy of the Potter world.

#8.  Sausage Party.  It had its share of laughs, but there are only so many “f-words” and sex jokes that you can handle.  And it may have had some laughs, but it was not enough to really overcome the disappointments of the movie.

#7.  The Accountant.  A lot of people liked this film, but to me, it was pretty dull and needed to be considerably better. I was really looking forward to this film and found it a serious disappointment.

#6.  Assassin’s Creed.  I was not looking forward to this, but there were tons of people who had placed their hopes that this would finally be the movie to be made from an existing video game and be good.  It is one of the worst films of the year.

#5.  X-Men: Apocalypse.  Quite a step back from Days of Future Past.  Apocalypse was a waste of what should have been an epic villain.  The 4 Horsemen was tossed away.  The finale was not what it should have been.

#4.  The BFG.  Steven Spielberg creating a film from a property of Roald Dahl.  How could this be a miss?  You make it dull and boring.

#3.  Hail Caeser.  I had looked forward to this film for awhile.  The new Coen Brothers film was not as funny as I had hoped, and was pretty dull.

#2.  Independence Day: Resurgence.  How can you be disappointed with the sequel of one of the great summer action movies of all time?  You make a overall rotten film that spoils what you remember of the original.

And the “winner” of the Spider-Man 3 Disappointment of the Year is….

#1.  Batman v. Superman

This was the easy choice.  Batman v. Superman should have been the greatest super hero film of all time.  It had the first appearance together of the two biggest icons of the super hero world as well as the first arrival of Wonder Woman.  And yet, there was so much wrong with the film.  From Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor to “Martha!”, B v S was the biggest disappointment of the year.

Here’s hoping that 2017 does not see The Justice League on this list.

Whereas 2015 was the year of the “spy” movie, I do not think there is any doubt that 2016 is the year of the Horror movie.  The horror genre had a fantastic year, with multiple movies that told interesting stories with great characters.  There was a lot of originality in a genre that was in desperate need of it.  The best horror movies avoided the nonsensical jump scare and concentrated on scaring us in other ways.

Not that there still weren’t bad movies in the horror genre.  Of course there was, but this year just seemed to make fewer bad films and much better good ones.

Now, let me state this.  There are two movies that could be considered horror movies.  I have seen others list these as horror, but I am going to disqualify them from the list and just mention them here.  These two films are 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Shallows.  I really enjoyed both of these (10 Cloverfield Lane for sure will be making the big list), but they are borderline horror movie.  And with as many great one available this year, I am taking them out of the running.

What follows is the top ten list of horror movies this year.

Top Ten Best

Honorable Mention:  The Witch ( I didn’t like this as much as many others did), and The Forest. 

#10.  The Boy.  This one I thought was going to be horrible, but turned out to be entertaining enough for what it was.  I enjoyed Lauren Cohen’s performance.

#9.  Blair Witch.  The surprise sequel announced at Comic Con was good, but too familiar.  Still, this was loads better than the previous Blair Witch sequel and had many frighteningly chilling moments.  I also relaly liked the time loop idea that I wished they had done more with.

#8.  I Am Not A Serial Killer.    Saw this recently on Netflix and it was a deceptively fun performance from Doc Brown himself, Christopher Lloyd.  A monster movie and a love story all combined into one.

#7.  The Autopsy of Jane Doe.  Another one I just saw recently, I really enjoyed this. It felt like a mystery story and a procedural as well as a tense horror story.  This had a great set up and basically became a haunted house in a morgue situation.  Brian Cox was great as well.

#6.  Green Room.  Great work from Patrick Stewart and the dearly departed Anton Yelchin.  Green Room was hard to watch, made you squirm, and filled you with emotion as these characters got picked off one after another.  It was a slasher film in a year without too many.  It also show us how much of a tragic loss it was with the accidental death of Yelchin this year.

#5.  Conjuring 2.  The return of the Warrens in another story of demonic possession.  This time the Warrens travel to England to deal with a little girl who may or may not be faking this possession.  This was an enjoyable sequel with one of the best uses of music of the year as Ed Warren sang Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.”  I loved that scene.

#4.  Ouija: Origin of Evil.  There was no way this was going to be good.  It had a horrible trailer and was a sequel to a horrible movie.  And yet, this was great!  They focused on the characters and there were several really good performances.  Amazing.

#3.  Hush.  Another Netflix film, Hush was the home invasion film taken to a new level. It turned out to be almost a one-on-one battle for survival.  Very tense and suspenseful.

#2.  Lights Out.  A great concept for a horror movie and some really scary scenes.  Plus more development on character than on just jump scares.  Sure, there are a few plot holes in the story, but they can be excused because you are so invested in the characters.  Lights Out was an exceptional film.

And the winner of the Best Horror Movie Award for 2016 is...

#1.  Don’t Breathe.  This was another one that I thought was not going to be good.  I was not a fan of the trailer and I wondered how we could root for these kids who are trying to rip off this blind guy.  However, once I saw the film, all of those worries went away.  There were times when I literally did not want to breathe myself.  So intense.  So frightening.  This was so well done, so well written and acted that it was more than just a great horror movie.  It was a great movie.  And Steven Lang was just awesome.

However…. every horror movie wasn’t great this year.  We had our share of failures too.  So here is the top 5 worst horror movies.

Top 5 Worst

Dishonorable mention:  Neon Demon, The Disappointments Room

#5.  The Purge:  Election Year.  I am ready for the Purge movies to be over.  This even had LOST’s Elizabeth Mitchell and couldn’t be saved.

#4.  Incarnate.  Dreams.  Plus a good effort by Aaron Eckhart.  He really deserved better.  Of course, there was Mark Henry.  WWE produced.  Not good.

#3.  The Darkness.  Honestly, I don’t remember anything about this except for the movie poster with the prints on the bed.  (After a quick Google search)-oh yeah, this is Kevin Bacon and the kid who plays Bruce Wayne on Gotham.  That kid was in Incarnate too.  He really played the same character in both.   Bad horror year for him.

#2.  The Other Side of the Door.  This one has so many stupid things going on that it even gives horror movies a bad name.  Just don’t open the door.

#1.  Shut In.  Probably the stupidest killer ever.  This was a film that had Golden Globe nominated actor Jacob Tremblay and they had him be mute and deaf.  He had zero lines!  There were so many things that you had to accept to believe this movie was even possible.  What are Naomi Watts and Oliver Platt doing in this?  It had 0% on Rotten Tomatoes until recently.  It is now at 3% with one fresh review.