As the year comes to a screeching end, we dust ourselves off and reflect on the magical time of 2016. I mean, it wasn't all bad, right? Lots of nice memes and apathetic irony about current events to escape how terrible things are. Whoops, that started off as a positive statement and took a turn, didn't it? Well, anyway, in the spirit of escapism, I've created this list of all the movies I saw this year and put them into three categories: Good, Alright, and Bad. Now, I know people can get defensive about movies they like, so let me say this; just because I don't like a movie, doesn't mean you can't like the movie, ok? Ok, cool, let's begin.

Good

10 Cloverfield Lane

This movie kind of came out of nowhere and no one was really sure what the deal was with it. Is it a sequel to Cloverfield? Does it just have a similar name? What the heck is going on? Well apparently the original script was written under the name " The Cellar " but someone in production thought, "Oh well, people won't watch a movie unless it's a sequel," and so it became 10 Cloverfield Lane.

The premise is a woman gets in a crash and wakes up in a crazy prepper's survival bunker, and is told she can't leave because of unspecified apocalyptic events. The main role is played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, with the other roles played by John Goodman and John Gallagher. They are all great, but they kind of have to be when there're only three characters in your entire movie.

The atmosphere is great, and the character progression is fantastic, and by the way, you don't need to know anything about Cloverfield to enjoy this movie. Overall good movie with subtext to boot.

Zootopia

Now, if I were strictly going by movies I'd call "Good" or "Great" the list would be over already, but one movie does not a list make, so I've added Zootopia because it's one of the better "alright" movies. Ignoring all possible furry references, this is a decent kids movie that tries to make... some... kind of... societal statement? It's not really clear and doesn't make too much sense if you think about it too long. Is it a statement on class in society? Race? Disney is pretty far from Marxism, so it would make the most sense that the statements being made are about race, which leads to even more problems. But these are all fine considering it's a kids movie, and kids really don't give a toss about societal subtexts in their anthropomorphic animated movie.

The movie is about a rabbit trying to enter the metropolitan police force of Zootopia, a job typically held by predators. She tries to prove herself, has to make friends with a predator, plot happens, predators get scapegoated etc etc. It's not that important, as stronger points of this movie lie in the acting, visuals, and humor presented. All the voice actors do a great job, except Kesha who is clearly in this movie for marketing purposes, and all the characters have life and character to them. This is assisted by the great visuals of this movie, which include bright, appealing scenery, and well animated and stylized characters. Finally, the humor is appropriate and well written, making it enjoyable even if you're outside the PG audience range.

Rogue One

Once again, this one made it to the "good" list to make me seem less like a cynical asshole, but has merits that make it a little more than just alright. Not nearly as good as Episode 7, but still better than any of the prequels, it sits in a purgatory that hopefully doesn't represent the next Star Wars movies we're getting. I'm not sure what to say about the movie, really. It's the story of how they got the plans to destroy the Death Star (Spoiler alert: they blow up the Death Star), which doesn't really feel like a story that needed to be told or that anyone cared about. It all seems to be an excuse to throw in original storm troopers, Darth Vader, and CGI face Leia and Grand Moff Tarkin, among many other throwbacks.

The tone is too grim to be very fun, and all the comedic relief lies in a sarcastic robot, so it's clearly a balanced film. The acting is all around "Eh," it's alright, not really anything great from any of the actors, but enough for there to be something. Also, when I said the tone is too grim, I don't just mean in the story, I mean in the color palette aswell. There's so much damn gray and muted colors, the only visually appealing scenes are the ones on the beach planet.

Now at this point, you're thinking, "Oh wow, he said this movie was good, but all he's said are bad things." Don't worry, because this movie has it's redeeming points that make it enjoyable. First off, the robot character is actually funny sometimes, which is great, because otherwise this movie would've been a slog till the end. The other aspects saving this movie are the action scenes and the final act of the film. The action is fast-paced, fun, and you're actually able to tell what's happening most of the time, not much else to say on that. The final act, which not exactly fantastic on its own, is the better part of the movie. The setup, fighting stormtroopers, blowing stuff up, and palm trees are all good, making for an exciting and satisfying conclusion.

Alright

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

This one almost made it out of the "alright" category, and that's mainly for one reason: Mother. Fucking. Skeletons. Yes, there is a skeleton fight scene, yes it is probably the best part of the whole movie, no I'm not joking. This movie based on a novel of the same name is another one of Tim Burton's vaguely dark PG-13 fantasy movies he can't seem to stop making. No, it doesn't have Johnny Depp in it, probably because the only adult male characters are crappy dad and dead grandpa.

The performances are good enough, and the plot is fairly compelling, at least enough to keep you intrigued. None of them really stand out except for one, which is the second best part of the movie: Samuel L. Jackson. He plays evil old dude, and seems to be having a really fun time doing so. Every time he was doing something on screen I was having a good time. His character may be kind of shallow in terms of script and writing, but his acting definitely makes this a movie I'd rewatch.

Finding Dory

I'm not sure quite what to say about Finding Dory, I really wanted to like this movie, but that doesn't stop it from having problems. To be fair, it had the first movie right behind it, so the expectations were set much higher. This movie knows where it comes from, and almost uses this fact as a crutch throughout the film. This movie has several throwbacks to the original, even going as far to use footage from the original movie in some flashback scenes.

The plot can be summarized as such: Dory remebers she has parents, Dory tries to go find them, Dory gets captured, Nemo and Marlin help save Dory, Dory gets resolution at the end. Finding Dory hits a lot of the same notes as Finding Nemo did, which include: Riding the water currents with turtles, talking to whales, getting separated after misguided aggression from Marlin, and befriending quirky fish that aid the main characters. It's almost like they were too afraid to try something new, so they just remade Finding Nemo with less effort and an unsatisfying ending. In the end though, its a cute animated fish movie with Ellen DeGeneres voicing the main character, so I mean it's really not that bad considering what else came out this year.

Ice Age: Collision Course

It feels like the eighth Ice Age movie to come out, you wonder to yourself how it could be possible for them to make another. No, I can't explain why the invisible hand decided we needed a fifth Ice Age movie, but here it is. Surprisingly, though, it's not that bad, which makes Blue Sky Studios consistent, if nothing else.

Who could've possibly seen this coming?

I mean, do you actually care what the plot is? I mean, I'm going to tell you, but it's the fifth movie, so I don't think it would be too surprising if I said they're reaching a bit at this point. Manny and his wife are concerned about their daughter's thirst for freedom after getting engaged and expressing interest in traveling. While this family drama plays out, asteroids threaten mass extinction after some Scrat slapstick scenes, and a weasle that reads prophecies tries to prevent the upcoming disaster. This movie tries to use magic magnetic rocks as a vessel to give some of the characters superpowers periodically and eventually deus-ex-machina the plot into it's conclusion. On top of this, the movie tries to make some kind of societal statement with the introduction of a giant magic space rock keeping obnoxious hippies alive with magic, but they don't really do anything with it. So yeah, good job guys, ya'll really went out with a bang for what will probably be the last Ice Age movie.

Bad

Suicide Squad

This movie is a mess, and you don't have to look too far for the reasons why. Characters you don't care about, bad writing, and editing done by a classroom of children suffering from ADHD. DC has really been dropping the ball with their recent movies, maybe they feel like they're behind Marvel's movies and have to throw everything out the back of the bus to catch up. I'm not really sure what the deal is, but I want to belive their movies will get better.

Jared Leto's totally heckin twisted performance of Joker that was advertised so much gets about 5 minutes of screen time in Suicide Squad. Honestly, that's one of the biggest flaws with the movie: the fact that they seemed to have cut out lots of potentially interesting Joker scenes and subplots for... more Will Smith? If you're looking for someone to blame, I think you should look towards the editor(s) of the movie. From what I can gather, the footage was sent out to multiple editing houses, one of which is a company that makes movie trailers, and another that typically edits big movies. This doesn't seem too bad at first, a little weird maybe, but when it turned out that the trailer studio made the final edit of the movie, things become much clearer.

Don't watch this movie unless Harley Quinn is your waifu or you really want to give DC money for some reason.

Kung Fu Panda 3

Po's real dad is in this one. Yup.
Why did they make this movie
Jack Black must be going through a hard time right now. Or maybe he's being forced to do these?

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice

Now, I came into this movie, not being quite sure what to expect; I had heard it was bad, but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to sit through. This movie is appalling, I could not believe I was watching something so bad that was released as a major feature film. It's all over the place in terms of tone, plot, and character progression, almost mind-numbingly so. I'm not even sure if I can put into words what makes this movie so bad, it burned a hole into my brain.

Let me try and describe what happens in this movie for everybody. Batman decides Superman is too dangerous to live after the events of the last superman movie, and Superman tries to slander Batman through his job at the Daily Planet (but his boss cares more about high school hockey teams). Superman is Jesus. Lex Luthor buys Kryptonite to try and make a weapon to kill Superman, while also defaming Superman through a terrorist attack during a court trial to try and bring Superman to heel. Superman is Jesus. Batman hallucinates several times about being in a western, and one time sees the Flash for a second in a really confusing dream sequence. Superman is Jesus. Batman steals the kryptonite to try and kill superman while Lex Luther kidnaps Superman's mom to try and force him to confront batman. Batman beats Superman with a sink, but they decide to become best friends after learning both their mom's names are Martha (what the fuck). Then they fight a monster Lex Luther made from a crashed spaceship, and oh yeah, Wonder Woman is helping out too for some reason. They beat the monster then Superman dies, but since he is Jesus, we all know he'll be back in the next movie.

I could really write a whole essay on why this movie is bad, but I'm hoping just the plot summary will be enough proof for my claim. I don't know what to expect of the upcoming Justice Leauge movies, but if it's more of Zack Snyder's shallow Jesus allusions and grimdark edginess, I'll probably pass.