The Best & Worst Moments, Scenes, Odds & Ends And More Of 2016 - Page 4 of 5

Best Animated Comedy Side-Characters
Even among the animated world, it feels like not many people saw Nicholas Stoller’s genial “Storks,” but it’s worth a look if only for the wolves voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, who steal every scene they’re given with their easily distracted broodiness and ability to form their wolfpack into a submarine. We demand a “Minions”-style spin-off.

Absolute Worst Ending
Until it performed unexpectedly well with the Spirit Award nominations, it seemed like Michel Franco’s Tim Roth-starring “Chronic” (sadly not a Dr. Dre biopic, but the story of a carer for the terminally ill) would be destined to be forgotten. But we’ll find it hard to shake from our memories — less for Roth’s central performance (though he is excellent), but for the unfathomably, movie-ruiningly cheap and dumb ending, in which Roth is randomly and meaninglessly mowed down by a speeding car.

Greasiest Strangler
The Greasy Strangler

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Most Contradictory Sequel Title
Short of the Tom Cruise-starring sequel being called “Jack Reacher: Sequels Are A Bad Idea,” calling the follow-up “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back” seemed like tempting fate. The box office seemed to agree, for the most part.

Most Surprisingly Decent Sequel To A Terrible Movie
The original “Ouija” was a toothless, unexciting, formulaic horror film, but in the hands of increasingly gifted genre helmer Mike Flanagan (“Oculus,” “Hush”), its period prequel was actually one of the more pleasantly surprising movies of the year: efficient, well-acted and genuinely creepy.

Sexiest Tooth-Filing
We didn’t even know that tooth-filing was a fetish you could have, and then Park Chan-Wook put it in “The Handmaiden” and now we have it. Thanks, Director Park!

Most Wasted Actor In A Blockbuster
Michael Stuhlbarg is a phenomenal actor, and one who doesn’t just phone it in when he’s in big-budget fare: He’s honestly fantastic in “Men In Black 3,” for instance. So it was exciting to see him pop up early in “Doctor Strange,” only to prove to be given almost no material to work with. He’s not even being impotently Tim Blake Nelson-ed (verb, to play a supporting role in a superhero movie intended to set you up as a villain in a sequel that never comes to pass), he’s just another doctor in the hospital. Someone give him something better to do!

Most Surprising Use Of ’00s French House In A Kids Movie
The most horrifying catch-up of age we found in a movie theater this year was finding Justice’s “D.A.N.C.E,” and Junior Senior’s “Move Your Feet,” two songs that scored more college house parties than we can remember, worked into a sugary medley in horrifyingly glittery kids’ musical “Trolls.” Here’s hoping we get some D.J. Mehdi in the sequel.

The Would Have Been Better If Mark Wahlberg Played The Same Character As In “Deepwater Horizon” And Said “How Can This Shit Happen To The Same Guy Twice” Award
Patriots Day.” We also would have accepted it if Mark Wahlberg from “Lone Survivor” had turned up after the credits to recruit “Patriots Day” Mark Wahlberg to the Avengers Of Real-Life Tragedies.

Most Ostentatious Secret Society
The ultra-secretive Templars in the resoundingly dumb “Assassin’s Creed,” who have their secret headquarters in a giant building that looks like Frank Gehry designed it, which sits obviously on top of a cliff overlooking the city of Seville. Honestly, being inside a volcano would have been subtler.

Best Woody Allen Movie
Every single year (except maybe the one in which “Cassandra’s Dream” came out), some fool calls Woody Allen’s latest film “a return to form.” And yet the best Woody movie in about 20 years was probably Rebecca Miller’s “Maggie’s Plan,” a film that captures much of the best of the director’s work, one that feels like an lost gem from his late-’80s/early-’90s output, but has absolutely nothing to do with him. A very distant second: “Café Society” which is actually by Woody Allen and is fine.

Warcraft 10Biggest Disparity Between Performances
Not being viewers of “Vikings,” our first exposure to Australian actor Travis Fimmel was his lead turn in “Warcraft,” in which he gives a performance that could charitably be described as “if Sam Worthington was Bon Iver playing Dungeons & Dragons.” So we were sort of staggered, within days, to see him being utterly adorable in Rebecca Miller’s “Maggie’s Plan” as the hipster-pickle selling man who may or may not be the father of the titular Maggie. No wonder he’ll next be seen in Andrew Haigh’s “Lean On Pete.

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Best Offscreen Bromance
Mads Mikkelsen and Ben Mendelsohn boyishly bonding like the mutually admiring acting geniuses they are during the ‘Rogue One‘ shoot would have been the sublimation of every celeb-watching impulse we didn’t know we had, except we totally knew we had it. We have always wanted a Mendelsohn/Mikkelsen bromance, and we knew it, and now we have it. This is the only thing that went right in 2016.

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All About Hair

As in previous years, there are simply too many hair-related observations, so here’s a subsection dedicated to them

Worst Hairdo: Shia LaBeouf, “American Honey

Runner-up Worst Hairdo: Ezra Miller, “Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

Least Convincingly Altered Hairline: Aaron Eckhart, “Bleed for This

Best Ensemble Mustaches: “Hell Or High Water

Best Individual Mustache: Ryan Gosling, “The Nice Guys

Worst Individual Mustache: Miles Teller, “Bleed for This

Most Mustaches: “Sully

Best Ensemble Beards: “13 Hours

Best Individual Beard: Vincent D’Onofrio, “The Magnificent Seven

Most Weirdly Fuzzy Beard: Matthew McConaughey, “Free State Of Jones

Best Deliberately Ratty Beard: Paul Dano, “Swiss Army Man

Runner-up Best Deliberately Ratty Beard: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, “Nocturnal Animals

Best Ensemble Ratty Beards: “The Birth Of A Nation

Worst Fake Beard Face Merkin: Chris Pratt, “Passengers

Worst Unintentionally Terrible Wig: Julia Roberts, “Mother’s Day

Runner-Up Worst Unintentionally Terrible Wig: Jesse Eisenberg, “Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice

Best Deliberately Terrible Wig: Peter Simonischek, “Toni Erdmann