My 16 Best Films of 2016

Releasing your film as close as you can to the Oscar deadline may keep it fresh in the mind of Academy voters, but it does make it tricky to keep a track of for your more casual viewer.

Throw in the time delay between US and UK releases and even the most fervent cineaste could be forgiven for forgetting exactly when their favorite film was released.…

Green Room is gut-wrenching, sometimes literally

 

Blue Ruin, Green Room. 

Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier is certainly not a director afraid to deal in primal colors: the bright green woodlands of Oregon into which down-on-their-luck punk band The Ain’t Rights stray, playing an impromptu gig to an audience of neo-Nazis; the visceral red of the horrific gore that results when band member Pat (an endearingly mumbly Anton Yelchin) stumbles upon a murder.…