Our 20 Favorite Movies of the Year (So Far)

We’re already halfway through 2016, but moviegoers have been blessed with a bounty of unique, stellar films. From animated adventures and superhero sendups, to sci-fi romantic dramas and hallucinatory foreign imports, there’s been something for everyone over the past six months. Below is a ranking of our favorites from the year so far.

20. Embrace of the Serpent
Embrace of the Serpent was among the nominees for this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, and with good reason: hypnotic visuals and pacing, and a dreamlike atmosphere make this black-and-white import one of 2016’s most distinctive and haunting works. Ciro Guerra’s film recounts two mirror-image narratives, one in 1909 and one in 1940, both of which involve a white Western scientist being led through the Amazon jungle by a native shaman named Karamakate (played as a young man by Nilbio Torres, and an older man by Antonio Bolivar) in search of a rare, quasi-magical healing plant. Their concurrent journeys speak to the region’s thorny colonial dynamics, though it’s the mood of hallucinatory dread and wonder that lingers long after it’s over. — Nick Schager (Photo: Oscilloscope)

19. Midnight Special
Michael Shannon reunites with his Take Shelter director, Jeff Nichols, for this sci-fi film, in which he stars as a father who absconds from Sam Shepard’s Texas cult with his son Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), who possesses some sort of godlike power. Pursued not only by his former religious-fanatic comrades but also the FBI (including Adam Driver’s benevolent agent), they team up with Shannon’s childhood friend (Joel Edgerton) and the boy’s mother (Kirsten Dunst) on a nocturnal cross-country odyssey that’s indebted to both John Carpenter’s Starman and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. With the mesmerizingly intense Shannon at the wheel, however, Nichols’s latest is its own strange, captivating beast. — N.S. (Photo: Warner Bros.)

18. Hello, My Name Is Doris
Michael Showalter’s May-December romantic comedy may not scale the heights of Harold and Maude (then again, what could?), but it does provide a first-rate showcase for national treasure Sally Field. As socially awkward sexagenarian Doris, the Oscar-winning actress digs deep to find the humanity in what could have been a cringe-inducing caricature. You’ll like her … you’ll really like her. — Ethan Alter (Photo: Roadside Attractions)

17. 10 Cloverfield Lane
While its title suggests a direct connection to 2008’s found-footage monster movie Cloverfield, Dan Trachtenberg’s film (produced again by J.J. Abrams) is primarily a sequel in name only. Ditching its predecessor’s shaky-cam POV, this taut tale concerns a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who awakens after a car crash to find herself in an underground bunker occupied by a crazy survivalist (John Goodman), who warns her of a catastrophic event that has made the surface uninhabitable. This paranoia-drenched slow-burn thriller peaks during its bombshell-revealing finale, and is led by a fearsome is-he-evil? performance from the inimitable Goodman. — N.S. (Photo: Paramount Pictures)

16. The Mermaid
China’s highest-grossing film of this — or any other — year was barely released on these shores. And it’s true that some of the gags featured in Stephen Chow’s rambunctious comedy about a mermaid (Lin Yun) seeking revenge on a wealthy industrialist (Deng Chao) get lost in translation. But nimble action sequences, crowd-pleasing slapstick, and a timely environmental message are all things that can easily cross borders. Cast your line into the VOD waters and catch up with this gem. — E.A. (Photo: Star Overseas)

15. Loving
Director Jeff Nichols’s second entry on this list is miles away from the sci-fi spin of Midnight Special. Based on the true story of the family behind the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case, Loving — which premiered at Cannes in May and will open in theaters this fall — follows Richard and Mildred Loving (Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), a couple from rural Virginia who are arrested and banished from the state simply because they dared to get married at a time when interracial unions were against the law. Nichols is less interested in legal wrangling and more focused on the heartfelt romance at the center of his graceful, understated story. Negga and Edgerton are incredibly moving as the bewildered, determined couple whose simple desire to live where they wanted to ended up changing the course of American history. — Kerrie Mitchell (Photo: Focus Features)

14. Finding Dory
This Finding Nemo sequel began with an impossible puzzle: How does one make a film about a protagonist who can’t remember anything from moment to moment? In true Pixar fashion, writer-director Andrew Stanton meets the challenge head-on, wringing laughs, insights, and, yes, tears from the story of memory-impaired blue tang Dory (Ellen DeGeneres). If the story is a little more meandering than most of the studio’s films, well, that’s fitting for a heroine who can’t keep her own story straight. — Gwynne Watkins (Photo: Disney)

Watch the ‘Dory’ cast talk discuss ‘What would Dory do?’:

13. Hail, Caesar!
The Coen brothers dive headfirst into the golden age of Hollywood in a witty fly-on-the-wall comedy about a midcentury movie studio “fixer” in charge of maintaining the stars’ images. A dream ensemble (including George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, and future Han Solo Alden Ehrenreich) has a ball conjuring up a bygone era of film, when even the most cynical Tinseltown residents were eager to buy into the fantasy. — G.W. (Photo: Universal Pictures)

12. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
According to none other than Mark “The Hulk” Ruffalo, Thor: Ragnarok will be an “intergalactic buddy road movie,” under the direction of New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi. Minus the “intergalactic” part, Ruffalo could also be describing Waititi’s utterly charming coming-of-age comedy, in which a young boy (Julian Dennison) bickers and bonds with his cranky uncle (Sam Neill) on an eventful trip through the New Zealand wilderness. On the basis of Wilderpeople, Asgard is in good hands. — E.A. (Photo: The Orchard)

11. The Jungle Book
The fact that director Jon Favreau and his team of F/X artists built a living, breathing digital jungle in an L.A. warehouse is reason enough to be dazzled by this update of the classic Disney cartoon, based on Rudyard Kipling’s series of stories. But Favreau’s adventure exists as its own impressive creature, populated by photorealistic CGI animals, a fluidly told story, and a villain — Idris Elba’s Shere Khan — who is already on the shortlist of great Mouse House bad guys. — E.A. (Photo: Disney)

10. Everybody Wants Some!!
Richard Linklater’s latest film picks up where its spiritual predecessor, Dazed and Confused, left off: with a college-bound athlete (Blake Jenner) passing through the doorways of higher learning in the early ’80s. Set over the course of one long weekend before classes begin, Everybody Wants Some!! is less formally audacious than Boyhood, but still features Linklater’s laserlike eye for the nuances of human behavior and his groovy ear for period music. Much like its director, this film is profound in an appealingly casual way. — E.A. (Photo: Paramount Pictures)

9. The Nice Guys
Most studio directors would never have thought that Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe would make a great comedy duo. But then, Shane Black has repeatedly proved that he isn’t like most studio directors. An appropriately scruffy ode to seedy ’70s-era Los Angeles, Black’s colorful Hollywood noir stuffs Chinatown, The Long Goodbye, and Boogie Nights in a blender and hits puree. And it provides as much of a kick as that concoction promises. — E.A. (Photo: Warner Bros.)

8. Weiner
During an infamous interview in the middle of ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner’s disastrous 2013 mayoral campaign in New York, MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell asked him, “What is wrong with you?” It was an overblown, overwrought question, but it will occur often to viewers of this political documentary, an enticing, can’t-look-away portrait of a campaign that initially soared on the strength of Weiner’s combative charisma, then crashed when he was caught lying about his sexting habits for a second time. Why Weiner — and his fascinating wife, Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin — let directors Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg keep filming during the painful aftermath is a mystery for the ages. Luckily for us, they did, and we get to see this darkly funny, terrifying close-up of the mania and mayhem that drives a modern political machine. — K.M. (Photo: Sundance)

7. The Lobster
You’ve never experienced anything quite like Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s out-there romantic drama about a man (Colin Farrell) who is forced to stay at a hotel where he has 45 days to find a mate or be turned into whatever animal he likes. What follows is a bizarre satiric portrait of dating rituals, cultural assumptions and expectations, and the push-pull between loneliness and togetherness, all of it infused with both absurd drollness and disarming melancholy. Akin to a surreally awkward alterna-reality version of The Bachelor, it’s a film overflowing with bleak, biting black humor. — N.S. (Photo: A24)

6. Sing Street
The music and culture of the 1980s are too often used in film as a punchline or a cheap nostalgia grab. Not so with Sing Street, about a Dublin teenager (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) who forms a band to escape his dreary home life and maybe win over his dream girl (Lucy Boynton). With every synth-pop and new-wave record he imitates, Conor figures out another piece of the person he wants to become. Director John Carney (Once; Begin Again) masterfully tells another musical tale of the city, with original songs that convincingly double as forgotten ’80s gems. — G.W. (Photo: The Weinstein Company)

5. Captain America: Civil War
So loaded with capes that studio insiders nicknamed it Almost Avengers, Marvel’s latest washed away the bad taste of Batman v Superman and delivered a worthy superhero smackdown, instantly establishing itself as one of the best MCU entries. Nimbly directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, Civil War touches on some Big Themes, including the nature of heroism, but is ultimately all about pitting Avenger against Avenger in epic ways. We also meet two formidable newbies — Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and the crowd-pleasing Spider-Man (Tom Holland) — who promise great things ahead for the Marvel machine. — Marcus Errico (Photo: Disney)

Watch the ‘Civil War’ cast take our Marvel character quiz:

4. The Witness
In 1964, Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in Queens, N.Y., while 38 witnesses watched from their apartments. That’s how the legend goes — but it’s not the full story, as Genovese’s younger brother Bill discovers in this startling documentary. In following Bill’s quest for truth, the film sheds unexpected light on the myth of the apathetic bystander but doesn’t ignore the shadows that lurk behind all the dead ends. — G.W. (Photo: FilmRise)

3. Zootopia
“Police procedural” isn’t the most intuitive genre for a Disney animated movie about cute animals. (Whoops, did we say “cute”? Sorry, Officer Hopps, didn’t mean to offend!) But this is an unusually ambitious family film, about an animal society whose citizens must rise above species-specific discrimination and stereotypes. Despite this heavy premise, Zootopia is one of the year’s funniest films, not to mention the best buddy-cop movie in years. — G.W. (Photo: Disney)

2. Green Room
Vibrating with the intense energy of a punk-rock album, director Jeremy Saulnier’s siege thriller is a sustained exercise in tension, one that has its roots in the films of John Carpenter, while also playing its own distinct tune. Brilliantly executed practical effects blend with stellar performances — particularly by the late Anton Yelchin as the film’s hero and Patrick Stewart as its heavy — and a narrative that never loses its momentum. With Blue Ruin and now Green Room, Saulnier is clearly on the path to creating his unique version of the classic “Three Colors” trilogy. — E.A. (Photo: A24)

1. Deadpool
Ryan Reynolds and his merry band of misfits blew up the box office and the superhero genre with this aptly irreverent, R-rated take on Marvel’s mutant mercenary. From the bleepin’ brilliant opening sequence to the pitch-perfect post-credits tag, Deadpool delivers the chimichangas. And we mean that in the very best way. — M.E. (Photo: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation)

Watch Deadpool nail a fake interview:

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