Hello film lovers,

This time last year, Mad Max: Fury Road was already the film of the year on Letterboxd, and it kept that spot till year’s end. Not even a late trudge through deep snow by The Revenant could unseat it.

We’re already halfway through 2016 but, all Deadpool love aside, there is no obvious Mad Max successor this year. We’ve taken a quick look at the numbers to see what films are popping their heads up. Using our usual method* we can reveal this Unofficial Letterboxd Top 10 Highest Rated for the first half of 2016. Congratulations to director Taika Waititi whose funny-sad adaptation of the Barry Crump novel Wild Pork and Watercress is currently perched in the number one spot!

2016 So Far

Who knows what will happen between now and year-end? The Letterboxd Year in Review is computed from your ratings, so keep them coming. To spare you the usual year-end frenzy, this is a friendly reminder that it’s easier to rank as you go and revisit later, than try to remember everything you’ve seen and how you felt about it come December.

(*To be included, films must be narrative, feature-length, and have had at least a limited theatrical run in the US during 2016—sorry OJ Simpson mini-series. Read more about our methodology and weighted average ratings on our blog.)

Happy watching,
The Letterboxd crew

Opening Credits

In cinemas and coming soon
Suicide Squad image
Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad is coming and it’s led by a bad-ass Viola Davis as intelligence officer Amanda Waller, and that’s maybe all you need to know. We can’t wait to see the energy that David Ayer (writer of Training Day, writer/director of End of Watch) brings to these DC antiheroes.

Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek Beyond is out and opinions are in: “The most character driven and humane blockbuster that this summer has had to offer” says one member. “Better than the atrocious second film, but lacking the emotional heft of the far superior first,” says another. We’re going with this one-sentence review from a Star Trek virgin.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie

A comedy pairing that’s lasted well into its third decade, Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley as Edina and Patsy are back with cameo-laden caper Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, in which the accidental [spoiler] of [Spoiler Spoiler] (it’s all in the trailer, if you want to know) precipitates more boozy adventures. P.S.: did you know there was once a French version?

The Magnificent Seven

Coming in September, Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven still has an all-dude seven, but with added diversity, including Denzel Washington at the trigger, Byung-hun Lee as the assassin, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as outlaw Vasquez, and Martin Sensmeier as Comanche warrior Red Harvest. Time to watch Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, which leads this Top 100 Samurai Films list, as rated by you guys.

Hell or High Water

Hell or High Water is a neo-Western bank heist family drama starring Chris Pine and Ben Foster, and penned by Sicario writer Taylor Sheridan. Getting middling-to-good reviews out of Cannes, the film scores extra points in our book for a soundtrack by brilliant Australians Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.

Star Wars

One star vs five stars, fight!
Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters

★ “There were some really silly scenes that were put into the film that they could have easily taken out. … There was never a time where I burst out laughing in the theater; there was never a moment when I jumped out of my seat because I was scared. But the biggest crime that this film commits is that it’s neither funny nor frightening. Something the original was able to get perfectly because they took the time to write the jokes and the pacing was perfect when the jokes were written and executed. Here? There were hardly any laughs to be had, any scares to be seen.” —Scarfy the Wolf

★★★★★ “Kate McKinnon is nothing short of brilliant in this film. Ghostbusters is McKinnon’s first opportunity to truly demonstrate how powerful her use of physicality is in terms of comedic timing and character. Actors in the audience, take notes. McKinnon’s strange, goofy, confident style is one of the most inexplicably and uniquely sexy performances I have ever witnessed on screen. In bedrooms across middle America, posters of her will hang from walls belonging to young queer girls. That’s my Ghostbusters: those not catered to male sexual gaze or fantasy. Those who do not deny themselves or each other of sexuality, but are primarily concerned with other matters anyway. No makeover sequences in the name of confidence or cheap shots at gender expression to be found here (which cannot be said of other recent female-led films like The Heat or Spy.)” —Lily

Sidenote: Graham Williamson makes a convincing argument for why whoever cut the film’s trailer should be shot at dawn: “There are so many reasons... but their most grievous injustice is taking Jones’s line about how ‘I know New York’ and making it sound like she’s talking about being streetwise, because duh, black. No. Jones’s Patty Tolan literally knows New York; she has a working-class autodidact’s passion for the city’s history that repeatedly gives the three academic members of the team vital information. Feig’s movies rarely seem to make good trailers, largely because they’re so dependent on team dynamics and cumulative laughs.”

Old School

Recent reviews of the classics
Breathless

Breathless

“The last time I saw this film was six years ago, on 35mm… I felt like I had understood everything there was to get in this movie after that viewing (which isn’t actually much, again a virtue) and actually watching it again it took me a while to get in this movie’s rhythm (though I was mesmerized by the opening) and actually thought the seminal hotel sequence was kind of stupid, also I was really annoyed by Belmondo’s character…

“Then maybe mid-way through the hotel sequence suddenly everything clicked, the rest of the movie became a kind of rush, I fell in love again, Seberg is filmed the way Auguste Renoir painted women… It was even more clear to me this viewing how youthful this movie is. Its simplicity pushed to the point where hypothesis isn’t a concern (even though Melville outright states all the movies themes in his interview sequence).

“One senses such passion for the mere existence of cinema, that cinema can be cinema without being concrete. This was a real joy, it was nice to be reminded that you don’t have to think about or interrogate cinema, you can still let it wash over you.” —NeilBahadur

Broadcast News

LETTERBOXD FAMILY PODCASTS, APPS, VLOGS & MORE

Each week, the podcast Let The Right Films In takes a movie from the IMDB 250 and discusses it with a guest, alongside discussion of more recent film viewings. Let The Right Films In has been running for almost a year, and is helmed by Letterboxd member TylerTellsTales. Listen on iTunes or Soundcloud.

And one of Letterboxd’s co-founders, Matthew Buchanan, recently spoke about his history with film to Arthur Gordon of GoodTrash Media.

This Is The End

Passage de Venus

The history of the cinema, “at least as Letterboxd sees it”: this list by Troy features the most popular films of their respective years among our users, from Passage de Venus (1874) to Deadpool (2016). “As one goes down the list, one sees the medium evolve as horses turn to spaceships.” Because comparing popularity to ratings yields quite varied results, Troy also made this companion list, showing the highest-rated film by year.

Persepolis

Related: Chris did some good work in putting together the 100 Highest-Rated Entries on Letterboxd Directed by Women and its companion, the 100 Most Popular Entries Directed by Women.

Wondering where to even start on getting through the above films? Here’s a suggestion: Asif’s 5 Unseen Highest Rated Films on LB from Each Decade, a hot list trend originally started by Mook

American Grindhouse

Cinema eats itself in this huge list of films about filmmaking: documentaries that look at various aspects of cinema around the world, the themes and genres, the eras and evolution, the making and marketing. This is from Mike Sean, the same Letterboxd member who brought us this list of films about the plight of filmmaking (think Jodorowsky’s Dune and Lost in La Mancha).

Independence Day: Resurgence

Matthew took issue with Independence Day: Resurgence. We know, we know, so did most people, but Matthew was specifically let down by “what could have been an interesting and potentially productive moment of queerness in a major Hollywood blockbuster”. Instead, as character X is consoling injured character Y, the moment “becomes ruthlessly offensive: ‘oh what, you think these two are gay? That’s so LAME’ *electric guitar solo*… In 2016, I shouldn’t have to be doing some first-year queer readings of films like this.”

Whip It

Speaking of films that shoulda been gayer, there’s a list for that. (We love you guys.)

The Jungle Book

In these confusing and terrifying global times, it’s heartening to stumble across a list of movies where Idris Elba plays a talking animal and confuses us sexually. We hope he’s pulling the “too old” card in response to James Bond rumors just so he can do more animal voices.

Red Hot Riding Hood

Alice took exception to Rolling Stone’s recent “boring” list of the 40 Greatest Animated Movies Ever. So she made a counter-list, with zero overlap and, she hopes, a slightly more adventurous spirit. Suggestions welcome.

Dope
Moonraker

Finally, jump scares are for pussies. (Literally.)