We’re coming down to the end of 2016 (at last!) and so here’s one last rankings update before all the lists and whatnot at the end of December. Since my last update I’ve written about I am Not Madame Bovary and Old Stone at Seattle Screen Scene and Sky on Fire at MUBI. I also appeared on the Snakes and Funerals podcast talking about Jean Renoir’s American Films.

These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.

La chienne (Jean Renoir) – 10, 1931
La bête humaine (Jean Renoir) – 4, 1938
Swamp Water (Jean Renoir) – 12, 1941
The Southerner (Jean Renoir) – 6, 1945
The Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir) – 9, 1947

The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir) – 9, 1952
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen (Donald Brittain & Don Owen) – 31, 1965
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Bill Melendez) – 4, 1966
Death Duel (Chor Yuen) – 17, 1977
City on Fire (Ringo Lam) – 4, 1987

School on Fire (Ringo Lam) – 3, 1988
Songs from the Life of Leonard Cohen (Bob Portway) – 41, 1988
Wild Search (Ringo Lam) – 46, 1989
Prison on Fire II (Ringo Lam) – 24, 1991
Touch and Go (Ringo Lam) – 58, 1991

Burning Paradise in Hell (Ringo Lam) – 24, 1994
The Adventurers (Ringo Lam) – 89, 1995
The Suspect (Ringo Lam) – 59, 1998
The Victim (Ringo Lam) – 53, 1999
Looking for Mr. Perfect (Ringo Lam) – 26, 2003

Leonard Cohen: Under Review: 1934-1977 – 44, 2006
Rat Film (Theo Anthony) – 24, 2016
The Shallows (Jaume Collet-Serra) – 29, 2016
I am Not Madame Bovary (Feng Xiaogang) – 33, 2016
Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt) – 34, 2016

Call of Heroes (Benny Chan) – 46, 2016
La La Land (Damien Chazelle) – 53, 2016
Old Stone (Johnny Ma) – 58, 2016
The Handmaiden (Park Chanwook) – 64, 2016
Arrival (Denis Villeneuve) – 68, 2016

Hamilton’s America (Alex Horwitz) – 73, 2016
Sky on Fire (Ringo Lam) – 83, 2016
Ghostbusters (Paul Feig) – 84, 2016
Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson) – 89, 2016

Since the last update, I posted my annual randomized Top 100 Films of All-Time list (see also the Seattle Screen Scene Top 100 Films of All-Time Project), wrote about DW Griffith and Intolerance for Movie Mezzanine, wrote about three Sion Sono films for InReview Online (Bicycle Sighs, Suicide Club and Love Exposure) and covered The Age of Shadows and Soulmate at Seattle Screen Scene.

I’m off to Vancouver in a couple of days for the Film Festival (here’s my proposed schedule) and I’ll be writing about what I see there over at Seattle Screen Scene. I’ll have an index over here of my coverage as well of course.

I’ve been watching fewer movies this year, mostly because as my kids get older it’s become easier to read books. I’ve read more this year than the past five years, since kid #1 was born) put together. Here’s a ranked list of what I’ve read (and finished) so far this year:

1. Where I Was From – Joan Didion
2. Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion
3. A Death in the Family – James Agee
4. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
5. Harmonium – Wallace Stevens
6. The Souls of Black Folk – WEB DuBois
7. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
8. Lyrical Ballads (William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge
9. The White Album – Joan Didion
10. Rising from the Plains – John McPhee
11. Lady Susan – Jane Austen
12. A Collection of Essays – George Orwell
13. Violet Energy Ingots – Hoa Nguyen
14. Basin & Range – John McPhee
15. Salvador – Joan Didion
16. In Suspect Terrain – John McPhee
17. Love & Friendship – Whit Stillman
18. The Silk Roads – Peter Frankopan
19. A Galaxy Not So Far Away – Glenn Kenny, et al

These are the movies I’ve watched and rewatched over the last few weeks and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.

The Adventures of Dollie (DW Griffith) – 2, 1908
A Corner in Wheat (DW Griffith) – 1, 1909
Those Awful Hats (DW Griffith) – 2, 1909
The Sealed Room (DW Griffith) – 4, 1909
The Unchanging Sea (DW Griffith) – 1, 1910

The Usurer (DW Griffith) – 4, 1910
The Lonedale Operator (DW Griffith) – 1, 1911
Enoch Arden (DW Griffith) – 2, 1911
The Miser’s Heart (DW Griffith) – 3, 1911
His Trust (DW Griffith) – 4, 1911

The Musketeers of Pig-Alley (DW Griffith) – 1, 1912
The Girl and Her Trust (DW Griffith) – 2, 1912
The Massacre (DW Griffith) – 3, 1912
The New York Hat (DW Griffith) – 5, 1912
The Sunbeam (DW Griffith) – 6, 1912

The Painted Lady (DW Griffith) – 7, 1912
Friends (DW Griffith) – 9, 1912
An Unseen Enemy (DW Griffith) – 10, 1912
The Lesser Evil (DW Griffith) – 11, 1912
One is Business, the Other Crime (DW Griffith) – 12, 1912

The Burglar’s Dilemma (DW Griffith) – 13, 1912
Death’s Marathon (DW Griffith) – 3, 1913
The Mothering Heart (DW Griffith) – 4, 1913
The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (DW Griffith) – 6, 1913
The Last Drop of Water (DW Griffith) – 7, 1913

Judith of Bethulia (DW Griffith) – 5, 1914
Intolerance (DW Griffith) – 1, 1916
Hearts of the World (DW Griffith) – 1, 1918
Broken Blossoms (DW Griffith) – 1, 1919
The Fall of Babylon (DW Griffith) – 5, 1919

The Mother and the Law (DW Griffith) – 9, 1919
Isn’t Life Wonderful (DW Griffith) – 5, 1924
America (DW Griffith) – 13, 1924
The Sorrows of Satan (DW Griffith) – 10, 1926

Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven) – 56, 1995
Young and Dangerous 3 (Andrew Lau) – 53, 1996
Time and Tide (Tsui Hark) – 7, 2000
Suicide Club (Sion Sono) – 9, 2001
Shaolin Soccer (Stephen Chow) – 12, 2001

Love Exposure (Sion Sono) – 5, 2008
Viola (Matías Piñeiro) – 11, 2012
Finding Mr. Right (Xue Xiaolu) – 49, 2013
Sully (Clint Eastwood) – 2, 2016
The Age of Shadows (Kim Jee-woon) – 5, 2016

Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson) – 9, 2016
A Train Arrives at the Station (Thom Andersen) – 16, 2016
From Nine to Nine (Neil Bahadur) – 17, 2016
Ocean Falls (Ryan Ermacora&  Jessica Johnson) – 18, 2016

Soulmate (Derek Tsang) – 20, 2016
From Vegas to Macau III (Wong Jing) – 29, 2016
The Secret Life of Pets (Yarrow Cheney& Chris Renaud) – 32, 2016