Last year I wondered if ~140 features a year was the ’new normal’, and it appears that is the case, as in 2017 I saw 147 features. That said, it felt like a really good year for cinema.

Top Films of 2016 (in Alphabetical Order):

• 10 Cloverfield Lane
• Arrival
• Don’t Think Twice
• The Edge of Seventeen
• The Handmaiden
• Hidden Figures
• High-Rise
• Moonlight
• Rogue One
• Swiss Army Man
• The Witch

**Honorable Mention: **

• Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru
• Weiner

Bottom 5 Films of 2016:

• Nocturnal Animals
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
• Hail, Caesar
• Money Monster
• Evolution (2015)

Most Disappointing:

• Hardcore Henry
• Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Best Reissue:

• Multiple Maniacs

Most Unnecessary Remake/Reworking:

• The Magnificient Seven

Best Movie I Finally Saw: Room **Best Director: ** The Daniels (Swiss Army Man)

**Best Ensemble: ** Don’t Think Twice

Best Original Screenplay: The Daniels for Swiss Army Man

Best Adapted Screenplay: Amy Jump for High-Rise

Best Cinematography: Chung-hoon Chung for The Handmaiden

Best Soundtrack: Swiss Army Man

Most Memorable Lines:

• Swiss Army Man
• Hank: If you don’t know Jurassic Park, you don’t know shit.
• High-Rise
• Laing: You know, Toby, when I was your age, I was always covered in something. Mud, jam, failure… My father never associated himself with anything dirty. Or real.Toby: My father’s up there.Laing: You mean, in heaven?Toby: Heaven isn’t real, stupid.
• The Witch
• Jonas, Mercy: [singing] Black Phillip, Black Phillip, a crown grows out his head. Black Phillip, Black Phillip, to nanny queen is wed. Jump to the fence post. Running in the stall. Black Phillip, Black Phillip, king of all.

I saw even fewer feature films in 2016, but it was a rather busy year for me. My final total was 141, which was 7 fewer than 2015. The big thing I alluded to last year, that may depress this total, was buying a new house. That happened, so it’s possible that may explain the reduced number. Or, perhaps, I’ve settled into a new normal.

Update 20161122: Since writing the text below, I’ve been contacted by several staffers at the Globe via many channels. They not only assure me that my discrete issues have been addressed, but that they’ve had meetings to pick apart what went wrong based on the notes I wrote up below. Hopefully my experience will (ultimately) make things better in the future.

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Setting the stage: I’ve been a digital subscriber to The Boston Globe for years now. Corinna decided she would like to try getting the Sunday edition in print. Here are the things I needed to do to accomplish this:

1. Log into my account on their website, to find there was no easy way to simply add ANY print subscription to my account. You’d think they’d want to make this braindead simple.
2. Call their phone line (1-888-MY-GLOBE) to find out they were only open until noon on the weekend.
3. Remember on Tuesday that I wanted to do this, and call the phone line again, waiting on hold for a few minutes to talk to a representative. I state that I want to add Sunday delivery to my existing digital account. I’m told the only way to accomplish this is to close out my existing subscription and add a new one. The existing subscription will be terminated as of Thursday, but my new subscription won’t be in effect until Sunday. So I’ll have no digital access for those few days. That seems ridiculous, but I accept it.
4. Wake up this morning, excited to fetch my paper, to find nothing. Try to attach my new account number to my bostonglobe.com login, but meet no success.
5. Call their support line, wait on hold for 5 minutes until a robot tells me i’m 22 in the queue. I hang up and run to their online chat.
6. After about 5 minutes a chat rep. appears, I explain my plight, and she straightens everything out. She tells me my subscription has no digital access, and would I like to add it? I told her that I was supposed to have digital access, that the rep on Tuesday told me I would have it as of Sunday, but apparently that rep messed something up. She schedules a redelivery before 2pm and gives me gratis digital access until my ‘repaired’ subscription kicks in on Tuesday and we end our chat. I have no idea why it takes them several days to activate a digital subscription.
7. Just before noon, I learn they have a Customer Service iPhone app. The sign-in screen asks for my name, email, phone # or acccount #, and house #. After lots of trial and error, i find that the address and phone number were out of date on my account. I can’t remember if the phone rep asked for updated information or not, but she clearly should have. As someone who’s never had print delivery, to assume that the address is correct on my account seems unwise.
8. I reenter chat (with 10 minutes to spare before they shut down at noon) and explain that the address is wrong on my account, and that is probably why I didn’t get a paper this morning. I give the rep my account number, which is attached to an address in Wellesley. I can’t tell you if the original phone rep transposed numbers or I did, but the whole time I was using the incorrect account number. So some person in Wellesley probably just had digital access added to their account. I give the rep my current info, and she updates my account, crediting me for today’s paper and suggesting that I will receive a paper at my ’new’ address starting next Sunday.
9. I log into the Globe site, attaching the new account number to my Globe login, and notice that while my billing address has been updated, my delivery address is still incorrect. There is no clear way for me to change this myself. My plan is to check back in a few days and see if it is fixed, otherwise I see another chat in my future.

It is maddening to me that this process was so painful.

• Why can I not add a print subscription myself, online, without involving a customer service rep?
• Why can I not update the address on my account myself?
• Why wasn’t I able to add print delivery without losing my digital access for several days?
• Why didn’t the phone rep verify my delivery address?
• Why didn’t the chat rep, once I complained of a missing delivery, verify my delivery address?
• Why is the process to attach my subscription to my bostonglobe.com login a manual process? Why can’t the customer service reps do it for me?

I saw fewer films in 2015, but it was a rather busy year for me. My final total was 148, which was 11 fewer than 2014. There are some things conspiring that could depress the total in 2016, but we’ll have to wait and see if that ends up happening.

I saw one more film in 2014 than 2013, but strangely, I apparently didn’t see any short film or, more likely, I didn’t record seeing them. With so much short-form video content available online it is difficult to figure out where to ‘draw the line’ in my recordkeeping.

• Top 15 Films of 2013 (in Alphabetical Order)
• 12 Years a Slave
• American Hustle
• Dallas Buyers’ Club
• Gravity
• Her
• Inside Llewyn Davis
• Nebraska
• Philomena
• Sightseers
• Sound City
• Spring Breakers
• The Act of Killing
• The Hunt
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• Upstream Color
• Honorable Mention:
• Dirty Wars
• Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
• Pacific Rim
• Tim’s Vermeer
• Bottom 4 films of 2013:
• Leviathan (2013)
• August: Osage County
• Prisoners
• Sharknado
• Best Remake/Reworking: Evil Dead (2013)
• This wasn’t necessary, but it was fun and sufficiently different from the original
• Most Unnecessary Remake/Reworking: Oldboy (2013)
• I didn’t actually see this.
• Best Director: Martin Scorcese for The Wolf of Wall Street
• Best Actress: Sandra Bullock in Gravity
• Best Actor: Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave
• Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong’o in 12 Years a Slave
• Best Supporting Actor: Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street
• Best Ensemble: American Hustle
• Best Original Screenplay: Spike Jonze for Her
• Best Adapted Screenplay: John Ridley and Solomon Northup for 12 Years a Slave
• Best Cinematography: Phedon Papamichael for Nebraska
• Best Soundtrack: William Butler and Owen Pallett for Her
• Most Alarming Cinematic Trend: Yet more remakes.
• Biggest Disappointment: Elysium
• Best Movie I Finally Saw: Searching for Sugar Man
• Most Memorable Lines:
• This Is The End
• Jonah Hill: Dear God, it’s me, Jonah Hill… from Moneyball.
• Spring Breakers
• Everyone in the movie: SPRAAANNNNGGG BREAAAAAAKKKKK
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• Mark Hanna: (Insert Weird-ass Beat Boxing Here)
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• Jordan Belfort: On a daily basis I consume enough drugs to sedate Manhattan, Long Island, and Queens for a month. I take Quaaludes 10-15 times a day for my “back pain”, Adderall to stay focused, Xanax to take the edge off, pot to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again, and morphine… Well, because it’s awesome.
• Best Documentary (of all time?): The Act of Killing
• Films I feel guilty for missing:
• Blue is the Warmest Color
• Fruitvale Station
• Films I don’t feel guilty for missing:
• Oldboy
• G.I. Joe: Retaliation
• Gangster Squad
• A Good Day to Die Hard
• Blue Jasmine
• Before Midnight

As regular readers know, I keep a list of all of the movies I see each year. Breaking a trend, I saw fewer features (146) than I had in the previous year (160). I don’t really have any insight into this other than a strong suspicion that ~160 isn’t terribly sustainable for me.

As regular readers know, I keep a list of all of the movies I see each year. For the second year in a row I saw more feature films (160) than I had in the previous year (155), setting a new benchmark.

The Princess Bride turns 25 today. Reading about this reminded me of a funny story from when I was a kid.

My father rented The Princess Bride and brought it home, announcing that he thought it would be fun to watch as a family. I protested, saying I didn’t want to watch a girls movie, and stayed in my bedroom. After about 25 minutes of hearing my family thoroughly enjoying the film, I sheepishly joined them in the living room.

I don’t remember if I watched the beginning of the movie immediately after the first viewing ended, or if it waited until later, but I definitely remember when I finally did see the beginning and being completely embarrassed yet amused at how my reaction to the title of the film paralleled the character of Fred Savage in the movie.

If it wasn’t such a perfect story I’d probably still find it embarrassing.