Happy New Year!
Eighty-five feature films were nominated across twelve separate ballots in Front Row Reviews’ annual year-end poll. As ever, each ballot was limited to a pool of films receiving a UK commercial release in the past year, and our scoring system remained: each ballot was ranked, with the top five films receiving 10-2 points and the remaining five receiving a point each.
Like previous years, a further 2 points were given for every mention a film received after its first, in order to favour overall popularity in the event of ties. Interestingly, unlike previous years, the bonus points made no difference to the final top ten: these are all clear-cut winners. And the fight for top spot wasn’t even close.
Several films received multiple votes without making it into the below list. They were: The Big Short, Embrace of the Serpent, Eye in the Sky, The Jungle Book, Knight of Cups, Love and Friendship, Midnight Special, Mustang, The Neon Demon, Star Wars: Rogue One, Train to Busan, Victoria, Weiner and Your Name.
Of the twelve contributors who participated in this year’s poll, three listed the eventual winner as their number one; three others had it in their top ten, while six didn’t vote for it at all.
Needless to say, from all the Front Row Reviews team, many thanks and very best wishes to everyone who enjoyed reading these pages in 2016. Here’s to 2017. See you…
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=9. Son of Saul
László Nemes · Hungary · 2015
=9. Creed
Ryan Coogler · USA · 2015
=7. Youth
Paolo Sorrentino · Italy/France/Switzerland/UK · 2015
=7. A Bigger Splash
Luca Guadagnino · Italy/France · 2015
6. Little Men
Ira Sachs · USA · 2016
5. The Witch
Robert Eggers · USA/Canada · 2015
4. Paterson
Jim Jarmusch · USA · 2016
3. Spotlight
Tom McCarthy · USA · 2015
2. Arrival
Denis Villeneuve · USA · 2016
1. I, Daniel Blake
Ken Loach · UK/France/Belgium · 2016
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