The best films of 2016

The movie awards season, set to peak with the Oscars on Sunday, has highlighted a remarkable array of films from the past year, from ethereal sci-fi to gritty American drama.

Here's a look at the silver screen highlights of 2016:

La La Land

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With an astonishing 14 Oscar nominations (it shares a joint record with Titanic and All About Eve) any top film list of 2016 must include throwback musical La La Land, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.

Described by The Guardian as writer-director Damien Chazelle's "magical love letter to the golden age of Hollywood", it has been a hit with critics and viewers alike, with rave reviews to complement its $300m take at the box office worldwide.

"Audacious, retro, funny and heartfelt, La La Land is the latest great musical for people who don't like musicals," says Empire.

Moonlight

Relatively low-budget indie drama Moonlight proved to be a challenging, earnest and necessary insight into homosexuality in Miami's African American community.

The film was screened at the Toronto and New York film festivals last autumn to rave reviews, but it only came out in the UK this month.

"Few will walk away from Moonlight untouched by its message," says the Wall Street Journal, and that analysis seems to be ringing true for the Academy. From unassuming beginnings, this small-yet-ambitious independent film will feature in eight categories at this year's Oscars, including Best Picture.

Manchester by the Sea

While Ben Affleck was busy fighting off critics of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, his younger brother Casey slipped into the spotlight in Manchester by the Sea and is now the odds-on favourite to take home the Best Actor Oscar.

The bleak family drama won Affleck a Bafta and Golden Globe, as well as considerable praise for writer-director Kenneth Lonergan's nuanced script.

The AV Club describes it as "almost operatic in the heartbreak it chronicles, that's also attuned to everyday headaches, like forgetting where the car is parked and hitting your noggin on the freezer".

Arrival

"Introspective, philosophical and existentially inclined – yet it unfolds in an unwavering tenor of chest-tightening excitement." So said the Daily Telegraph in a five-star review of the unsettling sci-fi drama Arrival.

Critics seem to unanimously agree that its tense story of impending alien invasion is masterfully directed, written and acted, with praise heaped upon the ever-present Amy Adams in the starring role.

The critics adore her but Adams was surprisingly omitted from the Best Actress category at the Oscars. Still, Arrival remains one of the ceremony's frontrunners in other categories. Spending two hours at the hands of this eerie, twist-filled thrill ride is two hours well spent.

Hell or High Water

Director David Mackenzie's neo-noir crime drama Hell or High Water was a somewhat surprising inclusion onto the Best Picture nominee list.

Though co-stars Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster wowed audiences across America upon the film's release in August, grossing $27m domestically, its release in the UK in September was considerably more low-key. It took only $2m at the box office, slipping under many Brits' radars entirely.

But those who made the pilgrimage to the cinema were treated to a dryly funny, thrilling character study that has been credited with revitalising the tradition of the Western film. Deadline was particularly impressed with its modern take, describing it as a "breakthrough" for the genre and noting that it refrains from tired Western cliches, instead opting to show how "West Texas and its people have been casualties of the 2008 recession and mortgage collapse".

Paterson

Each film from writer-director Jim Jarmusch has drawn adulation for his keen eye for subtlety, and his newest effort, Paterson, is no different.

Centred on a bus driver in small-town New Jersey (played by Adam Driver), the film is a delicate study of the lives of ordinary people and their day-to-day triumphs and defeats.

"It's an extraordinarily humane film about the creative process, told on the smallest scale possible," The Atlantic says of Paterson. It's a quiet, thoughtful film that goes everywhere it needs to without really going anywhere at all.

The Handmaiden

South Korean director Park Chan-Wook's loose adaptation of Fingersmith by Welsh writer Sarah Waters featured on no less than 37 critics' top ten lists for the year.

This complex film from the director of the famed Korean movie Oldboy (2004) has been described by veteran critic Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times as a "beautifully filmed, wonderfully challenging, multi-layered tale of trickery upon trickery, short con upon long con, deception upon deception".

Though the film received unanimous praise from critics, it failed to garner a single nomination at this year's Oscars, attracting further criticism to what Indiewire describes as the Academy Awards' "broken system for recognising foreign films".

Zootopia

If you can cast your minds back as far as March 2016, you may remember the gloriously colourful animated feature Zootopia from Disney. After all, it grossed a remarkable $1.024bn worldwide.

Its intriguing premise speaks volumes of the slightly mad-cap nature of Zootopia: "In a city of anthropomorphic animals, a rookie bunny cop and a cynical con artist fox must work together to uncover a conspiracy." But with buckets of humour and some of the most vibrant animation to come out of Disney in decades, Zootopia is one of the year's most eminently watchable films.

Instead of ending up as another run-of-the-mill family comedy, Zootopia surprised critics, who praised the depth of its characters and the prescience of its unexpectedly political message.

"The last thing you'd expect from a new Disney animated marshmallow is balls. But, hot damn, Zootopia comes ready to party hard," says Rolling Stone's Peter Travers. "This baby has attitude, a potent feminist streak, a tough take on racism, and a cinema-centric plot that references The Godfather, Chinatown and LA Confidential. The kids, paying zero attention to such things, will love it. But the grown-ups will have even more fun digging in."