Split
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Screenwriter: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Jessica Sula, Haley Lu Richardson
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Rated PG-13 | 117 Minutes
Release Date: January 20, 2017

In Split, the latest film by M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs), James McAvoy (X-Men: Apocalypse) stars as Kevin, a troubled young man who kidnaps three teenage girls: Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy, The Witch), Marcia (Jessica Sula), and Claire (The Edge of Seventeen‘s Haley Lu Richardson).

As Casey and her friends try to escape the underground lair in which they are trapped, they discover that Kevin has dissociative identity disorder, a psychological condition characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personality states. According to his psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley, Carrie), Kevin embodies 23 separate personalities of all ages and genders, manifesting unique physical attributes for each.

Silence
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriter: Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Yosuke Kubozuka, Shin’ya Tsukamoto, Liam Neeson, Ciarán Hinds
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Rated R | 161 Minutes
Release Date: December 23, 2016 (Limited)

“Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent?”

In 1988, at a screening for religious leaders of his new film The Last Temptation of Christ, Martin Scorsese was approached by Archbishop Paul Moore, the Episcopal Bishop of New York, who presented the filmmaker with a copy of ShÅ«saku Endō‘s acclaimed novel Silence.

Published in 1966, the novel is the story of Jesuit missionaries sent to 17th century Japan, where they endure persecution in the time of Kakure Kirishitan (“Hidden Christians”) that followed the defeat of the Shimabara Rebellion, an uprising of Catholic Christian peasants during the Tokugawa shogunate’s rule.

The annual ritual of narrowing down hundreds of titles to a definitive “Top 10” Movies of 2016 is a cruel but necessary discipline as a film critic. Over the past 12 months, I’ve seen more than 100 new releases. That’s over eight days spent watching new movies, and I’m happy to report that 2016 has been a great year for cinema, despite reports that “film is dead.”

This year, we saw new work by visionary filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Denis Villeneuve, Park Chan-wook, J.A. Bayona, and Joel and Ethan Coen. We witnessed noteworthy performances by Casey Affleck, Viola Davis, Natalie Portman, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Ryan Gosling, and Emma Stone. And we were entertained by emotionally engaging, visually impressive blockbusters like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Captain America: Civil War, and Doctor Strange.

Below are my 10 favorite films of 2016, accompanied by a list of 20 honorable mentions, making for a list of 30 must-see movies that kept my cynicism and negativity buried beneath hope and joy. I hope these films will move, inspire, and reinvigorate you in the same way!

Travel to another dimension of sight and sound this fall with The Twilight Zone: The Complete Series. Featuring new packaging, this 24-disc Blu-ray set includes all 156 episodes from five seasons (over 74 hours of content), and arrives on December 13, just in time for the holidays.

Black Christmas
Blu-ray (Collector’s Edition)
Director: Bob Clark
Screenwriter: A. Roy Moore
Cast: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon
Distributor: Scream Factory
Rated R | 98 Minutes
Release Date: December 13, 2016

“Oh, why don’t you go find a wall socket and stick your tongue in it, that’ll give you a charge!”

Considered to be one of the first “slasher” films, 1974’s Black Christmas served as an influence for John Carpenter’s Halloween and has since become a cult classic. Directed by Bob Clark (Porky’s, A Christmas Story), the movie was inspired by a series of murders that took place in Montreal, and the urban legend “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs.”

At a Christmas party at the Pi Kappa Sigma house, Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) receives an obscene phone call from “The Moaner,” a disturbed individual who has been calling the house. Jess and her sorority sisters Barb (Margot Kidder), Phyllis (Andrea Martin), and Clare (Lynne Griffin) listen in on the call. The feisty Barb provokes the caller, who responds by telling the girls that he is going to kill them.