is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
One last look at what I watched last year. First, between holidays and travel, I squeezed in eleven films in December and got out to the theaters three times. Most of my home viewing was spent binging on old Japanese films streamed from the new service Filmstruck; it’s basically a smorgasbord for cinema fans. Scroll down further to see them.
Some readers may recall that before the start of last year I resolved to stop watching television shows (more or less) and watch movies, exclusively. According to Letterboxd, where I keep a film diary, that allowed me to watch 185 films last year, averaging about three and a half per week. Looking back, I’m extremely happy with that choice because I saw so much good cinema last year—movies I’d always wanted to see but never got around to, movies I didn’t know anything about before discovering for the first time, and movies that I already cherished but hadn’t been able to revisit for years. Of course, it did mean that I missed out on “Game of Thrones,” “Stranger Things” and “Westworld,” but I’d take “The Duke of Burgundy,” “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” and “The Handmaiden” over those any time.
Speaking of the latter, here is a quick rundown of the best films released in 2016 that I managed to see. Given how infrequently I get out to theaters, it’s hardly a comprehensive list, of course.
You can also see every 2016 movie that I saw last year and how I ranked them in this Letterboxd list. That site, which I’ve really come to adore in the past year, also compiles a year-end summary of patron members’ activity which offers more insight into how I spent my movie time in 2016; if you’re interested in that, have a look here. It includes this imposing graphic of all 185 of the movies I logged.
Whew. If you care to follow along, you can join me over at letterboxd.com.
For posterity’s sake, here is the complete rundown of all 185 films, along with the brief commentary I added for them as I blogged them here, month by month.
January
“Sicario” Rewatched at home after seeing it in theaters last year.
“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” Really had a hard time finishing this one. Completely inessential.
“The Double” I was skeptical at first because it seemed very arch, but it’s full of inventive stuff.
“The Keep” Finally got to watch this rare early Michael Mann movie, transferred from a terrible print, via Amazon. Pretty flimsy, but still has some vintage Mann elements.
“The Dark Knight” Watched this again after several years; I was shocked by how much of it is really stiff and unconvincing, but its second half is still potent.
