Directed by Terrence Malick. With Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Brian Dennehy. A writer indulging in all that Los Angeles and Las Vegas has to. Over the next month, we'll be collecting year-end top 10 lists from over 120 movie critics and publications. Browse the individual lists and view our composite.

Directed by Terrence Malick. With Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman. Two intersecting love triangles. Obsession and betrayal set against. Create free online surveys in minutes with SurveyMonkey. Get the feedback you need so you can make smarter decisions. A horrible and wildly unnecessary follow-up that might actually be worse than its predecessor. We asked 163 critics and curators to name their five top movies of the year – and atop what may be our most diverse annual poll yet, the runaway winner is a German.

The best films of 2. That films as imaginative as that spare portrait of an awkward young black girl, The Fits, or Barry Jenkins’s moody depiction of a black gay outsider, Moonlight, or Natalie Portman’s searing portrayal of JFK’s first lady, Jackie, don’t make my five indicates how strong it was. Also of note was Manchester by the Sea, a blue- collar high tragedy with wrenching performances that weigh the balance so carefully between the push and pull of guilt and responsibility that the film is emotionally exhausting. Fire at Sea found a fresh way of viewing the immigrants risking their lives in lethal boats on the Mediterranean. Paterson was just the most soulful, quiet local neighbourhood pleasure at Cannes and Toni Erdmann the most outlandishly unforeseen comedy of manners.

Elle is a watershed film, the most involving psychological thriller in years, and Embrace of the Serpent felt like a rethinking of so much adventure cinema from the last half century. Cinema did the seductive part of its function well, taking us out of ourselves, and how we needed that.

Kieron Corless. Deputy Editor. A great year for cinema, and I still haven’t seen Albert Serra’s new film. In no particular order: Cemetery of Splendour. Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A trip into the Thai subconscious and a disfigured, decaying body politic, couched in an atmosphere of tranquil unrest. It comes off like some mesmerising, serenely disruptive sci- fi. Mimosas. Oliver Laxe.

The breakout film from the Galician scene is a shamanistic ride into the Moroccan mountains and desert, and more than fulfils the promise of You Are All Captains. It’s beautiful, strange, unclassifiable; Laxe will surely be one of the great directors of the next few decades. Son of Joseph (Le Fils de Joseph) Eug. Another brilliant one- off from the sublime Eug. Improbably, Paul Verhoeven just gets better and better, here channelling the spirit of Fritz Lang into a contemporary allegory on unredeemable male monsters and their overcoming.

Staying Vertical (Rester Vertical) Alain Guiraudie. Wilder and freer than the more classical Stranger by the Lake, the film literally reinvents itself from scene to scene, and yet somehow feels all of a piece.

Brilliantly, blackly comic. Special mention to Slack Bay: a brilliantly achieved creation of a unique universe, melding different types of comedy – black, grotesque, farce, burlesque, comic- book, expressionist – in service of a savage social satire. James Bell. Features Editor. Paterson. Jim Jarmusch. Embrace of the Serpent.

Ciro Guerra. Elle. Paul Verhoeven. Moonlight. Barry Jenkins. Love & Friendship. Whit Stillman. Nick Bradshaw.

Web Editor. Cameraperson. Kirsten Johnston. Tempestad. Tatiana Huezo.

Kings of Nowhere. Betzab. Finally, after my first three choices (which absolutely had to be in), I reluctantly left out 2. Fire at Sea could have been replaced by I, Daniel Blake, The Unknown Girl, Toni Erdmann, Hissein Habr. Things to Come could have been replaced by Elle (Huppert is surely the greatest actress of our age). And I felt especially bad about not being able to include fine new works by Radu Jude, Whit Stillman, Bertrand Tavernier, Asli Ozge and Jos.

Since an allocation of ten wouldn’t have been enough, five was excruciatingly insufficient. The highlight of my year was probably the London Film Festival’s Archive Gala screening of Arthur Robison’s The Informer – a meticulous BFI restoration of one of the best British films made at the end of the silent era, with a truly superb live performance of an unusually audacious, subtle, detailed and evocative new score for sextet by virtuoso violist and composer Garth Knox. Both cinematically and musically, it was a marvellous evening.

Sadly, however, the year’s most memorable event was the shocking, perhaps wholly avoidable death of Abbas Kiarostami, for me and many others the greatest artist working in film over the last few decades. What a terrible loss to cinema. Corrina Antrobus. Programmer (Bechdel Test Fest), UKMoonlight. Barry Jenkins. Mustang. Deniz Gamze Erg. Political tensions have ruptured the faith of liberals and strengthened toxic extremist views. Never before has the tonic of cinema been so necessary.

This list of elongated movies (many nudging the three- hour notch) has a silky thread of exquisite indulgence; interesting to notice that many of my choices are road movies featuring an reckless escape plan. With their far- flung narratives and acute, complex character portraits they provide respite from the social unrest. Aside from haute escapism, they offer solace to those weary of the straight white male norm. Certain Women in particular deeply understands the labour and expectations of women, and Moonlight softly confronts the pressures on black gay men. All are a feathered lash at the patriarchy, daring us to hope and reminding us to look to art in times of turmoil. Michael Atkinson.

Critic, USACemetery of Splendour. Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The Lobster. Yorgos Lanthimos. Toni Erdmann. Maren Ade. Evolution. Lucile Hadzihalilovic. The Academy of Muses.

Jos. Insofar as the context of my choices matter, here are my runners- up, in order: Fireworks Wednesday, Cameraperson, Moonlight, The Witch, High- Rise, Dheepan, Aferim! Beyond my top five features, favourite shorts include Laida Lertxundi’s Vivir para Vivir, Guillermo Moncayo’s The Event Horizon, Corin Sworn and Charlotte Prodger’s HDHB, Kathryn Elkin’s Why La Bamba and Kevin Jerome Everson’s Ears, Nose and Throat. My top moving- image exhibitions include Philippe Parreno at Hangar. Bicocca, The Inoperative Community at Raven Row, Jean- Paul Kelly at Delfina Foundation, Amar Kanwar at Frac des Pays de la Loire and Clemens von Wedemeyer at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein. My historical discovery of the year is Jean Matthee’s superlative Neon Queen (1.

Other repertory favourites include the Pere Portabella retrospective at Rotterdam, the restoration of Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames (1. Song of Ceylon (1. Harun Farocki’s 1. TV essay . It’s no coincidence that my favourite films of 2.

Whether these women hold the fate of humanity in their hands or are fighting for individual survival, are coolly competent or deeply flawed, they have all been treated with respect, intelligence and empathy by the filmmakers who created them, and the performers who brought them to life. And that makes for some of the year’s most original, powerful and inspiring cinema. Anne Billson. Critic, Belgium. The Blackcoat’s Daughter (aka February) Oz Perkins. Hail, Caesar! Ethan Coen & Joel Coen. Hell or High Water. David Mackenzie. Love & Friendship.

Whit Stillman. Our Little Sister. Koreeda Hirokazu. Download Burden (2017) Movie Now there. Among the films that might have made my cut had we been allowed ten picks: De Palma, The Invitation, Julieta, The Shallows and Train to Busan. I also loved Julia Ducournau’s Raw and Olivier Assayas’s Personal Shopper, but left them out because they haven’t yet gone on wide release. It was a lousy year for blockbusters, most of which I have already forgotten, but a great one for low(er) budget genre: I enjoyed the hell out of the likes of 1. Cloverfield Lane, The Conjuring 2, Ouija: Origin of Evil, The Purge: Election Year, Lights Out and Don’t Breathe.

Among the other highlights of my cinema- going year was a season of Ozu films at Flagey Cinematek in Brussels: calm, humane and exquisitely crafted – just the thing to offset the horrors of 2. If anyone needs me, I’ll be drinking Kirin in the Luna Bar. Daniel Bird. Writer, filmmaker and programmer, UKElle. Paul Verhoeven. Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present. Tyler Hubby. Embrace of the Serpent. Ciro Guerra. Psychonauts, the Forgotten Children.

Rivero Pedro, V. In other words, these are all titles well- suited – however coincidentally – to the year that has brought us Brexit and Trump.

Florence Henderson, TV's Carol Brady, dies at 8. Story highlights. Documentary Films Dvd Terminator 2 3D (2017). Florence Henderson took the role of Carol Brady in 1. Barry Williams tells CNN she was very gracious, kind, and genuine (CNN)She was one of America's moms, a television icon that endured through generations.

Florence Henderson, who played Carol Brady on . Henderson had not been sick, her manager, Kayla Pressman, said. Just this week, Henderson attended a taping of ABC's . Henderson died in a Los Angeles hospital, surrounded by family and friends. Her former castmates expressed their shock and grief at her passing. Love & hugs to her family.

I'll miss u dearly #RIPFlorence. Barry Williams, who played Greg Brady, told CNN's Brooke Baldwin that people ask him whether Henderson was really that nice, really that giving, really that maternal. She was an inspiration with how to conduct yourself in public as a famous person. She was so kind and would always take time. I want to remind people that - - and there are many many of us that will miss her - - that she was a genuine person. She grew up poor in Indiana, with an alcoholic father and a mother who left when she was 1. She was a talented singer, and would use her voice to entertain the family and help make ends meet.

And I would sing and pass the hat, and I would sing for groceries. In 1. 95. 9, she was on set as an NBC .

The fact that she was a young wife and mother helped her bring the role of Carol Brady to life. I was close to them. They were married for 2. In 1. 98. 7, she married John Kappas, a hypnotherapist. He died in 2. 00. When . She stuck with her musical career for a while, reviving her role as Annie Oakley in .

And, of course, she brought back Carol Brady for numerous . She showed up on . Mc. Kean was a contemporary of Henderson's, starring in the 1.