Important Movies

I dont remember even hearing about Elle

There's an argument for Ghostbusters for the reasons you state. That said, the glimmers of its online reception were already apparent in responses to The Force Awakens for having a Mary Sue protagonist and a Black Stormtropper, or to Fury Road for putting a woman at the center instead of Max. I guess what I'm questioning is if it was really Ghostbusters that was important or if it just happened to be in the right place at the right time. By comparison, what Elle is doing seems a lot more singular and specific to the film. Also, given how much of film theory is written about voyeurism, desire, fetishism, and gender, an openly pervy male director making a movie about a woman's experience of sexual assault that denies titillation and grapples with a complex psycho-sexual response to the violence invites a whole new wave of study and theory to develop from the film. I also just feel like the film is a very salient portrayal not just of rape culture but modern misogyny writ large. The fact that the lead is a videogame developer who has revenge porn made of her from the game her company is making really grapples with the modern culture of violence against women, and how that violence is realized, than any other film I can think of.

Nice guys
Arrival
Moana
La La land

Arrival and Witch can get added. Just need that 5th spot. Coop's pushing Elle, NE's pushing Ghostbusters

Elle is a substantially more interesting movie on the topic.

You were on the money with Rogue One and A.I.

The problem with adding Rogue One is that we already have Force Awakens and Last Jedi is a very likely contender for 2017. It's the ultimate film for online culture war vitriol. Do we really need three Disney-era Star Wars movies in the list? When we also have all of the original trilogy and The Phantom Menace?

Moana has a much greater reach than kubo.

And really outside that witch scene kubo isn't the most impressive Laika flick.

That might say something about how only certain properties are in a position to be "important" on a big scale these days, at least in the short term.

Did we settle on our 2016 picks?

As for 2012...

I'd be down to drop Hunger Games and Zero Dark Thirty. The former was the start of a big franchise but the YA wave was quite fragile and its influence short-lived. Bigelow has also proven a less significant filmmaker since 2012 than her success in that era would indicate. As for what should be swapped in... Django Unchained springs to mind. Very audacious and somehow still massively popular. Important film for debates about representation, who gets to tell certain stories and in what style, etc. I might also suggest Frances Ha. I've never got the hype for it but there are people who love it to death and in hindsight it played a key role in the emergence of Greta Gerwig as a filmmaker even if she didn't technically direct it.

There's still one more 2016 spot, but no consensus

Silver linings is peak David o Russel - hasn't quite hit the highs since.

Dredd has some awesome people in front of and behind the camera. Karl Urban is everywhere now (an Urban Sprawl if you will...) and the internet almost wants a sequel to this more than they want firefly to be continued. Seems like people keep discovering this awesome action flick.