Favorite Movies of 2016

I'm running a little behind this year, thanks to a combination of factors that most prominently features my own laziness. So apologies for that. Otherwise, I don't have a lot to say here. Here they are, my favorite movies of 2016, per usual beholden to my usual caveats that 1. "2016" means movies I saw during the calendar year that saw an American theatrical release during the calendar year, and 2. the reliably ludicrous and outdated roll-out model for major releases like La La Land has prevented me from seeing movies I definitely would have otherwise (like La La Land—I'm a little pissed that Knoxville didn't get La La Land soon enough to make this list; can you tell?).

Also, as always, this list was hard to trim down to a neat 10, but either because of an unusual glut of fantastic film in 2016 or just an unusual preciseness in my own watching habits, this year was particularly hard. I could have easily made a top 20 and still dismayed at leaving some on the cutting room floor. But such is the artificially inflicted pain of list-making.

Okay, I'll get on with the list now. Don't forget to tell me your own favorite movies, since this is nowhere near a comprehensive list of good 2016 cinema.

[As with my best 2016 music list, I'm linking to my original reviews for the films, provided I reviewed them. Unlike the music list, I'm writing short blurbs, too. It looked too bare without them.]

Favorite Movies

1. Green Room

It's not like a vicious conflict between urban leftists and rural fascists is in anyway relevant to this year. Nope. Can't see a connection there. Let's say there were a connection, though. This movie might be pretty brilliant, and not just for political posturing; it's the tightest thriller I've seen in years and a phenomenal piece of character drama, to boot. Every death is a blow.

[Read the original review here]

2. The Edge of Seventeen

I can't hype this movie enough. Steinfeld is Oscar-worthy. The characters are miles more human than those in most ostensibly adult-oriented movies. The depiction of adolescent obnoxiousness as an off-shoot of personal tragedy is spot-on. The stakes are perfect. I originally said I should wait for the theatrical high to wear off. Well, it has, and I'll say it still: this is one of the best coming-of-age movies of all time.

[Read original review here]

3. The Nice Guys

Nothing complicated going on here. This movie just makes me laugh very, very hard. Crowe and Gosling make a wonderful odd couple, and Gosling in particular shows a great capacity for physical comedy. It's so funny.

[Read original review here]

4. Kubo and the Two Strings

In a cultural moment that many have come to declare "post-facts," Kubo's message of the ability for story to override reality for both good and evil feels even more incendiary than it would have already. Even better, the animation is breathtaking.

[Read original review here]

5. Lemonade

Yes, I'm counting it as a movie. An awesome movie.

[Read original review here]

6. Moonlight

It's a structural experiment, sure, and a treatise on identity. But in practice, neither of those rather lofty aims end up feeling any loftier than the sand under these characters' feet. The drama of this movie's three vignettes is both profound and grittily tangible.

[Read original review here]

7. Hell or High Water

This movie hits its climax and then just keeps going. Normally, I'd reckon that as a fatal flaw; with a film as whip-smart as this one, though, it's what ends up making it great.

[Read original review here]

8. Eye in the Sky

The only way you'll have a tenser time in a movie this year is if you watch my #1. It's not a "fun" movie, not with its pained ambivalence on drone warfare, but it's a riveting one nonetheless.

[Read original review here]

9. Moana

Moana has a deeper bench of songs than any Disney movie in 20 years, and that's just one of its many pleasures. Really, the whole package is just so sweet.

[Read original review here]

10. Hush

Its "home invasion, but what if she was deaf?" premise should be gimmicky. But the execution is borderline brilliant. My review said that this would be fighting The Witch for the best horror movie of 2016, and, well, look who made the list.

[Read original review]

Appendix: Miscellaneous Movies Also Worth Noting

Other Best Horror Movie: The Witch—But seriously, The Witch is great, and I give it major kudos for committing to the Puritan language and nutso creepy ending.

Best Additional Evidence That This Was Just a Fantastic Year for Horror: Lights Out, Don't Breathe, et al—There were so many good horror movies this year, y'all.

Is It a Movie or a Miniseries? I Don't Know or Care Because It's Incredible: O.J.: Made in America—If I were more confident that this searing dissection of American celebrity and racial politics is a proper movie, it would rest easily at the #1 spot on the list. Instead, here it sits, with nothing to show for its excellence except my full-throated recommendation, regardless of the medium it belongs with.

Best Evolution from Old Fuddy-Duddy: Knight of Cups—Terrence Malick isn't exactly in dire need of update, but after the waifish To the Wonder, this high-concept urban-spiritual tale feels fresh and vital.

Best Same Old, Same Old from Old Fuddy Duddy: Café Society—Look, by this point, you know what you're in for with a Woody Allen movie and whether or not you're going to be into that territory. Me, I'm still loving all the incisive iterations of his stable of pet themes when he's able to craft movies as aching and gorgeous as this one.

Best Portrayal of People I Would Never Be Inclined to Give the Time of Day to in Real Life: Everybody Wants Some!!—Spending two hours with a group of athletes jumping from college party to college party as they try to impress ladies with their cleverness in an attempt to get laid sounds like "Michael O'Malley Repellent: The Movie." But lo and behold, we're instead graced with a funny and compassionate two hours that paints some of the most enjoyably idiosyncratic characters of the year. Willoughby for life!

Best Worst Cringe: Weiner—The most compelling tragedy of this riveting, excruciating documentary is not any of the many scandals that Anthony Weiner invites the camera to record but rather the knowledge that all us 2016 viewers bring to the table, which is that even these scandals aren't the last of the Weiner shenanigans!

Best Poignancy via Farting Corpse: Swiss Army Man—It really is poignant. And it really does feature a farting corpse (not even the most ridiculous this corpse does [cue Jurassic Park theme]).

Best Religious Work: Hail, Caesar!—By this time, I hope the characterization of the Coen brothers as nihilistic snarksters has been long put to rest, and if it hasn't, here comes Hail, Caesar! to try to tuck it in once more. A silly, sardonic movie, to be sure, but once that, like Inside Llewyn Davis and A Serious Man and No Country for Old Men and several more before it, is imbued with a sincere and even desperate quest for meaning within the universe.

Second-Best Religious Work: The Innocents—The Innocents is, honestly, a better movie overall than Hail, Caesar! But it's not better at being religious, settling on more humanist pursuits than the more sublimely focused Coens are. But it's still very good, compelling stuff.

Most in Need of Political Clarity: Captain America: Civil War—In theory, this is a movie about ideologies. But it does so little to flesh out the battling ideas of Captain America and Iron Man that it remains a movie about fists. We do get that kickin' airport fight scene, though, so it's not all a loss.

Best Eyeball: The Neon Demon—You'll know it when you see it.

Best Eyeball, Runner Up: The Lobster—You'll know it when you don't see it.

The "I Can't Believe I Haven't Talked About This Movie in This Post Yet" Award: Arrival—So very good. So very exploitative of linguistic theory. And here it is at the bottom of this post.

Best Non-2016 Movie I Saw For the First Time in 2016: Malcolm X—My original review gets at it best, but I haven't been so profoundly shaken by a movie since... well, I guess since I saw Make Way for Tomorrow last year.

Gotta stop sometime, so I might as well stop here. But I do so reluctantly! 10 Cloverfield Lane, Louder Than Bombs, Rogue One, Finding Dory, both Werner Herzog docs, Imperium, The Shallows, Love & Friendship, and like a bazillion other good-to-great movies from 2016 are still left unacknowledged. 2016 was a super solid cinematic year, and I'm sure all y'all out there have your own favorites that lie similarly neglected. So chime in! I'd love to hear from everyone.

Until next time!

Mini-Reviews for September 26 - October 2, 2016

Got around to lots of stuff this week! Woohoo!

Movies

Sully (2016)
Sully's biggest problem is how obviously better it could have been: a tense "inspired" by a true story chamber drama surrounding the (somewhat embellished in the film) investigation surrounding the Hudson River landing, a psychological portrait of the mental trauma faced by our pilot in the throes of both PTSD and self-doubt despite his ostensible success, a critique of the media tendency to anoint singular "great men" in situations where whole teams of people contributed to the heroism—all of these would have been more interesting narratives for the film to have wholly embraced. Sully's second-biggest problem is that it's all those things at once, feinting toward lots of potential dramatic ideas without ever really sinking its teeth into one. The result is a somewhat frustrating movie whose structure and tone are scattered across the screen like debris. And yet, thanks to an excellent performance by Tom Hanks and some fantastic staging and attention-to-detail in the plane scenes, Sully manages to be effective enough anyhow. But it's a close one. Grade: B

Weiner (2016)
When directors Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg began this fly-on-the-wall documentary project, I suspect they would have been content to capture the honest struggle of former Congressman Anthony Weiner to build a successful NYC mayoral campaign from the ashes of his obliterated-by-sexting-scandal political career. What they got—oh my word, what they got!—is a horrifying twist out of only the wickedest of documentarian daydreams: capturing the gutted reactions of the Weiner family and staff as a new Weiner sexting scandal breaks right in front of the cameras. "Why are you letting us film this?" one of the filmmakers asks at one point, and that's certainly the question most of this documentary begs; the ethics of publishing this project are certainly murky enough that even Weiner's flagrant (and possibly sociopathic) arrogance doesn't make this an easy watch, and as a whole, the project ends up being the purest distillation of the UK's version of The Office ever captured in real life, with all the tragicomic (and mostly tragic) pathos that goes with that. Few movie experiences have made me more pained from cringing. But golly, it's riveting. Grade: A-

The Innocents (Les Innocentes) (2016)
The sheer fact of The Innocents being, hands down, the most gorgeously photographed movie I've seen all year would be enough to give me a great affection for it: the repeated visual motif of patchy, white snow giving stark outline to darker objects—be they trees, crumbling buildings, or pregnant nuns (yes)—is an evocative, breathtaking sight that never grows thin, and the real triumph is the film's ability to make winter dimness actually look fantastic and interesting, which is a good thing, since much of the movie seems to have been filmed outdoors in late-afternoon winter light. It's even more exciting that the actual content of movie almost manages to match the visual splendor. This riveting true story of a Polish convent recovering from the Soviet pillaging at the end of WWII is full of emotional weight and powerful thematic grounds, although trickily so for the latter: the movie feints toward tackling the Problem of Evil and the existence of God, but the true heart of the movie is rooted much smaller, ultimately focusing on that existential human ability to imbue events with meaning rather than have those events' meaning be forced up them, and the unlikely and wholly earned happy ending here is the perfect microcosm of this idea. The movie isn't perfect: out side of one or two, the nuns are a bit too anonymous and lacking personality, and the protagonist, a French Red Cross worker, is a bit of a blandly competent audience surrogate. But those are small concerns in the context of the towering success of the rest of the film. Grade: A-

Back to the Future Part II (1989)
I've revisited the iconic original about as much as you would expect of a young, male movie nerd, but somehow, I'd never gotten around to either of its sequels. Color me pleasantly surprised: not that I thought Part II would be terrible, but I was not expecting the creative energy that's on display here. It's not a classic on the magnitude of the original—the humor is more that of gentle chuckles than guffaws, and the whole Jennifer thing is just weird (even the filmmakers have admitted as such, finding themselves written into a corner by her having stepped into the Delorean in the final scene of Part I). But Part II resides in that small pantheon of time travel stories that takes full advantage of the loopiness of the time travel mechanic without sentencing the plot to incoherent nonsense; the movie is famous for its 2015 sequence, but the real pleasure here is how complexly yet cogently the plot leaps all over the timeline from the original film, recontextualizing familiar moments in new and fun ways. I wonder how Part III will stack up... Grade: B+

Back to the Future Part III (1990)
After about ten minutes of that inventive use of time travel dynamics that made Part II so charming, Part III settles into a much more sedate structure more akin to the original's "Let's travel to this one specific time period and nowhere else so we don't have to have too many sets" approach, which is a slight disappointment. Emphasis on slight—it's still an enjoyable, smartly scripted caper that puts it only barely in little sibling status to the other two parts. Its flaws are relatively small, the worst of which being that the humor is even more in the gentle chuckle vein than before (possibly even verging on the smiling-and-shaking-head variety) and that I can't decide if its tendency to remake the same scenes in every movie (e.g. Marty wakes up in a bed being cared for by a female relative, thinks his time traveling has been a dream) is an agreeable playfulness with series tropes or an exercise in diminishing returns. The weakest of the three, no doubt. But not anything that'll make you want to travel back, Delorean-style, to tell yourself to save your time. Grade: B

Television

O.J.: Made in America (2016)
I wasn't old enough to care about the O.J. Simpson trial when it was happening, and as far as I'm concerned, these sorts of high-profile media-obsessed events are best viewed through the lens of hindsight anyway. And man, does this ESPN-produced documentary miniseries take the benefit of hindsight and runs with it, giving, in its five episodes and nearly eight-hour runtime, the most meticulously researched, nuanced treatment of the situation that the O.J. trial is likely to ever see. Beginning with Simpson's early life in poverty and the L.A. police brutality and resulting riots and not ending until Simpsons jail sentence ten years ago, Made in America tackles a scope that might have led to information overload and tedious slogging through archival footage if the whole thing weren't so rhetorically coherent: the series follows an impressive number of parallel threads (to name a few: the history of the LAPD, the effects of the LAPD's brutal actions on African-American communities, O.J. Simpson's complicated relationship with his own racial identity, the interplay of power and subservience in celebrity) and every interview, statistic, and mundane fact in the entire series clearly and purposefully advances the narrative of at least one of these threads, culminating in the documentary's final and overarching judgment—not on the trial itself (it lets its excellent roster of interviewees [including, most notably, Simpson's prosecutor and a lawyer from the Cochran firm] speak for themselves on that one)—of O.J. Simpson as a uniquely American tragic hero of the same magnitude as King Lear or (more likely) Macbeth. And, given the sensational nature of the trial itself, tragedy is probably the most responsible way to depict these events; the luridness is still there, but it's shown with an almost mournful demeanor, free from as much leering and opportunism as is possible in this sort of scenario. It's a searing treatise on media, celebrity, power, and, above all, American race relations, and the deeply tragic implication underpinning ever moment of the series is that this is not just twenty years ago; it's today. Grade: A

Music

Wilco - Schmilco (2016)
The easy thing to do with Wilco releases at this stage is to embrace the noisy, experimental work and dismiss the quieter, rootsier output: hence the critical adoration of The Whole Love and last year's Star Wars and the shrugs in response to records like Sky Blue Sky and now Schmilco. Don't get me wrong: I definitely prefer Star Wars to Schmilco. But I also think it's a mistake to tune out as soon as we hear the acoustic guitars. In a lot of ways, Schmilco is a sister record to Star Wars, sporting that same tossed-off, ragged vibe that positions them somewhere between an indie-rock version of the Grateful Dead and Neil Young, only this time in the context of Wilco's quieter half. The experimentation is just a little sneakier this time around: the unplugged jam "Common Sense" and the almost ambient outro to "Quarters" are just as exploratory as anything on Star Wars, just through the vehicle of soft guitar picking rather than noise rock. And let's not forget that, experimentation aside, Wilco has always been great at just crafting fine songs—"If I Ever Was a Child," "Cry All Day," and "We Aren't the World (Safety Girl)" are all vintage Tweedy songwriting and great songs in their own right. It's not Wilco's best, and the second half of the album does have a bit more slack passages than is good for it (it's not a great sign that, even at a slight 36 minutes, the album could still stand to be shorter). But it's nowhere near bad or boring. Grade: B