Evan's Top Picks of 2016
2016 was a great year for movies. Don't let anyone tell you differently.
Although no single movie has hit that perfect intersection of art and commercial success that defines the typical Oscar-worthy "best movie of the year," there are dozens of films that definitely stand out as great, if even definitive, entries in their genres and the overall canon of film.
You'll see a lot of unique Top 10 lists this year, and I have have trouble disagreeing with any of them. There was an absurd abundance of riches in 2016; whatever else you can say about the year, it's hard to argue movies weren't there to make us feel a lot better about it.
10 Movies You Should Definitely See:
Arrival
Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a linguist called in to communicate with aliens who have landed around the world under mysterious circumstances. The script by Eric Heisserer, combined with Denis Villeneuve's reliably gorgeous vision and a standout performance by Adams, seamlessly blends character work, mystery and awe.
The best science-fiction stories aren't the ones with military men killing bugs or techno-freaks sleeping with tentacled holograms (although you have to love those, too). No, the best bits of science fiction — in all mediums — are the stories that act as time capsules, insightful visions of the future through the lens of “now.”
“Faced with insurmountable odds, an intelligent but flawed woman manages to save the world through study, determination and cleverness.” It sounds like an alternate ending to 2016, and in years to come we'll look back on “Arrival” like we do all those other great works of science-fiction. It so incredibly captures the best spirit of the mid-2010s, as our popular culture has started to reflect the desire for diversity and openness in American culture. Louise is a woman who solves the problem on her own; the problem, in classic 2010s terms, is one of communication, and how fundamentally central it is to our culture, our politics, our very existence — to what we can ever accomplish.
And of course it remains to be seen whether or not things will deteriorate as rapidly as it sometimes feels they will. But there's a new world on the horizon, and thankfully stories like "Arrival" exist to remind us of how we envisioned the best of ourselves in 2016.
The Handmaiden
Very few movies are willing to venture into the realm of sex between two human beings as anything but raw titillation or narrative shorthand. Hell, the MPAA exists to distinguish consumer films from pornography. It's a difficult line to cross, but as time goes by it's become deliriously limiting to movies that want to try something new. If you can convey character through violence, why can't you convey character through fucking? “The Handmaiden” is rated NC-17 due to the graphic nature of its sex scenes (between the two lead characters, both women), but those sex scenes — centerpieces in each of the three "acts" — express so much about the characters and their experiences, their expectations. It pushes storytelling boundaries and the result is wholly unique.
Scissoring aside, “The Handmaiden” is classic Chan-Wook Park: lusciously designed, brilliantly paced and constructed layer-upon-layer to create a unique thriller experience. Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri play Lady Hideko and Sook-hee, the leads, and anchor the gaudiness and insanity with extraordinary performances.
Hell or High Water
The cowboy — the strutting, straight-talking son-of-a-bitch who flaunts convention to win a moral victory. It's the American ideal, and while that maverick bullshit gets us into regular trouble in the real world, the idea of the cowboy endures. Unfortunately, most Western cinema is more concerned with replicating the style of old movies rather than properly translating the substance into new worlds. So when a movie taps into it and makes it real? Well, that's something you have to see. The American catharsis is real and alive in “Hell or High Water.”
“Hell or High Water” is a classic Western, and I do mean that in the sense that it is an all-time great. The Howard brothers, Tanner (Ben Foster) and Toby (Chris Pine), are two West Texas boys whose mother dies, leaving them with a farm they need desperately — but one deeply at risk of seizure by a bank. So they do what any Americans would do: They start robbing bank branches to pay off the bank. Naturally a lawman comes into the picture to hunt the boys, this time Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) in what will surely be an Oscar-nominated role. Hamilton and his partner, Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham), hunt the boys down to the inevitable conclusion.
When I'm asked which movies from 2016 are worth seeing by people who see only a few a year, “Hell or High Water” is one of my go-to choices.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
“Hunt for the Wilderpeople” is the funniest, most off-kilter "coming of age" story of the year. Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) is a troubled kid who ends up in the care of Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and her grumbly husband Hec (Sam Neill). Baker runs off into the New Zealand wilderness and ends up on an adventure with Hec, as they avoid child protection services and grow to like each other. The performances are great, but the real standout is writer / director Taika Waititi ("Boy," "What We Do in the Shadows"), who imbues the relatively straightforward movie with lots of style and real insight into an unhappy child finding his place.
Jackie
What first seemed to be a “Best Actress” vehicle for star Natalie Portman is one of this year's most beautiful movies, a haunting depiction of the birth of an American mythology. Portman plays Jackie Kennedy in the days following the assassination of her husband. The framing device is her interview for Life magazine, when she coined the idea of the Kennedy administration being akin to “Camelot,” branding it an idyllic period in American life. Director Pablo Larrain and writer Noah Oppenheim aren't interested in propping up that idea; rather, they explore the trauma behind its creation.
Was the “Camelot” idea a scheme, or a necessary way to move on? It's that question — and the way Larrain answers it through Jackie's experience — that drew me to “Jackie.” We're about to see a seismic shift in the American mythology; our time is a strange one. What new myths will we need to cope?
Loving
Writer / director Jeff Nichols had a great year. February saw “Midnight Special,” a tense science-fiction movie, while October saw “Loving,” a decidedly different but no less powerful look at the lived experience of Richard and Mildred Loving, the white / black couple whose Supreme Court case legalized interracial marriage in the United States. It's easy to look at the world we live in and take for granted the unprecedented freedoms many, many of us enjoy. It's easy to forget we haven't always had them, and that the fight for them is oftentimes led not by “Great Men” or whatever bullshit, but by the pain and suffering of normal people fighting for what minor peace they justly deserve. Joel Edgerton as Richard and Ruth Negga as Mildred are both standouts here. “Loving” is low-key, exacting, human.
Moana
There's something to be said for optimism — especially this year. Few movies quite embodied the spirit of energetic, forward-thinking adventure for me as “Moana,” Disney's newest entry into its "princess" franchise. Like “Frozen” before it, “Moana” continues to redefine the basic “Disney musical” story in new, more progressive terms. Rather than appropriate aspects of a non-European culture a la carte, “Moana” does everything it can to stay actively attuned to the culture and mythology it adapts. Instead of creating another woman whose goal is marrying a hot guy or staying a princess, we get our first really adventurous, individual "princess" character whose story is about becoming a leader, and her struggle to understand what that entails.
The past half-decade has seen a steep rise in non-white, non-male dominated "fandoms." As new voices come into the greater pop-culture sphere, it is heartening to see the movies that form the cornerstone of our culture follow suit. There were many, many good animated movies this year. “Moana” was the best of them.
Moonlight
The less said about “Moonlight,” the better. I knew nothing going in and the movie was all the more powerful for it. In short: The movie chronicles the childhood, adolescence and adulthood of Chiron, a young black male who struggles with his identity. It's handled with finesse, care and deep empathy. It avoids falling into many of the traps our cultural narratives set for stories about black men and LGBTQ men. I think we'll see a lot of rooting for “Moonlight” this year at the Academy Awards, and some may be tempted to write it off as "chosen" because of who it stars and what it's about rather than the overall quality of the movie. Bullshit. We'd be fortunate if more movies like “Moonlight” got the attention they deserve.
Shin Godzilla
“Shin Godzilla” is a straightforward Godzilla movie, which means it's largely a lot of Japanese actors screaming at each other about politics and moral concerns while a man in a suit occasionally stops on cardboard buildings. The classic atomic metaphor is still present, but “Shin Godzilla” focuses much more on the failings of social institutions in response to unimaginable disaster. It doesn't take a libertarian stance that our systems are inherently flawed and thus we're better without them; it argues that no matter the system we devise, we're ultimately going to be helpless and utterly fucked, that all victories are ultimately pyrrhic. The utter nihilism of “Shin Godzilla” felt selfishly appropriate in the most anxiety-ridden moments of 2016's political landscape, sure, but it's also the most appropriate tone for a giant monster movie in a long, long time.
Sing Street
This year's best “boy growing up” movie is set in Ireland during the 1980s. Conor “Cosmo” Lawlor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is a young teen sent to a new school amidst his family's economic troubles. He starts a band to impress a girl. It's a pretty basic premise, set to the tune of mid-1980's pop music. It is purely joyful, exuberant, exciting.
5 Movies You Should Probably See:
2016 had several movies with brilliant style and effort that didn't quite land for me. These are films that I thought quite a lot about, but would never feature in my Top 10 for various reasons.
Swiss Army Man was the first of them. The movie is about lonely, shipwrecked Hank Thompson (Paul Dano), who is on the verge of suicide before a farting corpse washes up on the shore. Manny (Daniel Radcliffe) is the titular “Swiss army man”; he becomes a tool for whatever Hank needs, be it friendship, a compass, a weapon or fart-propelled human jet ski. It's an outlandish premise for an surprisingly powerful movie about finding a new lease on life. That said, the movie has an astonishingly cynical conclusion that feels like a swift kick in the nuts, like writers / directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan are laughing at you for buying into their movie. Engage at your own peril; the rewards, I thought, were worth the trouble.
The Lobster is a movie with lots of voice but nothing to say. Colin Ferrel stars as David, a single man in a world where being single is illegal. He checks into a resort devoted to finding you a mate, and if you don't settle down you're turned into an animal of your choice for the rest of your days. As he struggles with that culture he eventually finds another, out in the woods, rebels who eschew any kind of personal connection whatsoever. Pretty and well-acted with some fun digs at culture — but they're the same digs, over and over again, with no philosophical conclusion. Sometimes it's fun to watch the kid in the back of the class make fun of the teacher, but when you realize he's just angry with no actual plan to solve the problems he sees it's a bit of a letdown.
American Honey is a tedious trek through adolescence in rundown stretches of middle-America. Sasha Lane plays Star, a runaway who joins a caravan of other homeless teens eking out a meager existence “selling” magazine subscriptions door-to-door. She also comes under the influence of Jake (Shia LaBeouf), a troubled kid in her group who weaves in and out of her story to cause trouble. I didn't really like "American Honey." It's almost three hours long, which is a problem if your movie's story consists of a series of repetitive events with no moral statement. At times it slides into poverty voyeurism, like one of those “the hidden Trump voters” articles written by wealthy kids from Brooklyn eating at a West Virginian McDonalds like they're fucking ethnographers.
So why is “American Honey” listed here? Well, director Andrea Arnold ("Red Road," "Fish Tank") is a master of style. The world she creates for Star is so tactile, so immensely and beautifully crafted through cinematography, soundtrack and Lane's performance that it seemed shameful not to mention it. Despite my own reaction to it, it felt painstakingly authentic. It wasn't for me – but it may be for you, and I wanted to highlight it here.
The Witch was almost on my Top 10. As far as memorable movies go, “The Witch” stayed with me for most of the year. I championed it for “Best Original Vision” at our Indiana Film Journalists meeting this year. I've recommended it to many of my friends and family. Here's a confession: Most of the film does little for me besides the talking Satanic goat at the end. So why champion it? Well, writer / director Robert Eggers tells the story in a stark style and entirely in 17th-century, period-appropriate English. The sheer enormity of accomplishing this and still creating a tense and creepy movie should be applauded. In a year where I watched far too many horror movies for my own good, “The Witch” stood out as an above-average one with a lot of positive asterisks. Definitely one that will grow in stature over time, and a great representative of how 2016 pushed genre conventions.
Sausage Party needs to be watched in a theater with an unsuspecting audience. The raunchy, absurd "talking food" comedy from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg was one of my greatest theatrical experiences of the year. Sex jokes, constructive cursing, inappropriate cultural humor and a talking douche: it's anything and everything you've wanted from this creative duo smashed together with endless visual puns and a surprisingly decent commentary on religion. It's definitely not a movie for everyone, but pretty great.
5 Documentaries You Must See:
I didn't include any documentaries in my Top 10 because there were too many great ones to choose from. Here are a quick 5:
Trapped: My vote for the top documentary at the annual IFJA meeting, “Trapped” is a Netflix-produced documentary about abortion providers in the South and the legislative challenges they face when providing safe, necessary medical treatment. But this isn't just a standard pro-choice documentary. The reason I found “Trapped” so deeply compelling is that it has a deep focus on the role religious faith plays on both sides of the abortion conflict. It is a humanistic and holistic look at a deeply divisive issue and documentary filmmaking at its finest.
Tower: If not “Trapped,” then “Tower,” which tells the story of the 1966 UT-Austin bell tower shootings in a wholly unique and profoundly affecting way. “Tower” is an animated, minute-by-minute reenactment using animated characters and voice actors reading interviews with the survivors of the event. It places you in the moment in a way few documentaries manage.
O.J.: Made in America: Movie? TV? Who cares? What you should know is that if you have any interest at all in the O.J. Simpson trial, “Made in America” is an absolute epic, tracing the Simpson's life and the role race played in his successes — and how he himself influenced them. It's rare for a documentary to tread so much ground, but the eight-hour run time provided plenty of space.
13th: One of my greatest fears going into 2017 is that we're going to see a massive regression in the small gains black voices have made during the last decade in highlighting the systematic racism inherent in American history and governance. “13th” serves as a primer on the issue of race in the United States, and it's the kind of movie that could not have existed even eight years ago. Maybe not even four years ago. I hope it's the first of many. It is required viewing, and available on Netflix.
Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World: Werner Herzog's style is well-known to fans of his, and “Lo and Behold” offers up new curiosities in his familiar, warmly weird way. It's an off-kilter, bizarre look at the Internet by a man who clearly does not use it like your average person. Sometimes new perspectives on what we take for granted help us better appreciate our daily lives.
Other Recommendations
I said this was a standout year for movies and I wasn't being hyperbolic. Here are some I didn't write about, but strongly recommend:
10 Cloverfield Lane
Born to be Blue
Captain America: Civil War
Captain Fantastic
Christine
Doctor Strange
Don't Think Twice
Fences
Hail, Caesar!
La La Land
Manchester by the Sea
The Nice Guys
Paterson
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
The Shallows
Southside With You
Warcraft
Weiner
Zootopia
Movies You Shouldn't Watch
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (What a piece of shit.)
My Unqualified Top 10 of 2016:
10. Loving
9. Hell or High Water
8. Trapped
7. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
6. Jackie
5. The Handmaiden
4. Tower
3. Moana
2. Arrival
1. Moonlight
Previous Top 10 Lists: