Anyone of these films would not be out of place on
my top 10 list - in particular from 14 on up.
20.
Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford)
The Austin Wright novel that Tom Ford adapted in
Nocturnal Animals could not have been the easiest to adapt – it has a very
literally structure and style that if you don’t quite just right, will quite
simply not on screen. I don’t think Ford pulls it off effortlessly – you can
see the strain in his effort at times – but mostly, he does it brilliantly. The
film tells multiple stories – with fictions layered inside fiction – one
involving a husband and father (Jake Gyllenhaal) who watches as his wife and
daughter get kidnapped by a group of backwater psychos (led by Aaron
Taylor-Johnson) – and has to rely on a strange lawman (Michael Shannon) for
help. The other involves Susan (Amy Adams), the ex-wife of Tony (also
Gyllenahaal) – living a high class, empty LA existence of fashion, money, style
and excess – who is reading the book he wrote (the kidnapping story). The film
is a knowing mixture of genres and styles – half out of touch Hollywood
Liberal, half dimwit Trump supporter – deliberately provoking a response from
the audience, leading them to an inevitable conclusion – and then, simply not
providing it. The film is brilliant and flawed, mesmerizing and messed up.
There is a no way a film like this could ever be perfect – but it is
unforgettable.
19.
Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
Certain Women is one of the year’s quietest films –
as you would expect for the latest by the wonderful Kelly Reichardt. It tells
three, mildly interlocking stories about women in the Midwest, dealing with
their lives – casual misogyny, loneliness, crumbling marriages, etc. – and does
so without a hint of melodrama. The first story – starring Laura Dern as a
lawyer with a client who will not listen her (but will listen to a man) – has
the most plot, but even that is low-key. The second story, about a couple who
wants to buy some sandstone from an elderly man, who always planned to use it,
and never got around to it, is perhaps a little too quiet, too subtle. The
finale one is of the best of the year (if the whole movie were as good as this
segment, this would easily make the top 10 list) – and tells the story a lonely
rancher (Lily Gladstone, in one of the great performances of the year) who
develops a friendship with her teacher (Kristen Stewart) – which leads her to
do something she didn’t expect. Reichardt’s films are always quiet, always low-key
– always feel like not much is happening, but grow in your mind for weeks
afterwards. Certain Women – like Meek’s Cutoff, Old Joy and Wendy & Lucy –
is beautiful, subtle, heartbreaking filmmaking.
18.
Don’t Breathe (Fede Alvarez)
The best “pure” horror film of the year, Fede Alvarez’s
Don’t Breathe is intense and scary right from the start. The story of three
young people who break into the isolated house of a blind veteran – supposedly
because he has hundreds of thousands of dollars inside – is brilliantly
executed by Alvarez. He favors long takes, tracking shots, showing us the lay
of the land inside the house early, and then using it to great effect later on.
The sound design is perhaps the best of the years – everything heightened for
maximum effect. Jane Levy is in fine form as the “survivor girl” in the film –
sympathetic, even though she’s there to rob a blind guy – but Stephen Lang
gives perhaps the most undervalued performance of the year as that man – at
first sympathetic, than downright frightening. The movie takes a few wild turns
in the final act – does it go too far? Perhaps – but overall, this really is a
brilliant horror film – and one of my favorite movie going experiences of the
year.
17.
La La Land (Damien Chazelle)
Damien Chazelle’s La La Land is one of the year’s
most ambitious films – a full scale, made directly for the screen musical like
this isn’t seen very often, let alone one that pulls it off this well. The film
is anchored by two wonderful lead performances – Ryan Gosling as a character
who in other hands may have been an insufferable asshole, is instead instantly
charming, and Emma Stone, finds new bits to play as the ingénue looking for
stardom. They carry the movie through a few of its rough patches. Strangely, I
think if the music was a little stronger, and if Chazelle were better able to
hide the obvious enormous effort of the production (musicals are always a ton
of work – but watch Astaire/Rodgers or Gene Kelly – they make it look like they
aren’t trying at all), this would be even better. As it stands, it’s still
wonderful – and I have nothing but admiration for the wild, crazy ambition it
took to pull it off.
16.
Hail, Caesar! (Joel & Ethan Coen)
The consensus seems to be that the Coens latest is
minor Coens – and perhaps it is, since many of their films have found their way
onto my top 10 list over the years, and this sits just outside it. Still, it’s
impossible to overstate the pure joy I get out of this film- a brilliant homage
to, and send up of, the studio era in Hollywood – a lighter side of Barton Fink
perhaps, that still manages some thematic heft in its Christ-like story at its
core. Coen comedies often take more time to find their audience then their
dramas – and I find it hard to believe that people won’t be quoting this one
for years to come (“Would that it were so simple”, “Squint into the
grandeur!”). Coen regulars like Josh Brolin – in the lead role – and George
Clooney – adding another Coen buffoon to his resume – are in fine form, as is
its cast of stars – but no one is better than Alden Ehrenreich as Hobie Doyle –
a seemingly dimwitted star of cowboy pictures, who turns out not to be so dumb
after all. There’s no denying that Hail Caesar isn’t as good as the Coens last
film – Inside Llewyn Davis is my pick for film of the decade so far – but it’s
more Coen magic, then I’ll probably watch approximately 100 times.
15.
Christine (Antonio Campos)
Antonio Campos’ Christine is a film that has
continued to grow in my mind since seeing it at TIFF in September. The movie,
about Christine Chubbuck, the Florida reporter who committed suicide during a
live broadcast in 1973, is intense, scary and empathetic – looking at both the
mental issues that Chubbuck suffered from as well as the outside forces that
pressed in on her – and all women at that time. In the lead role, Rebecca Hall
gives one of the year’s great performances in the title role – brittle,
volatile, driven, and slowly driven mad – but the rest of the cast – Tracy
Letts as her misogynist boss, Michael C. Hall as a Me Generation anchor, and
especially Maria Dizzia, as an underling, who seems so nice, until she isn’t.
Campos has been doing solid work for a while – chilling work to be sure, but
distinctive – and Christine takes him to another level. A brilliant, underrated
film that not enough people saw this year.
14.
Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
Watching Paul Verhoeven’s controversial and
incendiary Elle is like watching Verhoeven, and star Isabelle Huppert, do one
of the most daring high wire acts of the year. This is a film that begins with
Huppert being brutally raped, and gets more disturbing from there. For Huppert,
this is one of the best performances of her career (I’m not sure she can top
her work in Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher – but this is as close as she’s
ever going to get most likely) – as she plays a woman who is in control of
every aspect of her life – beset with a bunch of weak-willed spineless men –
her sniveling ex-husband, her lazy son, controlled by his girlfriend, her
friend’s husband who she is sleeping with, etc. – who then finds one man in
control – her rapist. What follows will be offensive to some (many? most?) but
makes sense in the context of this one woman’s reaction. Huppert is brilliant,
and it’s great to see a Verhoeven film again for the first time in a decade.
With this, he does to European Art House cinema what he spent years doing to
Hollywood films. Love it or hate it, you won’t forget Elle.
13.
Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie)
Hell or High Water became one of the year’s most
relevant movies – a film where it was possible to see both Trump’s America, as
well the opposite of that. It’s story of two Texas brothers (Chris Pine and Ben
Foster) robbing banks – the very ones trying to foreclose on their home – is
genre filmmaking at its finest by David Mackenzie – a journeyman director, who
has quietly built up an impressive resume, with a great script by Taylor
Sheridan. Pine and Foster fall into their roles easily – Pine the more subdued,
Foster going characteristically crazy (in a good way) – and they are well
matched on the other side of the law by Jeff Bridges, as a tired Texas Ranger,
after one last big bust before retirement, and Gil Birmingham as his partner.
The film sneaks up on you a little bit – yes, it makes its political point
early – but for the most part subtly (it didn’t need to be literally written on
a wall, but never mind). This is the type of film – part modern Western, part
neo-Noir, expertly written, directed and acted that it seems like Hollywood has
pretty much forgotten how to make.
12.
Arrival (Denis Villeneuve)
Denis Villeneuve’s tour of different genres
continued in 2016 (following interesting work in Incendies, Enemy, Prisoners
and Sicario) – as he moved over to sci-fi – and to make the highest concept
mainstream film that genre has seen in a while. Featuring an excellent
performance by Amy Adams, Arrival is the story of a peaceful alien invasion –
where humanity has to find a way to communicate with, but cannot get out of their
own way, with their bickering and infighting. Adams is great as a linguist –
who we first meet as she has to watch her daughter die after a long battle with
a debilitating illness. She’s the one who knows figure out – through months of
work – how to communicate. Arrival isn’t a movie with a lot of action – it’s an
interior journey as much as anything, and asks some very heady questions of its
audience, and yet its greatest strength is emotional – this is that rare film
that makes you think and makes you cry at the same time. Villeneuve continues
to be one of the more interesting filmmakers working today.
11.
The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook)
In terms of bonkers, gonzo genre films – things
don’t get a whole lot crazier than Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden – a two and
half hour film, with twist upon twist about an Korean con-woman, brought in by
a conman to be the Handmaiden for a rich, but sheltered Japanese heiress. Her
job is to help him seduce her, so he can have her committed, and steal all her
money. Things seem to be going according to plan, until the film twists,
switches POVs, and restarts – and essentially does the same thing all over
again (which it will do a final time as well). The film is set in the 1930s,
and is one of the most visually dazzling of the year – the costume and
production design are the best of the year, the cinematography wonderful, the
score evocative, the performances pitched perfectly – going for high melodrama,
well still maintaining some degree of believability. Whatever Park does, he
goes all in – this is a violent, sexual, film that goes for broke, and doesn’t
let down for a moment. It may just be the most purely entertaining film of the
year.
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