BY SEAN EGAN | While most of us are on the same page — we can’t wait to see the back of 2016 — this year’s movies will surely be looked back at more fondly. Whether reflecting our cultural climate or providing escapism, forging new trails or looking to the past, filmmakers ensured that going to the theater remained one of the few bright spots of a dark year. Below is a roundup of some the year’s finest offerings, unranked, but loosely grouped — because haven’t we all had enough of divisive debating for one year? These are the films that helped make 2016 worth it; hopefully revisiting them will help to make 2017 a little bit better too.
DARING NEW NARRATIVES | Spanning decades and employing three actors to play its protagonist, Barry Jenkins’ soulful “Moonlight” follows the life of Chiron, a gay, black Miami man, as he grows up and grapples with who he is, and his place in a world stacked against him. Full of evocative imagery, masterfully naturalistic performances, and carefully observed relationship dynamics, it’s easy to say it’s movie “about” a lot of things: identity, poverty, toxic masculinity — take your pick. But above all else, it’s about Chiron; the boy, teen, and eventual man at its center. While the details of his story may not match your own, the emotions ring poignantly, deeply true, becoming universal in their specificity.
Sure, a plot synopsis of “Swiss Army Man” — a movie where a shipwrecked Paul Dano uses the magical farts and erections of Daniel Radcliffe’s reanimated corpse to survive the wilderness — reads like a foul-mouthed 12-year-old filled out a Mad Libs. But directing duo Daniels make damn sure they’re offering the most conceptually ambitious, thematically resonant fart jokes ever committed to film. As the movie tracks the two leads’ blossoming friendship, they mix humor so low it doesn’t even have a brow with resonant ideas about shame, love, and (of course) what it means to be human. Daniels’ confident direction ensures the movie doesn’t just avoid the dangerous tonal pitfalls twee-r indies fall prey to, but actively flips them off while speeding along its own bold, surprisingly moving path. In short, it’s the year’s most unexpected, original, idiosyncratic triumph.
AUTEURS AT IT AGAIN | Jim Jarmusch goes refreshingly small-scale in “Paterson,” which follows a week in the life of Adam Driver’s titular bus driver, going about life in the (also) titular New Jersey city. It’s a gentle movie, whose small pleasures (both narrative and aesthetic) accumulate to produce a quietly powerful portrait of an everyman, and a stirring treatise on creativity.
Forever zagging when expected to zig, the Coen Brothers’ “Hail, Caesar!” lets loose a veritable who’s who ensemble on a fictional 1950s Hollywood soundstage, running through meticulously crafted, imminently quotable vignettes that imitate golden-age movies — from westerns to stiff-lipped dramas to lively (and hilariously homoerotic) musicals. It might be the notoriously mercurial brothers’ lightest and brightest film to date, but don’t mistake that for lack of substance. Squint just beyond the old school razzle-dazzle and you’ll be rewarded with a parable on religious faith as meaty as it is absurdist.
After the triumph of 2014’s “Boyhood,” Richard Linklater took a victory lap this year with “Everybody Wants Some!!” — an ’80s-set college baseball comedy. In his oeuvre, it might be in the minor leagues, but it’s been a while since he’s turned his unobtrusively accomplished direction and plainspoken, poetic writing to material this addictively fun and deceptively deep. For movie lovers, that’s an achievement worth celebrating in and of itself.
MUSICAL MOVIES |Right from its title cards, the joyous “La La Land” announces itself as a modern spin on the Technicolor studio-era musicals of yore. Every candy-colored frame is a delight, enhanced by long takes where the camera dips and weaves around energetically choreographed song-and-dance numbers. It manages, however, to elevate itself beyond mere nostalgic curio, as underneath the (substantial) surface-level pleasures, writer/director Damien Chazelle digs into his pet themes, considering the push/pull of art and commerce, reality and dreams — all while skewering modern Hollywood culture and hoary romantic tropes.
In lieu of doing a press tour, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds invited director Andrew Dominik to document the recording of “Skeleton Tree” — a powerful album produced in the aftermath of the tragic death of Cave’s 15-year-old son. The result: “One More Time with Feeling.” Shot in the alluring combo of state-of-the-art 3D and charcoal-smeared black and white, it’s a haunting meditation on grief, rendered more gut-wrenching because of the broken, all-too-human icon at its center. The music, beautiful and damaged, is the only thing that cuts through the fog of loss with any clarity.
A scrappy Irish import from “Once” creator John Carney, “Sing Street” tracks a teen discovering his musical gifts, and using them as an escape from the often overwhelming issues he experiences at home and at school. Perfectly capturing the giddy highs and precipitous lows of adolescence, and boasting an infectious collection of ’80s-tinged original songs, it’s a heartfelt gem.
FEMALE-FRONTED FOREIGN FILMS | To say that Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle” isn’t to everyone’s tastes would be a dramatic understatement — it opens, after all, with a viscerally upsetting rape scene. But those who trust in the veteran Dutch director’s mastery of tone are in for the best character study of the year; a blackly comic tale that tackles its difficult subject matter with mature nuance. Anchored by Isabelle Huppert’s prickly powerhouse performance, it’s a film that refuses to give viewers any easy outs (or answers), and is all the more rewarding for it.
The greatest asset of “The Handmaiden,” Park Chan-wook’s recursive lesbian romantic drama, isn’t the fluid, precise camerawork, nor the sumptuous colors, nor the expertly delivered performances. No, it’s the narrative twists. In Chan-wook’s hands the twist, so often the crutch of lazy directors grasping for profundity, is used not just to shock and induce adrenaline, but to genuinely enrich both the filmmaking on display and the story’s already-strong emotional core. It’s a sensual, suspenseful, stone-cold masterpiece.
ONLY IN AMERICA | Yes, Andrea Arnold’s “American Honey” captures a poor, suburban American milieu often ignored by blockbusters and indies alike. More importantly, though, she uses this backdrop to create a sprawling, not-quite-coming-of-age road trip movie that bustles with immediacy and poetic grace notes. Arnold sketches characters sharply and nonchalantly through Linklater-esque conversation; her full-screen cinematography approximates an Instagram account run by Terrence Malick. Just hop in the van, and take a hit — I guarantee you’ll like where it goes.
Everything about “Hell or High Water” is informed by the economic strife facing rural, southern America — but the timeliness of this dusty, Texas-set neo-Western doesn’t overshadow its invigorating cops-and-robbers story. The archetypical narrative is populated with colorful, well-drawn characters; even the most minor roles feel perceptively real and lived-in. It’s thanks, no doubt, to Taylor Sheridan’s effortless screenplay, which the actors (most notably Jeff Bridges) chew on like so much tobacco, and spit out with rough-hewn grace.
Unfortunately for the country, “Green Room,” a punk rockers vs. Neo-Nazi flick, has only become more prescient since its April release. Fortunately for cinema, however, director Jeremy Saulnier’s crafted a genuine white-knuckle thriller that expertly taps into our cultural anxieties for maximum tension. Saulnier isn’t afraid to off his characters brutally, but unlike many others, he’s also not afraid to invest time on character development and examining moral ambiguity — which, combined with its DIY attitude, makes the movie an instant classic.
TO FEED THE NEEDS OF GENRE JUNKIES | At a certain point watching “Arrival” — which follows a linguist deciphering the language of extraterrestrial visitors — you’ll realize that director Denis Villeneuve has been subtly toying with film grammar the whole time. It’s then you’ll understand that you’re not just watching an exceptionally smart and inventive sci-fi movie, but an exceptionally emotional and humanistic one, too.
Like its heroes, “Rouge One: A Star Wars Story” often feels like the orphaned underdog of the “Star Wars” franchise — and that’s a good thing. It digs deeper and darker than any of its predecessors (yes, even “Empire”), culminating in a stunner of a third act that unflinchingly drags the space opera down to ground level.
Visionary madman Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of JG Ballard’s dystopian sci-fi novel, “High-Rise” is a bonkers, blood-soaked tale of class warfare and societal collapse, laced with deadpan dark humor and gorgeous, nightmarish visuals — all scored to ABBA, natch. Catch it, in all its hyper-stylized glory, before its inevitable (and well-deserved) cult status is cemented.
A belated entry in the burgeoning “Cloverfield” franchise, “10 Cloverfield Lane” is a survival bunker-set chamber thriller, featuring career-high performances from John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Honestly, that’s about all you want to know going in, in order to let this tense, twisty little movie work its charms.
The follow-up to last year’s “Buzzard,” “The Alchemist Cookbook” secures Joel Potrykus’ rep as both craftsman extraordinaire of engrossing (or maybe just gross) eating scenes, and as one of the most interesting indie auteurs working today. This strange brew of about a half dozen subgenres — psychological horror chief amongst them — Potrykus proves that even the lowest of budgets can’t hold back his skewed, unclassifiable vision from being hysterical (in all senses of the word) and effectively unsettling.
And finally, with “The Neon Demon” Nicolas Winding Refn continued to playfully gussy up pulpy genre material with auteurist flourishes, daring viewers to cry foul. This particular fashion industry satire/horror flick plays out a lot like if David Lynch directed a Sephora commercial on Xanax, and employed a sentient box of crayons as cinematographer. Oh, and also Keanu Reeves is there. Somehow containing zero subtext, while also being nothing but subtext, it’s a garish, gory, Grand Guignol experience.
