Boyhood

Best-of time again, and again this year Tom Breen, Arnold Gorlick, and I will be sharing our lists on Tom's radio show on WNHH--Thursday, and streamable thereafter. My goal this year is to reduce my "uh"s by half.

But that's next year; while a few minutes are left in 2016, let's do this.

• January was pretty much 2015 catch-up, though some goodies, especially The Revenant and Anomalisa.
• In February, I liked the Coens' Hail Caesar! more than most did, Deadpool was smartass funny superhero stuff, the Scandinavian-seeming The Witch was the year's first entry in the horror renaissance, and one more 2015 Oscar straggler, Son of Saul.
• Funny, a couple of weeks ago I was thinking the momentum of the aforementioned horror renaissance was slowing, but 10 Cloverfield Lane was a second already. The first new-to-America film that might end up on the list is Marguerite, which is infinitely better that Florence Foster Jenkins, the American telling of the same true story later in the year, even though that one had Meryl Streep going for it. The month also brought my first Manhattan trip, which included the trippy-in-every-way A Space Program.
• Busy year for my favorite young filmmaker I'm not related to, Jeff Nichols, and Midnight Special is also one of two films (Arrival the other) this year that made me feel the awe and wonder that Close Encounters never has.
• Hold my feet to the fire and ask the best film I saw in a thin May, I guess I'd claim Francophonia.
• An absurd June contender: The Lobster, by Yorgos Lanthimos. And I guess this too, a documentary I've thought about more than all but a few features in this political clusterfuck of a year: Weiner. And the neo-screwball Maggie's Plan, on, what, my only trip this year to the Cine 1-2-3-4?
• The brilliant and warmhearted New Zealand comedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople came back to town late in the year; is it angling for Oscar? Technically, I don't think Kiwi is a foreign language. Jesus! I compared Café Society favorably in some respects to Annie Hall! And Captain Fantastic wowed me with fantastic acting from a bunch of kids. A fine July
• Early August, The Land, a tough The Wire-esque look at part of a World Series city that Commissioner Manfred would prefer to have hidden. The anarchic yet serious in its theological probing Sausage Party probably made me laugh more than anything else this year.
• There are still September movies I haven't blogged: I blame the ghastly The Light between Oceans for sapping my energy.
• "Hard-edged gem" is how I described Chronic, the best of October, Tim Roth as a caregiver for the dying.
• And then in early November came the painfully beautiful Moonlight, which set the bar for best of the year. The documentary Peter and the Farm is a tone poem about both the small farm and mental illness that almost sneaked in and out of town unnoticed. Nichols returns with the story of the interracial Virginia couple Richard and Mildred Loving.
• OK, December: can anything beat Moonlight? Not Manchester by the Sea, but Kenneth Lonergan's surprisingly comic tragedy of guilt and regret gives it a good run. Oh, right: yet another fine, quirky horror film: The Eyes of My Mother. Penultimate Manhattan trip had two goodies: 13th, Ava DuVernay's documentary about the stubborn evolution of lynching by other means, and the real horror classic of the year, the originally creepy The Autopsy of Jane Doe. And finally, a great play and a pretty good movie, Fences.

The envelope, please? But wait . . . let's hold a slot open for Paterson or Hidden Figures or 20th Century Women.

10. Sausage Party

9. Hunt for the Wilderpeople

8. The Autopsy of Jane Doe

7. TK

6. Weiner

5. The Lobster

4. 13th

3. Captain Fantastic

2. Manchester by the Sea

1. Moonlight

Transit

New Year's Eve eve M3

Julieta

Sun

Almodóvar, so about mothers. And mystery. And time. And it's lovely but not one of his first rank.

Casablanca (1942)

FF

Oddly, this 35mm print is not as good a copy of the film as I have at home, and the picture is maybe 6 times as big, but having missed my usual July screening, I couldn't resist the rare viewing in a crowd. Though even the crowd wasn't as big or as appreciative as I'd have expected. So I suppose I'd say that if it's possible to be disappointed by a screening of my favorite film, this would be the time. But it's not, and I wasn't.

Toni Erdmann

FF

Wow. I do not remotely get why smart film critics love this. Of the three factors cited in every review--charm, hilarity, and length--the last is the only one that made an impression on me.

Trailers

• My Life as a Zucchini--I actually got in too late to know anything about this, but I couldn't resist the title. 
• La toutue rouge (The red turtle)--More Ghibli, and I wasn't even at IFC this time.
• Marius, Fanny, and César--Marcel Pagnol's Marseilles trilogy.
• Panique--From a Simenon mystery.
• Everybody Knows . . . Elizabeth Murray--Nope, not me.
• The 100 Years Show--Nope, don't know Carmen Herrera either
• I Am Not Your Negro--I do know James Baldwin, a bit.
• Franz--Love, guilt, and confusion.

Two strikes

Sing

Post

Well, that collection of c'mon-kids-we-can-do-it-let's-put-on-a-show clichés was a thoroughgoing delight, but I have one question: how did they know to use "Hallelujah" (Leonard Cohen) and "Under Pressure" (partly David Bowie) back to back in the soundtrack? If the "Faith" they played in the end credits had been George Michael's instead of Stevie Wonder's, it would have been really spooky.

Oh, also, if you're going to go see it, here's a premovie assignment: guess what Beatles song will be the first song you hear in the film (and will later get a bigger role).

Fences

Post

Yeah, it's a fair cop that this is more a filmed play than it is a motion picture, but if you can listen to Denzel Washington and Viola Davis play bloodsport tennis for two and a quarter hours with August Wilson's words and come out of the theater feeling cheated, I don't know what to tell you.

Trailers

• The Emoji Movie--No, I am not making that up. I'd give anything to be making it up. Just a teaser, not a trailer, hosted by Meh.
• The Lego Batman Movie--Nor this, but this one looks potentially fun.
• Despicable Me 3--Yeah, whatever.
• The Bye Bye Man--Why so many horror-movie trailers before Fences?
• Underworld: Blood Wars-Yeah, whatever.

Street view

Lion

Crit

Well, that was an odd film: determined to warm your heart, but determined also to earn the emotion, so much so that it rather shortchanges what seems as if it ought to be the central questions: what is family, where does one family end and another begin, and how is "family" earned?

I hate it when a reviewer complains that the film is not the one he would have made from the same material, and I apologize for being that guy, but I think I'd have been more on board had we had less of Saroo as the admittedly adorable and admittedly dealt a crap hand of cards young Sunny Pawar and more as the young adult played by Dev Patel. Specifically, we don't get enough of the privileged Tasmanian adoptee Saroo before his madeleine moment to make much sense of the obsession that moment spurs. Clearly, there's a lot more of that mostly metaphorical journey (enabled by Google Earth) than we see, but we don't miss a click of young Saroo's literal journeys. The film needs both less and more.

Trailers

• Gold--Matthew McConaughey prospecting in Indonesia.
• Julieta--¡Sí, sí, sin cuestión!
• The Last Word--Shirley Maclaine as a cranky old bat who wants a good obit.

Gravity

La La Land

Crit

Yes, this was a good way to have my heart broken on Christmas evening.

Oops: was I supposed to say "spoiler alert"? Sorry, but if you don't recognized perfectly matching Mia (Emma Stone) and Seb (Ryan Gosling) as doomed from the get-go, you have neither lived enough nor seen enough movies. In fact, if you don't recognize that from the get-go, you probably don't even recognize that when they meet with cute mutual enmity (in an LA traffic jam, he leaning on his horn, she flipping him off), they're destined to fall in love. You should probably see Why Him? instead.

I was gaga over Damien Chazelle's breakthrough Whiplash, and I also loved 10 Cloverfield Lane, which he wrote (and which also reminds me that in fact I had not had to wait until The Autopsy of Jane Doe to see an excellent horror film this year), but let's face it: there's a lot not to like here. Neither Stone nor Gosling is any more than passable (and maybe a bit less) as either a singer or a dancer, and I suspect that if you listened to the soundtrack before seeing the film, you'd find the songs uniformly un-special. And then there's that long dramatic segment in the middle, when doom is rearing its doomy head and the film altogether forgets that it's a musical, never mind a musical comedy.

And yet.

The songs are not out of context, and in context they charm, and the leads' very humanly minimal mastery of vocal and terpsichorean technique is irrelevant when we've already fallen for them individually and as a duo. It's also a terrific film to look at, and after it has broken your heart, it finds a genius salve to melt that sucker altogether. Just beautiful.

Trailers

• Going in Style--Another unnecessary remake.
• The Shack--Looks unbearably uplifting.

Surplus population

Scrooge

(1951)

So a guy who has lived his whole life (well, mostly) thinking of nothing but the bottom line and of how to advance himself suddenly has a chance at redemption and learns to love and care for his fellow humans.

I'd vote for that.

Strange fruit

Preholiday M3

13th

IFC

Yes, I could have streamed this on Netflix (and you should if you're a subscriber), but (1) I'm currently getting discs from Netflix,  not streaming, and (2) I'm not an altogether rational moviegoer.

Oh, and I also wanted to see it on a big screen and among an actual audience, but in fact, the screen it was on isn't vastly bigger than the one in the bunker, and the size of the audience was only about 5 more than I usually have there.

But none of that matters. What matters is that Ava DuVernay has created a remarkable and horrible document of the way lynching has not gone away so much as evolved into inequitable laws enforced inequitably, prosecuted inequitably, and sentenced inequitably so as to evade the titular constitutional amendment's proscription against involuntary servitude. It would be a powerful call to action if the presidential election had gone differently; as it is, it's a terrifying prediction of a trend extended.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

IFC

Well, here I was concerned that the golden age of horror films I'd been talking up was eroding. Holy crap, not so!

André Øvredal's first English-language feature (you may have seen his wonderfully wacky Trollhunter) gets us in ways we've been gotten before, but what makes the film great (yes, great)  is the brand new way it gets us: by making the slow, painstaking, ostensibly tedious process of the titular forensic procedure creepy far beyond any standard blood-and-viscera squeamishness you might bring to it.

Brian Cox's usual broadness is made for this role, and Emile Hirsch is perfectly OK, but the fresh face of Olwen Kelly is what will stick with you. I hope she isn't doomed to typecasting.

Elle

Ang

Jesus, Isabelle Huppert could give a shit what you think--we already knew that she has no fear about playing a despicable character, but she also has no fear about carrying an arguably despicable film, by veteran despicable-film maker (which is not the same as "despicable filmmaker," technically) Paul Verhoeven, and carrying it as heroically as she has carried all her nondespicable films.

Elle can fairly be described as a rape romance, though as they say on Facebook, it's complicated. I'm sure someone invested in the film's defense could make a case for its being a feminist manifesto, wherein Huppert's Michèle is only briefly a victim and is for the most part as much in control of the events of her life as she is of the events of the adolescent-boy-sex-and-violence-fantasy video games her company makes. And then there's her backstory, which strikes me as a red herring but could be served as psychological poached salmon, I suppose.

In short, it's a film I needed to see, and I don't wish I could unsee it, if only for Huppert's high-wire act, but don't try to make me watch it again.

[A footnote, which I am not making up: I dreamed the night after seeing the film that I was the willing consort of a (literally, I think) vampiric Huppert.]

Trailers

• Umi ga kikoeru (Ocean waves)--Damn, IFC loves Ghibli.
• Rester vertical (Staying vertical)--Wolves and (human) sex.
• Forushande (The salesman)--Directed by Asghar Farhadi, he of A Separation and The Past.
• Under Sandet (Land of mine)--German soldiers held in Denmark after World War II to clear mines; was the pun necessary in the English title?

Brief shining

Jackie

Crit

Honestly don't know whether to call this a good film (though I'm pretty sure it's not a great one), but Natalie Portman's performance of the just-widowed title character--in a constant fog and at the same time scrupulously in control of every word she subsequently declares off the record to a reporter or nonconfessional to her priest--should produce her 3rd Oscar nomination, though probably not her 2nd win.

Trailers

• A United Kingdom--I want to believe that this based-on-actual-events film about a hereditary African king marrying a white Englishwoman despite everything will be less cheaply melodramatic than the trailer suggests.
• Gifted--Likewise, want to believe that this story of a well-meaning uncle's struggle to raise his orphaned niece despite everything will be less squishily sentimental than the trailer suggests.
• Silence--Scorsese, religious faith, yes.

Image

Harry Benson: Shoot First

Crit

You know that photo of Muhammad Ali knocking over four moptop dominoes? Harry Benson took that. The photo of an aged Greta Garbo in a swimcap? Harry Benson. Frank and Mia masked at the Black and While ball, Ronnie and Nancy waltzing on the cover of whatever magazine it was? Benson, Benson. And the camera Ethel Kennedy is trying to block from photographing her dying husband? That's in Harry's hands, too.

A documentary about a brilliant Scot that barely nods at the ethics of images like the second and fifth mentioned above, but no less enthralling for that. The images are what matters to Harry and, in the end, to us. And good god, what images they are.

Episode III.i

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Crit

I'm a pretty big fan of the franchise--love the original, consider The Empire Strikes Back a great film by any measure, liked The Force Awakens, would prefer not to talk about the others--but there's a galaxy-sized chasm between enthusiasts like me and full-fledged Star Wars nerds, and that's who this film was made for. The filmmakers spent so much effort planting Easter eggs to other films in the series that they seem to have forgotten about storytelling.

Two appealing characters: K2SO (Alan Tudyk), unfiltered, attitude heavy, and the first genuinely fun droid in the entire series, and Chirrut Îmwe (Donnie Yen), or, as I have been referring to him before looking up his name, Blind Jedi Dude.

The character we're supposed to love, as the series continues its admirable trend of giving our daughters and granddaughters tough female characters, is Jyn Erso, sadly miscast in Felicity Jones, who seemed to be every bit as bored as I was.

Trailers

• Fate of the Furious--OK, time to start a Kickstarter campaign to keep Charlize Theron from having to be in stuff like this.
• Spider-Man: Homecoming--Huh! A re-reboot with a kid (Tom Holland) actually almost young enough to play a high schooler.
• Dunkirk--Christopher Nolan directs.

Now, voyager

Miss Sloane

Post

Jessica Chastain plays the iciest of D.C. lobbyists, somehow inspired to do the right thing (risk her career to fight the gun lobby) for the right reason. Well, the right big thing, built from a lot of ethically and morally wrong smaller things. It's kinda like The Sting, only without the ragtime.

Moana

Post

The Wizard of Oz meets The Ark.

A huge contribution from Lin-Manual Miranda makes the songs infinitely better than in most Disney flicks, in most flicks for kids, and in most movie musicals--and also makes you feel a sort of Hamilton vibe. Loved the flick, and honestly spent scarcely any time thinking about how girl-empowering, how anti-Disney princess, how--are we even allowed to use this word in the Trump era?--feminist it is; the look and the quest and the music pretty much pushed the politics to the background. Which makes this an exceptionally good political text.

Trailers

• The Smurfs: The Lost Village--Don't expect me to look for it.
• Rock Dog--The Jazz Singer redux, animated.
• Cars 3--At least I think that's what this ultrateasy teaser must have been for.

Vivisection

The Eyes of My Mother

Crit

Look, I'm not saying Francisca wasn't unusually fascinated by blood even as a little girl (Olivia Bond), her family intact. I'm just saying that if that weird, giggly visitor (Will Brill) hadn't shown up one day to bludgeon her mother (Diana Agostini) in the bathroom, and if the reaction of her wordless father (Paul Nazak) hadn't been to imprison the psycho in the barn, the adult Francisca (Kika Magalhaes) might have had a better chance of learning how to relate to others in a less sanguinary fashion.

A stylish and spare film without a hint of the supernatural from first-time writer-director Nicholas Pesce, lovingly shot in bloody black and white. 

Moving violation

Nocturnal Creatures

Crit

The novel as vengeful wish fulfillment. From Tom Ford a film stunningly stylish (duh), wickedly clever, and ultimately as nourishing as a Twinkie. A really, really tasty Twinkie, and the best-looking Twinkie you've ever seen, but a Twinkie nonetheless. Though I'll admit: the title sequence may haunt me forever.

Trailers

• A Cure for Wellness--Looks like Minority Report meets The Matrix.
• The Circle--Based on the Dave Eggers novel of which I read only the New Yorker excerpt, but probably, yes.

Grim reaping

Les Saisons (Seasons)

Crit

First, this is an absolutely spectacular nature documentary, cameras placed inside lairs and on bird- and beetle-stalking drones, or fixed with zoom lenses to provide stunning intimacy to the cycles of the European forest.

After a while, though, one species--mostly seen dimly, and at a distance not afforded any of the others--intrudes and establishes a narrative, inevitably of domestication and destruction, of single-minded progress, if you will.

Two products of that species came to mind as I watched: this song, and this Gary Larson cartoon.

Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened . . .

Crit

A documentary about faith and failure on Broadway. If you're the sort of musical theater junkie my daughter is, you probably know Merrily We Roll Along as the audacious show--starring young people, mostly amateurs, as characters whose story is followed backward from jaded adulthood to idealistic youth--that lasted 16 performances in 1981 and killed the long-running collaboration between Stephen Sondheim and Hal Price, but that later became an improbable standard of the genre.

I knew nothing about that, but found the film--by Lonny Price, one of those fresh-faced kids (Jason Alexander was the only one I'd heard of) who put on the show--heartwarming and -breaking in pretty much equal parts. Everyone who went through the experience came out of it scarred, and while most were unbowed, few stayed in musical theater. Several, though, tellingly, kept some tangential connection to the biz.

Shark school

Manchester by the Sea

Crit

Look, most of us do multiple stupid things ever day of our lives, and few carry any significant consequences (just as few of the smart things we do matter much). And for all of us, there's a stupidest thing ever (I remember mine: it involves alcohol and a motor vehicle), and most of us (including me) are lucky enough that even that stupidest thing had no consequences, or no major ones. Near the other end of the luck spectrum, some people's stupidest-ever things carry them away, so the consequences, while perhaps painful, are short-lived.

But at the very end of the bad-luck spectrum, the dumbest thing you ever did doesn't kill you. It just rips away everything that protects a human from pain, leaving you an animate raw nerve, an untouchable in every literal and figurative way. That's Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), in writer-director Kenneth Lonergan's third, and third great, film.

I knew going in that this film was going to hurt. What I didn't know what how much it would make me laugh. Yes, the comic parts are mostly of the whistling-past-the-graveyard ilk, but they're no less hilarious--as in, you-miss-following-lines-because-the-big-Friday-night-crowd-you're-unaccustomed-to-being-part-of-is-laughing-that-loud hilarious--for that.

I came out of the theater thinking this was the best 100% Caucasian film of the year, but then I remembered Quincy Tyler Bernstine's early brief (and funny) appearance. Yes, I think Lonergan would admit that his great melting-pot film is yet to come (and what better time than the coming 4 years, though 4 years between films would be a rapid turnaround for him), but damn, he's good with the canvas he uses.

Trailer

• Split--M. Night Shyamalan goes psycho kidnap porn.