We Need to Talk About Morgan

by Rob DiCristino

On empathy, character, and “calling the ending.”

Spoilers ahead for Morgan:

You probably missed Luke Scott’s Morgan last year. If that’s the case, you’re Fine. You get most of what you need from the trailer: Ex Machina meets Splice meets a thousand other “creepy person in a mystery box” science fiction premises. Is she human? Is she machine? Where does she poop in that glass room? You get the idea. Luke (son of Ridley) Scott’s debut feature is a strong technical exercise from a filmmaker with a lot of potential. Movies are very hard to make, and Luke Scott is probably going to be very good at making them if he continues to do so. But Morgan lacks soul. It lacks purpose. It lacks that often-intangible quality that transforms a film from a mess of bits and pieces into one of Roger Ebert’s empathy machines. Now, this isn’t to suggest that every movie needs a romance or a hero’s journey or a Jar Jar fucking Binks to make the kids laugh. That’s not what this is about. Plenty of great films challenge traditional structure and revel in their weirdness. This is about building a narrative in which we understand who characters are to each other, themselves, and what pushes them to action. This is doubly important in a film like Morgan, one so interested in the little nuances that separate human beings from everything else.

So, Morgan: At a secluded institution in East Jesus Nowhere, Drs. Simon Ziegler (Toby Jones) and Lui Cheng (Michelle Yeoh) lead a group of scientists to a major breakthrough in the development of artificial DNA. Their prize achievement is Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy), a five-year-old girl with synthetic parts and crazy growth hormones. She appears much older than her physical age and displays remarkable intellect and intuition. Trouble is, she also displays remarkable strength and emotional instability. After attacking Dr. Kathy (Jennifer Jason Leigh — blink and you’ll miss her), Morgan is confined to her habitrail pending an evaluation by The Corporation’s risk-management agent, Lee Weathers (Kate Mara). At first, Morgan tests well: she shows empathy for those she hurt and seems to feel real remorse for her actions. Even her handlers, weary of Lee’s cold professionalism, are defensive and territorial. They insist that Morgan is a person who deserves the right to make mistakes and learn from them. Lee disagrees, and after Morgan takes a bite out of the new psychologist (Paul Giamatti — this cast is ridiculous), she insists that the project be terminated. Morgan has other plans.

Morgan should work because it’s got a decent premise and a tremendous cast (further including Brian Cox, Rose Leslie from Game of Thrones, and Vinette Robinson and Jonathan Aris from Sherlock), but it’s dragged down by bland execution and underdeveloped characters. It’s not the only film guilty of that sin, of course, but it’s so much worse when digging into what makes those characters tick is supposed to be the whole damn point. If we’re supposed to be debating Morgan’s humanity and her influence on the larger family dynamic between all the scientists, then shouldn’t we have some understanding of who those scientists are and what shapes their behavior? Take Rose Leslie’s character, Dr. Amy. She’s Morgan’s favorite handler and the lynchpin to this whole escape scheme. She promises to take Morgan somewhere peaceful, somewhere she can soak in the true beauty of the universe and all that jazz. Aside from that, we basically know two things about her: she doesn’t like Lee, and she’s got the hots for hunky kitchen monkey Skip (Boyd Holbrook). There’s a bit early on to suggest that she has “boundary issues,” which sets up her devotion to Morgan, but there’s not much else to go on. Their connection is emphasized in dialogue, but only briefly shown.

A more infuriating example might be the red-hot romance between Dr. Brenda (Robinson) and Dr. Darren (Chris Sullivan), which consists of one conversation at dinner and one scene that implies they’re off-screen banging each other. Again, a better-developed dynamic might add weight to their insistence that Morgan was the “child” that helped build their relationship. Instead, we’re told they share a deep connection. We never see it, and they never spend significant time with Morgan (sorry, wait. Darren calls her “buddy,” so that’s a thing). Dr. Simon seems protective enough of Morgan, but we get the sense that what he’s really protecting is the blood and sweat he put into researching the project that developed her. Dr. Lui reads more as the enigmatic head honcho lady who supervises a number of projects, so no real personal connection there. The point here is that Morgan’s third act shift is meant to be motivated by contrasting Lee’s cold, calculated precision with the deep-seeded emotional bonds that this crew shares with their child. We’re supposed to be questioning what makes a person a person, what right a synthetic creature has to determine its own destiny, and how ethical standards can get wonky when affection becomes a factor. We can’t do that with the pieces Morgan gives us.

Put it this way: it’s never fair to compare movies, but Ex Machina works because Ava manipulates Caleb’s human need for connectivity and, in doing so, displays a weakness and authenticity that Nathan (an actual human being) seems to lack. Caleb is then forced to examine his own humanity (the arm scene!) and, as a result of some soul searching, moves to free Ava from her prison. What happens next perfectly illustrates the way Caleb’s humanity allowed him to be put in that position and the way Ava’s adaptation to humanity allowed her to take the actions she does. Again, it may seem inappropriate to compare one film with another, but Morgan and Ex Machina share so many themes (and the latter film develops those themes in such a superior way) that it’s hard not to see the similarities. None of this is meant to disparage Anya Taylor-Joy, who does what she can with very limited material. Morgan’s character arc is built around her ability (and right) to learn from the mistakes she’s made as a result of her model’s increased capacity for emotion. It’s a great hook on which to hang the film, really, because we often struggle with those same questions ourselves. What right does a person have to make a mistake, learn from it, and progress? Taylor-Joy plays that angle with all the latitude she can, but she’s never given the opportunity to develop it.

Lastly, the ending: I often joke that “if your friend says they saw the twist ending to ______ coming, they’re lying.” I get a lot of flack for that. People say I’m not looking hard enough, or that they just have more experience watching movies than I do.

The reality is that guessing a bad twist ending often has less to do with actual signifiers in the film than it does with viewing habits. It’s natural to speculate, but movies are not supposed to be our enemies; we shouldn’t spend their running time trying to outsmart them. We should allow a film to take us where it wants us to go, and we should judge it as a cohesive whole when it’s over. Case in point: Morgan’s twist ending is total bullshit. Yes, it explains how Lee was able to survive her injuries and why she was so weird around everyone. Yes, it pays off Jennifer Jason Leigh’s “assassin” line and Lee’s sterile, androgynous vibe. But the revelation that she’s also a synthetic person (an older model, free of the tendency toward emotion) rings like a cop out. That’s what my “lying” line is about: the film didn’t earn the twist, so there’s no way it’s going to feel right. It’s not in service of anything. It’s lazy dressed up as profound, answering a question the film never really asked. Morgan ends up arguing that emotional entanglements create complications. That’s fair, but we’re never emotionally involved enough in the film to care.

My Body is Disgusting: Swiss Army Man

by Cait Cannon and Rob DiCristino

The kids discuss their love of that farting corpse movie.

Rob: Hey, Cait! How’s it hanging? You and I were both big fans of Swiss Army Man, so I thought it would be fun to revisit it and talk a bit about how it stacks up to our other favorites of the year.

Cait: Huge! I get why people don’t dig it. They are wrong — but I get it. In talking with peers, the biggest problem they saw was how the ending shakes out. I didn’t go into the movie totally blind; I looked through the Daniels’ (ugh, name) portfolio and looked at work they had done pre-SAM, and it all sort of deals with the same stuff: they take movie tropes and end up totally inverting them through surrealism.

I’d like to hear what you thought about the ending: do you think it even matters? It is sort of like The Witch where (in my opinion) the last 20 minutes could have been cut?

Rob: So I just watched it again last night, and I actually think the ending is completely necessary. On a surface level, Swiss Army Man is about a guy coming to terms with his worst insecurities by processing them through someone else, which I think is sort of universal. The best way to understand something is to teach it. I heard one of the Daniels (ugh, name) explain it as “a suicidal man trying to convince a corpse that life is worth living,” and that really tracks for me. This broken and hopeless man (literally at the end of his rope) dives into his own private fantasy world, gradually building himself back up into a human being. The more Hank opens up, the more lively Manny becomes.

At first, I saw the whole last section as a sloppy and hurried way to slap an ending on a movie without a real narrative, but this time I saw it as Hank crossing that final threshold out of his fantasy land and back into real life. I love the absurdity of the final scene on the beach, with Mary Elizabeth Winstead giving that final “What the fuck?” That, plus the fart (“I did it!”) is the payoff of the entire journey.

Cait: I’m in the same boat. My boyfriend said he would have liked the movie better had they locked up Paul Dano’s character at the end or chosen something more decisive...but I don’t know if that would have done the movie justice. I also think it would have made people focus too much on the “did it actually happen?” line of thinking, ultimately unraveling the balance of sadness/delight the movie struck. I’m also not someone that needs to piece together the threads of realism in the movie, or wonder how it all came to being. There was a lot of chat online speculating whether or not the movie was a pre-death hallucination or what, but I don’t think that the story needs to be based in real life at all.

Rob: I know a lot of people were put off by the very idea of “the farting corpse movie.” What are your thoughts on how that kind of “lowbrow” comedy is used throughout the film?

Cait: I think lowbrow comedy is just using our physical existence as a punchline. We’re so uncomfortable about the internal goings-on of our bodies, especially if they don’t have a secondary purpose (the scene where Manny has an erection—the erection makes us laugh/feel weird because it’s out of the context of getting laid). Lowbrow comedy, I think in this instance, is mostly used to call out our separation from our bodies...kinda like that feeling of discomfort when you see your relaxed faced through the front-facing camera of your iPhone...if that makes sense to you? It’s sort of out of place, but at the end of the day it’s still us. So in the tradition of form fitting function, the lowbrow-ness of the movie is used in a really smart way—not as a comedic relief, but as a tool to talk about the reality of living, the animal-ness of it all.

Rob: Agreed. A fart might not be a good joke in and of itself, but it’s just like any other element in a story — the important part is how you use it and the feeling you’re trying to provoke from the audience. I think of something like Dumb and Dumber (which I love) where the joke is “He has diarrhea!” and compare it with this film where the joke is “Everyone farts, and that’s ok!” and I see an essential difference in pathos. I heard one of the filmmakers say that they chose farting because it was “the most honest sound a human can make,” which makes total thematic sense for Hank’s story. He’s afraid of himself and what people will think of him if he’s honest about who he is. What’s more dishonest than holding in a fart?

Take the “when I masturbate, I’ll think about your mom” conversation. I totally get why it’s off-putting for people, but there’s something about its presentation that immediately endears us (or at least me) to both guys. Hank is sort of explaining to Manny how his emotional trauma has led to social exclusion and suicidal feelings (and maybe coming to terms with it himself), and Manny is showing empathy for his friend in the most honest and childlike way possible. It’s like the “bag of sand” joke in The 40-Year-Old Virgin: it’s using something crude to evoke innocence.

Cait: Honesty is an interesting idea. I think it has a few ways “honesty” can be interpreted: sure, farting is one way to be an honest person in terms of your body and being vulnerable with people you love, but it also can represent our darker, more unsavory parts. It’s like holding back your ‘secrets’ or past when you’re just getting to know someone. I also think the movie tackles honesty within a male identity? Like, Manny’s and Hank’s relationship is romantic, deep, and intimate. Hank goes so far to start living as the woman he’s obsessed with to further the intimacy between Manny and himself. I don’t know if this necessarily goes so far as suggesting Hank is a trans-woman—which is another interpretation I’ve seen—but I’m wondering if this movie is challenging the distance that male friendship typically has in film (ie. the ‘no homo’-ness that exists in most buddy comedies, or male relationships existing as a punchline [see Judd Apatow movies…]). It’s especially interesting considering the directors are two men who advertise themselves as one unit. How do you feel about the gender roles they’ve got going on in this movie? Is it something that you put stock in?

Rob: That “two directors advertising as one unit” point is awesome; I’d never thought of that! It’s indicative of, like you said, how unironically comfortable this film is with male friendship. Since I read Manny as an extension of Hank’s consciousness (a kind of blank slate for him to project on) their increased intimacy reflects Hank’s increased sense of self-worth and agency. There’s that great bit on the river when Manny says, “I’m afraid that if I die, I might really miss you!” which leads to the underwater kiss of life. It’s such a romantic moment that plays totally sincere without any gender signifiers at all.

I was just thinking about some of Daniel Radcliffe’s line deliveries in this film. What did you think of his performance?

Cait: I don’t know if it was something that I paid too much attention to at first. It’s very deadpan but also very earnest and sweet. He sounds a lot like an internal monologue, but one that is without emotion or emphasis for much of the movie. I wonder if this straight read of his lines is meant to not have a bias? So we as viewers are left to interpret and soak up the information by osmosis, almost without thinking. I don’t know—what are you thinking about it?

Rob: I love Radcliffe in Swiss Army Man. I think it’s such an easy role to go big on (especially given the tone of the film), but he went for sincere, which works so much better. “My body is disgusting!” and “That’s so sad!” (in regards to the societal norm of holding in farts) are my favorite line deliveries ever. Learning that he refused a stunt double and manipulated a lot of the dummies himself gave me even more respect for the performance. I think it’s one of the very best of the year.

This has been awesome! Thanks for talking Swiss Army Man with me!

Cait: Hi bye! This has been a more fun version of AOL instant messaging, but smarter and with fewer sad away messages! So many exclamation points!

Riske Business: About That La La Land Ending...

by Adam Riske

I have a theory. SPOILER warning, obviously.

I fully admit that I might be reading into this based on personal experience, but I think the whole fantasy sequence at the end of La La Land is Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) realizing he was chasing the wrong dream. Mia (Emma Stone) was his avenue to life-long happiness and the jazz club he dreamed of opening (and does at the end of La La Land) is no longer his self-actualization. Remember way back when on the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace podcast where Patrick described George Lucas as being trapped in a Star Wars cage? I think Sebastian’s jazz club, affectionately named “Seb’s” for Mia (complete with a music note as the apostrophe), is Sebastian’s Mia cage.

Truth be told, I don’t know if Mia and Sebastian could have ever worked long-term. It’s obvious that they love each other and will think of the other fondly for the rest of their lives. However, using the structure of the four seasons of their romance, a lot happened. It might have been one of those super passionate loves that burns hot and flames out quickly. I think a reason for this is because (at heart) Mia is a revolutionary (e.g. she left Boulder City, she went for a big dream) and Sebastian is a traditionalist (i.e. he refuses to leave L.A., his dream is to revere jazz of the past). Mia is forward-thinking and Sebastian is not and he realizes that he probably should have been even though he’s (most likely) too late.

I think it’s telling that Sebastian isn’t seen in a relationship at the end of the movie. There’s ample opportunity to hint that he is, so much so that since they don’t it infers he hasn’t moved on. The giant wall advertisement for Mia’s next movie (or something she’s promoting) being on the side of the Seb’s building is also an interesting visual motif; she’s a cloud hanging over his whole life. He also comments to the other piano player in the “Five Years Later” sequence that “pretty good is great!” when the guy tells Sebastian that the club is doing pretty good. It hints that Sebastian is usually not “pretty good,” otherwise “pretty good” wouldn’t be “great.” Lastly, I don’t think the holiday card with Sebastian’s sister, her husband and his nephew being shown is a mistake. Within the sequence, it establishes quickly what happened to those characters, but they’re so slight in the grand scheme of the story that I think it’s more to give another clue that it’s what Sebastian really wants.

When Sebastian sees Mia as she comes into his club with her husband and plays Sebastian and Mia’s song, that sets off the phenomenal fantasy sequence, which is like Sebastian’s heart bleeding out for Mia to see.

• He grabs her and kisses her instead of brushing her off in the piano bar.

• Sebastian rebuffs Keith (John Legend) and doesn’t join his jazz fusion band, thus eliminating the choice he’ll have to make later of not going to Mia’s play and staying for the band’s photo shoot.

• Sebastian goes with Mia to Paris, plays at a jazz club there while Mia is groomed for stardom. The jazz club is seen as bright and lively as compared to “Seb’s,” which is darker and less vivacious.

• He imagines them married and with a family and super affectionate on a date night at the jazz club - - with someone else playing the piano. He seems happy. The jazz, while important, is not as important to him as Mia is. It still seems like Mia achieved her dream, too. It just goes to show you how delicate our lives can be based on a set of a few choices.

I love how the final shots of the movie recall Casablanca (i.e. “of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”) and I can easily see Mia and Sebastian getting back together even if it’s much more poetic that they do not. After all, they’re in the same town again, they are still making “do me” eyes at each other and she just has Tom Everett Scott as an obstacle. That’s no knock on Tom Everett Scott’s character. He seems like a decent guy BUT so was her boyfriend that she ran out on to meet up with Gosling for Rebel Without a Cause. Girl’s got heartbreaking in her bones. Gosling put it out there in his piano tribute to Mia and the ball is in her court.

In closing, this is just one theory I had. You could read this movie in a number of different ways (e.g. it’s a more realistic/modern take on the “happily ever after” traditional romantic musical, it’s a statement about sacrifices needing to be made to chase your ultimate dream and how bittersweet that can be, it’s about how timing is just as important as anything in a relationship etc.) which is one of many, many reasons it’s an incredible movie.

Reserved Seating with Rob and Adam: Silence

by Rob DiCristino and Adam Riske

The review duo that puts your faith…back in film criticism.

Rob: Welcome to Reserved Seating. I’m Rob DiCristino.

Adam: And I’m Adam Riske. I’ll just get it out of the way: Silence is great.

Rob: Based on the novel by Shūsaku Endō, it’s the story of two Jesuit priests (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) who smuggle their way into 17th century Japan in order to rescue their teacher (Liam Neeson)…

Adam: “Mentor” is more appropriate.

Rob: …who disappeared some years before. They discover a culture in which Catholics face daily and life-threatening persecution and find that their own faith is not as firm as they once believed.

Adam: In this clip, Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver) are in hiding, unable to go out in daylight for fear of being discovered by Japan’s military dictators, who are apprehending all priests and their Christian followers. But the two priests grow restless and frustrated as they are unable to complete their mission of locating their mentor, Father Cristóvão Ferreira. Finally, they decide to go out into the open, if only briefly. This scene is a fine example of the sense of danger and fear that fills Scorsese’s latest.



Rob: It’s a frightening scene that’s representative of the film’s first act, which is encased almost entirely in fog and obscured by brush. It’s perfect symbolism that serves a number of functions.

Adam: I’m glad you mentioned that. The cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto perfectly captures the time and place that is later described in the film as a swamp where nothing can grow. It’s a country with an enormous disparity between the haves and the have-nots, with religion being just as much political and socioeconomic as it is about the tenets of Christianity or Buddhism. This movie made me think about religion more than I have in a very long time. It’s not just affirmation for a devout audience, but rather challenges their devotion on a human and philosophical level. Is your faith worth your own suffering? And more significantly, is it important enough for you to allow others suffer for it?

Rob: As both a lapsed Catholic and a huge Scorsese fan, I was completely at home in the world he was building here. Catholicism is so much about demonstrating your devotion through suffering, more or less apologizing for even having been born.

Adam: I’m Jewish and I’ve never done any of that.

Rob: Are you done? I’m talking.

Adam: Latkes with sour cream, never applesauce.

Rob: Silence challenges us to consider how much our faith is really rooted in ego, and how willing we are to put our lives in the hands of an intangible force that may not even be listening. What happens when we lose the moral superiority that our doctrine has endowed us with?

Adam: You’re 100 percent right about the topic of ego. I found it fascinating how both the Buddhists and the Christians thought they were the ones who were right, not surprisingly, but when the priests begin using words like they have the “truth” then you open up a whole other can of worms. While not sympathetic, necessarily (they do persecute the Christians with violence), the Japanese inquisitors do have a point: who are you to tell me I’m wrong? Why are you trying to take away my country’s identity? The Christian priests in the movie will listen to this dialogue but aren’t really hearing it. They are so steadfast in their belief that they are unbending, and so are the Japanese. Unintended or not, it struck me as a statement on today’s climate (more political than religion), where each side is so firmly in their position that trying to convince the other side is like talking to a brick wall.

Rob: Including Garfield’s character, Rodrigues. I loved that our protagonist was a giant dickhead half the time, that he was so committed to his ideology for the sake of ideology, not even evidence or real “truth.” There’s a moment when he tells one of the peasants that his faith gives him strength. The peasant says (I’m paraphrasing), “I have love. Is that the same as faith?” Rodrigues says, “Yes, I think it is.” It’s so much about how subjective and incidental our own experiences with religion are, which is ironic considering how hard and fast the ideology tends to be. Life and death are played with in such absolute terms, and the religious oppression at work is so heartbreaking that Rodrigues is constantly reassessing his commitment to his core beliefs.

Adam: It really is heartbreaking. By the end instead of thinking “why would Rodrigues ever suffer and makes others suffer as long as he does?” the film gives us a moment that makes it absolutely clear why this was such an ordeal for him. I wish I could talk more about it because it’s a masterstroke type of moment that the movie builds to.

Rob: I won’t spoil it either, but it’s the only acceptable payoff for nearly three hours of this kind of emotional torment. Like you said, the title became more and more resonant as things went on. Speaking of which, did you feel the length at all? I found that the film’s structure made it so that I didn’t. It has three very distinct acts, and I think that helped me avoid complacency.

Adam: It did feel long, but not in a negative way. A movie like this should be long and draining. I don’t think having this movie be two hours would have been enough. In, say, The Passion of the Christ, the abuse is physical and for the audience emotional, we get that quickly, but here it’s much more a psychological suffering and that takes time to draw out. I love movies like Silence, where you feel like you’ve been through an experience of great strain. If any cuts could be made, I think they would be of Adam Driver’s character.

Rob: That or give him more screen time and make it more of a two-hander for the first hour and a half or so. Then again, maybe Scorsese knew that the character was just there to plant the seed of doubt? It’s hard to tell. Maybe he felt that the suffering he was depicting was so private and personal that some kind of Buddy Priest adventure wouldn’t resonate as much. Too much expository dialogue also might have spoiled the visceral experience of the film. None of this is meant to knock Andrew Garfield at all, by the way. He’s spectacular.

Adam: I’m right there with you. Garfield is a very emotive actor and I think that works so much to the benefit of Silence because you “get it” so much more than you would with a more stoic presence like, say, Liam Neeson’s character.

Rob: I love that he plays Rodrigues equal parts determined and totally vulnerable. I haven’t seen Hacksaw Ridge, but I hear he’s having a good year so far.

Adam: I’ve seen Hacksaw Ridge. The public wants us to see these pictures and share our thoughts. It’s decent.

Rob: As for the running time, the experience was worth a bit of back pain. Like you said, we should suffer a bit as an audience. Besides, Scorsese’s constantly giving us these little benchmarks to keep the drama ebbing and flowing. Like the “apostatize” sequences, when the Christians-in-hiding are told to step on the image of Christ. It starts as this lark and then gradually builds to the defining moment in the film. You can’t sell that in ninety minutes, but it’s totally cathartic after a long ordeal.

Adam: The character of Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka) was another element that really impressed me. He represented, I think, many people who claim to be religious who are really just using religion as a way to absolve their pervasive weakness of character or indiscretion. I found his arc and that character’s relationship with Garfield’s character to be fascinating and complex.

Rob: He’s the best! My audience laughed this desperate, agonized laugh every time he showed up to atone for a whole new set of sins. He definitely, to me, represented the kind of religious zealot who cherry picks the rules and regulations of their faith as they see fit. He’s gaming the system, taking advantage of its loopholes. Rodrigues’ continued frustration with him was a fantastic way to illustrate his own internal struggle, too. How the hell does this guy keep getting away with it? Why do I keep forgiving him? Is this really the human race I’ve been tasked with saving?

Adam: So a big Mark Ahn for me on Silence.

Rob: Totally. Watching Silence is basically a rite of passage -- it’s both spiritually enlightening and existentially miserable. Since I hate myself, it’s a big Mark Ahn for me. Can we just talk for a second about how Martin Scorsese is still balls-deep into excellent filmmaking while many of his peers are asleep on couches somewhere?

Adam: We’re running long.

Rob: Oh, so you can drone on about politics, but I have to cut to the chase?

Adam: On next week’s show Rob & I will be discussing Live By Night, the new gangster movie from Ben Affleck where he has to shoot a bunch of hoods and decide who he’d rather sleep with — Sienna Miller or Zoe Saldana, a sacrifice almost worse than in Silence.

Rob: Truly, we should be in awe. (Saldana, by the way.)

Adam: I’d like to meet them both first and see if my desire is reciprocated.

Rob: Oh cool, you’re high-roading me? I opened up to you, and you punished me for it.

Adam: Until next time…

Rob: Dick.

Adam: These seats are reserved.

Redboxing: Nerve

by Rob DiCristino

Yeah, just one. Everything else I rented was boring.

There are a lot of bad movies aimed at teenage audiences, and the one sin nearly every one of them commits is condescension. Sometimes, it’s the well-intentioned pandering of a forty-year-old screenwriter trying to get hip to the jive lingo, writing for a multi-ethnic-and-suspiciously-one-percenty group of kids who are trying to get all lit and turnt-up IRL on their Snapchats even though the screenwriter doesn’t have any idea what any of that actually means. Other times, a film will feature a thinly-drawn cast of caricatures taking up spaces meant for flesh and blood people because some producer somewhere saw The Breakfast Club but missed the point. The worst of them rely on a teacher or parent to dole out life lessons around the hour-fifteen mark because the teenage hero is written as so short-sighted and self-absorbed that they failed to see the obvious solution that’s been right in front of them the entire time. The point is that we often avoid real complexity in these films because we fail to treat teenage issues as real issues that deserve our attention and respect.

This isn’t to suggest that Nerve fully dissects the teenage condition, but it’s smart and stylish enough to say something worth hearing. Based on the 2012 novel by Jeanne Ryan, it revolves around a group of teens playing a new online game that pays cash for the completion of dares proposed by the viewing audience. You either join Nerve as a Player or a Watcher; Watchers “follow” their favorite Players and film them during the action, while Players must complete challenge after challenge until they either bust out or win the entire thing. Terrified of the imminent burden of college debt and convinced by her friends that she needs to Loosen Up A Bit, Girl, Venus Delmonico (Emma Roberts) embarks on a wild night through NYC with Ian (Dave Franco), a fellow Player with whom their Watchers have decided to pair her up. They speed, shoplift, and make with the romance while Best Friend Sydney (Emily Meade) and Friend Zone Guy Tommy (Miles Heizer) look on. How far will they make it? Will they face off against top-ranked Ty (Colson Baker) in the finals? When will Vee’s mom (Juliette Lewis) catch on?

The drama is face-paced and the characters are charming, but what’s really on Nerve’s mind is the relationship between our real-world identities and the avatars we create for social media. Watching Nerve is relatively passive — Watchers can hide behind user names — but Players are forced to give up everything from their Facebook photos to their Amazon order histories. It all feeds into building the most comprehensive personal advertisement possible. The more interested the Watchers are, the better the dares will be, the better shot you’ve got at big money. It’s an interesting bit of commentary on the nature of celebrity and the ease with which it seduces us, and it’s constructed in a credible enough way that we never question why a person would streak through a department store or drive blindfolded down a major thoroughfare — money and fame are reason enough. The stakes have to be compelling in order for an intelligent and self-aware young person like Vee to risk life and limb, and it can’t just be the allure of youthful rebellion. Nerve wants its characters to make mistakes and actually learn from them rather than simply face up to some all-knowing authority who’ll set things right.

It’s also a lot of fun to watch. Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman infuse the film with an appropriate level of kinetic energy that never feels artificial. Often we see these films stretch credibility to force a bit of product placement or overdo the techno-babble in the name of haphazard world building, but there’s a nice balance here. It’s colorful, dynamic, and shot with a good eye. While the actual logistics of Nerve (like The Purge) don’t hold up to close scrutiny (the presence of a central control center or corporate infrastructure is never addressed, among other things), the internal motivations of the characters and their causal influence on the plot more than make up for it. Nerve is a film that would have been very easy to write badly, to get fixated on the “crazy Jackass dares” aspect and leave characterization behind, but it rarely does that. Decisions are made by characters who are acting in ways that fit their personalities, and the plot moves in one direction or another based on those decisions. It’s almost as if someone with a brain was writing a film for teenagers. Go figure.

Emma Roberts doesn’t quite have the chops to carry the heavier moments, but she’s directed very well and rarely put in positions that don’t play to her strengths. Dave Franco hunks about and more or less only speaks when spoken to, which feels exactly right for Dave Franco. Orange is the New Black’s Samira Wiley is a welcome addition as the den mother to an underground cadre of dark web hackers and amateur ping pong players, and it would have been nice to have seen her role expanded a bit. The star supporting performance, though, is Emily Meade as Sydney, the Popular Girl with the chip on her shoulder. Her own obsession with (and ultimate failure in) Nerve is effectively juxtaposed with Vee’s activities — she’s doing it solely for attention, while Vee’s efforts are a bit more altruistic. She’s beautiful and sad and the film never shames her for either of them (again, doing the seemingly-insignificant things right). Her character arcs along with Vee’s and creates the larger emotional stakes necessary to push the film into the third act with real momentum. These sound like basic screenwriting tenants, but it’s amazing how often we see them ignored.

Ultimately, it’s the faces we don’t see that matter the most. The Watchers act as an all-seeing hive-mind (think the Blanks from The World’s End), their phones glowing like fireflies in the night. The higher up the Nerve rankings Vee and Ian climb, the more fireflies follow in their wake. It’s a great stylistic choice that adds to the paranoia permeating through the film. Unfortunately, Nerve’s climax — a showdown with two pistols and a thunderdome full of Watchers hungry for blood — is its shakiest moment, a bit stilted and clumsy for a film that has demonstrated so much tonal control. Still, it’s trying to warn us about the dangerous anonymity of the internet and the importance of regaining our humanity when we’re exposed. It’s easy to troll and downvote when there are no consequences, when we don’t see the people we’re tweeting at as human beings. But the minute Shit Gets Real, the minute we’re told (to our real faces and real names) to own up to what we did, we fold. It sounds a bit preachy, but Nerve is the kind of teen movie worth championing, a movie that uses cell phones and Instagrams to say something real.

Riske Business: In Case You Missed Them (Holiday Movie Edition)

by Adam Riske

My take on a half dozen holiday releases still in theaters, ranked least favorite to favorite.

Assassin’s Creed – I’m not one of those people who cross their fingers hoping video game movies are good. I’m in the camp that looks forward to them being kind of bad, especially during this part of the year ( "prestige" season). It’s comforting at this point because it’s a genre that delivers the “goods” (“bads” may be more appropriate) with consistency. So for the first 30 minutes of Assassin’s Creed, I was sitting in the theater thinking “people are being too hard on this,” but then I gear-shifted and fell comfortably into the consensus. The movie gets more and more nonsensical as it progresses but not in a fun way; more in a dull way where you can’t even enjoy the movie on its own terms. Michael Fassbender cares and that sustained me for a while plus some of the 15th century Spain action set-pieces are interesting to look at (it’s a neat visual, the way they introduce you into that setting each time Fassbender’s character enters the virtual reality) but a parade of characters where you barely know their names, let alone character motivations, ultimately make Assassin’s Creed a slog.

Passengers – Like Assassin’s Creed, Passengers is a movie that starts intriguingly but falls apart by the ending. At the beginning, the movie is interesting because you’re exploring this transport vessel along with Chris Pratt, so there’s a sense of discovery. Plus, the production design of this ship is really something; it’s the best thing in the movie. The movie then shifts gears and focuses on the Pratt-Jennifer Lawrence relationship and it suffers a bit for a number of reasons I can’t get into without spoilers. Let’s just say it is problematic and pretty sexist, too. A lot of it has to do with portraying its sole female character as less than equal to her male counterpart and being more important to service a man’s needs/be witness to his “greatness” than have her own agency. After playing such strong characters in the past in movies like Winter’s Bone, Joy or The Hunger Games, I'm surprised Jennifer Lawrence chose to play somewhat of a thinly realized damsel in distress. By the third act, Passengers has a choice to explore the icky moral quandary it sets itself up with head-on or cop out and finish with an arbitrary action climax. It chooses the latter and nets out as a bad movie because of it. The movie is almost worth seeing, though, for Andy Garcia’s role. It’s incredible how brief it is.

Why Him? – This movie made me laugh just enough to not dislike it. Why Him? comes from director John Hamburg, who’s a veteran of a handful of Ben Stiller comedies and who previously directed I Love You, Man. Coincidentally, I caught I Love You, Man on cable again recently and I still really enjoy that movie. Why Him? is not as good, and I think a reason why is because it’s more set-piece driven and less about character interaction with smart writing and funny people delivering those lines. I’m not trying to bag on James Franco or Bryan Cranston (I like both in general and both in Why Him?), but they don’t have any special chemistry to make the movie memorable. It’s fine and disposable. It feels like a lot of Judd Apatow productions from a few years ago, where there’s some raunchy behavior, a lot of sweetness but ultimately the movie is easy to forget. This is a movie made to fill out a DVD 4-pack.

Hidden Figures – A movie I liked but wanted to enjoy a lot more. Hidden Figures has an amazing story to tell made more exceptional because it tells a…well… hidden story from history that is fascinating and should have gotten the press it deserved at the time. What’s disappointing is that the film tells that story in a very movie-ish way. At times Hidden Figures feels inauthentic (more certain shots than sequences) – too sanitized and sermonizing, like something you would produce with the intention of showing to middle school students on “movie day” (it’s rated PG and that doesn’t work to its benefit). Some characters feel like types instead of people. “Lesson” is underlined a lot in this movie. The best sequences are the ones with Taraji P. Henson at work in Kevin Costner’s managed think tank, because it goes into the most detail about the work and skill involved in some of the missions. This is a movie that does NASA a lot better than Civil Rights in my humble opinion. The performances carried me through, but I’d be remiss to not admit that I think I’m giving this movie more of a pass than I should because I’m sympathetic to its subject matter. Hidden Figures may be a victim of expectations for me more than anything else. If this came out in January without a lot of buzz, it would probably feel less disappointing. This time of year is weird anyways. If it’s an Oscar hopeful and it’s not at least really good, it somehow feels like a frustration.

Fences –Denzel Washington would get my vote for Best Actor of the year because he’s terrific in Fences and it features THE MOST acting. Dude acts his face off in Fences (as well as Viola Davis, who is almost always great except for Suicide Squad…that movie takes down everything), and as a moviegoer who enjoys watching acting maybe more than any other facet of the medium, this was a real treat. I’ve heard criticism that Washington doesn’t “open up” the movie Fences so it still feels stage-bound, but I’m perfectly fine with that. I don’t get out to see live theater as much as I would like, so seeing something that’s more like a play was a unique experience for me which I enjoyed. If for no other reason, I appreciate Fences because it is my introduction to the writing of August Wilson (and probably is for a lot of people) and for that I feel fortunate. Fences is a tough movie, tougher than something like Manchester By the Sea imho, because it’s a much angrier movie and without all the gallows humor. It’s an experience that got under my skin, similar to how the Brad Pitt sequences in The Tree of Life are because they feel so authentic and suffocating. Despite the dialogue being poetic, the emotions and situations are messy and ugly, with lead characters that have the capacity to be much more than one single type.

A Monster Calls – This movie is a doozy and the reason I wanted to write this article, which is to shine a light on how good A Monster Calls is. I’m usually not one who’s easily taken in by creatures teaching children lessons in movies, but I found this movie so moving in a few ways. First, it’s a beautiful portrait about the bond between mothers and their children. Second, it deals with grief in an interesting way, because it’s about how disease affects the people around the afflicted. It’s a brave movie that acknowledges that our feelings and thoughts in these times can be murky and surprising, to the point where we feel we need to punish ourselves for daring to think them. The movie is also an amazing representation of how difficult it is to talk about grief and the isolation that comes from that (e.g. we don’t want to upset the person who is sick, we feel our feelings shouldn’t have equal weight to their well-being, we don’t know what to say, etc.) and how we need movies/stories/parables to help process how we’re feeling and find some measure of peace. I might be sounding so hyper-specific that it makes no sense to you reading this, but that’s just a residual effect of how much this movie hit me personally. A Monster Calls certainly would have been in my top 5 of 2016 had I seen it in time and it’s my exploding heart movie of the year. It really bums me out it’s not doing better in theaters due to how crowded the marketplace is right now. Go see it.

Have you seen any of these films? What were your thoughts?

Reserved Seating with Adam and Rob: The Autopsy of Jane Doe

by Adam Riske and Rob DiCristino

The new review duo who tell it to you straight.

Adam: Welcome to the first episode of Reserved Seating with Rob & Adam. I’m Adam Riske.

Rob: And I’m Rob DiCristino, and this week we watched The Autopsy of Jane Doe.

Adam: The Autopsy of Jane Doe is the new film from director André Øvredal, director of Trollhunter.

Rob: It tells the story of Tommy Tilden (Brian Cox) and his son, Austin (Emile Hirsch), a father/son firm of coroners presented with their strangest case yet: a Jane Doe (Olwen Kelly) found buried in the midst of a brutal murder scene. Jane has no marks, no burns, no visible wounds of any kind, and yet somehow still lies dead on the slab. The deeper the Tildens dig, the more convinced they become that something truly terrifying is going on.

Adam: In this clip, Tommy and Austin reveal a trick of the trade to the young man’s girlfriend. She’s played by the curiously named Ophelia Lovibond.

Rob: That’s the name of a spaceship, not a person.

Adam: I’m sure Roger Moore has googled her at least once.



The Autopsy of Jane Doe has several effective set-pieces like this one in the first act but then slowly devolves into a standard haunted house movie where the house is dull and the secrets revealed in the autopsy of Jane Doe become dumber and dumber and dumber. I usually give low-budget horror movies a pass, but a bad script that’s at odds with the character motivations ultimately negates the intriguing set-up. A real disappointment considering the cred it had on the festival circuit.

Rob: I disagree! I’ll give you the bad expository dialogue and underdeveloped character work, but I got a lot of mileage out of the photography and the autopsy effects. For me, they mostly overcame the clunky story bits and weak last act. I love me a good bottle episode, and I thought the film’s visual language got us comfortable with the space before beginning the drama.

Adam: Oh, Rob! Photography and effects? Admittedly the makeup is good, but is that all it takes for you in 2017? Well then here’s $10, I’ll buy you a ticket to Assassin’s Creed. You’ll love it. The story makes no sense. It’s like a house with a foundation made out of noodles. I mean, Brian Cox is good. This movie shows he can imbue humanity and backstory to the most thinly written character but when they reveal the history of this father-son dynamic late in the film...what does it have to do with Jane Doe? It just seems so arbitrary.

Rob: Yeah that’s the second act atonement moment thrown in seemingly because they realized a movie was supposed to have one. What’s funny is that I really am a story and structure guy, so I should have hated a lot of this. I found myself wishing the kid would shut the hell up and that they would do more of those silent shorthand moments of communication they established at several points. Like, I loved that Cox didn’t blink when Hirsch started pouring gasoline on the body. He just lit the match. The film would have benefited from more of that. And more autopsying, dammit!

Adam: Yeah and then the morgue goes up in CGI flames. Filmmakers, if you can’t afford fire, then don’t write a fire scene in your movie. Fire’s free isn’t it? Why couldn’t they get real fire?

Rob: Guys, in case you haven’t figured it out, Adam is the bad cop.

Adam: I am when you’re letting down the public by giving a disappointment like this a pass.

Rob: Oh! Here’s something I hated: You know how the girlfriend jumps out and scares him and goes, “It’s so easy!” I was like, “Cool, maybe the movie’s making a statement about shitty jump scares and will aspire to something better!” No. It did a bunch of them.

Adam: And CGI Resident Evil corpses, don’t forget those. So are you voting Mark Ahn or Mark Off? I couldn’t look Mark Ahn in the face and recommend this movie so I’m telling him to “Mark Off” The Autopsy of Jane Doe from his list of movies to watch.

Rob: I thought there were a lot of good and thoughtful bits that didn’t add up to anything much in the end. The movie kind of bailed on itself when it decided to have father and son explain the history of New England for twenty minutes instead of having a climax. I liked the energy and the pacing, as well as the non-performance of Olwen Kelly as the corpse. But it’s a soft Mark Off, for me.

Adam: There you have it. I liked the Cox and Rob liked the corpse. And not much else.

Rob: Same as it ever was.

Adam: On next week’s show, Rob and I will discuss Silence, Martin Scorsese’s long-gestating passion project. Until next time, these seats are reserved.

Erika's Favorite Movies of 2016

by Erika Bromley

This year more than ever, certain films spoke to me because of how important they are.

For example, the true stories shown in Hidden Figures were never featured in any of my history textbooks. Thank goodness for movies! They entertain, they teach, they open minds. Humanity is stronger, better, and more informed by the stories we read and watch. We’re more civilized when we show empathy – and nothing teaches empathy better than storytelling in all its forms.

Here are twelve films that made me laugh and/or cry; that made me feel; that inspired me; that opened my mind. Some even did all of those things.

12-8 (Five-way tie!):
Loving (dir. Jeff Nichols)
Arrival (dir. Denis Villeneuve)
Don't Breathe (dir. Fede Alvarez)
The Nice Guys (dir. Shane Black)
Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier)

7. Lion (dir. Garth Davis)

6. The Neon Demon (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)

5. 13th (dir. Ava DuVernay)

4. Hell or High Water (dir. David Mackenzie)

3. O.J.: Made in America (dir. Ezra Edelman)

2. Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins)

1. La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle)

Honorable Mentions:
Manchester by the Sea, In a Valley of Violence, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Hidden Figures

Erich Asperschlager's Favorite Movies of 2016

by Erich Asperschlager

Another year, another chance to apologize for having missed most of the movies that came out.

Where other writers on this site saw upwards of TEN good films in 2016, my role as slug-a-bed cinephile leaves me ready to play catch-up in 2017 but unprepared to weigh in on most of the year's biggest movies. All I can say in my defense is I'll make it up to you next month during F This Movie! Fest. Until then, time to should forget some auld cinematic acquaintances.

Honorable Mention: Captain America: Civil War

I respect anyone who includes Captain America: Civil War on their top ten list (can I have those photos back now, Doug?). It's ambitious, fun, has killer action, and deftly balances more characters and storylines atop a Marvel cinematic Jenga tower that occasionally wobbles but stubbornly refuses to fall. It's this last feat that impresses me most. Comic book movie fatigue is palpable across film blogdom, including this very site. I get it. I used to be annoyed by Marvel's approach to filmmaking. The movies are ephemeral. They rarely stand on their own. I hardly ever want to rewatch them. There's little room for experimentation. 2016 was the year I learned to stopped worrying and love the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The key to embracing the MCU is to stop thinking about these as traditional movies or sequels. These films are the onscreen equivalent of comic books, with each entry telling a little more of an ongoing story, loosely bundled into cinematic trade paperbacks called "phases." Of course Marvel plans their movies years in advance. Of course there are no lasting deaths or irreversible twists. Of course characters show up in each others' films to promote future projects. That's how comic books work. If that's not what you want out of movies, cool. I don't want it from all movies but I'm glad Marvel is doing it, especially if it means we get films like Civil War.

5. Hail, Caesar!

If Hail, Caesar! were set in the modern day, Capitol Studios would probably be making a comic book movie instead of the biblical epic that shares its name with the Coens' latest. Like many of the brothers' films, Hail, Caesar! is immediately charming but requires work from the viewer to fully appreciate. It's goofy and fractured in a way that turned off many critics. Middling reviews knocked it off my must-see list for almost the full year. I finally watched Hail, Caesar! during the holidays. I liked it on first viewing, but it took a second to see the clockwork genius in the chaos. Hail, Caesar! is a treat for movie fans: a bottle rocket day-in-the-life-of-a-golden-age-studio story that winds through amusement park attraction setpieces that celebrate the magical, messy process of making moving pictures. The dance numbers and DIY stunt work meet the Edgar Wright standard of being both funny parodies of the thing and brilliant examples of the thing being parodied. The script sparkles on the surface while offering deeper themes for those willing to dig. Top-tier actors give great performances in small roles. It looks great, it's hilarious, and it fully deserves the critical reassessment it's bound to get in a few years.

4. Green Room

When I first saw Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room, I loved it as a taut thriller that defies easy genre classification. Now, I see it as the perfect allegory for the crapfest that was 2016. Punk rockers The Ain't Rights start the film as self-assured badasses who do whatever they want. After a bad run of tour dates, the group accepts an offer to play a club they realize too late is inside a white supremacist compound. They mock and taunt their hostile "Nazi punk" audience. They posture. They sneer. They discover too late how unprepared they are to go toe-to-toe with real evil. Replace The Ain't Rights with progressive liberals and the white supremacist compound with Twitter and you basically have America after the 2016 election. Not that the real-life egg avatar army or their puppet president-elect have anything on the bad guys in this movie. The "alt-right" attackers in Green Room aren't faceless villains. They are tactical, disciplined, and led by Patrick effing Stewart. The baddies aren't dangerous because they are unrepentant hatemongers. They are dangerous because they're so well organized. Saulnier pitches his Assault on Precinct 13 as a war movie and it makes all the difference. I'm not saying we should use the second half of Green Room as a template for dealing with 2017. I'm just saying maybe it's time to stock up on duct tape.

3. Pete's Dragon

From green rooms to green... fur? Ugh, sorry. Despite positive reviews, Pete's Dragon isn't showing up on "best of" lists. I get it. It's a family film. It's a remake. It co-stars a CGI dragon. This movie shouldn't workóbut it does, in large part because director / co-writer David Lowery jettisoned almost everything from the 1977 original except the basic premise: a young orphan with a chameleonic dragon BFF finds a surrogate family in a small town. The environmental message and basic story beats are straight out of the Disney playbook, but the familiar elements do nothing to detract from a magical coming-of-age story with a sweet central relationship between a feral child and a cartoon dragon. The best lyrical sequences in Pete's Dragon are reminiscent of criminally underrated Carroll Ballard films like The Black Stallion and Duma. I took my daughter to see it. We both loved it. I cried. I cheered. It was the perfect antidote to the rest of 2016. Come to think of it, so are the next two movies on my list.

2. La La Land 

I don't make it out the theater as much as I'd like to. In any other year I would have skipped La La Land. It's exactly the kind of movie I hear great things about in December but wait to see until it hits streaming services a few months into the new year. I'm so glad I made the effort to take my wife to the nearest arthouse theater to see La La Land on the big screen. This is another movie that seems simple on paper. There's a good reason we don't watch movies on paper. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone star as dreamers living in a town tailormade to crush dreams. They meet, they flirt, they sing, they fall in love, they dance, they argue, they fly; they run the gamut of emotions in any intense relationship. As a straight romantic drama, La La Land would be exceptional. As a stylish musical with stunning choreography, hummable music, and bravura direction, it's transcendent. It reminded me at times of films as diverse as Singin' in the Rain, Fantasia, Once, and The Muppet Movie. I've been listening to the soundtrack on a loop since I saw it. Forget the mercifully few naysayers and nitpickers. Who cares if it wins Best Picture? Who cares if it beats Deadpool at the Golden Globes (actually, you can care about that one)? Throw aside cynicism and see this film as soon as you can.

1. Hunt for the Wilderpeople

I could probably swap my number one and two movies and be just as happy with my list, but I didn't choose Taika Waititi's Hunt for the Wilderpeople as my favorite film of the year. It chose me. This story of two outcasts on the run through the New Zealand bush from a bureaucracy that doesn't understand or value them has little in common with Waititi's previous film, What We Do in the Shadows. That it's every bit as fresh, inventive, and fully realized as that vampire mockumentary is a testament to the director's talent. Waititi hasn't reached Edgar Wright levels of creative invulnerability yet, but Wilderpeople automatically bumps all of his future films to must-see status. This is a perfectly balanced film. Funny but not cartoonish. Heartwarming but not cloying. Quirky but not twee. With funny, moving performances from a scruffy Sam Neill and the film's breakout star, the young Julian Dennison as "skux" foster kid Ricky Baker. Hunt for the Wilderpeople is the kind of standalone gem we beg for: new, refreshing, and not the start of an annual franchiseóthough I would totally watch a Wilderpeople 2: Even Wilderer to see if Ricky, Hec, and Tupac can find that bird. ...Maybe in 2018.

Melissa Uhrin's Favorite Movies of 2016

by Melissa Uhrin

2016 was a hell of a year.

I dropped the ball on beating my 2015 movie-watching total and came in at a measly 300-ish this year. Which is fine, and made it a bit easier to whittle down my top ten, but let's see if I can't get back on track for 2017.

I enjoyed a lot of movies this year, but these are the winners as far as what I loved, what stuck with me the longest and what I am most looking forward to revisiting soon soon soon!

10. For The Love of Spock

While my movie watching was lacking this year, I did however accomplish a couple things. Rewatching Star Trek TOS, Star Trek TNG and making it halfway through Star Trek DS9 helped me to rediscover my dormant Trekkie and now I can't get enough. This documentary delves into the beginnings of the Star Trek universe and the unexpected popularity of the alien character, Spock and turns into a moving tribute to the man inside the Vulcan, Leonard Nimoy.

9. The Handmaiden

The first of three Korean films to make my list. I fell in love with the beautiful story full of twists and turns, but even more so the beauty of the visuals that filled the screen.

8. Hunt for the Wilderpeople

What I loved most about this movie was the humour and charm of the two main characters. Fantastic performances by both Sam Neill and his foster child played by Julian Dennison ensured that this comedy would find a place on my top ten.

7. Sing Street

Ah!!! I love musicals. Well, some of them. ...actually not many, but I LOVED this. Because it's not really a musical? More of a music-filled comedy that is full of a few of my favourite things: music, friendship and the '80s.

6. Train to Busan

There are zombies on a mother-fucking train and no Samuel Jackson in sight. The second Korean film to make my list has all the blood and gore I had expected, with the bonus of a powerful daddy-daughter story at its heart.

5. Gleason

This story has all the sticky feelers that dig deep and don't let go easily. It filled me with love and admiration for a man and his perseverance to live with an all-consuming disease. Beautiful, powerful and full of heart.

4. Green Room

I watched this months ago and am always on the verge of a revisit, but something else seems to catch my eye as I am easily distracted. It has stuck with me, a couple spectacularly vivid scenes in particular, but the performances are what made this movie for me.

3. 10 Cloverfield Lane

Because John Goodman is the fucking man.

2. The Wailing

Loved it the first time, and have loved every viewing since. The only film on this list I watched more than three times in a very short time span. The story is haunting and yet beautiful, the acting is powerful and this movie has not left my thoughts for months. I am in love with Korean cinema.

1. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

GAH! When you are in love with a world, you need not see its flaws. The magic that I came to depend on for comfort flows through this movie and brings me more of what I am constantly craving. I honestly struggled to keep it from being at the top of the list, but I would be lying to myself if I placed it anywhere but number one. It was my favourite movie of the year -- not the best, but my absolute favourite and will be the most revisited for years to come.

Happy New Years everyone, looking forward to a movie-filled 2017!

Mark Ahn's Favorite Movies of 2016

by Mark Ahn

It’s never a bad year at the movies.

One of my favorite end-of-December customs is to watch the supercuts on YouTube of the year’s movies. It doesn’t even have to be a ranking (although I would say that critic David Ehrlich does the best of these); it brings me such joy to run (or run again) through the poignant or cool moments, even from the ones I didn’t love. Our very individualized culture is narrowing down our common experiences, but movies still offer that to us, and more and more, I find that important. What are the stories that we want to share with each other? From the conversations in the theater lobby or the car ride or the comments section or through YouTube supercuts, we think about and share and reflect back to each other about the stories that meant the most to us, and that is worth celebrating.

Honorable mentions: I have tremendous respect for these movies; they just didn’t quite make it into my top ten. I definitely plan on revisiting them soon:
Hail, Caesar!
Hell or High Water
Moonlight
The Neon Demon

The ones that got away: I wish I could’ve caught these as I considered my favorites of this year:
American Honey
The Fits
Loving
Moana
Silence
Toni Erdmann

10) I Am Not A Serial Killer

What do you do with other people’s expectations, especially when they are not particularly high? It is a consideration pondered over by John, the distinctive protagonist in Billy O’Brien’s story who spends particularly indistinctive days in his small, nondescript hometown. John does not find the complexity within himself reflected in his surroundings, and wonders what interest life could hold for him, until his thoughts are cut short the day the body comes into the morgue.

9) Manchester by the Sea

The hardest part of grief is that nobody can tell you how to do it. Tears? Anger? Silence? Almost any reaction is possible when the natural arc of human relationships is interrupted. Kenneth Lonergan’s story isn’t about a plucky, bright-eyed survivor, but it also isn’t about reveling in pure gloom either, although it includes moments of both. It’s more about the difficult but necessary choice to continue forward, even when every instinct says that you’re stuck, to combat the shriveling of life that accompanies grief.

8) Kubo and the Two Strings

There has been discussion on this site about Laika Entertainment and who exactly they are making movies for, but I’ve finally figured it out: overgrown children like me. I don’t know how successful a studio that relies on mostly stop-motion animation can be, but what I do know is that a child of the '80s like me who grew up on cel animation and Ray Harryhausen loves the realistic feel of the models as opposed to the comparative weightlessness of computer generated images. The technology means nothing unless it’s in the service of a story, and Kubo’s quest to make real what he has only dreamed of until now is worthy of the studio’s time- and labor-intensive approach.

7) Love & Friendship

Who cares what everybody expects out of you? Do what you want anyway! Play off the foolishness of entitled idiots! Lady Susan Vernon lives the aforementioned sentiment to the hilt; Kate Beckinsale is at her playful, energetic, ironic best in Whit Stillman’s comedy, and if that is a sentence which confuses you, then stop watching Underworld movies.

6) The Nice Guys

Shane Black is so good at having us live in a world where everything gets screwed up, but we still have a great time. What’s not fun about Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling playing awkwardly funny but surprisingly adept detectives? Or Los Angeles in the ridiculous '70s? Or kids saying inappropriately mature things, and stuff? Noir might be dark, but it doesn’t always have to feel dark.

4) and 5) 10 Cloverfield Lane/Green Room

It’s a little bit of a cheat, but I didn’t want to choose between two excellent movies with so much in common. There is plenty of horror to be derived from the idea that perfectly ordinary people, dealing with perfectly ordinary struggles, are grabbed and thrown headlong into a nightmare that completely recontextualizes what struggle is. But, what is admirable, maybe even inspirational, is that the characters immediately fight back, in the smartest and best way they can. Our protagonists didn’t ask to be in their situations, but they’re going to put aside their fear, not wait to be rescued by someone else, and do whatever is necessary to try and escape. Dan Trachtenberg and Jeremy Saulnier control the proceedings with nearly Hitchcockian mastery of space and tension.

3) The Handmaiden

Is it good or is it bad that almost any adjective can apply to this movie? All the trademark Park Chan-wook goodies are here: blended genre touches, simmering tension, richly textured style everywhere in the frame (if there is something that Park is the best at, it’s definitely making every moment in his movies look cinematic). It all starts with a poor girl taken in as a rich woman’s servant, the story unraveling and raveling in unexpected ways as the characters (and audiences) try to figure out what truths are being discovered and which lies are being bared. It wasn’t widely available during its theatrical run, but I hope in 2017 everybody who was interested can track this one down.

2) Arrival

Denis Villeneuve just keeps building a resume that engenders trust, which feels like a rare commodity in our cultural landscape obsessed with the empty calories of “pre-existing IP” (barf). Science fiction can be so powerful (and terrifying) because it expands our way of looking at the world, giving a glimpse of what could be real. With a gorgeous, eerie score, and some understated performances, the movie challenges us to consider seeing our existence differently, to consider that their might be a better way, to consider trusting someone else’s words.

1) La La Land

The movie loves so much. It loves its lead actors. It loves music (especially jazz). It loves the tradition of movie stars being triple threats of acting, dancing, and singing. It loves the myth of Hollywood and Southern California as magical places where dreams become reality; perhaps it even believes the myth that dreams come true at all. The movie knows, despite the pizzazz and the showmanship, that whatever it’s selling is fantasy (it is a musical, after all), but I cannot reject the goodwill and charm of a movie that loves so much. In a year where I was reminded often of the ugliness that resides within our culture, I’m happy that Damien Chazelle told a story that reminded me of the beautiful things as well.

Alex Lawson's Favorite Movies of 2016

by Alex Lawson

Another Top 10 list!

10. O.J.: Made in America (dir. Ezra Edelman) — It ranks this low strictly on procedural grounds, as it remains murky how a nearly 8-hour ESPN documentary fits into the rigidity of the Top 10 movie list construction. What is not murky is nearly everything else about Edelman’s sprawling masterpiece, a staggering piece of work that wraps together just about every prong of the nation’s racial unease over the past 60 years into a package that never — not even for one second of its run time — feels bloated or overly ponderous.

It would be one thing to produce a story of this size about a largely untold chapter of history, but to do so about a figure as dissected and examined as O.J. Simpson is next to impossible, or so I would have thought. The sheer entertainment value of the thing is eclipsed only by its value as a cultural document.

9. The Lobster (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos) — Look, I’m not that smart. I attended a poorly regarded public university and didn’t even do that well, and a lot of really dense art leaves me looking like I caught wind of some hot trash on the street.

So perhaps the central thesis of The Lobster has eluded me. Almost to a person, everyone who sees this move, supporters and detractors alike, has something to say about its cynicism toward the very idea of love. I think that’s true only in the sense that the two main characters exist to thumb their nose at it. Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz are both doing tremendous work to emote through a script and an environment designed to specifically prevent them from doing so, forging what I read as incredibly heartfelt and sincere romance. I guess I see their whole union as a rose-through-concrete sort of deal, two against the world and all that. I love this movie.

8. Zootopia (dirs. Byron Howard, Rich Moore) — I’ve just never seen anything like this. There’s been no shortage of children’s movies with political messaging, of course, but never in a way that is so pointed and so unafraid to put its characters in positions that challenge them at a basic, moral level. In a year without O.J.: Made in America, this talking-animal kids’ flick would have been the most important American film about race. Stew on that for a second.

On top of that, it has a genuinely intriguing and surprising detective story tucked away in there! Even some of Pixar’s best work never has me really tracking everything at a plot level the way this movie did. Aesthetically, Zootopia, the place, is a beautifully realized city in a way that captures the surface sheen and seedy underbelly that lies at the heart of the best film noir yarns. Everything about the movie just flat-out works.

7. Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch) — No other movie on the list underwent a more rigorous “Uh, is this thing actually good” test than Jarmusch’s sleepy ode to creativity and life’s mundane pleasures. Deftly sidestepping the trappings of a nauseatingly twee conceit — Adam Driver plays a Paterson, N.J., bus driver who is named Paterson, writes poems, and has a contentious relationship with his live-in girlfriend’s bulldog — the movie somehow got me charged up about the very act of poetic composition while maintaining an entrancing poetic structure itself.

It’s entirely possible that you and any number of other people who see this movie will think it’s just boring. Hell that was a pretty boring first paragraph up there, wasn’t it? But I could have lived in this movie’s world for hours on end.

6. The Invitation (dir. Karyn Kusama) — We’ve all got our blind spots, and I am basically a sucker for literally any story that explores cults and the way they use a person’s vulnerability as a method of imprisonment and their self-doubt as a key to keep them locked in. So through that prism, I was likely in the bag for this one from the jump.

But while the movie has a litany of interesting things to say about those components of cults and their followers, it also plays as a really profound meditation on the nature of grief and loss, all within its packaging as an unrelentingly intense chamber play. And, as is statutorily required in all reviews of The Invitation, no matter how brief, the final shot is nothing short of a kneecapper.

5. Elle (dir. Paul Verhoeven) — The alchemy on display in Elle is just plain wild. It’s one of those movies that you feel could have only worked out in this specific way, with this specific individual behind the camera and most of all with this specific actress putting a chokehold on every scene. A serious examination of sex, violence and consent shouldn’t really be this...gleeful? But here we are, as Verhoeven and Isabelle Huppert subvert sexual norms, genre tropes and our cultural expectations left and right.

On a scene-to-scene basis, Elle generated the type urgency and anticipation that was unlike almost anything else I saw this year, wriggling free from the grasp I thought I had on it at every turn.

4. Don’t Breathe (Fede Álvarez) — Sometimes when a movie is over, the lights come up and you realize you’ve been digging your nails into the armrest for the past hour. Enter Don’t Breathe, in which Fede Alvarez works the audience like a speed bag as he turns the oft-bungled home invasion sub-genre on its head. Instead of nihilistic terror descending upon well-meaning home dwellers, Don’t Breathe sees some troublesome but ultimately nonviolent burglars intruding into space where the nihilistic terror is waiting for them.

And lord, the terror. My favorite sequence in this bottle episode of a movie may not even take place in the house, but in an abandoned car with a very pissed-off rottweiler. Just kidding, my favorite sequence is all of them.

There’s a second-act development that some feel steers the movie away from gleeful anarchy and into truly vile territory. I don’t know that I can really refute that, except to say that the comeuppance-by-turkey baster is just about one of the most cathartic things I have ever seen in a movie and washed away any moral qualms I had about the movie’s trajectory.

3. Weiner (dirs. Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg) — A documentary that was already absurdly intriguing has only grown more so since the camera stopped rolling. The Cormac McCarthy novel that was 2016 has nudged the former politician at the center of the film well past “troubled public servant” all the way into “likely sex criminal” and “accessory to the degradation of the American experiment.”

Still, we have to deal first with what is within the parameters of the movie as it exists, and contained within those parameters is nothing short of the most compelling political documentary in recent memory. The amount of access given to the filmmakers is so confounding that it becomes an unavoidable question in the film itself.

But Anthony Weiner’s fall from grace is just one aspect of the film’s considerable appeal. There’s a whole other layer of commentary here and the sort of dutiful rottenness at the heart of political culture and those that it envelops, and it is that commentary that has kept me thinking about this movie from the moment I saw it so many months ago.

2. The Handmaiden (dir. Chan-wook Park) — Here’s some intellectual film criticism for you: The Handmaiden fucking owns. The movie’s minuscule release and general incongruity with the American marketing machine means you probably didn’t see it yet. And perhaps, for now, that is good, because you are reading this and I can tell you that you are not prepared for all the ways in which Park is about to fuck with you in this movie.

How The Handmaiden manages to be so many different incredible movies under one umbrella without ever feeling jumbled or confused is beyond me. There’s a dignified historical costume drama, a caper, an erotic thriller and even some romantic comedy DNA laced elegantly throughout the entire thing, with each of these complementing and enriching those that constantly surround it.

1. La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle) — Immediately after this movie ended, all I could do was giggle and stammer out sentence fragments of praise to my wife. I’ll try and pull those fragments together here to make some complete thoughts, but I can’t really make any promises.

I think what impresses me the most is Chazelle’s mastery of both the big moments and the small moments in equal measure. After a pair of pretty extravagant numbers to begin the movie, including one that features the camera splashing around in a god damn pool, he deftly shrinks the scale down and gives us this really earnest and sad love story that still somehow never strays from old-school Hollywood musical roots.

One of my favorite moments in the movie is barely a moment at all. Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian is touring the nation with a replacement-level techno-jazz band while Emma Stone’s Mia is back in L.A. on the struggling actress grind. They’ve been apart for a long time, and he surprises her by coming back into town and preparing an elegant meal in their apartment. The joy on her face is palpable, and as she rushes in to embrace him, he off-handedly blurts out that he will be heading back out of town the following day. This line doesn’t really register a reaction, the shot isn’t cut and the scene proceeds apace. But when he said it, I got a twinge up my spine thinking that something bad was afoot, because he felt the need to stress that this momentary bliss was just that, momentary. For a second I thought I’d read too much into a throwaway line, but sure enough, the conversation unfurls — organically and painfully — into a complete emotional clusterfuck that soon has the two at each other’s throats. It is heartbreaking.

The less said about the movie’s final set piece, the better, as it still remains in limited release. But...Jesus. The sheer audacity of it all is...Hell. There I go with the sentence fragments again.