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.

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.

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.

Riske Business: My Top 10 Movies of 2016

by Adam Riske

Double the Gosling! Double the Pine! Double the Yelchin (RIP). Ugh! 2016 was fucked up. These were my top 10 movies of the year.

But first…

Honorable Mentions (in Blockbuster Video alphabetical order): 10 Cloverfield Lane, American Honey, Don’t Breathe, Don’t Think Twice, Fences, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Life Animated, Manchester By the Sea, The Witch, Zootopia

10. Star Trek Beyond –A joyous and often funny entry in the Star Trek franchise that does the 50th anniversary of the series proud. It feels like the antithesis of its predecessor, Star Trek Into Darkness, by allowing us to spend time with old (and new) characters we love without putting them through gritty plot mechanics. I love that the movie splinters the crew into pairings we don’t usually see, allowing for some fun and interesting dynamics. Justin “Family” Lin is such an inspired choice to direct, getting us back to the relationships that made JJ Abramss 2009 Star Trek such a special blockbuster. I also love that the movie takes a progressive (admittedly liberal) stance and doesn’t apologize for it. It has a point of view, a statement of what the Federation stands for, but it doesn’t feel like a lecture. The ending is beautiful. It earns its sentimentality and looks forward to an uncertain but hopeful future for the series (at least in this specific incarnation). If Lin’s Fast and Furious films were the blockbuster series of the Obama era (as I’ve heard it described), Star Trek Beyond might be the last gasp of that for a while. To me it’s a tonic.

9. Hell or High Water – Nothing flashy, just a solid story well-told. Hell or High Water feels almost like a throwback to early ‘90s thrillers such as One False Move, showing a mixture of heroes professionally doing their job and villains driven to the edge out of desperation. The movie is serious but not solemn and features some really unexpected and inspired moments of humor in Taylor Sheridan’s (Sicario) terrific screenplay. David Mackenzie crafts a smart and confident crime film given more weight by being set in one economically devastated town after another. The uniformly strong performances are lively and surprising from a cast of great actors perfectly (type) cast (at least in the case of Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster). But that’s okay when they are this good at what they do. They are charismatic enough to drive the plot instead of the other way around. So many thrillers these days are high-tech and, in a refreshing change of pace, Hell or High Water slows things down culminating in one of the best final scenes of the year – a macho pissing contest that wouldn’t be found in a more conventional film. It’s the best.

8. Kubo and the Two Strings – One of the most moving films of the year made all the more impressive because it doesn’t rest on the laurels of being a stunning technical achievement. On top of that accomplishment, the filmmakers (led by director Travis Knight and the rest of the supremely talented team at Laika) still took the time and care to inhabit their film with a resonant story and rich characters. I found Kubo so affecting because it’s a rare movie that posits that not everyone in your family may be out for your best interests, but the ones who are will live on in your heart (either in reality or through stories and memory) and never truly leave you. I loved Laika’s 2012 effort ParaNorman, but I think Kubo stands on top of their accomplishments now. For me it’s just about a perfect movie filled with maturity, beauty and sadness. I made the joke after I saw Kubo that I found more catharsis in it than 15 years of therapy. There is actually some truth to that. Kubo and the Two Strings reminded me of maybe my favorite Roger Ebert quote: “Self-help books are bullshit. Read a good book. That’ll help you.”

7. The Nice Guys – I’m more hit and miss on writer-director Shane Black than others, but with The Nice Guys he’s made my favorite of his films. It’s nice to see a movie that lives and breathes on its filmmaker’s voice. The Nice Guys is also pleasantly like a refute of another ‘70s set screwball caper, Inherent Vice, because unlike that film this one invites viewers along for the ride instead of keeping them at a self-amused impenetrable distance. The Nice Guys is great for many reasons, but what I most admire about it is that it’s intelligently dumb, with characters whose flaws are right out in the open allowing the comedy to be lively and with a measure of spontaneity. Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling (in my favorite performance of the year) share a terrific chemistry, one where they are so good together that they wring big laughs out of behavior as much as laugh lines. It’s both their acting and reacting that is funny. I love movies like this because it proves that any movie formula can still work depending on the skill in which it is done.

6. Sing Street – A touching music-filled drama with an amazing New Wave soundtrack, where the hits of Joe Jackson, Duran Duran and the fictional band Sing Street burst through the grayness of its bleak Ireland setting. Sing Street can be easily categorized as a “feel-good” movie, but I think there’s something deeper to it. Of course it champions always taking the chance at what makes you happy in life, but also it provides living examples (in the lead character’s brother and parents) of how not following through on your dreams can sooner or later erode your soul. The movie works primarily as a fable. It says we only live our lives once and that we sometimes might have to survive/leave our environment to take our first step toward our dreams. Not a groundbreaking message, but one worth repeating when it’s done as well as in Sing Street. I also appreciate how the movie’s central relationship is shown to be enriching creatively more so than romantically. I don’t think Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) and Raphina (Lucy Boynton) will last forever in love, but the music inspired by his crush on her is well worth the ups and downs.

5. Jackie – A riveting account of First Lady Jackie Kennedy and the days surrounding her husband John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Jackie captures (better than almost any other movie I think) the heightened yet dulled out-of-body experience that occurs when we’re trying to process a personal tragedy. In this case it’s even more outsized, since it’s on such a huge stage. This movie, the unnerving score by Mica Levi and the skillful performance of Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy are like a raw nerve. I was really impressed how the actress modulates scene to scene depending on which Jackie Kennedy persona is required. Jackie is thoughtful on the subject of grief (especially in the terrifically written scene between Portman and a priest played by John Hurt), legacy and the insulation we can give ourselves based on a personal narrative. Jackie Kennedy saw herself and her inner circle as ordained and royal and the immediate aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination gave her (as depicted in the film) a crushing realization that everyone didn’t share her way of seeing things. Some of the most powerful cinema in 2016 was about the death of hope and progress, which is never without setbacks. Jackie was a prime example of how to make historical events feel once again personal and immediate.

4. O.J.: Made In America – This brilliant documentary made me more angry and sad than any other film this year. That’s not a slight, but a testament to its power. O.J.: Made in America tells the eerily prescient account of how we are all guilty of using abhorrent surrogates to exact revenge and then wash our hands of those representations to later absolve our personal guilt. Ezra Edelman’s documentary is amazingly edited together to show the parallel paths of the narcissistic O.J. Simpson and racially fueled events and mistreatment which made the former NFL star a valuable patsy and turned his murder trial into being about something other than what it was. Every story and sub-story of the event is given weight, from the mishandling of DNA evidence (by the police, the legal teams and the jury) to the marginalization and insensitivity shown to the murder victims (Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman) to the culpability of the media for sensationalizing the event. Even worse, it was a precursor to the ugliness and exclusive/being-first reporting that continued with the Internet and has rotted the public discourse. This documentary shows a scary reminder that the post-truth/shout louder/about my feelings society was around long before 2016. It is history we’ve decided to all doom ourselves to repeat.

3. Green Room – This movie is a fucking shark. It’s an ominous terror machine and I love it. Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to Blue Ruin (which should have made my top 10 list in 2014 but, you know, Begin Again could not be denied #mistake) is one of the most nerve-wrecking moviegoing experiences I’ve ever had. The movie feels as punk rock as the fictional band of the film with its messy violence, cruelly efficient characters and seething anger. Green Room is also one of those movies that effortlessly blurs the line between its characters and the audience in that we’re wondering “what would I do” as the events transpire. The performances are uniformly excellent – Patrick Stewart is quietly measured and terrifyingly practical, Imogen Poots is a charismatic loose cannon and Anton Yelchin as the band’s (and the film’s) heart and soul. Yelchin had sensitivity to him as a performer, which makes for such an effective counterpoint to the madness surrounding all of Green Room. His screen persona unto itself makes this film more impactful. His passing is a tremendous loss to the movies and a reason why Green Room has been intimidating for me to revisit since my initial viewing back in April. However, with time, it will serve as a happier memory; one where I can see (and enjoy) an artist in his element a la Paul Walker in the Fast and Furious movies or Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight.

2. Moonlight – I would like this movie if for no other reason than it’s an anthology. The fact that Moonlight is so moving, sympathetic and romantic is why it’s a movie that I now can’t live without. One of the ways I appreciate Moonlight is to stand back and admire what it is not. It’s not a message movie or maudlin or insistent that you recognize its greatness with verbose monologues. Instead, it’s quiet and slowly draws you in with each third of the movie, gaining momentum and paying off what has come before it. Writer-director Barry Jenkins has put together a movie that is technically dazzling but never showy and a character study as carefully observed as some of my favorite movies, such as Dogfight or Saturday Night Fever. In a different but similar way, all three films share a narrative thread – it’s about a man finding the emotional fortitude to be himself in an environment that stunts or prevents that. The performances are amazing to a person and the sequence in that Miami diner between Kevin (Andre Holland) and Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) is my favorite movie moment of the year; it’s so spot-on about how healing pain from our past is essential to allow us to grow. It’s a movie that tells us that even if we’re embarrassed or fearful, that phone call/that gesture/reaching out can make a world of difference. The messages in Moonlight are universal regardless of race or sexual orientation; it’s about why we need to just be decent people to each other and help out when you see someone in need of relief.

1. La La Land – Damien Chazelle directed my favorite movie of 2014 (Whiplash) and he’s now made my favorite movie not only of this year, but since 2012 (Silver Linings Playbook). I could talk about how technically amazing La La Land is or how catchy the songs and score are, but what makes the movie so special for me is its joy. It’s a movie that falls firmly in the camp that movie stars (Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, who are fucking sublime) being movie stars are better than any special effect and that there are few things more delightful than a musical that works. La La Land exemplifies a big reason I go to the movies which is to be transported and to see things completely unlike my own life. I share little identification with Gosling or Stone’s characters in the movie and I don’t find any type of deep catharsis from their journey’s, but that “it’s just like my life” necessity (that seems to be on the rise recently) is so insignificant to the quality of something like La La Land in my opinion. It’s like Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark or Pulp Fiction; it just sweeps you up for the ride and is a celebration of sheer movieness. In a year where I wanted to escape reality much of the time through the movies, La La Land is a gift.

My Favorite Movie Moments of 2016

by Patrick Bromley

One of my favorite lists to write every year!

There may not have been a lot of "great" movies this year, but there were still a lot of great moments to be found. Here are some of them.

• The bee scene, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
• Graham Skipper fails to save the day in The Devil's Dolls
• Black Phillip speaks, The Witch
• The opening credits of Deadpool
• Lauren Ashley Carter lets someone have it, The Mind's Eye
• "Nazi Punks Fuck Off," Green Room
• "Drive It Like You Stole It," Sing Street

• The girls come back for their candy, The Purge: Election Year
• "Sabotage," Star Trek Beyond
• The diner attack, SiREN
• Game night, 10 Cloverfield Lane
• Jackie and JFK dance, Jackie
• Amy Adams has a meeting at the opera house, Arrival
• Royalty Hightower dances on the bridge, The Fits
• Zack Efron realizes something is sexist, Neighbors 2
• "If you must blink, do it now!" in Kubo and the Two Strings
• "Queens/Brooklyn!" in Captain America: Civil War
• Really the whole airport fight in Captain America: Civil War

• Jane Levy empties the turkey baster, Don't Breathe
• The opening number of La La Land
• Darth Vader attacks, Rogue One
• Brahm's parents go for a swim, The Boy
• It's raining zombies, Train to Busan
• The first big shootout, The Magnificent Seven
• Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe toss a body over a fence, The Nice Guys
• "Father's Day," Holidays
• Anthony Weiner watching himself melt down on TV, Weiner
• Jena Malone gets some action, The Neon Demon
• The "No Dames" number in Hail, Caesar!
• Bells are ringing, The Handmaiden
• Gilbert Gottfried makes a surprise appearance, Life Animated
• The opening shot of Krisha

• The opening title of Trash Fire
• The last shot of The Invitation
• The last scene of The Lobster
• Gillian Jacobs' monologue at the end of Don't Think Twice
• Superman and Batman come face to face for the first time, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
• The shot of the firewood in The Witch
• The time loop in Doctor Strange
• Andre Holland prepares the chef's special, Moonlight
• Patrick Wilson sings, The Conjuring 2
• Meg Foster picks up a chainsaw, 31
• "Would that it were so simple," Hail, Caesar!
•  The bridge chase, Hardcore Henry

•  Kate McKinnon licks the gun, Ghostbusters
• The last hug, Beyond the Gates
• Sarah Bolger feeds the pet python, Emelie
• John Travolta gets caught in the middle, In a Valley of Violence
• Addison Timlin performs GWAR, Little Sister
• Rory Culkin delivers bad news to his brother, Weiner-Dog
• Hailee Steinfeld and her brother talk in the hallway at the end of The Edge of Seventeen

Riske Business: Great Performances of 2016

by Adam Riske

Happy Holidays!

This week Patrick and I discussed some of our favorite performances from the movies of 2016.

Adam: My first pick is Gillian Jacobs in Don't Think Twice. I saw this movie twice and while I appreciated the movie less, I fell even more in love with Jacobs. She's always been great, whether it be on Community or Love, but here she gives a different and very interesting performance as an improviser who is happy with her lot in life and isn't the competitor some of her improviser teammates are. She has a scene late in the movie where she's giving a performance with Keegan Michael Key that is sad and uplifting at the same time. She's a really good actress and this movie shows she's equally adept at portraying a rich character as she is at making an audience laugh (especially when she’s imitating Katherine Hepburn).

Patrick: Gillian Jacobs is always the best. She's one of those actors that can make something better just by showing up. I love her most when she's flawed but principled, and Don't Think Twice finds her right in that zone. I don't know if this was a conscious choice in the editing room or just how the actual scenes shook out, but she's also the only one who really gets laughs during the improv sequences, of which there are many. I don't mind that her character wants to stick with it because it seems like she's the best one.

For my first pick, I'll go with John Goodman in 10 Cloverfield Lane. It's unfortunate that most big awards shows don't ever recognize genre films -- with the obvious exception of Deadpool, one of the best Musicals or Comedies released in 2016. And how about that Ryan Reynolds? Seriously, HFPA, you may as well have nominated him for Van Wilder. He's no better or worse in either movie. But John Goodman is, like Gillian Jacobs, an actor who improves every project by presence alone, and his performance in 10 Cloverfield Lane is one of the very best I've ever seen him give. He's not just scary -- he's believable scary, and the scene (no spoilers) in which he appears "cleaned up" is one of the most chilling and disturbing moments in a movie that's full of them. All three actors are good; they have to be for the movie to be as good as it is. But I think John Goodman achieves greatness.

Adam: Goodman is.....good.....man....(I'm so sorry) in 10 Cloverfield Lane. It's nice to see him get a co-lead, which he only seems to get one out of every 10 movies he does. The thing I like about him is that all of his characters feel like they've had a life before we catch up with them. He always feels like he's for real and not performing.

My next pick stays on the girls tip (again I'm so sorry..I'm having trouble with transition phrases right now). It's Dylan Gelula in First Girl I Loved. You're probably all "Gehula in the Whata?" right now, so let me explain. This was a movie I saw on closing night of the Chicago Critics Film Festival this year (it's on Amazon Instant Video right now) and I was really blown away by her performance and the movie (more her performance...the movie is one of those "I'm blown away by this" and then you never think about it again type of movies). It's a love story about a high school girl (Gelula) who is in a love triangle with that Deadpool teenager superhero girl and some ponytail John Turturro looking kid. Complications ensue and Gelula's character goes on this sweet trajectory of trying to figure out if she's gay or just curious. The movie follows her lead and is pretty sensitive and also smart, depicting teenagers in a realistic way where they're thorny but still endearing, likable people (unlike that jerk face Halee Steinfeld in The Edge of Seventeen, who is the worst kind of person). You should see First Girl I Loved. Gelula's really good in it, though.

Patrick: I'm going to watch it right away! I love a good coming of age movie and I was sorry to have missed it at CCFF.

Speaking of good coming of age movies, I want to single out Hailee Steinfeld in The Edge of Seventeen, a movie I know underwhelmed you but which I thought was a really, really good character study of a teenage girl who felt real in every single way. There's no gimmick, no major crisis being faced, just a young woman who has a hard time seeing outside of herself and her own problems. I thought a whole lot about Juno during Edge of Seventeen, probably because both movies are about teenage girls who are a little too smart for the room and can't help but remind people of that. I thought Hailee Steinfeld was every bit as good as Ellen Page was in Juno, but both Page and that movie got nominated for Oscars and almost no one is talking about Steinfeld or Edge of Seventeen. That's a bummer. This is the best role and the best performance she's given since showing such promise in True Grit. She's so good that I can almost forgive that terrible song she has out right now. Almost.

Adam: Well I walked into that landmine, didn't I? I'll say this. She is very good at playing a disagreeable character. That song's not bad! I think I like that song (“Starving”) more than I like the movie actually.

Patrick: If you're serious about liking that song more than the movie, you, sir, are some kind of monster.

Adam: I do like the song more than the movie. Keep in mind, though, this is from a guy who is currently drinking Root Beer Schnapps straight from the bottle. My taste aren't very refined.

My next choice is a boy performance. It's Alden Ehrenreich in Hail, Caesar! I saw this actor for the first time in Tetro years back (he's really good in it) and then he kind of disappeared for a number of years popping up in a cameo in Somewhere and a supporting role in Stoker, but Hail, Ceasar! was cool to see because he delivers on the promise of that earlier performance. It's the type of role/performance that makes you really understand a different side of an actor (because he's so funny and likable as opposed to the usual 20-something brooding) and makes you excited to see him in future roles. I also liked him in Rules Don't Apply (shout out to Lily Collins, too, who is really good in the movie as well, better than she's ever been in anything else). Too bad in that movie the director steps in mid-way through and decides we need him more than anything and jettisons everything that was previously working about his film.

Patrick: Loved Alden Ehrenreich in that movie! Don't love typing his name. But he achieved the very difficult task in that movie of a) standing out most among one of the best ensemble casts of the year and b) making a very "simple" character sweet and three dimensional and gave him agency without ever condescending to the role. I can't wait for that movie to be reassessed and appreciated in about five years.

I'll once again piggyback off your choice and name Chase Williamson in Beyond the Gates as one of my favorite performances of the year. I've gone on and on about the movie since seeing it over the summer and I know it's not everyone's bag, but Chase Williamson is so good at finding a new way to play the fuckup brother. I rewatched the movie recently and was so taken with his ever delivery and reaction -- he's sweet and big-hearted when another actor would have played him as self-conscious and resentful. He has a goofy optimism that's super rare in horror movies.

Adam: I so want to like Beyond the Gates as much as you do. I'll give it another shot. I have watched the commercial Jackson Stewart shot for the board game about five times and love that. I may have just been in a mood that day. Or I'm a monster. We'll only know for sure from a blood test.

My next pick is twofer - Trevante Rhodes and Andre Holland from the last third of Moonlight. This is a movie with great performances across the board, but I'm sort of surprised that the largest share of praise is going to Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali. Though both of those actors are very good in the movie, it's Rhodes and Holland who are the most enduring memories I have from it. Their interplay is so reserved and emotional on a subtextual level that it maybe is easier to overlook. I love how romantic Holland plays that scene in the diner. It's the most romantic depiction I've ever seen on film of a relationship between two men and Rhodes is just out of this world as the adult Chiron. He's built like a brick wall but you can tell by his body language that he'll shatter from just the slightest gesture.

Patrick: I was so distracted by how much Trevante Rhodes looks like 50 Cent. Like, Andre Holland is hard at work making the Chef's Special and Trevante Rhodes is just thinking about taking him to the Candy Shop, where I assume he'll let him lick his lollipop.

Also, I am not trivializing their love. I'm just quoting 50 Cent lyrics because if I don't we are doomed to repeat history.

Adam: I take it Moonlight didn't do much for you, then? At least you've upgraded to 50 Cent blowjob jokes. They're 10 times better than your Nickelback blowjob material.

Patrick: I like Moonlight a lot! It's really good. Never let a stupid blowjob joke be the barometer of my feelings about anything.

Adam: That should be a Hallmark card.

Patrick: My next pick is Susan Sarandon in The Meddler, a movie I don't think a lot of people saw and even fewer people remember. I get it. The movie feels slight and Susan Sarandon has been doing good work for so many years that it's easy to overlook her when she's good in yet another thing. But she's seriously SO GOOD in The Meddler, a movie that's insanely sweet and touching and warm and funny. She takes a character who could have so easily been played as a sitcom nag and makes her into someone real and human. Plus, she loves going to see action movies so she might as well just let me marry her and now it's your turn.

Adam: I haven't seen The Meddler because there are too many movies. Also, I have a weird thing with that movie now because a couple (in their 50s maybe) told me that I might not like it because it's meant for "older people." So I'm going to wait for my hospice marathon to watch it.

My next pick is Sofia Boutella in Star Trek Beyond. The character and her performance add a great amount of humor and energy to the middle of the movie and I think starting with her appearance the film itself goes from "this is fun" to "wow, this is kinda special." "I like the loud beats and shouting" will always be funny.

Patrick: Love Sofia Boutella in STB. She's so fun and creates a character whose arc kind of becomes the centerpiece of the film. I really hope that, based on where it's left with her, she's back in a Starfleet uniform for the next installment (assuming there is a next installment). She kicks ass in that movie.

My next pick is probably a no-brainer, but I don't know if anyone had a better year than Ryan Gosling. I know he's always good in everything, but he's usually an actor I can appreciate or admire (though not as much as my wife) but never really love (never as much as my wife). Between his work in The Nice Guys and La La Land, Baby Goose is the king of 2016. He sings, he dances, he has expert comic timing. Maybe more directors will see how light and funny and charming he is when he's allowed to be light and funny and charming and not always rely on him to be dark and brooding and intense.

Adam: I'm glad you picked Ryan Gosling, because he was on my list as well for The Nice Guys. His performance in The Nice Guys is amazing in two ways to me: 1) He perfectly captures "my ass may be dumb, but I ain't no dumbass" and 2) He reaches a level (probably right around "No kid, we don’t want to see your dick.") where everything he does is funny...his mannerisms, his dialogue, his cadences, everything. I just saw La La Land this week and agree with everything you said there as well.

My next pick is Ethan Hawke in Born to Be Blue. It's a very good movie, but sort of the usual biopic; however, Ethan Hawke is more into the character than he usually is. I love this guy's work, but my last sentence means that he feels like Chet Baker in Born to Be Blue, whereas when I enjoy his work in other movies it's because I like Ethan Hawke as a movie star persona. He and Carmen Ejogo (who I thought would have been bigger after Metro) have really good chemistry together and he really is able to get across how this addict (in Baker) was so appealing to his peers. He's a decent guy but just one with a lot of problems.

Patrick: I haven't seen Born to Be Blue because I assumed it was the next Smurfs movie. I know you're a fan, though, so I will definitely check it out. Maybe during my 24 Hours of Jazz musician biopic marathon.

I'm picking an actor from a movie I don't think you've seen yet, but not just to get even for that whole Born to Be Blue thing. We're past that. I'm going with Samantha Robinson in The Love Witch. She's not an actor who was on my radar prior to this, but she's so, so good giving a very specifically pitched performance that's reminiscent of an early '70s exploitation or Hammer movie but at the same time being completely sincere. I don't want to say that the movie lives or dies based on her performance because it has a lot of other things going for it, but I think that if Robinson wasn't as good as she is the movie wouldn't work nearly as well as it does. What she does is really, really hard.

Adam: I'm really looking forward to The Love Witch. I wish it was available where I could watch it this month but I'm going to have to wait until its home release next year. I love the trailer. Whatever Robinson is doing, it works for me.

My next pick is kind of a lifetime achievement award/time served acknowledgment and that's for Kristin Stewart in Café Society. Her performance in the movie doesn't transcend other KStew performances, but her work in Café Society singlehandedly saves that movie because she has a certain heft to her that I think her co-creators are lacking. I really admire her because she takes interesting roles and is, more often than not, the best thing in the movies she's in. I also want to call it time served, because she is like the Jesse Eisenberg whisperer. He raises his game in movies she's in with him and case in point is Café Society. He's doing his Woody Allen schtick for the first 20 or 30 minutes and its insufferable and then Stewart walks in as if to say "cut that shit out and just play the scene" and it gets better. She did this in American Ultra, too.

Patrick: It bums me out when I see K-Stew be really good in something (like Adventureland or The Runaways) and then see her shit the bed in some high profile movie or seem miserable in an interview and get the reputation for being dead inside and talentless. She is not.

My next pick is a performance in a movie that no one saw and even I wasn't that crazy about: Mark Proksch in Another Evil. It's a microbudget/mumblecore horror comedy in which he plays an exorcist hired to get rid of the ghost living in Steve Zissis' house. The movie is never scary and only rarely funny, but Proksch gives one of those performances that is so original, so unlike the countless other versions we've seen of this same character (a variation on Chip in The Cable Guy -- the sad-sack loser who clings too tightly to a new friend), that I strongly recommend seeing Another Evil just to enjoy the work he does. Anything about the movie that works only works because of him.

Adam: Glad to hear your recommendation of Another Evil. I've had a couple of opportunities to see it but I've talked myself out of it thus far because people were saying I wasn't missing anything. Unlike Captain Fantastic, I'll give it a shot one of these days.

My last pick is one I just saw this week and I'm on cloud nine about it. It's Emma Stone in La La Land. Stone is always an actress I've enjoyed watching in movies. She's funny, likable, pretty, etc., but in La La Land it was seeing an actress kill it in a role that's perfectly suited for her. I made a comment on Twitter that one of the best things about La La Land is that it is a movie that lets us enjoy movie stars being movie stars. One thing that annoys me about movies today is that many of them are concept driven and not star driven. When you look back on decades past and see the caliber of movie star it puts the modern era (ERA!) to shame. And I think Emma Stone is La La Land takes a little bit of that back.

Patrick: Emma Stone is good in everything, but it's nice to see all of her talent truly put to use in La La Land. Her performance of "Audition" is really the emotional centerpiece of the whole movie and she kills it. Isn't that the same thing the Academy gave Anne Hathaway an Oscar for a few years ago? I don't imagine they'll be doing the same for E-Stone.

Adam: That would be a shame. We should give Emma Stone an Oscar just to say thank you for being Emma Stone.

Patrick: For me, Rebecca Hall gave the performance of the year in Christine, but I'm trying to highlight performances that probably won't get real awards consideration and I have to believe she will. So my last pick will be Lauren Ashley Carter in Darling. I understand why some people don't dig the movie because it is so much like Polanski's Repulsion, but I still really like it and Carter's performance is a big part of it. It's one of these movies that really hangs on the star's work, and her enormous eyes and increasingly undone state paint a picture of a girl who's already broken but waiting to shatter. Darling shows her shatter. This is the best performance I've seen LAC give yet, which is no small feat because I'm pretty sure she's in about half of the indie horror movies that come out.

Adam: I’m intimidated of Christine based on its subject matter. Glad to hear Rebecca Hall is good in it though. She’s a very good actress. Pretty underrated, too.

Some other performances I enjoyed a lot in 2016: Sam Neill in Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Shia LeBeouf in American Honey, Michael Shannon in Nocturnal Animals, Dan Fogler in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, John Travolta (and Jumpy the Dog) in In a Valley of Violence, Natalie Portman in Jackie, Emilia Clarke in Me Before You, AnnaLynne McCord in Trash Fire and Kathryn Hahn in Bad Moms.

Patrick: I second a number of your "other" picks, and I'll add Abigail Hardingham in Nina Forever, Ralph Ineson in The Witch, Lauren Cohan in The Boy, Jeff Bridges in Hell or High Water, Devin Kelley in Swept Under, Isabelle Huppert in Elle, Do Won Kwak in The Wailing, Jenny Slate in My Blind Brother and Joshy, Sally Field in Hello My Name is Doris...I'm sure there are way more but I can't think of them.

Is there a performance we missed that you want to get some attention? Let us know in the comments.

Review: La La Land

by Patrick Bromley

Magic.

I have written at some length before about a type of film I have dubbed the "exploding heart movie," which is a movie that speaks directly to us in such a way so as to cause a kind of emotional overload, filling us with so much love and joy that it feels like we're going to burst. Everyone had different exploding heart movies, and everyone's exploding heart moments in their exploding heart movies are different. This, of course, is because we are all unique and beautiful snowflakes.

La La Land is writer/director Damien Chazelle's exploding heart movie, designed not just to speak to the emotions of the audience -- and boy, does it ever -- but to lay bare all of the joy and passion the filmmaker feels about making movies. The film has been described as a love letter to Los Angeles or to classic Hollywood musicals. I guess it's those things. To me, La La Land is a love letter to anyone who loves movies. It's Chazelle saying "I am lucky to make movies. I love movies. You, the audience, loves movies. Let's fucking love this movie together." It works. I fucking love this movie.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone star in this Gangster Squad reunion as Sebastian and Mia, two budding artists trying to make it in Los Angeles. He's a piano player who dreams of opening his own old-school jazz club, in the meantime trying to get by playing Christmas carols in restaurants and filling in on keyboards for bad '80s cover bands. She dreams of being an actress, but like all would-be actresses is working as a barista in a coffee shop on the Warner Bros. lot. They meet, then meet again. After meeting a few times, they realize they like one another -- and, better yet, inspire one another to be better and reach further than either is doing on their own. Before you can say "they probably fall in love and sing and dance," they fall in love and sing and dance.

Yes, La La Land is a musical -- a sprawling, wildly ambitious, gorgeously photographed and perfectly choreographed musical. From the opening number, an astonishing single-take number in stuck traffic on the L.A. freeway, to "A Lovely Night," one of the most charming first dates in memory, to the breathtaking and gravity-defying "Planetarium" to the show-stopping "Audition" (the number that is likely to singlehandedly score Emma Stone a Best Actress nomination), nearly all of the musical sequences achieve one kind of transcendence or another. I won't argue that all of the songs themselves are great; there are standouts like "City of Stars," but others that faded from memory moments after they had finished. What does not fade is the exuberant energy with which Chazelle (and choreographer Mandy Moore [not that Mandy Moore]) stage the numbers, using them sometimes to advance the story but mostly to express emotions being felt by the characters that are too big to be expressed in words. This is the beauty of musicals, and what separates them from more "realistic" stories.

"But what if I don't like musicals?" you ask. That is your right. You are a snowflake. While I cannot predict what you, reader, will or will not enjoy (nor would I want to), I can say that I'm not 100% sure I love musicals either. But I do respond to both the emotion and the technical execution of every number in La La Land, nearly all of which made my heart explode more than anything else this year. Sometimes I was swept up in the beauty of the photography by Linus Sandgren, who shoots Los Angeles in a way that is painterly and romanticized while still capturing a realism and familiarity that other movies fail to achieve. Often I was moved by Chazelle's simultaneous expression of control and bravado -- he's made a movie bursting with big feelings that radiate off the screen but has done so in a way that is expertly staged and timed and edited. I've always liked movies that take big swings, and La La Land is nothing but big swings. Like Paul Thomas Anderson graduating from Hard Eight to Boogie Nights, Damien Chazelle has cashed in all the goodwill earned by his Oscar-nominated debut Whiplash to make a movie that is bigger and riskier but which once again concerns itself first and foremost with expressing an emotional state through form.

I know that La La Land isn't going to have the same effect on everyone. That's true of any movie, but especially true of exploding heart movies. For some, the story may seem too slight and the emotional beats too familiar. Maybe these things are true. Beyond the romance at the center, the film has a lot to say about the need to create, about the lasting impact of art, about the ways we can draw strength from those around us to do the things we maybe couldn't do without making these emotional connections. Besides, I have a hard time accepting the idea that human happiness is "slight," and while we may recognize the emotions being expressed on screen, I'm not sure I've seen them expressed in quite this way. Chazelle cuts right to the core of one our most basic emotions but then dresses it up in some of the most exciting, buoyant filmmaking I've seen all year. La La Land floats for two hours and refuses to come down even after the credits have rolled. This is classic movie magic.