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.

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.

Rob's Most Anticipated Movies of 2017

by Rob DiCristino

Let's look forward, shall we?

What a year! Many films were released! A good deal of them were successful, while others were not so successful! The one with that guy was good, but I really liked the one with that girl (because I’m woke as fuck). If it sounds like I’m deflecting, I am! That’s because I can almost guarantee that you saw more movies in 2016 than I did. I missed Blair Witch. I’m still working up the nerve to rent Nine Lives. And yet, despite my massive ineptitude, our best-of lists probably match up pretty well: I loved The Witch and The Nice Guys. 10 Cloverfield Lane and Green Room rocked my socks. The Neon Demon made me tingle in ways I’m not yet ready to talk about. So far, so familiar. Since I’m clearly not enough of an authority on 2016 to recommend any hidden gems or make any Oscar picks, let’s talk about next year. In no particular order, these are the films I'm most looking forward to seeing in 2017:

Blade Runner 2049 (October 6th)

I know Blade Runner. I own Blade Runner. Blade Runner is a friend of mine. But honestly, I’ve never really absorbed Blade Runner. It’s beautiful and influential and Jan B. loves the hell out of it (so it must be great), but I’ve never found my road into the film the way a lot of people have. I’ve studied it academically without getting attached, which means I’m far enough removed from the fandom that the very existence of Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming sequel doesn’t infuriate me. It’s an opportunity to immerse myself in the universe in a way that I’ve never had the incentive to before. I’m looking forward to prepping with at least two of the twelve cuts of the original film, spending the seven hours after that on its TV Tropes page, watching some of the crazy-ass conspiracy videos that I’m positive are clogging up YouTube, and walking into 2049 with a totally open mind. I’m excited to join a new fandom. Plus, Villeneuve rules and I’m hoping Harrison Ford will go 2-for-3 on his “I’m Still That Guy You Remember Me Being” retirement tour.

Baby Driver (August 11th)

Edgar Wright is my favorite director not named Scorsese. Everything he makes is so full of energy and wit and love and…well, he’s a lot like Scorsese, I guess. Anyway, I have no idea what Baby Driver is about, but it absolutely could not matter less. I know there’s a guy named Baby who drives a car (or several cars?). I know it’s going to be funny and smart. I know it’s going to have great music and ballsy action. I know the Blu-ray will sport a commentary track in which Wright talks about thirty films I’ve never heard of, and that I’ll immediately look up every one of them when it’s over. Most importantly, I know it’s going to feel like a warm blanket and yet still somehow push my expectations of what a movie can be. It’s hard to tell right now how bruised Wright was by his experience with Ant-Man, but I’ve seen Marvel Studios grind up enough good directors to be happy that one of my favorites went for a passion project instead. I hope 2017 gives him a massive hit film and a return to the loving arms of My Girlfriend Anna Kendrick.

T2 Trainspotting (February 10th)

Here’s the thing: I really like Clerks 2. Aside from all that donkey show nonsense, I think it has a lot of really interesting things to say about turning 30 and still not really having your shit figured out. I think it’s Kevin Smith firing on all cylinders in a way he rarely does (I say that as a Kevin Smith fan), and I think it’s both a great companion piece to the original Clerks and a significant statement about the autobiographical nature of filmmaking in general. The trailer for Danny Boyle’s sequel to his seminal comedy Trainspotting gave me the same vibe: it feels like a sincere way to explore the original film’s themes after twenty years of experience and growth (or possibly depression and self-destruction) and find out if all that sneering defiance from our youth holds up to the scrutiny of adulthood. What does it actually mean to Choose Life, and what did our boys make of it? This one is super high-risk for “soulless sequel produced for nostalgia’s sake,” but Trainspotting isn’t exactly the Ninja Turtles, so I don’t seeing it being a desperate cash-grab.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (July 21st)

Because why the hell not? If Luc Besson is making a movie, it’s your duty to watch it. Just look at that title! It makes absolutely no sense, but it still sounds amazing! I mean, I’ve never read the comic it’s based on — and I have only a passing understanding of who Cara Delevingne is — but what do I really have to lose? The guy’s written, produced, and/or directed some legitimate classics, and even his bad films tend to be ambitious and trashy. Like Wright, he makes movies from his gut; he embraces genre and tradition while still speaking his own language (admittedly, he speaks a lot of gibberish, but who doesn’t?). This one is set in a 28th century in which The Matrix happened in real life but seems to have worked out way better for everyone. There’s apparently also time travel, hyperspace, paradoxes, and a ton of crazy French weirdness. It looks like it has a chance to be one of those wacky Fifth Element deals with a really fun tone and energy. It could also end up being an incoherent CGI shit-fest that I forget ten minutes after it’s over. Might as well roll the dice. I’m not doing anything else.

The Fate of the Furious (April 14th)

My love for the Fast and Furious series is a lot like my love for ‘80s power ballads: at first, it was ironic. I respected how willing it was to be violent, melodramatic nonsense, but I wasn’t ever willing to call it art. The more I lived with it, however, the more I realized that it was doing something much more interesting and important than I was giving it credit for. I was the problem, not Fast and Furious (and certainly not ‘80s power ballads). Now, not only does the trailer for F8 ramp up the insanity with tanks and explosions and Kurt Russell and all that, but it introduces the first legitimate internal Family conflict since…ever? It’s time, I think. Brian and Mia are gone. Han and Gisele are dead. It only makes sense that the Family would be in crisis. I respect the way this franchise never rests on its laurels. It keeps pushing itself; it keeps trying. Seriously, though: what’s going on with Dom? And is Shaw really in the Family? How can they let that happen? See what I’m saying? My investment in this stuff really snuck up on me.

Yeah, yeah, I know. No John Wick. No Alien. No Episode VIII. I leave all that to you, F-Heads. What are you looking forward to this year?

Cinema Bestius: Blade Runner

This movie has burned so very, very brightly.

#12 – Blade Runner

(Note from your Pope: Here in the ecclesiastic city-state that is my suburban home, my movie infallibility is rarely questioned – except in the case of this week’s film. I’m going to wolf down a “Pope-sized” buttered popcorn while Jan, who is currently writing a BOOK on this movie [It’s only a book of poems, but she claims “it still counts.”] pens this week’s Bestius. I weighed in on Blade Runner about five years ago. You can find that column here.

“What’s your favorite movie?” is a dumb question. It’s an impossible oversimplification… “favorite” in what way? Do you mean the movie I’ll drop anything to watch when it pops up on cable, or the one that meant the most to me growing up, or the one I turn to when life is crushing me, or the movie that made me love movies? Is it Scary Movie Month? My answer might totally change during SMM. Also, could you ask me again tomorrow? Because I’m going to the movies tonight, and I’ve heard this one is AMAZING. Look—there are so many terrific movies out there that you can’t expect a person to choose just one. That’s ridiculous and reductive and kind of an insult to movies and the moviemakers who make them and the movie lovers who love them.

My favorite movie is Blade Runner.

The Plot In Brief: Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is an ex-cop pulled back onto the force for a special assignment: track and kill a gang of rogue “replicants” (human-like androids used off-world as slave labor) who have returned to Earth for unknown reasons. Along the way he meets Rachael (Sean Young), who works for the Tyrell Corporation, the company that manufacturers the replicants. As Deckard is drawn deeper into the case—and toward Rachael—he must confront the true meaning of Tyrell’s corporate motto, “more human than human.”

Roger Ebert famously wrote “it's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.” Few movies manage to illustrate this as well as Blade Runner. Its action is fairly simple; yet in every aspect (genre, theme, characterization, design) its execution is astoundingly complex. Exploring Blade Runner is like exploring an archeological dig; layer after layer calls back to previous discoveries, unearths new artifacts, and sparks new questions.

We’ve all experienced movies that have “no ‘there’ there”—the movie that’s enjoyable while we’re watching it, but dissolves into nothing in our minds during the car ride home from the multiplex. Blade Runner doesn’t dissolve, it expands. That expansiveness is the key to its place as one of the genre’s most influential films—in spite its lackluster reception on initial release. Blade Runner was one of the first films to take advantage of the new distribution opportunities offered by cable and home video; though it only made back about half of its $28 million budget at the box office, it was quite successful as a rental, and for many years was the Criterion Collection’s top-selling laser disc. It’s a movie that endlessly rewards repeat viewings, released when that was finally becoming possible.

That expansiveness is a big reason for my affection for this movie. I’ve talked about my Blade Runner love on this site here and here; I’ve also talked about my Blade Runner love at parties, school, the grocery store, poetry readings, and the doctor’s office because seriously, have you SEEN Blade Runner? (If the answer is “no,” see Blade Runner.) There’s just SO MUCH “there” there.

You want to talk subtext? Let’s spend the next 10,000 words discussing what Blade Runner has to say about what it means to be human. Or we could break that into sub-subtext: what it means to be human in an environment that commoditizes us, or what it means to be an organic being in a non-organic landscape, or what it means to be an outcast from a society that has labeled us as “other,” or how we make (or whether we can make) moral choices, or the ways in which memory defines us. Blade Runner speaks to all of these and more.

What about genre—shall we explore Blade Runner as sci-fi, or as film noir, or as neo-noir, or as a love story? Or instead, let’s concentrate on a few recurring motifs: the eye, vision, and seeing; the fallen angel, the prodigal son, the femme fatale; photographs, both as talisman and avatar; smoke, steam, and veils of all kinds; the triad of creator-creation-creative urge; artificial animals, the color red, pyramids. All of these motifs deserve attention when unpacking what Blade Runner “means.”

As a work of visual art, Blade Runner may be one of the most significant, influential, and boldly realized films ever produced. Syd Mead (as Blade Runner’s “visual futurist”), with production designer Lawrence G. Paull and art director David Snyer, virtually created the neo-noir, cyberpunk aesthetic. The interior spaces, the street scenes, and the sweeping skyscapes create a future that looks real and arrived at, not set-design-y.

Another 10,000 words could be devoted to the movie’s other standout features: the haunting, evocative score by Vangelis; Ridley Scott’s obsessively precise direction, which guides the viewer’s attention through frames packed with significant images; a terrific script (honed through countless revisions) based on a novel by seminal sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick; and the inspired casting and terrific performances (Ford is never better, in my opinion; and Rutger Hauer is amazing in a role that requires him to be part genius cyborg, part murderous warrior, and part frightened, abandoned toddler.)

Yet what I love most about Blade Runner is that, in spite of its incredible richness, it leaves so much unanswered and unexplained. In the end, that may be the key to its lived-in quality, the secret to its satisfying unpackability: it resists the urge to pick a single “truth” to tell. That’s how it chooses to be “about” what it’s about: by making its questions more about the asking than the answers.

A NOTE ON VERSIONS: We don’t have space here to discuss the seven “official” versions of Blade Runner (Wikipedia does that) or the numerous “fan cuts” (Google “Blade Runner white dragon” if you want to fall down that rabbit hole.) I fell in love with the original theatrical release; my favorite version is the 2007 Final Cut. Director Ridley Scott says that’s his favorite version too, which should be reason enough to love it; it also has what I believe is the far superior ending. (I don’t consider the Final Cut ending bleak; it’s certainly much more nuanced, and leaves some important questions importantly unanswered, which adds resonance to the rest of the movie’s themes and subtexts.) On Blu-ray, the Final Cut is stunning.

Look—I get that not everyone digs Blade Runner. It can seem slow for viewers who prefer straight-up action. This is a movie that takes its time and wants you to see and hear and feel every bit of kipple in the corner, every keening cry of the score. Yet for those who have seen it once and it didn’t “take,” I have a suggestion: if your previous viewing was not the Final Cut, check out the Final Cut. If you still don’t like it, I release you. There will always be a gulf between our hearts, but we can still be friends.

A NOTE ON THE SEQUEL: YES, I am excited to see a neo-noir sci-fi movie starring my boyfriend Harrison Ford and his sidekick Ryan Gosling, directed by the guy (Denis Villeneuve) who just did Arrival. NO, I am not excited that they made a sequel to Blade Runner. I wish it did not exist. My strategy is to just box off the original in my mind, and pretend the new movie is really about a future cop named Rint Dellers, a retired Blame Rugger who used to hunt duplidroids in Space City. Maybe it will be good.

Blade Runner’s Three Miracles: Art direction/production design that creates a future so layered, so boldly realized, and so authentically inhabited that it has influenced science fiction movies since its release; performances (or is this direction?) that demonstrate astounding depth of character through every glance and gesture; and a collection of themes and subtexts that inform each other and challenge the viewer in new ways with each screening.

In nomine Scott, et Philip K. Dick, y spiritu Deckard, Amen.

F This Movie! 367 - Our Favorite Movies of 2016

Join Patrick, Doug and JB for their annual countdown of the movies they loved most this year.



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