In 2016:
The United Kingdom voted in a nationwide referendum to leave the European Union;
The Olympics were held in Rio de Janeiro;
Donald Trump was elected President of the United States of America;
Peyton Manning retired from professional football;
The Cleveland Cavaliers overcame a three games to one deficit to defeat the Golden State Warriors and capture their first NBA Championship;
The Chicago Cubs battled back from a three games to one deficit to defeat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series, ending a 108 year drought;
Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature;
Hamilton won the Tony Award for Best Musical;
Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison for paying “hush” money to victims he had sexually abused;
Ringling Bros, and Barnum and Bailey Circus ceased featuring elephants during their live shows;
David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Glenn Frey, Antonin Scalia, Boutrous Boutros-Ghali, Umberto Eco, Harper Lee, George Kennedy, Nancy Reagan, George Martin, Larry Drake, Keith Emerson, Garry Shandling, Patty Duke, Merle Haggard, Doris Roberts, Chyna, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Kimbo Slice, Peter Schaffer, Gordie Howe, Anton Yelchin, Pat Summitt, Michael Cimino, Elie Wiesel, Abbas Kiarostami, Hector Babenco, Garry Marshall, Marni Nixon, Tim LaHaye, David Huddleston, Kenny Baker, Fyvush Finkel, Arthur Hiller, Mr. Fuji, Gene Wilder, Jon Polito, Phyllis Schlafly, Edward Albee, Curtis Hanson, Arnold Palmer, Shimon Peres, Andrzej Wajda, Dario Fo, Leonard Cohen, Janet Reno, Robert Vaughn, Florence Henderson, Fidel Castro, Ron Glass, John Glenn, Alan Thicke, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Richard Adams, Carrie Fisher, and Debbie Reynolds died.
The following is a list of my top ten films released in 2016:
10) Deadpool
On the surface this is a typical comic book movie, an origin story detailing how Wade Wilson became Deadpool, the “Merc with the Mouth.” However, it also functions as an elaborate metacommentary, frequently breaking the fourth wall to poke fun at the conventions of the genre and audience expectations, exploring the large dichotomy between the sanitized world of comic book violence and the actual, messy violence such actions would cause in the real world.
A passion project for star Ryan Reynolds, this film redeems his less than stellar work as Hal Jordan and will likely be a career defining role. He may well become a spokesman for the hardcore nerd film fan.
He understands the character, treats it with respect, and does not underestimate the audience. Unlike a lot of tent pole super hero movies, micro managed into something completely different by corporate suits, this film is pure, exhilarating nerd joy; it’s every teenage boy’s dream of what a comic book movie should be.
Jack Russell Terrier Max (voiced by Louis C.K.) is distraught when his owner, Katie, brings home a new dog, Duke (voiced by Eric Stonestreet), but when Duke goes missing, Max bands with several of his friends to track him down.
The plot is thin, and, as many critics have pointed out, feels like a Toy Story ripoff, but the movie’s impressive voice cast shines. Kevin Hart is hilarious as Snowball, a rabbit abandoned by his magician owner who leads a group cast-off animals: The Flushed Pets.
Illumination Entertainment is a relative newcomer in the animation genre. Their films, simple stories about family and friendship, seem more interested in zaniness than their competitors: Disney and Pixar. Pixar’s films are increasingly serious in nature, focusing on more sophisticated humor and richer characterizations. Illumination is more akin to the Warner Brothers shorts of the 50s, full of as many gags as possible. The laugh is what’s important, and the story often takes a back seat to the giggles.
I liked this film more than most critics did, primarily because of the impeccable cast.
8) Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill
In this filmed version of her Broadway winning role, Audra McDonald channels a performance by Billie Holiday. In between fantastic, soulful musical numbers, Holliday relates anecdotes about her unique life, turning many of them into origin stories of her songs, demonstrating how her personal and artistic life had merged.
There are a few places where McDonald’s mannered performance seems unnatural, but this film stands as a powerful testament to Holliday’s legacy and career. She’s funny, defiant, brassy, poignant, vulnerable, at times bitter, but mostly painfully, brutally honest.
7) Arrival
When aliens arrive on earth, linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is tasked to decipher their language. As she interacts with two of the hetapods (nicknamed Abbott and Costello), she discovers their language allows users to experience time differently, no longer limited to a linear progression.
Transformed by her discovery, Banks shepherds a spirit of cooperation between the hetapods and earthlings. However, this unlocked ability also brings a paradox: armed with knowledge about future tragedies in your life, would you avoid them, foregoing the pleasurable elements they bring with them?
Adams is excellent as usual. Forest Whitaker is fine in a small role as a grizzled military officer, but functions more as a plot device than a character. Sadly, Jeremy Renner is non-descript as Adam’s partner in determining the hetapod language / potential love interest.
Denis Villeneuve is a very talented director. Polytechnique, Incendies, and Prisoners are wonderful films and this is another fine entry in his filmography. I’m excited for his upcoming work in the Blade Runner universe.
This film is thematically similar to Interstellar, using science fiction structure to explore the importance of human interaction and relationships. I prefer Interstellar because it had a firmer grasp on what it wanted to say, but this is a good film.
Juvenile delinquent Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) is taken in by Bella and her husband Hec (Sam Neill). After kind-hearted Bella dies, Baker runs away to avoid child protection services. Illiterate Hec tracks him down, but the two inadvertently become the subject of a nationwide manhunt. During their ordeal, Baker teaches Hec to be vulnerable, while Hec teaches Baker how to be a man.
Director Taika Waititi’s has an uncanny ability to make mundane, ordinary things funny. Waititi is close friends and frequently collaborates with fellow New Zealander Jemaine Clement; this film shares many comedic elements with Clement’s Flight of the Conchords. Based on this limited exposure, it seems New Zealand humor is Bob Newhart’s deadpan on steroids, with a bit of Don Rickles insult comedy for spice.
If you liked Waititi’s previous film, What We Do in the Shadows, you’ll love this. Neill is phenomenal, Conchord alum and fan favorite Rhys Darby has a fun cameo, but fourteen year old Dennison steals the movie and I look forward to his future work. His delivery and timing remind me of Rebel Wilson.
Waititi’s next film is the sure to be successful 3rd film in the Thor franchise. If it possesses half the wit and genius of this one, we’ll be very fortunate.
5) La La Land
Struggling actress Mia (Emma Stone) and struggling jazz pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) find comfort and solace in supporting each other’s passions, but the demands of pursuing their dreams and building a life doom their potential romantic relationship.
When there haven’t been successful films in a particular genre for a while, critics are quick to write an obituary. “The musical is dead!” they proclaim from their haughty, knowledgable perch. I prefer to think of these genres as dormant, waiting for a new vision and passion to reinterpret them for another audience and time.
Damien Chazelle has done just that, and his love letter to classic Hollywood musicals is fantastic. Some have expressed dissatisfaction with the ending, but I thought it was lovely. Who hasn’t ruefully asked themselves what could have been? Many of us reflect on important life moments and ponder if things might have been better if we took the other fork in the road. But while we’re free to dream and perform our thought experiments, we must go on; decisions made once are decisions made.
Stone is wonderful. It’s impossible to imagine another actress in the part. Her audition scene is vulnerable and beautiful and probably sealed her Oscar victory. Gosling is serviceable, but his role could have been played by any number of actors and his natural stand offish quality hinders the film just a little.
I’m enamored with Chazelle’s work and beyond excited to think he has many more films in front of him. I imagine it’s what films fans of the 1970s felt about Spielberg following Jaws, or Scorsese after Taxi Driver.
4) Rogue One
With the outcome established, prequels often lose dramatic urgency. There are, however, exceptions to every rule, and this is one of them, providing a blueprint for how other prequels could work within larger cinematic universes.
It takes what has been one of the biggest question marks of the original Star Wars film, “why was the Death Star built with such a fatal design flaw?” and turns it into a strength. Engineer Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), coerced into creating the Empire’s ultimate weapon, resists by intentionally, surreptitiously incorporating a secret way to destroy the weapon into the design.
As the weapon nears completion, Galen’s daughter Jyn (Felicity Jones) leads a group of rag-tag fighters on a likely suicide mission to retrieve the plans Princess Leia was smuggling at the beginning of the original Star Wars film.
The diverse cast is an assemblage of remarkable talent. Alan Tudyk (long a fanboy favorite for his work as Hoban Wash) shines as the voice of sarcastic droid K-2SO. Between this and his impressive work in the HBO miniseries, The Night Of, Riz Ahmed has launched into stardom. Ben Mendelsohn is finally getting the moment in the sun he deserves. And Forest Whitaker is excellent as battle hardened Saw Gerrera, a character originating in the television program Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
It’s nice to see Jimmy Smits reprise his role as Bail Organa and the CGI work which brought back Peter Cushing as Gran Moff Tarkin and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia is much more natural than I expected. Carrie’s death a few days after the film’s premiere added an emotional depth to her brief appearance here.
This good film about the sacrifices of war launches into the stratosphere in the final ten minutes when Darth Vader reappears. Missing from the prequels, this, determined, focused, murdering machine is the Vader children of the 80s remember and have longed to see on onscreen for thirty years. His reappearance, combined with the pulsing urgency of the delivery of the uploaded plans reinterprets the iconic beginning of Star Wars, casting its forty-year old opening sequence in a new light.
3) Gleason
During Steve Gleason’s brief NFL career he memorably blocked a punt for the Saints against the Falcons in their first game at the Superdome following Hurricane Katrina, but a 2011 ALS diagnosis ended his athletic pursuits.
This film chronicles his life from the time of his diagnosis through the discovery his wife was pregnant and onward to his current role as an advocate for the disabled who works to make assistive communicative technology more readily available.
Gleason and his family should be commended for their willingness to show the ugly and uncomfortable truths about their life: his feelings of inadequacy, and her frustration with the way her life is subsumed in the effort to keep his going.
There are times Steve openly wonders if his life is worth fighting for, debating the merits of medical procedures to prolong his life.
The scenes with his father are heartbreaking. Early in the diagnosis, Steve’s dad coerces him to attend a prayer service and ask for healing. When Steve tries to run at the service to demonstrate his faith, it’s a painful epiphany for all of them.
Ultimately, this is an affirmation of the preciousness of every life, a beautiful and moving film about imperfect people in a difficult situation, who rise to heroic levels to combat their predicament.
Diagnosed with autism when he was three, Owen Suskind withdrew into himself. His family feared they wouldn’t be able to reach him. However, they learned they could engage him by reciting dialogue from his favorite Disney films. His passion provided a launching pad to a healthy, normal relationship with his family and opened Owen’s world up in ways previously thought unimaginable.
I love this film. It’s saccharine and a tad emotionally manipulative, but it’s heartwarming and kind, reminding us people like Owen often lead full, rich lives.
It also points to an important reason we love movies in the first place: they provide us with a common culture giving us something to talk about and look forward to, enabling us to bridge our many gaps and differences.
1) Silence
In the 17th century, two Portugese Jesuit priests, Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver) travel to Japan to investigate rumors their mentor Father Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson) renounced his faith.
Upon arrival, they learn Christians in the country have been largely eradicated through torture and violence. After a long and difficult search, Rodrigues finds Ferreira and confirms he committed apostasy and works with the Japanese government to eliminate Christian resistance.
Rodrigues is given a choice: he can abandon his faith and join his former mentor or the former Christians he met earlier will be tortured until they die. As he looks at a fumi-e he asks his Savior for guidance and hears (or perhaps hallucinates) Christ tell him he’s done enough.
Rodridgues steps on the face of Jesus, turning his back on his church and his previous life. Years pass, and, after a life spent working to undo the work of the church he once loved, he dies. As his body is cremated, the camera zooms in and shows he’s holding fast to a small wooden cross, implying his faith remains steadfast.
Garfield, Driver, and Neeson are uniformly excellent and the cinematography of the Japanese landscape (which earned the film its only Academy Award nomination) is sublime.
The film functions as a companion piece to Ingmar Bergman’s religious trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence). As a questioning Catholic, Scorsese knows the pain his religion inflicts in the name of ideological purity and wonders which should have the greater primacy, adherence to dogma or concern for fellow human beings. He sees conflict between the two great commandments of Jesus: love the Lord and love your fellow man. Intellectually, I think Scorsese believes in the necessity of strict and unbending rules, but feels this may harm the cause of the Great Commission. This is what cinema should do, challenge us, force us to deal with uncomfortable issues, and leave us struggling with the implications.