As the year comes to an end, the lists come out. Best movies, books, TV shows. Celebrity deaths. You know the drill. In Podunk we get all of these on the same schedule as the big city, except movies. Often the Oscar-bait pictures don’t arrive here until January or even February. Still, it’s time to make the lists before Auld Lang Syne, so here’s mine for films in various categories.
Documentaries: Three stand out. “De Palma” is an amiable look at the director as told by the director, and is notable for the candor of his reflections. Then there are two chilling examinations of how technology has made us vulnerable and can go wrong. “A Good American” concerns a cyber-warrior who saw 9/11 coming and was ignored and then subjected to attempts to silence and discredit him. “Zero Days” describes how Stuxnet got out of control and how it offers a template for future trouble.
Animation: Again, three films make my list. One is the amusing “Finding Dory” and is familiar to most sentient creatures by now. “Miss Hokusai” tells the story of the daughter of the master printmaker. She is an artist herself in a time and place where such a role was not regarded as women’s work. Predictably, it mimics the look of ukiyo-e woodblocks. At the top of the list is the beautiful and touching “Kubo and the Two Strings” in which music becomes both a kind of martial art and a means to discover one’s roots.
Foreign Films: Several of the year’s best pictures fall into this category. “In Order of Disappearance” is a Scandinavian black comedy about Nils (Stellan Skasgard), a snowplow operator, who is harmed by a gang of Serbian mobsters operating on his territory and how he exacts his revenge. Also notable for the presence of Bruno Ganz.
“A Man Called Ove” is about a depressed, nitpicking, Swedish widower who is brought back to life by the arrival of new Iranian neighbors. It may be the year’s best comedy, but it’s got serious competition from New Zealand’s “The Hunt for the Wilderpeople” in which a Maori foster child (who wants to be a rapper) is entrusted to a loving woman and her grouchy ex-con mate (Sam Neill). When she suddenly dies, the authorities, in the unpleasant person of a female Javert, try to put the kid in an institution but he and his reluctant foster parent flee into the outback producing a massive, incompetent manhunt. Both hilarious and touching.
Best of all is “The Handmaiden,” a sleek, noir thriller set in Korea and Japan in the years between the wars. Young women are recruited as domestics but put to more perverse purposes by a group of bibliomaniacs, until our heroine rebels. Dark, beautiful to look at, and full of entirely unexpected turns.
Comedy and Musical: The musical is added only to accommodate “La La Land” which is a charming homage to the Technicolor Days of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly musicals. It includes a nod to Fred and Cyd Charisse “Dancing in the Dark” in Central Park and “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg whose plot and finale it cheerfully rips off. Emma Stone is as winning as ever, but Ryan Gosling is better.
“Don’t Think Twice” is a sad, funny look at what happens when one member of a comedy improv group gets the big break and his friends and collaborators are left behind. Other honorable mentions include “Nice Guys,” “War Dogs,” “The Family Fang,” “The Meddler,” and “Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot.” All in all, a pretty good year for non-brain-dead comedy, and a year that needed all the laughs it could get.
Drama: A pretty good year for drama too. A pair of movies concern families coming asunder due to tragedies in which the fathers — one depressed and the other manic and — bear a terrible burden. “Manchester by the Sea” and “Captain Fantastic” each boast moving performances by the leading actors — Casey Affleck and Viggo Mortensen, respectively.
Another pair of very different films concern famous events and are notable for treating them obliquely, but elegantly, rather than in a conventional head-on manner. “Sully,” about the hero pilot, turns into a story about post traumatic stress and misguided, bureaucratic attempts to assign blame. “Loving” concerns a famous court case but barely sets foot in a courtroom, preferring to focus on the private pain, courage and fortitude of the victims of a cruel law.
“Arrival” puts the science back in science-fiction for a change, with subtle performances by the ubiquitous Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. “Queen of Katwa” tells a feel good story of poor African children inspired by a charismatic teacher, played by David Oyelowo, to become chess champions. And “Fences” brings the August Wilson play to the screen with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in the leading roles. Not for the first time, Ms. Davis is on everyone’s short list for the Oscar and deserves to be.
Though really a 2015 film, “45 Years” didn’t reach me until 2016 and deserves a place on any best-of list. Award-worthy performances by Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtney as a long-married couple and what happens when a long buried secret comes to light.
In a category I’ll call Superior Genre Stuff, I would put “The Accountant,” “Deepwater Horizon,” “Dr. Strange,” “10 Cloverfield Lane,” “Testament of Youth,” “Don’t Breathe,” and a few more with especially notable star turns. Timothy Spall is suitably creepy and cocksure as a holocaust denier in “Denial.” Jessica Chastain sleekly outwits everyone, even herself, in “Miss Sloane.” And Jeff Bridges, Ben Foster and Chris Pine are all fine in “Hell or High Water.”
Disappointments: This last category s reserved for films that ought to have been better. With the name James L. Brooks attached, it was reasonable to expect a lot more of “The Edge of Seventeen” than a mildly amusing coming of age tale. Hallee Steinfeld and Woody Harrelson are good, but the film ought to have been better. “Nocturnal Animals,” with Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams, is stylish but languid where it ought to have been gripping and suspenseful. “Love and Friendship” is amiable minor league Austen, but Whit Stillman’s fans wait in vain for him to match the wonderful “Barcelona.”
Two admired indie films on many best-of-the-year lists fell short for me. “American Honey” is too long and too diffuse despite an interesting premise and surprisingly good performances by Sasha Lane and Shia LeBeouf.
“Moonlight” is similarly in need of tightening, and like the earlier “Precious’ heaps so much woe on the protagonist — poor, bullied, fatherless, addicted mother, discriminated against gay — that it threatens to pitch over from pathos into bathos. Often it’s subdued tone seems at odds with the chaos and misery of the tale. And yet, despite these objections, it lingers in the mind. Perhaps it deserves to be on the best list where many have put it, but I couldn’t quite rate it that high. Perhaps I’ll change my mind next year.