We have a tendency to look for unifying themes at the end of the year, even when they don’t quite exist. And yet—from Richard Linklater’s rollicking and sympathetic portrait of bro culture in Everybody Wants Some!, to Barry Jenkins’ elegiac coming of age story about what it is to be black, gay, and poor in Moonlight, to Mike Mills’ exploration of a teenage boy learning about life and love from a group of headstrong women in 20th Century Women, to Andrew Neel’s criminally underseen frat hazing horror film, Goat—the state of malehood was definitely on filmmakers’ minds. But here’s the funny thing: With all these men front and center, for the second year in a row, it was the female performances that resonated with me most. When I reflect on this year, I’ll think about Isabelle Huppert giving not one, but two fierce and fearless performances in Elle and Things to Come; Ruth Negga’s quiet determination in Loving; Annette Bening’s warm eccentricity in 20th Century Women; Michelle Williams’ yawp of grief in Manchester By the Sea; and Sandra Hüller’s uptight businesswoman liberated by her prankster father (and one particularly spirited rendition of “Greatest Love of All”) in Toni Erdmann, a critically beloved film that rubbed me the wrong way (but not so much that I couldn’t appreciate the brilliance of Hüller’s performance). In a way, it’s fitting that these very themes emerged in film. Our politics this year also could’ve been boiled down to America’s complicated relationship to performative masculinity and powerful women. With that said, here are my favorite films of 2016.
(In some cases, I used excerpts of my previously written reviews.)
1. (Tie) MOONLIGHT Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, about growing up poor, black, and gay, is a deeply personal, deeply expressive film, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It introduces us to a nearly taciturn hero and makes his interior life so vivid, so laid bare, we almost feel like we’re breathing with him. Told in three chapters, documenting three periods in our young hero’s life—his name even changes, from Little to Cheron to Black—the film is filled with pain and longing, but also stubborn interjections of hope. The performances are extraordinary—Mahershali Ali will likely win an Oscar for his turn as an unlikely father figure; Naomie Harris is unforgettable as Little’s crackhead mother, who gives her son a kind of mournful, if erratic, affection; and all three of the young male leads will break your heart. Because so much of Moonlight is impressionistic—aided by Nicholas Britell’s spare and haunting orchestral score—each moment is uniquely evocative. Several months after seeing the film, I can conjure up small scenes in my head that bring me to the verge of tears. My complete review.
1. (Tie) MANCHESTER BY THE SEA Playwright-turned-director Kenneth Lonergan has a nearly extrasensory ability to capture the nuances of human emotion. His films are so meticulously observed, so true to the actual ways people communicate and feel, they tend to make other films feel fraudulent. This is particularly true in this study of grief, family bonds, and the possibility—or impossibility—of living in a bruising and often unforgiving world. As the benumbed survivor of a tragedy now forced to care for his teenage nephew, Casey Affleck is a revelation. And he has a wonderful rapport with newcomer Lucas Hedge, playing his nephew—their barbs and affectionate trash-talking buoy the film (impossible as it sounds, Manchester By the Sea can be quite funny.) I’m convinced that Lonergan is our most humane filmmaker and here, he has a spare, bleak visual vocabulary that perfectly pairs with the mournfulness of his work. My complete review.
3. ARRIVAL An edge-of-your-seat sci-fi film that also has profound things to say about mankind, communication, and empathy. On the one hand, Denis Villeneuve’s film is merely a well-mounted “oh shit, the aliens have come, now what?” crowdpleaser. On the other, it’s a thrillingly original examination of time, identity, and our collective humanity, with Amy Adams leading the way as the brilliant linguist who greets our unexpected visitors with an open mind and heart. My complete review.
4. HELL OR HIGH WATER David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water, about two brothers who go on a bank robbing spree, is something of a small miracle. It somehow manages to be not one, but two lively and pitch perfect buddy films; a contemporary Western; a film that captures the bruised, but not broken, spirit of a post-recession West Texas, and an exploration of fragile masculinity. Mackenzie happens to be Scottish, but he’s made the best American Western in years. My complete review.
5. A BIGGER SPLASH As a loud and lusty hedonist who disrupts the Sicilian idyll of his rock star ex-girlfriend (Tilda Swinton) and her guarded new beau (Matthias Schoenaerts), Ralph Fiennes gives one of the year’s best performances. The film—about the unsustainability of Fiennes’ full-throttled lust for life—is filled with deception and unspoken resentments (even murder!) and yet I wanted to luxuriate in its sensual, sun-dappled world. My complete review.
6. LA LA LAND A musical for people who think they hate musicals, La La Land pays homage to the giddy technicolor classics, while having a cool, understated elegance of its own. It starts with the leads—as the film’s central lovers, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone aren’t necessarily the best singers or dancers (they’re fine!), but they compensate by being two of the world’s most charming humans. The film, directed with heaps of style and imagination by wunderkind Damien Chazelle is packed with winsome, ear-wormy melodies. It perfectly blends the sunny optimism of LA with the wistful melancholy of recalling one’s first love. My complete review.
7. 20TH CENTURY WOMEN In a ramshackle boarding house in Santa Barbara, California in the late 70s, a teenage boy gets a sentimental education from three extraordinary women—his protective, eccentric mother (Annette Bening); the self-possessed teenage girl he loves (Dakota Fanning); and a 20something boarder who has struggled with cancer (Greta Gerwig), giving her a unique perspective on life. The film, which also explores how 70s idealism gave way to 80s commercialism, perfectly captures the rapidly shifting social mores of the time. Through it all, it’s made clear that our young hero is made a better man because of these doting women in his life.
8. PATERSON What a gift this gentle, droll film by Jim Jarmusch is. In Paterson, NJ, our hero named, yes, Paterson (Adam Driver), drives a bus, walks his wife’s unnervingly observant bulldog to the neighborhood pub, and scribbles unpublished poetry in a notepad. Each morning, he and his wife (Golshifteh Faranhani) wake up, beautifully enmeshed in bed, and then she makes him breakfast and he goes to work (she leaves loving notes in his lunch pail). At home, she leads an artist’s life, too, concocting marvelous black and white patterns that she wears, bakes (in cupcake form), and adorns the house with. They support each other fully. This is the rare cinematic love story about the artists’ life and the quotidian beauty of a happy marriage.
9. THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN Think of Kelly Fremon Craig’s funny, sensitive, and whipsmart coming of age film as John Hughes with an edge. It’s about a disaffected teenage girl (Hailee Steinfeld) whose favorite teacher (Woody Harrelson) doesn’t coddle her, but instead gives her his own hilarious brand of tough love. As she navigates the horrors of high school—some real (her father’s death; her mother’s high-functioning nervous breakdown) and some that only seem like tragedies (an errant dirty text to her crush; a budding romance between her jock brother and her best friend)—we laugh, cringe, and cry right along with her. My complete review.
10. THE LOBSTER Yorgos Lanthimos’ surrealist dark comedy—about an uncannily civilized retreat where you find a life partner or get turned into the animal of your choice—surprises at every turn. Our mild-mannered hero, David (an excellent Colin Farrell), seems blandly resigned to his fate, but has a lot more fight in him than we realize. (A scene in a hot-tub, showing how far David will go to secure a mate, is one of the most sadistically hilarious cinematic moments of the year.) And when David escapes from the retreat and takes to the woods, we expect him to find his salvation. Instead, he’s taken in by another oppressive, casually cruel society. The film, a satire of society’s pressure to be coupled, is also an exploration of the banality of fascism. My complete review.
11. JACKIE Pablo Larrain’s gorgeous and impressionistic look at the very specific horrors Jackie Kennedy endured in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s assassination is miles above your typical biopic. We watch as Jackie walks like a specter through the White House that she had so recently decorated, and the film underscores both her unfathomable loneliness and her unwavering strength. Jackie, played with steely self-possession by Natalie Portman, was obsessed with image and legacy—insisting on a formal on-foot procession for her husband’s funeral; wearing the chicest of black mourning clothing; coming up with the enduring myth of Camelot (yup, that was her). Larrain understands that we learn much about a person when we watch them grieve. One misstep: Whose bright idea was it to cast the normally redoubtable Peter Sarsgaard as RFK?
12. ELLE In Paul Verhoeven’s bold provocation, a woman (Isabelle Huppert) is brutally raped in her own home and then calmly picks up the phone and orders dinner—later, she and her rapist will become lovers. The film is shocking at first but, as it unfolds, we see why she has such a twisted relationship to violence and desire. The film has lots of ideas about agency and consent. Mostly, it’s is an excellent excuse for Huppert’s ferocious performance.
13. THE INVITATION A father (Logan Marshall-Green), still shaken with grief from the death of his son, returns to the house where he once lived for a dinner party. His ex-wife has remarried and is attempting to recreate the casual bonhomie of parties past. But the man finds the house to be haunted, in every sense of the word. Is there something more nefarious than just a casual dinner party afoot—or is it all in his fevered imagination? Karyn Kasama gives us a new kind of haunted house, in this deliciously creepy and assured mind-bender.
14. HAIL, CAESAR! The Coen brothers are clearly having the time of their lives with this homage to the glory days of the Hollywood studio system—and their giddiness is infectious. The central mystery—involving a society of communist writers who kidnap a blithely entitled leading man (George Clooney)—is pretty wan, but who cares when you have Channing Tatum as a tap dancing sailor, Scarlett Johannson as a water ballet diva, Tilda Swinton as dueling twin gossip columnists, and, most deliciously, Alden Ehrenreich as a cowpoke cast in a parlor drama and taught proper diction by his film’s preternaturally patient director (Ralph Fiennes)? My complete review.
15. DON’T THINK TWICE In Mike Birbiglia’s indie gem, the members of an improv comedy group—all friends and collaborators at different stages in their careers who rely on each other completely for onstage success—find themselves competing for the same slot on a Saturday Night Live-like TV show. But when one member of the group (Keegan-Michael Key) breaks off and calls attention to himself, and—worse still—it actually pays off, it creates a rift among the group that can never be repaired. One of the many beauties of this film is how it acknowledges that most friendships, particularly among creative people, are filled with petty jealousies and micro-resentments and how you can care about somebody and still begrudge their success. Best of all, Don’t Think Twice is actually funny, a rarity for a film about comedians. My complete review.
16. THINGS TO COME Yup, it’s Isabelle Huppert again, this time playing a philosophy professor, content in her life, whose world is shaken when her husband leaves her for a younger woman. She crosses paths with a brilliant former student and is briefly swept into his world of big ideas and youthful anarchy. Then, she slowly realizes that, even without her husband, she has found her own happiness—her books, her students, eventually, her grandchild—and if that makes her a bourgeois, as her former student derisively suggests, so be it. On top of being a wonderful portrait of a middle-aged intellectual, Mia Hansen Løve’s film has one of the most quietly satisfying “screw you” scenes in recent memory.
17. KRISHA The Thanksgiving family dinner as slowly unspooling horror film. Krisha (an uncanny Krisha Fairchild), an alcoholic, briefly on the wagon, returns to her sister’s house for Thanksgiving, hoping to repair her damaged relationship with her college-aged son. She is reluctantly embraced by most of the family—cautiously, and with great suspicion—but her son is so angry he can barely make eye contact. It’s all too much for Krisha to take—and we see that she’s about to break. Filmed with a swirling, merciless camera, creating a dizzying sense of alienation, this is a masterful debut from Trey Edward Shults. Oh, and keep your eye on the turkey.
18. WEINER All documentaries are a kind of voyeurism, this one—which follows Anthony Weiner’s doomed mayoral run in 2013—especially so. While Weiner himself comes across as a scrappy gadfly who might’ve made a great champion for the underdog were it not for his many well-documented personal failings, our eyes are inevitably trained on his put-upon wife Huma. Why did she stand by his side? How could she stomach him? A riveting portrait of a political couple with an unhappy ending—that has only gotten more unhappy since the film was made. My complete review.
19. AMERICAN HONEY A languorous road trip movie suffused with the carefree rhythms of youth. A kind-hearted but aimless girl named Star (dazzling newcomer Sasha Lane), tired of caring for her wastrel boyfriend’s two small children, joins up with a ragtag group of kids driving around the country selling magazine subscriptions. At first, she’s tentative but eventually she becomes part of the group, participating in their rituals—singing, fighting, screwing. Andrea Arnold’s film is long and repetitive, but intentionally so. These kids have nothing but time stretching out in front of them. With a restless Shia LaBeouf, playing a natural born hustler, who captures Star’s eye.
20. OTHER PEOPLE Chris Kelly’s highly personal film is filled with uncommon intimacy and irreverent humor. A struggling writer (Jesse Plemons), who has recently broken up with his boyfriend, returns home to Sacramento care for his dying mother (a touching Molly Shannon). The “other people” of the title refers not just to the idea that “cancer is something that happens to other people until it happens to you” but that we’re all living in our own little solipsistic bubbles. We can see that the writer’s little sister craves his attention, but he’s too wrapped in his own misery to notice her. This doesn’t make him a bad person, just…a person.
BONUS:
OJ: MADE IN AMERICA There was some debate this year as to whether Ezra Edelman’s 8-hour documentary, shown on TV, should be considered a film or a TV show. Regardless, it’s a revelation—one of the most brilliant and entertaining excavations of America’s complicated relationship to race and celebrity I’ve ever seen. Had I truly considered it a “film,” it would’ve been #3 on my list.
LEMONADE: In Beyonce’s visually arresting art film-cum-long form music video, she laments her cheating man, reclaims her power—and the power of black women collectively—and finds it in her heart to forgive.