Andrea Thompson’s Top Ten Films of 2016
Sure, there were a lot of good things that happened in 2016, but it’s still not enough to change my opinion of it, and how happy I am to see it end. Of course, there’s always a chance that 2017 may be even worse, but I still wouldn’t prolong this year for the world. If there’s any source of consolation for me, it’s that it was an amazing year for film, with so many unique offerings that it was very difficult to pare it down to which movies I’ve enjoyed the most. As a matter of fact, making this list provided me with pretty much my only pleasant reminiscence of a year that, thank god, will soon be behind us. So please enjoy my own attempt to make a silver lining out of it all with my list of the movies that I enjoyed the most in 2016.
1.Moonlight
Moonlight, a film about a young black man named Chiron coming-of-age, certainly has some familiar elements. He lives in an impoverished, crime-stricken neighborhood. His father is absent. His mother is addicted to crack. But good writing and great performances make all the difference. Set in Miami in three very distinct, very significant periods during Chiron’s life, beginning during his boyhood in the ’80s, then his teenage years, and finally young adulthood, each segment showcases Chiron wrestling with not only the treacherous environment he’s forced to navigate, but also with who he is, who he wants to become, and his own understanding of masculinity as he comes to terms with the sexuality that repulses and isolates him from his peers. The result is a tender, compassionate, poetic tribute to Miami and its people, especially those who make bad choices when swept up in forces beyond their control. But above all, Moonlight is a love story about how the very act of loving can redeem and bring out the best in all of us, even at our worst.
2.American Honey
It’s not often a movie thrills you and breaks your heart at the same time, but such passionate contradictions are what American Honey embraces as it follows the disenfranchised youth selling magazines across the country, partying hard as they journey from ritzy suburbs to poverty-stricken communities across the Midwest. The film takes its time with a nearly three hour runtime, but since we get to spend it with star Sasha Lane in the kind of breakout performance that fuels a long and successful Hollywood career, you’ll hardly mind it. Throw in some serious chemistry with Shia LaBeouf and Riley Keough as the group’s hardened boss, and it makes for the kind of experience that gives far more than it asks of its audience. Then there’s the soundtrack, which is the kind that threatens to stay in your head forever.
3.Untouchable
Brave is tossed around a lot in filmmaking, but I can’t think of a braver movie than Untouchable, a documentary that examines sex offender laws throughout the nation. The doc (which is also director David Feige’s first full-length film) mostly focuses on Ron Book, a powerful lobbyist and the driving force for some of the toughest sex offender laws in existence, and whose daughter Lauren was sexually abused by a nanny as a child. But Untouchable does something truly astounding: without minimizing the pain of the victims, it also humanizes the men and women affected by these laws. Some of them are genuinely sympathetic people who had consensual sex with someone who was only a few years younger, but others are what many would rightly call monsters, men who have molested or raped children. But Untouchable not only depicts them as human, it makes a case for how to keep them from reoffending, and how our current system hinders or hurts that goal. It’s not easy or pleasant film to watch by any means, but it is one of the most unique, empathetic experiences you’ll ever have.
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4.20th Century Women
At the end of 20th Century Women, writer-director Mike Mills remarked that it was impossible to tell his child what kind of woman his grandmother was. He’s right. His earlier film, Beginners, which focused on his father, is certainly easier to describe. But 20th Century Women thrives thanks to incredible writing and spectacularly intimate performances, especially from the eponymous women, who are comprised of Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, and Greta Gerwig, all of whom have a major influence in his life. While we do see these women through the eyes of the teenage Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), everyone is given their due in a film that mostly seems to be trying to capture the feel of a California summer in 1979, a time where the entire country seemed to be searching for meaning. Whether it was found or not is left to us.
5.The Handmaiden
Count on director Chan-wook Park, who also gave us films like Oldboy and Stoker, to complicate a seemingly simple story in the best of ways. The Handmaiden certainly seems straightforward enough to everyone in the beginning. In the 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea, a Korean thief named Sook-Hee (Tae-ri Kim) teams up with a conman to defraud a seemingly sheltered, innocent Japanese heiress Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim). But the two women soon fall deeply, lustily in love in this sumptuous film, which also serves as a surprisingly non-exploitative cautionary tale against eroticism tipping into objectification.
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6.The Love Witch
Many movies aim to cast a seductive spell, and The Love Witch succeeds like no other, ironic for a film that’s actually an homage to 1960s sexploitation dramas. Most of the credit goes to Anna Biller, who not only wrote and directed, but also edited, produced, and designed the costumes and sets, thus allowing her to reinterpret the genre she obviously loves and give us a stylish, deeply feminist horror about female fantasy and desire. But the rest goes to Samantha Robinson as the titular witch Elaine, a woman so desperate for love that she is willing to transform herself into the ultimate male fantasy while also demanding that men live up to her own impossible fairy tale dreams. In the process, the battle of the sexes begins to resemble an actual battlefield, as Elaine’s doomed, never-ending quest for love soon has a body count.
7.Elle
Talk about a movie that doesn’t let up. Elle begins with the title character’s rape and her reaction to it, in the process not becoming a story of victimization, redemption, or revenge, but rather a character study. We soon learn how just how invested Elle (Isabelle Huppert) is in having control, so much so that she refuses to call the police, or really make any changes at all. In the process, the film refuses to conform to any of the old rules about female sexuality, the new rules about female victimization, or the more modern ones about respectable feminism. It merely shows one woman’s response to the violence she has experienced throughout her life, and how it has affected her relationships with her family, friends, and at work.
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8.Christine
Sometimes failure is just as compulsively watchable as success. Tragedy, after all, is a genre all its own. The tragedy of Christine Chubbuck may have occurred in 1974, but it is still a painfully relevant one that still speaks to our time, with its themes of gender, gun violence, mental illness, and media sensationalism. The film’s superb screenplay brings all these issues to the forefront without reducing its heroine to them, while Rebecca Hall gives what may just be the best performance of her career. Her Christine is as achingly human, coming off as complicated as she is sympathetic. Chubbuck may not have been able to triumph over her many personal and professional demons, but Christine refuses to allow us to believe she isn’t worth championing.
9.Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
The latest Star Wars offering is actually a big studio movie masquerading as a tribute to all the unknown soldiers fighting for what’s right. They are the ones caught up in forces beyond their control, propping up the iconic leaders we are familiar with (RIP Carrie Fisher), and often giving their lives without ever knowing if their efforts have made a difference. Movie spin-offs are always a hard sell, but much like its characters, Rogue One beat the odds, becoming one of the funniest, action-packed, and enjoyable movies of the year. And its cast leaves you hopeful more Hollywood films will reflect the diversity of the people watching. It also has one of the best endings ever, and even manages to make clichés like the blind warrior feel fresh and new. Such a dark, but hopeful film about the fight against fascism may also be just what we need for 2017.
10.Wolf and Sheep
Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat’s first full-length film is impressive in every way, and not only because it so casually, confidently eschews plot, narrative, or really any kind of message or closure. Rather, Wolf and Sheep just follows the daily lives of the inhabitants of a remote village in Afghanistan, specifically the children who shepherd their families’ sheep. Clearly inspired by Sadat’s own time in similar surroundings, and bolstered by performances from mostly non-actors playing versions of themselves, what emerges is a portrait very different from what the media and even indie movies usually depict. Before long, the lives of people so different from our own soon become recognizable to us as we watch people laugh, fight, ostracize, and form close friendships, with just a touch of magical realism that feels right at home in such beautifully remote locations. Nevertheless, the outside world eventually intrudes in the form of rumors of armed men approaching the village. Small wonder then, that the meditative Wolf and Sheep comes to an abrupt halt along with its subjects’ peaceful lives.
Honorable mentions: Captain America: Civil War, Moana, Zootopia, Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, Girls Don’t Fly, War on Everyone, Almost Sunrise, Life, Animated, AWOL, Manchester by the Sea, Certain Women, Morris From America, In a Valley of Violence, Jackie.
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