On January 16th, the film critics of Hawaii (and who wouldn’t want to be a member of that group?) announced their picks for the best of 2016! They really, really liked La La Land!
BEST DIRECTOR:
Damien Chazelle, La La Land BEST ACTOR:
Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea BEST ACTRESS:
Viola Davis, Fences BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water (tie)
Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
Taylor Sheridan, Hell or High Water BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
Tom Ford (Based on the Novel by Austin Wright), Nocturnal Animals BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Linus Sandgren, La La Land
BEST EDITING:
Tom Cross,La La Land BEST ART DIRECTION:
Austin Gorg, La La Land BEST COSTUME DESIGN:
Madeline Fontaine, Jackie BEST MAKE-UP:
Bill Corso, Deadpool BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: Arrival(tie) Doctor Strange BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:
Justin Hurwitz, La La Land BEST SONG:
Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, “Audition (Fools Who Dream),” La La Land (tie)
Lin-Manuel Miranda, “How Far I’ll Go,” Moana BEST ANIMATED FILM: Kubo and the Two Strings(dir. Travis Knight) (tie) Zootopia (dir. Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush) BEST DOCUMENTARY: OJ: Made in America(dir. Ezra Edelman) BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: The Handmaiden (dir. Chan-wook Park), (South Korea) (tie) Neruda (dir. Pablo Larrain), (Chile) BEST HAWAII FILM: Moana(dir. Ron Clements, Don Hall, John Musker and Chris Williams) BEST NEW FILMMAKER:
Dan Trachtenberg, 10 Cloverfield Lane BEST FIRST FILM: 10 Cloverfield Lane (dir. Dan Trachtenberg) BEST OVERLOOKED FILM: Hell or High Water (dir. David Mackenzie) BEST SCI-FI/HORROR FILM: Arrival(dir. Denis Villeneuve) BEST STUNTS: The Magnificent Seven BEST VOCAL/MOTION CAPTURE PERFORMANCE:
Charlize Theron/ Kubo and the Two Strings WORST FILM OF THE YEAR: Fifty Shades of Black (tie) Zoolander 2
Well, with the Oscar nominations due to be announced next Tuesday, there’s just a few more precursors left to consider. And, since nomination voting has been closed, it’s debatable whether any of these remaining precursors matter.
But you know me. I love three things: movies, lists, and awards.
So, let’s get things started with the Denver Film Critics Society! On the 17th, they announced their picks for the best of 2016. And here they are:
If you haven’t, you’re probably just old or else you don’t keep up with what’s happening in the world of popular music. His real name is Conner Friel and he used to be a member of the Style Boyz. Of course, the Style Boyz eventually broke up. Kid Brain became a farmer. Kid Contact became a DJ. And Kid Conner — well, he became Conner4Real and he became a bigger star as a solo artist than he ever was as a Style Boy. His debut album, Thriller, Also, broke records.
But the follow-up, Connquest … well, Connquest wasn’t quite as acclaimed. In fact, it was hated by just about everyone. This is despite featuring classic songs like:
Finest Girl (Bin Laden Song)
Mona Lisa
and Equal Rights (featuring P!nk).
Fortunately, when Conner4Real was facing his greatest existential crisis, a film crew was present to record his struggle. For those of us who were fascinated by the career of Conner4Real, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a chance to see how Conner dealt with everything from his terminally ill pet turtle to the elaborate marriage proposal ceremony that led to Seal being attacked by wild wolves. We would have gotten to see Conner and his manager defeat a swarm of mutant bees but, unfortunately, that happened right after the only time that Conner’s manager asked the film crew to stop filming.
Oh well, these things happen.
So, as you should have guessed from all that, Popstar is not a serious film. It’s a mockumentary, with the emphasis on mock. It was also one of the funniest films of 2016, a spot-on parody of the silliness and pretensions of fame. Conner is a combination of Justin Bieber and Macklemore at their shallowest, a well-meaning but thoroughly empty-headed singer. In fact, if Conner was played by anyone other than Andy Samberg, he would be so annoying that the film would run the risk of being unwatchable.
But fortunately, Conner is played by Andy Samberg. It’s hard to think of anyone who plays dumb with quite the same panache as Andy Samberg does. There are plenty of lines in Popstar that shouldn’t work but they do, specifically because they’re being delivered by Samberg. He brings just the right amount of sweetly sincere stupidity to the role. Almost despite yourself, you find yourself hoping that things will work out for Conner and the other Style Boyz. Conner may not deserve to be as big a star as he is but it was obviously going to happen to some idiot so why not a sincere one?
Samberg is not the only funny person in Popstar. The movie is full of funny people, from Sarah Silverman to Bill Hader to the always underrated Tim Meadows. It’s also full of celebrity cameos and I have to admit that I usually tend to cringe when I see too many people playing themselves. But in Popstar, it works. One need only rewatch something like Zoolander 2to see how well Popstar pulls off its celebrity cameos.
Sadly, as funny as Popstar was, it was also one of the biggest bombs of 2016. (The trailer, it must be said, did not do the film justice.) However, I expect that it will soon develop a strong cult following. In a few years, we’ll get a sequel. It probably won’t be as as good.
Continuing my look back at the films of 2016, here are four mini-reviews of some films that really didn’t make enough of an impression to demand a full review.
The Accountant (dir by Gavin O’Connor)
2016 was a mixed year for Ben Affleck. Batman v. Superman may have been a box office success but it was also such a critical disaster that it may have done more harm to Affleck’s legacy than good. If nothing else, Affleck will spend the rest of his life being subjected to jokes about Martha. While Ben’s younger brother has become an Oscar front runner as a result of his performance in Manchester By The Sea, Ben’s latest Oscar effort, Live By Night, has been released to critical scorn and audience indifference.
At the same time, Ben Affleck also gave perhaps his best performance ever in The Accountant. Affleck plays an autistic accountant who exclusively works for criminals and who has been raised to be an expert in all forms of self-defense. The film’s plot is overly complicated and director Gavin O’Connor struggles to maintain a consistent tone but Affleck gives a really great performance and Anna Kendrick reminds audiences that she’s capable of more than just starring in the Pitch Perfect franchise.
Carnage Park (dir by Mickey Keating)
I really wanted to like Carnage Park, because it was specifically advertised as being an homage to the grindhouse films of the 1970s and y’all know how much I love those! Ashley Bell plays a woman who gets kidnapped twice, once by two bank robbers and then by a psycho named Wyatt (Pat Healy). Healy chases Bell through the desert, hunting her Most Dangerous Game-style. There are some intense scenes and both Bell and Healy are well-cast but, ultimately, it’s just kind of blah.
The Choice(dir by Ross Katz)
The Choice was last year’s Nicholas Sparks adaptation. It came out, as all Nichols Sparks adaptations do, just in time for Valentine’s Day and it got reviews that were so negative that a lot of people will never admit that they actually saw it. Benjamin Walker and Teresa Palmer play two people who meet, fall in love, and marry in North Carolina. But then Palmer is in a car accident, ends up in a coma, and Walker has to decide whether or not to turn off the life support.
As I said, The Choice got terrible reviews and it’s certainly not subtle movie but it’s actually better than a lot of films adapted from the work of Nicholas Sparks. Walker and Palmer are a likable couple and, at the very least, The Choice deserves some credit for having the courage not to embrace the currently trendy cause of euthanasia. That alone makes The Choice better than Me Before You.
The Legend of Tarzan (dir by David Yates)
Alexander Skarsgard looks good without his shirt on and Samuel L. Jackson is always a fun to watch and that’s really all that matters as far as The Legend of Tarzan is concerned. It’s an enjoyable enough adventure film but you won’t remember much about it afterward. Christoph Waltz is a good actor but he’s played so many villains that it’s hard to get excited over it anymore.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Happy birthday, Cary Grant!
4 Shots From 4 Films
The Awful Truth (1937, dir by Leo McCarey)
Notorious (1946, dir by Alfred Hitchcock)
North by Northwest (1959, dir by Alfred Hitchcock)
Well, the time is here! It’s time for me to reveal my picks for the best 26 films of 2016!
If there’s been any theme that I’ve found myself constantly returning to while looking back at the previous year, it’s that 2016 just wasn’t as good as 2015. That’s certainly true as far as movies are concerned. Whereas 2015 provided us with an embarrasment of riches, 2016 was — overall — a pretty bland year as far as cinema is concerned.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t some great films released in 2016. I’m proud of this list below. At the same time, I’m also a little bit frustrated. As happens every year, there are a few films that, as of this writing, I have yet to see. Weather permitting, I will see Silence and Jackie tomorrow and on Monday. If I feel that they need to be included in my top 26, I will come back and edit this list. And, of course, I still need to see some of the films that are no longer playing in theaters — Captain Fantastic, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and some others. The list below should be considered my picks for the best 2016 films that I actually got to see.
Also, I still need to write reviews for two of the films listed below. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do that today. As soon as those reviews are posted, I’ll add links.
Arrival was one of the best films of 2016. In fact, I would argue that it’s one of the best science fiction films that I’ve ever seen. There were a lot of reasons for that, of course. There was the brilliant script by Eric Heisserer. There was the starring performance of Amy Adams, who is one of the best actresses working today. There was a surprise and thought-provoking twist, one that forced you to reconsider everything that you previously believed. There were so many reasons why Arrival was a great film but, ultimately, it call came down to Denis Villeneuve.
Working with material that would have led most directors down the road to bombast, Villeneuve instead took a deliberately low-key approach. Whereas most directors would have encouraged their cast to play up the drama, Villeneuve encourages his actors to take a more inward and cerebral approach to the material. Arrival is a rarity — a film about smart people in which the people actually seem to be smart. For once, we don’t need expositionary characters to pop up and tell us that Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) are brilliant. Instead, we simply believe they are from what we see on the screen. Much like last year’s Sicario, Arrival proves that Villeneuve is a visionary director.
Arrival is a hard film to describe, not because it’s overly complicated but because there’s a huge twist that I really can’t reveal. Before the twist, Arrival is simply a well-directed sci-fi film. After the twist, it is something all together different, an intense meditation on faith, love, language, and destiny. Since I’m reviewing the film late, chances are that you already know about the twist but I’m still not going to spoil it.
What I can tell you is that Arrival opens with the arrival of twelve spaceships, all of which land at different places across the world. The Chinese have a spaceship. The British have a spaceship. I imagine that the Canadians have a spaceship, because who wouldn’t want to hang out with the Canadians? And, of course, the Americans have a spaceship. The aliens are inside the spaceships. They’re octopus-like creatures, ones that almost look as if they could have come from one of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories. The aliens may appear to be fearsome but they actually seem to be rather benevolent. No one’s quite sure because the aliens communicate through a complex series of symbols and nobody can understand what those symbols mean.
Louise Banks is a linguist. Ian Donnelly is a physicist. The Americans bring both in to help translate the symbols. Of course, the rest of the world has their own linguists and physicists working to translate the symbols and, humans being humans, it often seems that the Americans and the Chinese are less concerned with translating what the aliens are saying and more concerned with being the first to understand. While Louise works, she continues to be haunted by dreams and visions of her daughter’s death from cancer.
And that’s really all I can tell you without spoiling the film and potentially making myself cry. But I will say that if you haven’t seen Arrival, you must go out and see it now. It’s one of the most thought-provoking and emotionally wrenching films of the past year.
Add to that, it’s probably going to be nominated for best picture. It’s been overshadowed a bit by all the attention paid to La La Land, Moonlight, and Manchester By The Sea. But Arrival is just as good a film as any of them. In fact, in the future, we’ll probably look at Arrival and say that it was better than all of them.
The Director’s Guild announced their feature film nominations earlier today.
A DGA nomination is one of the biggest prizes of the precursor season. In general, if the DGA nominates a film then it’s likely that film will also get nominated for best picture. There have been exceptions, of course. (David Fincher was nominated for his bastardized rehash of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.) But, for the most part, the DGA is the most reliable precursor available.
Five directors were nominated. The usual suspects were there — Lonergan, Jenkins, and Chazelle. Fortunately, Denis Villeneuve picked up a nomination, which is good news for Arrival. The fifth nominee was a bit of a surprise. Garth Davis was nominated for Lion, which I guess means I’ll have to go see that movie now, even though I have little real desire to do so.
Martin Scorsese was not nominated for Silence, which probably means that the film will be dead-in-the-water as far as Oscar nominations are concerned.
Also not nominated — Tim Miller for Deadpool, a film that’s been doing surprisingly well with the precursors. If Tim Miller had been nominated, heads would have exploded. It would have been fun to watch the twitter reaction.
Ever since it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, I’ve read the White Girl was the most “shocking” film of 2016. You can take a look at the poster above and see that, according to The Hollywood Reporter, White Girl is “SHOCKING … AND SEXY AS HELL!”
Well, I finally got a chance to watch White Girl on Netflix and the only thing shocking about it is that so many (male) critics were apparently convinced that it was the most shocking movie ever made. I certainly wouldn’t call it shocking. (And considering that White Girl features two graphic rapes, I’d love to know why the critic thought “sexy as Hell” would be an appropriate description.) A better description of White Girl would be “honest.” Then again, considering the way that the movies usually present the experience of being young, female, and in the city, perhaps the fact that White Girl is an honest film is the most shocking thing of all.
Morgan Saylor plays Leah, a college student who, along with her friend, Katie (India Meneuz), moves into a New York apartment. The apartment is located in a largely Spanish neighborhood, one that has yet to surrender to gentrification. While Katie and Leah’s hipster friends are immediately suspicious of everyone else in the neighborhood, the Oklahoma-born Leah is far more adventurous (or perhaps reckless). She approaches Blue (Brian Marc) on a street corner and asks him if he has any weed.
Blue has weed and a lot more. He’s the neighborhood drug dealer and soon, he’s also Leah’s boyfriend. When Leah isn’t getting high and having sex with Blue, she’s working as an intern at a magazine where, early on in the film, she’s sexually assaulted by her boss, Kelly (Justin Bartha, playing a predator who, for many, will seem disturbingly familiar). Leah invites Blue to a party given by the magazine and Blue is able to make a lot of money selling cocaine to Leah’s wealthy co-workers.
For Blue, drugs are a business and he refuses to do hard drugs himself. To Leah, it’s an adventure, one that she believes doesn’t have any real consequences. Or, at least, that’s the way she sees it until Blue is arrested. With Blue, a repeat offender, facing a life sentence, Leah manages to find a lawyer (Chris Noth, who will make you skin crawl) but she needs to raise the money to pay him. Fortunately, Leah has a stash of cocaine that Blue was supposed to sell. Blue tells Leah that she needs to return the cocaine to his dealer but instead, Leah decides to sell the cocaine herself. Or, at the very least, she’s going to sell whatever cocaine she doesn’t end up snorting herself…
White Girl has been called shocking because of its open and nonjudgmental portrayal of both drugs and sex but, honestly, there’s nothing shocking about it. It may be a generational thing but, to me, Leah’s story was a familiar one. I’ve known a lot of Leahs and, personally, there were moments in White Girl that left me cringing just because I could relate to one of Leah’s naive notions or I could remember what it was like to feel like, no matter what I did, there would never be any consequences. Leah may not always be a likable character but it’s not because she has sex or experiments with drugs. Instead, it’s because she spends most of the film blissfully unaware of her own privilege. Leah thinks that she understands the realities of Blue’s world but, as she learns by the end of the film, she’s really just a tourist. And, unlike Blue and the rest of her neighbors, Leah can always leave whenever she wants.
So, White Girl was not a shocking film to me. Instead, it was a very honest film. It can currently be viewed on Netflix.
Through the Shattered Lens