Film Babble Blog’s Top 10 Movies Of 2016 (With Spillover)

I usually try to post my Top 10 before the Oscar nominations, but January has been crazy y’all! With everything going on – the daily ridiculousness of the newly installed Trump administration, having to get one of our cat’s legs amputated because of cancer, and editing my long in the works book project – it’s been hard to sit down and finalize exactly just what are my favorite films of 2016.

It hasn’t helped that I found the last year to be a pretty weak one for film, with an abundance of bad sequels, a run of epic fails (THE BFG, ALLIED, RULES DON’T APPLY) and many movies that were just meh, so picking out the gems was more difficult than in previous years. So here goes my picks, in descending order, with a little bit of annotation, and some links back to my reviews (click on select titles):

10. GREEN ROOM (Dir. Jeremy Saulnier)

Sadly, this largely overlooked indie about a punk band who find themselves trapped in the backstage green room of a hardcore club in the woods of Oregon, was one of the last performances of Anton Yelchin, who died in a freak automobile accident in the summer of 2016. Yelchin, as the fraught leader of the punk group, excels in this grimy, gritty, and extremely chilling thriller as do Imogen Poots and a sinister Patrick Stewart.

9. 20TH CENTURY WOMEN (Dir. Mike Mills)

I think Annette Bening should’ve gotten an Oscar nomination for this over Meryl Streep for FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Streep’s performance in FFJ, but Bening put in an exemplary portrayal as Dorothea, the put upon matriarch of Mills’ cinematic loveletter to the women who raised him. Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, and newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann round out the rest of the fine ensemble. 20TH CENTURY WOMEN somehow simultaneously captures how it felt to be a mixed-up kid in the ‘70s and how it felt to be a mixed-up mother living during the same era. Glad that Mills’ superb screenplay got the Academy’s attention.

8. O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA (Dir. Ezra Edelman) It’s amazing how riveting every minute of this 5-part documentary miniseries is, considering that it’s 10 hours long (467 minutes). But the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson from famous football running back to infamous alleged murderer as seen through the filters of race and fame in the American system never slows down or falters in its engrossing pace. Edleman’s opus, created for ESPN Films’ 30 for 30 series, is a masterpiece that not only deserves its nomination for the Best Documentary Oscar, it deserves to win it.

7. MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (Dir. Kenneth Lonergan) 

This is an achingly sad story about an apartment complex maintenance man (Casy Affleck) who, while still reeling from a tragic incident that killed his two daughters, and destroyed his marriage to his devastated wife (Michelle Williams), is asked to take care of his nephew (Lucas Hedges) after his brother (the boy’s father played by Kyle Chandler) dies. This is a stirring experience, and an oddly funny one at times, that’s hard to shake long after it ends, and that’s largely due to how real these people feel.

6. FENCES (Dir. Denzel Washington)

Denzel Washington’s third turn in the director’s chair is a filmed play, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t play as a great film. Based on the Pulitzer Prize, and Tony Award winning 1983 play by August Wilson, the film concerns Troy Maxton, a working class Pittsburgh garbageman played by Washington, and his family's struggle through the late ’50s to mid ’60s. Along with the nominations the film got for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Viola Davis), and Best Adapted Screenplay (August Wilson), Washington deservedly earned a nom for Best Actor as his energy makes many of his monologues more memorable than dozens (maybe hundreds) of other actors’ pontifications this last year. Davis holds her own against Washington, and really should’ve gotten a Best Actress instead of Supporting nomination, but at least she was recognized. 

5. NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (Dir. Tom Ford)

I can never unsee the imagery of this twisted yet impeccably stylish psychological thriller which revolves around the sordid contents of a novel that Jake Gyllenhaal sends to his ex-wife (Amy Adams), and, I bet I can never unthink it either. It’ll really be hard for sure to choose between rooting for Michael Shannon in this over Jeff Bridges (in #4 on this list) for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for their portrayals of two vastly different Texas lawmen.

4. HELL OR HIGH WATER (Dir. David Mackenzie)

This is a modern day western heist thriller that runs with the theme of robbing-the-banks-because-they’re-robbing-us. Chris Pine and Ben Foster play the robbers; Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham play the cops on their trail. It’s also starring a wide West Texas landscape sparsely decorated with billboards advertising debt relief, rundown ranches, and yellow fields stretching to the horizon. If it’s not a deserving Best Picture nominee, it’ll do till the next deserving nominee gets here.

3. PATERSON (Dir. Jim Jarmusch)

I haven’t posted a review of this film because it never came to my area, and that’s a shame because more people should see this lovely film starring Adam Driver as a bus driving poet named Paterson, who lives in Paterson, New Jersey. It’s the week in the life of our protagonist who fills a secret notebook full of his poems as he goes about his daily routine of driving his bus route, eating dinner with his wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), and having a beer at his neighborhood bar. It doesn’t sound like much happens, sure, but by the end I was cherishing every bit of the minutia that made up Paterson’s poetic existence.

2. LA LA LAND (Dir. Damien Chazzelle) Although this has been highly acclaimed by critics (it stands at a 93% on the Rotten Tomatometer), there has been a considerable amount of backlash against this modern musical starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as starcrossed lovers/Hollywood hopefuls. While I loved it, I can see the points of people who say it mansplains jazz, its leads aren’t the greatest singers, and that, despite the appearance of John Legend, it’s a pretty white movie. Still, I thought it soared far above most of last year’s releases with its wonderfully bouncy soundtrack (Gosling and Stone aren’t that bad as vocalists), sharp screenplay, and its colorfully inventive cinematography. As it’s nominated for 14 categories, it’ll take home a bunch of Oscars for sure come February 26th.

1. MOONLIGHT (Dir. Barry Jenkins) 

Right now, it looks like the Best Picture race is going to be a duel between MOONLIGHT and LA LA LAND, both of which are my two favorite films of the year. MOONLIGHT takes the #1 spot because it made more of an emotional dent on me with its realism over the pure fantasy of my #2 choice. Jenkins’ film, which tells the Miami -set story of a young African American male named Chiron who is played by three different actors (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes) representing different ages of the character as he struggles with his homosexual identity. It’s fearless in its harrowing honesty, but I bet it will be more remembered for its simple beauty. This definitely deserved every Oscar nom it got.

Spillover (click on the bold faced titles for my reviews):

HAIL, CAESAR! (Dirs. Ethan Coen & Joel Coen)

SILENCE (Dir. Martin Scorsese) Yeah, I gave this a really mixed review but I think Matthew Zoller Seitz was right when he wrote: “This is not the sort of film you ‘like’ or ‘don't like.’ It's a film that you experience and then live with.” I'm definitely still living with it.

EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! (Dir. Richard Linklater)

GIMME DANGER (Dir. Jim Jarmusch)

WEINER (Dir. Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg) 

HACKSAW RIDGE (Dir. Mel Gibson) 

A MAN CALLED OVE (Dir. Hannes Holm)

POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING (Dir. Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone)

ARRIVAL (Dir. Denis Villeneuve) This is another film I give a mixed review, but, what can I say? It’s growing on me.

HIDDEN FIGURES (Dir. Theodore Melfi)

HUNT FOR THE WILDER PEOPLE (Dir. Taika Waititi)

LIFE, ANIMATED (Dir. Roger Ross Williams)

THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK – THE TOURING YEARS (Dir. Ron Howard)

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20TH CENTURY WOMEN: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing at a indie art house near me:

20TH CENTURY WOMEN
(Dir. Mike Mills, 2016)

This is the kind of film that I wish there were more of – well observed, sharply acted dramas with vulnerable characters dealing with real-life situations.

There are no big confrontations, no convoluted crisis, no tragic circumstances – just people trying to understand each other, and how they fit in with the changing times.

Annette Benning really should’ve gotten an Oscar nomination for her performance as 55-year-old single Santa Barbara mom Dorothea, who in an early scene in this 1979-set comedy drama says to her tenant Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and her son’s friend Julie (Elle Fanning) that because “history has been tough on men, they can’t be what they were, and they can’t figure out what’s next,” she wants them to help her 17-old son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) figure out how to be a good man. “What does that even mean these days?” Dorothea asks.

Abbie, who is a flakey artsy photographer with dyed red hair, posits that Dorothea’s live-in hippy handyman William (Billy Crudup) could talk to Jamie about “guy things,” but our movie’s matriarch figure argues that they don’t connect. So Abbie shares her love of punk music with Jamie, playing him albums by the Raincoats, the Talking Heads, Siouxsie and the Banshees, et al, and lending him her feminist literature like Judy Norsigian’s “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”

Punk, a major theme in the picture illustrated by montages of photos of the low-fi icons of the era, is a divisive factor between Dorothea and her son.

When Jamie gets beat up by a bully, who spray paints “ART FAG”and “BLACK FLAG” on the sides of Dorothea’s car, she asks Abbie what those words mean. “The people who love Black Flag hate the Talking Heads,” Abbie replies adding, “the punk scene is very divisive.” “You’re all so advanced, aren’t you?” Dorothea responds in exasperation. 

This leads to one of the film's best sequences, in which Dorothea and William bond by giving a listen, and amusingly even attempt dancing, to Black Flag and the Talking Heads. 

Mixed up in all this is the matter of Fanning’s Julie climbing often through Jamie’s room window to sleep in his bed with him, but not have sex as she feels that that would ruin their friendship.

Julie tells the virginal Jamie about doing the deed with other boys to his irritation. “Half the time I regret it,” she confesses. “So why do you do it?” Jamie asks. “Because half the time I don’t regret it,” she answers.

Zumann, whose only other film credit is SINISTER 2, does a good job embodying Mills’ semi-autobiographical Jamie in all his awkwardness and fragility. The kid holds his own with a pro like Benning, who masterfully plays Dorothea by fleshing her out to be a lot more than a collection of quirks.

It’s also the best performance I’ve seen Gerwig give. The former indie “it” girl has annoyed me in many of her previous parts (talk about being nothing but a collection of quirks), but here she nails her character’s shaky grip on her freaky persona. Gerwig engrossingly inhabits the character of this odd woman who’s dealing with being diagnosed with cervical cancer. It’s the most real feeling work I’ve witnessed yet from her.

Crudup, who also appeared with Gerwig in JACKIE this year, delivers the goods as well, though his role may be the least realized of the ensemble. Fanning doesn’t stand out as much as her cast mates but puts in a nicely understated turn as the sexually curious Julie.

Although Benning got snubbed by the Academy, this film did get Mills a much deserved nomination for Best Screenplay. Mills’ dialogue is richly pointed and funny throughout, which is why I’ve quoted it so much in this review.

Mills based this film on his late ‘70s fatherless upbringing and calls it his “loveletter” to the women who raised him. It works beautifully as such as it honestly portrays these people’s efforts to relate with one another against the backdrop of the sexual revolution gone sour.

It’s like a moment mined from a treasured memory when Abbie gives Jamie a mix tape and says “These are a bunch of songs that I think my life would have been better if they’d been around when I was a teenager, so I’m hoping that if you listen to them now you’ll be a happier and more realized person that I could ever hope to be.”

It says a lot that Mills even includes then President Jimmy Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” speech in this fictionalized version of his memories. Dorothea’s reaction to the impassioned address is quite different than her friends’ grouped around the TV, one of which says “he’s finished.”

“I thought it was beautiful,” Dorothea remarks. Same can be said about 20TH CENTURY WOMEN. A film this thoroughly thoughtful and real feeling should not be overlooked.

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That Time I Met Mary Tyler Moore

In 2009, I met Mary Tyler Moore at a book signing in Las Vegas. It was for her then newly released book “Growing Up Again: Life, Loves, and Oh Yeah, Diabetes,” which I bought and stood in a long line to have her sign. When it was my turn, I said I was very happy to meet her and “you know what? I *like* spunk!” 

This, for folks who don’t know, was a reference to a moment on the first episode of her classic television sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which WJM-TV’s Six O’Clock News Producer Lou Grant (Ed Asner) said “You’ve got spunk” to Moore’s character, Mary Richards, during her job interview for Associate Producer. Mary blushed and said “Well…” but Mr. Grant (as she called him throughout the show’s run) interrupted by fiercely spouting out: “I hate spunk!”

Moore, and the people standing around us laughed at my pro spunk declaration, and that encouraged me to ask her: “What of the movies that you’ve made is your favorite?” She looked away and thought about it for a moment then replied “ORDINARY PEOPLE.” I almost jokingly said “What, not CHANGE OF HABIT?” referring to the silly yet very likable 1969 movie she made with Elvis Presley (which incidentally also featured Asner), but thankfully I thought better of it, and said (I think mumbled is more like it) something I don’t remember that I think was about how great she was in ORDINARY PEOPLE as she signed my copy of her book, then thanked her and left. It’s a great memory that I’ve been randomly replaying in my head since I heard that she passed.

Coincidentally, in the last few months I’ve been re-watching episodes here and there of The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Hulu. It’s one of my all-time favorite sitcoms, and it had been a long time since I watched the whole run (seven seasons) of it on Nick at Night so it’s been fun to revisit. For those who haven’t seen the show, I highly recommend it as I do her film of choice, Robert Redford’s 1980 drama ORDINARY PEOPLE. Moore deservedly got an Oscar nomination for her performance, and the film itself won the Best Picture Academy Award.

Also recommended: Moore’s five seasons as the spunky, Capri-pants wearing Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, her acerbic performance in David O. Russell’s FLIRTING WITH DISASTER, and, yes, her part as a nun who has to choose between Elvis and Jesus in CHANGE OF HABIT.

R.I.P. Mary Tyler Moore (1936-2017)

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