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| Visual recreation of me rolling through the New Year! |
This year was a good year for superhero films…well this year was more of a decent year…okay really there were only three outright good superhero films and 2/3rds of them were made by Marvel (the other third being Deadpool). At this point Marvel has become such an unstoppable monolith of high-quality, high-stakes, high-flying entertainment that giving them a spot on this list is done so pretty much begrudgingly. Yet there’s no denying Captain America: Civil War isn’t just good but damn good, both as a piece of pop-culture entertainment and a well written, well plotted continuation of the MCU soap opera. Sure there’s some mumbo-jumbo about global politics which only now seems more salient, but what really made Civil War stick were the characters. That and that big climactic fight at the airport; seriously that s**t was lit!
While superhero films did take a bit of a tumble, animated films did in fact have a pretty good year. Seems there was a little something for everyone, whether you’re into the artisan detail of Kubo and the Two Strings, the profane glee of Sausage Party, or the predictable sweetness of Finding Dory. Then of course there’s The Secret Life of Pets which I’m told audiences liked…for some reason. Then there’s Moana who took the Disney Princess tradition and went in new and interesting directions with it. Armed with a delightful voice cast and an incredible musical soundtrack provided by Opetaia Foa'i, Mark Mancina and Lin-Manuel Miranda, Moana might just rival Frozen (2013) as the best animated musical in recent memory.
Hell or High Water was one of the first unexpected surprises of the year. The elegy western about two brothers going on a bank robbing spree was so gracefully told and so wracked with baked-in tension that it basically stands in a category all its own. The cast is excellent all around with particular praise given to Ben Foster and Jeff Bridges who plays the Texas Ranger tasked with bringing the brothers down. Despite rave critical reviews and heavy attendance by the older set, Hell or High Water didn’t get as much attention by mainstream audiences as it deserved so if you have a chance, seek this slow-cooking crime thriller out.
Growing up is so hard to do. This year we got our fair share of coming-of-age stories; some good (The Edge of Seventeen) some not so good (I’m Not Ashamed). Though this year’s most joyous and colorful coming-of-age tale has to be Sing Street. For those who haven’t seen it, Sing Street is the tale of Dublin native Conor Lalor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) who starts a fledgling new wave band to impress a girl. What results is something of a conventional love story with unconventional results, aided by a killer soundtrack and nostalgia that doesn’t seem like a cynical marketing ploy. If you’re not smiling and giggling like a goofy Catholic school boy the moment the band first meet up to shoot a music video, you clearly have never tried to be creative.
Of course, Sing Street isn’t the only coming-of-age story in the mix. Moonlight, the story of a young black youth’s quest to find himself has to be one of the most emotionally engrossing films to come out this year. Three separate actors play the young Chiron as he comes to terms with his sexuality amid the backdrop of War on Drugs era Miami. While doing so he treads the worn path of far too many black youth and make you not just bear his burdens but see, taste, touch and smell them too.
Hands down the biggest surprise of the year was Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a New Zealand import directed by famed native Taika Waititi. Waititi has become one of my favorite contemporary directors as of late; fancying himself a hybrid of a Loachian humanist and Monty Python. In this little tale set in the New Zealand bush, Ricky, a young, wannabe street tough is forced to rough it in the backwoods with his would-be adoptive father. Due to a series of unfortunate events, Ricky and Hec (played by a grumpy Sam Neill) end up on the run from authorities and must work together to avoid capture. Part heart-warming father-son story, part survival movie, Wilderpeople is steeped in light-hearted humor that can’t helped but be loved.
Manchester by the Sea is a challenging, heart-wrenching but ultimately rewarding movie about grief and how humans of all stripes deal with loss. Told with uncommon poignancy by director Kenneth Lonergan, this kindly Massachusetts marvel truly shines with the inclusion of Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams as a loner who recently lost a brother and his estranged ex-wife respectively. This movie is just devastating in its sincerity and I can’t help but admire the way it approaches its subjects with patience and grace to spare. Manchester by the Sea is still in theaters so if you aren’t scared of getting a little melancholy this holiday season, this movie may just be for you.
A riveting and tense alien-invasion film whose main source of tension is getting humans and aliens to speak to each other? Surely you jest. Yet Arrival did just that this year, taking a setup that most storytellers would use to scare the crap out of you and make it a beckoning to reach the angels of our better nature. Amy Adams stars as that better angel; a talented linguist whose approach to the aliens just might save us all from killing each other. This movie is amazing both thematically and in its ability to bend the arc of the story in interesting ways while still managing to be grounded. It’s definitely one of those movies you can’t help but discuss and argue about afterwards.
While a sizable portion of the United States was rejecting multiculturalism this election, earlier in the spring Disney was in rare form embracing people (or rather animals) of all walks of life. Zootopia is the story of a determined little bunny desiring to become a big city police officer. After a lot of hard work, she makes it on the force, only to be designated parking duty by the city’s gruff police chief. But after a mystery involving missing predators ends up in Judy’s hands, it’s up to her and a streetwise fox to solve the crimes before things in Zootopia go haywire. Not only is Zootopia a pretty impressive and engrossing yarn but the moral messaging of the film, in a basic sense is about accepting others and working through your differences to address larger problems. It’s easy to understand messaging, but it’s told with such reverence to character and story that it can’t help but be one of the best films of the year.
Yet out of all the films on this list, the most fun you can possibly have at a movie theater this year is sitting down and watching La La Land. Everything about this movie is near perfect from its casting, to its memorable music, charming dance numbers, romantic imagery, infectious choreography and beautiful montage camerawork and editing. The story couldn’t be simpler; boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, they both lean on each other so they chase their dreams in the glistening streets of Tinseltown. Immediately after watching this movie every audience member was in full rictus. La La Land is an uncompromising crowd-pleaser that has the temerity to be charming, light-hearted and fun while still having the dramatic chops to back all that fluff up. I loved this movie and chances are if you see it, you’ll love it too.
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