Ah, the annual Top 10. Welcome. As you probably know from reading in the intro of every single annual Top 10 list, we film nerds tend to stress ourselves out to a ridiculous extent over our picks. There’s a lot of hair pulling, fretting and last-minute switches as you try to hone in on the select few films of the year you want to single out above all others. Usually, at a certain point, the pieces start to fall into place, but this year proved more of a struggle than usual.
It’s no original sentiment to say that 2016 was a “garbage fire” (to use the phrase of the year), and for a while there it seemed that sentiment might extend to the year’s film output as well. The summer movie season was a drag to be sure, but ultimately the year’s haul turned out to be pretty extraordinary. Even with a dry blockbuster season, there was an abundance offantastic popcorn entertainment.Horror flourished in 2016, one of the best years in recent memory by a mile. We got a new Scorcese, a new Jarmusch, a new Verhoeven, and a new Chan-Wook Park film. Yeah, it was a good year.
As ever, there are some films I didn’t catch that haunted me as I wrote this list. Foremost,SilenceandToni Erdmann. I also never got toSunset SongorKrisha. But I’m a notoriously bad watcher of documentaries (the pain is too real, man), so I’ve also missed13th,Weiner, O.J.: Made in America, andI Am Not Your Negro.
Everybody has their own way of doing Top 10 lists. I’m not saying these are the best movies made this year. Like I said, I haven’t even seen everything, so I’m definitely not qualified to make that judgment. And hey, spoiler,Manchester by the SeaandMoonlightaren’t on this list and they’re quite possibly the two most technically perfect movies I’ve seen this year. And I love them. But I love the ten movies you’ll find below just a little bit more. That’s what this list si all about for me, movies I absolutely love. I wish I had fifteen spots this year, but I didn’t. I wish we didn’t have to rank the movies, but folks love rankings. Last year I told you you’d be better off picturing the numbers as dancing monkeys. Same rules apply this year, but let’s keep things current and picture trash fires instead.
Ok. Great year at the movies, check. Hard to narrow the list down, check. Rankings are goofy, check. Right, that covers it. Let’s get on with it then…
Related:The 25 Best Movies of 2017
10. Paterson
Jim Jarmusch’sPatersonis a poetic movie about poetry that’s lovely down to its beautiful bones. There’s no sweeping arc propulsive action, just a subdued account of a magical thinking-tinged week in the life of a Paterson city bus driver, Paterson. Every day, he wakes in the arms of his loving girlfriend, played by the absurdly beautifulGolshifteh Farahani, who contrasts Paterson’s quiet, self-contained musings with flamboyant creativity that seems to pour out of her at every turn in a wash of black and white patterns. He makes a quiet breakfast, he punches the clock, he goes home, and finally, takes the dog for a walk and parks him outside the local bar where Paterson has a quiet beer before bed.
Adam Driverhas never been more charming than he is as the easygoing poet who embraces his daily routine and marvels at the small ripples that human interaction throw into the stream. As a nascent film junkie, I often found Jarmusch’s films off-putting, always beautiful but somewhat sterile, but with the with the double whammy ofOnly Lovers Left AliveandPaterson, I’m a late-stage convert.Patersonis enchanting and funny to watch, but it’s bigger strength is in the near meditative quality it possesses. When you walk out ofPaterson, you take a piece of the mindset with you. If only temporarily, there’s a sense of restored calm; a seed of goodness and beauty and art that is yours to keep and foster, and if you listen to what the film has to say, hopefully share with the world.
9. The Witch
Directorial debuts don’t get much better than whatRobert Eggerspulled off withThe Witch, an immersive, atmospheric exercise in the existential dread of the fanatically devout. Eggers never caters to the lowest common denominator. Instead, he demands that you sit up and pay attention — and he makes sure you damn well do by mashing up some baby remains with a mortar and pestle, on screen, right out of the gate. Eggers sucks you in with a holistic vision of historical terrors, even having the guts to go with period and regionally appropriate dialect. The costuming and set design are also picture perfect, crafting an image of a bleak, desolate place in time where moralism could cost you everything and cast you out into that dim, grey cold.
The Witch is very about the terrors of the devil (remember the baby remains?) but it is also about the lurid attraction of sin and a sinister life, well lived. After all, what is the point of being pure if you get nothing but pain for it?The Witchis alternately languid and bursting at the seams with kinetic frenzy, and that keeps you ever on your toes and the devil’s pernicious presence spreads through a rigidly puritan family, unhindered by their devotion. Eggers vision is matched by the talent of his cast, especially the career-making turns from the young leadsAnya Taylor-JoyandHarvey Scrimshaw,making for the rare, challenging horror film that doesn’t just shock and scare, but burrows into your mind and sits there to rot. Would you like to live deliciously? Well you see, the thing is, I’m afraid I might.
8. The Invitation
Greif is a bitch. The loss of a loved one, especially those most tragic, will leave you coiled in the icy hot grip of despair and if you’re not careful you can drag the people you love down with you into the bitter cold.The Invitationis horror by way of grief, a real-life ghost story about how we are haunted not by specters and ghouls, but by the places we’ve been, the moments we’ve shared, and the incapacitating guilt of what we might have done differently. In directorKaryn Kusama’s hands, it’s also a needling exploration of social anxieties and the quotidian horrors of polite society dinner parties.
Kusama already directed one of my favorite horror films with her woefully underappreciated cheeky teen camp, Jennifer’s Body, but with The Invitation Kusama once again proves her insane range as a director (watchGirflightorHalt and Catch Firefor more) with a decidedly mature and restrained take on the genre. Working from a script byPhil HayandMatt Manfredi, Kusama combines the two into a fever-pitch paranoia whenLogan Marshall-Green‘s Will andTammy Blanchard‘s Eden are reunited for the first time in years after the death of their young son on the night of a fateful dinner party. Neither of them is dealing with their grief well, but the film makes it clear that one of them is crazy and Kusama has fun stringing you along, leaving either option open until the film’s brutal end. To top it all off,The Invitationboasts a delightfully cheeky stinger that feels likeTwilight Zoneby way of Beverly Hills bourgeois.
7. Green Room
For a punk rock piece of violence,Green Roomis disarmingly quiet in its chaos. Writer-directorJeremy Saulnierblew me away with his nasty, stripped down revenge fableBlue Ruinand he captured that visceral, primal black magic again with hisGreen Room. Let’s all do ourselves a favor and not waste any more time debating ifGreen Roomis a horror movie. It scared the shit out of me, so it’s a horror film to me. Maybe it doesn’t check your boxes to qualify. Whatever. Who cares? The label is irrelevant, the effect is everything. Saulnier is an absolute auteur of on-screen violence. He doesn’t glamorize it and he doesn’t exploit it, but neither does he shy away from its consequences, both immediate and far-reaching. There’s an inherent stupidity to violence; a needless nastiness that most movies fail to grasp. Saulnier not only gets it, he knows how to make his audience get it too.
The film follows our woefully underqualified heroes into bloodshed when “wrong place at the wrong time” takes on a terrifying meaning with the help of some killer neo-nazis. Led byImogen Poots,Alia Shawkatand an exceptional turn from the lateAnton Yelchin), the young neerdowells square off against the most militant of “red laces” (Nazis who have spilled blood for the cause) led by a chilling turn fromPatrick Stewart.Cast brilliantly against type, Stewart plays their charming leader Darcy with a terrifying calm and calculating confidence, and his no-guns rule means that every kill comes hard and cuts deep. I saw Green Room long, long after the hype took over, which may have dulled my first viewing of the film, but ever since it has stuck in my mind and dug into my bones. I can’t shake Green Room and I think about it more often than makes sense. That’s some damn fine cinema.
6. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
The most delightful movie of the year by a million hectares,Taika Waititi’sHunt for the Wilderpeopleis a joyous and soulful film that’s so much it;s own thing, it’s almost impossible to pin down. It’s is part coming-of-age movie, party odd couple comedy, part road movie, part fugitive thriller – and it excels at being every single one. Hinged on the performances ofSam Neillas a rural Kiwi badass, Hec, and breakout newcomerJulian Dennisonas his hip hop fuelled foster child “nephew”, Ricky Baker,Hunt for the Wilderpeoplehas a pitch-perfect balance of comedy and drama that makes for a touching, poignant experience that keeps spirits light with generous levity and downright goofiness. It also has quite possibly the most catchy song of 2016 with ‘Ricky Baker Birthday Song’, and this is the year thatPopstarcame out.
The film follows the mismatched duo into the wilderness, a journey that sparks a massive government manhunt for the two misfit outlaws who just want to be left well enough alone. Any movie that knows how to make such good use of international treasure Sam Neil is well worth your time, butHunt for the Wilderpeopleis above and beyond, a film that fires on all cylinders with Waititi’s breezy, offbeat humor paving the way for the spirited romp through the New Zealand bush. CinematographerLachlan Milneshoots the gorgeous terrain for all it’s worth, makingHunt for the Wilderpeople just as beautiful to look at it is to experience.
5. The Handmaiden
Like the best director-driven movies,The Handmaidenbears the distinction of being a film that simply couldn’t have been made by anyone else.Chan-Wook Parkbrings his characteristically lush visuals, heightened drama, and perverse lilt to the tale of greed, betrayal, lust, and love. Inspired bySarah Waterssomewhat instantly iconic piece of queer literature,Fingersmith,The Handmaidentransposes the twisted melodrama to 1930s Japan-occupied Korea where Sook-Hee (Tae-riKim) takes a job as a handmaiden to the mysterious, troubledLady Hideko (Min-hee Kim), sparking a passionate affair that reshapes their lives.
To give away any of the twists and turns would do a great disservice to Park’s masterful puzzlebox, but suffice it to say the director does some of the best work of his career with the narratively complex love story. The Handmaiden is rich and sumptuous to look at, it boasts engrossing performances, and it is, if I may,sexy as hell. Park goes for broke with the “erotic” part of “erotic thriller”, but all his wildly sexual scenes have intense emotional payoff that make them worth the salacious screen time for more than just pure titillation. The Handmaiden is gorgeous and intricate, a seductive, twisting tale of tales that is far darker than you first imagine, but also more hopeful than you’d ever expect.
4. 20th Century Women
When I first sawMike Mills’Beginners, I felt like a bespoke movie, handcrafted just for me. The music, the cast, the subject matter, the bare decency and emotional honesty of the story – it was love at first sight. That’s a rare experience and I certainly didn’t think it was repeatable, but Mills has done it again with20th Century Women. The writer-director spins another tender-hearted yarn about family, born and built. This time, the action is set in the ’70s where single mother Dorothea (an astonishingAnnette Benning), somewhat awash and bemused by the age of punk and feminist counterculture, recruits the help of her unconventional household – a punk photographer (Greta Gerwig), an easygoing mechanic (Billy Crudup), and her son’s clever, complicated bet friend (Elle Fanning) – to make sure her son grows up to be a good man.
Mills subtle sweetness cuts through the bullshit and gets right to the humanity, treating each character and especially those title women with complexity and honesty that bucks in the face of conventional film types. Instead, Mills clearly loves his characters, and he treats them as such.20th Century Womentouches on all the big L-words – life, loss, love, lust, loyalty, longing, loneliness – through Dorothea and her tight-knit, make-shift clan, who form a lively portrait of a people and time gone by.
Isabelle Huppertis exquisite. I’m tempted to leave that as my sole review of the film, but that would only cheapen its value. But it’s true, Huppert may not walk home with the big awards this year, but you’ll be damned if you find a better performance. UnderPaul Verhoeven’s direction, quite possibly the best in his career, Huppert delivers a blistering turn as Michele, a fearless businesswoman with a broken past whose self-identity comes into clarity after she is violently assaulted in her home.
I love, love, love Verhoeven’s work. Always have. But I’ve never seen him to anything quite like this. Verhoeven abandons the crude and bombastic for something a touch more refined and contemplative. Don’t get me wrong,Elleis a gutsy, brazen film, but it’s not the “Paul Verhoeven does rape-revenge” you might expect if you listen to some of the crasser descriptions.Elleis a much richer and complex film than that. It’s true Michele is raped, and it’s true there is a cat-and-mouse of sorts between her and her attacker, but that is simply the narrative skeleton around which an all-time great character study is formed.Elleis a character unlike any I’ve ever seen, a continual victim who never even considers the possibility of being victimized — she is calculating, unruly, seductive and always, always in command. You’re never sure whether to fear her, respect her, or love her. That tonal mystery applies toEllea whole, a film that has disgusted some, enchanted others. I stand enchanted and compelled, drawn in by a not so nice story about not so nice people and the catastrophic way they collide with each other.
2. La La Land
Oh,La La Land. This movie gives me heavy sighs and heart eyes. You can probably find me staring whimsically out a window, day-dreaming aboutLa La Land. If this was high school, I’d be filling my notebook with its name in calligraphy, desperately trying to land it as my life partner in a round of MASH.Damien Chazelle’sWhiplashwas my favorite movie of 2014 so my hopes were dangerously high for his followup, but the writer-director somehow exceeded my expectations with his stunning love letter to love, Los Angeles, movies, music, and movie musicals. It’s so impossibly good and pure of vision, fromJustin Hurwitz’s infectious score toMary Zophresuncanny costuming, I kind of can’t believeLa La Landexists.
La La Landhas the power to transport you, to fully captivate you not only in song and dance, but in the life and love of its duo of dreamers,Emma Stone’s aspiring actress Mia andRyan Gosling’s jazz devotee Sebastian. Chazelle paints them in bright blocs of color with a magician’s hand, transforming their oh so common LA-narrative of big dreams and low means into something singular, and as authentic as it is universal.La La Landalso has an unexpected vein of maturity and pragmatism underneath all the swooning, a bittersweet insistence on truth even in grandiosity. The film culminates in a sequence of profound beauty and sadness, it sweeps you off your feet and breaks your heart at the same time and therein captures the terrible, wonderful power of love and ambition and the places where the two may or may not meet.
1. American Honey
Some movies just speak to you. Never in my life would I have guessed that a rambling 3-hour characters study would be the film that moved me the most this year, especially given the circumstances of how I saw it. I’m a huge fan of writer-directorAndrea Arnold’sFish Tank, so I jumped at the chance to do interviews for the film at Fantastic Fest. What I did not know was that I would have to wake up at 7 AM the day after the opening night party on a California-Austin time difference to make the press screening. “Woe is me, what mistakes I’ve made,” I thought to myself, unaware that I was walking into my favorite movie-watching experience of the year. I sat totally enthralled for every single minute of the fim’s long runtime. At a certain point, I caught myself thinking, “This movie’s going to end soon. That’s so sad.” I felt like I wished I could stay in the experience of watchingAmerican Honeyforever. Indeed, I listened to the ridiculous soundtrack of trap music for weeks afterward, trying to rekindle the freewheeling, down and dirty humanity the movie captures.
Just to ensure it wasn’t a screening fluke, I watched the film again. Same as the first go, I was transfixed for every one of its many minutes. The simple but sprawling story follows newcomerSasha Laneas Star, a teenage girl with nothing but a fire inside her who leaves her grim and empty life of poverty behind to follow a charming boy (a magneticShia LaBeouf) with gaudy gold phone and a gnarly rattail on the promise of making some money and having some fun. She joins his magazine sales crew, a team of young novice actors assembled by Arnold as she found them around the country, and as a result, everything inAmerican Honeysells as downright damn authentic. Arnold packed up her ragtag crew of neophyte actors and sent them on a real road-trip, filming as they went along. The spirit she captured is inimitable. Arnold sweeps through the anarchic, unvarnished America most people won’t even look in the eye and finds beauty in the disorder.
