An Absurdist take on Soviet history that left us wondering, Is this the worst movie we will see this year? We expected funny, but it never showed up. Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev was absurd, of course, but to what point? Making a farce out of executions in a police state makes for queasy viewing, and the uninteresting, unpleasant characters hardly helped.
In order to accommodate the films I liked, I’ve cleverly divided them into three categories: domestic, foreign and documentary. The bigger issue was weighing movies I enjoyed against movies I admired. For once, my choices and the taste of the award-givers weren’t far apart.
1. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Every line of Martin McDonagh’s dialogue is fraught and measured, delivered to perfection by Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson and an equally adept supporting cast. Like a good Coen Bros. movie it is funny and serious, real and surreal, all at once.
2. LadyBird
The oft-told story of a misfit high school senior is lovingly and sensitively told and portrayed, respectively, by Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan.
3. Detroit
You are there in the 1967 race riot, then in the motel as white policemen terrorize their black suspects. Kathryn Bigelow’s meditation on race (one of three, or maybe five, on this list) is not easy to watch, but masterfully made.
4. Get Out
The racially charged setup – white girl bringing black boyfriend home for the weekend – adds a bit of misdirection to a totally fun horror movie with a wonderful ending.
5. Mudbound
Remarkably balanced parallel stories of a white family and a black family, coping, struggling in 1940s Mississippi. Another hard-to-watch reminder that for many, life is hard, often unfair and a matter of endurance.
6. Wind River
The Indian reservation is topographically, economically and psychologically bleak, but in the snowy depth of winter bleak is beautiful – the most visually stunning movie of the year.
7. The Shape of Water
Masterfully directed by Guillermo del Toro, this fantasy set in 1950s America seemed as real and alive as it was charming.
8. The Post
Spielberg takes no chances and it’s reassuring to see the good guys win; but this is no Spotlight or All the President’s Men.
9. The Big Sick
Every year deserves a feel-good romantic comedy, and the Pakistani connection spiced up this pleasant but predictable confection.
10. Battle of the Sexes
A funny and teary, thoroughly enjoyable battle in which almost everyone is a winner, and love in tennis is not a bad thing.
Documentaries
Of the 15 documentaries listed for Academy consideration, I saw five, none of which made the final short list. I can understand the exclusion of four of them, but not the following, which was my highest-rated movie of the year:
Jane
What was best: the modest and beautiful Jane Goodall, the endlessly fascinating chimps, the story of the amateur woman being accepted and feted by the scientific community, or the quiet love affair between the ethologist and the photographer? All of them were here, beautifully photographed and cleverly edited.
Foreign Film
This is admittedly a hodgepodge of movies that were released in 2016, or were seen at film festivals, or might not have made the Top Ten but deserve mentioning:
The Salesman
Julieta
The Distinguished Citizen
Darkest Hour
Their Finest
A psychological thriller with Daniel Day-Lewis, a lover and a sister all vying for dominance while his dressmaking art that makes it all possible teeters in the balance. At first I wondered, why make a movie about the Day-Lewis character, except to show off his nonpareil acting skills. What a comedown is Reynolds Woodcock from Abraham Lincoln! But as his shell (think John Saladino) is penetrated by love, no less, the triangle of relationships becomes interesting, if not engrossing. Like so many of the top films of the year, however, I have no idea what happens in the end. And the dresses could have been prettier.
A skillfully made film that affirms one great value after another: the First Amendment, women’s equality, art over commerce, truth to power and on and on. The trouble is the movie is continually running up against history we know well, raising questions: wasn’t the Post’s story merely a sideshow to the New York Times’s? Not to mention Daniel Ellsberg’s? What did it matter if the Supreme Court was going to let the Times continue publishing in three more days, anyway? Did the Pentagon Papers really change many minds about the Vietnam War? What, really, was the legal threat facing the Post? (As a lawyer – and I could envision myself in my Time Inc. days playing the role of “Roger Black” – I don’t see how the Post could be deemed an “agent” of the New York Times, thus falling within the ambit of Judge Gurfein’s injunction, by relying upon the same source.) To the extent the movie’s core was about Kay Graham’s growth, I felt a bit cheated there, as well. I couldn’t see what led up to her sudden decisive direction to publish in the face of warnings from all her advisers and the uncharacteristic uncertainty of her formerly adamant editor. I suppose her conversation with McNamara was intended to provide this justification, but the way she asked, “What do you think, Fritz?” made me doubt that a newly backboned publisher had been born. I thought Streep was fine (no more, no less), Hanks was no Jason Robards and the fun was seeing how much the bit players were made to resemble the actual historical figures (Art Buchwald, Meg Greenfield, even Floyd Abrams). Then there were the Spielbergian touches – Graham descending the court steps through a phalanx of worshipful young females – that were corny and artificial but still made me cry.
Very hard to watch but a remarkable movie, telling parallel stories of a white family and a black family, coping, struggling in 1940s Mississippi. Life can be very hard (I was reminded of my grandmother’s eking out a living on her farm in West Memphis during the Depression), life can be unfair, and there is both cruelty and kindness in humans. What was most remarkable to me was the balanced presentation: there was good and bad, strength and weakness in almost all the characters. Only “Pappy” was despicable and only the wonderful Carey Mulligan was saintly; the rest were making do as best they could. (Why Mary J. Blige received an Oscar nomination is an artistic, if not political, mystery.) In a year of movies with inexplicable endings, this fit right in; but I suppose after two hours of misery and prejudice in the mud, director Dee Rees felt the viewer deserved a break.
A completely charming film by the master director Guillermo del Toro: every scene, every shot had visual beauty and plot significance. The caricature of 1950s America was comically dead-on, but not distracting – notably, Michael Shannon’s Dick and Jane family and Richard Jenkins’s Norman Rockwell art. Shannon was wonderfully evil, Octavia Spencer provided her usual semi-comic relief, and Sally Hawkins was Oscar-worthy in the difficult role of playing sweet, empathetic and fearful (and fully nude), all without speaking. The ultimate compliment may be this: while I judged various aspects of the film for its realism, it never occurred to me to question the Amazonian amphibian, the “asset,” that was at the center of the movie. Like a magician, del Toro diverted the viewer’s attention from his trick and made his fantasy world seem real and alive.
James Ivory’s gay wet dream goes from languorous to tedious about halfway through: how many slow-motion man-boy embraces do we need, or “let’s strip to our trunks and go for a swim”? (I subsequently read of screenwriter Ivory’s disappointment that both male stars had a no-nudity provision in their contracts.) More annoying were the unconvincing attempts to establish the academic bona fides of Armie Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg’s characters. In fact, Hammer didn’t seem convincing as anything – latter-day Greek god, perhaps? – and Stuhlbarg seemed more Hammer’s younger brother than mentor. Timothee Chalamet was excellent, and the Tuscan countryside was prime Merchant-Ivory territory; but all the subplots and lunches with totally incidental secondary characters reminded me of New Wave cinema but didn’t do much for this story. I was more invested in counting all the cigarettes that got smoked.
What a nice companion to Dunkirk and The Crown, a view behind the scenes of what Churchill was going through in the days between his ascension to Prime Minister and the desperate evacuation of British troops from France. The portrait of Churchill doesn’t comport with the public view we’ve been given: here is generally disheveled, occasionally absentminded and generally out-of-touch with everyone around him. We are made to think that it was only through bucking-up by his wife, King George and his secretary (a wonderful Lily James) that he was able to find the resolution to lead his country – a not-quite-exhilarating take from a dramatic viewpoint. Nevertheless, it was hard not to shed tears when Churchill finds himself amid the common man on the tube and they show their English spirit. Best of all was the cynical look at the political process, something in too short supply, for me, in season 2 of The Crown.
After 25 minutes (!) of previews for movies we will never see, involving sci-fi or cartoon creatures and lots of noise and violence, we returned to the galaxy far, far away for a very tired story featuring very tired actors – e.g., Carrie Fisher and Mark Hammill – and the new generation, all of whom were apparently told to look earnest. An hour was all we could take. Intergalactic battle followed battle, none of which made any sense; the story lacked all novelty; and the acting, across the board, was embarrassing – even by Laura Dern, normally a favorite. The typical conflict involved scores, if not hundreds or thousands, of people dying, yet our stars inexplicably weren’t damaged. Or if they were, they quickly reattached their heads. I think you had to be part of the cult to follow, let alone enjoy, this film.
Martin McDonagh channels the Coen Brothers at their best – think Fargo and No Country for Old Men – in this small-town dramedy where the stakes are small but emotions are large. Every line of dialogue is fraught and measured, delivered to perfection by Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson and an equally adept supporting cast. I was smiling throughout in this movie about a teenage girl who was set on fire and raped, and the juxtaposition never seemed awkward. Similarly, McDormand’s character was sympathetic and unforgivable at almost one and the same time. Like No Country, we aren’t told how the story ends, which also seems fine. There is a puzzle, though: how come the figure who must have been the rapist is cleared by the DNA evidence? If he’s not the rapist, the coincidences are just too great. McDormand, of course, is great and deserves an Oscar nod: she captures the screen just by thinking.
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