by ·Comments Off on Favorite 2016 Movies

As always, a “2016 movie” is defined as a movie released in 2016 (or the last couple years) which I had a reasonable opportunity to see (played theaters within an hour’s drive of here, or came out on blu-ray) for the first time in 2016. So, Carol is a 2016 movie, and I guess Elle and Jackie will be 2017 movies.

The ranking of some of these is shaky. I’m not sure exactly how much I like The Handmaiden or Cosmos or Hateful Eight or Everybody Wants Some!! or a couple others until I watch them again. I was going to make a separate “great but unranked” list but I’ll just wing it because who cares.

1. The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin)
2. Carol (Todd Haynes)
3. Kubo and the Two Strings (Travis Knight)
4. The Fits (Anna Rose Holmer)
5. Experimenter (Michael Almereyda)
6. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
7. Arrival (Denis Villeneuve)
8. La La Land (Damien Chazelle)
9. Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie)
10. Lemonade (Beyoncé Knowles)

11. The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos)
12. Cosmos (Andrzej Zulawski)
13. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
14. Show Me a Hero (Paul Haggis)
15. Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman)
16. The Handmaiden (Chan-wook Park)
17. The Revenant (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
18. Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater)
19. Hateful Eight (Quentin Tarantino)
20. One More Time With Feeling (Andrew Dominik)

21. Hail, Caesar! (Joel Coen)
22. Mia Madre (Nanni Moretti)
23. The Witch (Robert Eggers)
24. A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino)
25. HyperNormalisation (Adam Curtis)
26. Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman)
27. Office (Johnnie To)
28. Swiss Army Man (Daniels)
29. Sing Street (John Carney)
30. Chi-Raq (Spike Lee)

Runners-up:
The Edge of Seventeen (Kelly Fremon Craig)
The Invitation (2015, Karyn Kusama)
The Meddler (Lorene Scafaria)
Where to Invade Next (2015, Michael Moore)
Francofonia (2015, Aleksandr Sokurov)

by ·Comments Off on Favorite Recent Movies watched in 2016

Last year I focused on movies that were five years old and made a 2010 Redux list. I tried that again this year, watched a bunch of 2011 movies that I hadn’t seen, but really was trying to catch up on recent movies in general. So instead of a 2011 Redux, here are the best things I saw from the last five years.

1. Ernest & Celestine (2012, Stéphane Aubier)
2. Song of the Sea (2014, Tomm Moore)
3. When Marnie Was There (2014, Hiromasa Yonebayashi)
It was a good year for animation at our house.

4. Night Moves (2013, Kelly Reichardt)
5. La Sapienza (2014, Eugène Green)

6. Call Me Lucky (2015, Bobcat Goldthwait)
7. Vivan las Antipodas (2011, Victor Kossakovsky)
8. Goodbye First Love (2011, Mia Hansen-Løve)
9. Killing Them Softly (2012, Andrew Dominik)
10. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (2011, Johnnie To)

11. Sicario (2015, Denis Villeneuve)
12. The Mill and the Cross (2011, Lech Majewski)
13. Life of Riley (2014, Alain Resnais)
14. The Arbor (2010, Clio Barnard)
15. The Imposter (2012, Bart Layton)

16. Norte, the End of History (2013, Lav Diaz)
17. Tom at the Farm (2013, Xavier Dolan)
18. The Color of Noise (2015, Eric Robel)
19. Bridge of Spies (2015, Steven Spielberg)
20. The Deep Blue Sea (2011, Terence Davies)

21. The Day He Arrives (2011, Hong Sang-soo)
22. Life Without Principle (2011, Johnnie To)
23. Monsieur Lazhar (2011, Philippe Falardeau)
24. The Woman (2011, Lucky McKee)
25. The Big Short (2015, Adam McKay)

by ·Comments Off on Favorite Older Movies watched in 2016

Older than 2011, that is.

1. Shoah (1985, Claude Lanzmann)
2. Shirin (2008, Abbas Kiarostami)
3. The Band’s Visit (2007, Eran Kolirin)
4. An Affair to Remember (1957, Leo McCarey)
5. Gilda (1946, Charles Vidor)

6. Le Grand Amour (1968, Pierre Etaix)
7. La Ciénaga (2001, Lucrecia Martel)
8. Summer Wars (2009, Mamoru Hosoda)
9. Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1998, Julio Medem)
10. Pit and the Pendulum (1961, Roger Corman)

11. Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010, Banksy)
12. Targets (1968, Peter Bogdanovich)
13. Secret Sunshine (2007, Lee Chang-dong)
14. Rosetta (1999, Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
15. Innocence (2004, Lucile Hadzihalilovic)

16. Bend of the River (1952, Anthony Mann)
17. Ponyo (2008, Hayao Miyazaki)
18. Hyènes (1992, Djibril Diop Mambety)
19. Black Christmas (1974, Bob Clark)
20. Whispering Pages (1993, Aleksandr Sokurov)

by ·Comments Off on Special Screenings and HD Rewatches, 2016

Most of these I first watched 20+ years ago on videotape. Some I didn’t remember at all, a few I remember quite well, and a few I’ve never seen before. Half I watched at home on shiny new blu-rays, the rest at The Ross or the Alamo. Ranked based on presentation and rediscovery (I don’t actually like Varieté and Mad Max 2 better than Colonel Blimp). It makes sense to me. I don’t have to explain myself to you people.

1. Variety (1925, E.A. Dupont)
With live music by Alloy Orchestra at The Ross

2. Possession (1981, Andrzej Zulawski)
3. The Devils (1971, Ken Russell)
4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978, Philip Kaufman)
Three of my favorite horrors, beautifully presented at the Alamo

5. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981, George Miller)
6. Ali (2001, Michael Mann)
7. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, Jacques Demy)
8. The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy)
9. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992, David Lynch)
10. News From Home (1977, Chantal Akerman)

11. Only Yesterday (1991, Isao Takahata)
12. Wendy & Lucy and Old Joy (2008, Kelly Reichardt)
13. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004, Hayao Miyazaki)
14. Phantasm (1979, Don Coscarelli)
15. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943, Powell & Pressburger)

by ·Comments Off on Favorite Shorts of 2016

I watched 200+ shorts this year, so this took some figuring out.

1. The Exquisite Corpus (2015, Peter Tscherkassky)

2. Masterworks of Avant-Garde Film

This blu-ray from Flicker Alley needs its own section, or else its individual films would’ve dominated the shorts list. Some revelatory works, beautifully restored. Links to the writeups, and my favorite creators from each:
Part one – Robert Florey, Ralph Steiner, Jay Leyda, Fischinger, Watson & Webber
Part two – Maya Deren, Rudy Burckhardt, Bute & Nemeth
Part three – Jim Davis, Hilary Harris, Bruce Baillie, Francis Thompson
Part four – Larry Jordan, Bruce Posner, Brakhage & Solomon

3. Lumière!

I’ve only watched part of the disc so far, so look for the second half to turn up on next year’s list.
Chapters 1 & 2
Chapters 3 & 4

4. Der Apfel (1969, Kurt Weiler)
5. Father and Daughter (2000, Michael Dudok de Wit)

6. Animations by Rein Raamat

Lend (1973)
a bunch more

7. Piper (2016, Pixar/Alan Barillaro)
8. Black Soul (2000, Martine Chartrand)
9. The Danish Poet (2006, Torill Kove)
10. Jammin’ the Blues (1944, Gjon Mili)

11. Four by Vuk Jevremovic

12. Uncle Yanco (1967, Agnès Varda)

13. By Brakhage, Volume 2
Program 2 (1967-1976)
Program 3 (1972-1982)

14. Spies (1943, Chuck Jones)

15. Carmen and Papageno (1933/35, Lotte Reiniger)

16. False Aging (2008, Lewis Klahr)
17. Lorenzo (2004, Disney/Mike Gabriel)
18. Harvie Krumpet (2003, Adam Elliot)
19. Blinkity Blank (1955, Norman McLaren)
20. We Can’t Live Without Cosmos (2014, Konstantin Bronzit)

by ·Comments Off on 2016 Movies To Watch

Not every 2016 must-see, but a few notable ones.

I don’t understand theatrical distribution, never know what’s gonna play in town. Some movies I definitely missed or they came out on video without playing theaters here. Some have either been announced to play here in Jan/Feb or IMDB lists a U.S. release in 2017. And some exist in that Queen of the Desert limbo where nobody’s currently talking about it and you can’t tell if it’s opening next weekend or in six months or never. Anyway the distinction is important when deciding what’s safe to watch on video.

Movies I (Probably) Missed:

April and the Extraordinary World
Hello, My Name Is Doris
Manchester By The Sea
Kate Plays Christine
Creative Control
Under the Shadow
American Honey
Lo and Behold
Cameraperson
Indignation
Happy Hour
Creepy
Fences
Loving
Krisha
Demon
13th

Movies (Probably) Still to Come:

I Am Not Your Negro
The Lost City of Z
Personal Shopper
The Red Turtle
Things to Come
The Salesman
Toni Erdmann
Fire At Sea
Evolution
Paterson
Julieta
Silence
Jackie
Elle

Movies In Limbo:

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki
Yourself and Yours
The Ornithologist
The Dreamed Path
Hermia & Helena
A Quiet Passion
Endless Poetry
Voyage of Time
Son of Joseph
Daguerrotype
Kékszakállú
Aquarius
Christine
Nocturama
Neruda
Tower

by ·Comments Off on Goodbye First Love (2011, Mia Hansen-Løve)

Paris, 1999: Sullivan and Camille are young and in love. He moves to South America, letters arrive less frequently, and flash forward to 2003, Camille has a serious haircut and is taking architecture courses. We see scraps of her life as the years go by, trying to get over Sullivan, dating married professor/architect Lorenz, moving in with him. When Sullivan finally returns to Paris, they get together, but not for long. “I’m leaving you because it’s too late or too soon to start again.”

My first Hansen-Løve movie and it’s a good one, with the beautiful Lola Crèton (Justine in Bastards) made ever-more beautiful by regular Jacques Audiard cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine. The look sometimes made me think of Rohmer, but the way the story and the scenes moved was something else, which I’m apparently not smart enough to describe accurately (Peter Labuza says “sensually naturalistic yet carefully calculated frames“).

In fact I have a hard time defining what makes this a great movie, but I’m convinced that it is. The talk about light in building design reminded me of La Sapienza, a movie I rated more highly than this one on a year-end list, but they could easily switch positions. Ben Sachs’ article in Mubi is a good one:

The movie seems to advance by intuition … Nothing happens comfortably or predictably: Hansen-Løve will devote several minutes to a seemingly mundane action, then advance the plot several months into the future with a simple, unassuming edit. (The greatest elisions, usually skipping over a few years at a time, are denoted by slow fade-outs that suggest the line breaks in a poem.) … The film ends abruptly, and yet at exactly the right moment. Hansen-Løve doesn’t sustain Camille’s final epiphany, which only makes it feel more true to life. The character, now a grown woman capable of elegizing her youth, hasn’t experienced a lifetime of love and regret – she only thinks that she has.

by ·Comments Off on Los Muertos (2004, Lisandro Alonso)

A straightforward journey film. Vargas is released from prison, then rides and walks and canoes to deliver a letter to his friend’s wife and to find his own daughter, slaughtering a goat on-camera along the way.

Final moments alive for this goat:

I’d read that Alonso’s first three features were more realistic than the crazy-looking Jauja (also a journey movie where a solitary man looks for his daughter) and was afraid they’d be a drag to watch, but I needn’t have worried. Wish the DVD had looked better, though.

Quintín on the opening:

Alonso went on location with a cameraman and shot a scene – actually, one long take – of the main character holding a knife in his hand, leaving behind the bodies of his dead brothers: a mysterious, intriguing sequence with sophisticated camera movements and a sense of tragedy. The blood theme was there, as were the dead of the title. It was a highly remarkable, virtuoso shot. And a shot that made money. Shown to foundations, producers, sales agents and TV buyers, this homeopathic sample allowed the movie to be finished.

by ·Comments Off on Punch-Drunk Love (2002, PT Anderson)

Rewatched on the fancy new blu-ray. I’m not this movie’s biggest fan (some of my favorite film critics revere it) but its depiction of two socially awkward people in love is pretty delightful to watch, and feels more true than your Silver Linings Playbook and other recent attempts. The plot reads like a total Little Miss Sunshine quirk-fest (man finds harmonium on the street, gets robbed and stalked by phone sex operators, buys thousands of puddings in order to make a big romantic gesture) but in practice it never seems lame or trite. This time around I appreciated how the music gets weirder, pinging and scratching, according to Sandler’s frame of mind.

A. Cook:

There is an attractive spontaneity here that is largely absent elsewhere. More importantly it is the first, and perhaps only, Anderson film that feels wholly his. It is much harder to pick out the filmic references this time around. No doubt both Boogie Nights and Magnolia were intense labours of love but this film shows Anderson free from the shackles of Scorsese, Altman and his other inspirations and free from audience and critical expectation.