In an age where digital streaming services offer a dizzying array of TV and music options that can easily be enjoyed at home, the simple act of going to see a movie on the big screen threatens to become an endangered pastime. That's why the need for new filmmaking voices is arguably now more vital than it ever has been--their artistic passion serves as proof that the medium is still very much alive and kicking. Luckily, if the work that many relatively green filmmakers turned out in 2016 is any indication, film will have no trouble thriving in the near future.
This may seem like a surprising assertion coming from a dyed-in-the-wool lover of veteran auteurs such as myself, and to be sure, household names like Scorsese and Eastwood contributed dependably brilliant work in 2016. But when noticing that a little over half of the films on my list below of the best movies of the year come from directors who are fewer than five films into their career, a sense of optimism over where filmmaking newbies are taking the art form is only natural.
So while the year proved that inexperience is not an ideal quality for a White House candidate, it also confirmed that the same quality can be something much more positive for a director--a starting point for a possible future master. Here are the best films of 2016:
1. La La Land (Damien Chazelle). Opening with a dazzling song-and-dance number set in maddeningly congested LA freeway traffic and captured in a fluid simulation of a long take, La La Land immediately announces that Whiplash writer-director Chazelle has taken to his biggest canvas yet with confident showmanship. The sequence is perhaps even more impressive when viewed as an analogue for the movie as a whole; finding exuberance within the hell of gridlock reflects the film's complex, exquisite balance between unbridled joy and crippling melancholy, the escapism of movie fantasy and the harsh inescapability of reality. Ryan Gosling and especially the emotionally luminescent Emma Stone are perfectly cast as the central pair of aspiring-artist lovers, in that they exude both the glow of young love and the eventual heartache of realizing that love may ultimately not be enough to sustain their union.
2. American Honey (Andrea Arnold). The tale of a young woman (remarkably intuitive newcomer Sasha Lane) who escapes her impoverished, dysfunctional home life to join a group of wildly misbehaving teenagers for a life on the road selling magazine subscriptions, American Honey carries echoes of Oliver Twist and the carefree Lost Boys of Peter Pan. But in the hands of writer-director Arnold, making her best and most ambitious film yet, it's also its own, thrillingly original thing--a scrappy, empathetic, and immersive epic of the open road. Arnold and director of photography Robbie Ryan offer glimpses of the American heartland nearly tactile in their vividness and detail, and the young cast performs with unfussy spontaneity. This is a movie you don't just passively watch--you truly experience it.
3. Paterson (Jim Jarmusch). So many of writer-director and indie-film pioneer Jarmusch's films are treasured primarily for how effortlessly cool they are in fusing style, music, and deadpan humor that it's easy to overlook the heart he puts into his work. But that's not a mistake anyone could make with Paterson, his most gentle and humane movie yet, and arguably the one most grounded in recognizable, everyday experience. The title character (Adam Driver) is a New Jersey bus driver and aspiring poet who sees his daily routine not as a grind, but as a chance to appreciate the little events and details that make every day special in spite of familiar work and home obligations. Driver's quiet, soulful performance is perfectly matched with Golshifteh Farahani's feisty energy as his wife. Jarmusch treats these characters, their dreams, and the working-class community they reside in with a subtly touching warmth.
4. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins). It's always a treat when a film's ambition and profundity sneak up on you, which is the case with writer-director Jenkins' sophomore effort, Moonlight. Divided into three chapter-like segments, Moonlight follows young, black Miami resident Chiron from childhood to adulthood as he wrestles with his homosexuality (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes achieve remarkable performance harmony playing Chiron at three different stages of his life). Each segment is so well-observed, and so assured in mixing voluptuous style with unblinking realism, that the cumulative portrait of a man reckoning with how time ultimately reveals your real self and not the person societal pressure demands you to be lands with surprising force. The richness extends to the supporting performances, including beautifully nuanced work by Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris as complicated parental figures in Chiron's life.
5. Silence (Martin Scorsese). At one point early on in this gorgeous and powerful spiritual epic, Portuguese missionary Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield, in a performance of enormous physical and emotional commitment) says of the Japanese villagers that he ministers over, "I worry they value signs of faith over faith itself." And yet isn't that exactly what Rodrigues does when, later in the film, he refuses to apostatize by stepping on an image of Christ, even when his refusal threatens the lives of other Christians? Such thorny conundrums lie at the heart of this breathtakingly complex film, which reveres the courage it takes to hold onto one's religious beliefs in the face of violent opposition while at the same time criticizing the way that spiritual devotion can be twisted into pride, arrogance, and colonialist impulses. And Scorsese's masterful visual storytelling ensures that repeat viewings will unearth as many hidden cinematic treasures as there are intellectual and philosophical issues to grapple with.
6. Sully (Clint Eastwood). Throughout his directorial career, Eastwood has been fascinated with the demythologization of heroism. In the moving, brilliantly structured Sully, he continues this exploration not by undercutting the achievements of the titular pilot (Tom Hanks), who executed a tricky emergency landing of a passenger plane on the Hudson River, but by showing how bureaucratic, bottom-line-obsessed ass-covering and post-traumatic self doubt chip away at the perception of heroism. The ever-dependable Hanks faultlessly charts the dark interior journey of a man forced to question his life's work, while the non-chronological storytelling mirrors his troubled psyche. Eastwood ultimately validates the aptitude of Sully and everyone else on that legendary '09 flight, revealing that the true "miracle" on the Hudson was bravery and professionalism under pressure.
7. Hail, Caesar! (Joel and Ethan Coen). The story of a beleaguered Hollywood studio fixer (Josh Brolin, effortlessly balancing anachronistic stylization and recognizable humanity in his performance) trying to rescue a marquee star (George Clooney) who's been kidnapped by Communists allows peerless writing-directing team the Coen Brothers to hop freely between genres. As Brolin's Eddie prowls the studio lot, we see glimpses of various films being shot--an extravagant biblical epic, a toe-tapping musical, an elegant drawing-room comedy, you name it. This reflects the movie-saturated fabric of Eddie's day-to-day life, and on a deeper level, the existence of the film-savvy Coens themselves. And as the film's characters turn to religion or politics to give life meaning, the Coens seem to be arguing that the movies can act as a site of refuge and worship for some searching souls. It's a notion worth hailing, as is this witty, layered delight of a comedy.
8. O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman). Along with FX Networks' alternately witty and tragic TV series American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, Edelman's dizzyingly dense, nearly-eight-hours-long documentary marked a year in which the '90s murder trial of "the Juice" surprisingly formed the basis for some of the most provocative long-form entertainment out there. O.J.: Made in America played in select theaters before airing in installments on ESPN, and Edelman's gifts for storytelling momentum and fluid non-fiction montage justify its categorization as cinema. The portrait that emerges of a black celebrity who sought to "transcend" race in shaping his image until it became a legal convenience for him to embrace his blackness makes this documentary a thoughtful, searing meditation on wealth-protected hypocrisy and the sad inability of America's racial wounds to heal.
9. Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie). Not only are the central characters in this exceptionally flavorful modern-day Western richly three-dimensional; every fringe-dwelling bit player manages to stand out with a salty personality of his or her own. So while director Mackenzie deserves credit for nailing the dry, pungently sweaty atmosphere of this Texas-set yarn, writer Taylor Sheridan (Sicario, also excellent) is the film's MVP, granting everybody onscreen dialogue so tangy that you can't wait to hear what they say next. A quietly commanding Chris Pine and the brilliantly mercurial character actor Ben Foster form an affecting fraternal bond as bank-robbing brothers, while the other side of the law is represented by a pair of Texas Rangers played by a deadpan Gil Birmingham and national treasure Jeff Bridges, who has aged into a true poet of grizzled masculine authority.
10. Zootopia (Byron Howard and Rich Moore). Bringing animated Disney family fare boldly into this current age of political divisiveness and caught-on-webcam police racism, Zootopia is a ballsy, unapologetically topical allegory of institutional and cultural bigotry. The colorful, elaborate design of the animal-populated metropolis the film takes place in and the imaginative chase sequences will delight kids, while adult Chinatown fans will be absorbed by the twisty, corruption-uncovering mystery narrative. And viewers of all ages will value how the story of headstrong bunny Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) overcoming others' prejudices to become a cop, only to have to face her own deeply ingrained species-ism when circumstances force her to work alongside con-artist fox Nick Wilde (an appropriately sly Jason Bateman) imparts vital lessons on how best to navigate within a society overly fixated on reductive labels of "predator" and "prey."
And here are the next ten runners-up:
11. Manchester By The Sea (Kenneth Lonergan). The way that family members can messily go from combativeness to affection with each other in the blink of an eye is rarely captured accurately in movies, but this funny, emotionally raw drama gets it right. Writer-director Lonergan is just as unerringly honest when it comes to grief, showing how past tragedy keeps psychologically paralyzed janitor Lee (Casey Affleck) from being able to stay in his hometown and care for his nephew (Lucas Hedges) after his brother dies. In a piercing, lived-in performance, Affleck reveals the soul of a broken man.
12. Kill Zone 2 (Soi Cheang). Don't let the title fool you--this is a stand-alone feature with allegedly little connecting it to its (unseen-by-me) predecessor. All one needs to bring to it is a love of dazzling fight choreography and operatic emotion. The story of a Thai prison guard (Tony Jaa) whose daughter urgently needs a bone-marrow transplant teaming up with a Hong Kong undercover cop (Wu Jing) to take down an organ-trafficking ring cleverly foregrounds the action genre's usually unspoken reliance on the frailty of the human body. That reliance also manifests itself in stunning action sequences that showcase both the acrobatic wonder and the bone-snapping limits of the body's abilities.
13. The Nice Guys (Shane Black). With a body of work that includes The Long Kiss Goodnight, which he wrote for director Renny Harlin, and his directorial debut Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Black has become a specialist in wildly entertaining, noir-tinged buddy action-comedies. This estimable tradition continues with The Nice Guys, which pairs wry, beefy Russell Crowe as a brutish enforcer with an uninhibited, never-funnier Ryan Gosling as a drunken private eye. As the private eye's no-nonsense daughter, Angourie Rice is a revelation. Black gives this trio plenty of hilarious dialogue to deliver, and is just as generous when it comes to offering up vivid LA-in-the-'70s atmosphere and inspired, absurdist non-sequiturs.
14. 20th Century Women (Mike Mills). Considering that writer-director Mills' autobiographical portrait of his father's late-in-life coming out of the closet, Beginners, earned Christopher Plummer an Academy Award, it's a shame that Mills' latest cinematic memoir didn't even score an Oscar nomination for the magnificent Annette Bening's note-perfect performance as a Santa Barbara-dwelling single mother based on Mills' own mom. At least the Academy rightfully recognized Mills' screenplay with a nomination; its expansive exploration of generational divides, cultural shifts, and female sexuality, as well as the way it intermittently digresses to fill in characters' backstories, make it pleasingly novelistic. By the time this warm, compassionate film came to a close, I felt like I was saying goodbye to real people I had met.
15. Pete's Dragon (David Lowery). The best of Disney's recent remakes of their own properties is this touching re-do of their 1977 live-action/animation hybrid, which replaces the cheesiness of the original film with a disarming gentleness. Director and co-writer Lowery, who previously demonstrated a keen eye for nature in the indie Ain't Them Bodies Saints, allows the scenes of orphan Pete (Oakes Fegley) and his dragon pet/guardian Elliot frolicking in the Pacific Northwest woods play out with an organic patience. That way, when Pete must leave Elliot behind for civilization and life with a kindly park ranger's (Bryce Dallas Howard) family, the tears that flow feel fully earned. Lowery and his team of CGI wizards make Elliot so authentically dog-like that those tears will be especially plentiful for those of us who have ever lost a dear canine friend.
16. Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater). During one bong-fueled discussion in writer-director Linklater's hangout movie par excellence, a stoner riffs about "finding the tangents within the framework." In a way, that's what Linklater has done throughout his remarkable career. He takes a strict timeline--in this case, the weekend before a college baseball team in '80s-era Texas begins the schoolyear--and then sets a loose, conversationally free-wheeling rhythm within that timeline. The film's characters, for all their testosterone-powered braggadocio, prove to be socially adaptable enough to fit in wherever they party--be it at a discotheque, a punk club, or a drama-major shindig. Their openness is exceeded only by Linklater himself, whose affection for these youngsters proves contagious.
17. The Fits (Anna Rose Holmer). They don't call 'em "motion pictures" for nothing, which is something that impressively assured debut filmmaker Holmer intuitively understands. She fills every frame of this bracingly unique, hypnotic coming-of-age portrait with dynamic movement, which is fitting for the tale of an 11-year-old tomboy (magnetic newcomer Royalty Hightower) used to boxing training with her older brother joining the more feminine realm of a dance troupe. As members of the troupe begin falling prey to mysterious seizures, the film's mood is caught between eerie dread and euphoric empowerment--in other words, exactly the psychological tightrope many young girls find themselves on.
18. 13th (Ava DuVernay). The title of DuVernay's impassioned, purposefully infuriating documentary refers to the Constitution's 13th Amendment, which bans slavery "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The film persuasively charts how that exception has been exploited to keep black Americans oppressed, whether via the criminalization of civil-rights activism or the beefing up of punishment for minor drug charges. Numerous depressing recent headlines, most glaringly Trump's recent rolling back of Obama's plan to phase out private, for-profit prisons, make this necessary viewing for Americans wondering what happened to their country.
19. Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier). Combining the lean efficiency of a B-movie thriller with the shadowy aesthetic beauty and gruesome shock tactics of art-horror films, Green Room is wickedly unrelenting in its intensity. Writer-director Saulnier, considerably upping his game after the promising if ultimately underwhelming revenge movie Blue Ruin, pits a wet-behind-the-ears punk band (whose members include the talented, gone-too-soon young actor Anton Yelchin) against a pack of murderous neo-Nazi skinheads for a harrowing "survive the night" scenario. Squeamish viewers will want to steer clear, but for everyone else, this is one wild, sinister ride very much worth taking.
20. Jackie (Pablo Larrain). It's always refreshing to encounter a biopic that thinks outside of the traditional, birth-to-death narrative box. An excellent example is this cinematic snapshot of First Lady Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) in the days immediately following her husband's assassination. The tight focus allows Noah Oppenheim's thoughtful script to ruminate on how a President's legacy is like a narrative that continues to be shaped after his or her death, and Larrain's strikingly poetic, non-chronological storytelling feels just as liberated. Portman gives an emotionally forceful, intelligently layered performance, and is aided by a haunting score by Mica Levi that feels like a direct expression of the character's grief-stricken fragility.
And here are ten more of the year's standouts:
21. Captain America: Civil War (Joe and Anthony Russo).
22. Cafe Society (Woody Allen).
23. Weiner (Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg).
24. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone).
25. Little Men (Ira Sachs).
26. High-Rise (Ben Wheatley).
27. De Palma (Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow).
28. Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke).
29. My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin).
30. My Life as a Zucchini (Claude Barras).
Special Recognition for Non-Eligible Work: Beyonce's boldly abstract video album Lemonade (Jonas Akerlund/Beyonce Knowles Carter/Kahlil Joseph/Melina Matsoukas/Dikayl Rimmasch/Mark Romanek/Todd Tourso), which first premiered on HBO, and the infectiously joyous, only-on-Netflix concert film Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids (Jonathan Demme) didn't play in theaters, but they turned music into pure cinema.
As Yet Unseen: Chevalier, Dog Eat Dog, Fire at Sea, Goat, Life Animated, Neruda, Your Name.
