Semi-Controversial Opinions on the Films of 2016

The Oscars air this Sunday night. What better time then to share some semi-controversial opinions on the films of 2016. I'm trying to make these mostly positive but if I snipe at a movie or two along the way you'll have to forgive me.


Sing Street Is Better Than La La Land

THIS SHOULD NOT BE A CONTROVERSIAL OPINION! La La Land is okay at best (good acting, okay dancing, not so great singing). I guess if you live in LA or have strong opinions about modern jazz you can make the case for La La Land. Otherwise I'm not sure that I see the appeal. But I'm not here to trash La La Land. I'm here to praise Sing Street.

This opinion is actually originally that of my friend Bernard, whose evangelism for Sing Street is what made me seek it out in the first place. What I found was a sort of melding of The Commitments, The Breakfast Club, and the Spotify playlists that my fiance just barely tolerates on long road trips. The story of kids in 1980s Dublin who decide to form a band hit me in all the right places and featured original songs that I genuinely liked. It's so disheartening that Sing Street hasn't gotten much award recognition, including being shut out in the Best Original Song category at the Oscars. If you haven't seen it: stop reading, boot up Netflix, and give it a watch.


Arrival Should Win Best Picture

Not just because it's my favorite movie of the year. It also carries with it an important message. Denis Villeneuve, who so often opts for style over substance, happens upon a script here that suits his particular brand of visual filmmaking. The way he gradually unfolds the mystery of the aliens and their language is nothing short of masterful.

The film is a tribute to the power of communication and the exchange of ideas (something that is sorely lacking in this modern world). The showcased communication is between the aliens and the tag team of Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. But the film is abound with issues related to communication (and lack thereof). The stations around the world sharing (and not sharing) their discoveries. The propaganda radio influencing some of the soldiers on site. And, of course, the pivotal phone call at the climax of the movie.

Arrival checks all the boxes needed for a "best movie of the year." Great photography, great script, powerful performances, an imaginative and timely premise, excellent technical execution, popularity with audiences, potential for rewatching for years to come, and a general burning into the psyche.

I am already mourning its upcoming loss to La La Land.


Amy Adams Gave the Best Acting Performance of the Year

See Above. Amy Adams carries Arrival in a performance that showcases the full range of emotion. I can't say enough great things about it. It bested every other piece of acting in 2016 - male or female, film or TV. And yet somehow she missed out on Best Actress contention so that Meryl Streep could get her annual nomination. Did she somehow "split the vote" because of her role in Nocturnal Animals?

Complaints about the Oscar nomination selection process (not to mention how the winners are chosen) are banal at this point. But this isn't Michael Fassbender in the little seen Shame being passed over. This is the lead actress, nominated five times prior, in a film that's nominated for Best Picture and took home nearly $175 million worldwide. If that can't land someone a nomination I'm not sure what can.


Colin Farrell and Viggo Mortensen Should Do a Movie Together

Two of my favorite actors turned in two of their best performances in 2016. Colin Farrell, a favorite of mine since he decided to be a huge weirdo just over a decade ago, added another weird, wonderful film to his weird, wonderful pantheon in The Lobster. And Viggo Mortensen added another film to his "I'm fine with full frontal nudity" pantheon in Captain Fantastic.

To any Hollywood producers or oligarchs with a casual interest in film reading this: put these two in a movie together. Please don't make it a super hero movie or a big ensemble piece where they barely interact. No, this needs to be some version of The Sunset Limited where it's just the two of them onscreen being awesome for the entire run time. I humbly volunteer to write the script.


The Kid from Manchester by the Sea Should Absolutely Win Best Supporting Actor

That movie does not work without him. For as good as Casey Affleck is, there are a lot of ways that an accomplished actor could take that lead role. You can imagine a young Al Pacino or a mid-career Joaquin Phoenix taking a spin. Even a moody version with Sean Penn (not to mention an angsty Emilio Estevez version in like 1990). This is not bad company to be in and it's not meant to shortchange Casey Affleck. He is excellent most of the time (onscreen, anyway) and especially excellent here.

But this movie works because of Lucas Hedges. It works because you can feel sorry for him, you can think he's a dick, and you can think he's hilarious all within thirty seconds of each other. With the wrong young actor this movie would have been a disaster. Not a lesser movie. A disaster. Okay maybe not the whole movie. But all the scenes involving the kid would be (which is most of the movie). If you felt too sorry for him, or felt that he was too jokey, or if he strayed too much into asshole territory the movie just wouldn't work. A lot of the credit should go to Kenneth Lonergan's writing, of course. But Lucas Hedges walks the tight rope of the script in a way that few young actors have ever been able to do.

Look, I know that Mahershala Ali is probably going to win the category. There's no doubt that he turned in a great performance as well. But he's not even in two-thirds of Moonlight and the quality of the movie changes only slightly without him.* Lucas Hedges is an incredibly effective counterpoint to Casey Affleck's lead performance. In other words, he's exactly what a supporting performance should be.

*To argue with my own point - one could argue that Ali's presence haunts the rest of the movie like a specter and that a less impactful actor would have not had the same effect. This is a fair point. Another point is that Ali's performance is arguably the high point of Moonlight and that if the film is going to get any Oscar recognition he's as good an aspect to single out as any. I hope this doesn't undermine my "absolutely" in the title of this section too much!


Scorsese Goes "High Brow" with Silence and the Result Is One of His Best Films

That's not to say that I think it's better than Goodfellas or Taxi Driver. Those are classics in their own right that sit in a rarefied air. But they're decidedly middle brow. They trade in violence and profanity while also telling stories and creating images that are unforgettable. There is nothing wrong with middle brow movies. Hitchcock, Coppola, Tarantino, and many others have made legendary careers in this area. They're among my favorite filmmakers.

But to create something "high brow" is an entirely different challenge. And it's a place where Scorsese has stumbled in the past (there is plenty of forgettable Oscar Bait on his resume). But with Silence he combines his own history as a filmmaker (including the themes of faith and the struggle for an outsider to understand society) with those of influential filmmakers (there's a lot of Kurosawa here and hints of Dreyer as well (Silence is certainly closer to Ordet than it is to Raging Bull)). It's a film with strong images, a deliberate pace that forces the viewer to become part of the community being depicted, and bold challenges of faith and preconceptions.

It's no wonder this film didn't find an audience. It's incredibly challenging - not for its depictions of torture, which are many, but for its ideas. Plenty of crowd-pleasing films feature worse scenes of torture than those depicted here. No, this film alienates in other ways. The faithful shy away from being challenged by its ideas. The faithless have no desire to bathe in the earnestness of its convictions. That leaves the audience seemingly restricted to Catholics who care about the church's history as a geopolitical force (howdy), people who have an interest in the history of Japan (howdy!), and those who personally know Jesuits well through their education (howdy again!). Really though this is a film for people who want to experience a harrowing work of high art that excels in making you intellectually uncomfortable but ultimately strengthens how you think about this world and its history. Films, and works of art in general, that can be described this way just don't tend to be very popular.

Silence has been compared to Scorsese's earlier work The Last Temptation of Christ for good reason. Both struggle with tenets of faith. Both court controversy (though only Last Temptation was subject to a popular uprising). And both are a departure from Scorsese's normal fare. By casting stars and recognizable character actors in Last Temptation, Scorsese ties the film in superficial ways to the larger body of his work. Silence marks a departure in tone and style that is an incredible achievement for an artist this deep into his career to achieve.


Andrew Garfield Got a Best Actor Nomination for the Wrong Movie

Related to the Above. Andrew Garfield's depiction of priestly zealotry here feels far more genuine than his down home holiness in Hacksaw Ridge (as a side note, Hacksaw Ridge is one of the most violent movies I've ever seen - the makers of the most recent Rambo movie probably walked out of this one wiping the sweat off their foreheads and going "yeesh!").

Andrew Garfield does a lot of things well. The best of his talents at this stage in his career seems to be fiery righteousness. It's on display in Red Riding, The Social Network, and 99 Homes. It's on display a bit in Hacksaw Ridge, though it's rarely ever "fiery." This talent is the whole crux of Silence. It's the better utilization of his core talents, a better performance, and one that I'll remember far longer than the one for which he received an Oscar nomination this year.


Werner Herzog Is Still the King of Documentary Filmmaking

This was a really strong year for documentaries. The super poorly-timed political anti-thriller Weiner, the bizarre Tickled, the epic cross-section of 1990's race relations OJ: Made in America. But nothing hit me harder this year than Werner Herzog's meditation on volcanoes Into the Inferno.

Herzog is no stranger to volcanoes. His La Soufriere saw him travel to the island of Guadeloupe after it was abandoned due to a pending volcanic eruption. He also filmed a volcano in Antarctica in Encounters at the End of the World (where he met his comrade for Into the Inferno, volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer). The film features incredible photography of volcanic eruptions, lava flow, and landscapes transformed by volcanoes throughout the millennia.

But the film, like many of Herzog's projects, is about so much more than the nominal subject. Herzog explores culture, history, and religion in Vanuatu, Iceland, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and even North Korea. He sniffs out interesting characters and locations in his inimitable way - the best human bone finder at an archaeological dig, cargo cultists who sleep inside a volcano as an initiation rite, an abandoned church built to look like a chicken. It also features a central companionship between Herzog and Oppenheimer that I never tired of watching. Another one to head to Netflix for once you finish reading.


Doctor Strange Was the Best Comic Book Movie of the Year

Despite working for three years in the comic book industry (or maybe because of it) I have a rather low opinion of most comic book movies. That being said, 2016 was a solid year in that regard. Civil War was fun, Deadpool was even more fun, and Batman vs. Superman was a hellacious pile of garbage that was the polar opposite of fun.

But only one comic book movie this year was brave enough to cast straight-to-video action superstar Scott Adkins in a supporting role: Doctor Strange.

I liked it for other reasons besides that, of course. Benedict Cumberbatch does his most effective Sherlock knock-off yet. The script has a nice balance of humor and operatic self-seriousness that any good comic adaptation needs. And the special effects are imaginative enough to fit the source material.

And Scott Adkins is in it.


Enjoy the Oscars everyone! Especially those of you who are L.A.-dwelling jazz fans!