Wow. What a year for the world. What a year for film. What a year to realize that maybe the two things are more intertwined than we ever thought. The last twelve months almost feel like they were split into a part I and a part II. Did we even remember that Richard Linklater and Terrence Malick both released films in the year’s first quarter? Those movies now feel so very long ago. When looking back on the films that impacted me the most, I realize that there was not just a fracture in time but a fracture in my taste. This year has challenged, on a truly fundamental level, my beliefs on the role and responsibility and scope and even the limit of what film might be when consumed on a mass scale.
For most of my life, I’ve been in what I will call the Ford Camp, in honor of the pantheistic creator and overlord of the worlds in Westworld (yes, I know this a film post, not a TV post, but I’ll get there). Ford believed stories were “Lies that told a deeper truth.” Like him, I believed stories, especially the ones consumed on a massive scale, i.e. movies, could change the world for the better. Could empower our best selves. Could elicit empathy. Could transform our thoughts and connect us to our fellow man. But like Ford, at some point this year, the seemingly unstoppable cruelty and rejection of rationality and fissures that continued to fracture modern society have led me to the conclusion that maybe a good story does not have the power to improve or connect us, does not change the world for the better, does not have the influence us storytellers would like it to have, because deep down, somewhere in our hard-wiring as homo sapiens, we are incapable of change, and to be good is simply unnatural.
Yes, we are capable of empathy, but maybe it’s only there when we put in the mental effort. Maybe it’s a frontal lobe phenomenon. Maybe, for the majority of us, to be good requires mental exertion and, as behavioral psychologists have shown, our default state is to not waste mental energy. Maybe we don’t care for empathy anymore, because the modern world does not require it. Maybe, like Agent Smith accuses, we really are a plague; a virus on the planet. Maybe, given the option, freed of judgment, hidden behind a veil of a digital identity or a group of likeminded defenses, good is something that we choose not to be. Maybe being good was simply a pressure imposed by society on man’s natural tendencies: To be selfish. To not think. To not put in the effort to learn. To not be empathetic.
For most of my life, I’ve been in what I will call the Ford Camp, in honor of the pantheistic creator and overlord of the worlds in Westworld (yes, I know this a film post, not a TV post, but I’ll get there). Ford believed stories were “Lies that told a deeper truth.” Like him, I believed stories, especially the ones consumed on a massive scale, i.e. movies, could change the world for the better. Could empower our best selves. Could elicit empathy. Could transform our thoughts and connect us to our fellow man. But like Ford, at some point this year, the seemingly unstoppable cruelty and rejection of rationality and fissures that continued to fracture modern society have led me to the conclusion that maybe a good story does not have the power to improve or connect us, does not change the world for the better, does not have the influence us storytellers would like it to have, because deep down, somewhere in our hard-wiring as homo sapiens, we are incapable of change, and to be good is simply unnatural.
Yes, we are capable of empathy, but maybe it’s only there when we put in the mental effort. Maybe it’s a frontal lobe phenomenon. Maybe, for the majority of us, to be good requires mental exertion and, as behavioral psychologists have shown, our default state is to not waste mental energy. Maybe we don’t care for empathy anymore, because the modern world does not require it. Maybe, like Agent Smith accuses, we really are a plague; a virus on the planet. Maybe, given the option, freed of judgment, hidden behind a veil of a digital identity or a group of likeminded defenses, good is something that we choose not to be. Maybe being good was simply a pressure imposed by society on man’s natural tendencies: To be selfish. To not think. To not put in the effort to learn. To not be empathetic.
We often think of movies as reflecting the way the world is, or was, or might be, but just as often they can reveal a world we wish the world would be. For those who read my list last year, you’ll remember it was full of dark, cold, philosophical films that were mainly driven by ideas, concepts, and themes. But 2015 was 2015. This year made me wonder as to whether the last decade, the most economically stable and safe conditions domestically in recent history (with exceptions, of course), made us hungry for the never-ending appetite of comic-book-driven, world-ending destruction, the dark dystopias, and the gritty yet easily digestible tales of good and evil. Did we yearn for an escape from our banality? Were we willing to tolerate superheroes cracking jokes to each other in the midst of tasteless death and destruction and corruption on screen because it was guilt free? Was the mass media we consumed some sort of prodrome for what was to come? For the river of fury surging below the collective surface? Was this why it was mostly white males who were consuming the ever-growing number of comic spectacles, because the tongue-in-cheek parochialism on screen was so far removed compared to other segments of the country where the darkness hit closer to home?
I’ve always separated art and artists from the effect their work might have on a viewer, but extended universe franchises are no longer art (not that they ever were, but they at least had a sense of “commercial art” to them). They are carefully controlled brands and products, and in 2016, for the first time, I wondered if they must be held to a separate standard for the way the portray the workings of the world to their consumers. The same standard a corporate line of products might be held. Because that is what they’ve evolved into. And yet, there is a semblance of a resurgence on the other end of the spectrum. On the small and mid-budget original films I thought were lost.
My list this year is filled with much different types of movies than the last. And it’s because 2016 was, for my mostly privileged self, filled with real death, real cruelty, real bleakness all around. We’ve seen that most of our neighbors, fellow Americans, and human beings, given the chance free of consequence, are cruel, mean, divided, and tribal. And it’s pushed us farther into our bubbles of comfort. Our tribes. Farther and farther away from objective reality. Many have dubbed 2016 the year of post-truth. The year of Alt-Right and Hollywood Liberal and Elite Swamp-rats and Supposedly Conniving Climate Scientists. It was the year in which my ever-present cynicism towards humanity was overwhelmingly reinforced and confirmed. It was the year in which my hope that I could make a difference on the way people think flamed out. It was a year that existentially terrified me. Because I truly wondered if art, even the most commercial of art, Hollywood, could actually do any good.
I’ve always separated art and artists from the effect their work might have on a viewer, but extended universe franchises are no longer art (not that they ever were, but they at least had a sense of “commercial art” to them). They are carefully controlled brands and products, and in 2016, for the first time, I wondered if they must be held to a separate standard for the way the portray the workings of the world to their consumers. The same standard a corporate line of products might be held. Because that is what they’ve evolved into. And yet, there is a semblance of a resurgence on the other end of the spectrum. On the small and mid-budget original films I thought were lost.
My list this year is filled with much different types of movies than the last. And it’s because 2016 was, for my mostly privileged self, filled with real death, real cruelty, real bleakness all around. We’ve seen that most of our neighbors, fellow Americans, and human beings, given the chance free of consequence, are cruel, mean, divided, and tribal. And it’s pushed us farther into our bubbles of comfort. Our tribes. Farther and farther away from objective reality. Many have dubbed 2016 the year of post-truth. The year of Alt-Right and Hollywood Liberal and Elite Swamp-rats and Supposedly Conniving Climate Scientists. It was the year in which my ever-present cynicism towards humanity was overwhelmingly reinforced and confirmed. It was the year in which my hope that I could make a difference on the way people think flamed out. It was a year that existentially terrified me. Because I truly wondered if art, even the most commercial of art, Hollywood, could actually do any good.
But some of that changed. Meditating on the movies that impacted me most this year, I realize 2016 in film has reflected my yearning for hope. The yearning that I am wrong about all of this. I believe, like David Foster Wallace, that the arms race of irony and cynicism and disregard has made us afraid of sentiment. Afraid of exposing ourselves beyond our hardened shells of indifference. Maybe the way we interact with each other today wouldn’t feel so mean and so cold and so cruel if we opened ourselves up to that sentiment instead. They say great art is created in times of turbulence and oppression and uncertainty and despair. And there was great art this year. And I gravitated towards those films that gave me a sense that cinema still had a purpose beyond the myopic, lifeless spectacles of the Marvel blockbuster.
I latched onto the films that were soaked in empathy, that were personal and kind and tender and emotional and about what it means to be a human being today. And other films that were simply escape to worlds that felt more gilded and redemptive and concerning than ours. And of course, just like the pleasure that comes from immersing yourself in extraordinarily sad music after heartbreak or suffering, one or two choices that were full immersions into that masochistically dark pleasure of misery. But even the dark and violent films on this list had tenderness at their core. Because, even if we, at our most fundamentally atavistic level, really aren’t good, I am convinced that what ultimately makes us better is our relationships towards our fellow man.
So without further ado… here are my top ten films of a most peculiar year.
**NOTE: This list is contained to domestic films that were theatrically released in multiple cities in 2016 -- this being the sample pool that both my viewing habits and my professional life leave me qualified to discuss. I neither saw enough nor have enough knowledge of this year’s trove of foreign and alternatively distributed indies to give them due justice.
I latched onto the films that were soaked in empathy, that were personal and kind and tender and emotional and about what it means to be a human being today. And other films that were simply escape to worlds that felt more gilded and redemptive and concerning than ours. And of course, just like the pleasure that comes from immersing yourself in extraordinarily sad music after heartbreak or suffering, one or two choices that were full immersions into that masochistically dark pleasure of misery. But even the dark and violent films on this list had tenderness at their core. Because, even if we, at our most fundamentally atavistic level, really aren’t good, I am convinced that what ultimately makes us better is our relationships towards our fellow man.
So without further ado… here are my top ten films of a most peculiar year.
**NOTE: This list is contained to domestic films that were theatrically released in multiple cities in 2016 -- this being the sample pool that both my viewing habits and my professional life leave me qualified to discuss. I neither saw enough nor have enough knowledge of this year’s trove of foreign and alternatively distributed indies to give them due justice.
Movies I admit to not seeing that, by the buzz, may have been contenders: Sing Street, Loving, Fences, Green Room, Kubo, Hidden Figures.
Just missed the cut: Arrival, Zootopia, The Lobster, Rogue One, Don’t Think Twice.
10. Deadpool: Because it was irreverent and refreshing and didn’t feel like the sell-out version of a superhero parody I feared it might be. And because of that sex scene. And because it was 100 hilariously entertaining, blockbuster minutes of the filmmakers and writers and Ryan Reynolds all saying what I say in my usual day-to-day umbrage: “Fuck Marvel (movies).” Look, if you want to support shameless brand marketing and $200m budget commercials expertly disguised as ‘films’ that are then interpreted by audiences and Rotten Tomatoes critics as having thematic profundity to rationalize the fact that grown men are still watching comic book movies that in actuality are knowingly promoting simplistic thinking and encouraging myopic views of a world that is anything but… then by all means, keep giving them your money. *catches breath* But I will continue my embargo with my middle finger in the air.°
(°except for Iron Man. When they took a risk on a non-super-human character, weren’t owned by Disney, and had yet to commit to their extended universe franchise commercial cash grab. Iron Man was fucking dope).
Just missed the cut: Arrival, Zootopia, The Lobster, Rogue One, Don’t Think Twice.
10. Deadpool: Because it was irreverent and refreshing and didn’t feel like the sell-out version of a superhero parody I feared it might be. And because of that sex scene. And because it was 100 hilariously entertaining, blockbuster minutes of the filmmakers and writers and Ryan Reynolds all saying what I say in my usual day-to-day umbrage: “Fuck Marvel (movies).” Look, if you want to support shameless brand marketing and $200m budget commercials expertly disguised as ‘films’ that are then interpreted by audiences and Rotten Tomatoes critics as having thematic profundity to rationalize the fact that grown men are still watching comic book movies that in actuality are knowingly promoting simplistic thinking and encouraging myopic views of a world that is anything but… then by all means, keep giving them your money. *catches breath* But I will continue my embargo with my middle finger in the air.°
(°except for Iron Man. When they took a risk on a non-super-human character, weren’t owned by Disney, and had yet to commit to their extended universe franchise commercial cash grab. Iron Man was fucking dope).
9. Knight of Cups: Because it is the only film of 2016 that I can say stands as a work of art in itself without any other intention or purpose or reason for its creation. It does not pander to an audience’s expectations of narrative, it does not care to turn a profit, and it does not care if you like it or not. It is Malick pouring out the eulogistic angst of an artist onto a canvas that only the form of moving pictures and sound could capture. And because when Rick is told, “you don’t want love, you want an experience,” the collective entirety of our modern consumer society nodded bashfully (if any of them cared to see it). And because I’m biased, as it’s about Hollywood and the biz and art and being a writer and memory and reflection and existentialism and that’s pretty much my jam. It is a breathtaking poem to Los Angeles, a macabre fusion of love letter and requiem.
8. Hell or High Water: Because this low budget, neo-western crime drama of bank robbers in the badlands of west Texas came out of nowhere to knock me off my ass with powerhouse performances from Chris Pine, Jeff Bridges, and, best of all, Ben Foster, in the role I’ve been waiting to see since those scary green eyes first caught my attention in 3:10 to Yuma. And because the best films are always about more than the events that unfold on screen, and this one cuts deep with introspection on family, poverty, capitalism, big banks, and the American dream.
7. Nocturnal Animals: Because it’s tautological to say Tom Ford knows a thing or two about style and beauty. But beneath the polished veneer, we are treated to his deliciously dark, suspiciously personal, play-within-a-play ruminations on love, art, ambition, regret, and revenge. And because Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams have the two saddest pairs of eyes to stare into the camera. And because it’s flawed in biting off more than it can chew. I’ll take an imperfect yet ambitious film that delivers a few frissons of intense thought or emotion that resonates within the chaos over a well-crafted, milquetoast movie that’s good but never great any day of the week.
6. Moonlight: Because it was like opening a dossier into the deepest, darkest, most tender, and empathetic corners of another human’s psyche, making you itch in your skin for feeling so immersed in someone else’s. Because views on masculinity and sexual identity are not the same across race, and it’s never been more important to break down our irrational but human tendency to group ‘experiences’ together. And because it is a paragon of narrative’s power to transcend the development executive’s favorite buzzword of ‘relatable’ and instead evoke lasting empathy within audiences with dissimilar and disparate backgrounds.
5. Swiss Army Man: Because, in the words of a maniacal film guru named Lee, it is the best two-hour music video you’ll ever see. And because you will laugh. And you will cry. And there is nothing else like it. Not even close.
4. Manchester by the Sea: Because Kenneth Longeran displays an unparalleled erudition in melancholia and Casey Aflleck delivers his finest performance in this tour de force of quotidian sadness. And because it’s grapples with human connection, ennui, and trauma without devolving into traditional overdramatic melodrama that most any other filmmaker would be tempted to employ.
3. Everybody Wants Some!: Because Richard Linklater described it as his spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused. Do I need to say more? … No, but I will anyway. Because it is better than Dazed and Confused (yeah, I said it. Come at me, bro). Because it has the sentiment and sweetness of its predecessor, the raucous and hilarious confusion of the young male psyche at its most litmus, but, in this 1980’s Texas college baseball-team iteration, it is immeasurably more mature, realized, and honest. And because it is nostalgic yet critical, sentimental yet acerbic, deeply personal yet eerily close to home for anyone who dove too deep into their college experience.
2. The Edge of Seventeen: Because it’s the best high school movie since Superbad, full of side-splitting riposte, earnest characters, and the oh-my-god-every-day-is-life-or-death whirlwind of emotion that comes with the 17-year-old brain. Because it will somehow make you both wish you were still in high school yet never want to go back again. And because we all had, or wish we had, a teacher like Woody Harrelson. And also Erwin.
1. La La Land: Because this was the hero 2016 needed. A parallel world that feels more kind, more grandiose, and more sentimental than the one we live in today. Because its diegesis ignored smart phones and social media and fractured tribalism and elected to focus instead on real relationships, on grand romance, on aspirations and witty repartee and things we thought were dead… including jazz! A world where even when characters have reason to be unkind it is done so with such tasteful jeu d'espirit, and when lovers encounter rough patches it is with empathy and understanding of the other’s best intentions. There are no men calling women cunts in the comments sections of websites, there are not malicious trolls hiding behind anonymous screens, there are no groups bullying the disenfranchised that they do not take the time to understand. The cruelty of our world is replaced with an empathy between characters that feels lost on us today but that gives me hope that maybe our cruelty is not a symptom of our human nature but of other factors that we can overcome. Because we are all dreamers with a penchant for gaiety, gloaming minor chords of heartbreak, and the emotional lilt of a song. And because underneath the whimsy and charm is the melancholy reality that our lives are aleatory, rolls of dice on top of rolls of dice all the way down, with a billion parallel universes reflecting a billion different outcomes for every decision we make over its course. So we might as well enjoy the ride. Oh, and because Ryan Gosling is the greatest human being alive today.
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