Tag: top ten movies of 2016

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number One

Dan Seeger

There is tremendous beauty and pain to be found in Moonlight. Written and directed by Barry Jenkins (based on the Tarell Alvin McCraney play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue), the film drops in at three points in the life of Chiron (played as a boy by Alex Hibbert, as a teen by Ashton Sanders, and as an adult by Trevante Rhodes). The film probes into the challenge of coming to terms with one’s identity while operating in a fraught society that brutally rejects the version of self that’s emerging. Growing up is difficult enough without the added strain of … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number One

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Two

Dan Seeger

I remember 1979, and I suspect that contributes mightily to my affection for 20th Century Women, written and directed by Mike Mills. I don’t mean to suggest that the film is some bland exercise in nudging nostalgia, resonating only because of echoes generated by its hollowed-out soul. This story of a young man (Jamie Fields) experiencing pivotal stretch of growing up while under the watchful eye of his mother (Annette Bening, plainly perfect) and feeling his personal shape change due the influence of a handful of other figures (including characters played by Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, and Billy Crudup) is built … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Two

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Three

Dan Seeger

I think Colin Farrell is exceptional across the entirety of Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, but I have a clear favorite moment. In dire circumstances while roaming the woods outside of the compound where he’s been staying through much of the film, Farrell’s character, David, encounters a newly disgruntled acquaintance (John C. Reilly). Farrell meets the animosity with a desperate attempt to once again ingratiate himself to the person, delivering compliments and reassurances with a stilted calm. It’s a single scene, but it encompasses so much of what I adore about The Lobster: a genial off-filter quality and unhinged creativity that … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Three

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Four

Dan Seeger

It is a pleasing irony that the year’s most accomplished film that looks to otherworldly being to drive its story is so beautifully, wisely attuned to humanity. Arrival is centered on visitors from across the universe who park their skipping stone spaceships in a perpetual hover a few stories about the terra firma of Earth, but the primary commitment is to the people who struggle through daunting communication barriers to understand the planet’s new acquaintances. As linguist Louise Banks, Amy Adams gives one of those performances that perhaps only she can: grounded deeply in qualities that are equal parts charisma, approachability, … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Four

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Five

Dan Seeger

At this point in the life cycle of Damien Chazelle’s La La Land — a winding excursion from celebration to backlash to the backlash’s backlash to the backlash’s backlash’s backlash and points beyond — it’s almost impossible to write about this modern musical without ending up with an insufferable think piece. So I’m going to lean into it. As the signature films of 2016 are bandied about, few feel more detached from our current perilous moment as La La Land. There are no shadows of social and political preoccupations to found in the story of young cultural artists falling in … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Five

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Six

Dan Seeger

Grief is easy in the movies. For filmmakers, it’s a shortcut, imbuing characters with emotions that can be grasped quickly. Beyond stating the simplest narrative fact that explains what has brought the character to sorrowful place, there’s not much internal layering that’s required. And any emergence from that aching state can feel so cathartic for an audience that trite turns of character outlook are often accepted gratefully by audiences, even if the progression doesn’t really play plausibly. But Kenneth Lonergan doesn’t do easy. With Manchester by the Sea, the writer-director doesn’t treat grief as a gloss of emotional profundity. Instead, it’s … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Six

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Seven

Dan Seeger

Hell or High Water is sharp and funny and wise. The longer it sits with me, though, the more one quality it holds grows more resonant and true. Hell or High Water is forlorn. Taylor Sheridan’s finely honed screenplay tells the story of two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) who embark on a bank robbing spree across the dry, aching expanse of Texas. It also follows the Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham) who wearily pursue the criminals. This, then, is a cops and robbers tale, bleached with the starkness of a modernized Hollywood Western. But it moves past … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Seven

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Eight

Dan Seeger

The impulse to belong is powerful, especially for girls of a certain age. In The Fits, the feature directorial debut of Anna Rose Holmer, the girl trying to find her place in the world is Toni (Royalty Hightower). She regularly accompanies her brother (Da’Sean Minor) to the local community center, where he trains as a boxer. Toni half-heartedly participates in that brutish gym work until she spies the workouts of a dance troupe in an adjacent gym. Shortly after she falls in with that group, individual girls on the squad start falling victim to unexplained, seizure-like attacks, each a little … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Eight

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Nine

Dan Seeger

There are movies that I love unreservedly, quoting them with the hopped-up reverence of a devoted Bible thumper. 13th is a movie that I wield. Since viewing Ava DuVernay’s exceptional documentary on — for starters — the perpetuation of black persecution through the establishment of a skewed judicial system and incarceration complex, I find myself continually referencing it in spirited debates about current affairs. I have operated in multiculturally mindful academia and engaged with leftward political commentary enough to be comfortably acquainted with notions of institutionalized oppression, so there’s little in 13th that is fully revelatory to me. But I … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Nine

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Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Ten

Dan Seeger

There is a splendid modesty to The Witch, the feature debut from writer-director Robert Eggers. Positioned with false comfort as “A New-England Fable,” the film progresses with a stern leanness, as if its a spiritual sequel to Meek’s Cutoff, Kelly Reichardt’s saga of tragic pioneers. Set in the seventeenth century, The Witch covers the hardships of a family struggling to make do out in the rural outskirts after being cast out of their community. The tension increases when the family’s infant goes missing while being looked after by eldest daughter Thomasin (marvelous newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy), a vanishing that happens in … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2016 — Number Ten