Okay! Let's start this, um...
Movies! Movies...
I didn't see as many... or at least AS many as I wanted to this year, which is like, y'know, all of them,
mainlined into my eyeballs, Matrix-style.
Some of these films were made in 2015 and only hit American theatres last year, but, uh,
Movies! Movies of 2016.
Good movies of 2016. What are they. Let's find out!
(under his breath) I'm so terrible at this I swear. There's a reason I don't do vlogs like thi-
Okay. No ranks, just right. Ten movies that I liked, listed in the order that I want to talk about them.
There were plenty of animated films that I liked this year,
but this made the list purely for aesthetic reasons.
Laika's use of stop-motion animation, combined with digital compositing techniques,
has been pushing the form forward for only a little over a decade now;
but with Kubo, they've really earned their place in the canon of great animation studios.
It's not just that their design is gorgeous,
they've also become wonderful storytellers.
And fittingly, it's a film about: the power of storytelling.
It's the best kind of children's film.
Childlike, but, mature.
And, pressing the boundaries of maturity:
Fart jokes, boner jokes, dead guy jokes,
examinations of self-loathing, body dysmorphia, the legacy of emotional abuse, and [chuckles]
Yeah, this is just my kinda movie.
Utterly bug-crap, high-concept ridiculous, and yet,
profoundly emotionally intelligent.
Plus, co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert manage to make surprisingly beautiful cinematography
out of...
Daniel... Radcliffe's... floating, farting corpse-
J-j-just see this. Just see this.
The Fits is... surprising.
At first I thought it would be a by-the-numbers coming of age story about a girl who wants to dance,
but then became a surreal horror film.
A paranoid ego-terror inspired by real-life societal failures, like the Flint water crisis.
But, at the end it's... something entirely different.
Like any number of quasi-horror films, it COULD be an elaborate puberty metaphor,
but that feels like too simple a reading.
This is Anna Rose Holmer's first feature, and I hope she makes many more.
We need more magical realists working today.
Speaking of magical realism:
Or- I don't know, would this count?
(mumbled) I'm not sure, need to work out the defini-
[clears throat]
Yorgos Lanthimos' story about a dystopia where people must find love or be confined to life as an animal,
has so much to say about the arbitrariness of the norms we place on romantic relationships.
The lengths to which we'll change ourselves for the sake of companionship.
The disconnect between what we feel, and what we are permitted to present.
And, the absurdity of finding love, in a society that both fetishizes, and,
neuters it.
Oh, and it's quietly insane, too.
And now for something loudly insane.
Y'know in Best Of lists for this year,
this adaptation of JG Ballard's novel of the same name, is... kind of getting underrated.
Director Ben Wheatley, who's also underrated, is just refreshingly unconventional in his pacing.
His best works are less plot, and more feeling, this included.
It's not the story of how this modern high-rise descended into carnage and barbarism,
It's more - the impression of it.
It avoids obvious act breaks,
and relies more on decadent montage.
And the result is the feeling that life in the high-rise was always doomed.
This is the film debut of Robert Eggers, and what he did here is less filmmaking, than...
archaeology.
His self-penned, impeccably researched story about a Puritan family plagued by witches, is, transporting.
The period detail in the film places you in the dirt and desperation of a paranoid Protestant family,
where every action means survival.
And faith - the fear of God - wasn't just a comfort, but a psychological necessity.
And with that given context, the decadence represented in the idea of witchcraft, is chillingly unnatural.
It forces the viewer to contemplate every possible meaning of the word:
Profane.
And now, a very different kind of witch.
Director Anna Biller, who also wrote the script and created the designs,
made something equally transporting.
Though she transports us to 1960s technicolor B-films.
Don't be fooled - this is an incredible technical achievement.
I kept waiting for some sign, that this film was made this year,
and that it wasn't some recently unearthed, recently remastered hammer horror knock-off;
but the only hint of its modernity, is its politics.
It's a feminist masterpiece.
Subverting the sexism of bygone horror,
and also modern understanding of the genre.
The most masterful exercise in retro movie-making this year.
Yes, even more than this one.
I like the music. Next!
This felt like another throwback.
Back to when our cinematic aliens were more welcoming,
back to when first contact actually meant contact.
In fact I'm surprised there isn't more science-fiction out there which explores the complexities of language.
A field especially important in the age of social media.
I loved the minimalist design of the aliens, which kept them vaguely threatening, yet, approachable;
but, moreover, I loved the timeliness of this film.
This is exactly the kind of story we need right now,
to warn us of the dangers of militarization,
and to remind us that communication is always possible.
There's already been so much praise for this story about the life of a closeted man, and... there's not much I can add.
This... floored me in ways I couldn't predict.
Y'know critics, y'know including me, can fall over backwards praising marvels in style or aesthetic,
when film as a medium can do so much to capture something that other mediums can't -
something... private,
something that generates pure empathy.
Where the cameras fall away, and the lights become part of the scene, and the actors start... being characters.
And you're shown something that you almost feel you... shouldn't be watching.
It's private, but, accessible to a few, what's the right word? Um...
Oh yeah.
Intimate.
It's rare to see a movie this...
intimate.
And... those are my Top 10.
There's plently I wasn't able to see, like I missed Tony Erdmann and The Handmaiden,
20th Century Women, Martin Scorsese's Silence, they all looked good,
and hopefully I'll catch them sometime this year, but,
eugh.
More episodes to come soon, and looking forward to what 2017 will bring.
At least... on the screen.