High-Rise
More so than any other year-end list, and more so than any actual movie awards, I look forward every year to David Ehrlich's "Top 25 Films" video countdown. In addition to writing the best reviews out there, the man knows how to edit the hell out of a video countdown montage. (See this year's, here.) At any rate, High-Rise absolutely wasn't on my radar, until Ehrlich's countdown listed it 24th with some fascinating accompanying shots, and then it absolutely was on my radar. I watched the movie less than a day later - thanks, Netflix! - and liked it a whole lot. What you've got here is an immaculately produced dystopian film taking place in the 1970s in which chaos descends over a residential high rise building where the wealthiest people live in luxury at the top; these one-percenters ultimately begin to siphon electricity away from the lower floors' inhabitants after taking away their pool privileges and other trivial things, and while the whole thing feels a bit metaphorically on-the-nose, goddamn, it's beautiful to look at! Well-acted, too - Tom Hiddleston, Elisabeth Moss, Jeremy Irons. Check it out!
Manchester by the Sea
This was such a welcome movie for me about guilt and tragedy and loss. All too often there's a sense in our stories - and in life - that time heals all wounds, that things will work out for the best, that sometimes it just takes an opportunity for redemption in order to overcome years of anguish. But life isn't always like that, and what doesn't kill you doesn't necessarily make you stronger, and there are some scars that are, well, scars, and that never go away. Maybe this resonated with me a little more because of its New England setting, as there's a particular subtle Boston flavor to the movie (underneath the blatant one among the bad accents and blue collar anger) in the way the characters want to bottle up their feelings instead of talking about them, but fuck it - I loved this movie. It's sad as hell, and not really optimistic when it's over, but there are about a hundred laugh lines scattered throughout it that keep it from collapsing under its own weight, and save for a musical choice or two, I think it's damn near perfect.
Cowspiracy
Here's a documentary from a few years ago, available on Netflix, that absolutely floored me with its content. I'm a big fan of, well, meat. No disrespect to vegetarians or vegans or animal right activists or anything, but you just can't compare a juicy steak or a greasy piece of chicken to anything plant-based or manufactured. Which is why I'm absolutely devastated by what this documentary taught me, nay, led me to conclude on my own: that eating meat is completely unsustainable given our current population (not to mention its upward trend). I've made peace with that, and I can report that I've undergone no moral crisis here as I've continued to dine on animal flesh throughout the holiday season, but man... this documentary absolutely convinced me that my current animal intake is immoral and unsustainable. Moreover, it suggests a conspiracy (hence the title) that the agro-business is paying off environmental groups to ignore animal-based climate change effects and to double down on their anti-fossil fuel vitriol. (A small example: most "green" groups will tell you to turn off the water while brushing your teeth, which saves perhaps a gallon of water; yet very few will tell you to cut hamburgers from your diet, even though, to produce one hamburger, it takes 600 gallons of water.) I highly, highly recommend this film. And at only ninety minutes long, it's an easy watch.
Pervert Park
Another documentary on Netflix, and this one's even shorter. Its focus is a community of sex offenders in Florida who live in a trailer park a court-mandated distance away from all schools and playgrounds and such. (Remember that gag where they all move to "Sudden Valley" in the fourth season of Arrested Development? Yeah, that, but in real life.) Watching a documentary about sex offenders is, surely, no one's cup of tea. But I still thought this was interesting and fascinating and eye-opening for a number of reasons. None of the subjects here are trying to convince you or anybody else that they're innocent, or that what they've done isn't terrible; instead, the running theme seems to be that so many of them were, tragically, victims of sexual abuse earlier in their own lives, and that some were almost "doomed" to perpetuate the same cycle of violence. One man, touched by his babysitter as a boy, was beaten by his parents when they found out; he later raped someone. Another woman, who routinely had sex with her own father, ended up having sex with her teenage son while a boyfriend watched; she regrets it to this day. Dark, no? Perhaps the lightest case - still a sad one, granted - involved a 22-year-old kid who got to flirting with an older woman on the Internet. She propositioned him with sex, he said yes, she asked if her 14-year-old daughter could join in, he foolishly went with it, and when he showed up at the house, hey, presto, it's time To Catch a Predator. I mean, shame on him and all, but how is that not entrapment? At any rate, this surely isn't the most appealing thing you could watch a documentary about, but it still might be worth your time.
Indie Game: The Movie
Third straight documentary, and finally, something fun! This one's about the development process of three indie games in particular: Braid, which came out to huge acclaim in 2008; Super Meat Boy, which did the same in 2010; and Fez, likewise in 2012. More accurately, the movie looks at the mix of elation and frustration that Jonathan Blow felt after Braid came out, the stress of the Super Meat Boy team to meet their launch deadline, and the ongoing despair felt by Phil Fish as Fez fell further and further behind schedule and into legal turmoil. It's an interesting (if already a little dated) look at a burgeoning industry where one- and two-man teams can devote years to passion projects that could either make them millions of dollars or fail horribly. That the movie chose to focus on Super Meat Boy seemed like a stroke of good luck; the film would have taken on another tone entirely if its 2010 release was a flop and its 2012 release was a trainwreck in development hell, particularly after its 2008 success story's creator mentioned battling depression. (Instead, it's inspiring - made all the more so in hindsight by Fez's eventual completion.)
Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV
This was impressive from a technical standpoint, and one of the most lifelike-looking animated movies I've ever seen. The opening five minutes alone are legitimately awesome. But for anyone who hasn't played Final Fantasy XV and doesn't plan to - and hell, even for someone who has, like me - this is a jumbled mess of a movie. The Internet at large recommended that I see the movie before I played the game, lest I get confused about the plot, but I actually found the game very tame, plot-wise, for a Final Fantasy experience. This movie, on the other hand - a prequel, kind of, in that it takes place between the game's first and second chapters - was just downright confusing. Looked great, though!
White Girl
Did you watch Homeland and think, "yeah, this teen daughter, I want to see more of her?" Well, now you can - literally! (No, no, calm down. She's not a teen anymore, it's cool. And the joke here is that no one liked the mopey teenager in Homeland at all.) This is a movie about a naive college-age girl doing lots of drugs and having frequent sex in New York. I didn't love it. Not so much because its heroine is an unsympathetic person - plenty of smart movies can get away with their main characters being downright terrible - but more because I don't think the movie convinced me that it understood she was terrible. I mean, I think it did, but maybe it's more accurate for me to say she could have been much worse. A few people have called this a movie about white privilege, and it is, but I just don't think it goes nearly far enough; moreover, I found it boring. Not Love-level boring, but boring in a similar vein - just lots of people having sex for extended periods of time. Surely there's more to this one than I could glean from it, but do you really feel the need to check it out for yourself?
Rogue One
This was good! As I think we all should have expected it to be. Not great - the first two thirds kind of dragged, and the ragtag group of rebels we spend the movie following are collectively charming, but individually fairly flat. (The best character is a droid, and still even he's streets behind R2-D2, C-3PO, and BB-8.) But for all the "eh" of the first ninety minutes, the third act is Star Wars at its best, with multiple battles raging at once. I enjoyed this more than the prequels but less than The Force Awakens, which seems about on par with the world around me.
La La Land
One thing I hate about hype and buzz - call me Keith if you must - is that when you like something but still consider it "overrated," you're in a difficult spot in any conversation about it. I liked La La Land - a lot, even - but for something currently topping so many year-end best lists, eh, yeah, this was very overrated. It also feels explicitly designed to garner oodles of Oscar nominations, and I just feel like I'll be rooting against it come late February. Which is too bad, because again, I really did like this! I just liked maybe ten other 2016 movies even more - and I've only seen thirty.
The Lobster
This is my favorite movie of 2016 (so far). I don't want to say anything about it yet, but I absolutely loved it. See it. It's streaming on Amazon Prime. We'll talk about it, me and you.
Blue Jay
Because the world needed another Mark Duplass mumblecore movie. I didn't care for this. It's a short little black and white movie about two former high school sweethearts who reconnect in their hometown twenty years later. Nothing you haven't seen before, you know? Sarah Paulson was fine, but her performance was nothing exceptional. Neither was the script. And in an eighty-minute indie film with two characters, what else is there but the acting and the script? This felt like a college kid's attempt at Before Sunset. You can pass.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2
Not good - not by a long shot - but still better than the first part. Does anyone actually go into these "Part 1" half-movies thinking "oh man this'll be satisfying?" I understand the $$$ aspect on the studios' end, but why do people keep seeing seeing these things? What if we all stood firm next time a "Part 1" came out and said, "cool, we'll make sure to stream Part 1 before heading to the theaters for Part 2 a year from now." I mean, somewhere in the four hours of film put forth as Mockingjay, there's a pretty good two and a half hour movie with tight pacing and tons of action and an emotional throughline that's easy to follow. I would have liked to see that movie!
Green Room
Lotta word of mouth around this one, as I kept hearing it described as one of the tensest and most thrilling movies in years. The idea is simple enough - a punk band accidentally plays a show for a Nazi skinhead crew and a hostage crisis ensues and people are gonna die. Gripping! But execution-wise, I thought this was a strong seven at best. Maybe an eight. The first half, where all the tension and hostage negotiation lives, is superior to the second, which is more of a conventional slasher horror movie. Still all in all a pretty good movie and worth the time it takes to stream on Amazon Prime.
Lemonade
This wasn't for me. And that's fine! I'm white, and straight, and a man. Can you imagine if Beyonce gave two shits about how people like me would respond to Lemonade? But even if I didn't love it, I'm glad I saw it - didn't want to leave 2016 without consuming the year's most iconic dose of pop culture.
And so ends 2016, a year in which I saw 159 movies, which is just way too many movies, you guys.
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