The 50 Best Films of 2016

by Andrew Parker

Our Senior Film Writer Andrew Parker delivers his picks for the Top 50 films of 2016…

I was able to come up with a list of fifty films from 2016 that I liked enough to make this list, but let’s be up front about this:

2016 was a distressingly mediocre year in film. I don’t want to start the list off on a downer note here, but let’s call it what it is. The gap between these fifty films that I have selected (and maybe a couple of honourable mentions around the periphery) and the largely forgettable and in some cases downright terrible movies that rounded out the year is troublingly massive. At times it felt like finding a good movie was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

It was even worse if you lived in Canada, where many films that are popping up on best of lists south of the border weren’t given a chance with Canadian distributors or exhibitors. Films like The Fits, The Invitation, Under the Shadow, and Kate Plays Christine were nowhere to be found in area theatres outside of single screenings at festivals if you were lucky to find them and just happened to be in the right place at the right time when they were programmed. Krisha played at a one off screening and later at a festival, but that was it, and I completely missed seeing it. The buzzworthy documentary I Am Not a Negro and cult film in the making The Love Witch only popped up on the release calendar for early next year – BOTH of them only getting announced this week as I was preparing this list – and long after they gained anything resembling acclaim in the U.S. and abroad. Shockingly, even a major awards contender with a high profile cast like Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women couldn’t find any distribution up here. Some of these have popped up very quietly on Netflix or VOD, but unless you heard of them from their previous theatrical runs in other places and you made it a point to see if they were available on an almost daily basis, you probably missed them. As such, this list has more holes in my research that I would like.

But as terribly as Canadian distributors and theatre chains have been about handling cinema from the rest of the world, it was even worse to its own homegrown talent. If it was a sad sack year for cinema in general, but it was an abysmal year in Canadian cinema.

Such a sweeping statement comes with a caveat. I saw quite a number of great Canadian films at festivals last year. The problem is that almost NONE of those were released this year, with distributors instead sitting on the lot of them to blow through in the dumping grounds of early 2017 in an effort to keep them safe from competition. That will ensure that 2017 will get off to an amazing start, but I was hard pressed to think of even five tangible Canadian releases from 2016 that I unequivocally enjoyed. The vast majority of TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten selections are 2017 releases, so one glance at that list of options offers a lot of hope for the future. Just a bummer about 2016, I guess.

But enough of the lumps of coal; let’s get to the presents under the tree this year. Here are my picks for the Top 50 films of 2016, and as I leave you I would like to wish you and yours a Happy Holiday season and a joyous start to 2017.

  1. Train to Busan

The live action debut of animator Yeon Sang-ho is a riotously entertaining, obviously subtextual horror yarn about a zombie outbreak on a train. While it’s clearly indebted to the vastly superior Snowpiercer in terms of tone, it was one of the most consistently entertaining films of the year.

  1. Arrival

The rare example of a film that I liked the cornier it got, Denis Villeneuve’s stunningly photographed sci-fi drama about attempts to communicate with an alien race is a moving meditation on life and regret. I thought the actual nuts-and-bolts science stuff in Arrival was a bit too close of a riff on Close Encounters of the Third Kind to come off as being all that original, but as it builds to its big reveal, I found myself unabashedly caught up in it. It has a great leading performance from Amy Adams, too.

  1. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

One of a few films on this list that I know will elicit some eye-rolls from readers, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk might be disappointing as a technical achievement (filmed in a wholly unnecessary 120 frames-per-second 3D format), but as a work of avant garde theatre with a huge, beating heart, it’s surprisingly successful. Filmmaker Ang Lee wants to immerse the viewer in the viewpoint of his main character, a traumatized young soldier briefly home for a press tour tied to a heroic act on the battlefield, and I think the effect works. I was transfixed by it, and I thought it worked wonderfully. One of the most unjustly maligned and misunderstood pictures of the year.

  1. The Shallows

I thought this Blake Lively vs. A Killer Shark movie was pretty great. Good suspense. Nifty build. Interesting subtext (another film this year about processing loss). A running time that’s just long enough. For this kind of genre effort, director Jaume Collet-Serra’s work is near perfect. It’s this year’s best and least pretentious work of pure horror.

  1. Moana

Disney flips the script on its lucrative “princess” stable of films for the rare example of an empowerment tale that could actually be seen as potentially empowering to young viewers. It’s gorgeous to look at, the gags are funny (particularly those involving a mute chicken companion that’s too stupid to live), and the songs are catchy. It’s a better film than most of the Disney classics that are made under the auspices of being somehow inspirational to young girls, but they actually aren’t.

  1. Gleason

One of the most heart-wrenching documentaries of the year, Clay Tweel’s assembling of videos created by former NFL player Steve Gleason to document his battles with ALS for a child he’ll never be able to actually speak to is wonderful. It’s moving without being manipulative, and Gleason is a fascinating subject worth following around.

  1. Nocturnal Animals

Somewhere between a “guilty pleasure” and being an actually good film, Tom Ford’s “novel within a movie” structure is a slick, highbrow work of lowbrow sleaze. It’s a unique sort of revenge film with tongue firmly in cheek, right down to casting Michael Shannon in what might be his most stereotypically Michael Shannon-y role to date. Points lost, however, for the dumbest jump scare in any film this year, no matter how funny it was intended to be. I’m not quite sure Ford knows that this film shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but I hope he does. He made one of the most entertaining things I saw all year.

  1. Kicks

Justin Tipping’s stylish debut feature, Kicks, takes a simple premise – a young, inner city kid tries by any means necessary to get his expensive sneakers back from the thug who robbed him – and does it exceptionally well. Also, next to his game changing turn in Moonlight, this has Mahershala Ali’s second best performance of the year.

  1. Sing Street

I loathed Irish filmmaker John Carney’s Begin Again from a couple of years ago with the fire of a thousand suns. So colour me surprised that this tale of growing up in 1980s Ireland and trying to awkwardly start a new wave band was so much more charming and genuine. As the supportive, but screwed up older brother of the main character, Jack Reynor delivers the most underappreciated supporting turn of the year. And despite this year being stacked with great songs from movies, the Hall and Oates inspired “Drive It Like You Stole It” is still the most infectious track in any film this year. Sorry, La La Land (we’ll get to you in a minute, though).

  1. Bad Moms

A great film about Bad Moms. I laughed harder and more often at Bad Moms than any other film on this list. It’s the kind of film that Bridesmaids wished it could be: fleet, economical, well executed, and devoid of filler. This is how lowbrow comedy should be executed, and props to the almost exclusively female cast for really going for it. It’s one of the year’s most unexpectedly pleasant surprises.

  1. The Lobster

If it weren’t for the significant slowdown that the latest effort from Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos suffers in the second half, The Lobster would be a lot higher on this list. But as far as deadpan, idiosyncratic, dystopian romantic fantasies go, this is one of the best since Brazil. Bonus points for showcasing Colin Farrell’s constantly underutilized deadpan abilities.

  1. Finding Dory

I actually like Finding Dory a lot more than I liked Finding Nemo (which is fine, but not one of Pixar’s most memorable). While searching for a lost child (or in this case, fish) can certainly be used for great drama, adventure, and comedy, searching for a sense of identity and place makes for a much meatier story. There’s also a lot more heart and investment to such a story. I actually like this more than Pixar’s Toy Story sequels, and I think it’s the best follow-up the studio has created to date. I’ll stop before I press my luck here.

  1. Weiner

One of the best documentaries ever made about ego and arrogance while in the public eye, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s look at Anthony Weiner’s scandal plagued run for mayor of New York City (as well as a rocky marriage that became even more politically relevant as the year progressed outside the film) is a true life black comedy. Anthony Weiner is an outright narcissist, but Weiner deftly looks at the positives and negatives of one of the most polarizing figures in politics.

  1. Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Just before he jumped to the big time with next year’s Thor: Ragnarok, the best working filmmaker in New Zealand today, Taika Waititi, delivered this charming, gleefully foulmouthed family adventure that pairs a troubled kid (a wonderful Julian Dennison) and his aging, gruff foster father (Sam Neill, in his best role and performance in years) stranded in the middle of the woods where they learn to find common ground and poignantly overcome loss. It’s a perfect blend of bitter, sweet, and entertaining. It also has the year’s best car chase, so there’s that.

  1. How Heavy This Hammer

For his second feature, Toronto filmmaker Kazik Radwanski (who has one of only two Canadian films on this list of fifty) tells the darkly comedic internalized story of one awkward man’s midlife crisis. The tale of a man gradually withdrawing from his duties as a father and husband to play a decrepitly out of day MMORPG and hang out with his rugby mates, How Heavy This Hammer takes a nuanced look at how human selfishness and a counterproductive desire for belonging can manifest itself in seemingly mundane, but emotionally powerful ways.

  1. Swiss Army Man

The first time I saw Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan’s directorial debut – yes, the one where Daniel Radcliffe plays a flatulent corpse – I admired it, found myself amused, and puzzled over it. On a second viewing, however, the depth of this story about a shipwrecked loner (a splendid Paul Dano) emerged and any misgivings I had about it immediately went away. This might be the smartest film in years to get by almost exclusively on boner and fart gags.

  1. Kubo and the Two Strings

Another film that took a second viewing for a greater appreciation of what it’s trying to artistically achieve is the LAIKA animated epic Kubo and the Two Strings. At a first glance, I found it visually stunning, but less than most efforts from the studio. On a second viewing, I realized that I had vastly underrated this one (and I still might be doing so putting it so far down the list). There isn’t a frame of this film that isn’t serving the story in a gorgeous, visual fashion. This one continues to grow on me the more I think about it. It also has the best overall musical score of any film on this list. Sorry, La La Land (we’ll get to you in a minute).

  1. Tickled

New Zealand pop culture reported David Farrier thought he found a cool, lightweight story for the local news about a weirdo sport/fettish called “Competitive Endurance Tickling.” What he ended up with were personal threats and lawsuits before he even started on the story. With co-director Dylan Reeve, Farrier goes down a rabbit hole of greed, deception, and malfeasance that turns a potentially wacky story into something icky and vital. It’s an expert depiction of how some people use fear to control people into complacency. It’s hilarious, terrifying, dangerous, suspenseful, sickening, and unlike any piece of documentary journalism I have ever seen.

  1. Christine

Can a decent, but still somewhat wonky film be elevated this high on the strength of a single, exceptional leading performance alone? When that movie is Antonio Campos’ Christine and the actress in the lead is a phenomenal Rebecca Hall, the answer is yes. Hall disappears completely into her role as real life troubled late 1970s news anchor Christine Chubbuck, delivering the best performance by anyone – male of female in any film – all year. To say that it would be career defining work by anyone who sees it would be an understatement. No one commanded a film to success more than Rebecca Hall does here. This film has the performance of the year at the heart of it. Period.

  1. The Edge of Seventeen

The first excellent mainstream teen film of the decade era, Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen casts a pitch perfect Hailee Steinfeld (in her best turn since True Grit) as a teenager trying to make sense of the motivations of everyone around her. Another film this year that deals with the impact of grief and trauma quite well, The Edge of Seventeen might be the subtlest of an overcrowded field for that title. And unlike most teen flicks, every character here isn’t from a pre-packaged template, and in a daring move, the protagonists is arguably the least likable person in the film. It has just as many raunchy laughs as one would want from this sort of thing, but it definitely walks to the beat of its own internal drummer.

  1. Sand Storm

Another stunning debut film from a female filmmaker this year was Elite Zexer’s Israeli drama Sand Storm, about a woman (and an entire family around her) slowly crumbling around a loveless marriage of convenience who watches in horror as her daughter starts making some poor romantic decisions of her own. Not just a story of different generations of women struggling to understand their patriarchal society or even an empowerment film, Zexer’s work here is as impactful as human drama gets. Never slow, but packed with moments that can speak volumes without saying anything at all, Sand Storm is an understated, but powerful debut. Of all the debuting filmmakers on this list, I’m most excited to see what Zexer does next.

  1. Pete’s Dragon

Calling David Lowery’s updating of the Disney tale of a boy and his dragon a remake would be somewhat of an insult, since it bears only a cursory resemblance to a film that wasn’t very great to begin with. The most intelligent family film of the year, Pete’s Dragon has created a somewhat traditional fable about family being where you find it and how hope and beauty are around every corner if you look hard enough for it, but Lowrey also spins an exceptionally moving, intelligent, and genuinely heartwarming piece of cinema. It belongs in the conversation alongside Paddington and The Iron Giant when talking about films that can appeal as equally to adults on an intellectual level as they do on an entertainment level for kids. This should have been a much bigger hit than it was.

  1. Cemetery of Splendor

No one does “dream-like” quite like Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Cemetery of Splendor is one of his most resplendent, relaxing, and intellectual exercises to date. The ever evolving story about a nurse at a makeshift hospital along the Mekong River where soldiers and workers are falling ill with sleeping sickness wants to confront difficult issues without turning the film into a nightmare. It’s laid back and contemplative, but in an intelligent, thoughtful way that’s closer to reading a book. It’s also resolutely stunning to look at.

  1. The Stairs

The only other Canadian film on this list is Hugh Gibson’s indispensible documentary look at addiction and harm reduction in Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood. Allowing a trio of fascinating subjects – all of whom perform community outreach while being open and honest about their perceived vices – to have agency over their own stories is a revolutionary approach so frank that it’s disheartening that more films don’t take this approach. It’s a must see for citizens of Toronto who want to know about their city, but just as indispensible to anyone who lives in major cities anywhere in the world.

 

  1. Deepwater Horizon

More than a disaster movie, Peter Berg’s almost shockingly great look into one of America’s greatest human tragedies and ecological catastrophes takes time to get to know people before putting them in harm’s way. A spot on recreation of The New York Times article it’s based on (no easy feat for something that’s ostensibly an action flick), Berg looks at every detail that led to the explosion of the titular off-shore oil rig and how each person tried to help or hinder the situation. Once the harrowing second half kicks in, the audience actually feels something because they’ve learned about complex people in a technically complex situation.

  1. Green Room

The second film from filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier to deal with the sloppiness of revenge (following the equally awesome Blue Ruin), this thriller about a punk band who runs afoul of a Neo-Nazi murder plot by being in the wrong place at the wrong time is a master class in tension and dark humour. There isn’t a bad performance in the bunch. Patrick Stewart is exceptional as the main villain, the late Anton Yelchin makes for a sympathetic leading man, and Imogen Poots steals every scene she’s in. Most importantly, like all of the best suspense thrillers since the dawn of the medium, it’s wildly unpredictable, and anything can happen at any time. It’s truly an “edge of the seat” kind of film.

  1. The Little Prince

The best animated film of the year is also one of the most underrated films of the year. Mark Osborne’s animated reimagining and retelling of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s beloved children’s fable updates the material respectfully and lovingly, without a shred of edginess, cynicism, or malice. It goes beyond the core story in such a way that I feel like it has been improved upon rather than detracted from. It’s also one of the best pure tearjerkers of the year, no matter what age you are. It’s a shame that it didn’t do too well in Canada and that its American release was botched even worse by Paramount dropping it at the last second before Netflix rescued it. It’s good to see that some people still appreciate quality in all ages films while others take massive write-downs on films involving alien powered monster trucks.

  1. Midnight Special

Jeff Nichols (a name you’ll hear again later in the list) delivered the first truly exceptional effort of 2016 back at the beginning of April with this low-key, Spielberg-ian sci-fi tale of two men trying to protect a gifted child from mysterious baddies who seek to harm him. It’s a film best experienced “cold,” without knowing too much going into it. It’s a contemplative sort of fantasy and mystery that’s as indebted to Sinclair Lewis as it is the Coen Brothers. It’s an earnest, but unsentimental look at where wonder ends and paranoia can begin following an encounter with forces that can’t be explained.

  1. Little Men

Ira Sachs steps away from the wheelhouse he was building for himself making films about intimate romantic relationships for this blunt, but warm and uncompromised look at two best friends growing up in modern day, gentrified New York getting torn apart by a rivalry between their parents. An ode to what New York has become and a skeptical eye towards what made it this way in the first place, Little Men feels as intimately written as if it had sprung from the pages of one of the main character’s unseen personal diaries. It’s wrenching, but never depressing. Sachs creates worlds where people don’t fly off the handle when they’re upset. They take a moment to compose what they’re going to say next, and it’s that attention to human nature and nuance that could make him one of the best working American filmmakers today. It’s also worth noting some career best work from Greg Kinnear as the patriarch of one of the families.

  1. High-Rise

Divisive and delightful, Ben Wheatley’s admittedly severe and extreme adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s trippy 1970s novel about the perils of modern convenience (once again penned by the filmmaker’s most important collaborator Amy Jump) won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it’s the best and most audacious film Wheatley has made to date. Relishing every misanthropic drop Ballard’s depiction of excess and class warfare run amok (which, if you ask me, is the only way this material could be done justice), Wheatley has created a fire breathing hydra disguised as a sly social critique. It’s almost deliberately ornery and ponderous, and I love it for it.

  1. Chevalier

The plot of Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Chevalier is easy to summarize, but the film’s complexity comes from the writer and director’s ability to make the most out of what’s essentially a one joke premise. It’s an constant game of one-upmanship played out among the male passengers of a pleasure cruise under the guises of a bonding experience. What emerges is one of the wittiest looks at toxic masculinity ever committed to cinema. On one hand, it’s a film with almost no catharsis that dabbles in all things pointless and trite. The point is how seriously these characters take all of these inconsequential games that will mean nothing once the trip concludes in a place no one could adequately see coming. It’s a film based in shock value, but those shocks are like tiny mounting papercuts in a very ticklish area.

  1. 20th Century Women

The first film on this list that has yet to open in Canada (January 13th in Toronto, January 20th everywhere else) is Mike Mills’ second feature about a teenager boy without a father figure in his life learning about life in the late 1970s from his mother (a superb Annette Benning, in a performance so good that everyone around her just follows her cue almost instinctually), a boarder at their home (an also great Greta Gerwig), and the best friend he has a sexual crush on (Elle Fanning, in the best role she’s ever had). More than just a treatise on the benefits of feminism 20th Century Women is also a primer in something a lot more basic: how to be a good and caring human being that takes notice of the needs of those around them. It’s a delicate, deeply loving, and often hilarious experience.

  1. The Wailing

Few films pack as many different elements into a single package as South Korean genre maestro Na Hong-jin packs into his horror epic-slash-mystery-slash-procedural The Wailing. A film that he worked on for over six years (and the effort is certainly appreciated), The Wailing is the story of a detective and family man investigating a grisly, brutal killing that looks ritual in nature who finds the almost supernatural danger lurking behind the murder coming uncomfortably close to home. Like many epic works of Asian cinema, it’s one of those films with something for everyone, but it’s told with a continually mounting sense of tension that makes its 156 minutue running time feel like nothing at all.

  1. Knight of Cups

A lot of people weren’t so hot on Terence Malick’s latest “tone poem” (a term so meaningless now that it should join “Lynchian” as a buzzword that’s thrown out when someone finds something hard to understand), but I happen to think that this story of modern day Hollywood malaise to be Malick’s most deeply personal film yet. Everyone likes to theorize about Malick’s intentions and emphasis of feeling and beauty over narrative cohesion, and I like to think that buried within this effort lays a filmmaker trying to explain in his own special way why he didn’t make movies for several years. It’s a look at the perils of success and being wanted that no one else other than Malick could have made, and I am positive this will go down as his most unjustly dismissed effort. Hopefully time and critical reappraisals will be kind to this one.

  1. Love & Friendship

There’s no disputing that Whit Stillman is an exceptional writer, director, and wit, but to actually take an unfinished Jane Austen story and make it feel even remotely authentic to what the original scribe might have achieved is one hell of an accomplishment. One of the most openly delightful films of the year, Love & Friendship is akin to a playground romp for anyone who adores Austen in tone and spirit. Bolstered by a wonderfully droll leading performance by Kate Beckinsale and one of the best supporting turns of the year in the form of Tom Bennett’s grinning goofball, Love & Friendship manages to be one of the best Austen adaptations without actually being or feeling like anything that has come before it. The companion book from Stillman is also highly enjoyable for those interested, but not in any way a prerequisite.

  1. The Witch

The debut feature from writer-director Robert Eggers, The Witch is not only one of the most unflinchingly terrifying horror films in recent memory, but also perhaps the most literary and nuanced. Taking most of its cues and dialogue from period-accurate primary sources and folklore, the film functions both as a meditation on American history and a bone-chilling paranormal thriller. It’s a rare film that can balance a script written primarily in old time-y English and create a remarkably modernist horror film. Eggers never mistreats the audience or dumbs things down for them, but the material is hardly obtuse and The Witch is anything but a slow burn. It starts at a place of immense fear and continues relentlessly for ninety minutes. It’s commitment to a pure Gothic aesthetic isn’t merely commendable; it’s daring and provocative. A special shout-out goes to Black Philip: the best animal actor of the year.

  1. Sunset Song

Terence Davies’ Sunset Song holds staunchly literary reverence for the source material (a seminal novel from Lewis Grassic Gibbons), but never sacrifices emotion within an austere, sometimes stoic story. Davies presents the plight of the Guthrie family, and particularly its highly educated, female main character, circa World War I in a matter of fact way, without resorting to melodrama or shortcuts. When the film switches to one of familial strife to that of love in wartime, the change is marked, but fluidly approached. It’s a measured approach to measured material, a great pairing of story and storyteller enhanced by gorgeous cinematography and Davies’ trademark ability to let quiet moments speak louder and longer than more bombastic ones.

  1. Hell or High Water

Lots have people have attempted the “heist film as a metaphor for America’s current financial crisis” riff for almost a decade now, and not one of them has gotten it right, save for British filmmaker David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water. A sundrenched and dirt cake Texas neo-noir, this allegorical yarn about bank robbing brothers trying to save their family’s estate from foreclosure never sacrifices character, performance, tension, or mood to heap on more subtext. Mackenzie understands that the audience can figure out what the film is driving at, and he never unnecessarily hammers things home. Factor in some of the year’s best cinematography and a trio of complex performances from Chris Pine, Ben Foster, and Jeff Bridges, and you have one of the best American dramas films of the year.

  1. Do Not Resist

The most globally important documentary of the year is Craig Atkinson’s depressingly timely Do Not Resist, a powerful and well researched bit of journalism looking at how American police forces in even the smallest of communities are quickly and frighteningly becoming militarized. Atkinson has created a kind of law enforcement travelogue and pleads for reason to win out over fear. Considering this was completed before the Trump presidency and booked into theatres just around the time the controversial new leader of the free world was elected, Do Not Resist will be a document that will inspire rage in many without manipulating the facts and will sadly live on invaluably over the next four years.

  1. Things to Come

While Isabelle Huppert has been getting plenty of award season buzz for her role in Paul Verhoeven’s controversial Elle (which is a mediocre film, at best), more attention should be paid to the soulful, nuanced, and complex work that she does in French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve’s humane and philosophical Things to Come. Huppert plays a high school philosophy teacher who rebounds from the dissolution of her marriage by reconnecting with her favourite student, an anarchistic academic. It’s a very funny film if you know anything about philosophy and the theory that madness starts whenever one can see all sides to an argument, but also a bittersweet one that grows sad, but never depressing as it goes along. It’s a clever, subtle and made by one of the best working filmmakers today.

  1. Fire at Sea

For his stunning, subtle, and heart-wrenching documentary Fire at Sea (which won the coveted Golden Bear in Berlin earlier this year), Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi (Sacro GRA, El Sicario, Room 164) paints a picture of the modern refugee crisis from an empathetic angle and perspective unseen heretofore. It’s a stunning work of art, but an even more laudatory work of journalism. Rosi documents life on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a 20 square kilometer fishing community from a variety of perspectives. Lampedusa is noteworthy as a way-station for those seeking refuge and asylum from Africa and the Middle East. In the past twenty years, 400,000 migrants have tenuously and dangerously made their way to the island community on dilapidated, overcrowded sea vessels en route to what they hope is a better life. Of those hundreds of thousands, approximately 15,000 don’t arrive to Lampedusa alive. By looking at the migratory crisis head on as well as the world surrounding it, Rosi achieves a difficult to achieve balance between emotion, journalism, and art, building to a stunning, almost wordless final third that will leave viewers in awe. It’s beautifully, but also vital.

  1. Paterson

Another film that’s technically a 2016 release but has yet to open in Canada (it will on February 3rd) is a rare example of modern American poetry moulded to fit the cinematic medium. Jim Jarmusch’s relaxing tale of a bus driver named Paterson who lives in Paterson New Jersey and finds inspiration for his own poetic musings in a volume of poetry titled Paterson is a subtly layered slice of life story. It ebbs and flows, and there’s always a sense that something’s going to go amiss, but the viewer is never quite sure what it is. But while waiting for some unseen conflict to come, it’s a delight to be able to follow around Adam Driver’s beautifully realized soul (the best character and performance of the year) as he pulls creative inspiration from the world around him. It’s not really a film about a journey or a destination, but more closely related to spending time with someone you actually want to hang out with and get to know. It’s a film I wished never ended, and one that I hope finally gets Driver recognized as an amazing actor outside of bit parts and the Star Wars franchise.

  1. La La Land

I promised you we’d get back around to this. It’s delightful. What more do you want me to say? Damien Chazelle’s resplendent throwback musical gives a bigger endorphin rush than anything this year. Balancing a sense of wonder and a dash of pointed cynicism towards modern Hollywood conventions, La La Land doesn’t just dazzle with a lot of spectacle and game performances from a pair of really, really, really good looking leads. It tells an old school story in a new school way using an outmoded and inherently nostalgic way. It’s purposefully charming, but also exceptionally well made. They don’t make them like this anymore, and to a certain degree I can see why, but as a one off extravaganza of feeling, song, and splendour, it’s outstanding.

  1. O.J.: Made in America

This one is a bit of a cheat after the intro where I said that some of the best films of the year never got theatrical releases in Canada. Technically speaking, though, it is playing in Toronto in January in the full, uncut version that aired across five nights of television over the summer, so I’m inclined to allow it. By any metric, O.J.: Made in America deserves a high spot on this list of the best films of the year. With this overwhelming comprehensive look at “the trial of the century” and the fallout of O.J. Simpson’s acquittal in the murder of his wife, Ezra Edelman has crafted the most entertaining and scholarly look at race in America ever created for cinema or television. This is a deceptively powerful work of journalism without a wasted moment. Every second of its nearly eight hour running time is maximized and relevant. It makes the fictionalized FX show about the same trial look like thin, nutritionless gruel in comparison.

  1. Toni Erdmann

Opening in Canada at the end of January is the only crowd pleaser more charming – and admittedly more complex – than La La Land. German filmmaker Maren Ade’s father and daughter bonding saga Toni Erdmann brims with good will, a welcoming nature, and not a drop of cynicism. What I hope in my heart to be the film to beat for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, Toni Erdmann runs a bit longer than most films of this sort (clocking in at just a bit under three hours), but it’s consistently heartwarming in ways that most viewers won’t expect. It also has two of the year’s best leading performances, courtesy of Peter Simonischek as a happy-go-lucky father and Sandra Hüller as his stressed out, workaholic daughter The two of them struggle to find common ground – she wants nothing to do with him, he keeps coming back in various disguises – and what results is something truly beautiful. It builds to one of the best hugs in cinematic history, which is the highest compliment I can pay of any film. See it now before some U.S. studio options it, cuts an hour of material from it, casts Jennifer Lawrence and Bill Murray in the leads, and then royally screws it up. It also has the best use of a Whitney Houston song I’ve ever seen, and if you don’t agree you’ll need to check your pulse.

  1. Silence

Opening in Canada on January 6, the latest film from director Martin Scorsese – a passion project decades in the making, figuratively and perhaps literally speaking – is a striking, forceful, and spiritual film unlike anything the master filmmaker has created to date. The story of two Portuguese missionaries (a wonderful Andrew Garfield and a subtle Adam Driver) sent to Japan in 1633 to find an important priest (Liam Neeson) who has gone missing and is presumed dead during at time when being Christian in the Far East was life threatening. Gorgeously shot, expertly paced for a story spanning years and various locales around Japan, and able to make the philosophical elements of the story resonate across historical and cultural boundaries. It’s equally the most delicate and dense film Scorsese has made since Kundun, and it definitely won’t be to everyone’s taste, but as far as films dealing with crises of religious faith go, this one stuns. I’ve been thinking about it constantly since I first saw it a couple weeks ago, and I can’t wait to see it again.

  1. Loving

The other film from Jeff Nichols on this list (probably the only time I’ve ever had a filmmaker with two films on a yearend best list, but certainly not the only filmmaker to have more than one film open in 2016), Loving looks back at a controversial 1958 marriage between everyday Americans Richard and Mildred Loving (played by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), a white man and black woman who got married legally in Washington D.C., only to return to the Virginia hometown and face arrest, prosecution, and persecution for breaking anti-miscegenation laws forbidding a man and woman of different races from such a coupling. Understated at every turn – exemplified by the performances of Edgerton and especially Negga, in one of the year’s best performances – Loving spends only intimate moments with the characters, making the battle to have their marriage recognized as one of the most meaningful struggles committed to film this year. It’s almost purposefully sparse, but Nichols proves here that love is something that doesn’t need an explanation.

  1. Manchester by the Sea

No one writes quite like playwright, screenwriter, and director Kenneth Lonergan. The story of a stand-offish janitor (Casey Affleck, putting in phenomenal work) with a past he likes to keep quiet by wears like a metaphorical millstone around his neck suddenly becoming the unlikely guardian of his nephew (Lucas Hedges in a star making turn) tackles the nature of grief head on and with a great deal of uneasy emotions and tearjerking poignancy. Also featuring wonderful performances from Michelle Williams (as Affleck’s equally suffering ex-wife) and Kyle Chandler (glimpsed in flashbacks as Affleck’s brother), Lonergan knows how to write real people and real pain better than any other scribe working today. It also features a welcome amount of dark humour to punctuate the sometimes sorrowful material at hand.

  1. Cameraperson

Kirsten Johnson’s documentary-slash-memoir sounds experimental on the surface. Constructed from the over twenty years of excised or unused footage she has accumulated as a cinematographer and camera operator working on documentaries edited together with some home movies from various points in her life she barely appears in, it sounds devoid of structure, but potentially artful. After about thirty minutes of so, however, a clear cut structure and sense of purpose emerges from how Johnson has constructed a cinematic mixtape of sorts, and it results in the most unexpected and disarmingly movie of the year. I cried more once I figured out where Cameraperson was going – a film that’s actually devoid of any explicit emotional manipulation – than I did at any other film this year. It’s not just a film about what it means to work in documentary, but what it means to be a woman in the business, what it means to be a mother, and what it means to be a daughter. It’s great that Johnson has found so much meaning in her images because no words could truly do them justice.

  1. Moonlight

Sorry if this list has suddenly become rather anticlimactic, but Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight really is that excellent a film. A sprawling look at one young man named Chiron at three pivotal moments in his maturation as a human being (each soulfully captured by Alex R. Hibbert as a child, Ashton Sanders as a teen, and Trevante Rhodes as an adult) it’s a unique character piece about what goes into building a person’s identity. It’s the definition of a perfect movie; one where there isn’t a single note that rings false. There’s a reason so many critics have gotten behind it. You don’t need to have experienced everything Chiron has gone through in his life to understand just how painfully real it all is. Moonlight isn’t just the best film of 2016, but destined to be one of the best from the decade.

See you all in 2017!

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