I’m going to be honest here: 2016 has been a notably poor year for major American studios. It’s not all their fault, of course:The Nice Guys, one of the most remarkably entertaining action-comedies to be released this decade, got no love at the box office despite an energetic and engaging marketing campaign.Captain America: Civil Warwas fun and did very well, but even if it wasn’t very good, it was going to make money. Need proof? A similarly buzzed-about title,Batman v Superman, will remain in the top ten best opening weekends of all time for at least a year, and probably much longer based off of little more than its name and a battalion of devoted fans who tend to curse, brood, cite, and threaten rather than actually explain what there is to like about the film.
But hey, I’m not here to just jump up and down onZack Snyder’s head; it’s already been done in far more eloquent ways than I can muster. Even outside of the tentpole pictures, things have been grim:Keanuwas a tremendous disappointment from two very funny men, whileThe Jungle Bookproved to be both very pretty and incredibly thoughtless.Deadpool,Civil War, and10 Cloverfield Lane, up until it’s final 10 minutes or so, all offered minor pleasures that at least made the case for efficient, creative blockbusters at the multiplex, but for each one of them, there was a cloying, misguided mess like13 Hours,London Has Fallen, andAllegiant.
None of this is particularly new, however. This has been the state of being for quite some time, and if 2016’s top offenders felt all the more noticeable, it’s only because their failures have also been more public. Word of mouth actually slowed Snyder’s roll, and there’s been a similarly clear backlash to the grand, empty spectacle ofWarcraft, a film that should have been far more sweeping and magical than what felt like three hours of my cousin playing a really weird video game. It’s not surprising then that most of the best films have remained just a little below the radar, whether it be the assured moodiness and feminist allegories ofThe Witchor the wondrous, existential voyage that isKnight of CupsorRichard Linklater’s irrepressible ode to good times,Everybody Wants Some!!
One has to give credit to something likeCivil Warfor having such a tight grasp on what makes a busy, entertaining movie, but the very best of 2016 thus far has, as always, come from films with distinct personalities and perspectives behind them, packed with ideas that don’t always do well in market testing. With the summer season well under way, we thought we’d gather our favorite films of the year as of right now, so there will be plenty of time to catch up with the best of the bunch by the time you’re making your end-of-the-year lists.
‘10 Cloverfield Lane’
If you had told me last year that aCloverfieldfollow-up would A. Actually happen and B. End up being one of the best films of the year, I’d have laughed in your face. But the taught, thrillingTwilight Zone-esque10 Cloverfield Laneis just that, with a tremendously complex (and terrifying) performance fromJohn Goodmanand a refreshingly unique female blockbuster protagonist inMary Elizbaeth Winstead. The secret to10 Cloverfield Laneis that despite the sci-fi-intensive finale and winking title, at heart this is a character drama, and directorDan Trachtenbergexecutes the entire film as such. The twists and turns keep audiences guessing not just about what’s outside, but what’sinside, as the trifecta of Goodman, Winstead, andJohn Gallagher Jr.prove to make for an unendingly compelling watch. –Adam Chitwood
‘Captain America: Civil War’
Leave it to Marvel to keep changing the game. Whether you want to look at this film as the third chapter in Steve Rogers’ story or the latest chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,Captain America: Civil Waris a towering achievement that smartly brings its two biggest characters into conflict, and does so with sharp subtext about the use of power and responsibility to the greater good. You may not agree with Cap (Chris Evans) or Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), but you’ll nonetheless be riveted by the choices they make and the brawl that ensues. Superhero movies don’t get any more epic than this (that is, until the next Marvel “war”…) –Matt Goldberg
‘Cemetery of Splendor’
Just you try and concisely explain anApichatpong Weerasethakulmovie to the person next to you. Go ahead; I’ll wait! Quite the chore, no? Even if it’s not always easy to understand what exactly he’s getting at, beyond the ache of spiritual death and metaphysical transformation, the films made by this Thai wunderkind are amongst the most hypnotic and strangely heartbreaking movies that have come out in the last two decades. The director made his reputation with the sublime double-tap ofSyndromes and a CenturyandUncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, butCemetery of Splendoris similarly evocative, ruminative, and emotionally involving in its tale of the dead and dream states. An older woman, played byJenjira Pongpas, looks after a soldier who has been stricken by a strange sleeping illness, and he is retrofitted with a tube light that is meant to help with the problem. As always, the progression of technical and medical science is intertwined with an advanced, thoroughly thoughtful take on the spiritual afterlife, and reincarnation. Lights glow all sorts of colors in Weerasethakul’s Thailand and his imagery suggests floating through the land of the half-living, but the everyday struggle of poverty-wrecked Thai citizens is considered intermittently as well. As such,Cemetery of Splendorfeels like a passage from one world to the next, a fascinating evocation of the feelings that passing away, or going to the movies, can foster. —Chris Cabin
‘The Club’
The Clubmakes four masterworks in a row for the Chilean maestroPablo Larrain, and early word about his next two films, including his American debut, which starsNatalie Portmanas Jackie Onassis, has been remarkably positive. Though his treatment of his home country in the wake of Pinochet’s death squads and routine corruption was always a big ghastly, Larrain reaches new levels of pain and furiosity withThe Clan, which tells of a seaside home where a gaggle of ex-communicated priests are hiding out. Their crimes range from the familiarly, nauseatingly sexual to the callously greedy, but when one member of the titular clique shoots himself on their lawn, an investigator for the Catholic Church is flown in to take stock of the situation. To ruin any of Larrain’s sinister pivots into a range of challenging moral questions would be wrong, but it’s easy enough to say that the director sees a world where denial of crimes, of faults in religious design, has opened up a kind of pandora’s box. InThe Clan, we must face the horror of the Catholic Church’s unending crimes forever due to our inability to face up to decades, even centuries of letting them get away with all of it. — Chris Cabin
‘Embrace of the Serpent’
A distant cousin ofMiguel Gomes’ ravishingTabuand the wilder works of the greatLuis Bunuel,Embrace of the Serpentmay be one of the best films to be nominated for a foreign film Oscar in the past decade. Columbian directorCiro Guerraconsiders the long-lasting effects of colonialism and mortality as he details two adventures taken by Karamakate, played byNilbio TorresandAntonio Bolivar, an Amazonian shaman who agrees to take two different scientists, separated by 40 years, to seek out a rumored healing plant. Guerra fills his black-and-white images with a fury against the idea of cultural and religious control, but he never loses the essential feeling of discovery in Karamakate’s intertwined voyages. One sequence in particular, at a school for misbehaving native children, expresses an anger and disbelief at colonialist thinking that rattles you to your core. –Chris Cabin
‘Everybody Wants Some!!’
The “spiritual sequel toDazed and Confused” tag that was used to promoteRichard Linklater’sEverybody Wants Some!!isn’t a ruse, but it actually takes a little bit of time to achieve that distinction.Confusedconcerned a day-in-the-life of 1970s high schoolers and the routine acceptance of the roles of being next year’s top dog (seniors) and bottom dog (freshmen). There were keg runs, embarrassments, flirtations and philosophizing. It’s one of the best and most attuned teenage films of all time and an early spotter of the talents ofMatthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Parker PoseyandAdam Goldberg.Some!!takes place in college in the 80s, within the first weekend in the house of the university baseball team; there are freshmen and transfers coming in, seniors taking control, lots of parties (all within different youth subcultures), embarrassments, flirtations, and philosophizing.
Some!!is a little too on the nose with the male gaze of the camera lens as the guys go out to prowl for sex, ogling backsides and cleavage in a parade of faceless moments (it takes an uncomfortable amount of time before a young woman that they’re attempting to bed has any meaningful dialogue). The characters also meld a little too quickly (although it’s fun, no one would get into a car with a bunch of strangers and have a perfectly synchronized rap of Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message”). But around the point when our main freshman (Blake Jenner) starts to pursue a cute freshman he saw moving in (Zoey Deutch), the film gloriously achieves thatDazedgroove. Jenner’s attempt to shed jock status to impress a theater girl forces the rest of the house to deliver their own unique creeds of what makes them different from the group they’re in. Once these discussions start entering the parties, practice fields and parking lots,Wyatt Russell, Glen Powell, Tyler Hoechlinand Deutch all get magnificent calling card moments for their future Hollywood ascension—a la theConfusedalums before them—and Linklater is able to comfortably convey his “Message” of uniqueness. When the players are not in perfect unison—like they are at the beginning of the film—Some!!becomes spiritual indeed. —Brian Formo
‘Hail, Caesar!’
Hail, Caesar!has the standardCoen Brothersplot of a kidnapping and a ransom, but that plot is all a McGuffin. Sure, a 1950’s A-list actor (George Clooney) gets drugged, taken to a safe house, and a briefcase with $100,000 is requested from the studio’s everyman “fixer” (Josh Brolin) by the kidnappers. ButCaesar!is less interested in that. Instead,Caesar!is fixed on Old Hollywood. On the story side of things, the Coens deliciously frame cinema as a new belief system. Brolin’s fixer has discussions with religious leaders about the studio’s Christ film, Clooney’s been kidnapped by Communist writers who want an equal pay system within the pictures, and in both rooms of scholars man is described as being “split”. The splitting of mankind funnels us off into different groups that ultimately have more in common than we’d like to admit. By the end of the picture, cinema and entertainment has shown itself to be a potential healer for split people, as it provides a reprieve and a diversion.
On the surface,Caesar!is an excuse for the Coens to replicate Old Hollywood films that they’ll never make into a feature film. As Brolin wanders the lot taking care of egos and gathering ransom money, each sound stage is filming a different type of picture—many genres of which no longer exist; there’s the sailor musical, the bathing beauties swim picture, the huge Ancient Rome set, the no dialogue shootout western, the western musical, and the old school class melodrama that Hollywood now leans on Britain to produce. On these stages and nearby locations we get amazing moments (lensed gloriously byRoger Deakins, of course) from Clooney,Channing TatumandScarlett Johanssonin Roman armor, tap shoes and a mermaid tale, but it’sAlden Ehrenreichwho absolutely steals the movie as a B-movie buckaroo that the studio’s “changing the image” of by placing him in a dialogue-heavy melodrama.Caesar!is funny, charming and intelligent, but it’s the loose nature of the film that allows the Coens to skirt the “plot” and take us into 5-to-10-minute short films replicating Hollywood of yore that makes this madcap film worthy of many hails. And in Ehrenreich, truly a star is born. —Brian Formo
‘The Invitation’
Social anxiety is a bummer. You walk into a crowded room and feel completely alone. You’re surrounded by friends but feel in the thick of enemies.Karyn Kusama’sThe Invitationis one of the best films in recent memory to encapsulate that fearful disorientation and translate it into a gripping paranoid horror story. Set at a dinner party that finds a group of old friends reunited after years apart,The Invitationcenters onLogan Marshall-Green’s Will andTammy Blachard’s Eden, a divorced couple who lost their young son in a tragic accident. Years later, after Eden disappeared without a word, she reemerges a seemingly changed woman, her grief supplanted by a newfound peace of mind that she wants to share with her nearest and dearest at their long overdue reunion, set in the home she and Will once shared. Will is understandably suspicious, even hostile, towards her new mentality and even more so her new friends, and as the night unfurls, each moment more tense than the last, he develops a paranoid theory of insidious intent.
Or is it so paranoid? Kusama does a wonderful job balancing the two possibilities, setting up Will’s instability and the uneasy circumstances in equal measure. Much of the film plays out as a ghost story, as Will navigates the halls of his old home, memories packed in at every turn. Haunted by his loss and tormented by his suspicions, Will’s despondence increases by the moment as the night’s events grow ever more unwieldy, building to a fever pitch anxiety that boils over at exactly the right moment. At a certain point, the film has to take a side, is Will crazy or is it everyone else who’s insane for acting like nothing’s out of order? Depending on how you like your horror, the answer will either delight or disappoint, but ending aside, nothing can undercut the preceding eighty minutes of Kusama’s masterfully crafted, sick-making slow-burn suspense. —Haleigh Foutch
‘Knight of Cups’
Terrence Malickhas been making the best American movies this side ofMartin Scorsesefor the last few decades, but even by his ridiculously high standards,Knight of Cupsis a walloping experience. Here, Malick envisions himself as a sell-out screenwriter (Christian Bale), who all-but floats through a world of tangled, tarnishing relationships with a series of unique women.Imogen Poots,Cate Blanchett,Teresa Palmer, andNatalie Portmanall do some of the best, most instinctually aware acting of their careers against Bale’s largely silent but exquisitely ruminating performance. Even more stunning is the near-hallucinatory vision of family strife that Malick evokes in Bale’s hustler’s relationship with his father (Brian Dennehy) and brother (Wes Bentley), which sees to reach beyond time and even the loss of life.
It’s been suggested thatKnight of Cupsis nothing more than high-end white-guy brooding, and it’s not entirely hard to see how people could come to that conclusion. Then again, I’m not sure if any Malick film could escape such a condemnation, though such criticisms are easier to be levied at the filmmaker’s post-Days of Heavenwork. There’s unquestionably something breezy about the film, a feeling that could be easily misconstrued as simultaneous carelessness and self-importance, but there’s also moments of untamed personality and clattering connections, a palpable feeling of intimate communication in his imagery. Believing, fully, that Malick’s visions of poverty, familial anger, sex, and love are genuine and empathetic, rather than merely self-important, is, in a way, an act of faith, which happens to be one of Malick’s chief concerns as an artist.Knight of Cupsdoes not strike me as the work of someone who thinks only about himself and how he feels, but rather as the complicated, fearless divulgence of a very wealthy, wise, and imaginative artist. –Chris Cabin
‘Love & Friendship’
Whit Stillman’s delightful comedic career has included a few pointed critiques of East Coast private school privilege (fromMetropolitanthroughDamsels in Distress). Which makes him the perfect fit for taking on a comedic class navigation of America’s colonizers. One of Britain’s cheekiest and most rebellious melodrama scribes,Jane Austen, fits him like glove. Austen’s Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale) is our guide through the houses of many 18thcentury estates. Lady Susan is a widow and property-less, but she means to not only keep her stature, but to continue to rise in society. She requests quarters at her distrustful sister-in-law’s (Emma Greenwell). And from there she sets up a chessboard that includes a new-money suitor (Tom Bennett) for her daughter (Morfydd Clark), an American confidant (Chloë Sevigny) who’ll cover for her when she meets up with a married man (payment in gossip, of course), and attempts to win over her former brother-in-law (Xavier Samuel) to keep her in the family’s good graces (and guest room).
There’s a labyrinth of characters inLove & Friendship, and Stillman helps us keep track of them through posed portraits. It takes the first third of the film to set up all the characters, but once they’re all placed, it’s dizzying fun. Bennett is a hoot as the oaf with a heart of gold, who’s new to gold, and thus the type of conversation that old money wants to echo in their quarters. And Beckinsale properly keeps the audience at arm’s length as she’s consistently putting on a new affront and gives no sense of self, besides achieving her status desire. While such a distant character might make another film impenetrable, Stillman’s supporting cast is so delightful that it makes Susan’s manipulation of her status (and them) more lighthearted and fun. —Brian Formo
