VIDEO: David Ehrlich's Top 25 of 2017

THE 25 BEST FILMS OF 2017: A VIDEO COUNTDOWN from David Ehrlich on Vimeo.

A Brief Unsolicited Enthusiastic Recommendation: Tower

(A new feature. Looking for something to watch? Let this occasional movie blogger be your guide. Presenting "A Brief Unsolicited Enthusiastic Recommendation." First up: Tower from 2016.)

On August 1, 1966 a man with a sniper rifle went to the top of a tower on the campus of the University of Texas and opened fire. For a long time (but not long enough) it held the record for the most deadly school shooting. Tower is a documentary of the 96 minutes the shooter spent on his deadly perch. It is told in typical documentary fashion, with interviews, voiceovers, flashbacks and reenactments. But the reenactments and some interviews are portrayed using rotoscope animation. Rotoscope means that the animation is done overtop of real footage of the subjects. The technique creates a unique look that manages to be both lifelike and abstract.

Reenactments in documentaries can be distracting. The actors often look nothing like the people they portray and the scenes and effects are often cheaply made - like when survivors of a shipwreck are obviously floating in a small pool inside a studio, or when lost hikers survive the night in a cave clearly made out of plaster and foam. The animation in Tower is used brilliantly to avoid being distracting. It seems counterintuitive, but by not attempting to be lifelike re-creation, the animated scenes end up making the action seem more real, true, and vivid. It achieves this while still maintaining its own artistic beauty: the animation itself is just really cool.

The story of the shooting gets to the heart of tragedy and the beautiful things that almost always come out of it. Its focuses on the bravery, selflessness, and heroism of the first responders, classmates, faculty, and citizens who took action during the crisis. It also explores the healing and forgiveness that came after, highlighting the beautiful side of human nature and showing that that side is the dominant one or maybe the only one. There may not be an evil side. The movie doesn’t portray the the shooter as an evil monster or less than human, but as a severely ill individual. That doesn’t make anything he did acceptable or even understandable. But for at least one woman in the film, it helped her forgive and move on. And that’s a beautiful thing.

Tower is currently available on Netflix.

(Even if rotoscope-animated school shooting documentaries aren't your typical fare, give it a try. You won't be disappointed.)

TOWER Trailer from keith maitland on Vimeo.

2016 Power Rankings Update + Oscar Best Picture Nominees

I remember first taking an interest in the Oscars in 1998. That may be because it was the year Titanic set the record for most nominations, and that probably drummed up a lot of noise. But I don’t remember that. What I remember is thinking L.A. Confidential, a best picture nominee, looked really cool (old-timey cops, a mystery, a beautiful lady mysteriously in the center of it all). But I was 12 in 1998 and I didn’t end up seeing L.A. Confidential until a couple years ago (which was for the best, since I don’t think I would have appreciated it, much less even followed the complicated plot, back then and I really enjoyed it when I saw it).

I have always ended up seeing most of the best picture nominees, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I started making a point to see all of them every year (and as many of the best actor/actress movies as I can). This year it came down to the wire. The Oscars are tonight and I saw the last nominee last night.

I wrote about the nominees last year and wanted to do it again this year. But I also promised an update to my best of 2016 power rankings (below). So I combined them. The best picture nominees are in bold. I wrote about the ones I haven't already written about in posts below.

1. Moonlight

We watched this last night and I guess I saved the best for last. Moonlight is about three stages of one guy’s life. It’s slow and quiet and yet somehow managed to keep me on the edge of my seat like a well-crafted thriller. I think the secret is in the empathy it builds. The story feels so true and the characters so real and rich and complicated, the way real life and real people are, that the struggles and suffering, and ultimately the hope, sinks in with richness and color and genuine feeling. It all feels so true that it puts real life into perspective. Chiron isn’t a real person, but there are so many real people just like him with problems and struggles just like his, and worse. In that way Moonlight transcends its form through empathy, and by connecting with real life, does one of the best things movies can do.

It is also beautifully filmed and full of great performances. It feels like more than a movie, but it’s also, to me, the best movie of the year.

2. Manchester by the Sea

3. La La Land

When movies sit and soak for a little while, sometimes their status changes in my mind. I still love La La Land, even though it dropped two spots since last time, but the other two left me with a little more to chew on. La La Land is going to win a lot tonight.

4. The Witch

5. Hunt for the Wilderpeople

I still have a lot of love for these two and I would have loved to see some Oscar recognition - maybe in the screenplay categories.

6. Moana

My favorite animated movie this year, but I think Zootopia is going to take the prize (and I’m not mad about it. I liked that one too).

7. Rams

8. Hell or High Water

Hell or High Water is a modern day western. It trades out the mindless gun play of the worst westerns and keeps the pointed, intense action of the best ones, while simmering with a quiet rage and leaving itself with something to say. That rage simmers in real life and has led to surprising results recently in both American and British politics. It’s the rage of the little guy in the face of the greedy and powerful. Whether that rage is warranted in real life is another question, but it works here as the two brothers wage war against the banks and the invisible hands they feel are oppressing them and the towns and way of life dying around them.

9. Arrival

10. Sully

I thought Sully might steal a best picture nomination and maybe take the Hacksaw Ridge spot. I think it should have. Tom Hanks could have snuck into the best actor category as well, but I think both he and that performance are too steady to stand out.

11. Fences

I understand why this one didn’t work for some people. It’s very clearly adapted from a stage play - though ‘adapted’ might be generous as I can’t imagine much was changed. It’s full of long dramatic monologues and the kind of poetic language that sounds much better than it is realistic. The characters still speak like a blue collar black family in the 50s, but they go on and on in a way nobody does. And Denzel Washington’s Troy can be such a horrible jerk, almost too much of one. But if you can get past that, there’s a lot to enjoy. It’s a portrait of a hard man, hardened by a hard life. Life is not black and white. When you look closer, there are so many different shades and different colors. When someone is awful, there is always a reason for it. The reasons don’t excuse the awfulness and knowing them still may not create any sympathy for the awful person. But it puts their behaviour in context. So if Fences’ presentation isn’t realistic, the way it portrays a difficult person and the people around him feels very true to life. It shows how life can contradict itself and how people can love and hate someone at the same time.

12. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

Popstar is a satire of modern celebrity culture and the speed at which fame comes and goes. It’s also a parody of no stars in particular - though there is some Justin Bieber to it, some boy band elements, and a little Macklemore (especially when Connor4Real releases his tone deaf single in support of gay marriage with frequent references to his own heterosexuality) - while parodying stardom itself. And it’s hilarious. There are songs about how the Mona Lisa is overrated and about making love “with the clinical efficiency of the assassination of Bin Laden,” Will Arnett’s perfect spoof of the TMZ guy, and the funniest gross-out scene I’ve ever seen (if you’ve seen it, you know the one). It’s definitely not a movie you’d watch with your grandma (unless your grandma is hilarious), but it made me laugh more than any movie has in a while.

13. Everybody Wants Some!!

14. 10 Cloverfield Lane

15. Krisha

16. Hacksaw Ridge

17. Rogue One

It’s not the most memorable Star Wars movie - except for that one scene at the end. And it’s probably the least fun (I think some of the prequels are too fun, which is no fun at all), though I did appreciate some of the darker and more serious elements - good guys that kill to get what they want, spies and traitors, and morally compromising situations. But its action really stands out. It combines some of the best elements of modern-day war movies, with their Middle Eastern set pieces, with World War II epic battles in a very exciting way. There are some really interesting characters, though they get lost in the mix and Felicity Jones’s Jyn isn’t one of them. But it made me appreciate The Force Awakens that much more, as it combined the fun, action, adventure, characters, locations, and big ideas of the best of Star Wars so much better than Rogue One did. Rogue One had elements of each of those, but the balance was off. But that last scene - it may have put the movie on this list by itself.

18. Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures tells a great story that deserves to be told, includes some great performances, and is generally well put together. There were a few times when people acted in ways I can’t imagine anyone in the 60s acting - Kevin Costner really didn’t know there were separate bathrooms for black people until that speech? And I can’t imagine a black woman making such a speech. But overall it was excellent, though that’s about all there is to say about it. It didn’t leave me with a whole lot to think about or even relate to. Though it is good to recognize the contributions of, not just the historically underappreciated or underrepresented minority groups, but the many people behind the momentous achievements throughout history who don’t get their names in the headlines.

19. Lion

I enjoyed the first third of the movie. I can’t get into what didn’t work for me about the rest of it without getting into spoiler territory. So you’ve been warned. Here it comes:

The second two thirds are just Dev Patel moping around. And it comes out of nowhere. He sees those pepper things at the party and then instantly decides he’s not going to talk to anyone ever again (did it not occur to him to wonder about it until he saw those peppers?). His girlfriend is very supportive. His adoptive parents seem to be the kindest people on Earth and definitely the sort of people who would understand his desire to find where he came from. But he shuts them both out for no reason. And the whole problem turned out to be very easy to solve. His recollection of his town’s name wasn’t THAT far off from the actual name. He could have googled a list of Indian town names that start with K, and the right town likely would have stuck out. He could have at least narrowed it down to a few, looked those ones up and followed the train lines out of each of them. Maybe if he would have spoken to another human being they could have told him about that strategy. The movie is based on a true story, so maybe that’s exactly how it all happened.

Also, the movie didn’t highlight his birth mother enough for me to feel much for her when they finally reunite. I mean, of course that experience would be very powerful and emotional and in my mind I feel for her. But the movie didn’t really set up the emotional payoff that it seems to be going for. Mopey dude finds a lady who was only in a scene or two an hour and a half ago - it didn’t work for me.

But the little guy at the beginning was great and that whole setup was powerful. It made me want to keep my kids on a leash.

20. Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids

Even though he is one of the biggest stars in the world, it seems Justin Timberlake is still somehow underrated. People don’t call themselves “entertainers” anymore, and there probably isn’t a lot of people that would qualify. But JT would be the last of a dying breed. I only like a few of his songs and I put this on out of curiosity, but I couldn’t turn it off. The whole thing could probably get by on Timberlake’s charisma alone, but the filmmaker deserves a lot of credit for making it much more interesting than any other music documentary or live performance I’ve ever seen on screen. JT is at the center of it all, but the camera spends a lot of time on all the other people that make such an elaborate show possible - the backup singers, the dancers, each member of the band. Add that to the interesting camera angles and movements and high production value and it ends up being more of a movie than just a recording of a concert.

Best of 2016 Power Ranking

It’s difficult in a small city to catch up with some of the more talked about movies from any given year. Some don’t get wide releases until early the next year. Some never do. Some end up in our theatres long after their release date after they have generated more buzz or have been nominated for Oscars. It seems that to see all the best movies of the year you have to be a professional critic in a big city. But even then it can be difficult. And so any top of 2016 list from the occasional movie blogger in Medicine Hat, Alberta will be lacking, at least until the first couple months of 2017. So I thought I would do it power rankings style, adjusting the list as I catch up with some of the better movies of the year.

Notably absent so far, and which I hope to catch up on as soon as possible, are: Hell or High Water (no real excuse here - it came to our theatres, and it’s available to stream on iTunes. I’ll get to it soon), Lion, Jackie, Fences, Moonlight, Paterson, Silence, Loving (and a few other one-word titles, I’m sure), and Nocturnal Animals. So I hope to be back regularly as I catch up with these.

Right now I have a top 12 for some reason. That’s just how it worked out. I don’t know if I’ll bump some as I add some or just draw out the list. Stay tuned.

Now, without further ado.

1. La La Land

I don’t think I have a particular fondness for musicals (and have downright hated some - I remember turning off the Phantom of the Opera halfway through, but then realized after 20 minutes that I had nothing else to do and so put it back on and finished it), and I was never a theatre person. But La La Land is such an exuberant joyride of fun, humor, happiness, lights and colour, song and dance, that it would melt the heart of the coldest Grinch. Director Damien Chazelle (of Whiplash fame - and I don’t know anyone who didn’t love Whiplash) did everything just right. It’s easy for certain elements of a musical to become overbearing - it can be too cheesy, too musical, even too joyful - but everything is here balanced perfectly and it’s a fun ride.

2. Manchester by the Sea

Manchester by the Sea is in many ways the opposite of La La Land. It’s about grief and sadness and how sometimes things just aren’t ok and never will be. That sounds like a depressing recipe, but the movie explores those issues with such empathy and true feeling - and a surprising amount of humor - that it makes you feel more alive and not less so. It’s a true exploration of human emotion and behavior in the face of unspeakable tragedy. And it is put together brilliantly. It’s affecting, real-life drama - haunting and sad in a way that feels true but not overbearing. It explores deep human emotion without drowning in it. And with emotions this deep, that is difficult to do.

Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams are spectacular in it. The movie will win many awards, and it’s as close to a masterpiece of human drama as anything I’ve seen for a long time.

3. The Witch

I wrote about The Witch, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Everybody Wants Some!!, and Krisha here. They survived from my (sort of) half-year list to be among my favorites of the year..

4. Hunt for the Wilderpeople

5. Moana

I guess I do like musicals. It’s hard not to when they’re done this well. Moana follows the typical Disney formula, but is richer and more textured than usual, with vibrant visuals, fully-developed characters, and music that rivals any of the Disney classics. The music in Moana was done by Lin-Manuel Miranda, of the broadway hit Hamilton and I guess there’s a reason anyone who follows pop culture in any way can’t escape Hamilton this year. I haven’t seen it or listened to its music, but it’s apparently spectacular. And you can tell in Moana. There usually comes a point in even the best animated movies where the movie loses me and I just want all the chaos to wrap up already. That didn’t happen in Moana. It’s more than a good animated movie - it’s a great movie on its own.

6. Rams

This one is more obscure. There is some debate about whether Rams is a 2015 or a 2016 movie (it was released in Iceland in 2015 and the US and Canada in 2016), but since this list has absolutely no consequence whatsoever and I saw it in 2016, it’s making my list.

Rams would be a good introduction for anyone hesitant about foreign films. It’s an Icelandic film, in that language, and takes place in a remote sheep farming community in rural Iceland. The plot is as powerful and touching as it is unique (I don’t think there are many other movies about Icelandic sheep farming). It tells the story of a dying way of life and the dying love between brothers (starring everyone’s two favorite actors, Sigurður Sigurjónsson and Theódór Júlíusson, who are actually both excellent). The movie goes in unexpected places as the two hardheaded brothers clash while their way of life clashes with the inevitable. But it’s the love of that way of life that brings the only warmth to their frozen Icelandic wilderness. Give it a chance. It’s on Netflix.

7. Arrival

Arrival is intelligent, thinking-person’s sci-fi that shares elements of first-contact (benevolent) alien movies like Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the complex and imaginative plot of movies like Christopher Nolan’s Inception or Interstellar. It lacks the large-scale spectacle of those movies, but masters the intimate, scaled-down tension in a style that is all its own. Director Denis Villeneuve has been developing that style in his last few movies (especially in last year’s Sicario), and seeing it applied to a big-budget genre movie is exciting and promising for the prospects of non-franchise mainstream movies.

It’s more than just aliens and complicated ideas. There are genuine existential questions and real human emotions, as the immensity of the event of extraterrestrial visitation is brought down to the scale of one woman (played by Amy Adams) and her personal crisis.

8. Sully

Sully is simple and understated, like its hero. It’s a portrait of a solid man doing a solid job. There are few bells and whistles in the movie about a man who lived his life and did his job with few bells or whistles. It’s a movie about competence in the face of crisis. And it’s not just Tom Hanks as Chesley Sullenberger, but the whole crew. Their composure and their performance of their duties under pressure is impressive, if at times almost chilling (“Heads down, stay down!”). It’s a movie that shouldn’t be exciting, but it is. Its repeated computer simulations shouldn’t be thrilling, but they are. And he shouldn’t have been able to land that plane, but he did. It’s solid craftsmanship about solid craftsmanship.

9. Everybody Wants Some!!

10. 10 Cloverfield Lane

I wrote about 10 Cloverfield Lane here - and I still think John Goodman deserves Oscar attention.

11. Krisha

12. Hacksaw Ridge

Hacksaw Ridge is made of two movies. One is about integrity, commitment to personal beliefs and principles, passivism, charity, kindness, and the love for fellow man. The other involves gruesome, brutal, war violence, staged in as well-assembled and breathtaking a way as any action movie ever, and it is genuinely thrilling and downright cool. Combining the two movies, however, is problematic and borderline distasteful. But there is no denying that each is excellent. Desmond Doss’ story of heroism deserves to be told and is told in a touching and inspiring way. And the war action is spectacular. But the combination muddles the important message the movie could have been telling. As it is, it says that violence should be avoided at all costs, while also showing that it is downright awesome.

VIDEO: Best movies of 2016

THE 25 BEST FILMS OF 2016: A VIDEO COUNTDOWN from David Ehrlich on Vimeo.

I always enjoy David Ehrlich's best of the year videos, though I don't always agree with his choices and end up not seeing a large portion of the movies he includes. But I enjoy how he puts these videos together. I'll have my own best of 2016 post up soon.

Speed Round

#82 – Sunrise (1927) 

Sunrise is a silent film that was released at the end of the silent era when artistic film technique had reached its peak. It won the first and only Oscar for “Unique and Artistic Production” and that’s a good description of the movie. The story, which seems like it should be unbearably sappy – a woman from the city tempts a farmer away from his wife, he tries to murder the wife, but they rediscover their love for each other – is rendered in such surprisingly interesting visuals that it all works somehow. The story doesn’t say much in itself, except for early 20 th century ideals about how virtuous women should be meek and forgiving, sexual women are dangerous and conniving, and men will do anything for either type of woman (and that women fit into those types). But the movie uses its visuals as more than then-modern showcases of special effects and camerawork. The techniques fit to tell a simple and pure story of love and marriage and it all fits together. The ending is also genuinely powerful.

#81 – Spartacus (1960) – Stanley Kubrick

Spartacus raises a loyal army of slaves and leads a rebellion against the Roman Empire, solely on the strength of his integrity and his cleft chin. The two together – the good character and the rigid masculinity – combine in Spartacus to form a noble manliness. A real man, as shown by Spartacus and the dedicated army he inspired, is equal parts hard and soft, and knows when to use each.

Spartacus is one of the great characters of film, and Spartacus is the best epic I have ever seen.

#80 – The Apartment

If Spartacus was the right amount of hard and soft, “Buddy Boy” C.C. Baxter is only soft. He allows himself to get taken advantage of by men more powerful than he is, lending out the key to his apartment so his superiors can use it for illicit rendezvous with women who aren’t their wives. He is walked all over, over and over, until one day finally… Well, I’m not sure the day really comes.

#79 – The Wild Bunch

“If they move, kill ‘em,” William Holden tells his gang at the beginning, but the instruction seems to apply throughout the whole movie. Because a lot of people move. The “Wild Bunch Ending” became a screenwriting term, referring to the chaotic bloodbath that seems destined to come where lawlessness lives. Peckinpaw shows the senselessness and inevitability of violence, shot with disorienting cuts and zooms and a soundtrack of gunshots and the screams of the dying. Trains and cars are starting to arrive in the west and it signals the death of a way of life that was rough and pointless. Death to death and more death.

#78 – Modern Times (1936)

When the worker is literally a cog in a machine, the worker has no rights. Charlie Chaplin was accused of being a communist and a socialist (and eventually condemned for it?). Whatever he was, he had sympathy for the workers, the people at the bottom of the food chain, the scraps at the bottom of the barrel, the bottom rung of the ladder. His character gets swept up into union protests and labour rights disputes, he works on an assembly line, and ends up in jail for reasons unclear. The system seems to grind and grind: as long as there is production it doesn’t matter how it’s produced, or even what it is producing. Modern Times is a satire and a cutting critique, as it gently points out and calls out the absurdity of the modern state and its systems, and it does it without saying a word.

VIDEO: Rare behind-the-scenes footage from The Shining

This is so interesting. Worth the watch.