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.