This is the second part of a look back at the best films of 2016. If you missed Part 1, featuring Nos. 30-16, click here.
Without further ado, the 15 best films of 2016…
15. “La La Land” (directed by Damien Chazelle)
Here’s to the ones who dream. The grand new screen musical “La La Land” pulses with the magic of the cinema in almost every frame, drawing inspiration from the long tradition of old Hollywood musical productions to concoct its own alchemic, irresistible charm. Set among the dreamers and struggling would-be artists in Los Angeles — a town director Damien Chazelle lovingly photographs — “La La Land” showcases a sweeping romance between an aspiring actress (Emma Stone) and a jazz musician (Ryan Gosling) with a chip on his shoulder. The two have sparkling chemistry and make for an undeniable musical team — but “La La Land” is also wise enough to realize that life and romance are not always like the movies, and the film transforms into something more bittersweet. You may find yourself absolutely entranced by the music, energy and sheer passion that drive this film.
Standout performer: Stone, whose interplay with Gosling is charming, but who gets a solo all her own to break your heart.
Standout scene: The opening musical number set on an L.A. freeway is the year’s purest shot of ebullience.
14. “Midnight Special” (directed by Jeff Nichols)
The science fiction chase film “Midnight Special,” my favorite of the great rising director Jeff Nichols’ two 2016 films (though “Loving” certainly isn’t bad either), is a gripping and assured throwback that melds the sensibilities of John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg on a road trip across the Southeast. Part of the joy of “Midnight Special” is in discovering its secrets. What makes a young boy named Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher) so special? Why is he desired by a religious cult and the federal government? And to what lengths will his father (Michael Shannon) go to protect him? Nichols gives us all the necessary information meticulously and patiently, until by its conclusion the scope and scale of “Midnight Special” grows beyond anything we might have expected. Yet beneath the awe-inspiring sci-fi turns remains the film’s most important aspect: the central relationship between father and son, brought to life in a thematically rich and truly moving story from Nichols.
Standout performer: The wonderful Michael Shannon, so decent and steadfast in the lead role as a father coming to realize potentially painful truths about what makes his son special.
Standout scene: In one of the film’s earliest surprises, a late-night visit to Alton from a friendly former cult member has an explosive conclusion.
13. “Toni Erdmann” (directed by Maren Ade)
This is just your run of the mill, nearly three-hour German comedy about fathers and daughters, industrial globalization and the merits of various cheese graters. Epic in length, narrow in scope and dryly funny in the most appealing way, “Toni Erdmann” flirts with screwball comedy in truly Teutonic fashion. It’s the story of a divorced senior named Winfried (Peter Simonischek) with a fondness for dumb practical jokes looking to reconnect with his harried adult daughter, Ines (Sandra Hüller), a workaholic consultant for industries modernizing their operations. When he pays her a surprise visit in Bucharest, it’s bad enough. When he starts wearing fake gag teeth and a ratty long-haired wig, assumes the role of a businessman named Toni Erdmann and inserts himself into Ines’ business dealings, things get worse. Ines works twice as hard as her male counterparts as it is — and she doesn’t need her frustrating father complicating things for her. Winfried just wants her to try to lighten up. Throughout this madcap scenario, director Maren Ade constructs her characters with sensitivity and nuance — she has plenty of time to do so — and takes her story in surprising and hilarious new directions.
Standout performer: As great as Simonischek is, Hüller is a fearsome foil, whose reluctant participation in her father’s childish scenarios leads to some great laughs.
Standout scene: In one rather awkward prank, Winfried puts Ines on the spot at a party and asks her to sing Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All.” What happens next may draw spontaneous applause.
12. “Everybody Wants Some!!” (directed by Richard Linklater)
Only a filmmaker as talented and sensitive as Richard Linklater could make a bro-comedy in the otherwise poisonously masculine year 2016 that is not only gentle but casually profound. “Everybody Wants Some!!,” described as a spiritual sequel to the filmmaker’s cult classic “Dazed and Confused,” traces the high-energy antics of a college baseball team in August 1980, over the long weekend before class starts, with all the beer, drugs, sex and rock ’n’ roll you’d expect. But underneath the hard partying and masculine bravado is a sweet-natured, nostalgic look back at the innocent days of youth on the cusp of adulthood at the fleeting frontier of college; as a character puts it, “Here for a good time, not for a long time.” Like so many of Linklater’s great films, “Everybody Wants Some!!” is filled with memorable characters, offhanded wisdom and general good vibes.
Standout performer: As the wiseacre Finnegan, Glen Powell, who also has a nice small role in “Hidden Figures” as John Glenn.
Standout scene: The closing moments sum everything up in a perfect Linklater fashion, with just the right message written on a blackboard as class finally begins.
11. “Jackie” (directed by Pablo Larrain)
A grand American tragedy is dissected in intimate, operatic fashion in “Jackie,” this account of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s days and weeks immediately following the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963. As Jackie Kennedy, Natalie Portman assumes the difficult task of inhabiting one of the most recognizable American figures of the 20th century — and she nails it, bringing a deep grief and pathos to Kennedy in her darkest hour. Far from a standard biopic, director Pablo Larrain’s film is almost a psychodrama, owing as much to the films of Roman Polanski or “The Shining” as it probes and pushes into the mourning widow’s psychology. “Jackie” is a fascinating look at the border between truth and myth in historical accounts, searching for the reality behind a closely guarded public image and the curated legend of the Kennedys’ Camelot. This is an electric, rattling film that will take you by surprise.
Standout performer: Portman, obviously, but special mention must be made of the film’s other great contribution: the excellent, anxious original score from rising composer Mica Levi.
Standout scene: The initial glimpse we get at the events of Nov. 23, 1963, followed by Jackie Kennedy’s shell-shocked trip home on Air Force One, are stunning.
10. “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” (directed by Taika Waititi)
This marvelous comedy from New Zealand will make you laugh and will warm your heart in equal measure, and that it loses none of its potency for both on repeat viewings suggests “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” has the potential to become a beloved movie for older teens and their parents — if it finds the audience it deserves. Director Taika Waititi brings his oddball sense of humor and fast-paced style to this mismatched buddy adventure story about a “bad egg” young boy (Julian Dennison) and his grumpy and reluctant foster “uncle” (Sam Neill) who go on the lam in the New Zealand wilderness after inadvertently becoming the subjects of a nationwide manhunt. Bright and colorful, filled with quotable lines and appealing performances, Waititi has concocted what might be his best work yet, a broadly funny chase film in the style of his work with comedy folk duo Flight of the Conchords.
Standout performer: Dennison, whose oddball “gangsta” style is at odds with his rather roly-poly physique, gives a sympathetic, exuberant and vulnerable performance and masters the delivery of so many great jokes.
Standout scene: Waititi himself makes a cameo as a minister in a key scene, delivering a particularly inscrutable and hilarious sermon.
9. “The Fits” (directed by Anna Rose Holmer)
Anna Rose Holmer’s debut narrative feature “The Fits” is the emergence of a vital new cinematic voice in a film that defies genre labeling and description. If many films approach coming of age as a moment of wonder about the future and wistfulness about the innocence lost, “The Fits” sees it as a process of terror and anxiety, as one’s body is twisted and transformed into a mysterious end result one cannot anticipate. At least, that’s the central metaphor at work in this dreamlike, remarkably assured film, in which our preteen protagonist, Toni (played magnificently by the young newcomer Royalty Hightower), is torn between the masculine world of her brother’s boxing gym and the feminine world of her community center’s dance crew at a moment where a mysterious sickness appears to be afflicting local girls at random. “The Fits” gains immeasurable power from its ambiguity, and from the sensory overload of its filmmaking, featuring some of the most memorable images and moments of any picture all year.
Standout performer: Hightower dominates nearly every frame of “The Fits.”
Standout scene: A routine workout transforms into a jubilant dance routine in the film’s most beautiful shot.
8. “The Witch” (directed by Robert Eggers)
Not only the most brilliantly composed and artful horror film of 2016, but in the final analysis, by far the scariest. “The Witch,” the debut feature of writer-director Robert Eggers, draws from the long history of New England folklore to create its own unnerving and ceaselessly creepy story of one Puritan family in the mid-1600s forced to do battle with the untamed wilderness, their own paranoia and prejudice, and, yes, an actual, literal witch who lives in the nearby forest and communes with Satan himself. Our glimpses at this witch are kept to a minimum; instead, Eggers ratchets up the tension and stays with the family, which begins to tear apart at the seams as their misfortunes go from bad to much, much worse. Anya Taylor-Joy plays the eldest daughter who becomes an object of suspicion, revealing, as “The Witch” nears its horrifying conclusion, its potent metaphor about religious repression and misogyny. But most importantly, this movie will crawl under your skin, and you will have a difficult time shaking it off — like all the most indelible horror movies.
Standout performer: If we are restricting ourselves to the human cast, Ralph Ineson gives a conflicted, frightening performance as the patriarch who slowly discovers he may be in over his head. If we are not, Black Phillip the goat was easily the best supporting goat of the year.
Standout scene: The eldest son, Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), is ailing after a mysterious absence. The source of his ailment is soon dramatically revealed.
7. “Hail, Caesar!” (directed by Joel and Ethan Coen)
We all need a system of belief to offer some meaning to this world, whether it’s Communism, Catholicism or the cinema. As “Hail, Caesar!” suggests, the cinema is much more fun. Joel and Ethan Coen have made their share of intellectually provocative films and dumb comedies, but “Hail, Caesar!” is a perfect combination of their tendencies toward philosophy and farce. It’s the mercurial filmmakers’ take on the New Testament, in which a 1950s Hollywood studio fixer (Josh Brolin) bears the sins of his cinematic world as he tries to prevent one crisis after another from endangering film production. Among these crises: the empty-headed star (George Clooney) of the studio’s expensive prestige epic has been kidnapped by Communists, the innocent Esther Williams-type aquatic musical star (Scarlett Johansson) is suddenly and unexpectedly pregnant, and the studio boss has forced a hayseed cowboy actor (Alden Ehrenreich) into a fancy drawing-room drama that actually requires him to speak. With an expansive ensemble and fun riffs on classic Hollywood moviemaking, the Coens have crafted a hilarious and sneakily theological film destined for reevaluation.
Standout performer: Ehrenreich, whose cowboy actor is not only the funniest character in the film, but also its sneaky conscience.
Standout scene: Ehrenreich’s cowboy actor has a line coaching with his snooty director (Ralph Fiennes), in which a single line is repeated unto absurdity.
6. “Arrival” (directed by Denis Villeneuve)
In a year when many of us feel completely alone in the universe, here comes “Arrival,” a movie espousing the value of diplomacy and crosscultural understanding for mutual enrichment, a movie about working together toward a common purpose for a brighter future. That these concepts might feel more farfetched now than the film’s literal premise — the arrival of space aliens, and humanity’s attempts to learn their language and communicate with them — is a shame. At least there are films like this to remind us occasionally of the merits of such ideas. At its core, the moody “Arrival” is a wondrous mixture of heady science fiction concepts and genuine tear-jerking emotion, aided by a terrific performance from Amy Adams as the haunted linguist who finds herself changed forever by the process of trying to understand these visitors. The secrets of “Arrival” I will leave to you to discover, but rest assured Denis Villeneuve’s film will stand the test of time with the most mind-bending cinematic science fiction. And if, after “Prisoners,” “Enemy” and “Sicario,” you were not sold on Villeneuve as potentially the most exciting emerging director working today, surely “Arrival” will settle the matter.
Standout performer: Adams as Dr. Louise Banks, the linguist grieving over the loss of a child, who is given unexpected layers in a plot that reveals itself to be more complicated than initially expected.
Standout scene: We head into the unknown with the disorienting initial journey into the alien craft, in which even gravity ceases to have any conventional meaning.
5. “Hell or High Water” (directed by David Mackenzie)
Sometimes you just like a good old-fashioned crime drama, and boy does “Hell or High Water” deliver on that front, a neo-Western tale of cops and robbers set in a modern-day Texas devastated by the recession. Surrounded by enemies of all sorts and with the family home in danger of being foreclosed upon, two desperate brothers — a ne’er-do-well (Ben Foster) and a more straightlaced divorced father (Chris Pine) — resort to robbing banks, drawing the attention of an aging lawman (Jeff Bridges) on the verge of retirement. You may think you know this story. But “Hell or High Water” has some surprises for you, among them just how sharp and filled with brilliant dialogue Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay is, or how taut David Mackenzie’s direction grows as the situation becomes more dire for our outlaw protagonists, or how fully realized and beautifully performed this cast of ostensible movie stereotypes grows over the course of the film. “Hell or High Water” crackles.
Standout performer: Bridges gets another rich role as the Texas lawman with an unflappable moral code who can’t help but torment his half-Native American partner with unbearable racist jokes.
Standout scene: Foster’s outlaw character plays a tense game of cards at a casino, and has one of the most memorable screen conversations of the year.
4. “Silence” (directed by Martin Scorsese)
When is an act of apostasy the most faithful act a religious believer can commit? Martin Scorsese brings his long-brewing passion project, an adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s 1969 novel, to the big screen with a beautiful, probing film that cements the master filmmaker as one of cinema’s most important theologians. With “Silence,” Scorsese walks the same hallowed ground as Ingmar Bergman and Robert Bresson, pondering the intricacies of Christian faith, the meaning of human suffering and the perceived absence of God. This is the story of two Jesuit missionaries (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) who travel to Japan in the mid-1600s after hearing that a respected priest (Liam Neeson) of their order was tortured and has renounced his faith. The two sneak into a dangerous landscape in which the practice of Christianity is forbidden, and their ministry marks both them and their followers for persecution. “Silence” comes to question the wisdom of missionary work and the arrogance of seeking martyrdom at the expense of the suffering of others. During the course of a nearly three-hour runtime, Scorsese considers the great questions of belief, unflinchingly depicts suffering and torment, and presents his audience with no easy answers.
Standout performer: Garfield, whose deep-seated personal convictions are shaken again and again as those around him suffer and his prayers yield no results.
Standout scene: A breathtaking final shot which underlines the heartbreaking generosity of Scorsese’s thesis.
3. “Manchester by the Sea” (directed by Kenneth Lonergan)
There has never been a film about the grieving process quite so honest and raw as “Manchester by the Sea,” Kenneth Lonergan’s beautiful, heartwrenching story about a man consumed with sadness who can’t stop the world from turning, no matter how much he might like to. Casey Affleck stars as Lee Chandler, a Boston handyman forced to return to his hometown after the death of his beloved brother (Kyle Chandler). Not only must Lee contend with the mundane arrangements for the deceased, but in a surprise, Lee’s brother named him the guardian of his teenage nephew (Lucas Hedges). Owing to the skeletons in his closet and a grief from his past too all-consuming to face, Lee is unprepared to assume this new role. With a delicate and pitch-perfect mixture of comedy and pathos, and an ear and eye for the rhythms of daily life, Lonergan and his cast have crafted a character portrait you won’t soon forget.
Standout performer: Affleck, whose tightly coiled, clenched performance is a masterwork in repression, and the year’s best performance.
Standout scene: An unexpected meeting on the street between Lee and his ex-wife (Michelle Williams) yields heartbreaking results.
2. “Paterson” (directed by Jim Jarmusch)
The world of “Paterson,” which might be the great director Jim Jarmusch’s masterpiece, feels like it might be a slightly magical one. It’s a film about a bus driver named Paterson (Adam Driver) who drives a route in Paterson, New Jersey, and lives a life of quiet, humble domestic routine. He’s in a loving marriage with Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), a ceaselessly creative individual who finds new passions every day. He wakes up next to her every morning, has a cup of coffee and faces off with his only enemy, Laura’s bulldog Marvin, about whom Paterson is honestly ambivalent. He walks to work and listens in on the conversations of his many passengers. In his free time, he writes poetry in a notebook. “Paterson” follows a week in the life of this humble dreamer, crafting an ode to finding poetry and art in the mundane and to the delights of a simple fulfilled life. Jarmusch finds joy and big ideas in the deceptive complexity of Paterson’s routine, delighting in finding patterns — or, as Paterson would put it, in finding “internal rhymes.” No film of 2016 delighted me more; “Paterson” finds the glory and artistry that surrounds all of us, and rejects the very notion of mundanity.
Standout performer: Driver, who finds the soul in his quiet but expressive gangly poet.
Standout scene: After an artistic setback, Paterson meets a Japanese businessman (Masatoshi Nagase) who shares his interest in the poet William Carlos Williams.
And the best film of 2016 is…
1. “Moonlight” (directed by Barry Jenkins)
If ever there were a movie with the power to make its viewers more empathetic, surely “Moonlight,” this great open heart of a movie and the most important work of 2016, would be it. It’s a portrait in three parts of a person left in the margins of society: Chiron, a young black gay man from a low-income, drug-addled household who we meet as a child, a teenager and an adult. This is a person whose search for meaning and identity is consistently frustrated by the preconceived notions of those around him, of gender norms, of concepts of traditional blackness and masculinity. But through it all, there beats within his heart the yearning for something more authentic. What does the world see when it sees Chiron? What does he see when he looks in the mirror? The beauty of the symphonic, lush “Moonlight” is in discovering who Chiron really is, and watching Chiron discover it for himself. A perfect ensemble guides us through three time periods, and writer-director Barry Jenkins brings a meticulous, textured style to his heartbreaking character study. A masterwork, and a film much needed right now: the best film of 2016.
Standout performer: Mahershala Ali as the paternal drug dealer Juan, who guides young Chiron through a trying time in his life but struggles with his own contributions to Chiron’s fraught home life.
Standout scene: The extended restaurant-set scene in the film’s third act, detailing an unexpected reunion between Chiron and an old friend set to Barbara Lewis’ “Hello Stranger,” is both melancholy and giddily romantic.
Special mention: Though it isn’t represented on this list, some critics consider the ESPN five-part documentary “O.J.: Made in America” a film. If I were one of those critics, it would be somewhere near the top of this list. But because I insist on splitting hairs, I must refer to it simply as one of the best television series of 2016, and I don’t do a list for those.