In this shitty, shitty year, movies proved a great escape. They allowed us to forget — if all too briefly — about the horrors of Trump and Brexit, about the deaths of David Bowie, Prince, and Leonard Cohen. Films threw us a lifeline. They were the best solace. Yes, 2016 gave us the Point Break remake and Independence Day 2, but let’s just put those two to one side for now. This is about escaping the apocalypse via the big screen and reaffirming your faith in, well, everything.
American Honey
Obviously, Andrea Arnold’s bruising road movie about traveling mag crews is memorable for Shia LaBeouf’s rattail. You can’t not be transfixed by it. But beyond that, it’s impossible to shake the image of Sasha Lane’s free spirit reaching for the sky in an open-top car. Or the camaraderie of the crew in the van as they chant, “I like to make money, get burnt.” Or what’s surely one of the most honest sex scenes committed to celluloid. If the film feels authentic — like Arnold bottled that feeling of traveling on the open road — it’s because it was filmed over one crazy summer spent on the road IRL, the chaos captured chronologically. It was a stroke of genius, as it turns out.
Everybody Wants Some!!
Filled as it is with handlebar mustaches, short shorts, and aviators, you might assume Linklater’s 80s-set “spiritual sequel” to Dazed and Confused is swamped in clichés. It isn’t. It may even be the first film to portray jocks as anything other than macho dicks with fuck-’em-and-chuck-’em attitudes to dating. Linklater, reflecting on his own college years as a baseball player, makes you want to hang out with these beer-guzzlers. He also makes you think, Man, the 80s look like a whole lotta fun.
Little Men
Little Men is a contender for the most out-of-the-blue brilliant, totally unexpected gem of the year. It’s a tale about gentrification in the Big Apple viewed through the friendship of two young and confused boys. That friendship is put through the wringer as the kids’ parents lock horns over the details of a lease on an unprofitable shop. The film makes you think about the forward march of time; how, at that age, you can lose friends as quickly as you can make them; and how things beyond your control can change your entire world.
Mapplethorpe: Look At the Pictures
You don’t need to be a fan of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work to enjoy this eye-opening documentary about the late NYC photographer. As he says himself in the film, “The photographs, I think, are less important than the life that one is leading.” And what a life it was. He dated Patti Smith, rubbed shoulders with Warhol, and photographed all manner of people and things in his studio.
Paterson
In Jim Jarmusch’s latest, Adam Driver plays a bus driver who’s also a prolific poet. He pens poems in between shifts that reflect his simple life: he drives a bus, he walks his dog, he goes to a bar, he sleeps. Then he does it all over again. That hardly sounds like a thrilling cinematic experience. But Jarmusch manages to amplify the mundane moments in this guy’s life to the point where they become absurd, hilariously deadpan, and quietly poetic.
Your Name
The year’s best anime is a tale about body-swapping teens. The swap happens as an epic comet streams across the sky. With an ecological catastrophe imminent, both teens ask themselves, Why? Then they find out. The film broke records at the Japanese box office, with many people hailing filmmaker Makoto Shinkai as the next Hayao Miyazaki.
Author: The JT LeRoy Story
In this revealing doc, we finally learn why and how writer Laura Albert created and hid behind JT LeRoy, the 16-year-old literary sensation with a tragic back-story. We also see how she managed to fool artists like Tom Waits, Courtney Love, and Billy Corgan.
Weiner
Did Anthony Weiner, the former Democratic congressmen and NYC mayoral candidate, effectively cock block Hillary Clinton’s presidency? Weiner, a politician with a penchant for dick pics, was recently investigated by the FBI amid allegations he sexted a 15-year-old girl. And because his wife, Huma Abedin, was Clinton’s closest aide, all their emails were dragged into the headlines yet again. This timely doc has all the background info about that story and about the strange, strange man with the unfortunate name.
Kicks
All 15-year-old Brandon wanted was a fresh pair of Air Jordans. He saves up and finally gets a pair. Then he’s robbed and has to deal with a loss tantamount to your worst break-up. So begins his ambitious quest to track down the robber, a feared local gangbanger, and reclaim his precious sneakers. Set in the East Bay area of Richmond, California, Justin Tipping’s striking feature debut captures teen life in a rough neighborhood, as kids steal forties and cruise through town on BMXs. It’s beautifully shot, with plenty of stylish slo-mo sequences and close-ups of its cast of unknowns. Keep an eye out for Tipping. He’s going places.
I, Daniel Blake
Ken Loach, Britain’s high priest of social realism, returns with a powerful drama about a carpenter who is unfit for work and in need of state welfare. The people at Jobcenter Plus, however, say he is fit for work, and what follows is a painful trudge through a swamp of red tape. It’s a heartbreaking film about the day-to-day struggles of living on the breadline, and how the smallest acts of kindness can be a guiding light in dark moments. A deserved winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes and a return to form for the director of Kes.
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World
Werner Herzog, in his inimitable Bavarian drawl, narrates his film about the internet. Navigating the online wilderness, he poses questions like, “Will our great grandchildren need the companionship of humans or will they have evolved in a world where that’s not important?” and, “Does the internet dream of itself?” It’s an eccentric’s take on the internet, and it’s exactly what you’d expect from a man who once ate his own shoe.
Credits
Text Oliver Lunn