Instead of waiting for my year-end Top Ten list, I keep a running list throughout the year: Best Movies of 2016 – So Far. At year’s end, my list usually is comprised of 20-25 films with an Official Top Ten. I’ll also be updating my list throughout the year as films become available to stream or to rent on DVD. Right now, my list includes:
The Memory of Water
Eye in the Sky
Magallanes
Chevalier
Weiner
Frank & Lola
Take Me to the River
Lost Solace
Green Room
I usually start my list in April or May, and I don’t think that I’ve ever waited until July before. I guess that’s because none of these early-in-the-year releases have popped out at me like Ex Machina from last year, Boyhood or Ida from 2014, Blue Is the Warmest Color or The Hunt (2013), Winter’s Bone (2010) and the like. But these are all really, really excellent films.
Eye in the Sky and Take Me to the River are available streaming or on DVD right now, (see Best Movies of 2016 – So Far for details) and Frank & Lola will be in theaters later this year.
I’m self-conscious about how many of these films can’t be seen right now (or maybe ever) because they don’t have US distribution. I really try NOT to be precious and list a bunch of super obscure films. I’m particularly wringing my hands over three gems from Cinequest – The Memory of Water from Chile, Magallanes from Peru and the Canadian indie Lost Solace. But I’m pretty sure that you’ll be able to find the rest of the movies on my list by year’s end.
I’m still waiting to see many, many contenders for my year-end list, including film festival favorites Loving, Manchester By the Sea, The Birth of a Nation and Toni Erdmann. I also reserve the right to reshuffle the list.
It’s an exceptional week for movies about American politics.
All the Way is a thrilling political docudrama with a stellar performance. It’s the story of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, warts and all, ending official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bryan Cranston brings LBJ alive as no actor has before. All the Way is still playing on HBO.
Don’t miss the political documentary Weiner – it’s probably the best documentary of the year. Weiner has more than its share of forehead-slapping moments and is often funny and always captivating. It also provokes some reflection on the media in this age.
Scroll down to read about two other great films of American politics coming up on TV: All the President’s Men and The Candidate.
If you like the espionage novelist John le Carré, you’ll enjoy Our Kind of Traitor opens today. It’s a robust thriller with a funny yet powerful performance by Stellan Skarsgård.
Also in theaters:
Love & Friendship – a sharply witty adaptation of a Jane Austen story with an adept turn by Kate Beckinsale.
The Nice Guys – Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in a very funny mismatched buddy movie from the creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise.
Julianne Moore, along with supporting players Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph, shine in the amiably satisfying little romantic comedy Maggie’s Plan.
Finding Dory doesn’t have the breakthrough animation or the depth of story that we expect from Pixar, but it won’t be painful to watch a zillion times with your kids.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is the quietly engrossing drama 45 Years, a movie on my Best Movies of 2015 list with an enthralling Oscar-nominated performance by Charlotte Rampling. 45 Years is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Set your DVRs for Turner Classic Movies next Friday, July 7, as TCM explores “America in the 70s” with four of the best films EVER – All the President’s Men, The Candidate, Network and The Conversation – along with the time capsule thriller Klute (after which 15% of all American women changed their hairstyles to mirror Jane Fonda’s “shag”).
Don’t miss the political documentary Weiner – it’s probably the best documentary of the year. Weiner has more than its share of forehead-slapping moments and is often funny and always captivating. It also provokes some reflection on the media in this age.
Also in theaters:
Love & Friendship – a sharply witty adaptation of a Jane Austen story with an adept turn by Kate Beckinsale.
The Nice Guys – Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in a very funny mismatched buddy movie from the creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise.
Julianne Moore, along with supporting players Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph, shine in the amiably satisfying little romantic comedy Maggie’s Plan.
You can find a thrilling political docudrama with a stellar performance playing on HBO. It’s All the Way, the story of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, warts and all, ending official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bryan Cranston brings LBJ alive as no actor has before.
Stay away from the dark comedy The Lobster. A grim and tedious misfire, it’s the biggest movie disappointment of the year.
On June 21, Turner Classic Movies presents Jack Nicholson as the iconic 1970s anti-hero in Five Easy Pieces. It’s a profound and deeply affecting study of alienation. Nicholson plays someone who has rejected and isolated himself from his dysfunctional family. Then he must embark on the epic road trip back to the family home. Amid the drama, there is plenty of funny, including the funniest sandwich order in the history of cinema.
WEINER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society.
Don’t miss the political documentary Weiner, probably the best documentary of the year. It also provokes some reflection on the media in this age.
You may remember Anthony Weiner as the politician forced out of Congress in a sexting scandal. A couple of years later, he tried to make a comeback by running for mayor of New York City. Weiner is the inside story of that campaign, which self-immolated when the sexting scandal popped up again. Weiner is a marvelously entertaining chronicle of the campaign, a character study of Anthony Weiner himself and an almost voyeuristic peek into Weiner’s marriage to another political star, Huma Abedin.
Co-director Josh Kriegman served as Weiner’s Congressional chief of staff and left politics for filmmaking. When Weiner was contemplating the run for mayor, Kriegman asked to shadow him in the campaign, and Weiner agreed. Kriegman and co-director Elyse Steinberg shot 400 hours of backstage footage and caught some searing moments of human folly, triumph and angst.
In office, eight-term New York Congressman Anthony Weiner was a firebrand, pugnacious and a master debater with a vicious sense of humor, always eager to mix it up. He is married to Huma Abedin, a close Hilary Clinton advisor often described as “Hilary’s other daughter”. Huma is as reserved as Anthony is ebullient, and her own distinguished career in politics has been behind the scenes. He lives for the limelight, but she is uncomfortable in it.
Anthony begins his comeback with brutally painful media launch. The press is in a complete feeding frenzy – all revisiting the scandal and nothing else. One of the highlights of Weiner is a montage of talking heads reviling Weiner, including Donald Trump, who bellows, “We don’t want any perverts in New York City”.
But when Anthony goes on the campaign trail, the electorate begins to really respond to his passion and feistiness. Weiner unexpectedly surges into the lead 10 weeks to go. We are treated to a first-class procedural and see what only political pros see – the banal opening of a campaign office, rehearsing speeches, shooting commercials, dialing for dollars.
But then the scandal re-opens when a publicity-seeking bimbo releases a photo of Anthony’s penis that Weiner had texted her. We see his Communications Director as the new scandal unfolds in real-time, her eyes becoming lifeless; my day job for the last thirty years has been in politics, and I have gotten some bad news, but nothing like this.
Amazingly, we see Anthony calling Huma and telling her. When the screenshot of Anthony’s penis shot goes viral, we watch as Hums see it for the first time on the Internet, and her anger builds into rage. Anthony finally kicks out the camera.
Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin in WEINER
New York Post prints headlines like “Weiner: I’ll Stick It Out” and “Obama Beats Weiner”. Anthony tells his shell-shocked and pissed off staff “nobody died”, but nobody’s buying it. Anthony has masterfully redefined himself to be more than the punchline once, but the second set of revelations make him indelibly a punchline – and no one can come back from that. From behind the camera, Kriegman plaintively asks Weiner.”Why did you let me film this?”.
Anthony’s pollster gives him the bad news: “There’s no path anymore to get to a runoff” and “So this is a solo flight”. The smell of death is about the campaign at the end, but Anthony is in “never quit” phase.
Anthony’s best moment is when he is obligated to face a hostile neighborhood meeting in the Bronx neighborhood of City Island. He knows that he is doing poorly there, and there aren’t many voters out there anyway, but he keeps his head high and delivers a courageous effort.
Anthony’s worst moment may be when he is re-watching himself in a mutual evisceration of a TV host on YouTube. He is relishing the combat, but Huma, behind him, is appalled by Anthony’s Pyrrhic victory. He smugly thinks that’s he won the verbal firefight, but Huma just says, “It’s bad”. She’s right.
I saw Weiner at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) at a screening with co-directors Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg. Kriegman said that he “intended to show the humanity behind the headline – the nuance that is Anthony”. Steinberg noted that “the most exposed are the least revealed”. As of the SFIFF screening on April 23, Anthony Weiner had to date declined to watch Weiner. In Weiner, Anthony looks back after the campaign and ruefully sums it up, “I lied and I had a funny name”.
Weiner has more than its share of forehead-slapping moments and is often funny and always captivating. It’s almost certainly the year’s best documentary and one of best films of 2016, period.
WEINER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society.
Don’t miss the political documentary Weiner. I haven’t had the chance to post about it yet, but it’s probably the best documentary of the year. Weiner has more than its share of forehead-slapping moments and is often funny and always captivating. It also provokes some reflection on the media in this age.
Another movie that I enjoyed but haven’t had the opportunity to post about is the nice little comedy Maggie’s Plan.
Also in theaters:
Love & Friendship – a sharply witty adaptation of a Jane Austen story with an adept turn by Kate Beckinsale.
The Nice Guys – Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in a very funny mismatched buddy movie from the creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise.
You can find the best movie out right now on HBO. It’s All the Way, the story of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, warts and all, ending official racial segregation in America with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bryan Cranston brings LBJ alive as no actor has before.
Stay away from the dark comedy The Lobster. A grim and tedious misfire, it’s the biggest movie disappointment of the year.
My Stream of the Week is Meet the Patels, both a documentary and a comedy – and ultimately, a satisfying crowd-pleaser. Meet the Patels is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play. It’s hilarious and heart-warming, so don’t miss it.
Wow – Turner Classic Movies should keep your DVR humming on Tuesday, June 14. TCM will be broadcasting one of the great movies that you have likely NOT seen, having just been released on DVD in 2009: The Earrings of Madame de… (1953). Max Ophuls directed what is perhaps the most visually evocative romance ever in black and white. It’s worth seeing for the ballroom scene alone. The shallow and privileged wife of a stick-in-the-mud general takes a lover, but the earrings she pawned reveal the affair and consequences ensue. The great Italian director Vittorio De Sica plays the impossibly handsome lover.
And ALSO on June 14, TCM will present The Graduate, The French Connection, The Last Detail and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Just for fun, on June 16, TCM will screen a series of Lupe Velez’ Mexican Spitfire movies from the early 1940s. I find startling similarities between Velez’ Mexican Spitfire and Sofia Vergara’s character of Gloria on Modern Family.
Athina Rachel Tsangari, director of CHEVALIER. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society
This year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) includes movies from 50 women directors. Some are high-profile (by indie standards):
Academy Award-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple (Harlan County U.S.A.) brings Miss Sharon Jones!. Sure to be a festival crowd-pleaser, this doc chronicles the salty Dap Kings frontwoman and her fight against cancer.
Oscar-nominated Chris Hegedus (The War Room), with her directing partner D.A. Pennebaker, has the animal welfare doc Unlocking the Cage; and
Elyse Steinberg’s Weinerwas the top documentary hit at the most recent Sundance.
Among the foreign choices, the Must See is one of the funniest movies at the fest, the Greek comedy Chevalier from director Athina Rachel Tsangari. Obviously a keen observer of male behavior, Tsangari delivers a sly and pointed exploration of male competitiveness, with the moments of drollness and absurdity that we expect in the best of contemporary Greek cinema. This is Tsangari’s second visit to SFIFF – in 2011, she brought her hilariously offbeat Attenberg.
Other strong choices from women directors include:
NUTS! from director Penny Lane – a persistently hilarious (and finally poignant) documentary about the rise and fall of a medical and radio empire – all built on goat testicle “implantation” surgery in gullible humans.
Suite Armorcaine, the character-driven drama from French director Pascale Breton;
Five Nights in Maine, a showcase for David Oyelowo, Dianne Wiest and Rosie Perez from writer-director Maris Curran.
Here’s the complete list of women directors with entries at the 2016 San Francisco International Film Festival:
As I Open My Eyes, Leyla Bouzid, Tunisia/France/Belgium Audrie & Daisy, Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, USA Ayiti Mon Amour, Guetty Felin, Haiti/USA Between Us: Experimental Shorts (Rock, Clay, Sand, Straw, Wood, Something Between Us, Starfish Aorta, Winter Trees) Cameraperson, Kirsten Johnson, USA Check It, Dana Flor, Toby Oppenheimer, USA Chevalier, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece The Fits, Anna Rose Holmer, USA Five Nights in Maine, Maris Curran, USA Granny’s Dancing on the Table, Hanna Sköld, Sweden/Denmark haveababy, Amanda Micheli, USA The Innocents, Anne Fontaine, France/Poland Irving M. Levin Directing Award: An Afternoon with Mira Nair: Monsoon Wedding Maggie’s Plan, Rebecca Miller, USA Miss Sharon Jones!, Barbara Kopple, USA Mountain, Yaelle Kayam, Israel/Denmark National Bird, Sonia Kennebeck, USA No Home Movie, Chantal Akerman, Belgium/France NUTS!, Penny Lane, USA Operator, Logan Kibens, USA Our Kind of Traitor, Susanna White, UK The Return, Kelly Duane de la Vega, Katie Galloway, USA Shorts 1 (In Attla’s Tracks, Seide) Shorts 2 (Partners, The Send-Off) Shorts 3: Animation (Edmond, Glove) Shorts 4: New Visions (My Aleppo, False Start, Sept. – Oct. 2015, Cizre) Shorts 5: Family Films (Bunny New Girl, The Casebook of Nips & Porkington, Mother, Welcome to My Life) Shorts 6: Youth Works (Child for Sale, From My Head To Hers, I Don’t Belong Here Run, Run Away) Sonita, Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami, Germany/Switzerland/Iran Suite Armoricaine, Pascale Breton, France Thirst, Svetla Tsotsorkova, Bulgaria Under the Gun, Stephanie Soechtig, USA Unlocking the Cage, Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker, USA The Watermelon Woman, Cheryl Dunye, USA Weiner, Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg, USA Wild, Nicolette Krebitz, German
Weiner – This hit from the Sundance and New Directors film festivals is an inside look at Anthony Weiner’s cringeworthy, self-immolating campaign for New York City Mayor;
Miss Sharon Jones! – Sure to be a festival crowd-pleaser, this doc chronicles the salty Dap Kings frontwoman and her fight against cancer. From Academy Award-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple (Harlan County U.S.A.);
Unlocking the Cage– an animal welfare doc from storied filmmakers Chris Hegedus (The War Room) and D.A. Pennebaker (Monterey Pop and The War Room); and
The Bandit, in the coveted slot as the festivals’ Closing Night film, documents the real life bromance between Burt Reynolds and iconic stuntman Hal Needham that led to Needham’s Smokey and the Bandit movies.
But some of the best docs in the fest are less well-known nuggets:
NUTS! – a persistently hilarious (and finally poignant) documentary about the rise and fall of a medical and radio empire – all built on goat testicle “implantation” surgery in gullible humans.
Dead Slow Ahead– a visually stunning and an often hypnotic film, shot on a massive freighter on its voyage across vast ocean expanses with its all-Filipino crew.
Under the Sun – a searing insight into totalitarian North Korean society, all from government-approved footage that tells a different story than the wackadoodle dictatorship intended.
Kyle Chandler and Casey Affleck in MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
The Sundance Film Festival happened this past week and it happened without The Movie Gourmet traveling to Park City, Utah. Nevertheless, I followed Sundance on a daily basis and here’s why – the buzz from Sundance adds a bunch of movies to my “Must Find and See” list for the coming year.
Last year’s Sundance Film Festival produced six films for my Best Movies of 2015: #2 Wild Tales, #5 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, #4 Brooklyn, and honorable mentions I’ll See You in My Dreams, The End of the Tour and ’71. In addition, Sundance featured several of the year’s most notable films: The Tribe, It Follows, Tangerine, Diary of a Teenage Girl, I Smile Back and 99 Homes.
The films on the top of my 2016 Sundance Must See list are Manchester By the Sea and The Birth of a Nation. Manchester By the Sea is from Kenneth Lonergan, who also wrote and directed the brilliant You Can Count on Me and Margaret. Manchester By the Sea features a reputedly searing performance by Casey Affleck; Kyle Chandler also stars.
The Birth of a Nation, which won the top prize at the fest, is the story of the slave rebellion chronicled in The Confessions of Nat Turner, written and directed by and starring the actor Nate Parker. Believe it or not, both movies are ALREADY generating 2016 Oscar buzz.
This year, Amazon and Netflix, to the consternation of the movie studios, aggressively shopped for Sundance indies. Amazon bought Manchester By the Sea and, although The Birth of a Nation was bought by Fox Searchlight, Netflix drove up the price.
Sundance is also usually especially rich with documentaries. Last year’s haul included Listen to Me Marlon, What Happened Miss Simone?, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, Welcome to Leith, The Hunting Ground, Prophet’s Prey, Going Clear: The Prison of Belief, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, Finders Keepers, Hot Girls Wanted and Cartel Land. In other words, Amy, The Look of Silence and Hitchcock/Truffaut were the only major 2015 documentaries that did NOT play Sundance.
This year’s top doc at Sundance was Weiner, an inside look at the Anthony Weiner mayoral campaign that collapsed on his bafflingly gross tweets and sexts. Mrs. Weiner is Huma Abedin, a longtime top aide to another Famously Wronged Woman, Hillary Clinton. Prepare to cringe.
