ON FILM: Critics' range wide in 2016 top 10 lists

Isabelle Huppert was a surprise winner in the Best Actress in a Drama category at the Golden Globes for her role in Elle, which opens in Northwest Arkansas today and is coming soon to central Arkansas.
Isabelle Huppert was a surprise winner in the Best Actress in a Drama category at the Golden Globes for her role in Elle, which opens in Northwest Arkansas today and is coming soon to central Arkansas.

For the third week in a row, notable moviegoers tell us the best movies they saw last year. We'll have at least one more of these in the newspaper -- after that we'll run some lists on the blood, dirt & angels (blooddirtangels.com) blog.

Mark Thiedeman, filmmaker (Last Summer, White Nights and Sacred Hearts, Holy Souls):

I'm very much looking forward to seeing a few films that haven't made their way to Arkansas yet, including Toni Erdmann, Silence, I Am Not Your Negro, Paterson and Neruda, but here is an evolving list of favorites from an outstanding year of movies, and where to find them:

1.Moonlight (Barry Jenkins) -- When I watched Moonlight in a Little Rock theater on a rainy afternoon, the audience around me shifted, mumbled, snickered. And then they became still and silent, and those uncomfortable with its story of fragility among black men stayed until the end, hushed. Tough but sensual, universal but specific, and so voluptuously cinematic, Moonlight is more than a great movie -- it's the kind of movie that makes the world a better place. (Back in theaters soon, I hope.)

2.The Academy of Muses (Jose-Luis Guerin) -- The spirit of Eric Rohmer hovers over Guerin's documentary-fiction hybrid, in which a poetry professor, his philologist wife and his female students navigate the trials of digital-era romance in the context of its Greco-Italian origins. It's a symphony of impassioned, intelligent -- and largely unscripted -- conversation. (Available on Fandor.)

3.Aferim! (Radu Jude) -- An imbecile constable travels the Romanian landscape -- thinking himself a Samaritan, bemoaning his disenfranchisement, validating racism and misogyny through the words of priests and the Bible, and following the law without conscience -- while on a mission to apprehend a gypsy slave with the help of his "girlish" son. Blackly comic, luminously photographed, frighteningly resonant. (On iTunes)

4.Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) -- In this quiet, trancelike (and very witty) exploration of spirituality and magical thinking, sleeping soldiers wage war on behalf of ancient kings, a psychic medium ushers people through others' dreams, and ghost princesses materialize for a lunchtime chat -- but there's only one special effect in the entire picture. (On Netflix)

5.Evolution (Lucile Hadzihalilovic) -- The grotesque and gorgeous second feature by Hadzihalilovic revisits the horror she experienced as a young girl coming to terms with her body and its functions, but transplants that horror into the minds of young boys. It's a fairy tale of the old school, in which the threats of a fantastical universe are psychic extensions of a young person's paranoid urges. (IFC On-Demand)

6.Elle (Paul Verhoeven) -- Isabelle Huppert's awe-inspiring career could be considered an auteurist triumph in its own right; here, her gravitas, boldness, and sense of humor dignify the work of Euro-provocateur-turned-Hollywood-auteur Verhoeven. In her hands, Elle is not a film about a victim, but an audacious, fascinating female. (In Northwest Arkansas theaters today, opening in Little Rock soon.)

7.My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin) -- Continually inspired by Truffaut's suggestion that a film should contain four ideas per minute, Desplechin lets his memory run wild with an ebullient, constantly surprising reverie about love, travel, youth, sex, religion, academics, family, international affairs, and -- ultimately -- solitude. It pulses with life -- and the retro-beats of its '80s soundtrack. (On Netflix)

8.Tikkun (Avishai Sivan) -- Flecked with elements of Kafka and Camus, the surreal noir of early David Lynch, and invocations of Andrei Tarkovsky and Bela Tarr, Tikkun retells the story of Abraham and Isaac as an existential allegory about the end of an Old Testament ideology. Deeply serious -- and outright hilarious -- it is a film of inventive and powerful imagery, particularly in its third act, when the splintered psychology of its asburdist hero spins the narrative into a 35-minute dream sequence as startling as it is beautiful. (On Netflix)

9.Sunset Song (Terence Davies) -- Set in the sweeping hills of Scotland, the long-unrealized dream project of one of my cinematic heroes finally arrived [last] year. As always with Davies' mournful, classical work, it's a film of profound suffering and sadness rendered in images of transcendent beauty. (On Netflix)

10.The Childhood of a Leader (Brady Corbet) -- Corbet's wild and precocious debut borrows from Sartre and is made all the more chilling by our recent election. Imagining the youth of a future dictator, Childhood explores the seedlings of fascism and the ways in which sex and gender dynamics shape young minds -- sometimes dangerously. (On Netflix)

Very honorable mentions: The Witch, de-li-cious, indeed; 13th, a clear, illuminating cry for social justice, and the most necessary of journalistic documentaries; Being 17, a gorgeous, interracial gay love story for an evolving world; The Other Side, a painterly look at life outside the liberal bubble; Little Men, a charming and wise story of adolescent friendship tested by class and privilege; Nocturnal Animals, a breakup movie designed as a voluptuously romantic horror film; Manchester by the Sea, for its shades of blue, Casey Affleck, and Lucas Hedges; No Home Movie, the final film by the heroic Chantal Akerman; From Afar, a controversial, dark examination of repressed homosexuality; and finally -- dare I? -- The Neon Demon.

Most overrated: A tie between Andrea Arnold's menagerie of symbolic animals, American Honey, and Damien Chazelle's pumpkin-spice musical, La La Land, a film about how hard it is to not be famous yet.

Philip Vandy Price, critic, reviewsfromabed.com:

This may have been the toughest year to compose a list of 10 rather exceptional films. It has been a frustrating year in terms of not being able to catch as many of the year-end awards contenders as I'd like ....

10.Everybody Wants Some!! -- I think I've finally come to the realization that I really, really love Richard Linklater movies.

9.Arrival -- Every moment of Denis Villeneuve's meditation on time and interpretation via the guise of an alien invasion film is fascinating and worthwhile.

8.Manchester by the Sea -- The film on this list I'm least likely to watch again, at least for a while.

7.Moana -- Not only was this the best animated film in my opinion, but one of the very best films of the year.

6.Midnight Special -- A precisely paced and methodical piece of work from auteur Jeff Nichols. While many will place Nichols' other film this year, the more awards friendly Loving, on their list, I found his exercise in genre filmmaking to be more affecting.

5. Popstar: Never Stop Stopping -- Despite the fact the film flopped and virtually disappeared from theaters less than a month after release, I can only hope this thing will garner a following much like its spiritual cousin This Is Spinal Tap did back in the '80s.

4. La La Land -- Director Damien Chazelle isn't simply looking to re-create images and feelings afforded him during his youth as he watched Gene Kelly dance across the screen, he is interested in exploring the consequences of having such aspirations: the dark side of fame that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with addiction or other harmful activities, and the decisions such individuals have to make without knowing what they'll regret more than 20 years down the road. Can I be the person I want with the person I want? Is it worth more to make a life as I so desire or with the one I desire?

3.Moonlight -- The simplest way to put it is that Moonlight feels important. It unfortunately feels necessary.

2.Hell or High Water -- The film is very much steeped in the archetypes and beats of any Western from the illustrious genre, but it deals in contemporary and relevant themes and ideas that propel the film into a modern-day setting with a modern-day mentality.

1.Sing Street -- Director John Carney's (Once, Begin Again) latest music-infused narrative, about a boy in Dublin during the 1980s who escapes his strained family life by starting a band to impress the mysterious girl he likes, is pure magic.

Tara Sheffer, expatriate Arkansan, filmmaker, coordinator at the Department of Motion Pictures at Court 13 Arts in New Orleans:

1.Certain Women

2.Moonlight

3.No Home Movie

4.Manchester by the Sea

5.The Handmaiden

6.Toni Erdmann

7.American Honey

8.Cemetery of Splendor

9.My Golden Days

10.20th Century Women.

Email:

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

www.blooddirtangels.com

MovieStyle on 01/13/2017

Upcoming Events