I’d hoped to get this post out before the end of January but then life happened, so it was a scramble to watch as many 2016 films as possible, get this written, and also turn in my homework on time. I’m largely happy with the representation of films I saw last year, but if down the road I stumble across something new that captures my heart, I’ll be sure to let y’all know.
Before I start with my own list, every year Letterboxd posts their own Year in Review, complete with stats, quotes, and reflections about last year’s cinematic offerings. Always included is a beautifully edited montage sequence of David Ehrlich’s tribute to his top 25 films of the past year. It’s a great way to remember 2016 and then add some more films to your “to-watch” list.
But finally I bring you my own favorite films of last year and my last reflection list for 2016:
1. Captain Fantastic While I don’t think this was the “greatest” film of last year, Captain Fantastic was certainly my favorite. Viggo Mortenson plays a father determined to raise his children outside of the reach of society’s rampant materialism, narcissism, and coddling. The children grow up in the wilderness, learning to raise and hunt for their own food, while also studying the humanities and sciences at a university level. The kids are brilliant and self-sufficient, but when they come into contact with their family and others from the “outside”, it’s a serious culture shock. The movie is beautiful, sad, funny, and a profound reflection on life, death, family, and humanity’s constructed ideas about societal norms and expectations. (Also if you happen to be a grad student….there are lots of wonderful nerdy references that will make you laugh a little too hard.)
2. Moonlight Moonlight is the film that most film critics put at the top of their list and that most agree should have swept the awards this year. In some respects, the film is your typical “coming-of-age” narrative: we watch protagonist Chiron grow into a young man through three key episodes in his life. But the typical ends there. I really have no idea how to describe this film because it is like nothing I have seen before. Josh and I left the theater in awed silence. It is truly a masterpiece. Just go see it.
3. Jackie I’m going to share the review of Jackiethat I posted on Letterboxd here: “Two exhausting, painful and beautiful hours that offer just a glimpse into the lonely burden that was Jackie’s complicated grief. A powerful and historic performance from Natalie Portman, and absolutely brilliant and insightful editing. I’m going to need a few weeks to process this one.” It’s a few weeks later . . . and I am still processing.
4. Always Shine I saw Always Shineat the Denver Film Festival last year, and I posted about it then. Here’s what I wrote: “Always Shine is a psychological thriller starring MacKenzie Davis (Halt and Catch Fire) and Caitlin Fitzgerald (Masters of Sex) as best friends whose relationship has recently come under strain. Both women are actresses trying to make it in Hollywood but with unequal success. In order to try to restore their friendship, they plan a weekend retreat in Big Sur; however, the weekend quickly falls apart. One might expect a cliché film capitalizing on the tropes of “female friendship drama”; however, the film brilliantly and directly tackles those tropes in the narrative. From the beginning, we see how the women are operating inside a world constructed for them by men, where the lines they speak either on set or in daily life are interpreted and understood from the male perspective. As the tension builds, the viewer quickly realizes that the struggle in the film is not between the female characters but, in fact, between the women and the patriarchy which tries to dictate their story. Takal cleverly plays with the traditional elements of the horror genre, subverting our expectations of the “virginal” and “promiscuous” characters. All this takes place against the perfect backdrop of the creepy but beautiful Big Sur forests and oceanscapes.”
5. Knight of Cups The final of my top five is Terrence Mallick’s latest piece, which I was lucky enough to see at its Los Angeles Premiere at the Ace Hotel Theater. Knight of Cups in true Mallick tradition is an abstract, visually poetic piece that doesn’t follow a clear-cut narrative but rather draws you into an emotional journey through compelling cinematic landscapes. The backdrop to Knight of Cups is Hollywood and its dysfunction, but it tells a much larger story about the struggles of making art and wrestling with tragedy. If you like your films to fit an understandable structure, this is probably not the film for you, but if you want to try something that will ask you to let go of your preconceived notions about what “cinema” is and just go for a ride, try it out. At any rate, you’ll get to spend the whole time with Christian Bale, which is never time wasted. 😉
Special Mentions:
Silence: Martin Scorsese’s exquisite retelling of Shusaku Endo’s famous novel about Jesuit missionaries venturing into a feudal Japan determined to eradicate Christianity from the land. It’s complicated, painful, heart-breaking, and insightful. Not an easy one to watch, but one that should be watched. This is easily one of his greatest films.
The Lobster: This is a dark comedy starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz about a dystopian world where everyone is required to have a romantic partner. If you end up single, you get sent to this hotel to try make a match. If you fail, you get turned into the animal of your choice to try again for a match in the animal kingdom. Quirky, weird, and wonderful.
Rogue One: I can’t finish this list without a nod to the marvelous new Star Wars story, featuring my favorite actress Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso, a hero of the resistance. It was an amazing addition to the Star Wars canon, greatly enriching the narrative of Episode 4: A New Hope.
What were your favorite films? Shocked something didn’t make my list? Think I may have missed a fantastic film from 2016? Let me know in the comments and as always be sure to subscribe!
Happy New Year! I hope you are having a restful winter break. I have been reveling in all the free time to spend with family, read books of my own choice, catch up on some television shows, and play lots of games.
Before we met up with my family in Switzerland, Josh and I had a chance to take a quick detour to Madrid, where two of our friends are living for the year. (Cami is doing her Master’s there at IE Business School.) The day we arrived also happened to be the day that the new Star Wars film, Rogue One, came out . . . so naturally the first order of business was to go see it. I have been particularly excited for Rogue One because Felicity Jones was cast as the lead. She has been one of my favorite actresses ever since I saw her in the indie film Like Crazy at Sundance several years ago. (She is also fantastic in The Theory of Everything, The Invisible Woman, and Breathe In).
Seeing Star Wars in Madrid in English, however, was easier said than done. Most movies in Spain are dubbed over in Spanish rather than being subtitled. To give you a sense of what that looks and sounds like, watch the Spanish language trailer for Rogue One:
Since my experience of foreign films is usually through English subtitles, I was quite intrigued by this practice–especially since the asynchrony between the original actress’ lips and the voice actress’ dub feels really distracting to me. Curious, I did some research and came upon this blog post entitled, “Subs or Dubs: Why some countries watch films dubbed (e.g. France, Spain, Italy) while others watch with subtitles“. He argues that the primary correlation with dubbing rather than subtitling is English proficiency, i.e. the Scandanavian countries and the Netherlands, which have high English proficiency, tend to prefer subtitles, while those with lower proficiency prefer dubbing. He also notes that dubbing is associated with countries that more consciously reject American culture.
I came across similar answers on quite a few different blogs, but the conclusions felt too speculative so I dug a little deeper into the matter, focusing on the history of subtitling and dubbing in Western Europe. This is where things got very interesting. There is a long history, since the beginning of the 20th century, of each European country exploring the various options of how to distribute and present foreign-language films. Dubbing did not take off initially until various political regimes got involved. Miika Blinn, a German scholar, writes in his paper entitled “The Dubbing Standard: Its History and Efficiency Implications for Film Distributors in the German Film Market” that:
Nationalistic film policies and censorship encouraged the use of dubbing as a means to manipulate foreign films’ content and obtain favourable ratings by the Reichsfilmkammer: The “choice in favour of dubbing [was] influenced by nationalist considerations in many countries” (Dibbets, 1996). Nationalism perceives foreign-language films as offensive and threatening national identity and culture, which can be remedied by dubbing (Danan, 1991: 611-612). In 1929-1930 Mussolini prohibited all films with nonItalian dialogue tracks to foster Italian national unity; Franco pursued similar policies in Spain (Danan, 1991: 611).
These leaders consciously sought to minimize Hollywood and the English-language’s influence within each national culture, and, though political regimes have changed dramatically in Western Europe since then, because such practices were naturalized into standard cultural practice, they have remained habitual today. Of course, I am grossly simplifying the history of dubbing and subtitling, so if you find this subject fascinating, I encourage you to read more of Blinn’s essay and/or do some research of your own.
All that said, before we arrived in Spain, our friends had done reserved tickets at a theater that was supposedly screening an English language version. We arrived and quickly learned that was not the case. Thankfully they refunded our tickets, but it was back to the drawing board if we were to see Rogue One that evening. So we huddled over cafés con leche, armed with the cinema’s free wifi to develop Plan B. The trick to doing this in Spain is being able to read the code: VO, VOS, and VOSE. VO stands for versión original (original version),and it means that the film is being screened in its original language, whether that be English or French or Japanese. VOS and VOSE indicates subtítulos (subtitles). Those terms are usually synonymous, though the E explicitly designates the subtitles as being in Español.
We managed to find a screening later in the evening that was VOSE, so we dashed over to procure seats. Once inside, we made another interesting discovery, confirmed by our friends, that one should never assume stadium seating in Spanish movie theaters. Our theater had a slight gradient, but I spent a good chunk of the film shifting back and forth in my seat to see the screen while the couple in front of me made out.
Watching with Spanish subtitles was an interesting experience and ultimately, quite enjoyable. While my spoken Spanish is rusty, I’m fairly proficient reading the language, so I found myself using the subtitles to enhance my comprehension of the narrative. Even when lines were spoken quietly or out-of-sight of the camera, I knew what was being said–from the subtitles. And sometimes it was simply fascinating to juxtapose the Spanish interpretation of dialogue with that of the original English.
All in all getting to experience the latest iteration of the Star Wars world outside of the U.S. was quite a treat. Seeing the excited faces in the packed theaters and hearing the cheers and laughs of the audience was a great reminder of the special way in which the Star Wars franchise has appealed to people around the world in such a fundamental way. And indeed, the recent Star Wars films have also consciously embraced more diverse casts, inviting a greater global audience to identify with the films’ characters. I have been concerned though that the financial factor involved in maintaining such a franchise will ultimately result in the dilution of narrative. For now, we seem to still be in good hands. And we only have another year before we get to follow up with the next one.
The featured image is courtesy of Pexels, made available for use through a CC0 license.
: Martin Scorsese’s exquisite retelling of Shusaku Endo’s famous novel about Jesuit missionaries venturing into a feudal Japan determined to eradicate Christianity from the land. It’s complicated, painful, heart-breaking, and insightful. Not an easy one to watch, but one that should be watched. This is easily one of his greatest films.
: This is a dark comedy starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz about a dystopian world where everyone is required to have a romantic partner. If you end up single, you get sent to this hotel to try make a match. If you fail, you get turned into the animal of your choice to try again for a match in the animal kingdom. Quirky, weird, and wonderful.
: I can’t finish this list without a nod to the marvelous new Star Wars story, featuring my favorite actress Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso, a hero of the resistance. It was an amazing addition to the Star Wars canon, greatly enriching the narrative of Episode 4: A New Hope
.
, came out . . . so naturally the first order of business was to go see it. I have been particularly excited for Rogue One because Felicity Jones was cast as the lead. She has been one of my favorite actresses ever since I saw her in the indie film 
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