The best (and worst) from 2016

Image courtesy Cohen Media.

Looking through this list the one thing that strikes is the breadth of options to pick from. The top film is about five sisters struggling in Turkey, and the rest of the collection incorporates a punk band under siege, a pair of pretty great musicals with wildly different themes and presentations, and a profile of one of the saddest politicians in recent years. Depth and variety are great things to have when hitting up theaters, and 2016 brought a broad palate to theaters.

The films below are all ones reviewed from 2016. I kept the list to the top seven to focus on the films most worth a second look, which cut out a few rather good films. Movies missing the cut include The Neon Demon, Pete's Dragon, The Nice Guys, Rogue One, Hail, Caesar! and Everybody Wants Some! So below are the best films I reviewed this year, along with the absolute worst film I laid eyes on in 2016.

No. 1: Mustang

This one was actually nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2016 Academy Awards, meaning that the film was up for competition among 2015 nominees. I'm keeping it though because the stateside release came in 2016 and to recognize it as the best film I've watched in the last 12 months.

Mustang is a tender and melancholy look into the lives of five sisters being thrown into marriages with little to no choice and a lot of implied violence. There is a hint of fatalism and a lot of danger if things go wrong, but in the end the little victories are what matter in this film. Mustang lifts and drops viewers on such a frequent basis that the relatively positive ending feels like rapture.

Image courtesy A24.

No. 2: Green Room

Director Jeremy Saulnier's follow up to his terrific revenge film Blue Ruin shocks viewers with its sudden bursts of violence between lulls of peculiar black humor. It's tough to find a film this balanced and this effective at what it wants to do; keep the audience on edge and with little clue of what’s really going on.

Despite the oddity of the premise – a punk band led by Anton Yelchin stumbling into a Neo-Nazi murder in the middle of the woods – everything feels natural and logical, the acts of violence ramping up in a strangely grounded fashion. This is one of the better horror films in recent years too, featuring one of the scariest boogeymen to come along recently in Patrick Stewart's Neo-Nazi leader Darcy.

Image courtesy Lionsgate.

No. 3: La La Land

A probable front-runner for a ton of awards, La La Land keeps its soulful analysis of the divide between romance and ambition hidden just underneath a sunny, musical surface. The cheeriness does just enough to disguise the film's true theme – although those sometimes sneak in through the lyrics – and the result is a complex, enchanting musical.

Writer/director Damien Chazelle deserves credit for folding in the tenants of musicals of the past – the big numbers and those little flirty bits of dancing – into a modern setting and doing so in a smooth, logical fashion. That Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are both charming as all hell and showcase a rather engaging rapport just adds to La La Land's many charms.

Image courtesy IFC Films.

No. 4: Weiner

Somehow this film became even more noteworthy in the months after its release. The film didn't predict Anthony Weiner's role in the 2016 election, but it set the table for how the man could muck up enough to become entangled in that morass of awful.

What makes the film so engrossing is watching Anthony Weiner fall apart over the course of a few months and the tragedy of the self-inflicted crash. He is depicted in Weiner as a politician with his heart at least close to the right place, so his second fall from grace impacts a whole lot of people outside of himself and his family. The documentary ably captures his failings, his inability to handle his faults, and the fact that his personal foibles sink any chance of his message catching on.

Image courtesy Fox Searchlight.

No. 5: Jackie

Jackie is the film I hope proves to people that Natalie Portman is a terrific actress. She absolutely nails a difficult performance, being a woman who must show a pretty and calm face to the nation and still have enough verve to fulfill the legacy of her husband.

Even though Portman is the heart of Jackie, the film is strong enough independent of her performance to remain a worthwhile experience. It offers one of the more interesting glimpses into the John F. Kennedy legacy, playing around with the concept of Camelot while pointing out why that ideal was seized upon by the public. Kennedy's election came at a difficult time in American history, so a little romanticism worked to assuage the fears of the voters while pushing for vital changes.

Image courtesy Disney.

No. 6: Moana

This film and the next are pretty close to being toss ups, but I liked Moana a little bit more than the next one. For one thing, it has a great performance by the unfairly charismatic Dwayne Johnson, and that tends to push many films up a level or two.

Moana's real selling point though is the eponymous princess who takes decisive action to save her people even against the recommendations of her father. Even though the film sets things up to have her be Mad Max to Maui's Furiousa, it makes a quick and effective shift that is logical and important. Add that to some terrific vocal performances (particular Johnson and Auli’i Cravalho) and killer songs courtesy Lin-Manuel Miranda and the result is a wicked good animated film.

Image courtesy Disney.

No. 7: Zootopia

Like Moana, one of Zootopia's main selling points is a complex message delivered in a bright, often rather humorous fashion. This film addresses racial stereotypes and how easily those characteristics become ingrained in societal fabric, an important topic given how easy it is to ignore or miss such biases. The film doesn't offer any definitive answers, but it at least works as a gateway for understanding the issue and inspecting one's own biases.

The message wouldn't really work without the rest of Zootopia's charms, as it has so many jokes and clever references it is worth watching just on the surface level. Adding depth to it just makes for a more interesting and rewarding viewing experience.

Image courtesy Lionsgate.

Worst film: Norm of the North

The fun thing with this year's contenders for the worst film was the depth of the terrible. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice suffer from a terminal case of dourness and some tremendously asinine plot twists. Patriots Day is an insensitive, dumb film about a complicated moment Boston history. Dirty Grandpa has the great Robert De Niro at his nadir, while films like Sing and Zoolander 2 are obnoxious at best.

None of those films though fail on the same level as Norm of the North. This animated monstrosity is ugly to look at and is lacking narrative cohesion, talented voice actors (the awful Rob Schneider is the headliner), and any coherent themes. This film is a garbage dump of an animated flick that insults the intelligence of its young target. At least it seems to have drifted away from public eye in the last 12 months, fated to rest in the depths of online streaming services for some unlucky soul to stumble upon.

Moana is better than your average Disney princess

Moana and Maui in a scene from Moana. Image courtesy Disney.

The most enjoyable part of the Moana screening didn't come while watching the film, but shortly thereafter while waiting in line to pick up a cellphone. In line were a few women talking excitedly about it, their excitement peaking with the fact that the eponymous female Disney character with royal roots has not one but two living parents. While on the outset it seems like an odd thing to consider, Disney has a historically nasty habit of using dead parents (or the illusion of that in the case of Tangled) as plot points to build female characters from. It's a cheap way of creating the ideal strong, female character, a figure that can overcome the worst loss and succeed with a slew of despites in her way. That Moana didn't resort to killing the lead character's parents is an appreciated change of pace for the folks who grew up frustrated by that pattern.

Better still, the filmmakers didn’t need to do it to prove their central figure's bona fides as a character. Moana, voiced by newcomer Auli'i Cravalho, is shown immediately as a courageous soul who embraces the dangers of the unknown. She’s drawn immediately to the tale her grandmother (Rachel House) tells about cocksure demigod Maui (voiced by the unfairly charming Dwayne Johnson) and is lured by the adventure the legend promises. Life is waiting for her at sea, albeit one conflicting with her status as her island's next queen, a role her father (Temeura Morrison) and mother (Nicole Scherzinger) push her toward through a catchy Lin-Manuel Miranda tune. The tension of the situation could be resolved through a sad song by Moana before the great adventure serving as the film's drawing point begins. But Moana doesn't take the easy route with its decision, instead having Moana see her value on the island and only leave as a means of saving her friends, showing the leadership she exhibits in one song without abandoning the promises she just made in it. The concept is a fairly complex one, and it reveals just a shade of the traits and portrayal, both in the writing and in Cravalho's performance, that make Moana such an interesting, deep character to pull from.

Her role underlines how much of Moana is devoted to women, whether it’s Moana (who pulls off most of the successful feats of daring as Maui watches), her mother, her grandmother, and the island Moana and Maui adventure off to resurrect to save the island. The film even pulls off a third act twist to realign the narrative to fit the concept and emphasize the film's feminine bent, switching up the prophecy at the film's heart to a nuanced resolution that fits the film's themes perfectly. This isn't exactly unknown territory for a film to take, but it remains nice to see Disney at least continue to broaden its characterization of its female characters that has taken the company from comatose damsels to clever and competent seafaring leaders.

Moana's thematic depth extends beyond female role changes to rip into trite narrative shortcuts. This is the kind of film that uses the concept of The Special – the one character destined to be Neo or Harry Potter or Superman – as a plot point and as a way of criticizing the concept at the same time with the idea of fate being limited by free will. In the filmmaker's eyes, a savior has to decide to be one even if the actual ocean itself anoints that person for the role. Moana has a habit of undercutting tropes – Johnson's Maui makes a few cracks about Disney princesses – but this one is the sharpest rebuke and the one that has the most resonance, or at least is taken most seriously by the filmmakers.

Moana is worthy of respect for its layers and intelligence, but it earns its keep through a rather fun plot that excels in its simplicity. There's nothing overly complicated about the hero's journey, and the filmmakers throw in the right level of levity, homages (among them a rather goofy one to Fury Road), Miranda songs and Dwayne Johnson to make the whole experience sing. Add that to some gorgeous animation and you have a pretty strong case for the best animated film of the year. At the least, it is good enough to please a fan base eager for Disney to catch up with the times.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG

Run time: 113 minutes

Genre: Animation

Ask Away

Target audience: Families and people who want a Disney protagonist with two living parents.

Take the whole family?: One sequence is a little intimidating, but overall this should be acceptable for kids ages 5 and up.

Theater or Netflix?: Theater is cool for this one. I'm not entirely sold on the need for 3D though; the regular format was gorgeous as is.

What of the short film at the beginning?: It's OK. Called Inner Workings, the short features the internal struggles the protagonist's mind has with the rest of the body to figure out what's in the best interest of the human. There's enough humor from the awkwardness of the brain tugging along the heart, stomach and other organs to keep everything in line, although the final message is a little heavy-handed. The best of the recent batch of shorts remain 2012's brilliant Paperman.

Watch this as well?: Just about everything from Disney's recent run of good to greatness is worthwhile, but I'm going to step away from the Mouse and recommend another terrific animated film that rips holes into narrative tropes and has an infectious score to boot: The Lego Movie.