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.

Stay away from 'Norm of the North'

Rob Schneider voices Norm in "Norm of the North." Image courtesy Lionsgate.

I'm not even sure where to begin with “Norm of the North.” I just do not know where to start with this wretched, aesthetically hideous little film guided by intellectual laziness and a star best known for making copies. “Norm of the North” represents much of what’s wrong with children's entertainment and movies. It fails on almost every conventional level, but does so in the least entertaining fashion possible. It's less of a train wreck than a toy locomotive spinning its wheels sideways on the edge of the track that was never going anywhere anyway.

“Norm of the North” is about a polar bear named Norm voiced poorly by Rob Schneider. Norm is special because he can talk to humans, just like his missing grandfather (poor Colm Meaney), so he's not really all that special, but whatever; it's the closest the film gets to offering him some semblance of uniqueness. He usually doesn’t employ his gift of gabbing with humans (although he converses interminably with everything else), but he is required to use that talent to save his arctic home from evil rich fellow Mr. Greene (Ken Jeong) who plans to build condos on the North Pole. For reasons that are known to somebody else, the mission to save his home takes Norm to New York City, where he pretends to be human and auditions to become the new corporate spokesperson and work with Mr. Greene’s morally conflicted assistant Vera (Heather Graham).

The plan, apparently, is for Norm to become so popular people will listen to him speak out against building in the arctic. It’s an exceptionally terrible idea and it backfires magnificently for obvious reasons. So Norm then has to do a few things to create a happy ending that saves his home, ruins Mr. Greene’s plans, brings Vera closer to her daughter Olympia (Maya Kay), saves his grandfather, and offers enough time for the stupid polar bear to dance. There are also lemmings involved in all of this; three awful, annoying, insipid lemmings who try ever so hard to pass themselves off as non-union Minions.

“Norm of the North” isn't as awful as it sounds; it's far, far worse. It's a garbage film made by clueless people and carried by a man whose most discernible talent is a grand ability to annoy. “Norm of the North” is an endeavor that feels as if it lasts forever but somehow can't even make it to the 90 minute mark. And, really, there isn't enough of a plot for the movie to make it that far; the film includes two sequences that repeat scenes from earlier in the movie and seven (seven!) soul-sucking dance sequences, including three in the first act. The filmmakers even toss one in after what could have been a tolerable ending because kids needed to see Norm do the so-called Arctic Shake dance routine one last time. The flashbacks and the numerous dance sequences are indicative of an undercurrent of laziness that carries “Norm of the North” to its uneventful, anticlimactic denouement. The jokes are frequently scatological in the least interesting fashion possible, or are outright stolen from films like “Austin Powers.” Much of what isn’t potty humor is weird in a discomfiting manner; there’s just something off about watching an orca consume a seal right after a dance scene. There's no real thought put into this film, no consideration for children's intelligence or their ability to pick things up instead of having characters just vomit out plot points via characters who never shut up. Schneider's Norm just chatters through this movie like a myna bird on pep pills, and what he has to say has less value than what the speed-addled bird would spew.

And yet “Norm of the North” still can't talk itself out of the abundance of plot holes that only strengthen the vortex of suck. The plot makes zero sense logistically and logically and requires far more complications than just having Norm come out as a polar bear who speaks human (human meaning English, because of course it does).

The stupidity this film possesses is mind boggling and frightening, and it treats the children it wants to entertain as dolts. The thing of it is, kids are not stupid; they can figure out emotional nuance and plot machinations without too much help from an adult. Then again, perhaps “Norm of the North” isn’t condescending to viewers; rather, the film needs to announce what’s happening so it knows what’s going on.

Review: A Half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG

Run time: 86 minute

Genre: Animated

Ask Away

Target audience: Suckers.

Take the whole family?: Technically it is family friendly, although it doesn't quite work for the youngest set due to some poorly done adult humor.

Theater or Netflix?: No. Just no.

Does “Norm of the North” do anything right?: I kept the half star in there because there is a nugget of an interesting idea in using the condo scheme as a comment on gentrification. The execution fails miserably because this movie lacks the most basic levels of competency, but that little bit is just enough to keep it from getting a complete zero.

Watch this instead?: Almost anything else. To be more specific, watch the tremendous Cartoon Network show “Steven Universe.” An average episode – all of 11 minutes – has more heart, laughs and vibrancy than anything “Norm of the North” has to offer.