Some of my favorite 2016 are all in one article. It feels like a shame not to give each one their due, but “La La Land” and “Rogue One” have already been semi-reviewed in my end of the year movie countdown, and sadly “Silence” never quite caught-on with audiences or awards voters. I still hope people will check out “The Founder” and “Patriot’s Day” one day though…
La La Land…What can be said about this film that hasn’t already been said, written, or shouted? It’s the best 2016 movie (number 6 on my countdown) that hasn’t already received a proper review, but by now it risks being slightly overpraised. [Read Owen Gleiberman’s great thoughts on why it’s not just a good movie, but a great movie.] I loved Damien Chazelle’s debut “Whiplash” and if that movie was all about what it takes to make it in New York and the icy, ruthless pursuit of perfection, then “La La Land” is more LA-centric: romantic, warmer, looser, but with hidden notes of melancholy, and a struggle not so much for perfection or greatness, but to make art you love in a world that may no longer love art. The first-half production numbers are great, but the movie begins losing some people with the darker, more contemporary second-half where grand production numbers are replaced by “hip” concerts that feel like corporate-hosted group think orgies. “Fun” becomes a commodity, and deep in the heart of “La La Land” is a savage critique of how corporate market-testing has co-opted entertainment and–possibly–love itself. There’s a reason this film is beloved by artists and likely going to win Best Picture: it’s unabashedly romantic even when it’s being cynical, and it feels like the beginning of an actual resistance against corporate interests. [And for the record, I never liked “The Artist,” so it’s not just a nostalgia thing.] Grade: A
Rogue One…It may seem a little ridiculous that Disney (the most successful movie studio of 2016 by a mile, and solely due to franchise pictures and remakes) has become the unlikely champion of the resistance, and the creators have sworn up and down “Rogue One” is not meant to be political. I believe them, but none of that stops this from being the most politically relevant Star Wars film ever made and the first one truly for adults with a bruise-black action climax that is the closest these films have ever come to haunting. [Forget the tacked-on final scene with a young Princess Leia that was clearly added to brighten-spirits after such a dark ending. I would’ve ended it with the blast radius wiping away our heroes.] In fact, the worst aspects of this sequel are the fan service to the rest of the franchise–Peter Cushing did not need to be resurrected, as well as the other unnecessary cameos–but otherwise this is a strong stand-alone film that is the first one since the original trilogy to feel truly different than what’s come before it. Unlike “The Force Awakens,” which felt too much like a cover band, this thing has a mood, look, attitude, and feel all its own. Grade: B+
Silence…It may seem downright perverse to stage a movie in ancient Japan without a single samurai or sword fight, but that’s because “Silence” is doing something very different than any movie I’ve seen before which is the best thing about it. It’s about a period of history I never knew existed–when Japan tried to wipe Christianity from its shores in the 16th century and killed any Christian it could get its hands on–and Andrew Garfield/Adam Driver go looking for their priest mentor (a strong Liam Neeson) who has disappeared. Unlike Mel Gibson’s paranoid Christian persecution dramas (does anyone really believe most of the soldiers in a WWII boot camp weren’t Christians?), “Silence” has characters that are really up against it, tortured, hunted like dogs, and killed in brutal ways. When Neeson shows up towards the end, the movie becomes a fascinating duel of souls and minds—and the conflicting overlap between survival of the mind and faith of the heart—but too much of “Silence” lacks any real sense of dramatic urgency. I hate to say it because I know Scorsese worked for decades to get this movie made, but I feel Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu would’ve known more what to do with this material. It’s been a looong time since “The Last Temptation of Christ” and Scorsese’s style may now be a bit too straightforward to properly visualize the abstractness of faith. “Silence” would’ve been better if it had absorbed more of “The Revenant” in its filmmaking bloodstream. Grade: B+
Patriot’s Day…A movie I liked more than I thought I would, and a classic example of how most critics can be selectively ridiculous. Although this film has received positive reviews, many are lukewarm, B- type reviews that mention different absurdities like “the film doesn’t properly examine the masculine ego” or something that sounds intelligent but is actually ludricrous when remembering “oh yeah, this is a movie about the Boston Marathon bombing.” “Silence” meanwhile, does dissect internal things and most critics found it too boring or lacking plot momentum. Oh well…
Anyway, what Peter Berg manages to do here is stage the most propulsive post-911 thriller since “United 93” and there are moments when you forget you’re watching a “Mark Wahlberg movie” and the stars you’ve seen before fade into the tense dread of the real-life events. The actual Bostom bombing is staged like the opening moments of “Jaws” and would rival Hitchcock’s best sequences for suspense. Then the film catapults into a riveting manhunt that makes great use of real-life surveillance footage to layer in an eerie sense of “this is how they really do it.” Seeing the techniques actually used is fascinating, but it’s all a set-up for the best action sequence of 2016: a (literally) explosive face-off in a sleepy Boston suburb. Even in the middle of third-world chaos brought to a cul de sac, the movie finds time for hilarious gallows humor like one neighborhood resident throwing out a baseball bat to a local cop telling him “kick his ass.” Grade: A-
The Founder…How was McDonald’s founded? That may be a question you’ve never thought to ask, and it’s a credit to “The Founder” that it makes you care about the answer. Micheal Keaton is sensational as Ray Kroc, the McDonald’s founder who didn’t really “found” anything, but is undeniably responsible for it becoming so huge. The movie is open enough to admit that Kroc may be kind-of a bastard, but it never fully disowns his behavior either, on some level admitting that there’s no way McDonald’s could’ve become as big as it was if he wasn’t a bastard. Are the MacDonald’s brothers who founded the original restaurant more honorable, more pioneering, and more honest? No question, but at a certain point the movie gets you to see that they were wedded to a form of “integrity” that was also more than a little controlling, and it would’ve been awfully hard for McDonald’s to become what it is today with them still in charge of the company…and then it flips the script again by showing how Ray cheated them out of rightful royalties. “The Founder” is excellent at confounding your sympathies, and Keaton does something beyond difficult: getting you to see how unlikable his character is while still on some level rooting for him to break out of his late middle-age slump. You want Ray Kroc to become a “winner” even as you know it means giving rise to a corporate America that has made a lot of people losers. That’s not an easy task, but “The Founder” makes it look easy. Grade: B+/A-