Tag: Hell or High Water

Mr. Reed’s Metaphysical Neighborhood Presents the Best Technical and Artistic Film Work of 2016

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best-art-and-technical-2016

On Tuesday, January 24, the  Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced the 2017 Oscar nominees. Three days later, I am finally getting around to finishing up my own lists of favorites from last year. I already posted my “best film” and “best acting” lists, so today’s post – about the (often) unsung artists and craftspeople who are essential to the filmmaking process – completes the triptych. Most of the time, the movie’s hyperlink will take you to my review, if one exists (and if not, I have a note explaining where the hyperlink takes you). I also hyperlink the artists’ names, as well (mostly to IMDb, but sometimes to their own personal websites), so you can see what other work they have produced over their careers. In the case of best score, I link to the movies’ soundtracks on Amazon or iTunes, as well.

For each category, I stick to 5 candidates, in alphabetical order. These are the films where I thought that the work in that particular area truly enhanced the quality of the movie. Enjoy, and feel free to leave comments after you look it over!

Best Screenplay (adapted and original, combined):

Best Cinematography:

Best Editing*:

[*2 of these are documentaries – Cameraperson and The Last Man on the Moon – which are among the hardest kinds of films to edit, given the huge amount of material to work with, from which one must, somehow, extract a coherent story.]

Best Production Design:

Best Visual Effects**:

[**Too many people to mention all, so I have simply hyperlinked, next to the title, to the movie’s crew page on IMDb page, where you can look at the multitude of people involved in the many visual-effects teams.]

Best Original Score***:

***plus The Lobster for best choice of previously composed music (particularly Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1, Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato)

Mr. Reed’s Metaphysical Neighborhood Presents the Best and Worst Films of 2016

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[For an explanation of my blog post title, check out my “best of” list from 2013.]

Below you will find lists of my favorite films of the year, divided by narrative (fiction) and documentary (nonfiction) formats (I do not separate animated films from either genre, and there are examples of at least one animated film in each category). This is the first time I have broken down my lists in this way, and it largely has to do with the sheer number of documentaries I now watch and review in my position as lead film critic for Hammer to Nail, which makes me want to highlight even more of the great work being done by the 21st century’s exceptional nonfiction filmmakers. As always, the main factor that motivated me to include a film among my favorites is whether or not that film surprised or moved me; was there something in it that reached deep down into my cinematic soul and woke me up as I watched it, even if the film as a whole may have had some flaws (perfection is a subjective reality, anyway).

Not all of the movies mentioned received some kind of theatrical or online release in 2016, though most of them did; a few may still be looking for distributors after making their festival rounds. Where I have previously written reviews of a movie (whether for Hammer to Nail, Film Festival Today or this blog), the title of that movie is hyperlinked to my original review. If I only wrote a brief capsule review of a film after seeing it at a film festival, then I link to that write-up, however short it may be. Where I have not (yet) reviewed a film, I have hyperlinked the title to the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes page and written a (very) short description of it, just to explain what I admire (or don’t).

If a film that you, yourself, saw and liked is nowhere mentioned here, then it is possible that I did not see it (or saw it and liked it, but not enough to include among my favorites, or saw it and, of course, did not like it). As many films as I watch every year, I do not see everything; Swiss Army Man is but one example of a movie I missed. If you have questions about any omissions, feel free to comment and/or send me a note. And really, what separates the “Top 10” from the “runners-up” is very little.

Enjoy! Over the next three weeks or so, as always, I will publish a separate list of the best acting and technical/artistic achievements of the year.

Top 10 Narrative Films of 2016 (in alphabetical order):

Best of 2016 Narratives Part 1

Best of 2016 Narratives Part 2

  1. Captain Fantastic
  2. Certain Women
  3. Hell or High Water
  4. La La Land
  5. Loving
  6. Manchester by the Sea
  7. Moonlight
  8. Rams
  9. Toni Erdmann – Perhaps excessively long (perhaps), this delightful German film is nevertheless a profound (and very entertaining) meditation on familial bonds that features one of the best uses of nudity to ever grace the silver screen.
  10. 20th Century Women – Mike Mills (Beginners) delivers a loving fictional portrait of his mother that is also a tribute to the strength of women, of all ages, everywhere.

2016 Narrative Film Runners-Up (in alphabetical order):

2016 Narrative Runners-Up Part 1

2016 Narrative Runners-Up Part 2

  1. Claire in Motion
  2. The Edge of Seventeen
  3. Fences
  4. The Handmaiden – Bound meets Rashomon in this  twisted Korean period thriller from Chan-wook Park (Stoker) that offers us a satisfying frisson both sexual and intellectual.
  5. Hunter Gatherer
  6. The Lobster
  7. Miles Ahead
  8. Moana
  9. Silence – An adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s 1966 novel of the same name, this chronicle of the plight of Portuguese priests in 17th-century Japan is director Martin Scorsese’s best work in years.
  10. Zootopia

Top 10 Documentary Films of 2016 (in alphabetical order):

Best of 2016 Documentaries Part 1

Best of 2016 Documentaries Part 2

  1. Cameraperson
  2. Chicken People
  3. In Pursuit of Silence (linked to my interview with director, which includes a brief capsule review)
  4. The Last Man on the Moon
  5. Newtown
  6. Plaza de la Soledad
  7. Salero
  8. Tower
  9. Under the Sun
  10. Weiner

2016 Documentary Film Runners-Up (in alphabetical order):

2016 Documentary Runners-Up Part 1

2016-documentary-runners-up-part-2

  1. Abortion: Stories Women Tell
  2. Almost Sunrise
  3. Audrie & Daisy
  4. The Bandit
  5. The Dwarvenaut
  6. The Eagle Huntress
  7. The If Project
  8. National Bird
  9. Ovarian Psycos
  10. Sonita

Documentary and Narrative Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):

Worst Films of 2016 (in alphabetical order):

Stay tuned for more posts in the week ahead, where I will list my favorite performances and technical achievements of the year, as well.

 

“Roughly Speaking” Podcast on Hollywood Epics, “Ben-Hur,” “Hell or High Water” and “War Dogs”

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Rodricks August 19 2016

Today, Linda DeLibero – Director, Film and Media Studies, Johns Hopkins University – and Christopher Llewellyn Reed (that’s me) – Chair and Professor, Department of Film & Moving Image, Stevenson University – join Dan Rodricks on his Baltimore Sun podcast, “Roughly Speaking,” where we discussed three films out in theaters this weekend – Hell or High Water, War Dogs and a new version of Ben-Hur – using the release of the latter as a springboard for a larger conversation about the history of Hollywood epics. Here is the link to the show. Enjoy!

“Hell or High Water” Is a Brilliant Existential Western Crime Thriller

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Hell or High Water

Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie, 2016)

It’s early morning in West Texas. The camera drifts lazily over and through the low-rise buildings of a small town, nondescript and empty in the morning. A patch of graffiti reads “3 Tours in Iraq, but no bailout for people like us.” We travel through a parking lot and come to rest on a bank entrance, where a lone woman approaches the door, pulling out her keys. She’s the first employee of the day. Suddenly, from behind, come two masked men, who push her roughly inside. And so begins Hell or High Water, where riches will be sought, Robin Hood-style, from those who have stolen them. Our protagonists may be bank robbers, but the villains here are the forces of society that steal from the poor to make the rich richer. That graffiti we passed by is more than just a random happenstance: it’s the theme of the film.

The truth of who’s right and who’s wrong is, fortunately, a lot more complicated than that – and of what importance is right or wrong in a good narrative, anyway, as long as the characters believe in what they’re doing? – or we’d have a movie far too simple for its own good. Instead, what we get, courtesy of director David Mackenzie (Starred Up) and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (Sicario) is a morally complex tale of economic and existential survival masquerading as a damn fine bank-heist thriller. Brothers Tanner (Ben Foster, Lone Survivor) and Toby (Chris Pine, Star Trek Beyond) need a lot of money quickly, for reasons soon to be explained. Tanner is the wild card, just out of prison; Toby’s a divorced father of two, calmer and brighter than his older sibling, but in need of his ruthlessness. As they make their way through a series of attacks on banks, which go off with varying degrees of success, they attract the attention of a pair of Texas Rangers, played by Jeff Bridges (True Grit) and Gil Birmingham (California Indian). The Rangers are yin to the brothers’ yang, patiently tracking them down, trading (mostly affectionate) barbs as they go; two sets of partners with whom we spend almost equal time, dividing our loyalties. It’s Birmingham’s Alberto – of Native-American descent – who seems to most understand the brothers’ motivation, as he likens their plight to that of all conquered people. If it’s not the White Man putting you down, it’s the banks, who go after all the poor, regardless of race.

It’s a deeply satisfying film that mixes genres – crime, Western, epic drama – in a brilliant combination that keeps us guessing how it will all turn out until the very end. There are great – if also devastating – surprises in store and, most importantly, a wonderful sense of plot and character development that is often missing in some of the bigger movies of our day: unlike in, say, the last Marvel movie, here we care deeply about the fate of all involved. Foster and Pine are both terrific, as are Bridges (doing his old-man thing, but doing it well) and, especially, Birmingham, an underused actor (perhaps best known to most viewers as Billy Black in the Twilight films) who here gets a chance to shine. A deceptively small movie, set in vast and desolate landscapes, Hell or High Water deals with important themes relevant to our day and age, all the while entertaining the “hell” out of you. Go see it.