A fine collection of films hit our screens this year
2016 was an excellent year for New Zealand film.
The warm and poignant documentary Poi E, the hilarious, at times too-strange-for-words Tickled and the brilliant comedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople were hallmarks of a national cinema rich with wit and innovation.
It’s with some regret that I place Wilderpeople just outside my top 10 films, bumped into 11th position by the late release of arguably the best movie of 2016.
10. I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach, UK) Palme d’or winner at Cannes, Ken Loach’s story about a late 50s carpenter struggling to survive the minefield that is the British social welfare system is thematically consistent with the director’s best work yet notably less didactic, the politics emerging naturally from the drama. An impassioned demand for human rights as well as a study of social alienation that has much to do with technological change as policy decisions or class struggle.
9. Elle (Paul Verhoeven, France) At age 78, bad boy Dutch director Paul Verhoeven returns with easily his finest film, a blackerthan-soot comedy about a ruthless career businesswoman coming to terms with being raped. Though marketed as the equivalent of those bogusly feminist revenge movies of the 70s in which victims turn the table on sexual predators, Elle is a whole lot smarter and and a whole lot funnier.
8. Julieta (Pedro Almodovar, Spain) A mother-daughter melodrama based on three short stories by Canadian Alice Munro. By turns sensual, romantic and tragic, this delicately structured film references Bunuel in its dual casting and the Hitchcock of Rebecca with a creepy housekeeper but is always, definitively, Almodovar. The great Spanish auteur’s 20th feature.
7. The Light Between Oceans (Derek Cianfrance, NZ/UK/USA) This beautifully realised 1920s romance walks a fine line between drama and melodrama, unashamedly seeking tears but benefiting greatly from moving performances by real-life lovers Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander. With themes of love, forgiveness and regrowth, the perfect antidote to all those World War I films we saw last year. 6. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt, USA) A subtle and slow-moving character study of four career women, each in their own way negotiating the decidedly male environment of Montana. Proof positive that American filmmakers can make art house movies every bit as beguiling as their European counterparts.
5. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, Germany) A satirical comedy of the first order, epic in length with ideas to match. The tale of a sixtysomething German practical joker who attempts to reconnect with his daughter, a business executive working in Bucharest, through assuming a series of increasingly bizarre guises and costumes. Yeti suits, nude birthday parties and unexpected Whitney Houston covers result yet the pratfalls never get in the way of Ade’s essential point: that corporate culture is sucking the soul out of contemporary life.
4. The Hateful Eight (Quentin Tarantino, USA) Tarantino’s tightest and most fully realised screenplay since Jackie Brown, The Hateful Eight is an allegorical commentary on race relations in the United States. The stylised treatment of the post-civil War period examines the on-legacy of slavery and the confederacy. It also has its Agatha Christie side – it’s essentially a murder mystery – and is resplendent with Tarantino trash talk and trademark violence.
3. Carol (Todd Haynes, USA) An adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel The Price of Salt, Carol is set in New York in the 1950s and concerns a pair of women who fall in love. As an exercise in style and a recreation of time and place it is simply stunning, refusing to do the obvious and settle for being a lesbian melodrama or ‘‘message picture’’ about period homophobia. 2. Son of Saul (Laszlo Nemes, Hungary) A sensitive Holocaust drama, one that draws much of its power from a simple stylistic choice. Rather than showing the horrors of Auschwitz in graphic and potentially exploitative detail, Son of Saul implies them through sound, as an out-of-focus backdrop to the experiences of a Sonderkommando, a Hungarian Jew who works in the gas chambers.
1. La La Land (Damien Chapelle, USA) Whiplash’s Damien Chapelle manages a minor miracle, re-inventing the Hollywood musical with stunning originality. Not that Chapelle doesn’t have a full awareness of Tinsel Town’s past as well: the story of a jazz pianist and an aspiring actress is one of romantic dreams forged by the likes of Casablanca, Rebel Without a Cause and An American in Paris. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are an Astaire and Rogers for the 21st century.