The Best Films of 2016

While 2016 may not have been the mega-year for great cinema that 2015 was, there was still plenty of greatness to go around this year. Granted much of that greatness was crammed into the last two months of the year (and, for many, into the first month of 2017), but it still made it fun for me and others to experience it all communally in the darkness of the movie theatre.

Recently, I was asked the question that many people who hear that I'm an aspiring filmmaker tend to ask me: "What are some of your favorite films?" And many are surprised when I respond with relatively recent films that, you could say, haven't stood the test of time as well as bona fide classics like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark or Back to the Future. But here's the truth: I'm 19 years old (will be 20 next month) and the great films that have come out in my lifetime, the films have spoken to me and to the world that I grew up in and to the world that I make my way in as an adult, are the films that ultimately stayed with me and grew me as a filmmaker and film-lover more than other, older "classic" films. And while I wouldn't take the leap to say that many of the films on my top 10 from 2016 will end up on my all-time favorites list (with the exception of a couple), these are all great films that, on some level, spoke to me and to the world that I make my way in as an adult. So, without further ado, here are my top 10 favorite films from 2016 from 10 to 1:

(NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: I have not yet seen Fences, Lion, or Hell or High Water, but intend to do so very soon...)

10. Moonlight -- I know there's probably a few of you out there right now saying that this is too low, and I was definitely surprised when I was ordering this list and Moonlight, of all films, ended up at only #10. But this is absolutely one of the most remarkable achievements of the year in terms of pure storytelling and telling an incredibly personal tale amidst a background of poverty and suffering and prejudice. In an unusual way, it reminded me of Boyhood set against a world similar to that in the HBO drama The Wire with the same kind of personal, emotional storytelling I loved so much in Fruitvale Station from a few years back. The three young men who played the lead role blend perfectly together as the same person in three different decades, and Mahershala Ali is absolutely deserving of all of the Oscar buzz you're hearing about right now. Naomie Harris and Janelle Monae also give a good amount of heft to their (albeit slightly underwritten) roles as Chiron's mother and Juan's girlfriend, respectively. So while I do think this might rise up on my list with repeated viewings (I've only seen it once, when it first came out in Chicago back in November), it's staying at #10 on my list, if only to show just how many great films there were this past year.

9. Hidden Figures -- One of the most unabashed crowd-pleasers of recent years, this film tells a beautiful and remarkable true story of three women of color who overcame the odds to become mathematicians at NASA. Janelle Monae proves herself once again to be an actress of remarkable talent in an amazingly well-written role that fits her style and sensibilities perfectly, and Octavia Spencer earns her second Oscar nomination for her understated performance as well. Taraji P. Henson, Kevin Costner, and Jim Parsons (yes, Sheldon from Big Bang Theory) kill in all of their roles as well (this won Best Ensemble at the SAG Awards last night for a reason). I recently read a column in the Chicago Tribune that said every student in the 3rd-12th grade should be required to see this movie. I couldn't agree more.

8. Loving -- Set around the same time period as Hidden Figures, Loving tells a story of two people fighting for the right to be married in the most un-Oscar-baity way imagineable. Writer-director Jeff Nichols (one of the best indie filmmakers of the past 16 years, whose films include such overlooked masterpieces as Take Shelter, Mud, and this year's Midnight Special, which just missed my top 10) takes this painful but important civil-rights story and lets it speak for itself in a beautifully understated voice. Rather than having big self-important speeches and montages of the civil-rights battles of the time, Nichols shines his spotlight solely on Richard and Mildred Loving and their love for each other and how they just want to be able to live their lives as husband and wife with their children. Ruth Negga's performance as the sensitive but strong Mildred is one of the most beautiful performances of the year and stands toe-to-toe with all the amazing female performances in Hidden Figures. Edgarton also shines as the simple-minded Richard and he reminded me of why I fell in love with him as an actor in the first place (back in 2011 when he co-starred in Warrior with Tom Hardy). And Nichols' muse, Michael Shannon, kills in his all-too-brief cameo as a photographer for Life magazine. Jeff Nichols is a true American treasure and this film proves once again how amazing and wonderful his sensibility is. It's not quite the heartwarming feel-good civil-rights drama that Hidden Figures is, but it's still a necessary film that should absolutely be sought out.

7. The Edge of Seventeen -- Anybody who knows me knows that I am a sucker for coming-of-age movies. Films like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Boyhood and last year's period piece coming-of-age story Brooklyn are all films that moved me and spoke to my own experiences in different ways. Kelly Fremon Craig's remarkable debut feature can stand toe-to-toe with any of these films as a beautiful, heartwarming, and unexpectedly moving coming-of-age story about a depressed, socially anxious high school junior (played in a profoundly real performance by Hailee Steinfeld, in her best role since 2010's True Grit) whose social life spirals out of control when her best friend begins dating her older brother. Woody Harrelson steals every one of his too-few scenes as Steinfeld's history teacher, and Kyra Sedgwick nails her role as the emotionally unstable mother. But what ultimately makes this film so special is that it succeeds where so many movies about high school fail, and that it places the viewer in that mindset that everything that happens in high school will determine the rest of your life while having the maturity to know just how histrionic all that "drama" really is in retrospect.

6. Nuts! -- An all-too-overlooked and forgotten documentary masterpiece from earlier this year that you can read all my thoughts on here, this movie lives up to its title in the best possible way, telling a story that has to be seen to be believed. That's all I will say, as the best way to watch this movie is knowing absolutely nothing about it (that's exactly how I saw it, anyway). It's available to watch on Amazon Prime now, and it absolutely needs to be seen.

5. Life, Animated -- One of the most emotional movie-watching experiences I've had in a theatre this year, this documentary about autism and the magic of movies is the best documentary of 2016 in my opinion (I still haven't watched all of OJ: Made in America yet) and you can read all of my thoughts on it here. Put simply: as someone with an autism spectrum disorder (Asperger's, to be specific) and as someone who grew up watching and loving Disney animated films, this movie spoke to me on so many personal levels, and I am so thankful the Oscar Documentary voters didn't forget about it when making nominations. This, like Nuts!, is currently available on Amazon Prime, and should be required viewing for every single human being who is a child, has a child, or has ever been a child.

4. Manchester By The Sea -- I have to say, this is one movie this year that, while deserving every inch of praise that's been heaped upon it, is being talked about in a way that's not helping people to go see it. Because of the fact that it's about a depressed man suffering from PTSD who is forced to take care of his teenage nephew after the boy's father dies, the word "depressing" has become attached to this movie in a way that I don't believe it deserves to. Yes, there are absolutely parts of this film that are heartbreaking and that will hit viewers hard who have ever had to deal with the loss of people who are close to them, but what I ultimately took from this movie is, strangely enough, hope. It's a film about persevering through all the crap that life throws at you and about being able to break down your walls in order to do what is right in times of tragedy and suffering. And the way that writer/director Kenneth Lonergan (whose past films include other indie dramas such as You Can Count on Me and Margaret) writes this movie and films this movie is so intimate that it literally feels like you're watching scenes from real life. He adds just the right amount of levity/comic relief so it doesn't get too bogged down and still feels realistic. And this is further elevated by absolutely brilliant performances from Casey Affleck (who deserves his all-but-guaranteed Best Actor Oscar) and Lucas Hedges as well as Michelle Williams, whose one heartbreaking scene is the reason she's nominated for Best Supporting Actress this year. Reminding me in the best way possible of my other favorite indie dramas of the last 10 years like Grace is Gone and Fruitvale Station, Manchester by the Sea is a film that grabbed a hold of me when I first saw it back in December and has never let go since. And regardless of what you might be hearing from others, this is not a film of depression. This is a film of hope.

3. Sing Street -- Yet another criminally overlooked film that came out earlier this year and was then forgotten about. While not quite on the same emotional level as Moonlight or Manchester by the Sea, this is still one of the most joyous cinematic experiences I've had in many years. A relatively simple coming-of-age story (yes, another coming-of-age movie, I know) about a fifteen-year-old boy who meets a girl and tells her that he's in a band (which results in him then having to actually form a band), writer/director John Carney (of Once and Begin Again) packs every inch of this movie with heart and energy and joy and great music, as well as successfully putting the viewer in the mind of this boy so that you're on the same emotional wavelength as him throughout. You can read the rest of my many thoughts about this film here, but it is on Netflix right now and should absolutely be watched by everyone who loves fun and joy and, yes, great music.

2. A Monster Calls -- And now we go from a criminally overlooked film from earlier this year to a criminally overlooked film from this awards season. While A Monster Calls was ignored by both the Oscars and moviegoers as a whole (to date, it has grossed $41 million on a $43 million dollar budget, and less than 10% of that gross was from the U.S.), this is still the most emotional experience I had in a theatre watching a movie from 2016. Yet another coming-of-age movie on my list, this tells the story of a 12-year-old boy with a terminally-ill mother who has nightly visions of a tree monster coming to visit him and telling him parables to help him cope with this tragic episode in his life. While this is a family film in the sense that it has a CGI tree monster (brilliantly voiced by Liam Neeson) and parables that are told via sequences of beautiful animation, this is a challenging family film in the style of Where the Wild Things Are and Inside Out in the sense that it doesn't treat children as dumb or fragile, it's not afraid to tackle hard questions that any child who has ever had to deal with death has had to face, and it's also not afraid to answer them honestly and in a way that respects the intelligence of its audience. Felicity Jones and Sigourney Weaver both give stellar performances as the main character's mother and grandmother (respectively), and newcomer Lewis MacDougall (whose only previous credit was 2015's Pan) gives a heartbreaking performance as the main character Conor, perfectly channeling the sadness and anger that every 12-year-old faces at one point or another. I teared up a good four times during the running time of this movie, and I teared up again right after I saw it when I received news of a very close person in my life being diagnosed with breast cancer (she's doing okay now, thank God). I really hope people come to discover this movie on HBO or Netflix or any other streaming platform (or DVD/Blu-ray, if that's still what you do), because this is one of most powerful films about grief and dealing with death that I have ever seen, but, like Manchester by the Sea, it's ultimately a movie about hope and moving forward. So...yes, please do whatever you can to see this.

And...1. La La Land -- Those who are a part of my circle of family/close friends know that I have not been able to stop talking about this film since I first saw it on Christmas Day, and I will not stop talking about it until every single person on the planet has experienced this beautiful, joyous masterpiece of filmmaking. I love freaking everything about this movie, all the way down from the opening musical number, which immediately threw me into its fantastical world, to the wonderfully committed performances of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, who I love even more now after this film. While yes, I know the plot itself isn't particularly exciting, the whole point of this film is that Sebastian and Mia (Gosling and Stone's characters) are both incredibly passionate people. They're dreamers and they want to do whatever they have to do to follow their dreams. As someone who's been passionate about filmmaking and storytelling since I was seven-years-old, and is currently spending thousands of dollars to go to DePaul University film school just so I can follow my dream of writing and directing indie films, I can absolutely relate to the mindset of these two people. Writer/director Damien Chazelle perfectly understands this and made this film for people who feel like this, as also evidenced by the amount of passion and love he put into every freaking inch of this screenplay and production. The first thing I said after walking out of this film the first time (and second time) was, "This is a love letter to everything that I love." And it's true. It's a film about the beauty and importance of storytelling, it's a film about love, it's a film about being a dreamer in a cynical you-need-to-make-money world, but it's also a film about reality, about the fact that not everything always gets wrapped up in a nice neat bow. And while I know that that's not something that everybody likes to hear in movies...well, that's the truth, and the truth ain't always pretty. All of the musical numbers in this film are brilliant, and while I know that Gosling and Stone aren't professionally-trained singers/dancers, they still do a fine job (particularly Stone, who belts out one particular number beautifully). This film deserves every single Oscar it is nominated for, and it deserves to be remembered years from now as one of the greatest films of the 21st century, a film of beauty, love, hope, passion, and dreams. This is a perfect, brilliant, joyous, moving, and poignant movie on every single level. "Here's to the ones who dream...foolish as they may seem..."

And, for anyone who's curious, here's ten films that just missed the cut for my top 10 (the ones that are hyperlinked are ones I reviewed over the summer):

Arrival

Silence

Hacksaw Ridge

Kubo and the Two Strings

Midnight Special

The BFG

The Nice Guys

Morris from America

Love & Friendship

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (just for the last 40 minutes)

Morris from America

SCREENED AT THE 2016 CHICAGO CRITICS FILM FESTIVAL: Back in May, when I heard the plot of the opening night film of the 2016 Chicago Critics Film Festival, I had an immediate flashback to the summer of 2012, when I was chosen as one of four Chicago teenagers to represent the United States at the Giffoni Film Festival in Italy, the largest children's film festival in the world (around 3300 teenagers from 54 countries and 79 Italian towns come to it every year). Besides the fact that I had to stay with an Italian host family for a entire week (and nobody in the family spoke English), the most exciting and unusual part of this film festival was that they would only show movies during the day and then, in the afternoon and into the evening, it would just turn into a gigantic party with all these teenagers from all over the world picnicking and hanging out and dancing to (mostly American) pop music.

However, due to my shyness and antisocialness at the time, I would mostly sit on a pair of swings in a nearby park and occasionally interact with pretty Italian girls if they seemed interested in interacting with me. Anyway, my point is, I thought a lot about my own experience as a young American boy in Europe when watching Morris from America, and while I only stayed in Italy for a week and a half, there were still a lot of things that rang true.

Here's the set-up: Morris, a 13-year-old African-American boy, is living in Heidelberg, Germany, with his dad who's a soccer coach. Since Morris' mother died a long time ago and he's beginning to become more and more distant from his father, most of the time Morris just sits in his room listening to rap music and surfing the Internet. It isn't until Morris' German tutor, Inka, makes him sign up for a program at the local youth center that he actually begins to interact with other human beings his age. Unfortunately, though, most of these German youths taunt him for his weight and his skin color, and as a result, he retreats further into depression and loneliness until an attractive young lady named Katrin takes him under her wing and develops a friendship with him.

What follows is a light, sweet, and sometimes heartbreakingly honest coming-of-age story that hit me on a lot of very personal levels. First of all, I just want to point out one scene that pretty much sums up my entire experience in Italy four years ago: when Morris and Katrin first have an actual conversation (after he's been admiring her from afar for a while), the first thing that Katrin does if offer Morris a cigarette. Considering that this is exactly what happened at least three times during interactions with pretty teenage girls in Italy, I immediately knew that writer/director Chad Hartigan knew a lot about what he was writing.

And this continued throughout the entire film. Not one thing here felt dishonest. The German teenage characters never felt like caricatures. The situations were all believable. And, most of all, the beautifully understated performance from Markees Christmas adds a lot of depth to what Hartigan already had written on paper, adding certain awkward beats and body language to moments that ultimately do a lot to capture the alienation and loneliness that he feels and that I felt during my week-and-a-half in Europe. And Craig Robinson does remarkable work as Morris' father, having just right amount of humor and pathos to be a fun character while also grounding the film, particularly in one great scene late in the film when he's driving Morris back from someone's house in Frankfurt and he tells the story of how him and Morris' mother met. I'd like to think if this film had come out later in the year, Robinson could have had a shot a Best Supporting Actor nomination. I know that won't happen, but he does deserve it.

Although I will admit to being kind of a sucker for coming-of-age films (three of my favorite films from the past several years are The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Boyhood, and Brooklyn), I still think that Morris from America is a solid entry into the genre with great performances and a beautifully honest story. And while I didn't have the urge to engage in repeat viewings like I did those other films, I would nevertheless recommend this without reservations since this isn't the kind of film that will get much of a push from its studio but it's one that deserves to be seen. Oh, and you will immediately want to visit Europe afterward.

Tallulah

I'm not sure how I feel about this whole "Netflix Revolution" that's been happening over the past few years. On one hand, I like how it's been able to expose my friends to some older films and indie films that they likely would have never seen otherwise, and in terms of TV I like being able to watch quality television like Breaking Bad and House of Cards in the way that one would read a book. On the other hand, I think that Netflix going into new film distribution is really troubling and disheartening. Yes, there are certain films that would be better seen on your 32-inch television or laptop. And yes, going to the movies is expensive and it's easier to just sit on your couch and watch Netflix. However, seeing a movie in a theatre, on a big screen in a dark room with a crowd of strangers, is something that's incredibly special and dear to me. The movie theatre has been my home-away-from-home since elementary school. It forces you to unplug from the world for a couple hours and embrace yourself in a story. It's the most beautiful communal art form that brings people together in a way that most art forms don't anymore.

I thought a lot about this while watching Tallulah, a Netflix pick-up from this year's Sundance Film Festival. It's a powerful film, and I think an important film, but throughout it's running time I kept thinking of how much more I might have enjoyed it if given the opportunity to experience in a dark theatre with a crowd of people.

Here's the basic set-up: Our main character, a homeless twentysomething drifter named Tallulah (or "Lu" for short), is living out of the back of her van while traveling across the country stealing credit cards and eating out of dumpsters with her boyfriend Nico. One day, however, Nico decides he's had enough of this life and takes off in the middle of the night, leaving Lu alone in a train station parking lot with no money. In response, she takes off to New York City, where she finds herself stealing room service leftovers (mainly food to tide herself over) from outside hotel rooms while trying to track down Nico's mother who lives in NYC.

While doing this at a high-end hotel, she is mistaken for housekeeping by a hotel guest named Carolyn, who is staying in a room with her one-year-old daughter, Maddy. While going on a drunk, profanity-laced, and incoherant rant to Lu about how she's going out tonight to impress a man since her husband is away in Cancun, Carolyn asks Lu to babysit Maddy, and Lu agrees once she sees how much money Carolyn is going to pay her (and also once she sees what a horrible, neglectant mother Carolyn is). Once Carolyn comes back from her affair even more drunk and passes out on her bed, Lu, having formed a connection with Maddy while her mother was away, quickly packs Maddy's things and takes her from the room. Once she finds Nico's mother, Margo, who lives in her ex-husband's 5th Avenue apartment while separated from him, Lu tells her that she is the biological mother of this baby and she needs a place to stay for the night. Margo obliges Lu, and gives her and Maddy the guest bedroom. 

That's about as far as I want to go into the plot, because what the film really becomes about is not only the beauty of motherhood, but also parental and societal responsibility for children. While the plot may have the makings of a Lifetime movie, writer/director Sian Heder is able to transcend the tropes by providing the audience with two fully developed and three-dimensional human beings as main characters. Ellen Page and Allison Janney (reunited from Juno, a similarly life-affirming film) show much more complete chemistry here than they did in that film, mainly because they just have a lot more time to spend together. Tammy Blanchard does a similiarly sublime job as Carolyn, even if I didn't quite buy her transformation by the film's end.

Overall, I believe Heder has crafted an insightful, absorbing film with her debut, painting characters with many shades of gray and giving a beautiful message that life is precious and worth living even if things don't go as planned. This would actually make a great double feature with Ellen Page's other 2016 indie film Into the Forest (which I reviewed a few weeks ago) as both are unequivocally feminist films that also honor the beauty and value of all human life. While I still believe some of the film's most intense scenes would be best viewed in a theatre, I also think this could be great Netflix viewing on a rainy day. However you decide to see it, this is one absolutely recommend. 

Sausage Party

Since this isn't going to be a very long review I'll just cut right to the chase: I was really looking forward to this film. This might sound weird coming from someone whose favorite films of each year tend to be along the lines of Boyhood and Brooklyn, but I've actually liked quite a few of the comedies produced by Seth Rogen and Even Goldberg (This is the End and The Interview being two of my favorite comedies of the last five years) and I had heard really good early buzz coming out of its work-in-progress screening at the South by Southwest Film Festival as well as other advance screenings. And plus, I just thought the central premise was really fun and original for an animated film: What if our food had feelings? What if the food that sits in supermarkets around the world could talk and walk around and throw wild parties in the store after-hours? There's a lot of potential in that premise, and I really thought Rogen and Goldberg and their crew could do something creative with it, given their track record and their love of double entendres, while paying homage to the likes of Toy Story and A Bug's Life and Finding Nemo.

So, here's what they do with the premise: it's Fourth of July weekend at a Whole Foods-like supermarket called Shopwells. Our main character, a sausage named Frank who's packaged with others of his kind for Fourth of July sales next to neighboring buns, is enthusiastic about the possibility of being chosen by the "gods" (supermarket customers) to enter the "Great Beyond" (the customers' homes). Once Frank and his other sausages are chosen with a package of hot dog buns (which includes Brenda, a bun that Frank is infatuated with), it seems like everything's going to go great...until a jar of Honey Mustard in the cart (who we learned earlier was mistakenly purchased by one of the "gods" and is much less than enthused about his experience in the "Great Beyond") tells everyone in the cart that the Great Beyond is "bulls***" and kills himself by jumping from the cart and smashing on the floor. Frank, haunted by seeing this and being of the inquisitive type, is determined to go on an adventure to see whether there's any sort of truth behind Honey Mustard's statements on the "Great Beyond".

What follows is, to put it bluntly, an anti-religious parable disguised as an animated sex comedy. Yes, essentially the argument that Rogen and Goldberg metaphorically make in this film is that the whole concept of Heaven (or, in the film, the "Great Beyond") is a lie invented by humans to make themselves feel better about death. And while I am a practicing Christian, I have no problem with tackling religion from an angle I don’t personally agree with as long as they handle said subject with thoughtfulness and intelligence. But what this film essentially does is pound its atheistic message down the audience's throats so forcefully that the impact of much of the film's raunchy humor and double entendres (the kind that I loved in This is the End and The Interview) is blunted and didn't really register with me. 

And on top of this, I also found it to be kind of lazy that literally all of the food talks in exactly the same profane way, so no one really sounds unique. Thankfully the voice cast does a good job at helping to differentiate the characters so they don't sound completely interchangeable, but I still just kept thinking, "Not ALL of these characters have to talk like this! Do they all have to drop f-bombs at every other word?!"

Now that's not to say there wasn't any hint of cleverness in this screenplay. I liked the relationship between the Israeli bagel and the Palestinian pita/flatbread, and how they only hate each other because their respective people hate each other. There's also a piece of chewed-up gum that has metamorphisized to resemble Stephen Hawking that shows up and allowed me to have a good laugh. And the final 10 minutes of the film is about as offensive and shocking as you can expect from Rogen and Goldberg and did a lot to pay off the preceding 80 minutes. But, overall, I just found myself really underwhelmed by Rogan and Goldberg's squandering of the film's great premise. One of the most disappointing films I've seen so far this year.

Into the Forest

SCREENED AT THE 2016 CHICAGO CRITICS FILM FESTIVAL: I feel as though there's been a lot of talk recently about the role that technology and the media is playing in what some people are considering to be "the downfall of our society." People say that our world is becoming one similar to Mike Judge's 2006 satire Idiocracy with the rise and success of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, which was successful primarily to the ridiculous amount of free media he received during primary season. Even people my age are saying that younger kids don't have imaginations anymore due to the easy access to smartphones and iPads. As an eternal optimist, I want to believe that our best years as a society are ahead of us, that my children will be able to have a similar childhood to the one that I had. I'm not a fan of tech-based fear-mongering, especially from people close to my age, but I do think there's a certain truth somewhere in it.

In Into the Forest, writer/director Patricia Rozema poses the question, "What if, all of a sudden, our access to this technology and media was suddenly lost? How would we be able to survive?" In the not-too-distant future, two young women named Nell and Eva, who happen to be sisters despite the fact that they treat one another like strangers, are living at their father's secluded cabin in Northern California when, all of a sudden, the power goes out. Like many annoying power outages, they just assumed it will be fixed in a matter of time; however, not only does it never get fixed, but soon word spreads that the entire country is in the dark. But thankfully for these two girls, their father is about as resourceful as they come, and it seems as though they're going to be fine...until he kills himself in a horrific chainsaw accident and they're both left to fend for themselves, and they're hardly as resourceful as their father (Nell is a bookworm and straight-A student while Eva is an extremely competitive ballet dancer).

Watching these two very different people who really only share gender and DNA in common have to work together just to survive in this cruel, brutal environment is relentlessly compelling to watch, especially given the fact that these two people are played by Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood, who bring so much humanity and emotion to these roles that at some point you don't even realize that (a) they don't look like sisters and (b) they're both in their late twenties, and these characters are clearly supposed to be much younger. Their chemistry is excellent, and their performances do a lot to suggest long-standing family ties and ratchet tension even in scenes that might seem uneventful on paper.

But throughout the inevitable hardship and suffering that these two young women face while trying to survive, there is always a slight glimmer of hope that permeates through every scene. (SPOILER): At one point during the film, Eva is raped by a local stranger who walks onto the property and gets her alone while Nell is out collecting water. Eva ends up getting pregnant from this rape and is determined to have the baby, despite Nell's pleas for her to have an abortion. This was a brilliant, beautiful storytelling decision on Rozema's part, as the scene where Eva gives birth to the baby amidst the dark woods and falling-apart house is an incredibly life-affirming moment that very much gives the film a "circle-of-life" theme, and reminds the viewer of the preciousness and beauty of Eva's child despite him being conceived in the most hateful of situations.

If I have one complaint about the film, it's that it's ending is a little too simplistic and vague for my liking. I understood the symbolism behind it, but what exactly happened felt a little out-of-character in terms of what these two women had been doing up until that point. But that quibble aside, this is one of the best (and definitely most thought-provoking) post-apocalypic dramas I've seen in the past few years that manages to have feminist and pro-life messages simultaneously, both of which I wholeheartedly approve of. This is available on most VOD platforms right now (I don't think it's in any Chicago-area theatres but I'm not 100% sure) and I absolutely recommend seeking it out.

Sing Street

Yes, I know that Sing Street has already had its theatrical run, but considering the fact that it's now available on pretty much all digital streaming platforms as well as DVD and Blu-ray, I figured I had to write a review of it as it is without question the best movie I have seen in 2016 so far (and that says a lot, considering how much I loved Nuts! and Life, Animated, among others).

Throughout my life, I have always seen music as having the power to allow people to connect with each other and to communicate messages more than simple words can. I often turn to classic rock acts like Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles, and U2 as being artists who allow their words and melodies to carry stories and messages of hope and, in some cases, sociopolitical commentary that give their listeners greater insight into the world around them. Even some modern pop artists like Taylor Swift and the up-and-coming indie pop band Echosmith are using stories and meaningful lyrics to communicate with their listeners. Either way, music has been a big part of my life and a huge part of what's shaped the way I see the world (along with film, obviously, and theatre). And I don't think any filmmaker has quite captured the power of music as well as John Carney has in the few movies that he's done. As much as I absolutely loved Once (I haven't seen Begin Again yet but I intend to very soon), this film hit me on an emotional level unlike any other film I saw in the first half of 2016 and it reminded me of why I'm going into film as a career.

Set in 1985 in inner-city Dublin, a young boy named Conor Lalor is just starting his freshman year at a conservative prep school known as Synge Street CBS. After the first couple of days are complete hell, by the third day he meets a teenaged orphan girl named Raphina who lives across the street in a home for other orphan girls. Instantly infatuated with her, he tries to impress her by falsely saying that he's in a band and they need a girl to play a model for their new music video. After she agrees to it, he tells his new friend Darren that they need to immediately go and form a band. Putting together a ragtag team of amateur musicians from the school, they start out rough but eventually turn out to be quite good, drawing influences from numerous MTV bands at the time such as Duran Duran and The Cure, all as a part of forming their own style and (of course) impressing the girl. 

What an incredible film this is. And when I use the word "incredible," I don't necessarily mean in terms of deep hidden meaning and subtext and symbolism or anything worthy of film scholars. I mean simply in terms of the sheer joy that eminates from every frame and every performance and every line of dialogue in this movie. I wasn't even born in 1985. Heck, I've never set one foot in the country of Ireland. But after viewing this film months ago, I felt like I knew this era and this world like the back of my hand. I felt like I knew Conor and Raphina and Conor's co-songwriter Eamon (who's kind of the Lennon to Conor's McCartney) as if I had been friends with them my whole life, and I wanted to see those characters again and hang out with them long after the film ended. Lucy Boynton (having seen her in this and The Blackcoat's Daughter within a short timespan) is one of my favorite newcomer actresses of the past several years and she dazzles in this film, as do Ferdia Walsh-Peelo as Conor, Mark McKenna as Eamon, and Jack Reynor as Conor's brother Brandon (who's perhaps this film's equivalent to Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lestor Bangs in Almost Famous).

But perhaps the part of the film that struck me the deepest is its emphasis on "happy-sad." It stems from a brilliant conversation with Conor and Raphina when he's depressed about how crappy his home life and school life have become and how it's resulted in him writing sad songs, but Raphina tells him that his problem is that "he's not happy being sad," and that love by nature is "happy-sad." He quickly begins to channel that into his art, writing various "happy-sad" songs with a forward-thinking "futurist" mindset (even his piano ballad about being "friend-zoned" by Raphina, "To Find You," has glimmers of happiness and hope). This was a huge awakening for me personally as a creative writer and also in my outlook on love in general, because in reality, nothing is ever "all happy" or "all sad". The rush that I get when I have intense love-like feelings for a girl is happy, but then the blow when I realize she just wants to be friends is sad. The highs of a first date and a first kiss with a girl are happy, but the pains of the break-up phone call are sad. I've already begun to channel this into my writing, as hard as it is not to paint things as "all happy" or "all sad" depending on how I'm feeling at that moment. 

I absolutely adored every frame of this film, and I walked out of the theatre feeling the best that I've felt after a movie since Brooklyn last November (yet another Irish film). John Carney has crafted a masterpiece of a music-based script unlike any since Once while channeling the best things about School of Rock and Almost Famous into it as well. Now that it's widely available on video, everybody reading these words right now who didn't get a chance to see this film in the theatre should rent it immediately. If you're not impressed by your summer theatrical options now, stay home and watch Sing Street. Well-made feel-good movies like this don't come around very often anymore, and this is not only the best of 2016 so far, but it's one of the best movies I have seen in at least the last five years, with a soundtrack that I listened to for a long time afterward. It's a masterpiece of music-based filmmaking and filmmaking in general.

The BFG

It's fascinating to see how stories change over time as one gets older. I read Roald Dahl's The BFG in fourth grade, at a time in my life when I was literally consuming every book that I could. To demonstrate how much I loved to read, my parents and I were actually vacationing in Los Angeles for my tenth birthday and I would stand in line for a ride at Disneyland and read the book, often making comparisons between things in the book and rides we would go on or even things we would eat at the park (i.e., I would eat a "BFG-sized corndog" lunch). At the time, I saw Dahl's book as a beautiful story of friendship at a time when I didn't have very many true friends. It had the same dark quirkiness of my other favorite books of his like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda but also just being very sweet and funny.

But that was obviously nine years ago and I haven't been able to plow through books nearly as much since my AP English classes in high school. It's easier for me to watch films based on literature and judge them from a cinematic and critical standpoint versus as a fan of the literature the film is based on. And even as much as I loved Dahl's book in fourth grade, the nine years that has passed since I read it allowed me to go in with as clean of a slate as possible.

So, for those of you unfamiliar with the story, here's the basics: In early 1980s London (the only way you know this is by hilarious throwaway reference to Ronald Reagan about two-thirds into the film), a young orphan girl named Sophie is grabbed out-of-the-blue from her cruel orphanage by a 24-foot-tall giant, who calls himself the Big Friendly Giant (or "BFG") and is whisked away to Giant Country. There, the BFG sticks her in his cave and tries to befriend her, but it isn't until young Sophie sees the BFG being crudely bullied by the bigger cannibalistic giants that she actively becomes his friend and does things such as going out and collecting dreams with him and watching him deliver a dream to a young boy in his London home.

I was amazed watching this film how much details I had forgotten of Dahl's story. I knew the all-around plot, but I almost feel like I should read the book again to see how different it was. Because this film played out like a great Dahl story, and it shut down any suspicions I might have had going in about how Spielberg's sentimentality might affect it, because as it turns out, Spielberg was the absolute perfect director to take on this source material. Many critics have pointed out comparisons to E.T. (the unlikely friendship between a child and an otherwordly creature, a screenplay by the late Melissa Mathison), and to be honest, I had a lot of the same emotions watching this film that I did the first time I watched E.T. While the Sophie character isn't as fully fleshed out in this film as Elliott was in E.T., she was still a compelling young female protagonist with defined emotions and a spunkiness that's only elevated by the wonderful newcomer Ruby Barnhill (who I can't wait to see more of). And while I never have really been a fan of the whole motion-capture technology thing, Mark Rylance brings such a humanity and warmth to his portrayal of the BFG that he transcends the technology that he uses to perform in a way that I've never seen in a film.

One of the things I was talking to my parents about as we left the theatre was how different this movie could have been in the hands of a director like Tim Burton or a lead actor like Johnny Depp playing the BFG. And to be honest, I think the fact that it's Steven Spielberg and a lesser-name actor like Rylance on the poster for this film is one of the reasons why this film is bombing as badly as it is. But I also think one of the reasons is how (as sad as it is to say) old-fashioned the style and the story of this film are. Rather than being plot-focused and loud and snarky and full of gags, this movie is a simple, quiet friendship story. It puts equal focus on the characters and the wonder of the world that we're in. It doesn't use scatological humor as a crutch or as a desperate plea for little kiddie laughs. Heck, even the inevitable fart humor is strange and witty and quirky in the best possible way, a way that I'm sure would make Dahl smile if he were alive today.

Just before the film started I saw two trailers, one for Ice Age: Collision Course and The Secret Life of Pets. While I haven't seen either of those movies and thus can't comment on them, if the trailers are any indication they will likely be loud and snarky and gag-focused and reliant on cheap potty humor for shock value. For a film like The BFG to sneak in as a reminder of the children's films I responded to as a kid and continue to respond to now...I just pray that young children will be able to see this film and go on this journey and just get wrapped up in the wonder and the characters. Because if anybody has an understanding of the power and the wonder of cinema, it is Steven Spielberg. He understands the wide-eyed adventurous storyteller inside of everyone, the child that I was growing up and the child that still exists inside me and comes out as soon as my fingers hit a keypad. I hope that there are still children out there that can watch a Spielberg movie (whether it's this or any other one) and are inspired to embrace their inner storyteller and write or shoot or whatever it takes to tell their stories. And I truly hope that Disney doesn't take this film bombing as an excuse to churn out even more cash-grab sequels and remakes. Because films like The BFG are the ones that introduce young writers and storytellers to new worlds and inspire them to create worlds of their own. That alone should be enough to get people to give $11 of their money to this film. If it's not, then just go see it because it's a beautifully filmed, old-fashioned adventure and friendship story that brings out the best in Spielberg's directing and Dahl's storytelling. It's almost as if the movie itself is a dream concocted by the BFG of the kinds of family films that kids should be seeing instead of ones about a squirrel who can't get to an acorn for fourteen years. And that alone should be enough for anyone to shill out $11.