Belated End of Year List 2016

I try to forget all the awful news of 2016 for a moment and focus solely on the films I have seen over the past year. This has probably been the first year (since I started to keep records of my cinema going habits) during which I have seen more films at home than in a theater, even if I am not counting the ones I watched on a computer screen for closer analysis. 

Most memorable cinema moments 

Nevertheless, there were some truly memorable cinema moments in 2016: two of them happened in June, when I visited my sister in London where we enjoyed TRUE ROMANCE (Scott, 1993) - which I had actually never seen before - in a rooftop cinema on the top of an abandoned multi-storey car park wrapped in blankets because of the ice-cold drizzle. And then I even got to see one of my all-time favorites VERTIGO (Hitchcock, 1958) in revelatory 70mm in the Prince Charles Cinema!

After studying Spielberg's first decade as a movie director in detail, I witnessed a truly collective emotion in an E.T. (1982) screening. While I still think that JAWS (1975) and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) are almost perfect masterpieces of entertainment filmmaking, the "shameless", childlike suburban fantasy of a positive poltergeist from outer space is the most (cornily) affecting and personal movie of Spielberg's whole career, even more so than CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (1977).

LA TORTUE ROUGE

Of all the new releases I have seen, LA TORTUE ROUGE by Michael Dudok de Wit moved me in a profound way animated films have not moved me in years. I also had a great time at the Annecy Animation Festival with the most memorable event, oddly, being not a screening but a work in progress presentation of MOANA by Ron Clements and John Musker. As they often say, you could not imagine a more enthusiastic audience than the one in Bonlieu theater. 

Music and Lyrics 

In the first half of 2016, in celebration of Erik Satie's 150thanniversary I wrote an article for filmbulletin about how Satie's most famous music is used in contemporary films. For the same magazine I also studied the film music of Howard Shore with a special focus on his collaboration with David Cronenberg.

And just before the year ended, I revisited some of my favorite movie musicals from TOP HAT (Sandrich, 1935) to SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (Donen/Kelly, 1952), A STAR IS BORN (Cukor, 1954) and LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT (Demy, 1967) in preparation for a lecture on Damien Chazelle's LA LA LAND. 

Wide angle cinemascope

location shooting / color scheme

colored lighting for dreamy states of mind

Favorite Films of 2016 (in alphabetical order)

• FINSTERES GLÜCK (Haupt, 2016): Visually coherent literary adaptation about a psychologist who tries to take care of a little boy who lost his family in a car accident. The rare Swiss feature that really moved me.
• FRANTZ (Ozon, 2016): Ambivalent characters, unreliables narrators, atmospheric black and white widescreen cinematography, suspense, emotional tension and an exceptionally strong leading actress. 
• I, DANIEL BLAKE (Loach, 2016): If Ken Loach is still decrying similar injustices after almost 40 years, then maybe the world (and not just the British health care system) has not advanced that much, after all. 
• LA LA LAND (Chazelle, 2016): a mesmerizing experience, Damien Chazelle creates an entirely contemporary love story by combining film making devices of the 1930s to 60s without getting lost in superficial references.
• LA TORTUE ROUGE (Dudok de Wit, 2016): so simple and archetypal, yet so deeply  philosophical and touching. Sublime.
• MA VIE DE COURGETTE (Barras, 2016): merely an hour long, but sweet, funny, touching and most of all authentically childlike.
• OUR LITTLE SISTER/UMIMACHI DIARY (Kore-eda, 2015): For the past few years, Kore-eda's latest family melodrama always made it on my favorites list.
• SUNSET SONG (Davies, 2015): an underrated (and in Switzerland undistributed) Terence Davies period picture of harsh beauty captured on high resolution celluloid (exteriors) and digital (interiors).
• TONI ERDMANN (Ade, 2016): a complex father-daughter relationship in a comedy with its own peculiar but extremely rewarding rhythm.
• VOR DER MORGENRÖTE (Schrader, 2016): a refreshingly static biopic that boldly focuses on a few separate moments in the life of writer Stefan Zweig.

FINSTERES GLÜCK

Animation 

In my book, 2016 was a strong year for animated features. While LA TORTUE ROUGE and MA VIE DE COURGETTE (MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI) were among my favorite films over all, I really enjoyed Sébastien Laudenbach's one man feature LA JEUNE FILLE SANS MAINS (THE GIRL WITHOUT HANDS, 2016) and Rémy Chayé's TOUT EN HAUT DU MONDE (2015).

Laika's overwhelming 3D stop motion feature KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS (Knight, 2016) got so many things right that I easily forgive the few wrongs (Matthew McConaughey's character, American idiosyncrasies among Japanese villagers). And within the same year, Disney Feature Animation released two interesting if not wholly convincing films both of which served as perfect examples for explaining specific film making devices (stereoscopic 3D in ZOOTOPIA, digital water in MOANA/VAIANA) in my introductions for children and families.

Watching short films from all over the world, I am delighted to discover that especially the works of young film makers and students demonstrate an overwhelmingly strong color sense. Even if you just look at a random sample of cartoonbrew's "artist of the day" posts (examples see below), this almost universal new "color consciousness" (to abuse Natalie Kalmus' Technicolor term) becomes obvious.

Restraint candy colors in SCAVENGERS (Bennett/Huettner, 2016)

Kevin Phung

Jose Mendez

Mel Tow

Woonyoung Jung

Carrie Hobson

Anete Melece

(Re-)Discoveries

• ACE IN THE HOLE (Wilder, 1951): Masterpiece. If you only see one media satire in your life, it must be this one.
• JACKIE BROWN (Tarantino, 1997): Tarantino's most laid-back and straightforward character study reveals a great deal about how much his trademark dialogue writing is influenced by Elmore Leonard's prose.
• KISS ME DEADLY (Aldrich, 1955): Cinematic invention, quintessentially lush noir lighting and camera angles and "the great whatsit" as more than a mcguffin in this entertaining Mickey Spillane adaptation.
• KUROI AME (Imamura, 1989): Realist take on long term effects of the Hiroshima bomb, shot like a post-war picture with incredible music by Takemitsu Toru.
• PRIDE & PREJUDICE (Wright, 2005): Here, Joe Wright's long takes are unobtrusive and really the perfect device to tell the story of Jane Austen's Bennet girls brought to life by a stellar cast and Dario Marianelli's piano score.
• SHADOW OF A DOUBT (Hitchcock, 1943): Never mind the production code ending. This tight and funny suspense picture - one of Hitch's personal favorites - about a fascinating and ambivalent uncle-niece relationship grows on me every time I see it.
• SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (Park, 2002): Not everyone's cup of tea but a truly cinematic kick-off for Park Chan-wook's vengeance trilogy most famous for OLD BOY (2003).
• THE QUIET MAN (Ford, 1952): Thanks to the British "Masters of Cinema" blu-ray series I now own a pristine transfer of Ford's nostalgic Irish Technicolor picture.
• THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE (Gessner, 1976): An unexpected discovery: What an entertainingly zeitgeisty and creepy little film by a Swiss director. Just think of Jody Foster from TAXI DRIVER meeting Martin Sheen in BADLANDS mode.
• WEST SIDE STORY (Robbins/Wise, 1961): As far as broadway adaptations with dubbed actors go this is still the benchmark. Upon seeing it again in a theater, I came to appreciate Robert Wise's contribution to a film of which I would have always preferred to see a complete Jerome Robbins version.

Amazing cinematography in ACE IN THE HOLE.

Widescreen staging in PRIDE & PREJUDICE

Technicolor location shooting in THE QUIET MAN

In 2017, I have already seen the stylish if slightly inflated Tom Ford thriller NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, Asghar Farhadi's latest humanistic thriller THE SALESMAN and another Billy Wilder masterpiece (STALAG 17, 1953). Now I am looking forward to the Swiss release of Martin Scorsese's SILENCE (2016) and especially to all those films that I hopefully will discover by chance. 

And maybe I even find the time to finish the video essays that I have started to put together in the last few months...

Note: I have also been busy on my companion blog film studies resources:

Two GIFs composed from the "Masters of Cinema" blu ray of ONIBABA (Shindo, 1964).