Year in Review: Top 10 Performances of 2016

Much of this list speaks for itself – and in the many words written below – but I would be remiss not to point out the top two performances below come from the same film. They are, taken together, remarkable in such a way as to exist beyond the bounds of a list such as this. They represent two of the finest actors in the business delivering some of the greatest lines ever written in a way that nearly breaks the form. I discuss them individually below, but in truth, they cannot be separated. They are dependent on one another in the way the Earth is dependent on the sun. Make of this what you will.

Before we get to the top 10, here are five more performances worth your time and attention: Annette Bening in 20th Century Women; Rachel Weisz in The Lobster; Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga in Loving; and Ralph Fiennes in The Big Splash.

10. Tom Bennett for Love & Friendship

The world of Jane Austen, as filtered through the lens of writer-director Whit Stillman, is one of high class and high manners, of subtlety and sobriety, so leave it to Stillman to splash a character like Sir James Martin across the screen. As played by Bennett, Martin is a dolt of the highest order, his profound ignorance matched only by his guileless good humor.

He marvels at peas – yes, the vegetable – praises the 12 commandments then is shocked to find out there are only 10, and is delighted to have realized the name of the estate at which he is staying is Churchill and he need not have searched for a church on a hill. Staying firmly within the Stillman tradition of rapid-fire dialogue and sharp satire, Bennett pitches his performance to just the right level of absurdity as to stay believable but transcend into hilarity at the drop of a hat.

9. Sandra Hüller for Toni Erdmann

Writer-director Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann is remarkable for many things, not the least of which its success at turning a serious condemnation of sexism in the business world into a three-hour farce littered with humor and pathos. Its star, Hüller, carries the weight of both ends of the story. She must be a woman marginalized within her office, frustrated by her obvious talent being overlooked, but she must also exist in the absurdist comedy world Ade creates. Hüller is more than up to the task.

For evidence of this, look no further than Hüller’s much discussed, rightly lauded performance of Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All” somewhere after the midpoint of the film. By this time, she is exhausted by her father’s shenanigans – and plain exhausted and overworked – but somehow, she lets him talk her into performing for a group of strangers at a party. Hüller’s slow build from reluctant participant to hammy belting is a thing of beauty. She is a joy to watch, as is this film.

8. Ben Foster for Hell or High Water

If Foster were not so good at playing live wires and loose cannons, I would say it was time for him to move on to something else, but he just is that damn good. This is a bit reductive, of course, as Foster has shown plenty of range throughout his career, from early work on Six Feet Under to The Messenger. However, it is the wild, unhinged characters, capable of anything at any moment, equal parts frightening and seductive, for which Foster will always be best remembered.

He reaches perhaps the apex of that kind of character – though never count out Foster for finding new levels of insanity to portray – as Tanner Howard in David Mackenzie’s widely loved western cops-and-robbers saga Hell or High Water. As a bank robber just recently out of prison but fighting alongside his brother for a just cause, Foster imbues Tanner with enough heart that no matter where the script takes the character – and it gets plenty dark and violent – the audience never loses sight of his true purpose. He is a man who wants to do right, but his only path to it is through wrongdoing.

7. Isabelle Huppert for Elle

How many actresses get to this point in their careers – more than 100 credits to her name, international acclaim, a storied career working with some of the most brilliant directors around – and choose to do a movie like this? Only Huppert, I imagine. Only Huppert could take such a risk on a Paul Verhoeven vehicle about rape, revenge, fantasy, and womanhood. Only Huppert could have the courage to play a sexual assault survivor as both victim and pursuer. Only Huppert could play a woman facing down the demons in her soul, as well as the evils that surround her. Only Huppert.

After making her onscreen debut in 1971, Huppert has spent a lifetime taking chances, and she has never shied away from the ugly, dirty, angry side of the characters she plays. Her character in Elle, Michèle Leblanc, is often cold, cruel, and calculating, and Huppert makes us sympathize with her without softening her. She is allowed to be strong and confident without worry for what others will think. It is a radical and bracing portrait of femininity few actresses would dare tackle. In fact, I can think of just one.

6. Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea

Affleck has been among the best actors of his generation for some time. He has not exactly been prolific of late, but what he lacks in volume, he makes up for in quality, never failing to deliver authentic, lived-in performances whether in ensemble heist comedies like the Ocean’s series or in dark, impressionistic thrillers like Ain’t Them Bodies Saints or The Killer Inside Me. Reports of his treatment of the women he has worked with, including multiple claims of sexual harassment, cannot be ignored, but the work stands apart from that.

As Lee Chandler, grieving as much for the life he could have lived but did not as for the death of his brother, Affleck delivers a typically on point portrayal of pain, anguish, and fear. Lee has shut himself off from the world so long, he no longer knows how to reach out and connect, even when he knows he must. For his sake and the sake of his family, he tries over and over again to bring out something in himself that must have been there once – we see it in flashbacks – but he is fishing in a river that has run dry. Affleck expertly sells the weight of this struggle in his body, his voice, and his whole being.

5. Mahershala Ali for Moonlight

Moonlight is broken into three distinct acts, each showing a different stage in the life of a boy growing up in Miami. Ali appears only in the first act, but the monumental force of the character he and writer-director Barry Jenkins create brings into being the rest of the events of the film. Moonlight is predicated on its ability to challenge the assumptions we make about others, and nowhere is that more clear than in the character of Juan, the gentle drug lord who takes a scared young boy under his wing.

Juan does not seek to mold the boy into anything. He simply shows him kindness, which in this world is enough of a miracle. Ali, probably best known for his work on Netflix series House of Cards and Luke Cage, does not force his will onto the character. There are no big, showy moments, no actorly affectations. He lets Juan flow through him so naturally and gracefully it simply sweeps the audience along.

4. Natalie Portman for Jackie

Jacqueline Kennedy is an icon, her place in the public imagination firmly entrenched. As an icon, she is an ideal to which people aspire, an inspiration, a shining example of the best of who a people can be. Yet, she was also a person, a woman, a wife, a mother, whose life was marred by tragedy and whose grief was felt on the grandest stage imaginable. The world is quite familiar with the icon, but Portman’s daring, subtle, and sublime work in Jackie shows us the person.

Taking place mostly in the few days after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Portman takes us into the mind of a woman who has been forever altered by her circumstances but refuses to be broken. The actress nails the mannered speech patterns and stiff gait of the upper-crust debutante, but the performance is not built on its imitations. It is built on the quiet, devastating moments in which Jackie is alone, looking at her tired visage in the mirror and wondering what could possibly come next for her. This is where Portman shines.

3. Colin Farrell for The Lobster

What a ride it has been to follow Farrell over these 20-odd years. He has been in enough bad films and disastrous flops to kill five careers, but he keeps coming back, and every once in a while, he gives us a gem like this. Though he has never seemed like a vain actor, Farrell has always projected an easy cool, a breezy charm that makes him easy to root for in his performances. There is none of that here. As the schlubby, awkward, near-sighted David, he inhabits the character so fully the entire movie-star persona he has cultivated just disappears.

At first, Farrell would seem an odd pairing with a director as iconoclastic as modern Greek master Yorgos Lanthimos, but as a man trapped within a dystopian bureaucracy, he embodies the perfect mix of vulnerability and resignation, hope and despair. Lanthimos creates a world that has beaten down its characters until they are empty husks, flat, monotone cyphers on which the system can project its own needs. Farrell commits to this risky characterization so thoroughly he brings the audience along into this disquieting world and makes us long for his release from it.

2. Viola Davis for Fences

If it is not clear by now, it should be made so: Davis is a national treasure. She is an actress of such skill and range as to elevate instantly whatever material she is given. Imagine then some of the greatest material ever written placed in her hands, and you will have some idea of what she achieves as Rose Maxon, Troy’s long-suffering wife. She has stood by him and shown nothing but kindness, patience, and grace, but she is not weak, far from it. She is the rock on which their marriage is founded, and her shock and anger at her husband’s misdeeds are as righteous as anything you will see.

Davis has been onscreen for 20 years and onstage longer. Her early roles included parts in several Steven Soderbergh films, as well as Denzel Washington’s directorial debut, Antwone Fisher, but I suspect most of us first took real notice of her for her brilliant, shattering work in John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt. She has only one scene, but her impact is so great it leaves a void in the rest of the film.

She has gone on to great acclaim and notoriety with her television show, How to Get Away with Murder, and like all great actors of this era, she even joined a comic book universe for DC (Suicide Squad, remember what I said about elevating material?). She should probably already have an Oscar or two, and if she does not win for this performance, it will be a scandal. She is the heart and soul of Fences, its emotional center of gravity, and she makes it look as effortless as cooling a pie on the windowsill.

1. Denzel Washington for Fences

What else could this be but Washington in the role that should come to define the latter portion of his career? Washington might be the most consistent and consistently wonderful actor of all time. His carefully curated career is marked by excellent genre work, smart crowd-pleasers, and a handful of stone-cold classics. He is incapable of giving an inauthentic performance, and as much as his movie-star persona informs his screen presence, he never lets it inform his acting.

As retired ballplayer and garbage man Troy Maxon, the first half of the film is given over almost entirely to Washington reciting playwright August Wilson’s many stirring monologues. Washington finds every moment, every nuance, every turn of phrase and makes it his own. He hugs the curves of Wilson’s words like a racecar driver, steering into the littlest details and taking us along for the ride.

This obviously was a deeply personal project for Washington, who directs and stars in this adaptation not long after finishing his run in the Broadway revival of the play. As personal as it must be for him, though, Washington’s performance makes it universal. Troy is every one of us who longs for more than he has been given, but he is no mere symbol. He is a living, breathing human being, and that is thanks to Wilson’s words and Washington’s career-topping performance delivering them.

Check back tomorrow as we conclude our Year in Review series with Last Cinema Standing's Top 10 Films of 2016.

Year in Review: Top 10 Quotes of 2016

This is my favorite feature to write each year. Screenwriting and screenwriters fascinate me. The best scripts evoke emotions and themes it is possible even the writer did not see. A film is the sum of its component parts, among which one is the screenplay, but that screenplay is made up of its own components – lines, characters, directions – that mean so much more together than they do apart.

The Top 10 Quotes feature began with a decidedly narrow focus, attempting to identify individual lines within scripts that best summarized or exemplified the themes at the cores of their films. This approach lacks a broader context. As much as the cinema is an escape, it is increasingly difficult – although, perhaps it was always impossible – to view a film without considering it through the prism of the real world. So, while each of these lines is wonderfully evocative in its own right, each also reveals a grander emotion or theme that informs the world beyond the screen.

10. “You only have to forgive once” from The Light Between Oceans, written by Derek Cianfrance

Rachel Weisz in The Light Between Oceans

Adapted by writer-director Cianfrance from the novel by M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans poses a series of devastating moral dilemmas and proceeds to follow each to its painfully logical conclusion. Every decision has the potential to destroy the lives of every person that decision touches. It is a complex and beautiful film that begins as a portrait of the lengths we will go to spare our loved ones pain but ends as a treatise on the value of forgiving those who have caused us pain.

Hannah (Rachel Weisz) loses her husband and infant daughter in a boating accident. As she attempts to put the pieces of her life back together, she is shattered all over again by the well-intentioned machinations of the lighthouse keeper Tom (Michael Fassbender) and his wife, Isabel (Alicia Vikander). They are three good people faced with awful choices who all suffer greatly because of each other.

With every right to seethe, to lash out in anger, to hold on to her grievances and grief, Hannah remembers the words of her late husband: “You only have to forgive once.” It takes her time to take heed fully of this maxim, but when she does, the disorienting blur of the film’s ethical morass comes into sharp focus. The only idea in which we can find moral certitude is forgiveness, an action of which we are all capable, no matter the slights or transgressions committed against us.

9. “You haven’t seen the rubbish” from The Dressmaker, written by Jocelyn Moorhouse and P.J. Hogan

Now, if you will permit me to swing 180 degrees in the other direction, I present director-co-writer Moorhouse’s The Dressmaker. This is a strange, cynical, angry film featuring a pair of brilliant performances in the mother-daughter pair at its center Molly and Tilly Dunnage (Judy Davis and Kate Winslet, respectively). It argues persuasively for a world in which some people and places are like trees rotten at the root that should be chopped down before their spoiled fruit can sicken anyone else.

Tilly, a London dressmaker in the haute couture industry, returns to her small hometown in rural Australia decades after an incident in which she was blamed for the death of a small boy – mind you, when she was just a child as well. She arrives initially to do penance, to have the town forgive her and welcome her back through her work. Molly, who became a town pariah in her daughter’s exile, rightly tells her there is nothing that can be done. The town will use her, judge her, and spit her back out, as it has done to Molly.

Tilly learns this lesson the hard way, over and over, but unlike in her childhood, she is no longer defenseless against this town or its people. She sets in motion her revenge, and as she leaves town on the rail – this time, by choice – the largest fire the Outback has ever seen burns on the horizon. The train steward suggests someone has overdone it with their rubbish fire. Tilly responds, “You haven’t seen the rubbish.” By this time, we in the audience have seen the rubbish. It is fiercely nihilistic, but as evidenced by the world around us, some trash needs to burn.

8. “A first lady must always be ready to pack her bags” from Jackie, written by Noah Oppenheim

Natalie Portman in Jackie

Director Pablo Larraín gifts us here with a biopic unlike any you have ever seen as Jacqueline Kennedy (Natalie Portman), yet to become Onassis, tells the story of the defining tragedy of her life in her own words days after the event has taken place. She is a wreck of a woman, destroyed by what has happened to her but caged by the expectations of a nation and a repressive upbringing.

Even at her most vulnerable, she cannot bring herself to say what she means, and when she does, she denies having said it. She hides her pain beneath the veneer of propriety. However, when she slips and lets out a truth, it is as though a crack has opened up in her façade, and before she can plaster over it, she has given us a brief glimpse into her life and her experience in spite of herself.

All of Jackie plays like a series of dramatic ironies. In John and Jackie’s happiest moments, we know what is to come, but so does Jackie, who is narrating the story for us. As a result, everything is tinged with the pain of hindsight. However, in saying, “A first lady must always be ready to pack her bags,” Jackie is not speaking solely of her tragedy. Such is the truth of the president and the first lady – the White House is not their home. It belongs to the people, and the people can take it back whenever they see fit. By election, term limit, or assassination, one way or another, you are leaving that home, and your mark on it will be impermanent at best – a lesson best remembered by the president, as well.

7. “I can’t beat it” from Manchester by the Sea, written by Kenneth Lonergan

As a portrait of grief and grieving, writer-director Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea has few equals. It nails the ever-present whirlwind of pain, anger, guilt, and longing in ways other films would be afraid to engage. In its honesty and brutality, it shocks the senses, and for an audience unprepared for such raw emotion, it unnerves.

After the death of his brother, Lee (Casey Affleck) returns to his hometown to care for his teenage nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges). The experience is made more painful for Lee by the constant reminders of the personal tragedy that forced him to leave town in the first place, including ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams). He fights and he claws to bring himself back from the abyss, to honor his brother’s wishes, and to find some connection, solace in family.

Finally, with the weight of the past, present, and an uncertain future crashing down upon him, he breaks down at the dinner table, telling Patrick, “I can’t beat it. I can’t beat it.” It is the most emotionally naked moment in a movie that traffics in such sentiment, and it is all the more daring for taking us to such a dark, unforgiving place. We want everything to be okay for Lee, for Patrick, for Randi, for ourselves. When a film tells us sometimes it will not be okay, it is distressing, but it is truthful. Sometimes, things are not okay.

6. “What place is there for a weak man in this world?” from Silence, written by Martin Scorsese and Jack Cocks

Andrew Garfield and Yosuke Kubozuka in Silence

To some degree, almost all of Scorsese’s films are about strong, self-possessed people, be they mobsters, comedians, waitresses, or taxi drivers. Their conviction and righteousness – as defined by their own perspective – is unwavering, and this assuredness carries them down a path, usually to their destruction. How remarkable and refreshing then that Scorsese’s best film in years explores the path of the weak, the wavering, and the wondering.

Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garrpe (Adam Driver) are Jesuit priests in a nation, Japan, where Catholicism has been outlawed. The atrocities they see force them to question their faith in a god who would allow such things to happen to his believers. They are plagued by these questions and the guilt these questions inspire. They should be pillars of the faith for a people whose every breath is belief and every action is praise.

It takes the weak-willed Kichijiro (Yôsuke Kubozuka), who sells out the fathers, his faith, and his god at every turn, to show Rodrigues the truth. His actions test the boundaries of forgiveness, but he is sincere when he asks Rodrigues where he belongs in this world as a man with no conviction. Kichijiro’s weakness calls out for a strength of faith he does not possess and which only Rodrigues can provide him. The weak have just as much a right to this world as the strong.

5. “Sometimes, we’re asked to do things that are beyond us” from Midnight Special, written by Jeff Nichols

A March release that was unfairly forgotten amid the sturm und drang of the year, Nichols’ tender ode to the early science fiction of Steven Spielberg is ripe for rediscovery. The writer-director described the film as his reflection on being a father, and those origins shine through in every second of the relationship between Roy (Michael Shannon) and Alton (Jaeden Lieberher).

Shannon is typically excellent as a father trying to help his young son escape a religious cult that believes he is a prophet of god. Despite all the fantastical science fiction elements, at its core, this is a chase film. Roy and Alton are fugitives, looking for help wherever they can get it. At one point, they trust the wrong man, who tells Roy, “Sometimes, we’re asked to do things that are beyond us.”

His failure costs all of them deeply, and this is his manner of explanation. However, it is undeniably true as Roy and Alton can attest in the middle of a plan for which they are ill-equipped. At some point, most of us will be asked to perform a task beyond what we think is possible, either because of means or motivation. Some will succeed and some will not, but the only failure is not pushing ourselves beyond what we think we are capable of, which is how Roy and Alton end up where they do.

4. “No one ever listens to him, so why should he listen to them?” from I, Daniel Blake, written by Paul Laverty

Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Dylan McKiernan, and Briana Shann in I, Daniel Blake

Director Ken Loach’s Palm d’Or-winning drama is a deeply infuriating investigation of the ravages of austerity and the failure of governments to care for their citizens. It functions as a primal scream against a system built to lock people out, and yet, it strikes a deeply human chord in its depiction of good people who simply want to do right by each other, the bureaucracy be damned.

Daniel (Dave Johns) is a carpenter who is not medically cleared to return to work in the wake of a heart problem. However, the government physician – who is not a doctor – contradicts this, and in the eyes of the system, he is not entitled to his medical benefits. As he fights for his benefits, he befriends a single mother, Katie (Hayley Squires), and her two small children, Daisy and Dylan (Briana Shann and Dylan McKiernan, respectively).

One afternoon with the children, Daniel tries to get Dylan’s attention but cannot. His sister observes, “No one ever listens to him, so why should he listen to them?” This is astute. The world has no time for the Daniels and Katies and Daisys and Dylans. It does not want to hear of their plight nor consider its role in creating it. The world consumes. It roars. So, why shouldn’t they roar back? Why shouldn’t we?

3. “There ought not never have been a time called ‘too early’” from Fences, written by August Wilson

Fences, Wilson’s original Pulitzer Prize-winning play, is one of the greatest things ever written in the English language. It sings the lyrics of everyday life more crisply and clearly than anything that came before or has come since. It is a musical without songs, a dance without steps, a rhythmic flow of emotion and truth and beauty.

Denzel Washington brings it to the screen, and as a director, he mostly gets out of its way. As an actor, however, reprising his role from the recent Tony-winning Broadway revival, he leans back and rips into the material like a slugger on fastball. Though not written for him, the role of Troy Maxon feels like it was just waiting for Washington to come along and play it. The perfect marriage of actor and part.

Of course, it all begins with the character Wilson put on the page – the embittered ex-baseball player Troy, who feels the world owes him more than he ever got and knows he missed his chance in life because of racism, a poor upbringing, just plain bad luck, or a combination of all three. When he is told his playing career went nowhere because he came along too early, before Jackie Robinson and the Civil Rights movement as a whole, he lashes out. Why should there even have been a time of such inequity? Why, indeed.

2. “If I go, there’s just no telling how far I’ll go” from Moana, lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda

Pardon if so far this has been a dour list, but it was that kind of year, wasn’t it? What little hope there was to be found seemed to flash in and out of existence, like the flicker of a candle in a downpour. Miranda offered us two – his Broadway sensation Hamilton and the soundtrack to Moana. Much of the soundtrack is a series of collaborations among Miranda, Opetaia Foa’i, and Mark Mancina, but the film’s signature song, “How Far I’ll Go,” is a solo composition by Miranda, and it is glorious.

The same can be said of Moana, a Disney princess movie that has the courage not to be a princess movie, as stated even by the titular heroine (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) throughout the film. She is a wanderer, an explorer, which is similar to other Disney princesses, but unlike so many before her who journeyed to find love or to realize they were happy at home, Moana journeys because it is a part of her. She must, and the only question is right there in the title of the song: How far will she go? The answer is in the lyric: There is no telling.

It is as uplifting a message as you are likely to find this year: try, fail, try again, keep going, stretch yourself, and do not wonder about the destination, just go. I would say it is refreshingly progressive for a Disney movie, but in fact, it is a progressive message for any movie. So much of life is learning limitations, banging our fists against walls and our heads against ceilings. This should not be the case. Just go, and if you do, there is no telling how far you will travel.

1. “We made a legend out of a massacre” from I Am Not Your Negro, written by James Baldwin and Raoul Peck

James Baldwin in I Am Not Your Negro

The history of the United States is a modern history of atrocity. From the natives who were already here to the slaves who were brought here to the immigrants who came here, the white European ruling class has used its power and influence to dominate, oppress, and terrorize. If we cannot agree on this fact, we will not agree on much else. That there is even debate is the sick result of a guilty party unwilling to admit guilt or even to admit there is something for which to be guilty.

Peck’s documentary, made from activist Baldwin’s unfinished book, is a deeply personal view of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, its implications for the world today, and its roots in the past. It is honest, unflinching, and unafraid to call racism what it is – a malevolent scourge that ignores what is human in all of us. To deny its existence is to reinforce its power. To deny its influence is to be influenced by it. It tears at the fabric of American life, making life impossible to live for Americans.

Schools cannot even agree today on what to teach about slavery. It is not brought up in polite society, lest we remind some sensitive soul of the indignities suffered by an entire people at the hands of someone else’s forebears. No, most want to believe slavery was the past. It was the Civil War. It was the Underground Railroad. It was a few songs to pass the nights on the plantation. “Swing low, sweet chariot.” It is a story. It is a legend. But in truth, it was and remains a massacre.

Check back tomorrow for more of Last Cinema Standing’s Year in Review as we count down the Top 10 Performances of 2016, and check back each day this week for continued Year in Review coverage.

Year in Review: Best & Worst of 2016

In year three of this annual Year in Review series, it occurs to me perhaps “best” and “worst” represent an inadequate way to analyze trends in cinema. To a degree, it is a matter of formatting. It was my initial mistake to try to bifurcate the film landscape in such a manner, to pass judgment by way of a subjective pro/con list.

With that in mind, this entry called out for a different approach this time around, a new format. In the interest of becoming more open-minded and considerate of other viewpoints – a condition sorely lacking in so much public and private discourse – here is the proposal: Point/counterpoint. Not a new idea, by any stretch, but with this twist – it’s just me.

I have assumptions and preferences like anyone else. Perhaps by challenging my own prejudices, I can come to a new understanding and point of view. That is the hope anyway, and not a bad goal for life outside the cinema as well.

Point: Home distribution models threaten the nature of the cinema

You do not need me to restate the mission statement of this site, which I have done a dozen times before, including yesterday in the introduction to this Year in Review series. A film is meant to be seen on the biggest screen, heard through the loudest speakers, and felt in the darkest room. The cinema is a transporting experience, allowing you to walk through dimensions, envelop yourself in new worlds, and leave behind the grievances of real life. Show me the living room that encompasses all of these and make it available to the masses, and I will tell you that is called a movie theater.

This is not a new problem, but it is an expanding one. The rise of Netflix and other video-on-demand services has made it possible to see new releases in the comfort of your home sometimes the same day as they become available in theaters. Being reasonable, I see the allure of a comfortable couch, a big-screen, hi-definition television, and surround sound. No one can be blamed for blanching at the cost of a movie ticket, the price of concessions, or any of the dozens of nagging annoyances that plague the theater-goer’s experience.

However, this devalues the medium. Going to the movies once was and still can be a glorious night on the town. There is no better way to spend an evening than with a good film, and the ritual of the cinema is as important as any other aspect of it – the sound of a ticket being torn, the smell of freshly popped popcorn, the feeling of sinking into a worn-out old seat, and the moment the lights go down and the image begins to flicker on that big, white screen.

Counterpoint: This model democratizes cinema, making it available to anyone, anywhere

Around March every year, once the Oscars have passed and release schedules firm up, I sit down and make a list of every upcoming movie I want to see in the next calendar year. I have spreadsheets with lists of films, directors, and release dates (as well as check marks for those I have seen) for every year going back to 2006.

When I first moved to New York City three years ago, I thought of those lists of release dates and how so many of the best films came with the same disclaimer: New York and Los Angeles only. I hated that disclaimer because it meant I would have to wait or, worse still, miss out entirely because I lived in a small, secluded college town, four hours from the nearest metropolis, let alone New York or Los Angeles. Moving here was a permanent reprieve from having to wait or miss out.

This is not true of most people. Large swaths of the population of this country live nowhere near a movie house even, never mind the kind of screens that might show the independent and foreign films that nurture an appreciation of cinema. Some of the best films of this year such as The Lobster, 13th, and Under the Shadow never played near many of my friends back home, yet they are experiences that cannot be missed. The theater remains the best place to watch a movie, but if the choice is at home on your television or not at all, then there is no choice to be made.

Point: It has been a great year for African-American representation and movies exploring black life in America

After enduring two years of #oscarssowhite controversy, the Academy has a chance to course correct in a big way, and not through some benevolent tokenism but rather due to the quality and volume of black voices and black stories in theaters this year. From Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight to Denzel Washington’s Fences, as well as documentaries such as Ezra Edelman’s O.J.: Made in America, Ava DuVernay’s 13th, and Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, powerful, comprehensive stories about the black experience in America found their way into cinemas.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in Fences

Each stands as a damning document of struggle and oppression, a radical call for change and re-evaluation, and even in times as bleak as those we now face, an inspiring message of hope, survival, and transcendence. The central question of movies like these, as well as Loving, directed by white southerner Jeff Nichols, is whether we can do better than the generations that came before and whether we can leave a path for future generations to do better than we have.

Counterpoint: And yet, we still have not come far enough

Not one of those wonderful movies has made more than $32 million (Fences), which is good for 82nd at the domestic box office in 2016. The rise in strong black voices on screen and behind the scenes is a wonderful development, but it means little unless we can pack theaters and show financiers and distributors these stories are not only profitable but fill a gaping hole in the marketplace. Put plainly, audiences need to want these movies more or risk losing them.

Point: Documentary films this year provided a powerful, necessary lens through which to view our world

We already touched on O.J.: Made in America, 13th, and I Am Not Your Negro, which address issues of race in America. In addition, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg documented the folly of our political system with Weiner, Josh Fox showed us a new outlook on an environment teetering on the brink of disaster with How to Let Go of the World and Love Everything the Climate Can’t Change, and Kirsten Johnson showed us the world as a set of puzzle pieces, waiting to be put together in a portrait of humanity, with Cameraperson.

In Newtown, Kim A. Snyder delivers a poignantly human take on the gun violence epidemic, while the prolific Werner Herzog gave us a pair of films (Lo and Behold: Reveries of a Connected World and Into the Inferno) that made us question the very nature of human civilization and demonstrated how tenuous the grasp of society truly is. All of these are vital works that taken individually or as a whole, shine a light on who we were, who we are, and who we could be, answering questions it has never been more important to ask.

Counterpoint: To what end, the truth

Angela Davis in 13th

As a journalist, it has been clear for some time you cannot tell someone something he does not want to know. Throughout the 2016 election and certainly since, it has become fashionable to refer to this as a post-truth society. The proliferation of fake news and propaganda online and elsewhere contributes to a world in which facts are meaningless in the face of belief.

This is a country in which people believe the Sandy Hook massacre was a government plot to confiscate guns. This is a country in which the fact of global warming is debated while the planet rapidly dies. This is a country in which racism is denied as it is perpetuated and a history of systemic oppression is seen as just the way it is.

Powerful as these documentaries are – and many of them are perfectly constructed artifacts of a world gone mad – they lack the power to change hearts that have hardened and grown cold. In this, however, the fault lies not with the films but with us. Our blindness, apathy, and self-regard mean we will not notice when we are being led off the cliff but will grow ever more confident as we take the plunge.

Check back tomorrow for more of Last Cinema Standing’s Year in Review as we count down the Top 10 Quotes of 2016, and check back each day this week for continued Year in Review coverage.

Last Cinema Standing’s 2016 Year in Review

No matter how it ended for you, no matter where things left off, and no matter how you felt about what transpired, 2016 was a trying year. It tried our patience. It tried our sanity. It tried our humanity. The average among us – and that is damn near all of us – tried our best, I like to think. We weathered the storms, savored the highs, and survived the lows. If you are here with me now, we made it through, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Last Cinema Standing took a backseat in 2016 to events both personal and universal. I did not write as much as I would have liked or hoped – nor as it turned out, as much as I needed. If this site is nothing else, it is a place for me to share with the world that which is close to my heart and to be a small part of that world. As always, I thank those of you who join me on this journey for your indulgence, your support, and your participation. Such things are not lost on me.

I began a new professional job in January 2016 as a copy editor and web writer for the sports department of the New York Post. While adjusting to my new circumstances – which included a shift to working evenings and late nights – I continued my tradition of breaking down the Oscars category by category. I wrote more on the Academy Awards race in 2016 than I did the previous year, and I wrote too much that year. This is a long way of saying I burned myself out early and what felt like irretrievably.

It is a rewarding job in many ways, and it does not escape me that to watch, write, and read sports as a profession is to live a dream most people would hardly dare imagine. I love it, but it has become increasingly clear it cannot be my whole life. Film is my first love, and I put it on the backburner this year, whether for reasons of fatigue, lack of focus, or divided energies.

I do not make New Year’s resolutions because life is a continuum without regard for the calendar, and we are all works in progress. However, when reflecting for this series on the past 12 months – particularly the past 10 – it is clear I have moved away from that which has made be happy and that in which I have previously found solace. Such will not be the case, I promise to myself, this year.

At the end of November, I proposed to my longtime girlfriend as we stood in the cold in front of the New York Metropolitan Opera House. We had celebratory drinks steps away at the Lincoln Ristorante, a flight of stairs above the Elin Bunin Munroe Film Center, the best place in New York City to see a film. You see, no matter the occasion, cinema is never far from my heart.

When you spend much of your life in the dark of a theater, it helps to have a partner there to share the experience. It is also helpful if that partner will drag you out into the light, which it is sometimes easy to forget exists. In these twin endeavors, I could not wish for a better partner in life and cinema than my fiancée. As supportive as one can be, she is that and more, and on my best days, my hope is I am able to return the favor.

This site began in earnest in July 2007 as a way to promote active engagement in the films we watch. Film is the only medium capable of showing us who we are as a people, of taking us outside of ourselves, and of demonstrating what the world is like for so many people we will never meet or know. Now, more than any time in the site’s history, these qualities of film are crucial to processing the world as it unfolds around us.

The mission of this site has never changed. For anyone who wants to understand this world a little better, Last Cinema Standing will be there with you in the dark of the theater, looking for a light that shows us what any of this means.

Snowden: Nothing to hide, everything to fear

Moderator Matt Zoller Seitz (left to right), stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley, and director Oliver Stone at a screening of Snowden on Wednesday night in Manhattan.

The story was never supposed to be Edward Snowden. The story should have been the National Security Agency, domestic spying, the circumvention of due process, and the end of privacy as we thought we knew it. For a while – a few days maybe – it was, but the complexity of the issue and the overwhelming scope of the offense made for a tale that was less Aesop and more Tolstoy. Put simply, the media could not sell it. The story of an ex-CIA spy going on the run after revealing secrets of national security, however, was one they could sell.

When the public grabs hold of your story, it ceases to become your own. The narrative builds on itself. People choose to believe the parts that fit their argument and disregard the rest. No one has the full picture, nor could they comprehend it if they did. If it ever was, this is no longer a culture that can digest complex issues. It is a culture of soundbites and snippets, headlines and clicks, tweets and shares. Arouse anger. Fuel suspicion. Light a match and hope there is profit in the flame. All of which is a roundabout way of saying: None of us knows Snowden well enough to judge him, and none of us is in a position to judge anyway.

On Wednesday night, in the Loews Theatre at the AMC Lincoln Square in Manhattan, Oliver Stone, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Shailene Woodley sat and spoke with author and critic Matt Zoller Seitz after a screening of their new film, Snowden, which seeks to explore the man behind the mythos. They were joined, via satellite feed from Moscow, by Snowden, who is among the most impressive people I have ever had the chance to see speak. Their 45-minute discussion, which was broadcast across the country to more than 700 theaters, covered everything from the weather in Moscow to the importance of privacy, even in a world dominated by social media.

“It’s easy for the media to spin a story and to portray a certain narrative,” said Woodley. “Something that fascinated me about this screenplay to begin with was a lot of us know who Edward Snowden is, or we thought we knew who he was, and a lot of people have a lot of strong judgments about Edward Snowden, and I feel like until this movie, none of us actually knew the story of Ed the human. We knew the story that mainstream media had put out, we knew the story that the government had released, but we didn’t know his story.”

Gordon-Levitt

Snowden’s story, as Seitz addressed and Stone acknowledged, has many parallels to another Stone protagonist, Ron Kovic, the real-life hero portrayed by Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July. Both men loved their country and made immense personal sacrifices for its protection. Both men then were disheartened and disillusioned by what their fights proved in the service of – Kovic’s fight the war in Vietnam and Snowden’s the global cyberwar, which turned out to be a massive civilian spying program. Finally, both men were ostracized and demonized for speaking out against the corruption and moral decay they witnessed.

What is easy to forget – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, what is convenient to forget – about people like Snowden, Kovic or anyone else who speaks out against the government is this: They are patriots, more so than any one of us who says nothing or follows blindly the edicts of the ruling class. To speak out against the U.S., you must love it. To criticize your nation’s actions, you must believe it is capable of better. To question its motives, you must care deeply about its direction.

The benefit of telling the story of Snowden’s life leading up to the reveal of the NSA’s domestic spying program is to understand the kind of person he was and the kind of circumstances that would drive him to such dramatic action. When he chose to go public with what he knew, Snowden was a 29-year-old government employee with a beautiful, supportive girlfriend living in Hawaii and making a fortune. His life was, for lack of a better term, idyllic. It serves us then to question what could be so morally repugnant, so clearly offensive to basic humanity, as to make a person give that up.

“Silence is the biggest weapon that’s used against us,” Snowden said. “We don’t want to be weird. We don’t want to be different. We don’t want to say anything at all. But that kind of thing is de-mobilizing. That’s the kind of thing that makes people think we don’t care. That’s the kind of thing that makes government officials think they can get away with anything. … Whistleblowing – whistleblowers are elected by circumstance. It’s not about where you went to school. It’s not about who you know. It’s about what you see.

“If you see something and you have feelings about it, share them. Try to do something about it. That’s not to say burn your life to the ground and try to be a martyr. We don’t need martyrs. What we need are people who care and say something about it and try to do something in an effective way. Don’t destroy your life for nothing, but if you see an opportunity to share the reality of what’s actually going on in our world, particularly behind closed doors, recognize that that may be an opportunity to make the world a better place.”

At this, the audience burst into applause. There was much cheering for Snowden’s words and those of the assembled filmmakers who brought his story to life. While the feed from Moscow was being set up, one audience member shouted out, calling Stone a hero, a plaudit the three-time Academy Award winner politely demurred. Much as the evening was a forum for a serious discussion about global security and the right to privacy, it was also a celebration of an impressively mounted, elegantly conceived Hollywood film.

Snowden is the kind of smart political thriller the industry has little patience for these days, preferring instead stories where the president is taken hostage by terrorists and must blast his way to safety. Stone makes this film with the belief his audience is intelligent and attentive, and viewers are rewarded with a film that neither dumbs down the complex nature of its story nor weaves a tale so byzantine it proves impossible to follow. It finds balance in ways few big-budget, star-driven vehicles do.

Gordon-Levitt, Woodley, and Stone

To that end, leads Gordon-Levitt and Woodley deliver wonderful performances, with Gordon-Levitt effectively disappearing into the role of Snowden and Woodley, as Snowden’s longtime girlfriend Lindsay Mills, providing a sturdy anchor to keep the audience moored amid the ever-choppier waters of the story. Some will argue the love story is a distraction from the more pressing matters at hand in the film, but his relationship with Mills is among the things that makes Snowden so human, so relatable.

“If you’re going to do a character, I like characters who change or undergo tremendous difficulty or adversity and either keep their character or change it. Depends on the circumstance,” Stone said. “It always comes back to a drama, comes back to a person, persons, and that fascinates me. People will make this thing go. As much scientific technology as there is in a movie, especially this one, it comes down to the faces who are looking at the computers. Unless you feel what Joe’s feeling or Shailene is feeling, you’re not going to follow the computer story.”

Those parallel narratives – the human story and the computer story – are both magnificently executed by Stone and his team, in particular cinematographer Anthony Dodd Mantle, who captures several perfect moments and images within the film’s largely frenetic pace. One beautifully rendered sequence in particular stands out as Snowden lays out for documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo), who directed Oscar winner Citizenfour, the scope of the NSA’s spy program.

If the government looks at all the people one person knows and all the people those people know, and so on, by the fourth level out, the privacy of millions is being invaded for no reason other than a tenuous connection to a connection to a connection. Stone conceives the scene visually as a cascading map of human interconnectedness in which we are eventually all connected and all of our personal information funnels into the black hole of the government’s prying eye.

Perhaps none of this moves you. There is a strong likelihood you are not a terrorist nor affiliated with anyone remotely linked to terrorism. Perhaps you do not steal. You do not cheat. You do not lie. You think, for all intents and purposes, you have nothing to hide and, thus, nothing to fear. It is the common line of argument among supporters of the domestic spying program. I cannot refute this more strongly or eloquently than Snowden himself, so here he is:

“One of the most important things – and I think we all have a duty collectively in society to remember this – is to think about when we’re being manipulated, when we’re being told to think a certain way and accept a certain argument reflexively without actually tackling it,” said Snowden. “The common argument that we have – if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear – the origins of that are literally Nazi propaganda. This is not to equate the actions of our current government to the Nazis … but that is literally the origin of that quote. It’s from the minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

Edward Snowden

“So when we hear modern politicians, when we hear modern people repeating that reflexively, without confronting its origins, without confronting what it really says, I think that’s harmful. And if we actually think about it, it doesn’t really make sense because privacy isn’t about something to hide. Privacy is about something to protect, and that’s who you are, that’s what you believe in, that’s who you want to become. Privacy is the right to the self. Privacy is what gives you the ability to share with the world who you are on your own terms, for them to understand what you’re trying to be, and to protect for yourself the parts of you that you’re not sure about, that you’re still experimenting with.

“If we don’t have privacy, what we’re losing is the ability to make mistakes. We’re losing the ability to be ourselves. Privacy is the fountainhead of all other rights. Freedom of speech doesn’t have a lot of meaning if you can’t have a quiet space, a space within yourself, within your mind, within your community, your friends, your home, to decide what it is that you actually want to say. Freedom of religion doesn’t actually mean that much if you can’t figure out what you actually believe without being influenced by the criticisms and outside direction and peer pressure of others. And it goes on and on and on.

“Privacy is baked into our language, our core concept of government itself in every way. It’s why we call it private property. Without privacy, you don’t have anything for yourself. So when people say that to me, I say back, ‘Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like arguing that you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.’”