A Circus, A Camera, and Ryan Gosling: How Joko and Klaas Punked the Golden Camera

            It has not even been a month since the Flub to End All Flubs at the Oscars last month, when the presenters for Best Picture were given the wrong card, read it in spite of their confusion, and for a moment everyone thought La La Land, the assumed favorite, had indeed won, until it was revealed halfway through the acceptance speeches that, in fact, the winner was the indie-underdog everyone had wanted to win, Moonlight.  It was awkward, painful, terrifying, and spectacularly funny all at once, creating enough genuine TV drama to last an age. 

            Normally (read; in a non-Trump world) this sort of event would carry a glow about it for weeks afterwards.  But, since we are no longer in a world where rules of any sort apply, barely 8 days went by before another major awards show fell victim to their own missteps, leading to another spectacular fail on live TV that also, funnily enough, centered around La La Land.  It hath been deemed…Gosling Gate.   

            Every year it goes by almost entirely unnoticed in the English-speaking world, but for Germans, the Goldene Kamera (Golden Camera) is basically the Oscars meets the Golden Globes.  For German-speaking media it is THE awards event that wraps up each year in film and TV.  As is the nature of these things, it’s usually about as exciting as the Oscars, with about as many surprised up its sleeve.  But this year, with the Oscars seemingly ready to run away with the title of Best Live Error of the year, two German comedians decided to one-up them (and everyone else). 

            Let’s start by going through the moment as it occurred. 

            It was Saturday, March 4^th, in the Messe in Hamburg, where the Goldene Kamera was being broadcast live by ZDF, one of the core TV channels in Germany.  Hosted by Steven Gätjen, things kicked off at 8:15 and went fairly normally at first.  Then, about 1 hour 45 minutes into the program, Gätjen transitioned into presenting the award for Best International Film, announcing that it would be going to La La Land.  A montage from the film followed- Gätjen even allowed himself a joke at the Academy’s expense, saying he could present the award “without an envelope, and you can all cheer for more than 8 seconds”- and after informing everyone that the Director and Producer of the film could not attend the show to accept the award, they had been able to arrange for Ryan Gosling to accept the award in their stead. 

            And with that, the screen behind him on the stage opened, and out of the backstage shadows stepped…..not Ryan Gosling.  The person- whoever it was- walked up, shook the moderator’s hand (you can see his surprise, and even hear him say “interesting…”, in the video below), took the trophy, and proclaimed himself- in terrible English- to be Ryan Gosling, and that he wished to dedicate this award to Joko and Klaas.  After which he promptly turned around and hurried himself off the stage.  The moderator made a banal joke about how they’d just gotten a sample of the best of German satire.  The Germans in the audience had about the same expression on their faces they’d have had if the man, instead of speaking, had simply let rip a minute-long belch into the microphone.  Meanwhile the foreigners in attendance, particularly Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell, just looked utterly lost, as if they suddenly realized they were a long, long way from home, with no way back.   

            Clearly, something had gone very, very wrong.  But what, exactly?  Who was that man pretending to be Ryan Gosling, and who the hell are Joko and Klaas? 

            That second part is easier to answer, so let’s start with that.  Largely unknown outside of Germany but widely known within, Joko and Klaas are the comedy duo behind the popular sketch comedy show Circus HalliGalli (which has been on-air since 2013), where all sorts of celebrity guests appear to take part in their antics.  They’ve long held a reputation for iconoclastic button-pushing, like one hot-potato game they play where the loser has to post something in terribly poor taste on their Twitter page (and aren’t allowed to hint at it being a joke).  But until now, their impish pranks have usually been fairly limited in scope, like dressing the most well-known Rom-Com actor in Germany in Santa getup and setting him loose on the unsuspecting customers of the Berlin Christmas Market. 

            This, though, was something bigger.  Thankfully, my job of explaining what they did at the Goldene Kamera and why has already been done for me; during the next aired episode of Circus HalliGalli, they featured a two-part mini-documentary documenting how that non-Ryan Gosling made it to the stage and why he dedicated a Goldene Kamera to them.  And it’s…..well…..just watch (these videos come with English subtitles). 

            Hooooooooly shit.  There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s break down the ways this plan SHOULD have failed miserably, but didn’t, and what it reveals about not just the Goldene Kamera, but ritzy awards shows in general:

            First, a dozen people succeeded in convincing the producers of a major awards show that they represented a company (that didn’t exist) and a huge Hollywood star (they’d never met)….and only because no one apparently ever tried to check within the industry if the company in question actually existed. 

            Second, these same people sought cover by making fantastically arrogant demands to ensure no one blew their cover before or during the show….and not once did they receive any pushback on a single one of them. 

            At the show itself, partially through luck and partially due to their list of demands, the double was able to effectively run the gauntlet of an entire arena’s worth of backstage staff and security, where one long glance could have been enough to end the game right there…..and no one, even one of the main producers of the show sitting directly behind the stage, ever took that glance. 

            Then, much like the Oscars flub the week before, once the lights were up the error was revealed almost instantly….but in the heat of the moment, the on-stage presenter either didn’t realize what was happening, assumed it was planned, or was just plain confused for enough precious seconds to allow the double to take the trophy, at which point it was effectively too late to do anything. 

            The double and his team then managed to re-run the gauntlet again and get out of there, prize and all….because apparently no one was ready to alert security at any level to apprehend someone just booking it out of the building with a trophy in their hand. 

            Finally, and this is perhaps the most damming (or hilarious, or depressing, depending on your point of view); by just hinting at the possibility of having an A-List Hollywood superstar take the stage at their show, Joko and Klaas got the higher-ups to select La La Land as the winner of a major award that, had they not pulled this stunt, may very well have gone to another movie entirely. 

            That last one is probably the most disturbing part out of all of this.  The technical and logistical systems of setting up bigtime TV shows and bringing in guests always have flaws, ones that remain invisible until they are finally noticed and exploited, at which point they are usually closed for good.  It’s safe to say a trick of this exact nature will never be possible at the Goldene Kamera again, and this particular stunt couldn’t succeed at something as endlessly scripted and re-scripted as the Oscars.   

            But the fact remains that, across the world, the events and organizations that claim to represent the “best” of mankind’s artistic output really just act as rubber stamps for what a select group of non-artists deem to be “the best.”  And a head manager deciding arbitrarily to give a film a trophy by fiat simply because they could land a big name on their stage for 45 seconds is a particularly pungent example of that, making the blatant nakedness of it as revealed by this prank all the more disheartening. 

            And of course this is by no means limited to Germany.  That the Oscars are endlessly (often pathetically) political has been a running joke for a long time now, and both the Academy and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (which select the Golden Globe winners) are constantly belittled for effectively selling their votes to the highest bidder- estimates on the total amount spent by various studios competing for Oscars regularly run into the hundreds of millions, with one expert estimating about $10 million to be the usual cost of winning Best Picture BBC. 

            Is that sort of nonsense really any different than what happened at the Goldene Kamera?  I doubt it, and honestly, it may be quite a bit worse from an ethics standpoint. 

            The hard truth is that, while regular celebration of human achievement is in principle a good and noble and necessary thing, the specific laurels we have conditioned ourselves to treat as the most meaningful are often given out in ways that are overwhelmingly arbitrary, unfair, and not at all connected to trying to identify the “best” in anything, film or otherwise. 

            And yet, for all the weight and real-world influences that awards shows do have- like convincing a studio to finance Movie A over Movie B solely based on what they think will bring in a rack of shiny, golden men- does any of this really matter?  Most Germans don’t seem to really care about #Goslinggate that much.  The media company in charge of the event certainly has its tie in a knot over the whole affair- they very quickly announced their intention to sue to get the trophy back.  But most others, at worst, think it was a hilarious egg on the show’s face, perhaps done in poor taste, and leave it at that. 

            Internationally it seems to have made even less of a splash; Ryan Gosling, to my knowledge, has so far said nothing about the whole fiasco, and for all I know may not be aware it even happened.  That said, the award is, in fact, currently listed on the Wikipedia page for accolades won by thefilm, so it IS still, at least at the moment, official. 

            I will leave it to you to draw what conclusions you want from this.  As for myself, I clearly still need to work on reminding myself that logic and sanity no longer exist in the world, and for all the crazy imaginings I can conjure for the next few years, they obviously still aren’t nutty enough, because reality is still finding ways to outpace me. 

-Noah Franc 

Review: Logan

Logan (2017): Written by Scott Frank, James Mangold, and Michael Green, directed by James Mangold.  Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Richard Grant, Boyd Holbrook, and Stephen Merchant.  Running Time: 137 minutes. 

Rating: 3.5/4

            One of the easiest ways to make someone my (fairly young) age feel vastly older than our years is to remind them that it was nearly 20 years ago when Hugh Jackman first hit the big screen as the Wolverine in the very first X-Men movie.  In time this casting proved to be every bit as pitch-perfect as Patrick Stewart’s and Ian McKellan’s as Professor X and Magneto.  And since that moment, one of the running gags surrounding the franchise and its comically zig-zaggy fortunes has been the remarkable lengths to which each and every entry into the current canon has gone to include at least a cameo of Jackson, if not outright starring him. 

            His presence has certainly defined this phase of the X-Men world every bit as much as the character has, in turn, defined Jackson’s career, but alas, even the Marvel film universe can’t avoid the ravages of time, and we truly have reached the point where Jackman is simply too old to keep doing this shit.  Which means that this dark, grim, tightly-focused, and slightly-meta drama about facing up to aging and disappointment in a bleak, possibly hopeless dystopian future really is it; Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart have come out for their final curtain call in roles that have defined them in the eyes of an entire generation of film goers.  And in a particularly poignant twist, it might just be the best X-Men movie they’ve ever done. 

            It’s 2029, and for reasons unknown, most of the old mutants have died and it’s been years since new ones were born, so everyone simply assumes they were a freak occurrence going the way of the Dodo.  Logan, clearly aging and dying in spite of the fact that his powers *should* make that impossible, scrapes by as a limo-driver-for-hire in Texas.  Most of his earnings go towards procuring medicines for Xavier, holed up across the border in Mexico with an albino caretaker.  Xavier is also rapidly dying, suffering from seizures that amplify his mental powers in frightening ways and make him a legitimate danger to everyone within a certain radius. 

            As far as Logan is concerned, they are the last of their kind, and fated to remain so, so he may as well try to make their passing as non-destructive as possible until Xavier is gone and he can blow his brains out with an adamantium bullet he’s been saving for just such an occasion.  This all goes up in smoke pretty quickly though, as a Mexican nurse brings them Laura, a young girl who possesses Logan’s power set (infinite regeneration, claws, and a vicious fighting style), begging their protection from the hired hit men of an unnamed corporate entity (led by a fantastic Boyd Holbrook as the film’s main antagonist) seeking to kill her. 

            In typical gruffly resigned manner, Logan takes the girl and Xavier North, seeking a location that may or may not be where the last of the mutants are gathering, including other children like Laura.  To say that they are seeking hope or some sort of salvation for the clear failure of what the X-Men should have been would be saying a bit too much, because this movie is not a pick-me-up, nor does it try to offer much hope.  It runs hard on themes of loss and failure haunting someone knowing they are near the end and that everything they did in their life may very well have been for nought.  Jackman’s Logan always hailed from the bitter side of pessimism, but even Xavier, famed eternal optimist, has been brought low emotionally by his failures and the ravages of his illnesses. 

            This is one of those comic book movies that almost isn’t a comic book movie- most of the dramatic weight and meaning to what Logan and Xavier say and do comes not from anything explicit on the film’s part, but rather from the assumed collective knowledge on our part that we are seeing the conclusion of a two-decade-long film partnership in its final chapter.  It’s an extremely rare set of circumstances to surround a movie like this, giving it a heft it otherwise wouldn’t have had, and often raising the film above its (admittedly fairly small) flaws. 

            And it certainly isn’t a perfect film- there are a few story shifts regarding the bad guys, what they do, and what they want that don’t entirely add up- but it commits so fully to its road-trip-dystopia atmosphere that it has a unique feel and character lacking in nearly every other recent entry into the comic book superhero genre.  It’s the first hard ‘R’ film to show us what people facing claws like that really would look like afterwards, but given how easily the movie could have banked on that to sell itself and excluded all else, like Fury Road it goes the needed extra step to ensure that every bit of fighting or action (and one very solid car chase) feels necessary to either the story or the development of a particular character. 

            While Jackman and Stewart give two of their best film performances ever, superhero movie or otherwise, we already knew they were awesome.  I suspect the truly lasting impact of this film will revolve around the revelation that is Dafne Keen as Laura.  Silent for nearly the entire film, she steals every shot she’s in it with her presence.  It’s easily a star-making turn for the actress and one that SHOULD guarantee a central part of her character in any future X-Men franchise.  It’s also rather depressing that a film featuring gifted children of color/minorities like the bilingual, Spanish Keen fleeing not to, but THROUGH the United States to reach safety from forces seeking to destroy them feels far more topical than it was probably meant to be when first conceived. 

            Logan might or might not go on to redefine what we expect superhero movies to be, but regardless of what comes next in the X-Men universe, if indeed anything does come next, it’s a powerful little film that does refreshing justice to the abilities of its cast and is definitely a must-see for anyone who grew up with this particular version of the X-Men.  With both this and John Wick 2 hitting theaters this early, the gauntlet has very much been thrown down for all other action movies set to come out in 2017, so to those next in line I say; your move. 

-Noah Franc 

My Picks for the 2017 Academy Awards

            **for my Top 10 favorites of 2016, click here**

            It’s that time of year again!  With the final gaudy celebration of film just around the corner, I’ve done my usual prep and am now presenting my picks for the 2016 Academy Awards. 

            I don’t have much to add in terms of commentary.  It’s a wonderful relief that a lot of minority artists and minority-centered works have been nominated, but that is tempered somewhat by me knowing that the whitest film of the bunch, La La Land, is quite likely to waltz away with the most awards, including the big ones.  Not that that’s surprising, but since I already went off at length about this topic in lastyear’s picks, there’s not much new I have to say about that a year later, so this time around I’ll lay off the heavy politicking, and instead go straight to the goods! 

Writing (Original Screenplay): Hell or High Water, La La Land, The Lobster, Manchester by the Sea, 20^th Century Women

My Pick: Manchester by the Sea

            Not a hard pick this year at all, with Manchester by the Sea far and away my favorite film on this list. 

Writing (Adapted Screenplay): Arrival, Fences, Hidden Figures, Moonlight, Lion

My Pick: Moonlight

            Much in the vein of Linklater’s Boyhood, Moonlight masterfully weaves together the connecting threads of three very separate events in a man’s life to show what brought him to become the man he eventually became. 

Visual Effects: Deepwater Horizon, Doctor Strange, The Jungle Book, Kubo and the Two Strings, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

My Pick: Kubo and the Two Strings

            Damnit, Kubo was amazing, and deserves all the awards (I will elaborate on this later). 

Sound Mixing: Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, La La Land, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

My Pick: Arrival

            Arrival had the best overall use of sound and music of any film I saw this year, utilizing its shifts and cues perfectly to alter the tone or feel of a scene.  This was especially potent in the “contact” scenes of the film, easily some of the best first interaction moments I’ve ever seen in this kind of movie. 

Sound Editing: Arrival, Deepwater Horizon, Sully, Hacksaw Ridge, La La Land

My Pick:  Arrival

            Same reasons as above. 

Short Film (Live Action): Ennemis Interieurs, La Femme et la TGV, Silent Nights, Sing, Timecode

My Pick: N/A

            As always, none of these works got a wide release, and the only people with full access to them are insulated Academy members who don’t even bother to watchthem all, so as always, I can’t pick a winner. 

Short Film (Animated): Blind Vaysha, Borrowed Time, Pear Cider and Cigarettes, Pearl, Piper

My Pick: N/A

            See above. 

Production Design: Arrival, Hail, Caesar!, La La Land, Passenger, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them

My Pick: Hail, Caesar! 

            It has been way, way too long since a Coen Brothers movie won an Oscar, and Inside Llewyn Davis was irresponsibly snubbed, so I’ll take what I can get.  My close second is Arrival, and it will probably win. 

Music (Original Song): “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” from La La Land, “Can’t Stop The Feeling” from Trolls, “City of Stars” from La La Land, “The Empty Chair” from Jim: The James Foley Story, “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana

My Pick: “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana

            Lin-Manuel Miranda needs an Oscar.  Right now. 

Music (Original Score): Jackie, La La Land, Lion, Moonlight, Passengers

My Pick: Moonlight

           

            I’m not that blown away by this year’s nominees, to be honest (where the hell is Arrival??), but out of all of them Moonight made the most out of its use of music, and it’s one of the nominees that most deserves some good award love over more overrated fare like La La Land. 

Makeup and Hairstyling: A Man Called Ove, Star Trek Beyond, Suicide Squad

My Pick: Star Trek Beyond

            This and Original Song are always the weakest categories, since they often allow tripe like Trolls and Fifty Shades of Grey to sneak in and forever-after get to refer to themselves as “Oscar-nominated,” while legions of vastly more worthy films are denied.  Last year at least had Mad Max and The Revenant leading the pack, but this year isn’t quite as strong.  That said, having a Star Trek film take a trophy would be a nice change of pace for once. 

Foreign Language Film: Land of Mine, A Man Called Ove, Toni Erdmann, Tanna, The Salesman

My Pick: Toni Erdmann

            At long last, a German film is nominated, and I am pulling for it all the way.  German cinema has been on a solid upswing recently, something I might look at more closely in a future post. 

Film Editing: Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, La La Land, Moonlight

My Pick: La La Land

            There, I picked La La Land for something, just to ward off the Bad Juju.  And the editing was really good. 

Documentary (Short Subject): Extremis, 4.1 Miles, Joe’s Violin, Watani: My Homeland, The White Helmets

My Pick: The White Helmets

            The White Helmets are volunteers who for years now have been risking their lives to save the lives of victims of the fighting in war-torn Aleppo, Syria.  They are true heroes representing the best of humanity, and deserve every bit of recognition and aid we can provide them with, and them winning an Oscar might prompt more people to go out and materially support them as well. 

Documentary (Feature): 13^th, OJ: Made in America, Life, Animated, I Am Not Your Negro, Fire At Sea

My Pick: 13^th

            I love the fact that 3 of the nominees this year are works centered around widely-ignored/misunderstood parts of the racial history of the US, and that another deals with the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean.  It’s one of the best-possible middle fingers the Academy could have given The Orangutan.  While I have heard nothing but good things about all of these films, 13^th is still my film of the year, so it’s my pick here. 

Directing: Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight

My Pick: Moonlight

            Barry Jenkins really draws out the best of everyone in his cast, bringing us up close and personal to experience their pains and trials with them, and I can’t wait to see what he does next. 

Costume Design: Florence Foster Jenkins, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, Allied, Jackie, La La Land

My Pick: La La Land

            There, I picked La La Land for something, just to ward off the Bad Juju. 

Cinematography: Arrival, La La Land, Lion, Moonlight, Silence

My Pick: Arrival

            Arrival was, overall, one of the year’s best just in terms of creating a consistent mood, and its camerawork was every bit as integral to that as its Sound Design, which I’ve already lauded to the skies here. 

Animated Feature Film: Moana, Zootopia, The Red Turtle, My Life as a Zucchini, Kubo and the Two Strings

My Pick: Kubo and the Two Strings

            I know Zootopia will win in reality, but by God, it’s about time Laika won one of these, and Kubo really was the best animated work of 2016. 

Actress (Supporting Role): Viola Davis (Fences), Naomie Harris (Moonlight), Nicole Kidman (Lion), Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures), Michelle Williams (Manchester by the Sea)

My Pick: Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures)

            This is a hard one for me.  Naomie Harris does a powerful job as the mother in Moonlight, and my sense is that she’s likely to win, but Hidden Figures is criminally underrepresented in the acting categories, and I want to see it win at least one trophy as well, so I’ll take a hard knock here. 

Actor (Supporting Role): Mahershala Ali (Moonlight), Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water), Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea), Dev Patel (Lion), Michael Channon (Nocturnal Animals)

My Pick: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)

            My favorite part of Ali’s character is how seamlessly he transitions from the street-tough dealer we see him as first (in many ways seeming to confirm the hardened stereotypes people have of such people) to the kind, fatherly softie who takes the main character under his wing.  Also, as far as I can tell, he would be the first Muslim to win an Oscar in an acting category, and in these times?  Hoo boy, would that be important. 

Actress (Leading Role): Isabelle Hupert (Elle), Ruth Negga (Loving), Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins), Emma Stone (La La Land), Natalie Portman (Jackie)

My Pick: Ruth Negga (Loving)

            I have to be brutally honest; due purely to time constraints, I have so far only seen one of the movies nominated here (La La Land), and I may not be able to see any of the others by next Sunday (I refuse to see Florence), and to be frank, Emma Stone just didn’t impress me much.  It STAGGERS me that Taraji Henson from Hidden Figures was ignored here, because if she were, she would be my pick.  This is the price of determinedly nominated Meryl Streep for literally everything, all the time. 

            So here, I take out my Importance Hat again, and give my vote to the only woman of color here, who also happens to be nominated for a film about a part of American racial that a lot of people don’t think about much anymore, but that remains as necessary as ever. 

Actor (Leading Role): Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea), Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge), Ryan Gosling (La La Land), Viggo Mortenssen (Captain Fantastic), Denzel Washington (Fences)

My Pick: Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea)

            Another fairly easy pick for me, since part of what made Manchester such an emotional experience for me was seeing how much pathos Affleck managed to bring to his role despite rarely, if ever, altering his facial expressions. 

Best Picture: La La Land, Moonlight, Lion, Hell or High Water, Hacksaw Ridge, Hidden Figures, Arrival, Manchester by the Sea, Fences

My Pick: Arrival

            Manchester by the Sea and Arrival are my two favorites out of this bunch, but while Manchester came in higher in my personal Top 10 list, I am flipping them here and to give Arrival Best Picture.  It may end up being more influential within its genre than Manchester, and its themes of broader communication and the need for human unity is something we will really, really need more of in the years to come. 

            And finally, a tally of which films gets what in my book, for those of you who are like me and obsessively keep score. 

Arrival- Best Picture, Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing (4)

Moonlight- Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, Directing, Supporting Actor (4)

Manchester by the Sea- Best Actor, Original Screenplay (2)

Kubo and the Two Strings- Visual Effects, Animated Feature (2)

La La Land- Film Editing, Costume Design (2)

Hidden Figures- Best Supporting Actress

Loving- Best Actress

Star Trek Beyond- Makeup/Hairstyling

Hail, Caesar!- Production Design

Moana- Original Song

Toni Erdmann- Foreign Language Film

The White Helmets- Documentary Short

13^th- Documentary Feature

-Noah Franc 

My Top (Nine) Film Scores/Soundtracks of 2016

            **for my Top 10 Films list for 2016, click here**

            I have a particular penchant for looking at the use of music in film, whereas many others often quip that the best soundtracks are the ones you don’t hear at all (or that simply feature the most generic collection of rock hits imaginable).  For me, the right score is what can push a good film to greatness and make an otherwise uneven or passable one good.  So looking back at 2016, what were the films that had the best original music and made the best use of it?  These are my picks. 

9. Star Trek: Beyond (Michael Giacchino)

            For all its ups and downs, the music has been one of the most consistently excellent parts of the Star Trek reboot, and the latest (and by far best) of the trilogy is no exception.  And not only was the score good, the soundtrack gets an extra point for featuring a musical call-back to the very start of the first movie way back in 2009, one that I might have been the only person to catch. 

8. Kung Fu Panda 3 (Hans Zimmer)

            Since this had the misfortune to come out in the Dreg Month of February, not many people saw this one, and it was all but forgotten by year’s end, but the consistent excellence of Dreamworks when it comes to making good sequels continued here, and like the first two movies in the franchise featured a fitting original score by Hans Zimmer, one of the finest composers working in film today. 

7. Moana (Mark Mancina, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa’i)

            While Disney still isn’t quite back to Beauty and the Beast/Hunchback/Lion King levels in terms of its animated musicals, Moana was the best step in that direction yet taken, the first of them since Princess and the Frog to have both a score and song set that actually heard and felt like they were written for each other for the film.  We all know how awesome Lin-Manuel Miranda is, but Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa’i deserve equal credit for coming together to collectively create the most solid musical of the year (yes, substantially better than that other one). 

6. Midnight Special (David Wingo)

            Another early-year release that most people seem to have forgotten about already, this gripping little thriller about a boy possibly possessing deity-like powers and being pursued by both the government and a religious cult is not just a great underrated movie everyone should see right now, it also had a beautifully ambient score to accompany its sharp visual style. 

5. The Handmaiden (Cho Young-wuk)

            As fittingly-crafted as the film’s writing and visuals, the score by NAME is another one of the key puzzle pieces that came together perfectly with the others to make this masterpiece a reality. 

4. Arrival (Johann Johannsson and Max Richter)

            Featuring a score by two of my favorite film composers (you may notice this isn’t the first time Johannsson has appeared on these lists), this movie has arguably the best sound design of any film that came out this year, perfectly tuning in the music to unsettle, elevate, calm, or sadden a given scene as needed. 

3. Kubo and the Two Strings (Dario Marianelli)

            A good fantasy film always calls for a good, old-school orchestral score to match its soaring emotions, the danger and intensity of its action, and the strength of its quieter moments, and Marianelli’s work for the latest work by Laika delivers in every way it had to, especially in how it works in the instrument the main character specializes in playing and the melodies he calls upon to cast his powerful magic. 

2. The Nightmare (Steffen Kahles and Christoph Blaser)

            With its thumping beats, dubstep-style aesthetic and furious pace, the score for this twisted psychothriller makes the audience feel every bit as harried and pursued as the main character does as she tries to find out the truth behind a creature sneaking around her house, and whether or not her basic grasp of reality has slipped away entirely.  Like the film, its harsh tone must be set to LOUD to have the proper effect, and boy, does it work. 

1. Swiss Army Man (Andy Hull and Robert McDowell)

            Easily one of the oddest scores of the year, Swiss Army Man’s music is almost entirely acapella, featuring only the chanting/humming/muttering voices of its two lead actors (Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe).  It’s mostly quiet, reflective, almost meditative in its sadness and somberness, but with one key exception; the montage track, used to excellent effect several times over the course of the movie (and featured in the trailer), is easily the most exuberant, joyful, and fist-pumpingly inspirational bits of music to come out in a time and place that desperately needed (and still needs) more joyful energy.  For this, and for the wonderful creativity and uniqueness of each of its tracks, Swiss Army Man gets my vote as the best film score of 2016. 

            A brief apology for not being able to my more silly awards this year- time simply has not allowed it, especially if I am to get my Oscar post out before the ceremony itself.  Hopefully it will make a grand and spectacular return next year. 

-Noah Franc 

My Top Ten Films of 2016

            Yes, this is late, and I do apologize, but now that I am (mostly) caught up on the Oscar-nominated films, we can finally get to the goods- my favorite films from the offerings of 2016.  As of this writing I have seen over 60 movies from 2016 that fall into my personal rules (either a theatrical or festival release in the US or Germany), roughly a third of which were non-English, and here are my absolute favorites of those. 

            As always, this is in no way an attempt to objectively rank films based on their value, and not being on list in no way means I didn’t think a movie was good.  I can’t always quite express why I might like one movie more than another, but I’ll do my best. 

            We start with, as always….

Honorable Mentions: Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick), Hail,Caesar! (the Coen Brothers), A Lullaby under the Nuclear Sky (Tomoko Kana), The Whispering Star (Sion Sono), Censored Voices (Mor Loushy), Moonlight (Barry Jenkins), The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos) 

10. Journey to the Shore (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

            The latest work from Kiyoshi Kurosawa, this is one of the most interesting takes on the idea of a ghost story I’ve ever seen, focusing on the redemption such a condition could provide rather than its uses for revenge or shock scares.  Kurosawa proves himself once again an absolute master of cinematic tone- I’ve never seen a scene’s emotional vibe change so abruptly (and flawlessly) simply by raising or dimming the lights. 

9. How To Let Go Of The World and LoveAll the Things Climate Can’t Change (Josh Fox)

            There are plenty of solid, detail-packed works on climate change and the threats from it we will face in the coming years, but this is my favorite because of how it digs deep into the darker side of activism in fighting what often appears to be a doomed battle.  Confronting a reality so impossibly huge isn’t possible without, from time to time, simply being overwhelmed by it all.  And as Josh Fox discovered, while this can easily lead one to moments of profound despair, it is what we do after those moments that may, in the end, make all the difference in the world. 

8. Silence (Martin Scorsese)

            Martin Scorsese’s decades-long passion project is a fictional story of Christian missionaries in Japan, and the suffering and torture inflicted on them and on the handful of villages that follow them by Japanese lords determined to stamp out all foreign influence in the country.  Andrew Garfield plays the lead as a particularly devout priest forced to confront the limits of his beliefs in the face of true earthly suffering.  A trying, painful, and complex work that asks, but doesn’t resolve, a host of questions about colonialism, religion, and the nature of true faith, whether or not you like this will depend on how you react to the conclusion Garfield’s character reaches in the film’s final act.  Some will love it, many will find it too much (or too confusing), but I felt profoundly moved, and haven’t been able to get the film out of my mind since then. 

7. The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook)

            I am not in the position to make a case whether or not this Korean film by Chan-wook is a proper cinematic representation of lesbians (especially since, yes, it was made by a man), but it’s filled with so much narrative detail about themes far beyond female sexuality (though that certainly is a focus) that I could spend hours unpacking it.  It’s also an expertly crafted narrative about character, lies, and deception that yanks the audience around just as much as the main characters get yanked around in their tortured bids to outthink and out-smart each other.  Like Journey to the Shore, it’s such an expertly crafted work in terms of seamlessly combining its technical effectiveness with a top-notch screenplay that I would feel ashamed of myself for not having it on this list. 

6. The Nightmare (Achim Bornhak)

            A slick thriller about the lines between fantasy and reality (and possibly a narrative metaphor for mental illness and/or eating disorders), Der Nachtmahr is a visceral trip down psychedelic lane- a teenage girl begins to see a strange, Gollum-like creature around her house, but is perplexed to find that it disappears whenever she tries to reveal it to anyone else, and soon she finds herself down a very deep rabbit hole indeed, possibly one entirely of her own making.  Or maybe not. 

5. Arrival (Denis Villenueve)

            This was easily one of the best and most original sci-fi films to come out in years.  Taking the classic First Contact scenario, it delves into the complications of language and communication as barriers for understanding (and catalysts for fatal misunderstanding) between peoples.  Like the best of the sci-fi genre, the parallels and lessons for our own world and the crisis of confidence and common purpose we currently find ourselves in are impossible to miss.  Mix in one of the year’s best soundtracks, viscerally gripping cinematography, and another top-of-the-line performance by Amy Adams, and it’s not hard to see why this topped so many Best Of lists. 

4. Kubo and the Two Strings (Travis Knight)

            As always, the latest from Laika got little love from either audiences or the awards cliques, but that in no way diminishes the quality of what is easily the studio’s best film behind ParaNorman (and it’s a close second).  A film that involves both losing one’s parents and being a target of cruelty from relatives doesn’t sound like much of a pick-me-up, but Kubo takes these fairly dark ideas and, without shortchanging them or losing any sense of danger, creates an uplifting reminder of the power of art, music, and storytelling to rebuild and reshape ourselves even when faced with the greatest obstacles.  And it doesn’t hurt that it further pushes the envelope of what stop-motion animation can do. 

3. Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)

            No other Best Picture nominee this year hit me so deeply.  Grief is hard to experience, hard to relate to, and harder still to write about and express properly in a performance, but everyone involved in this movie turns out career-best work, especially Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges.  This is the first time I’ve seen Hedges in a movie since Moonrise Kingdom, and holy cow, do we need to keep an eye out for this guy.  This isn’t a movie where much happens- we mostly just sit with these people as they seek to understand how their lives are being reoriented by the death of a loved one- but in a way, that’s everything there is in life. 

2. Swiss Army Man (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)

            This year’s Mood Indigo, Swiss Army Man is possibly the best film in Daniel Radcliffe’s career to date.  Playing a possibly-supernatural living corpse that appears to rescue a stranded Paul Dano, the two of them embark on what alternates between being a survival tale, an action movie, a whacky slapstick comedy, and a psychological exploration of gender, sexuality, and the self.  It is utterly absurd in its story conceit, unfathomably bizarre in its execution, and endlessly willing to haunt anyone put off by graphic talk of the many fluids and functions of the human body.  And I adored every second of it. 

            And my #1 film of 2016 is….

1. 13^th (Ava DuVernay)

            13^th is DuVernay’s follow-up to her last masterwork, Selma, and I could hardly imagine a more fitting topic for her to turn to incredible talents towards.  Examining a tiny loophole in the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, which formally ended legal slavery in the United States BUT allowed for exceptions for anyone “duly convicted of a crime,” she winds us through 150 years of subsequent history, breaking down how systematic disenfranchisement and oppression of African-Americans continues to shift and change shape to meet the times, making the post potent case I’ve yet encountered as to why it’s not only ignorant to insist that systematic racism no longer exists, doing so is actively destructive to those who are still caught in its maw. 

            All of that being said, since we are talking about my #1 film choice for 2016, I feel compelled to go a bit deeper as to why I put this ahead of other types of films that otherwise usually top these lists, including absurdist philosophical wanderings (Swiss Army Man), performance-centered character dramas (Manchester by the Sea), and gorgeously-animated fantasy (Kubo and the Two Strings).  There is a moment, towards the end of the film, where DuVernay cuts to a montage playing mostly audio (and some video) clips from Donald Trump’s campaign rallies set over black-and-white footage of Civil Rights activists being attacked, arrested, beaten, and brutalized.  It is the most succinct and effective summation of the entirety of the 2016 Presidential campaign, and what the rise of Trump really signifies.  For this scene, the most affecting I saw in any other movie for 2016, it earns this spot as my favorite film of the year, and as the one I consider the most important and essential viewing for, and I do mean this literally, everyone. 

            And there we are.  Another year of film, summed up.  I will be back shortly with my favorite soundtracks/scores of the year, followed by that most dreadful of yearly tasks, deucing out my Oscar picks. 

-Noah Franc