Kris Avedisian and Jesse Wakeman of 'Donald Cried' Talk Unexpected Influences
A personal early favorite of 2017, "Donald Cried" is a little gem of an indie comedy whose sharp humor about deconstructing the notion of "arrested development" had me literally laughing out loud.
In this dark comedy, which was executive produced by David Gordon Green, Jody Hill & Danny McBride, former childhood best friends, Donald (Kris Avedisian) and Peter (Jesse Wakeman), are forced to reconnect under the oddest of circumstances. At its core, "Donald Cried" is a simple story about rediscovery and friendship while remaining bizarrely funny and, ultimately, universal.
I had the opportunity to talk to the stars of the film, whose talents extended far beyond just the front of the camera. Both guys, in addition to their friend, Kyle Espeleta, wrote the script, and this marks Avedisian's feature-length directorial debut. With so much time, money, and passion invested in this film, we talk about their prior filmmaking history, inspiration from the Coen brothers, and toeing the thin line between "Euro" and "Conventional."
What was your favorite movie of last year (2016)?
Kris Avedisian: I'm honestly going to say my most memorable experience is not a movie, but it was actually a video game called Inside. It is a small, independent dice-rolling game, like a David Lynch thing. I think that game was just as much a narrative experience as a movie could be.
Jesse Wakeman: 'The People vs OJ,' which was also not a movie, but I think it's amazing.
KA: Was "Green Room" from 2016?
Oh, it was, it made my "Top 10."
KA: Yeah, that's one I think about for sure.
I saw "Donald Cried" a few weeks back at the Cinefamily, and I went in not knowing what to expect. Turns out, it's hilarious! What is it like for you to take this movie on the road and hear the audience laugh?
KA: It's amazing that you can take [the film] to these different people in different places. I've shown it in colleges to younger folk and also people in Tallahassee, FL who are in their 60's who were really, really into it. It's been awesome. To be able to make strangers laugh like that is unreal.
JW: It's kinda sad, you spend all this time wanting exactly that to happen, and then it happens, which is completely incredible. But I'm just too fucked up and always worry what's wrong with the movie, or what's next still, unfortunately. Fortunately, it's been amazing.
How did you two meet and what was your first filmmaking experience together like?
KA: We met in the Bay Area through our other co-writer, Kyle Espeleta. Kyle and I were making shorts and eventually, Jesse came into the mix. We all got along pretty immediately and sort of formed this family.
JW: In retrospect, I feel so lucky that we did meet. I worked as an actor for a long time, before I met the crew. When we first met, I was like, 'Wow, our sensibilities really align.' This was about 17 years ago. We were just grinding, working on these short films. We made the Donald short in 2012, at that time we had a couple of feature scripts in the works and were trying to make our first feature, but after the short, we thought, 'Wow, these are characters we can work with and develop more.' Plus, we were both in it, so we could control it ourselves. We had to find a way to do it our way but with no money, and do it well. I guess that's what took us so damn long.
To be able to make strangers laugh like that is unreal.
You mentioned working on other projects before this one, what made you want to make your feature debut with 'Donald Cried?'
KA: We've always liked the comedy-drama mix, and the short film had all of the ingredients we needed– Jesse and I would primarily be in it, we could afford to make it, and it was funny which would be good commercially. Even writing the script, we were debating how "Euro" or "conventional" we should make it. We knew if it was too experiential or "Euro" it would have failed.
JW: I felt like in watching the performances, we weren't pushing. We had made a lot of shorts where the acting was close to the characters, but it wasn't quite right. Then we made 'Donald' and it was like, oh, I believe these characters.
Among other champions of the film are your executive producers, David Gordon Green, Jody Hill, and Danny McBride, who presented the movie at the Cinefamily screening. What did they say they responded to in the film?
KA: David said at the Cinefamily screening, which I think was the nicest thing he said about it, was that he felt like "Donald Cried" was a personal gift made for him. I don't want to speak for him, but I think they responded to the humor and the compactness of the story– how much it does in such a small amount of time.
JW: We have been watching their work for years now, they are huge influences on us, so having their approval was huge.
How do you work together, specifically during the scriptwriting process? Do you finish each other's sentences?
KA: For this particular project, we would just throw ideas around and build outlines. I would then write a draft based on that outline. We'd go through that, see what was and wasn't working, and then get back together and keep working on it from an outline standpoint. I think that's kind of our thing, the writing comes last.
JW: We'd look to other films, "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" would come up a lot. That one in particular, although it has a different tone, we'd ask "How did they do that buddy structure?"
KA: I just listened to a Coen brothers [interview] because I was curious how they operated. I forget if it was Ethan or Joel, but one of them writes just because they type faster than the other one. He just sits there and writes as they're both talking through it.
That's the scene that ended up being what I hoped it was when it was just in simple sentence form. Plus, people seem to really enjoy that scene, and you can't tell that we were actually really miserable.
When you look back on shooting, was there one moment that you remember fondly?
KA: I think the scene that we're smoking pot in. That was written as us going into the woods and kind of fuck around, and it just looked terrible in the script but I knew it was something we would improvise. During production, we shot a version of it that was really constricted and wasn't improvised, and it didn't really work. We had to reshoot [that scene] while it was snowing, and I thought the movie was a failure. Jesse wasn't feeling well but we just forced ourselves to do it, and that's the scene that ended up being what I hoped it was when it was just in simple sentence form. Plus, people seem to really enjoy that scene, and you can't tell that we were actually really miserable.
JW: Absolutely, it was tense. The snow came to us five days before we started shooting. We needed the snow, but were prepared to shoot without it, but it came. And then when we needed to do the reshoot, it came again.
Any last thoughts on the film before it hits theaters?
KA: I hope people see it in a movie theater, that's the best way to experience a movie. I need to see more movies in a movie theater.
JW: Yeah, we just feel so lucky and hope to make more things soon!
Best Picture Winner 'Moonlight' Sweeps at the 2017 Film Independent Spirit Awards
Each year, on the day before the film industry's biggest night that is the Oscars, the non-profit arts organization Film Independent hosts the Independent Spirit Awards, an annual event that brings out some of Hollywood's finest indie filmmakers and stars to a beautiful Santa Monica beach setting to celebrate the films that are made outside of the mainstream studio system. This year, Cinemacy's Editor-in-Chief Morgan and I covered the awards show from the press room. There was a diverse lineup of films being honored this year, from the Franco-Mexican drama "Chronic" to this year's Academy Award winner for Best Picture, “Moonlight" (who will ever forget the massive flub that initially and incorrectly awarded the film to "La La Land”). Despite their background or box office success, all nominees shared one common thread – a deep rooted passion and love for independent films.
In a politically-charged era that has viewers almost expecting Hollywood to comment on our nation's current political happenings, comedians Nick Kroll and John Mulaney co-hosted the event with no shortage of sharp-witted jokes. Their buddy breeziness set a perfect atmosphere for a relaxed and casual evening (along with house band Gary Clark Jr.). This, being the day before the stress-filled night that is the Oscars, is a much-appreciated thing.
The Indie Spirit Awards recognized "Moonlight" with six top honors, including Best Feature, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. The show brought out the film's stars Mahershala Ali (who went on to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), Naomie Harris, Janelle Monáe, and more, who all cheered on director Barry Jenkins as he received the Robert Altman Award on the film’s behalf. Speaking about “Moonlight’s” impact on the film industry, Jenkins was humbled by the acknowledgment and considered it a "beacon of inclusivity,” noting that the industry has to tell “more stories that speak truth to power.” “Moonlight” is available to rent on iTunes now.
For our review of "Moonlight," click here.
Voters awarded Casey Affleck, who would also win Best Actor in a Leading Role at the Academy Awards the following night, with the award for Best Male Lead for his performance as a grieving janitor in "Manchester by the Sea” (available to rent on Amazon).
For our review of "Manchester by the Sea" click here.
Best Female Lead was awarded to Isabelle Huppert for her performance as a woman assaulted in the amazing, but little-seen, French film, “Elle" (available to rent on Vudu beginning March 14th).
For our review of "Elle," click here.
Winning Best Supporting Male was Ben Foster for his bank-robbing bad boy character in “Hell or High Water” (available to rent on Amazon).
For our review of "Hell or High Water," click here.
Best Supporting Female was an ecstatic Molly Shannon for her portrayal of a cancer-stricken mother in “Other People” (available to stream on Netflix).
For our review of "Other People," click here.
"Toni Erdmann" won Best International Film. Receiving the award was the film's director, Maren Ade, who spoke to the news of the film's remake, starring Jack Nicholson and Kristen Wiig, as "strange," but ultimately humbling. When asked if she was to have any part in the remake, she quickly answered, "No."
The award for Best Documentary went the seven-hour epic, "OJ: Made in America" (which was awarded the same honor at the Academy Awards the following day). Director/producer Ezra Edelman accepted the award, and made it clear that this was his first, and last, seven-hour long film.
Another independent film to be recognized was last year's Puritan horror film "The Witch," which saw writer/director Robert Eggers take home the awards for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay.
For our review of "The Witch," click here.
The event's first award, Best Editing, went to Joi McMillon and Nat Sanders for "Moonlight." McMillon made history as the first African-American woman to be nominated for a best editing Oscar.
The theme of the day, celebrating both the diversity of filmmakers and the important stories they tell, resonated when more than a handful of winners thanked us, the members of the press, for their dedication to their job in a time when the media has faced so much attack from Washington. The feeling of unification we felt this day reminds us why stories are so essential to tell now more than ever, and independent cinema continues to prove that this is the place to do it.
Morgan and Ryan would like to express our sincere thanks to Film Independent and Ginsberg/Libby for our inclusion in the event.
'Dying Laughing' Review: Comedians' Pain Gets the Spotlight
There's a pain in life that comedians know all too well, which directors Lloyd Stanton and Paul Toogood shine a spotlight on in the new documentary, "Dying Laughing."
As Stanton and Toogood show in their documentary, a collection of interviews ranging from the Mount Rushmore of stand-up comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Kevin Hart, to lesser known talents, it's actually often not the audience who are the ones dying from laughter. Speaking to a number of less than glamorous moments that every stand-up has to share, from disastrous early comedy sets (“bombing”), taking an act on the road and the loneliness it brings, audience “heckling” turning into insults and threats, to re-examining why they choose to do this in the first place, the documentary provides a unique behind-the-curtain look at these struggles and stresses that are so woven into these artists’ craft.
Running at just eighty-nine minutes, "Dying Laughing" shoots all of its famous faces in black and white against flat white backdrops, giving a unifying aesthetic to the whole film. This look, without much use of music or score underneath their emotionally vulnerable stories, lends a viewing experience that's more of a studied watch, an intellectual understanding of comedy, which gives this a bit more heft than other documentaries on the subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mWZeIgMO68
From Jerry Seinfeld observing that "comedy is purely a result of your ability to withstand torture," Sarah Silverman talking about needing the approval of strangers, Kevin Hart scrolling through pages upon pages of logged ideas and "bits" in his iPhone, to Amy Schumer talking about finding her comedic inspiration, to Cedric the Entertainer talking about being called the "N-word" on one such stand-up occasion, there is a vast amount of stories that the documentary features. "Dying Laughing" further contextualizes the role of the stand-up comedian in this modern age, with Chris Rock opening "we're the last philosophers - everybody that talks now is taking with a pre-approved scripts."
It's clear that the directors themselves are clued into the sense of self, spirit, and struggle comedians hold, usually coming from a real sense of internal struggle and depression. For those who would be just as interested in the existential crisis that accompanies comedians' craft as they would their jokes, this documentary has much to offer.
"Dying Laughing" will most appeal to those who aren't so much looking for actual laughs, but who are curious to learn more about the people who work their whole lives to earn them. The documentary also features an interview from the late and great Garry Shandling, who the film is dedicated to. "Dying Laughing" is at both times poignant and profound, and adds another layer to the truth about comedy and its crucial place in the world today.
Grindhouse Comedy 'I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore' Wins Grand Jury Prize
Cinemacy just came back from covering this year’s Sundance film festival (my and Morgan's first time!), and we were lucky enough to see the film that took home the top prize.
That film was Macon Blair's comedy-thriller I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore, which won the coveted Grand Jury Prize after leaving audiences in stitches with its raucous tonal mixings of genuinely side-splitting comedy and shock-violence action that plays like an indie grindhouse comedy.
I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore is built on the premise that the world is full of self-centered jerks. It’s certainly the world that Ruth (Melanie Lynskey) lives in, where minor violations like witnessing lifted trucks pumping out black exhaust, people’s careless discarding of items on the floor at the grocery store, and constantly not picked up dog droppings on her lawn, are a part of everyday life. The easygoing nice-person levee breaks when, after the discovery of a home invasion with personal affections stolen, Ruth decides to take matters into her own hands and track down the culprit, if nothing more than to confront the perpetrator for their moral wrongness. Ruth enlists the help of her quirky karate-obsessed neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood) to help find the burglar, but little do they know that they're tracking down a band of junkie nutso's led by slithery and vampiric Marshall (Tony Zow), who are planning an even bigger smash and grab job. This sucks them into an underbelly world full of bloodbath mayhem that puts them in way, way over their heads.
Even the notion of being one of the last few moral-defenders in a world run amuck by schmucks is a feeling that taps into the collective conscious that we all have (haven’t we all fantasized about confronting that jerk who uncaringly spoils a major twist in that fantasy novel??), making the cathartic and comedic effects here even greater.
As Ruth, Melanie Lynskey is great as an elder’s nurse turned homespun moral crime-fighter, playing the full comedic range of meekly expected disappointments in the beginning of the film, up through passing her tipping point and boiling over into DIY revenge, stealing back her grandmother’s silver from a seedy pawnshop in one of the film’s most jarringly and unexpectedly hilarious moments when the pawnshop owner tries to stop them. Even the notion of being one of the last few moral-defenders in a world run amuck by schmucks is a feeling that taps into the collective conscious that we all have (haven’t we all fantasized about confronting that jerk who uncaringly spoils a major twist in that fantasy novel??), making the cathartic and comedic effects here even greater.
Elijah Wood as Ruth’s nerdy, karate-loving loner neighbor Tony may have never been funnier onscreen. With his rat tail hair, old man specs, and nunchucks and ninja stars, Wood plays the punchline sidekick that keeps the filming motoring confidently on its screwy head. Wood gets rich deadpan dialogue at every turn from Blair’s original script (after struggling to pull out a ninja star from the wall, Tony surmises “That’s how hard I threw it”). But Wood’s sensitivity also conveys the introverted anti-social neighbor that makes Tony a perfect companion. The chemistry between them makes one wish what other adventures the two could get into.
I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (its mouthy title comes from a Gospel LP that Blair received from director pal Jeremy Saulnier, whose name ended up fitting the tone of the film perfectly) is a true belly laugh of a film, and the perfect choice for when you want to watch a weirdly hilarious and insane hybrid of a movie. Director Blair, who Morgan and I had the fortune of actually running into while walking down Park City’s Main Street earlier in the day before his film would win at the Awards Ceremony later that night, could not have been a more pleasant and nice person- which just goes to show – as the film will be streaming on Netflix later this year – that nice people don’t always finish last.
'Newness' Captures Millennial Love in the Digital Age
Having its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival is director Drake Doremus’ newest film, Newness, a romantic drama set in today’s digital age.
Shot in just eighteen days in November of last year, Doremus and team found that they were able to whip the project together and cut it into an unapologetic and raw feature-length film.
Fans of Doremus and his films will know that he prefers to make a certain kind of movie– meditations on modern romance about two lovers who, although in love, are kept apart by some force larger than themselves. The larger force in Newness is the digital age itself, in which social media and hookup apps allow for the possibility of an infinite amount of connections but also leaves this generation feeling emotionally bankrupt, unsatisfied, and incomplete (as if the imagined opportunity of infinite is more desirable than any current situation).
When Martin (Nicholas Hoult) and Gabi (Laia Costa) use technology to swipe and match with each other, the two meet up (after both having been on a date earlier in the night) and hook up even quicker. It doesn't take long after that special night for the two to form a connection that sees them enter into something of a relationship. As their relationship ramps up past the physical desires of each other, the pair soon finds that as they get more serious, the more honest and sacrificial they must become. The messiness of previous relationship histories and the temptations of others are something they can’t ignore, forcing each other to look at their lives and evaluate what they are willing to give up to be together.
Newness is almost like a barometer reading of today’s young love landscape, a near-perfect capturing of the real-life moments that drive our obsession for seeking out the new and the hesitant satisfaction of being happy with what one has. Working off of a script from longtime collaborator Ben York Jones (Like Crazy, Breathe In), Newness runs the full emotional spectrum of young dating life that will surely connect with today’s millennials as well as show the pitfalls of this dating culture to all others.
'Newness' is almost like a barometer reading of today’s young love landscape, a near perfect capturing of the real life moments that drive our obsession for seeking out the new and the hesitant satisfaction of being happy with what one has.
As is Doremus’ filmmaking style, which is exploring and discovering the story in the moment of shooting, Doremus allows Hoult and a whirlwind Costa (who starred in 2015’s amazing single-take film Victoria) to navigate the emotional moments between each other throughout the story. While this is an energizing practice, in some moments, it ends up dovetailing and cornering scenes into emotional walls with no resolution.
After having grown in story scope since his first feature film, Douchebag, and through his bigger films like the dystopian Romeo and Juliet movie, Equals, “Newness” returns to an intimacy felt in Like Crazy. What hurts Newness is that, following Martin and Gabi’s hookup, comes a good amount of steamy scenes between them (we already knew they had the hots for each other), but there doesn’t seem to be any moments that show a real connection between them that would solidify a base foundation for the infidelities and emotional insecurities that threaten their relationship. This, in turn, makes the film feel a bit trepidatious in making its ultimate point. All this can be rationalized as “real life,” but the longer the film plays and the further each emotionally drift from each other, it feels like we want to see these characters fight to be with each other rather than let personally manufactured insecurities let the story peter out.
Yet for these few dips, Newness sees Doremus further developing his directorial storytelling abilities while also showing what he can do better than most of his peers – tell a romantic story that feels so electric, alive, and which captures modern love in all of its beautiful and messy form. Newness is dedicated to the late Anton Yelchin, star of Doremus’ Like Crazy, simply put: “To Anton, Into the Jungle.”
This review previously ran on January 27, 2017, during the Sundance Film Festival
NEWNESS (2017)
Starring Nicholas Hoult, Laia Costa, Danny Huston
Directed by Drake Doremus
Written by Ben York Jones
'Trespass Against Us' Review: Fassbender Is a Criminal And Family Man
Fans of Michael Fassbender know that any movie they see him in, he is fully committed and brings an intensity that rivals most of his contemporaries in terms of consistency and quality of performance. The latest performance from Fassbender is “Trespass Against Us” in which he plays a family man who lives in a rural community on the outskirts of Irish societal living. He has been sucked into the ever-tempting crime world at the hand of his father (Brendan Gleeson) but comes to a crossroads when it threatens to tear him away from his family. While “Trespass Against Us” offers a lot in the way of fresh storytelling, it’s a bit tonally off and inconsistent, which may keep audiences from praising it, or hesitant to check it out in the first place. But if you love indie dramas that have a little bit of everything and are a fan of Fassbender, it might be worth your time.
"Trespass Against Us" is largely a movie about a father, Chad Cutler (Fassbender), living a life of crime that involves petty thievery and pursuits from the cops, which plays like good fun. Living on the outskirts of society past the forest that divides the town, where campers and children's toys litter the area, he and his family live spiteful of the cops, much under the leadership of his "ex"-criminal father, Colby (Gleeson), who proudly states to his grandson the need to defend oneself by those who "trespass against us." But when a heist goes wrong, turning a playful cat and mouse game between Chad and the police into a personal mission to jail him, Chad's life choices catch up with him and threatens the safety and unity of his family.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnq8jZejw-s
It dips into a few different genres and it takes a while to unfurl, and even then, this drama really is a bit all over the place. While it's a rich and well-fleshed out story, Fassbender's character is connected to too many different characters. Between the relationship with his father (their shared scenes are powerful and gripping enough to wonder what an even more simplified version of this drama between them would've been like), the police, his wife, and that with his young son, the drama is scattered and the emotion is lost. In some ways, its story is more closely connected to "The Place Beyond the Pines," in its portrayal of a father who seeks to provide better for his family in the only way he knows how– through criminal activity. He causes mayhem against society and breaks its rules, but returns home to provide for his family.
"Trespass Against Us" shines as a family drama that feels authentic with real life struggles that teeter between collapse and finding peace. While the film is comprised of individually great scenes, it fails to make an overall gripping story and could have included more cinematic textures to add a little meat to the film's bare-bones.
Ryan's Top 10 Films of 2016
I think that for all of the shocking news and dramatic surprises that happened last year, most people would agree that 2016 wasn't too far from being a kind of movie itself (it certainly gets the horror treatment in this hilarious horror-spoof trailer here). Yet no matter the events of any year, I believe that the films that are also released in that same year can shine through like diamonds in the rough and put any year into a sort of context from which to better understand it, this year notwithstanding. For me, the movies that I found myself thinking about at year's end about were movies that I attributed to having a similar shared theme: defiance. I suppose one could say that that is true of the spirit of independent film as a whole, but I found that my ten favorite films all had – in some way or another – a dose of defiance, meaning that it was a refreshingly non-traditional movie with non-commercial ties or scratched and clawed its was into the cultural consciousness, advancing the entire medium and art form as a whole.
Without further ado, below are my ten favorite films of 2016:
10. The Witch (The VVitch: A New-England Folktale)
Perhaps it was an omen for the year to come that one of the first movies to send electricity through me was a horror movie; a period-piece horror film at that, whose scares didn't come from any sort of familiar blueprint before it. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the majority of people who found themselves watching "The VVitch" had no idea they were in for a New England-set folktale about witchcraft and black magic circa 1630 (in fact, I'm pretty sure I heard audible disappointments in the theater the longer the movie went on). But what jolted me about this entry was seeing a world that I had never seen before shown in a new haunting tone. The story of a Puritan farming family settling onto new land, the plot is, essentially: don't go into the woods, because an evil witch lives there (a story whose origin I'm guessing would come from parents putting a healthy sense of fear in them to not run off). Yet after the disappearance of the family's baby (in one of the best edits I've seen all year), into the woods the unsupervised children go. What follows is a tale of subtle Satanic possession that fractures this lone family to fear that the devil is in the children. What I personally dig about this film, besides capturing the period so refreshingly well and with anachronistically correct dialogue translated from the era, is that the heart of what makes this a truly terrifying horror movie lies in the scariest thought of them all: helpless paranoia, which festers a fear that forces its characters to wonder if the evil is real, or all made up in their minds, which the widespread practice of the witch trials that would follow this time would also speak to. Also mark "The VVitch" as the film that introduced newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy to the big screen, whose career it seems has only just begun. And let's not forget Black Phillip – the Satanic goat that makes a case for being one of the year's scariest scene-stealing characters.
9. Green Room
A movie about a Washington punk band that gets held captive by a warehouse full of Neo-Nazi punk skinheads after a bad gig ends in murder, and which they need to slash their way out of to make it out alive, "Green Room" was the most cringe-worthy movie I watched in theaters all year (see also: "Angry Birds" and "Suicide Squad," but for very different reasons). "Green Room" doubled down on its being one of the most fearless movies of the year by forcing these young punk rockers to unleash something far beyond "punk" – depravity – if they wanted to make it out alive. The sequel to the equally fantastic underground revenge movie "Blue Ruin," writer and director Jeremy Saulnier returned to make another artistic bloodbath with even more thrills. With a killer soundtrack that scored the death around them, beautiful cinematography (whose polished camera glided through the greenery of the forest's trees into the remote backstage green room itself, to the blood-drained faces of greenery guts), this movie plays for keeps. Credit the final piece of this movie's power to a set of performances that lock the fear and chills in tight. Patrick Stewart, in a head-spinning turn as a measured but ruthless Nazi leader, makes this story even more unsettling. And, one of the final performances from an actor who we tragically lost in 2016, an actor whose intelligence shines through every one of his movies as well as every day in the philosophy class I took with him some years back, I will truly miss the work and artistic spirit of the late Anton Yelchin. His singular intelligence and warm persona made everything he was in shine, and "Green Room" commemorates his fevered commitment and sensitive artistry wonderfully.
Read our full "Green Room" review here.
8. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Oh, how this breath-of-fresh-air comedy delighted me so. This little-seen Sundance hit was singularly the funniest movie I saw all year (next to the joke-drenched "Deadpool"). And funnily enough, I wouldn't even try to sell this movie to people as a comedy alone, as that might imply limitations of not being anything beyond that, for which it certainly is. The New Zealand comedy that is "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" is a genre-mashing mix of things: a road movie, coming-of-age movie, and certainly a movie that the whole family can sit down and enjoy together. Credit that to the writing and directing effort of "Flight of the Conchords" player Taika Waititi, who, with his second expertly crafted comedy following 2014's vampire mockumentary "What We Do in the Shadows," proves that he is one of comedy's new breakout stars and someone to keep your eye on (especially this year, as Waititi directs the latest Thor movie, "Thor: Ragnarok," in theaters this year. Perhaps the biggest achievement in "Wilderpeople" is how Waititi creates an authentically felt story full of real characters, the main character being one orphaned, overweight, and wannabe gangsta youngster (Julian Dennison) who, after his foster mother dies, is left to be looked after by his gruff and reluctant new foster father (Hey, Sam Neill!). What follows is a terrific and touching movie in so many unexpected ways. Seek this one out – it's as hilarious as it is heartwarming and would have become a home-video classic of yesteryear.
Read our full "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" review here.
7. The Lobster 
If "Hunt For the Wilderpeople" was one of the most laugh-out-loud movies of the year, “The Lobster” was its comedic counterpart cousin – the most intellectually ambitious romantic comedy of the year that has its fun by poking at our modern day culture's overly-rational heads than our much softer heartstrings. This black comedy, a satire of modern day love where people not in a relationship with a romantic partner are given thirty days to find love or be set into the woods, hunted, and tranquilized, and turned into an animal (not all cruel – an animal of their own choice). Colin Farrell leads this surrealist sober movie that is all things at all times: a serious musing on the binary nature of love by way of an utterly ridiculous premise, a somber look at what should be the most heart-affecting things – love, and a movie so dreary and bleak but yet still so hilariously and emotionally felt. "The Lobster" is a stroke of excellence, certainly most enjoyed by those who want their high-brows knocked a little, as well as those ready to embrace and unpack the silliest and yet most contemplative stories of romance and partnerships and its place in modern society.
Read our full "The Lobster" review here.
6. Swiss Army Man
Talk about a simultaneously wacky and heartfelt movie that you won't soon forget. This Sundance darling was a product of pure originality, a true lightning in a bottle movie, a sincere and heartfelt tale of loneliness and companionship that feels like a music video-art piece gone haywire. “Swiss Army Man” features Paul Dano as a lone survivor on an island – ready to off himself – when the promise of a corpse washes up (Daniel Radcliffe). By way of keeping himself sane, he talks to the lifeless body, which animates him back to life (if only in his head), including cinematic montages of a farting corpse that propels them through the water like a jet-ski. However, the fart jokes work as the sly shell of an immature movie that is really about much deeper and more honestly-felt things, like lost love. This indie hit was the first feature film from music video director duo DANIELS, known best for their music video for DJ Snake's "Turn Down For What." There's no reason why this movie should exist, and I imagine that's precisely why I can't stop thinking about it, making it one of the most unforgettable of the year for me.
Read our full "Swiss Army Man" review here.
5. Moonlight
Pure artistry and honestly-felt storytelling always make a film worthy of discussing, but when that film takes those elements and packages them in a way that movies have not done for a particular group of people, a people of color and sexual orientation that has not been adequately represented on the big screen, then it's worthy of consideration in a whole new way. Director Barry Jenkins' stunning coming of age film "Moonlight" doesn't fit into any easily definable genre. In fact, it defies you to try to define it, being the story of one young man's life and chronicling three separate periods in his life. Chiron, a quiet African-American adolescent dealing with the pressures of growing up in Miami's threatening street life while discovering his sexual orientation is powerful by its universal theme of discovering one's identity amidst threatening conflicts. Chronicling three different periods in one man's life in similar "Boyhood" fashion, yet played by three different actors, "Moonlight" is both creatively and emotionally daring whose story feels so personal and vulnerable. For a movie with such devastating conflicts, I consider it to also be the most hopeful movie of the year, proving that even under a night's sky filled with senselessness and oppressions, one might only need to look up at a small sliver of moonlight to feel its comforting power above.
Read our full "Moonlight" review here.
4. Sing Street
If at the end of the day, movies are for escapism, entertainment, and fantasies, then "Sing Street" is the ultimate fantasy of my young adolescent life. The third film from writer and director John Carney, "Sing Street" trades the soft-sincere acoustic guitars of his previous musical films ("Once," "Begin Again") for electric guitars and synth rocking to create a movie that was for me, the feel-good movie of the year. The story of a young Catholic school kid who takes on his school's oppressive regime as well as trying to win over the school's elusive vixen by forming a rock band, this movie was note-perfect. While the movie mamanged to stay fresh and fun in this coming of age formula, what really tipped the scales into being a great movie were the movie's original songs, which rock hard in the 80s pop-rock world that take inspiration from the Cure and Joy Division.
Read our full "Sing Street" review here.
3. Paterson
I saw "Paterson" at the 2016 AFI Film Festival (presented by Audi), and boy was Iastounded. I didn't know near anything except for it was Adam Driver starring in Jim Jarmusch’s latest movie, and that’s still kind of what it is. Driver plays Paterson, a bus driver who drives the same routes and lives the same life repeatedly, as if on auto-pilot, the real moments of beauty come from Paterson's internal poetry that he muses in between his droll life.
2. Manchester by the Sea
An air-tight, note-perfect movie about grief. I’ve discussed this movie with movie-people and non-movie-people alike, and all can agree in some sort of consensus, that this movie is sad. That it is. I’m a fan of sad movies, but it’s the execution of this sadness that left me speechless in the film’s end. Set in Boston, the story of a grief-stricken janitor who, after the death of his brother, is left to care after his nephew, is about as brilliantly realized as it could have been. It’s a blanket sadness, and one without a redeeming ending, so why are people taking to it so? The direction is incredible in its non-styled but brilliantly composed photography, and the story is told with doses of flashback.
1. La La Land
In all honestly, I probably would have loved whatever film writer and director Damien Chazelle came out with following 2014’s "Whiplash,” the maniacal jazz drumming tornado that got my young male blood boiling and landed J.K. Simmons an Oscar. When Chazelle’s next movie turned out to be a 180-degree turn from the fever sweats of the obsessive jazz drumming, lighting up the screen with an old school Studio soft-shoe musical starring the wonderful Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in the city of Hollywood that rekindled the love I have for the first movie I loved, "Singin’ in the Rain," it won me over and lands as my favorite film of the year.
Writer and director Damien Chazelle’s years-in-the-making passion project (he conceived the idea before making Whiplash), La La Land checked all of the boxes for me last year: an old Studio-style throwback starring an irresistibly great Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone (the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of our times), a story of artists with both dreams and fears of making it big, a beautifully styled Los Angeles backdrop, a fantastic original score, and altogether incredible direction come together to achieve such a mastered vision of this modern musical. And even past its slick, lovely, fun, and wonderful exterior is a real story and conflicted drama of what it takes to follow your dreams, especially when love – both the love for one’s work and the love for their counterpart – lies at the heart of it. The song and dance numbers are out of this world – literally so in a wonderfully choreographed dance in the famed Griffith Observatory’s Planetarium. With locations all over Los Angeles, I was so moved by the film’s spellbinding jazz music that not long after seeing the film I found myself with Cinemacy’s Editor, my sister Morgan, at Hermosa Beach’s Lighthouse Café for a Sunday Jazz Brunch to take in a location that’s featured in the film. And with a movie that climaxes to such an emotionally soaring level, and ending with perhaps one of the most fantastically choreographed endings of the year, La La Land is the movie that rewards dreamers. And sometimes, people’s faith deserve to be rewarded.
Read our full "La La Land" review here.
Honorable Mentions:
Silence
20th Century Women
American Honey
In 'Paterson', Jarmusch Shows the Lyricism in Life Americana
The light-hearted surreality throughout the movie offers much to unpack, making Paterson more a poetically enrichening experience than a traditional film would offer.
The thing about daily life, since it's typically lived in such a familiar, repetitive and track-like fashion, is that we often miss the subtle, magical coincidences that are going on around us all the time. In his latest movie, Paterson, writer and director Jim Jarmusch sprinkles in these subtle surrealities that often go unnoticed into a week in the life of a bus driver who quietly drives his routes and more quietly writes his original poetry, all while coincidence washes over him and his community, making a film that speaks to the beauty of everyday life and the role of an artist in it.
In this tone poem of a movie, which also plays more accessible than Jarmusch's other films, Paterson is a film that operates more from the invisible structures of poetic stanzas than the freeform swirl that his last released film, the rock and roll-soaked vampire flick Only Lovers Left Alive, did. Like Lovers, which showed centuries-undead vampires suck up culture in arts music and history only to live alone in their same unfulfilled lives, there's a similarity here that Jarmusch explores, following as equally an emotionless man who similarly takes in the pleasures of poetry without entertaining the thought of dreaming of publishing his own or even the very poetry in motion around him. It's this failure to dream in which Jarmusch sets up his main character, Paterson (Adam Driver), the humble bus driver who coincidentally shares his name with the city where he drives his routes in Paterson, New Jersey, to show and study this noble pursuit of the artist: as one that is only valid when it's realized rather than romanticized.
Following a day in the life from one Monday through the next in chapter-like fashion, Paterson is tuned to the rhythms of the day from sun-up to sun-down, waking up every day to face a wristwatch that reads around six-fifteen, hunching over a bowl of cereal at home, and scribbling some lines of poetry before setting off on his daily route, and before returning back home that he shares with girlfriend and bulldog who he walks to the local bar for a late-night nightcap – a process that more or less repeats daily. But it's in the moments in between the mundane where Jarmusch hones in on, and where Paterson makes its message.
The rich tapestry of the city of Paterson hides its coincidences and meanings in plain sight – a young girl approaches Paterson with her original poetry about rain, a theme we see Paterson earlier write about in his poem about moving through trillions of molecule of water – showing the playful inter-connected themes that link the things between the days.
Although he's a poet that scribbles things like how love is like his favorite matchbook brand, he doesn't tie together the coincidence that his bohemian girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) shares with him about her dream about twins, failing to see the many varied sets of twins that then populate throughout the rest of the film. The rich tapestry of the city of Paterson hides its coincidences and meanings in plain sight – a young girl approaches Paterson with her original poetry about rain, a theme we see Paterson earlier write about in his poem about moving through trillions of molecule of water – showing the playful inter-connected themes that link the things between the days. Instead, Paterson, the reluctant artist whose humility leads him to follow his same life's track of driving the bus and writing his poems in his secret notebook, goes about his day meekly while larger life meanings play out around him.
Driver in the driver's seat (pun intended) continues to shine in auteur-driven movies – of which this is the latest – delivering a finely controlled and nuanced performance. The quiet depth Driver brings forth in Paterson the man shows a man pondering the serious artistry of a mind stirring. It's not that he's not an insecure artist – he's just an egoless one, more content living his hum-drum life than writing his poems for an audience of one then the restless activities of all those around him. His quiet but commanding performance anchors a film that is also as measured and patient, and within Jarmusch's playfully dreamy movie, it's not out of reason to think that Paterson himself is a physical embodiment, read tour guide or ghost of the blue-collar city.
The light-hearted surreality throughout the movie offers much to unpack, making "Paterson" more a poetically enrichening experience than a traditional film would offer. "Paterson" will be most loved by those willing to experience the movie much like they would a literary work, and actively working to unpack the movie for symbolism and themes like they would a poem itself. The role of the artist as poet is explored by Jarmusch, who in fact self-identifies as a poet over filmmaker, Jarmusch's ode to the quiet American artist proves that there's magic in the mundanities of real life, if only you choose to see it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8pGJBgiiDU