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 RoomA 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 WilderpeopleOh, 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 ManTalk 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. MoonlightPure 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 StreetIf 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 SeaAn 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 LandIn 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