Top Twenty Movies of 2016, Part 2 (#10-1)

And then there were ten. I've tried my best not to squawk about it too much over the course of the year, but I stand by the opinion that 2016 was not a vintage year for film. I do, however, think it may be the year wherein the importance of film (and our cultural sphere, in general) was clearer than ever.

Many might dismiss the pageantry of awards seasons and the minutia of 'Top Ten' lists as utterly frivolous in a year with so much noisy social and political unrest, with much larger (and disheartening) things happening outside the cinema bubble. But such tumultuous times are when we should cherish the movies even more.

The right movie at the right time can have tremendous power; It can soothe the vexed mind with magical escapism, it can educate by giving exposure to unseen people or issues, and it can provide connection to worlds we may never have known we could connect with. These ten movies do all that and then some. Congratulations to them, especially the top five, which represent my personal nominations for Best Picture of 2016.

One Category at a Time: Best Documentary

In the years since the Academy tweaked its rules to allow the entire voting membership to cast a ballot in this category, Best Documentary has gone from one of the trickiest calls to one of the easiest. Four years running now they've gone with the whichever nominee has received the most critical and guild attention. That trend will be put to the test this year as the title which fits that glove is a unique contender in the Oscar race.

My Award Nominations: Director

Tomorrow the DGA will bestow its yearly honours for the year's best direction in television and film. Barring some kind of earth-shaking upset, we can expect to see Damien Chazelle and Garth Davis take home prizes for Best Director and Best First-Time Director respectively. Best Documentary Direction is a bit more up in the air, but I'm betting it'll be Ezra Edelman for O.J.

My own ballot for Best Director follows:

My Award Nominations: Original Song

It promises to be a slow news week for awards watchers, with little to do but twiddle our thumbs while the number crunchers at PwC determine the nominees who will be announced next Tuesday. So now seems an apt time for me to start running through my own year-in-review rituals. I'll be listing nominations for my personal ballot periodically over the course of the next six weeks, culminating in my Top 20 and my selection of winners the Friday before the Oscars.

It was a stellar year for movie songs (pleasant U-turn from 2015's wasteland), especially thanks to three original musicals providing us with catchy new tunes. Theoretically, I could have filled all five of my Best Original Song slots using any one of them, but in the spirit of spreading the wealth, I made the executive decision to only select a single entry from each. It wouldn't be fair otherwise, especially to some non-musicals with worthy tracks to feast our ears upon.

Here are the final five I've settled on, followed by a longer-than-usual list of second tier contenders:

Will the Best Pic Contenders Please Stand Up?

The agonizing wait for Oscar movies to finally show themselves towards year's end is annual gripe of mine. While some years aren't as bad as others, 2016 has thus far proven to be exceptionally back-ended, with nearly every predicted Best Picture contender waiting until the last two months of the year (three months if you include the inevitable January roll-outs) to debut to the public. Only next weekend's limited release of Barry Jenkins' festival darling Moonlight provides us with the faintest hope of a Best Pic nominee that dares to drop before November.

How did it get to be this bad? Looking back over the young expanded Best Picture era, every slate has contained at least two or three films that bowed in October or earlier -- heck, some from the summer and spring -- that would have been absolutely pulverized by the competition had they waited for the winter glut. I fear that fate may be lurking for some of this year's late-breaking gems, whatever they may be. The season's barely underway and already I can tell this is going to be one of my biggest pet peeves.