Top Twenty Movies of 2016, Part 1 (#20-11)

It's always interesting for me to see how the overall quality of the year in film affects my selection process for annual "Best of" lists. Strong years can make it easy to decide on a top twenty, but makes ranking them a chore. Years such as this, on the other hand, feel pretty settled in terms of what's the best (don't expect me to deviate too much from the median when it comes to my top two), but then fleshing out the rest of the list is more taxing.

For me, my #14-9 slots were constantly shifting as the year progressed, and will likely continue to do so long after this publication. #20-15 feel almost arbitrary, as all of them are largely flawed efforts that wouldn't even figure into my consideration during a stronger year, but boast specific assets and memorable hooks that help them to stand out.

I don't mean to cast shade here. The point of articles like this are to celebrate, not to denigrate. And anyone who claims that there aren't at least 20 movies worth celebrating any given year clearly doesn't watch enough movies.

First, a few shout-outs to titles that just missed the cut:

-To The Lobster for the originality of its deadpan dystopia

-To Moana for its grand musicality and gorgeous Pacific scenery

-To Queen of Katwe for its earthy slice of life wrapped in a sports movie

-To The Red Turtle for its painterly magic realism
-To The Salesman for its gripping moral complexity

-To Tanna for its vibrant cultural snapshot of native Melanesia

-To Toni Erdmann for its droll father-daughter absurdism

-To Tower for its powerful alchemy of testimonial, reenactment and animated abstraction

A now, the back half of my Top Twenty[-one] Movies of 2016 [UPDATED]:

My Award Nominations: Original Screenplay

The Academy's judgment that Moonlight and Loving be considered adaptations certainly thinned things out in this field (while I normally don't hold myself to taking Oscar's cues, it appears in both cases to be have been a reasonable decision), but on the plus side it freed me up to welcome a bubble contender or two into the fray. My five favourite Original Screenplays of the year are:

My Award Nominations: Acting Ensemble

The Screen Actors Guild Awards are this weekend, and all eyes will be on the group's coveted Best Ensemble prize, as this is the biggest chance for Moonlight or Manchester (or possibly something else?) to gain momentum on La La Land, which of course is not up for this significant precursor. In light of that, I hereby announce my own preferences for the best acting rosters of 2016:

Oscar Noms 2016-17

Today has been too busy for me to provide any kind of in-depth response to the announcement of 2016's Oscar nominees, but here's an oversimplified rundown of The Good and The Bad (we'll hold off on The Ugly since most of these nominees are beauts). I'll have time to analyze each of the 24 races when "One Category at a Time" returns in a few weeks.

Until then, some off-the-top reactions:

THE GOOD

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:

FYC: My Nomination Wish List as Oscar Polls Open

Ballots were mailed today to the Academy's 7000-some-odd voting members,
so now is the natural time for me and Oscar bloggers everywhere to deliver our impassioned last-minute "For Your Consideration" pleas on behalf of the underrated and overlooked of the awards season thus far.

Mind you, I don't circulate in any circles of influence on such matters, but that shouldn't stop any of us from professing what potential goodies we'd luuuuuv to unwrap on nomination morning (our Christmas, y'know). AMPAS could do a lot worse than to at least give these longshots an honest chance:

Actors

While the depiction of Chiron in Moonlight is undoubtedly a cumulative piece between three actors, it's Trevante Rhodes' iteration that has critics most frustrated for being unable to gain any attention outside a bevy of Best Ensemble citations. True, there doesn't seem to be much room for Rhodes in a Best Supporting Actor conversation that's been utterly dominated by costar Mahershala Ali, but why not take advantage of a thin year and place him the category where he belongs: Best Actor. The same logic should be extended to Dev Patel in Lion, screen time be damned. Who's going to argue that the characters these men play aren't the leads of their respective films?

March palette cleansers

New releases will be low on my list of priorities for the next few weeks, but anything I do happen to see in the 'Oscar off-season' (three so far) I'll mention here.

2016 predictions coming later this spring.