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]:

One Category at a Time: Best Animated Feature

The Academy's animation branch saw a record number of submissions this year for Best Animated Feature consideration, which makes it a tad surprising that the final five were so easy to predict, and that the race for the win has been such a non-contest for so many months.

My Award Nominations: Animated Feature

I know, I know, only four nominees seems super lazy in a year which saw record submissions for the Oscar, but I promise if I eventually catch up with other 2016 toons that I like well enough I shall retroactively add them to the ballot.

Annie Award Winners

I didn't even realize that the ANNIEs were happening this weekend. I guess you lose track of these things when the Oscar race for Best Animated Feature seems like such a done deal. ASIFA-Hollywood did little to sway my prediction by handing their top prize (among many others) to Zootopia, but they spread some wealth to Moana and Kubo. They even handed prizes to three of the five Oscar nominees for Animated Short, making that category even tougher to gauge.

List of movie winners after the cut:

Good Times Keep Rolling for 'La La Land' with PGA Win

La La Land continued its precursor dominance last night with the Producers Guild of America's top award. Zootopia and O.J.: Made in America also continued their similar dominance in the corresponding animation and documentary categories.

ACE Eddie Winners, and PGA/SAG Preview

To the surprise of precisely no one, La La Land won the ACE Eddie Award last night for Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy). Tom Cross is likely en route to his second Oscar in three years.

The Dramatic Feature category was a bit more competitive, but prevailing pundit logic of Joe Walker's editorial of Arrival winning out proved to be correct. Can't argue with either of these winners. For me, they're easily the top two editing achievements of the year, with everything else eating their dust.

'Manchester', 'Moonlight' and 'La La Land' Lead Early Critics Awards

It has begun. Awards season is "officially" underway after what has been a busy seven days of early -- and I mean ridiculously, unnecessarily early -- precursor citations. The main takeaway: In a studio year as lack-lustre as 2016 was, it looks like critically acclaimed indies will be leading the race, namely Barry Jenkins' Moonlight, Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea and Damien Chazelle's La La Land, while some sneak-peek twitter reactions to Scorsese's recently screened Silence paint it as a major last-minute lurker that could crash the party.

The National Board of Review got the ball rolling last Tuesday, handing Manchester four prizes including Best Film, Best Actor and Best Screenplay. Moonlight trailed with a pair of wins for Jenkins' direction and Naomie Harris' incredible performance.

The New York Film Critics Circle followed up two days after with three prizes apiece for both Manchester and Moonlight, but at the eleventh hour voted in favour of La La Land as Best Film (not an unprecedented move for that group).

That same day, La La Land went on to dominate the Critics Choice nominations with 12. Again, Moonlight had a prominent showing with 10, Manchester with 7 (Full list of nominees will appear at the end of the post with some quick takes).

The LA Film Critics Association rounded out the week by naming Moonlight the best of the year just this afternoon. The film also won Best Director, Supporting Actor and Cinematography. La La Land only earned a single prize from the west coast crew (for music), but was runner-up in five other categories, making it the most represented title in the group's day of announcements. Hmmm... were they afraid giving it multiple wins would smack of homerim?

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.