After the break you can find a brand new episode of Travis Bickle on the Riviera, the world's only movie podcast, with your hosts Tucker Stone, Morgan Jeske and Sean Witzke.
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0:00:00 - 0:34:27 - Bonus Beats - movies, scenes, or performances we loved that did not make our top 10s. Including: Wiener Dog, Midnight Special, Certain Women, Moonlight, Fences, Hail Caesar, Deepwater Horizon, Patriot's Day, 13 Hours, Age of Shadows, Train to Busan, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Hunt For The Wilderpeople.
0:34:28 - 2:39:30 - Top Tens! (presented in alphabetical order)
Certain Women (2016), directed by Kelly Reichardt, starring Laura Dern, James Le Gros, Jared Harris, Lily Gladstone, Kristen Stewart, and Michelle Williams.
Christine (2016), directed by Antonio Campos, starring Rebecca Hall, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts and Maria Dizzia.
Demon (2016), directed by Marcin Wrona, starring Itay Tiran, Tomasz Schuchardt, and Andrej Grabowski.
Elle (2016), directed by Paul Verhoeven, starring Isabelle Huppert, Christian Berkel, Anna Cosigny, Virginie Elfera, Laurente Lafitte, and Jonas Bloquet.
Green Room (2016), directed by Jeremy Saulnier, starring Anton Yelchin, Alia Shawkat, Imogen Poots, Patrick Stewart, and Macon Blair.
The Handmaiden (2016), directed by Park Chan-Wook, starring Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, and Cho Jin-woong.
High Rise (2016), directed by Ben Wheatley, starring Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Elizabeth Moss, Luke Evans, James Purefoy, Keely Hawes, Stacy Martin, and Reece Sheersmith.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), directed by Taika Waititi, starring Sam Neill, Julian Dennison, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Rhys Darby, and Taika Waititi.
Hypernormalisation (2016), directed by Adam Curtis
The Invitation (2016), directed by Karyn Kusama, starring Logan-Marshall Green, Tammy Blanchard, Michael Huisman, John Carrol Lynch, Emayatzy Corinealdi, Lindsay Burge, Jay Larson, and Toby Huss.
Manchester By the Sea (2016), directed by Kenneth Lonergan, starring Casey Affleck, Kyle Chandler, Michelle Williams, Lucas Hedges, Gretchen Mol, Tate Donovan, and Matthew Broderick.
Moonlight (2016), directed by Barry Jenkins, starring Trevante Rhodes, Andre Holland, Mahershala Ali, Naomi Harris, and Janelle Monae.
Nerve (2016), directed by Ariel Schulman & henry Joost, starring Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, Machinegun Kelly, and Juliette Lewis.
The Nice Guys (2016), directed by Shane Black, starring Ryan Gosling, Russel Crowe, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer, Margaret Qualley and Keith David.
Right Now, Wrong Then (2016), directed by Hong Sang-Soo, starring Jung Jae-young, Kim Min-hee, Youn Yun-jung, and Gi Ju-bong.
SPL 2 / Killzone 2 (2016), directed by Soi Cheang, starring Tony Jaa, Wu Jing, Simon Yam, Zhang Jin, Louis Koo, and Ken Lo.
The Wailing (2016), directed by Na Hong-jin, starring Kwak Do-Wan, Hwang Jung-min, Jun Kunimura, Chun Woo-hee, and Kim Hwan-hee.
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Tucker's Top 10
- The Wailing
- Green Room
- Elle
- Killzone 2
- The Handmaiden
- Manchester By the Sea
- Demon
- The Nice Guys
- The Invitation
- Hunt For the Wilderpeople
Morgan's Top 10
- The Wailing
- The Handmaiden
- Green Room
- Right Now, Wrong Then
- Hunt for the Wilderpeople
- The Invitation
- Moonlight / Certain Women
- Nerve
- Christine / Manchester By the Sea
- Elle
Sean's Top 10
- Elle (my immediate reaction to this movie was that it was the best movie I'd seen since in a solid fucking decade)
- The Wailing
- The Invitation
- High Rise
- Green Room
- Nice Guys
- Nerve
- Hypernormalisation
- Christine
- Manchester By the Sea
Next Week: Sleepless, Paddington, maybe more on Elle!
You can download episodes directly from itunes and rss. For a quick look at who has been on the show before and what movies have been discussed in each episode, look at our one-page episode guide. This is a Patreon-supported podcast, subscribing to the show can give you access to monthly criticism from the hosts. You can follow the show on twitter, tumblr, letterboxd and facebook. The hosts are on twitter too - Tucker, Morgan, and Sean.
2017: be afraid, be very afraid.
Tucker, to continue your theme of "cute" young girls appearing in 2016 movies, did you manage to catch 'The Fits' (dir. Anna Rose Holmer) last year? I reckon you can can take that film as the apotheosis of a part of what you're singling out in that it relies on the performances of a cast of untrained, young female actresses to set up a naturalistic depiction of teen life and gives its story over to observing the reality of one particular 11-year-old girl, Toni (played by Royal Hightower).
It's a film about the performative aspects of gender that works this metaphor into a literal aspect of the story by presenting two gendered spaces of physical performance that Toni is able to cross between: the male-centric boxing gym, where she trains with her brother; and the female-exclusive dance troupe, where she is intrigued by the vivacious exhibitions of call-and-response dance battles that she catches the girls performing. It gets at the idea of how one has to behave in order to be accepted within a particular social order; what parts of yourself need to be given up to the collective and what parts can be obstinately retained. There are some queer elements packed in there too, given that Toni is relatively fluid in her ability to cross between two performances of gender.
I'm making this sound more conceptual than the film actually is though. While the mapping of the gender stuff to the boxing and dancing activities is pretty on-the-nose, what it does is place a lot of reliance on physical performances and this is where Royal Hightower's turn as Toni comes into its own. The character she plays is stoic and taciturn and so Hightower, a first time actress, has to convey most of her experience through subtle expressions and physical movement. The way she holds her body (and adjusts this when around different people), the energy with which she moves (which varies with her emotional state and her sense of self-comfort), and her quietly longing gazes (which reveal wants that she doesn't fully understand), all combine to give you a picture of her character that her spoken words resist. There's another impressive element to Hightower's performance too, and that's that she's a highly skilled dancer playing the part of an awkward beginner and she really pulls off the movements of a shitty dancer, so much so that her turn to grace as the movie progresses feels more convincing than anything I've previously seen in any type of "beginner gets good" movie trope.
There are also some surprising horror elements thrown in - the way the ex-diegetic music works, the way lighting is used, and the depiction of the epidemic of physical seizures that begins to take hold of the girls, etc. - that make this film an interesting watch all round.
Posted by: Leon Kpow | 2017.01.19 at 17:59
Jesus fucking christ calm down dude
Posted by: Sean Witzke | 2017.01.19 at 18:04
Jesus. I've only seen Hunt For the Wilderpeople from your list. What did I do all year?
Wailing is streaming on Netflix so I plan on checking that out.
Posted by: Tim Hamilton | 2017.01.19 at 18:45
This is how I roll, Sean. Stilted text and an Asbergers-like inability to see the forest for the trees are all I've got when it comes to online communication. Take that away and all I'm left with are those fleeting interactions with the internet chat bots where I ask them how their day has been and they ask me if I want my $%#@ %^&*ed.
Posted by: Leon Kpow | 2017.01.19 at 19:33
Hey Leon--i haven't seen that but am down for anything relating to fighting or apotheosis-y. I'll check it out asap
Posted by: tucker | 2017.01.22 at 06:46
'The Fits is good. It almost appeared on my list for this year (though technically it's a '15 release)
Posted by: Morgan | 2017.01.22 at 19:47