THE FILMS CRITICS WANT TO SEE…
Arrival
Discounting the fake movie that provided Argo with its title, no science fiction film has ever won the Oscar for best picture. Arrival is the perfect film to redress this. Not only is Denis Villeneuve’s thoughtful sci-fi puzzle politically relevant in the age of Trump, its first-contact premise provides a framework for spectacular visuals, intelligent storytelling and a profoundly moving performance from Amy Adams as a linguistics expert brought in to communicate with the film’s tentacle-clad alien visitors. As they trigger complex thoughts about the shape of her character’s life with her terminally ill daughter, Adams grounds the film emotionally, enabling it to pull off a subtly dazzling twist that rewires the entire narrative. Oscar-winning films have a tendency to look to the past. Arrival looks to the past, the present and the future and views it all as one. It’s a giant storytelling leap worthy of recognition. Alistair Harkness, The Scotsman
Moonlight
The concept of Moonlight, using three actors to portray the protagonist at three stages of youth, sounds stagey: it was adapted from the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney. But Barry Jenkins’ film about a sensitive boy growing up in the drug-soaked Miami of the 1980s is cinematically expressive and emotionally real. With ragged camera work reflecting Chiron’s often-troubled perspective, Jenkins builds a heartfelt yet notably ambivalent coming-of-age and coming-out story that has tough things to say about the construction of African-American masculinity. Manchester by the Sea is also affecting; La La Land is also clever, but Moonlight can match any of the other nominees in a crowded best picture category for the clarity of Jenkins’ vision and the delicacy of the performances by Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes. Kate Taylor, The Globe and Mail
Manchester by the Sea
This is one of the most wonderfully written pictures I have ever seen – or heard. Each word, even the most trite, shapes the characters, their fate, and our perception of their lives and actions. This amazing cinematic text gives birth to a fully constituted movie. Kenneth Lonergan is a playwright and a screenwriter, but in three movies he has become a one-of-a-kind director, who engages his actors and actresses to elicit from them frighteningly truthful performances and set them in a perfectly defined milieu. This constant attention to detail is the tool that allows Lonergan to get at the core of the mysteries he’s exploring: why we love; why we hurt the ones we love; and how can we live with pain, our own and others’. Manchester by the Sea is a sombre movie that paradoxically illuminates the lives of those who see it. Let’s hope the Academy members are photosensitive. Thomas Sotinel, Le Monde
La La Land
So far, La La Land has been the front runner for best picture at the Oscars, and for good reason: Damien Chazelle’s candy-coloured musical – which harks back not only to the great MGM song-and-dance films of the 1950s, but the pensive, pastel-hued meditations of Jacques Demy – reinvigorates a beloved Hollywood genre with bravura brush strokes. But La La Land also plays as a love letter to a medium that Chazelle clearly sees as threatened. Ryan Gosling’s character, a jazz musician with tetchy purity standards for the music he loves, could just as easily have been a film-maker who perceives such advances as digital filmmaking and home-entertainment centres with ambivalence, if not outright grief. Technically and thematically, La La Land checks just about every box for Academy members who no doubt admire Chazelle’s energy and prowess, and share his passion for cinema as an art form, emotional conduit and imperiled cultural practice.
Ann Hornaday, chief film critic, The Washington Post
Hacksaw Ridge
You may not like Mel Gibson so much anymore but after seeing Hacksaw Ridge, the film that has brought him back into Hollywood acceptance, you simply cannot deny his gifts as a film-maker. There’s a brutal directness to his storytelling that other directors shy from. This real story of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who served heroically as a medic in the hell of Okinawa, is a classic war movie up there with Saving Private Ryan. By choosing this subject, a man who would not touch a weapon, Gibson has adroitly turned his own penchant for violence, so often condemned, into one of the strengths of the movie, enabling it to stand aside from the very thing it shows. The film convincingly shows us that there can be heroes in real life as well as in cartoon universes – and Gibson gets a better performance out of Andrew Garfield here than Scorsese did in Silence. So it’s not progressive? Hacksaw Ridge is ultimately a faith film and what it believes in is courage. David Sexton, London Evening Standard
Fences
Denzel Washington’s adaptation of August Wilson’s Fences lifts the Pulitzer Prize-winning play from the stage whole, yet manages to avoid the pitfalls that often befall stage-to-screen adaptations. Instead of opening up the play with new scenes, director Washington and his cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen open up the frame around the actors, positioning them in ways that make the mountains of dialogue they utter as visually cinematic as possible. This focus on the actors as they powerfully deliver Wilson’s words and emotions is a lost art, reminding the viewer of works by Sidney Lumet and Billy Wilder. Fences makes universal its stinging glimpse of the hardships of 1950’s working class African-Americans. Wilson’s message is superbly rendered by the career-best performances of Washington and Viola Davis. Though I’d seen the play, this film haunted me more than any fictional 2016 film I saw. Odie Henderson, Rotten Tomatoes
Hidden Figures
The best movies show us our shared connections. They remind us of our humanity. They tell stories that move us. While not many movies are able to accomplish this feat, Hidden Figures absolutely does. The film tells the story of three African-American women who are experts in Stem (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). We see so few women on screen working in these fields, and even fewer who are African American. And the fact that this is a true story, yet one most are unfamiliar with, is disgraceful. We’ve been deprived this amazing story about women of colour for too long. But the movie doesn’t dwell on the fact that history has ignored these women’s invaluable contributions. Through Hidden Figures’ emotions, wonderful acting and joy we become a part of the story and are taken on a ride with these women that culminates in one of the greatest feats of humanity: a person going into space. What Hidden Figures teaches us is that man made it to space thanks to the calculations of an incredibly brilliant African-American woman. With its box office success, Hidden Figures has proven that audiences are hungry for these types of stories, and just like The Right Stuff, it will be a movie about the struggle to get to space that will endure for future generations. Melissa Silverstein, founder and editor, Women and Hollywood
Hell or High Water
‘Muscular film-making’ is one of those movie criticism clichés that gets spat out as often as ‘Rollercoaster thrillride’ and ”Fun for the whole family!’ but Hell Or High Water really is just that. Muscular film-making, that is, not ‘Fun for the whole family!’ Weighty and thrilling, featuring impactful performances from an Oscar veteran (Jeff Bridges) and Oscar inevitables (Chris Pine and Ben Foster), it tells a worthwhile story of cops and robbers, age and youth, reverse mortgages and, um, angry armed posses. Writer Taylor Sheridan – who also gave us Sicario – brings us real characters with true depth, and British director David McKenzie (Starred Up, Young Adam) executes every scene in this modern Western thriller with such confidence that you’ll swear he was born and raised in Texas himself. Beautiful, complex and exceptionally rewatchable, this is eminently Oscar-worthy and, well, muscular film-making. Ali Plumb, Radio 1/1Xtra film critic
Lion
Unequivocally deserving of the Oscar for best picture, Lion is beautiful, brilliant, and easily one of the most important films of 2016. Inspiring and unbelievable as it might be, what makes Saroo Brierley’s story so powerful is that it’s also universal. One needn’t be a young boy lost in India to know the fear of separation, or an adopted child a continent from home to yearn for a connection to his or her roots. Therein lies Lion’s potency – it is inherently relatable to every man, woman, and child the world over. At a point when global dynamics (especially those regarding foreigners) are shifting at a dramatic pace, for a film to eschew borders and embrace such elemental human truths as home and love is profoundly necessary. Timeliness alone, however, does not make a film the best of its year. Expert craftsmanship, gorgeous cinematography, and stellar acting all must contribute. In Lion, they do, and the result is a genuine, poignant, and urgent film nonpareil. Zach Hollwedel, staff writer, Under the Radar