Top tens are not my favorite sort of lists really. It’s all a matter of bias and I always feel something is being left out. Even if the writer does a honorable mentions section. For my best of 2016 I decided to try and show my thought process / bias in this Tournament of Champions. Give everyone a chance to really get mad at me.
In the process I pitted some films against each other who otherwise should never be. I have to pause, consider details, and in the end go with the movie that brought me the most joy and or moments of thought.
For example Rogue One beating out The VVitch. Two movies I thoroughly enjoyed for very different reasons. The VVitch being such a visceral film I had a long hesitation but Star Wars wins when Star Wars is done right.
That left Hell Or High Water against The Handmaiden. Two power house films about love, loss, entrapment, desperation, and good old fashioned capers. It’s weird to think about these films being so similar, in such drastically different settings, culturally and locality. But there they were, two desperate women fighting with two desperate men.
In the end I had to go with Hell Or High Water because of my own current cultural desperation. Hell or High Water shows me the world in which Trump became president and it humbles my liberal feminist heart a little. Just a little. Not too much. #dembabyblueeyes
So my cultural bias chooses Hell Or High Water as the best film of 2016.
I’m a Filmmaker, Set Decorator and Rat lover. So I like telling stories, making things pretty and small fuzzy animals. My life in a nutshell.
