What if Hollywood refused to release any more movies after June 30th, leaving audiences and Oscar voters to pick from what washed in with the tide from the first six months of 2016? Yikes. Last year at this time, wed already had Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out,Love & Mercy and Ex Machina. This years pickings are, well, slimmer. Amid the furor over the degrees of suckitude in Batman v Superman, the lack of laughs delivered by Kevin Hart inRide Along 2 and Central Intelligence, and the franchise fatigue brought on by Alice Through the Looking Glass, X-Men: Apocalypse, Zoolander 2, The Huntsman: Winters War, and The Divergent Series: Allegiant, a few goodies did manage to poke through the sludge. Heres the best of 2016 so far:
Captain America: Civil War
The years best popcorn flick to date is one of the few films of 2016 to break the sequel jinx. The Russo brothers, Joe and Anthony, actually know how to get us caught up in the feud between the Cap (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr,) and bring in Marvels Avengers only the Hulk and Thor are MIA to take sides. Lesson to Hollywood suits only in it for milking a franchise: If you build the damn thing right, they will come.
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Deadpool
The R-rated black sheep of the Marvel movies actually gets better with repeat viewings. If Academy voters werent such tools and ass-hats then Ryan Reynolds would get award attention for turning snark into an art form. As Deadpool, a medical experiment gone wrong, he proves that a rogue superhero is a lot more fun with a mouth on him. Thank Reynolds and director Tim Miller for turning what should have been junk into something deliciously disreputable.
De Palma
Director Brian De Palma likes to get up in your face. Prudes are always bitching about the sex, violence and defiant perversity in him films, from Carrie and Dressed to Kill to Scarface. If youre not already a fan for those exact same reasons, however, then listening to him dish on his career, with choice clips to match, will cinch the deal. Directors Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow just let the dude talk; my only gripe is that this doc is too damn short at 108 minutes. Sequel, please.
Everybody Wants Some
Richard Linklater reflectively rolls us back to 1980 in the company of baseball jocks starting a new year at a small Texas University. Thats all. But Linklater, a master minimalist from Dazed and Confused to Boyhood, creates something major about the way freedom tastes when the future still lies ahead and getting stoned, laid or both is a key part of the journey. And that soundtrack!
The Fits
A lot of American indies get touted as the next big thing. The Fits deserves to be. Royalty Hightower is only 11 years old, but you cant take your eyes off her. She plays Toni, an Ohio kid learning to box at a Cincinnati community center. And then, in the gym next door, she sees a dance team of older girls going through their paces. And everything about her life, her direction, her body, her sexuality it all changes. No wonder these girls have fits. Anna Rose Holmers stunning debut film may have the same effect on you.
Hail, Caesar
The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, look back at Hollywood in the 1950s and show why their impure love of cinema is the driving force behind everything they create. Thats some agenda for a goofball farce starring George Clooney, Josh Brolin, a dancing Channing Tatumand a scene-stealing Alden Ehrenreich (the young Han Solo in an upcoming Star Wars spinoff) as a singing cowboy. Ive been accused of being buzzed, stoned or in the tank for the Coens for finding Hail, Caesar so funny and affecting. But it did make me drunk on movies again.
The Jungle Book
Director Jon Favreau didnt care that the 1894 Rudyard Kipling story about a boy in the jungle had been filmed many times before, most famously in Disneys 1967 animated musical version. He thought todays technical marvels, including 3D, could bring it to life like never before. With Neel Sethi as the boy, the only human in a cast of talking computer-generated animals, the director and his VFX team holed up in an building in Los Angeles and created visual miracles. Favreau, wise dude that he is, brought the heart.
Love & Friendship
Whit Stillmans flagrantly naughty take on a novel that Jane Austen wrote in 1794 is as modern and badass a romantic comedy as youll find anywhere. The gorgeous Kate Beckinsale is killer good as a fortune-hunting widow on the prowl. She and costar Chloe Sevigny, as her American co-conspirator, plot like the real housewives of Austen Country. If the Oscars were given out today, Beckinsale gets my vote for Best Actress, hands down.
Sing Street
Theres no explaining why you can get knocked sideways by this simple tale of how a bunch of music-crazed teens form a band in 1980s Dublin while the sounds of Duran Duran, the Cure and Spandau Ballet swirl around them. Maybe its because Irish writer-director Jon Carney (Once, Begin Again) lived it all himself. Or maybe its because Carney captures the tenderest of moments without an ounce of Hollywood bullshit.
The Witch
A horror movie that scares you senseless without a single cheap trick. Impossible? Just take a look at the small miracles achieved by debuting filmmaker Robert Eggers. The setting is a New England farmhouse in 1630 when Puritan repression conjured up evil, real and imagined. Is Anya Taylor-Joys bonnet-wearing beauty a witch because her little brother went missing in her care? And whats with that goat the kids call Black Phillip? Eggers slow burn off a movie wants to plumb the violence of the mind. Boy, does he ever!
Zootopia
The frontrunner for animated movie of the year (and, yes, I did see Finding Dory) mixes mischief and menace in ways that will sail over tiny heads. In this animal kingdom, a feminist bunny, whos also a rookie cop, teams up with a snarky fox, whos also a con man. They tackle politics and prejudices in a town where predators, who once lived in peace, revert to attack mode. Trump would blow the problem away or at least build a wall. Zootopia, alive with vibrant ideas and images, sees no reason why entertainment cant also be a provocation. Me neither.