It is a bit too early to put together a best-of list for 2016, as being in Korea I have to wait another month or so to finally catch up on all (or at least most) of the prestige releases. So I thought I would put together a list of 20 (actually more, since I did some cheating) older films that I saw for the first-time in the 2016 calendar year.
1. Abbas Kiarostami's "Koker" trilogy: Where is the Friend's House? (1987); Life and Nothing More (1992); and Through the Olive Trees (1994)
Of all the celebrity deaths of 2016, Kiarostami's had the biggest impact on me personally. And although I love a number of his films, I had never seen the three films many consider his highest achievement, the so-called (rather inaccurately) "Koker" trilogy. Where is the Friend's House? is characteristic of so much of Kiarostami's greatness, a rather simple story, great affection for his child protagonist, and all within a formal structure that ends up being suprisingly challenging. The following two films return to the same area of Iran, but are more meta-textual, with a Kiarostami surrogate becoming the lead in Life and Nothing More, and a character from that second film taking over the main narrative of Through the Olive Trees, Both of the later films also take place in the real life aftermath of a devasting earthquake that hit the area and bare the imprint of Kiarostami's self-reflexive turn in 1990's Closeup. For some, like the late Roger Ebert, this formalism was a barrier to emotional impact, but I found the opposite to be true, showing how one can have both distance and genuine affect.
2. The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967)
A rarity: an affecionate homage to a classical genre (the musical) that manages to also be something completely original. A huge influence on La La Land, my current favorite of 2016.
3. Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)
One of the few films that is a legitimate spritiual successor to the creeping paranoia and menace of classic Roman Polanski. Also, makes effective use of a fake "true story" frame to add another fascinating layer to its oblique tale of sexual repression.
4. The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges, 1942)
I'm not the world's biggest Sturges' fan, admiring Sullivan's Travels (1941) and The Lady Eve (1941) without really loving them, but this film is an absolute masterpiece, and further proof of the type of experimentation that was possible within the supposedly stifling studio system. One of a kind, with an amazing opening and closing sequence. The slapstick still is not really to my taste, but everything else works perfectly.
5. My Neighbour Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
Another of my blindspots is Miyazaki, probably due to my lack of interest in animation. However, this film is so charming and quietly profound that I will need to watch his other films this year.
6. Too Late for Tears (Byron Haskin, 1949)
A rather forgotten noir from 1949, starring two icons of the genre, Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea. Unique in that the lead character is also the femme fatale, this one deserves to the discussed among the great crime films of the era.
7. News From Home (Chantal Akerman, 1977)
I caught up to this film early in the year following Akerman's death. A rather simple premise of Akerman's mother's letters from Brussels to her daughter in America being read over footage of New York City from the mid-70s. Watching today, the images from this period are truly captivating, and the experimental form enables Akerman to give the viewer two different perspectives of both mother and daughter at the same time.
8. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
Finally caught up with Tarkovsky's great sci-fi mind bender, inspired by discussions of the film by documentarians Adam Curtis and Mark Cousins. The parallels with the future event of Chernobyl only add to the strange power of the narrative.
9. 3 Women (Robert Altman, 1977)
Maybe the winner of the New Hollywood "How the Hell Did This Get Made?" Award, a truly unusual drama from Altman with two tremendous performances from Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall.
10. Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973)
The ur-text of Tarantino's Kill Bill films, and difficult not to think of those as you watch, but really works on its own terms as well, with a darkness and melancholy Tarantino is never able to re-capture. Meiko Kaji has as magnetic a screen presence as one can imagine.
11. Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)
Denis is another director I have long admired and I finally got around to the film many consider her masterpiece. Amazing images combined with a quite obscure story that re-imagines Melville's Billy Budd. I think I still prefer 35 Shots of Rum, her take on Ozu's Late Spring, but the final scene here is among the greats.
12. Ghosts (Christian Petzold, 2005)
After seeing Petzold's Phoenix, one of my favorite films of this decade, I was able to track down a number of his previous films. This one is my favorite, a truly heart-breaking story of a outcast teenage girl and a woman suffering from the loss of her child. Difficult to shake its impact.
13. Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993)
I watched Kieslowski's Red, the third of his Three Colours trilogy shortly after its original release but never returned to earlier Blue until this year. Very much within the art cinema tradition and thus lacking a certain originality, but one of the best performances of Juliette Binoche.
14. Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 1958)
Great pre-New Wave noir from Malle starring Jeanne Moreau and featuring a great Miles Davis jazz score. Not much substance perhaps but high style.
15. Macbeth (Roman Polanksi, 1971)
A bit of a cheat here since I had seen this one previously, but through a combination of high school English screenings and catching parts on television. Seeing on the big screen on 35mm was a real highlight and it remains a contender for best adaptation of Shakespeare, both in its filmmaking and its unique interpretation on the text.
16. Running on Empty (Sidney Lumet, 1988); The State I'm In (Christian Petzold, 2000)
Two films with a similar premise of former radicals on the run, each with teenagers who are being negatively impacted by the sins of their parents. Petzold's is the darker take, but Lumet's drama holds up well, mostly due to the late great River Phoenix.
17. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978); The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
Two remakes from end of the New Hollywood era, rarities in that both are close to (in the case of Kaufman) or superior to (in the case of Carpenter) the 50s sci-fi originals. The endings are both are particularly memorable.
18. Repast (Mikio Naruse, 1951)
My second Naruse film, following When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), seen as part of a Naruse retrospective at the Seoul Cinematheque. Not as strong as the later film, but Setsuko Hara is great as always in the lead, and the understated story of an unhappy young couple gains strength as it builds to its conclusion.
19. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)
Following the death of David Bowie, I finally decided to catch up with one of his larger film roles, as the title character in Nicolas Roeg's bleak sci-fi adaptation of the 1963 Walter Tevis novel. Like most of Roeg's work, visually striking and puzzling, but for me less satifsying than his best work, such as Bad Timing (1980). Bowie, however, is really great.
20. Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987)
A former professor of mine once dismissed this film as a "profound film for shallow people" (an insult he did not reserve for only this example). I can see the point, as Wenders' meandering approach feels at times unfocused and purposeless, but there are enough arresting images and a great Peter Falk performance to recommend.
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