At the end of Martin Scorsese’s Silence is a quiet conversation about religion and its place in the state, the community, and the heart. It is reminiscent of the last scene in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors where two people whose stories have been told throughout the film spend time discussing their own fates. The quiet contemplation of Silence and an explanation of the hidden Christians is offered, so goes the best moment of what may be Scorsese’s most intimate, personal film. Silence caps off the year in film hated and beloved with equal measure. There is no doubt that it is a major accomplishment from the country’s best living director.
A fatherless family of misfits cobbled together in a broken-down house that needs constant repairs, random strangers wandering in and out, populate Mike Mills’ rendering of his childhood with his mother and the other women who shaped his life. The best scene in 20th Century Women has Jimmy Carter at the center. That scene in 20th Century Women was so powerful because it was Mike Mills looking at his past growing up under Carter, but also understanding Carter through his mother’s eyes. That is the beauty, ultimately of the film. She was a good teacher. He was saying thank you.
Sully has not caught on as an awards season favorite, even if it remains the biggest box office hit of the bunch. Sully is such a Clint Eastwood movie. The subtle details, the slow mood throughout. As a filmmaker, he never gives us more than is necessary and has a confidence in his ability to tell a story. I suppose that is what makes Sully so good. The best part of it for me is the wonkish flight simulations that show the crash landing from many different perspectives — in the cockpit, cabin. and air-traffic control tower, from the point of view of the passengers, the pilots, and the safety inspectors. All of that is so thrilling to watch, to see just how close everyone on board came to dying and how a mistake by Sully could have killed them too. But he made no mistake.
The Coen brothers have made another great movie with Hail, Caesar! even if it hasn’t yet found its audience. Like The Big Lebowski and Burn After Reading, big heavy themes are encountered by the clumsiest of bumblers. Roger Deakins’ work is exceptional, once again, as he drifts in and out of representative styles. Scarlett Johansson, I think, steals the show as the Esther Mermaid. Smart talking and funny, she could fill up the whole movie all by herself.
Manchester by the Sea is at its best in the scenes between Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges, drifter and orphan, what’s left of his brother and his family. They’re it. They try to stick it out but neither has what the other wants. This scene is made most clear when Hedges has a panic attack after seeing frozen meat in the freezer, imagining his dad lying dead in the morgue. Affleck fumbles around trying to help him but once again, he fails. It takes a man to admit that failure and this is really what the film is about.
Jeff Nichols’ varied contribution to American film this year should not go overlooked, whether it’s the quiet, authentic way he recreates the segregated South in Loving, or the way he reveals a parallel world of creatures who live alongside us every day only we can’t see them. Midnight Special’s big reveal at the end is nothing short of spectacular. Completely under the radar and barely noticed by anyone, but wow. In Loving the best scene is really the two of them, Mildred and Richard, planning their lives for a better time, as they stand in an open field and imagine that day.
Hidden Figures takes us into a world where no one really questions the dumb rules put forth that divide people. One of the best ways Ted Melfi expresses that division is by having mathematician Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) run nearly 40 minutes in her heels to the from her desk to the “colored ladies” bathroom. There are many wonderful moments in Hidden Figures, from Octavia Spencer’s character standing up for herself by demanding her staff be promoted with her, to Janelle Monae fighting the courts to go to school. But for some reason Taraji P. Henson running back and forth in her high heels, just to go to the bathroom is one part of that movie that moved me greatly. The absurdity of accepting those kinds of accommodations in ways no one in the white America of the 1960s could ever understand is delineated so beautifully.
Denzel Washington is not given near enough credit for his directing work in Fences. For some reason, this was the year to talk more about Fences being a play. Was the same said in an attempt to diminish A Streetcar Named Desire or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, both among the best American films of all time? Washington is up there with Mike Nichols and Elia Kazan’s renderings of these great plays precisely because he doesn’t “open it up.” How awful would each of these plays be if they forced location variations here and there. This writing accounts for the place, the setting, and it is an important character in the writing. To erase that would be to put that language and those characters in unintended places. It can work if that isn’t the point of the piece, but in Fences there is no need to. In fact it would be distracting to try move the play from the place where it naturally resides. The two most visually memorable moments happen when Denzel Washington frames himself in a angle from behind as he’s looking out the window beating back death. The other is the shot of his children all together — all there because of Rose. Finally, the shot of Viola Davis quietly listening to Troy go on and on is the best example of what film can do, and what a great director can do with that kind of writing.
La La Land is a very good movie until the final ten minutes, when it becomes a great movie. Everything that is brilliant about that film exists right there — the acting, the editing, the music, the melancholy. Damien Chazelle is playing with the form of the musical itself — one where an impossibly happy ending is almost always handed to you. The last part of the film asks: what if. If it’s from her point of view, it’s what if I ended up with him, what would be different? Maybe I would be happier. If it’s from his point of view it’s also what if I chose her instead, would my dreams have come true? Yes is the answer to both. We can’t live our lives on what ifs and must make due with what is. But it grabs your heart for a minute and holds on tight. Then it releases you back into the real world, alas. La La Land, like The Player and other films about Hollywood, and the way movies inescapably play with illusion vs. real life. The film, too, gives us both.
As Moonlight chronicles the painful life of a boy named Chiron, it takes your pitiful heart and rips it in two. We watch a sensitive, kind person withdraw into himself to fit in, for protection, out of fear, and it isn’t until the end that we see the extent of what it has done to him. Though the film is filled with so many beautiful, heartbreaking, sensational moments, one that stands out the most is, of course, at the end when Trevante Rhodes meets up with André Holland who cooks him the “chef’s special.” The film starts with Little meeting Juan (Mahershala Ali) whose wife Teresa (Janelle Monae) once fed him what was probably his first big meal of his life. The idea is you eat, you talk. But he doesn’t really talk either time. How Barry Jenkins frames these two moments in Chiron’s life is really the identification of true love. That whole scene with Kevin, the eroticized way Chiron remembers him, the music, the two of them talking, inching closer. It’s just the most beautiful scene in that or any other film this year.
Though Jackie is full of many memorable moments, some rely on nothing so much as a look by Natalie Portman. The scene that sticks with me is Jackie Kennedy cradling her husband’s bloody head in the car as they speed away from Dealey Plaza. This is where Portman shows her skill as an actress beyond the spot-on conjuring of Jackie’s tone of voice. That moment of horror, panic and resolve is one of the best scenes in the film, and one I really can’t seem to shake.
For so much of Lion, the film follows plucky little Sunny Pawar through the wide expanse of India, on trains and through dirty, crowded streets, living among the homeless, the monks, the cops, the predators and the rare protectors — staring at people eating food. Somehow he makes it through. The scene of him drinking an orange soda is such a relief, the poor little guy. And most will say that is their favorite part of Lion. Indeed, this is among the most stirring and memorable. But I may be among the few who was also taken with Dev Patel. As a tech nerd myself I have spent years, hours, days, minutes, rabbit-holing down with the use of the internet — the greatest resource of information known to mankind. That is not hyperbole. It’s the damned truth. So yeah, say what you will about the Google Earth part, but my god, Have you ever used Google Earth? The places you can go, the things you can see. It’s mind-boggling. But to use it as he did to find a place in India he couldn’t even remember let alone find on a map — using tiny shards of memory to place it and then to find it? To me, this would have been the high point of my life too — not just because I found my mother, but because I succeeded in solving a complicated puzzle. Perhaps it’s just how my tech nerd mind works but I was more invested in that part of the film than any other part, up to and including the tear-jerking ending, which is so unbelievably sweet. So yeah, you would might scoff and call it product placement if you weren’t bedazzled by that level of technology, which I happen to be.
Hell or High Water starts off with a bang. The moment you’re out of the bank and traveling with the two brothers in their muscle car, you know immediately you’re in the hands of a very talented director. That first is like a rush reminiscent of movies like Bullitt or The French Connection. But the part of this film that makes it great is when Ben Foster needs to provide a distraction for his brother. He basically kamikazes his way through it. Loads up a semi-automatic gun and just starts shooting. He drives away the vigilante mob, then taunts them and buys his brother more time. Like very good noir, we know that is the beginning of the end, the winner take all sacrifice for the greater good. It also happens to be the best part of this great western noir.
Not for nothing, but Mel Gibson knows what he’s doing behind the camera. I dare say Hacksaw Ridge is his best film. It’s better than Braveheart, better than The Passion of the Christ. He has a keen sense of the frame, but the action shots especially are remarkable. One might wonder why Hacksaw didn’t draw the Christians out to the box office like Passion did. After all, this is about a Seventh Day Adventist. The reason is that it’s anti-war and somehow anti-war means “liberal” to many out there yonder, so Gibson is sort of stuck between worlds — can’t please the left, can’t please the right. Either which way, from a purely cinematic standpoint there is no denying the power of his directing here. Without the politics involved, surely this would be a Best Picture frontrunner. The moment that sticks with me is Andrew Garfield covering himself with dirt and a corpse so that he appears dead to the enemy. Hacksaw Ridge is about not fighting as much as it is about fighting. It makes the year’s most important statement regarding war. I’ve never been so convinced that we are, by nature, killing machines as I was when watching this film.
No film moved me as much or as profoundly as Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival. I suppose because at the end of the day life is absurd and all of the people in it are equally absurd. We humans have so much to offer yet do so much damage with our arrogance and our stupidity. How much better off we would be if we could just listen, really listen, to not just other people who speak different languages or come from other cultures but animals too — these smart, caring animals we share the planet with that we torture every second of every day for no other reason except that have dominion over them. But the one thing that has meant something to me in my long life has been having and raising a kid. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I think it’s the only thing of value I’ve ever done. But no film has ever expressed what that feels like for me until this one. On top of being effortlessly beautiful — Bradford Young’s cinematography is the best of the year, behind Roger Deakins — it tells a unique story of what it might be to encounter intelligent life. Arrival is a fully satisfying experience top to bottom, in the head and the heart and the soul. There are so many moments that stay with me, from the “death process” scene to the way the heptapods protect the scientists from an explosion. But of course the moments that touched me most were with Amy Adams and her daughter — especially the scene where her daughter says, “I’m unstoppable?” The film asks the question if you would say yes, knowing all of the pain and heartache life has in store for you. Well, my friends, you say yes every time you wake up in the morning and go about your day.Yes to all of it — to the love, to the sex, to the memories, to the happy endings and bad ones. So many around the world do not have that choice but are met with tragedy just opening the door. So take the gifts life offers. Take them, enjoy them, appreciate them while they last because nothing lasts forever. Arrival is the best film I saw this year for extremely personal reasons but I can defend it as a work of great cinema too.
Other things I can’t forget: Jessica Chastain standing up to lobbyists in Miss Sloane, one of the best performances of the year. The never before seen photos of a dead Nicole Simpson in O.J.: Made in America. Dancing and fighting wordlessly in The Fits. Floating witches with wicked smiles on their faces in The Witch. Trump’s America recorded and indicted for all time in 13th. Hugh Grant buying up all of the newspapers so Meryl Streep will not read them in Florence Foster Jenkins. The mother and baby elephants in the Ivory Game, a film I can’t bear to watch but is among the most important of the year. A young island girl’s unabashed embrace of female power and how it connects to nature, power and the sea in Moana.
![2025 Oscars: Can a Late-Breaker Still Win Best Picture? [POLL]](https://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/gladiator-350x250.jpg)
