So many lists and awards announcements this week you'd think it was... oh, yes, it is December. Sight and Sound enter the fray now with their top 20 which is a mix of expected auteur worship titles, festival films that may or may not ever actually open. It's also very now. The oldest title here is the great German continuous shot film Victoria (which premiered at festivals last year -- we nominated it for cinematography in 2015) but almost everything else just opened or hasn't opened yet! It's to be expected but also deeply frustrating that distributors never really catch up to film buzz...
It's a mix of one 2015 title (Victoria), a lot of right-now film releases (if you like in NY or LA), handful of 2017 pictures (Personal Shopper comes to the US in March and who knows when we'll ever get Nocturama, Sieranevada, or The Death of Louis XIV) and films that will feel like 2017 offerings since they don't start platforming until after Christmas (I Daniel Blake, Paterson, Toni Erdmann, and Julieta.)
SIGHT & SOUND LIST
1. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
2. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
3. Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
4. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
5. American Honey (Andrea Arnold)
6. I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach)
7. Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)
8. Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve)
9. Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)
10. The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra)
11. [TIE] Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)
Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu)
13. [TIE] Fire At Sea (Gianfranco Rosi)
Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello)
Julieta (Pedro Almodóvar)
16 [TIE] La La Land (Damien Chazelle)
Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson)
18 Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman)
19.[TIE] Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
Victoria (Sebastian Schipper)
163 critics spoke… and the runaway winner of our Best Films of 2016 poll is a German comedy https://t.co/JHZYxofoqb pic.twitter.com/PI5MCDbejn
— Sight & Sound (@SightSoundmag) December 2, 2016
Some interesting films that just barely missed the list: Embrace of the Serpent (another 2015 title that only really got going in 2016... like some of these titles with 2016 to 2017), Lemonade and OJ: Made in America (both made for TV but nobody notices these differences anymore), The Ornithologist, and Neruda.
TWO QUESTIONS
Which of these titles are you most excited to eventually get around to seeing?
Which of these films critical response is most bewildering to you?