These are the 2016 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best in that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Rankings & Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. You can see my live-tweeting of the ceremony here. And the Endy goes to. . .
Once Upon a Time in China II (Tsui Hark, 1992)
“When we are young, we learn the myths. And we interpret them as we get older. After all, we see they are just myths.” – Lu Haodong
“Gods are useless. You must rely on yourself.” – Wong Fei-hung
“Vigorous when facing the beatings of ten thousand heavy waves
Ardent just like the rays of the red sun
Having courage like forged iron and bones as hard as refined steel
Having lofty aspirations and excellent foresight
I worked extremely hard, aspiring to be a strong and courageous man
In order to become a hero, One should strive to become stronger everyday
An ardent man shines brighter than the sun
Allowing the sky and sea to amass energy for me
To split heaven and part the earth, to fight for my aspirations
Watching the stature and grandure of jade-coloured waves
at the same time watching the vast jade-coloured sky, let our noble spirit soar
I am a man and I must strive to strengthen myself.
Walking in firm steps and standing upright let us all aspire to be a pillar of the society, and to be a hero
Using our hundredfold warmth, to bring forth a thousandfold brilliance
Be a hero
Being ardent and with strong courage
Shine brighter than the sun” – “A Man Should Strengthen Himself”
In some quarters seen as superior to the first film, perhaps because of its tighter focus (only a few main characters, including a recognizable to the West historical figure in Sun Yat-sen), specific historical moment (set in September 1895 at the beginning of the Boxer Rebellion, as opposed to the vague late 19th century of the first film), and the presence of Donnie Yen (his second attempt at stardom, after supporting roles in a handful of films in the late 80s). I appreciate the grander sprawl of the first film, however.
Once Upon a Time in China (Tsui Hark, 1991)
Tsui Hark is the John Ford of Chinese cinema, and Once Upon a Time in China is his Stagecoach. Not only does it redefine a genre on the cusp of its rebirth (in this case the period martial arts film, which had lain dormant through the late 80s much as the Western had been relegated to cheap serials through the 1930s), but it expresses a total historical vision entirely through archetypes, which are by turns deepened and confounded. Much has been made of the film’s nationalism, an apparent sharp turn from the more scathing works of Tsui’s New Wave films, but like Ford Tsui’s patriotism is more complex than it appears on the surface.
A Top 50 Films of 2016, More or Less
As I did last year and the year before, I’m making a Best of the Year list following the conventional system for what counts as a 2016 film, mainly the nonsensical and ahistorical system that decrees that critics may only consider movies to have existed once they have played for a week in a commercial venue in New York City, or, in a new twist this year, on a television or streaming service in New York. This is the system that claims my favorite film of 2013 (La última película), which played for a week in Seattle in 2014, can only be considered a 2015 film because that is when it finally got a New York release, although it played Los Angeles for the first time in 2016. Not to mention the absurdity that my favorite film from 1991, Isao Takahata’s Only Yesterday, qualifies for this list, along with a 30 year old Edward Yang movie and an Apichatpong Weerasethakul movie I saw in Vancouver in 2012. But alas, we all must bow to convention, however silly, every once in awhile.
My 2016 list of course will never be finalized, as there’s no such thing as a final list here at The End: there are always more new movies to discover and old movies to reevaluate. But in a couple of weeks I’ll have the nominations up for the 2016 Endy Awards, with the winners to be announced during the Academy Awards ceremony. This list is a snapshot of my favorites of 2016 as they stand now, on the last day of the year.
1. Only Yesterday (Isao Takahata)
2. Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)
3. Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman)
4. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
5. Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke)
6. Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
7. Lemonade (Beyoncé Knowles & Kahlil Joseph)
8. Things to Come Mia Hansen-Løve)
9. SPL 2: A Time for Consequences (Soi Cheang)
10. Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
11. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
12. Sully (Clint Eastwood)
13. Sunset Song (Terence Davies)
14. The Love Witch (Anna Biller)
15. The Terrorizers (Edward Yang)
16. Three (Johnnie To)
17. Kaili Blues (Bi Gan)
18. Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sangsoo)
19. Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater)
20. The Mermaid (Stephen Chow)
21. Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (Karan Johar)
22. The Age of Shadows (Kim Ji-woon)
23. Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick)
24. The Thoughts that Once We Had (Thom Andersen)
25. Mekong Hotel (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
26. Hail, Caesar! (The Coen Brothers)
27. Crosscurrent (Yang Chao)
28. The Edge of Seventeen (Kelly Fremon Craig)
29. I Am Not Madame Bovary (Feng Xiaogang)
30. The Shallows (Jaume Collet-Serra)
31. Tower (Keith Maitland)
32. Rogue One (Gareth Edwards)
33. Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson)
34. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
35. Train to Busan (Yeon Sangho)
36. OJ: Made in America (Ezra Edelman)
37. De Palma (Noah Baumbach & Jake Paltrow)
38. Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)
39. Short Stay (Ted Fendt)
40. Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
41. The Witch (Robert Eggers)
42. My Beloved Bodyguard (Sammo Hung)
43. A Train Arrives at the Station (Thom Andersen)
44. The Wasted Times (Cheng Er)
45. One Night Only (Matt Wu)
46. Indefinite Pitch (James Kienitz Wilkins)
47. SoulMate (Derek Tsang)
48. Call of Heroes (Benny Chan)
49. Garfunkel and Oates: Trying to Be Special (Riki Lindhome & Jeremy Konner)
50. La La Land (Damien Chazelle)
Books of 2016
2016 was the first time since I started writing about movies on the internet that I averaged less than one film watched per day, with somewhere around 320 movies seen over the course of the year. Some of that is schedule-related: my kids are at such an age that watching a single movie in one sitting is difficult, let alone the two or three per day I could squeeze in when they were less ambulatory. But some of that is also a shifting of priorities: I read (and finished) more books this year than I had in all my five plus years of parenthood put together. And since this is the end of the year, and since I love to make lists, here is a ranked list of all the books I read (and finished) in 2016:
1. Where I Was From – Joan Didion
2. Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion
3. A Death in the Family – James Agee
4. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
5. Annals of the Former World – John McPhee
6. The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin
7. The Proud Tower – Barbara Tuchman
8. Harmonium – Wallace Stevens
9. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
10. Lyrical Ballads – William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge
11. The White Album – Joan Didion
12. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
13. The Souls of Black Folk – WEB DuBois
14. Eminent Victorians – Lytton Strachey
15. A Collection of Essays – George Orwell
16. Meditations in an Emergency – Frank O’Hara
17. Lady Susan – Jane Austen
18. Salvador – Joan Didion
19. Justine – Lawrence Durrell
20. Violet Energy Ingots – Hoa Nguyen
21. Kora in Hell : Improvisations – William Carlos Williams
22. 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed – Eric Cline
23. Love & Friendship – Whit Stillman
24. The Silk Roads – Peter Frankopan
25. A Galaxy Not So Far Away – Glenn Kenny, et al
The Best Older Movies I Saw in 2016
An annual tradition here at The End, this is a look at my favorite film discoveries of the year, any movie more than a few years old that I saw for the first time in 2016. Previous years include: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, and 2006. I watched 320 or so movies in 2016, less than one third of which qualified for this list. Here are 60 that I liked.
1. Mahjong (Edward Yang, 1996)
2. Love Exposure (Sion Sono, 2008)
3. Canyon Passage (Jacques Tourneur, 1946)
4. The Yakuza Papers (Kinji Fukasaku, 1973-74)
5. Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies, 1988)
6. School on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1988)
7. Viva Erotica (Derek Yee & Law Ch-leung, 1996)
8. Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)
9. Isn’t Life Wonderful (DW Griffith, 1924)
10. La bête humaine (Jean Renoir, 1938)
11. The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies, 1992)
12. Prospero’s Books (Peter Greenaway, 1991)
13. Duelle (Jacques Rivette, 1976)
14. Phantoms of Nabua (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2009)
15. Sonatine (Takeshi Kitano, 1993)
16. The Big Road (Sun Yu, 1935)
17. Viola (Matías Piñeiro, 2012)
18. Suicide Club (Sion Sono, 2001)
19. Persuasion (Roger Michell, 1995)
20. Swamp Water (Jean Renoir, 1941)
21. Noroît (Jacques Rivette, 1976)
22. The God of Cookery (Stephen Chow, 1996)
23. Violent Cop (Takeshi Kitano, 1989)
24. Dirty Gertie from Harlem USA (Spencer Williams, 1946)
25. Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)
26. The Unchanging Sea (DW Griffith, 1910)
27. Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)
28. La chienne (Jean Renoir, 1931)
29. Burning Paradise in Hell (Ringo Lam, 1994)
30. Hearts of the World (DW Griffith, 1918)
31. Medicine for Melancholy (Barry Jenkins, 2008)
32. The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir, 1952)
33. Beyond Hypothermia (Patrick Leung, 1996)
34. Under the Cherry Moon (Prince, 1986)
35. The Bitter Stems (Fernando Ayala, 1956)
36. The Stunt Woman (Ann Hui, 1996)
37. The Anthem (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)
38. The Razor’s Edge (Edmund Goulding, 1946)
39. So Dark the Night (Joseph H. Lewis, 1946)
40. Ebola Syndrome (Herman Yau, 1996)
41. Viva (Anna Biller, 2007)
42. Youth of the Beast (Seijun Suzuki, 1963)
43. Looking for Mr. Perfect (Ringo Lam, 2003)
44. Gates of the Night (Marcel Carné, 1946)
45. Stage Door (Shu Kei, 1996)
46. Wishful Drinking (Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato, 2010)
47. Desk Set (Walter Lang, 1957)
48. Bastards (Claire Denis, 2013)
49. Death Duel (Chor Yuen, 1977)
50. A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2009)
51. Big Bullet (Benny Chan, 1996)
52. The Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur, 1950)
53. Young and Dangerous 3 (Andrew Lau, 1996)
54. The Sorrows of Satan (DW Griffith, 1926)
55. The Black Pirate (Albert Parker, 1926)
56. Shanghai Grand (Poon Man-kit, 1996)
57. Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2000)
58. Mismatched Couples (Yuen Woo-ping, 1985)
59. The Fun, The Luck and The Tycoon (Johnnie To, 1990)
60. Prison on Fire II (Ringo Lam, 1991)
This Week in Rankings
We’re coming down to the end of 2016 (at last!) and so here’s one last rankings update before all the lists and whatnot at the end of December. Since my last update I’ve written about I am Not Madame Bovary and Old Stone at Seattle Screen Scene and Sky on Fire at MUBI. I also appeared on the Snakes and Funerals podcast talking about Jean Renoir’s American Films.
These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.
La chienne (Jean Renoir) – 10, 1931
La bête humaine (Jean Renoir) – 4, 1938
Swamp Water (Jean Renoir) – 12, 1941
The Southerner (Jean Renoir) – 6, 1945
The Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir) – 9, 1947
The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir) – 9, 1952
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen (Donald Brittain & Don Owen) – 31, 1965
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Bill Melendez) – 4, 1966
Death Duel (Chor Yuen) – 17, 1977
City on Fire (Ringo Lam) – 4, 1987
School on Fire (Ringo Lam) – 3, 1988
Songs from the Life of Leonard Cohen (Bob Portway) – 41, 1988
Wild Search (Ringo Lam) – 46, 1989
Prison on Fire II (Ringo Lam) – 24, 1991
Touch and Go (Ringo Lam) – 58, 1991
Burning Paradise in Hell (Ringo Lam) – 24, 1994
The Adventurers (Ringo Lam) – 89, 1995
The Suspect (Ringo Lam) – 59, 1998
The Victim (Ringo Lam) – 53, 1999
Looking for Mr. Perfect (Ringo Lam) – 26, 2003
Leonard Cohen: Under Review: 1934-1977 – 44, 2006
Rat Film (Theo Anthony) – 24, 2016
The Shallows (Jaume Collet-Serra) – 29, 2016
I am Not Madame Bovary (Feng Xiaogang) – 33, 2016
Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt) – 34, 2016
Call of Heroes (Benny Chan) – 46, 2016
La La Land (Damien Chazelle) – 53, 2016
Old Stone (Johnny Ma) – 58, 2016
The Handmaiden (Park Chanwook) – 64, 2016
Arrival (Denis Villeneuve) – 68, 2016
Hamilton’s America (Alex Horwitz) – 73, 2016
Sky on Fire (Ringo Lam) – 83, 2016
Ghostbusters (Paul Feig) – 84, 2016
Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson) – 89, 2016
Happy Thanksgiving
HONG KONG – NOVEMBER 30: Actor Simon Yam from China attends the 2012 Mnet Asian Music Awards Red Carpet on November 30, 2012 in Hong Kong, Hong Kong. (Photo by Han Myung-Gu/WireImage)
This Week in Rankings
This is a quick post-festival update of my year-by-year rankings. My coverage of the 2016 Vancouver International Film Festival is Indexed here. All my VIFF reviews are at Seattle Screen Scene, along with a review of Operation Mekong.
Viva (Anna Biller) – 25, 2007
Medicine for Melancholy (Barry Jenkins) – 20, 2008
Paterson (Jim Jarmusch) – 2, 2016
Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade) – 3, 2016
Elle (Paul Verhoeven) – 5, 2016
A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies) – 7, 2016
The Hedonists (Jia Zhangke) – 8, 2016
Crosscurrent (Yang Chao) – 9, 2016
Hermia & Helena (Matías Piñeiro) – 10, 2016
Last Poems Trilogy (Sofia Bohdanowicz) – 11, 2016
Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve) – 13, 2016
HyperNormalzation (Adam Curtis) – 14, 2016
Yellowing (Chan Tze-woon) – 17, 2016
Pop Song (Matthew Taylor Blais) – 19, 2016
After the Storm (Kore-eda Hirokazu) – 24, 2016
Never Eat Alone (Sofia Bohdanowicz) – 25, 2016
Nine Behind (Sophy Romvari) – 26, 2016
The Movieland Movie (Zachary KerrHolden) – 27, 2016
One Day in Our Lives of. . . (Stanley Kwan) – 28, 2016
Nutag – Homeland (Alisi Telengut) – 29, 2016
The Love Witch (Anna Biller) – 30, 2016
The Ornithologist (João Pedro Rodrigues) – 32, 2016
Lifeline (Shiota Akihiko) – 33, 2016
Short Stay (Ted Fendt) – 36, 2016
Two (Christopher Spencer-Lowe) – 39, 2016
Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas) – 41, 2016
Those Who Remains (Mathieu Vachon) – 44, 2016
Kékszakállú (Gastón Solnicki) – 45, 2016
The Unknown Girl (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne) – 46, 2016
The Promise (Shiota Akihiko) – 47, 2016
The Intestine (Lev Lewis) – 48, 2016
Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho) – 49, 2016
Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids (Jonathan Demme) – 50, 2016
Indefinite Pitch (James N. Kienitz Wilkins) – 51, 2016
I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach) – 54, 2016
Suffering of Ninko (Norihiro Niwatsukino) – 55, 2016
The Human Surge (Eduardo Williams) – 56, 2016
Tales of Two Who Dreamt (Nicolás Pereda & Andrea Bussmann) – 57, 2016
Mamie (Janice Nadeau) – 60, 2016
Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait (Khyentse Norbu) – 61, 2016
Operation Mekong (Dante Lam) – 64, 2016
The Road to Mandalay (Midi Z) – 65, 2016
Maudite Poutine (Karl Lemieux) – 66, 2016
Neruda (Pablo Larraín) – 67, 2016
Phantom Detective (Jo Sunghee) – 68, 2016
Harmonium (Kôji Fukada) – 69, 2016
Somewhere in Kamakura (Hideo Nakata) – 72, 2016
Fish (Heather Young) – 73, 2016
Maliglutit (Zacharias Kunuk) – 74, 2016
Dama Wang Who Lives on Happiness Avenue (Alec Su) – 80, 2016
The Cameraman (Connor Gaston) – 81, 2016
Srorrim (Wayne Wapeemuka) – 83, 2016
