Stability: 2016 in Review

Other Years in Review.

In a year when the finely woven tapestry of our reality began to unravel at the edges, it's been nice to have a platform to try to make sense of things. That's one way to think of criticism: a quantifying, qualifying act of sense-making. Society makes sense of a chaotic world, art makes sense of society, and criticism makes sense of art.

Although I had fewer total blog posts than last year, I had a greater focus on watching and reviewing new films. That made for less post-to-post variety, but I've gotten into a good rhythm that has allowed me to work on the nuts and bolts of my review style. I have also made a point of tightening up my numerical evaluations. This has been the year with the lowest average review score yet.

Though not nearly as expansive as last year's various series, I still made room for a February retrospective of woman directors, a Captain America/Iron Man series, and a goofy exploration of the Final Destination franchise.

In the future Post-Credit Coda may find the occasion to diversify once more, but for now we have found a comfortable pattern. Here are the year's statistics.

This year Post-Credit Coda featured a total of 56 blog posts, including 54 movie reviews, 30 reviews of 2016 films, 1 top ten list, and 1 editorial.

Of the 56 movie reviews, the average score was a 7.4 out of 10.

No perfect 10s were awarded this year, so the highest score was a 9.5, belonging to six movies: Arrival, Carol, Don't Think Twice, The Lobster, Speed Racer, and The Witch.

The lowest score, a paltry 2.5, belongs to the 1979 Captain America TV movie.

The breakdown is as follows:

Score - Number of Movies with that Score

10 - 0
9/9.5 - 17
8/8.5 - 13
7/7.5 - 10
6/6.5 - 5
5/5.5 - 3
4/4.5 - 2
3/3.5 - 3
2/2.5 - 1
1/1.5 - 0
0/0.5 - 0

The total number of hits for this year: 15,425. The total number of hits for each 2016 post adds up to 3,778.

Of the 56 eligible posts, the average number of hits per post was 67.

The highest number of hits: Finding Dory with 211.

The lowest number of hits: The Hitch-Hiker with 27.

As always, thank you for reading! It's been a solid three years. Keep dreaming, everybody.

JACKIE: Mythmaking in America

Director: Pablo Larraín
Writer: Noah Oppenheim
Cast: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Billy Crudup, John Hurt, Greta Gerwig, John Carroll Lynch, Beth Grant, Caspar Phillipson
Runtime: 100 mins.
2016

"God doesn't care about stories. God cares about the truth."

So says the priest who Natalie Portman's Jackie Kennedy seeks out for counsel and understanding. It is for this reason that Jackie has little use for God as she endeavors to craft her late husband's cultural legacy. Pablo Larraín's version of Jackie is a student of history, and a newcomer into one of the more privileged families in America; she knows that the truth is created by stories, and the stories are crafted by those with power. While the world projects onto Jackie a young, frightened, grieving widow, Jackie sets about using her social position to shape the history books forever to come--all within the context of that youth, that fear, and that grief.

Such is the nature of this shockingly complex and impactful biopic of Jackie Kennedy, a movie that chooses to dig deep into her most crucial weeks rather than draw a lazy sketch of her entire life. The essence of this character is captured more elegantly in this limited timeframe than it could be in an epic overview. This is what sets every moment of Jackie apart from its floppy biopic peers: Larraín fills Jackie with the crackling energy of a thriller because he has an urgent story to tell, as opposed to the typical biopic approach of "important people's lives are important because they're true."

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY - A Newer Hope

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Gareth Edwards
Writers: Chris Weitz, Tony Gilroy, John Knoll, Gary Whitta
Cast: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Alan Tudyk, Donnie Yen, Wen Jiang, Ben Mendelsohn, Forest Whitaker, Riz Ahmed, Mads Mikkelsen, James Earl Jones
Runtime: 133 mins.
2016

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the second of Disney's new era of Star Wars films to be successful despite near fatal flaws. The difference between the two is that every time I reconsider Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it gets worse in my memory, to the point that I regret the relatively high marks I gave it. Rogue One, on the other hand, holds up well to scrutiny even as its messiness becomes clear.

Of course, this is far from a universal perspective. Rogue One has turned out to be one of the more divisive blockbusters in recent memory for a whole slew of reasons. I've been a cheerleader of director Gareth Edwards for a few years now, so it's no surprise that I come out on the positive side of the divide. Edwards himself is divisive, as previously manifested in the 2014 Godzilla reboot. His trademark directorial style involves framing and composition far more grandiose and sophisticated than any of his peers, coupled with character work that is apathetic at worst, functional at best.

Lo and behold, Rogue One is a Gareth Edwards movie through and through, which I consider to be something of a triumph. The movie underwent some serious reshoots, and composer Alexandre Desplat got swapped out for the more crowdpleasing Michael Giacchino; folks took this as a sign of Disney trying to neuter Edwards' approach to the material. Those fears are mostly unfounded, although the reshoots have left their grubby fingerprints all over the film.

STAR WARS: EPISODE I - THE PHANTOM MENACE: George of the Bungle

As Rogue One: A Star Wars Story sweeps the planet, let's dig into the first major Star Wars prequel.

More Star Wars Reviews.

Director: George Lucas
Writer: George Lucas
Cast: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd, Ian McDiarmid, Pernilla August, Ahmed Best, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Frank Oz, Andy Secombe, Lewis Macleod, Ray Park, Keira Knightley
Runtime: 136 mins.
1999

Much like Onan shamefully spilling his semen on the ground after intercourse with his brother's widow (Genesis 38: 6-10), many words of criticism have been frivolously sloshed into the dirt concerning Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace. Arguably the most rabidly anticipated feature film of all time, Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace released itself upon the public on May 19, 1999. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The meteoric impact of disappointment was so significant that we have still not seen the end of its aftershocks. One could even argue that J. J. Abrams' rehabilitation of the franchise was shaped in direct refutation to Lucas's prequel trilogy. For the past seventeen years, folks have not been able to shut up about how bad Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace turned out to be.

What, then, is there left to say?

LA LA LAND: Livin La Vida La La

Director: Damien Chazelle
Writer: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, J. K. Simmons
Runtime: 128 mins.
2016

There's really nothing to the story of La La Land. An aspiring actress named Mia (Emma Stone) and a passionate jazz musician named Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) have several chance encounters, fall in love, and encourage each other to follow their dreams. In fact, if you were to sum up all that this movie has on its mind, it would amount to nothing more than that feverish exclamation: "Follow your dreams!" It's unabashedly boilerplate. That extends to the personalities, too. Supporting characters are one-note at best, no-note at worst, and only show up briefly to present vague obstacles before disappearing from the movie forever. Even our heroes lack depth, content to be ciphers who are only passionate about one thing.

None of that keeps La La Land from being extraordinary. Damien Chazelle, fresh off the intense Whiplash, sets about presenting us with a beast thought to be extinct: a contemporary high profile Hollywood musical not based on any preexisting material. Being entirely illiterate regarding the era and genre Chazelle is homaging, I couldn't begin to tell you about the references to the golden age of movie musicals that Chazelle litters throughout the film. But I do know enough about the era to point out that oftentimes the characters in these films were purposefully blank, written only as vessels for the great movie stars of the age to embody. La La Land follows that pattern, which makes its narrative simplicity entirely forgivable--sometimes all we need is to watch Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone sing, dance, and fall in love.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA: A Death in the Family

Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Writer: Kenneth Lonergan
Cast: Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges, Kyle Chandler, Michelle Williams
Runtime: 137 mins.
2016

Manchester by the Sea is an iceberg movie. Rather than pursue the melodramatic structure of a classical tragedy, wherein misfortune after misfortune get heaped upon an individual until they are crushed by the weight of it, Manchester features characters already anchored by past tragedy. When the not-unexpected death of a family member kicks off the plot, nobody breaks down. The characters handle it with weariness and gravitas as we are given watery glimpses into the mass of sorrow that lurks beneath the surface.

The main character in question is Lee (Casey Affleck), a man. Unlike most movies, it is vitally important that Lee be a man, as Manchester is very much about a particularly masculine flavor of grief. Lee is stoic, silent. The iceberg of masculine emotional self-abnegation paralyzes him, disallows vulnerability, kills new connections before they've even begun. When his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies and leaves Lee to be the caretaker of his son Patrick (Lucas Hedges), Lee must reconcile his self-exile from the world with his newfound responsibility for one of the only people remaining in the world that he cares about.

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS: Emission Admission

Director: Tom Ford
Writer: Tom Ford
Cast: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Armie Hammer, Laura Linney, Isla Fisher, Ellie Bamber

Nocturnal Animals is a bit of a formal experiment and a bit of a revenge thriller, but mostly it's designer mogul Tom Ford's strained attempt at baring his soul. The film begins with an art exhibition that I won't spoil as it is the most delightfully weird part of the entire enterprise. As it turns out, this exhibition was curated by Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), a high profile L.A. artist whose heart isn't in her work anymore, even as she's reached the top of her craft. Part of her malaise is disillusionment with her success, and part of it is being stuck in a loveless power marriage with businessman Hutton Morrow (Armie Hammer). This comes to a head when Susan's ex husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) sends her a transcript of his soon to be published novel that he has dedicated to her. She becomes fixated, both on the story of a family that encounters unthinkable tragedy, and on her memories of her relationship with Edward, perhaps the only genuine thing she's ever had in her life.

It's hard not to read Ford himself into Susan's character, a bourgeoisie artist who emerges from decades of irony and cynicism to try to rediscover empathy, only to find those bridges may have been long burned. At the very least that makes Nocturnal Animals a worthwhile autobiographical nugget for those interested in Tom Ford's life, which I am not. My enthusiasm rather centers around the story-within-a-story structure. In addition to Susan reading the novel, we get to experience it as well in the form of a film version that is intercut with Susan's frame narrative. As the movie progresses, these two worlds are also spliced together with flashbacks featuring the history of Susan and Edward's relationship. To double down on the messaging, Gyllenhaal portrays Susan's ex husband Edward as well as Tony Hastings, the protagonist of his novel, a choice that deliberately connects the threads and gives us a window into Susan's psychology. The transitions between these stories are crisp and playful, featuring a lot of match cuts and pertinent parallelisms. It's an auspicious way to structure a film, and it pays dividends, as each story fractal greatly enhances the others.

Unfortunately, none of the three individual stories are any good on their own. Edward's novel (or perhaps Ford's movie based on Edward's novel?) is a tacky revenge thriller that has little up its sleeve beyond gaudy miserabilism. It's like Cormac McCarthy without the rich language, nuance, themes, or grand meditations on humanity. It's supposed to be Edward's magnum opus, but it mostly plays petty and shallow. The tension works well enough, but that's all there is to it. Nocturnal Animals is universally buoyed by strong performances; this boilerplate revenge narrative would have been far more insufferable without the always brilliant Michael Shannon stealing the show as flintnosed deputy Bobby Andes, who aids the Gyllenhaal character in his quest. Props also go to Aaron Taylor-Johnson for being unrecognizable in his one-dimensional role as piece of human refuse Ray Marcus.

The flashbacks are even worse. They fill out the characters well enough, but their method for doing so is overwrought melodrama. These characters speak to each other by summing themselves up in the most abstract terms. "I'm pragmatic and you're idealistic and therefore our relationship cannot work," a character might proclaim. It's like a screenwriting exercise for essentializing character motivations that was meant to be replaced by real dialogue later.

My favorite of the three timelines is the initial framing narrative, even though about two things happen in its entirety. Or maybe one. One and a half? Much like Shannon in the West Texas story, Amy Adams singlehandedly carries a large swathe of this movie on her back. Also she lives a pretty dope arty life that's fun to see her wander through. Ford's visuals seesaw between inspired and bland throughout, but this world is the most consistently good to look at, perhaps because it's the world Ford knows best. It also contains, for no particular reason, one of the most effective jump scares I've seen all year.

So we have a movie that is greater than the sum of its parts, though the parts are mediocre enough to make that no large compliment. One could say that the mediocrity of the seed narrative is meant to illustrate the thematic exploration of the tension between high class sophisticate art forms and low class exploitation entertainment. There's merit in that, but any way you look at it, the concept of Nocturnal Animals is superior to its actuality. Despite that, it is worth checking out, and at least it has the dignity to begin and end perfectly.

2.5 / 5  BLOBS