The 10 Best Movies Of The Summer
“A Bigger Splash” [full review]
Luca Guadagnino’s gorgeously sleazy chamber piece was one of the most enjoyable specialist releases all year — it felt like a sharp-teethed beach read of real beauty, and with four cherishable performances from Dakota Johnson, Matthias Schoenaerts, Tilda Swinton and, especially, Ralph Fiennes.
“Captain America: Civil War” [full review]
Marvel fatigue was neatly headed off with the year’s best blockbuster, which applied a deceptively rigorous script to a massive cast, went dark but with a light tone, and featured some cracking action sequences thanks to the Russo Brothers and their team. For all of the insidious influence the success of the MCU has had, if the movies keep being as good as this, they can carry on as long as they like.
“Kubo And The Two Strings” [full review]
Laika’s films have always been beautiful, and usually engaging, but they haven’t always been entirely satisfying — “ParaNorman” and “The Boxtrolls” didn’t completely work. But in “Kubo And the Two Strings,” the stop-motion company delivered their best film to date, a weird, wonderful adventure that feels a little like a miracle.
“Hell Or High Water” [full review]
We wrote about it above, but it’s worth dwelling again on how good David Mackenzie’s modern Western is. It might not be burningly original, but the tale of two bank robbing brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) and the sheriff out to bring them in (Jeff Bridges) was soulful, beautifully shot and scored, and dryly funny.
“The Lobster” [full review]
We’ve been singing about the greatness of Yorgos Lanthimos’ absurdist satire for over a year now, but it was still gratifying to see it connect so well once it finally got a U.S. release. Featuring career-best work from Colin Farrell, some of the best dancing of the year, and the rare ambiguous ending that feels truly earned, it’s maybe the best movie of the year, not just the summer.
“Love & Friendship” [full review]
How great is it to see one of the biggest indie hits of the year come from Whit Stillman? “Love & Friendship” saw the perfect match of material and maker as Stillman delivered probably the funniest Jane Austen adaptation ever, one elevated by stellar performances by Kate Beckinsale and breakout scene-stealer Tom Bennett.
“Pete’s Dragon” [full review]
It might not have busted the blocks of some of the other Disney remakes, but we’re delighted that “Pete’s Dragon” exists. A hugely impressive studio debut from “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” director David Lowery, it feels like a lost kids classic that you wept buckets over as a kid, at once old-fashioned and pleasingly contemporary. It’ll age like a fine wine.
“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” [full review]
The first movie from the “Lonely Island” crew is transparently trying to be “This Is Spinal Tap” for the 21st century, but it’s pretty impressive how close they get to pulling that off. Stuffed with unusually effective cameos but anchored by a great lead turn from Andy Samberg, not everything it tries works, but a vast majority of it does. It flopped on release, but expect it to live on like “Anchorman,” “Zoolander” or “MacGruber” on home video.
“The Wailing” [full review]
A fantastic supernatural thriller that makes up in invention and thrills what it lacks in strict narrative logic, “The Wailing” is both recognizably a film from the director of “The Chaser” and “The Yellow Sea” (both excellent) and a progression. With a dark humor that brings a self-aware zaniness to the sensory-overload story of reanimated corpses, shamans, ghosts, demons, occultist rituals, and so on, it’s further proof that Korea might be producing the most exciting cinema in the world.
“Weiner” [full review]
Even before recent events gave it a real-world coda, “Weiner” was one of the most gripping movies of the year, despite being entirely non-fictional. Tracking the abortive mayoral campaign of the charismatic, utterly self-destructive New York politician/not-able-to-keep-it-in-his-pants-er Anthony Weiner, the film was a classic American portrayal of hubris, ego and waste, while also being a very human picture of a marriage.
The 5 Worst Movies Of The Summer
“Alice Through The Looking Glass”[full review]
Maybe you could argue that James Bobin’s sequel to Tim Burton’s 2010 “Alice In Wonderland” revamp is better than its predecessor. It certainly isn’t tangibly worse. But it would have been very hard for it to be worse, given how awful the original was, and this keeps most of the same problems — the gaudiness, the stiffness, the dreadful scripting — while also carrying a crushing sense of being totally unnecessary.
“Ben Hur” [full review]
Speaking of unnecessary: the 2016 edition of “Ben Hur.” Perhaps there’s an argument to be made that the Bible classic did deserve a remake in some kind, but Timur Bekmambetov brought few ideas to the table beyond ‘OMG chariot race but with CGI.’ Ugly, boring and propped up on the glowing star power of the guy who had a mask on his face in “Boardwalk Empire,” it couldn’t even bring in the Christian audience, and they went to see “Heaven Is For Real.”
“Sea Of Trees” [full review]
It might seem a bit unfair to include Gus Van Sant’s “Sea Of Trees” here, given that the much-derided Matthew McConaughey-starring drama only opened at the end of summer, only in two theaters, and only made $2000. But along with about 180 paying members of the public, we have seen the thing, and it’s still a thunderingly stupid, cheap, crass and manipulative movie that’s getting exactly the fate that it deserves.
“Suicide Squad” [full review]
Not so much a movie as a marketing campaign, fifteen opening scenes penned by different writers and then a bad action sequence lasting for an hour, “Suicide Squad” pulled off the remarkable feat of making us wish we were watching a Zack Snyder film. Well, maybe not, but at least “Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice” felt like somebody’s coherent vision: here, a committee seemed entirely responsible, and the committee, it turns out, are very bad at making movies.
“X-Men: Apocalypse” [full review]
After the decent “Days Of Future Past,” we were confident enough that Bryan Singer knew what he was doing when it came to “X-Men” movies. But then came “Apocalypse,” which did almost everything wrong that its predecessor did right, wasting its impressive cast (Oscar Isaac’s buried over prosthetics and still looks happier to be there than almost anyone else), engaging in destruction porn three years after everyone got sick of it, and making some truly dunder-headed storytelling decisions.
