My picks for Best Films of 2016 will arrive in two parts, and list 20 productions. This was a good year for ambitious, relatively low-budget entries that dealt with the best and worst sides of human nature. These movies dealt with serious issues in ways that were entertaining, dramatically moving, and better at what they did than any competing medium.
1. Being 17 French master Andre Techine returns. His 1994 classic Wild Reeds about French adolescents set the bar high for movies where teen characters grapple with adult dilemmas. Here two teen boys, Thomas (newcomer Corentin Fila) and Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein), are forced to overcome racial differences and complicated personal histories to forge a bond neither could have imagined.
2. Manchester by the Sea Casey Affleck is moving as a New England janitor drowning in sorrow, a human hand grenade capable of pulling his own pin. Just when his life appears to have bottomed out, Lee gets news that his older brother has died, leaving him in charge of his teenage nephew. Kenneth Lonergan withholds crucial information about the source of Lee's dark mood until late in the film, when everything is painfully and poignantly clear. With a great supporting cast: newcomer Lucas Hedges battles his emotionally unstable uncle like a pro, while Michelle Williams scores as Lee's ex-wife.
3. Spa Night First-time feature director Andrew Ahn puts his good-little-boy protagonist (Joe Seo, in a Sundance Special Grand Jury Award performance) in a family business that gives us a catbird seat's view of a complex immigrant community. Although it had its debut at the Frameline film fest, Spa Night is less a queer drama than a film showing how a tidal wave of new immigrants deals with the chaos of 21st-century America. David takes a job at an old-fashioned Korean male bathhouse, a hangout for middle-aged men seeking a taste of the old country, discovering to his shock that it has somehow morphed into a de facto late-night gay sex club.
4. Front Cover is the latest work from Ray Yeung, whose 2008 Cut-Sleeve Boys was a dress rehearsal for this sophisticated urban comedy. Ryan's editor reneges on a long-promised cover story, and instead assigns him to create a new campaign around an ego-inflated, Chinese-born star. Combines an insider's take on fashionistas with a two-worlds-collide cute-boys implosion.
5. Little Men A revelatory study of two boys, Jake (Theo Taplitz) and Tony (scene-stealing newcomer Michael Barbieri), growing up fast under the pressure of bad blood between their families. The boys become fast friends and possibly more. Introvert Jake is content to spend his days drawing, while Tony sweeps around the hood like a pint-sized tornado. Ira Sachs' film examines those moments in adolescence when kids surrender a child's awe of their parents' infallibility and become resigned to their family's flaws and not-so-secret sins.
6. Cafe Society In Woody Allen's literate and laugh-out-loud latest, Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) is a young go-getter seeking to learn the science of the care and feeding of Hollywood egos from his world-weary talent-agent uncle (Steve Carell). He falls in love with a young starlet (Kristen Stewart) and becomes disillusioned with the picture business. Set in the 1930s, first decade of the sound era when ruthless men called the shots, Allen's film benefits from his life-long aversion to life on the Left Coast. Now 80, Allen gives his surrogate Eisenberg free reign to bring his personal style and comic chops to the role.
7. From Afar In Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas' dark tale, middle-aged denture-maker Armando (Alfredo Castro) pays to dominate bad boys like Elder (humpy newcomer Luis Silva), a brutal Caracas street thug. In a dance macabre series of brutal encounters, thug and denture-maker refuse to let each other or us glimpse their true feelings and needs, in a society brutalized and betrayed by politics from both left and right.
8. Jackie The new bio-pic from director Pablo Larrain seduces you into imagining what it must have been like for first lady Jacqueline Kennedy when the sound of three bullets shattered her regal world forever. The creators of this smart, sensitive, beautifully lensed film don't attempt to cover its subject's spectacular life-arc, instead zeroing in on the crucial hours of the Dallas motorcade and assassination.
9. The Good Wife Over seven years, series creators Robert and Michelle King produced an amazingly inclusive look at the legal profession as seen from the vantage point of the wife of a disgraced politician. When her Illinois State Attorney hubby is jailed in a sex scandal, Alicia Florrick (the sublime Julianna Margulies) supports herself and two kids in the hyper-competitive world of a big Chicago law firm. The series was diligent with queer issues, including a bisexual investigator and Alicia's gay teacher brother.
10. Looking In the final 90-minute episode of HBO's San Francisco-set gay male series, openly queer actor Jonathan Groff returns to town for a reunion with his old friends and lovers. Playing like a movie with great shots of the Castro, this series finale creates a great blueprint for future gay TV.
(Next week: Best films 11-20.)