“Louder Than Bombs”
On the one hand, we’re sort of baffled that “Louder Than Bombs” wasn’t a bigger deal. It headlined Jesse Eisenberg, an unlikely A-lister but an A-lister nonetheless; it featured Isabelle Huppert in The Year Of Isabelle Huppert; it marked the English-language debut of Norwegian helmer Joachim Trier; and it was really, really, really good. But on the other hand, we kind of get it: This was an unusual, poetic, almost novelistic film with a rhythm entirely of its own, and so it’s sort of understandable, if disappointing, that so many critics, and audience members, slept on it. It’s a film about three men — father Gabriel Byrne, eldest son and recent dad Eisenberg, and difficult teen son Devin Druid — in a spiral of mourning after losing their wife/mother, a celebrated war photographer who may or may not have killed herself. And it’s almost deliberately unsatisfying by its nature — it’s a film about how nebulous memory is, how difficult communication can be, how intangible our thoughts of a loved one can be after they pass. But in its unruliness, its refusal to conform, its lack of easy answers, it becomes something that haunts you long after it wraps up.
“The Love Witch”
If you’d asked us at the beginning of 2016 which genres and eras might be most worthy of a kind of postmodern, satirical reinvention, “1960s/70s technicolor occult romantic melodrama” might not have sprung to mind. But Anna Biller‘s “The Love Witch,” featuring a remarkably period-accurate performance from Samantha Robinson, is one of those rare films that makes the case for its necessity as you watch it: Recreated in loving homage to films as mainstream as the James Stewart/Kim Novak vehicle “Bell Book And Candle” and as cult-y as exploitation title “The Velvet Vampire,” it delivers an interesting prism through which to view modern gender relations. The pastiche is impeccable, but it has loftier ambitions, too, that give “The Love Witch” more resonance than a straightforward spoof. And if it ultimately stops just short of providing the definitive word on the destructiveness of a notion of female desire that is shaped entirely by men, it can also be argued that this is part of its charm — this is a film that’s much more about the immaculately well-dressed journey than the destination, much less about the effects of the love spell than the act of incantation.
“Miss Stevens”
A kind, small film that loves its characters, and was at one time slated to be the directorial debut of Ellen Page with Anna Faris in the lead role, it’s easy to see that perhaps that incarnation of writer-director Julia Hart‘s “Miss Stevens” would have made a slightly bigger splash. But that’s the unfairness of an industry powered by name recognition: Hart’s film, especially with a terrific performance from Lily Rabe as the titular teacher, is all the more solid for being unshowy, modest and sincere. It follows Rachel (Rabe), a high-school English teacher who chaperones three of her students to a weekend-long drama competition, and for whom the line between taking a compassionate interest in her charges and pursuing an inappropriate relationship with them becomes a little blurry. It’s not the most dramatic of stories and there are a couple of on-the-nose moments en route to the finale, but for the most part the pleasure of “Miss Stevens” is in the uniformly excellent performances (from the young cast as well) and the way it sets up cliched situations and characters only to gently subvert them while never feeling less than generous in spirit.
“Other People”
It is completely criminal that this wasn’t the indie hit of the year: a poignant, laugh-out-loud funny, heartstring-tugging depiction of illness, loss and grief that ultimately celebrates the beauty of life and its divine absurdities. Featuring the best performance Jesse Plemons has given in his uniformly excellent career, balanced against the exquisite Molly Shannon, it sees “SNL” co-head writer Chris Kelly mining his personal experiences with his mother’s death. There are awkward, devastating moments that Kelly renders delicately, but with pathos and wit: ill-timed answering machine messages, canine improprieties, and drunken late-night meltdowns in the the grocery store searching for a laxative. He even manages to take his lead character, David (Plemons) on a Kafkaesque journey with Train’s “Drops of Jupiter,” a moment that turns the nauseating earworm into a celebratory anthem. There might have been another indie smash about grief that sucked up a lot of the attention (*cough* rhymes with “Banchester by the Bee”), but Kelly’s debut hits the sweet spot of funny/sad too, and plus, it actually nails the funny part — helped in part by excellent supporting performances from national treasure John Early, Bradley Whitford, Maude Apatow, and J.J. Totah, alongside comedy legends Paula Pell, Matt Walsh and Kerri Kenney.
“They Look Like People”
Low-budget horror thrillers can often go horribly awry when they try to work outside their means. But as Perry Blackshear’s “They Look Like People” proves — alongside other underseen entries “Always Shine” and “The Eyes Of My Mother” — you don’t need much more than a strong concept, good performances, and a willingness to get creative with form to elicit truly creepy tension. Having won a Special Jury Prize at Slamdance 2015, this neurological/mental illness friendship psycho-thriller came and went when it was released this year, but the film is an austere exercise in subjective realities, the voices in your head, and the monsters within that are scarier than any external threat. With an expert use of surreal and hallucinatory sound manipulation, Blackshear depicts the mental unraveling of Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews), trying desperately to reconcile his tenuous grasp on reality with the world around him. He’s reconnected with an old pal in New York, Christian (Evan Dumouchel), who’s got his own set of quotidian problems, and Andrews does a wonderful job conveying Wyatt’s Herculean efforts to seem “normal.” For such a dark and scary story about a faltering sense of reality, “They Look Like People” contains a heartening message about friendship and trust.