2016 in Film

Of all the many absences we noted as 2016 drew to a close, there’s one that still hits hard every day. Scene editor Jim Ridley, who died in April, was a movie lover and a moviegoer, and trying to assemble anything close to a comprehensive survey about film without him ... well, it’s daunting. But the idea is to nurture every one of the myriad ways Jim enriched the local, national and global film community and let them be a welcoming example to everybody who digs the visual arts.

As Scene contributor and film poll participant Ron Wynn put it:

The loss of Jim Ridley this year was the biggest cinematic blow/impact/loss of all. We lost someone who truly loved the art form and contributed enormously to its growth and positive direction, despite not being a filmmaker or actor. Even more importantly, he was a phenomenal person, a truly kind and generous soul, with a spirit many claim to have and so few actually possess, including a lot of pious religious types. For me, going to films will never quite be the same, especially in Nashville and/or at the Belcourt.

So in our first year without Jim, the Nashville Scene film poll has expanded its reach and extended its arms. We’ve got contributors present and past, established critics from throughout the city and all across North America — as well as several interesting up-and-coming voices in the field, some festival programmers, podcasters, visual artists and filmmakers, a beloved horror host, cinephiles of every stripe, educators and performers. All have one thing in common: informed and interesting taste in film.

So have a look around. We’ve got a list of 2016’s top films, as well as a small selection of the responses to this year’s poll questions.

2016 was a tumultuous year on a lot of fronts. What’s the film that is most emblematic of this year for you?

Since this is the Scene, I’ll go with the film that made me miss Jim Ridley the most — De Palma. On two fronts: first, because Jim was a huge De Palma booster, who among other things, had the underrated Femme Fatale as his No. 1 film of that year. Jim’s review of De Palma would have been the first thing I would have read about it. Second, because the film itself embodied Jim personally — it’s nothing but a sparkling conversation about films with a man who has a lot to say, and says it well, with wit, with charity, without agenda or meanness. When Jim died, the Scene’s pages and site as well as film-discussion forums overflowed with people describing how Jim touched them personally, by conversing with them as equals and inspiring them in their loves (which were often his, too). De Palma is a bit more peppery than Jim would usually be, but Jim would be the first to say it takes all kinds. RIP, bud. —Victor Morton

Zootopia — no joke. What can I say, I’m a sucker for racially charged Disney fare. Honestly, though, I hope every kid in America is watching this on repeat and learning about the misconceptions of racial and cultural bias instead of watching literally anything the president-elect is saying or doing. —Roxanne Benjamin

For me, the film that best represented 2016 on both a personal and an expanded scale is Bonello’s Nocturama. What else could possibly be in its place? No film has better captured a moment in time, the youthful fury and confusion that leads to extremist reaction, perhaps without coherent motivation. And then, in the end, the state’s destruction of their bodies, of anyone who dares to challenge their insistence on compliance. Nocturama is 2016’s most radical film: a call to arms, and a call for leftist unification. —Jacob Dornan

Nuts! — the story of a loudmouth millionaire snake-oil salesman who misuses his media empire to run for office and scam America. Sound familiar? —Tony Youngblood

Birth of a Nation. A prime example of a worthy film that filled a tremendous historical void and whose overall impact, as well as its possible Oscar viability, was compromised and undone due to its principal figure being ensnarled in another equally important cultural and social controversy: allegations of sexual misconduct and its consequences. —Ron Wynn

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. —Sean Burns

Probably Lemonade. “Is it really a film though?” “So many people worked on it, how can we say it’s Beyoncé’s vision?” “It’s just a music video, so really it’s a promotional object.” “A bunch of it is stolen from Julie Dash and Khalik Allah.” “Did it actually screen in theaters? Then can it be eligible for polls?” In other words, how many different ways can we come up with to move the goalposts, allowing us to ignore, belittle or patronize a work of defiant intelligence by an African-American woman artist who has clearly gotten too uppity for the white establishment. Rock and country? History, poetry and politics? Nuh-uh, go back home and straighten your halo, Bey. —Michael Sicinski

Captain Fantastic — for both its matter-of-fact condemnation of the greed that is consuming the world like a disease, and for its hopeful vision that there are still small pockets of beautiful sanity and grace. —Jonathan Roche

Rogue One — it was not my favorite film of 2016, but it was the most 2016 film of 2016. A sophisticated and visually beautiful piece on the nature of collaboration and resistance. As a dapper white nationalist rides the imperial wave to galactic domination, the film makes unabashedly clear what was always implied in the original films: that the Galactic Empire of the Star Wars universe is a racist, white supremacist faction, opposed by a desperate rainbow coalition startled and traumatized by the threat to a once-thriving pluralism. While the empire is consolidating power, and seems unstoppable, the film insists that rebellion against such a regime will be costly and hard-fought, but is possible and necessary. In that, after the election of Donald Trump and his cynical plutocrats and ardent neo-Nazi lieutenants, it is a shockingly timely film. Severe as it was, Rogue One was the movie I needed at the end of 2016: Hope is sometimes just something you press into someone else’s hand. —Anthony Oliveira

Moonlight. There are going to be millions of boys and men walking around acting like third-act Chiron, and their model will be Donald Trump, not gangsta rappers. —Steve Erickson

Using the classic folktale assemblage as its structuring conceit, Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights distills and refracts a tumultuous 12-month period in recent Portuguese history into a six-hour epic of reportage, documentary and tall tale. In so doing, Gomes crafts an expansive universe that not only reflects but also helps us better understand our world today (maybe even Trump’s America). —Scott Manzler

The obvious choice is High Rise, the deliberate, spooky, utterly dialectic political polemic about how we can’t have nice things. It’s gorgeous in ruin and decay, with characters in retro-future garb dropping wonderfully blunt lines about how everything is doomed. A beautiful parable for England under Thatcher and a road map to our cannibal apocalypse. Rightly suggests the only future is madness (the tower is the world) and ABBA covers (SOS). On the practical front, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is a great glimpse into the paranoid, loser world of Trump’s America. Everything is a conspiracy and nothing is true, but women and brown people are totally trying to steal your balls. —John Leavitt

Raoul Peck’s James Baldwin documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, which applies Baldwin’s timeless wisdom to the events of today, which are the same events Baldwin rallied against decades ago. —Odie Henderson

Cameraperson because it's a personal and global call to empathy. It brings it all back home. —Allison Inman

The Invitation. That was 11/08/16 in a nutshell. —Jason Shawhan

Starship Troopers. —Jordan Hoffman

The best film of the year in my opinion is Manchester by the Sea; I suspect all the major awards will go to La La Land, which is fine by me because I loved that movie. But when it comes to the pictures that best represented this year, I have to go off the beaten path a bit and pick two different visions of America: the divided, casually oppressed nation in the documentary Do Not Resist (an exposé of our increasingly militarized police force), and the creative, expressive, joyously multicultural United States in Jonathan Demme’s concert film Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids. —Noel Murray

It was pretty great to see a print of Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd in the lead-up to the election, and the day after the election I watched Duck Soup. However, I was struck by the fact that neither film quite captured the feeling of the whole ordeal, despite my best efforts to make them fit the situation. 2016 saw the deaths of some pretty significant figures, but perhaps the death we should be mourning the most is Satire. —Zack Hall

Captain America: Civil War. —Cass Teague

There was a lot of accidental commentary this year — films that were made oblivious (or partly oblivious) of what happened in the world that wound up unintentionally speaking to the Age of Trump. In terms of sheer breadth, O.J.: Made in America had the most to “say.” Reaching back to the ’90s, it retold a story that spoke to race, the media and the United States with uncanny fervor. It’s not just that we’re doomed to repeat the same problems; you can see the bombs planted in the Trial of the Century that finally erupted once the 2016 election season began in earnest. —Matt Prigge

Cameraperson, part documentarian’s memoir, but mostly a Shuffle All tapestry of humanity itself that has a scope rarely seen in filmmaking. Culled from extra snippets shot while she was on location filming dozens of documentaries, Kristen Johnson’s film touches on so many facets of the human experience, and the cumulative effect is awe-inspiring. It is a portrait of human suffering, and while most every film this year identified by creating something from nothing, Cameraperson, perhaps most interestingly, shows us we can access all the empathy in the world by just looking at what’s already there. —Sam Smith

I don’t know if any one film can encapsulate this year for me, but I will point to the film that started off 2016 looking like it would be the Movie of the Year, and ended the year being That Film of Which We Will Not Speak: Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation. I saw it at Sundance and found it tremendously powerful — along with many, many other people in that audience. We need not go over all the particulars of what happened with the film and its writer-director-star over the course of the next few months, and I’m certainly not here to decide whether its subsequent fate was just or not. But the journey of Birth of a Nation — the way it was wildly embraced, then wildly condemned, then discarded and finally forgotten — was certainly one of the most 2016 things to happen in 2016, at least in the world of film. And yet, I still find it to be a very good movie, and something tells me we’ll be hearing from it again. —Bilge Ebiri

I Am Not Your Negro. Captures the fury so many of us feel whenever we look at a newspaper, social media or a TV. It also points the way toward positive action. What do we do now that the U.S. has lost its mind again? Write. Create. Never shut up. Be angry. We have a lot to be angry about. —Scout Tafoya

Probably Green Room. I think we’re all going to feel like that band after the next four years are up. —Dr. Gangrene

Manchester by the Sea, I’m sad to say. It’s a film not about grief, but about unfathomable loss — and there’s been a whole lot of that this year. That said, there were beautiful moments and silver linings all throughout 2016 if you managed to spot them. Wait … did Kenneth Lonergan direct 2016? —D. Patrick Rodgers

Watching Green Room post-election is quite a different experience than when I first saw it as a midnight movie at the Belcourt in June. The film, gruesome and unapologetic, features underrated performances by Anton Yelchin and Alia Shawkat as part of punk band held captive by neo-Nazis after witnessing a murder after a gig. Unfortunately, what makes this film so engaging is its eerily relevant depiction of how cultural anxieties can manifest, resulting in hate and violence that grow more powerful with numbers, money and a shameless, manipulative leader. —Lisa Williams

How do you think the experience of going to a theater to see a film could be improved?

Show better movies. Soundproof the cinema walls. Educate the public. Have patrons surrender cellphones at the door. I don’t know, it’s probably a lost cause. —Michael Sicinski

One way to really make the moviegoing experience more accessible would be to find a way to manage costs, so that going to the movies need not cost an arm and a leg for those who are actually willing to do it — and that every movie need not be Star Wars to break even. I also don’t know how we find a solution to the “opening weekend” problem. It’s not just big studio movies that need to have a big opening weekend to survive; that opening weekend also determines whether many independent films will stay on in theaters. This seems to me tremendously unfair to these movies, forcing them into a grab-it-fast business model that benefits nobody, and also makes it impossible for people to discover movies in movie theaters. Discovery still happens today, but it happens online and on video and streaming — not in theaters. —Bilge Ebiri

More quality control with regard to sound and projection issues in multiplexes. I didn’t file as many complaints with these theaters’ management as I have in the past few years, so perhaps they’re realizing the need to keep their game up if they want to compete with the living room. —Sam Smith

Mask the screen to the proper aspect ratio, make sure all of the speakers work properly, maybe just employ a full-time projectionist? There’s so little care given to the presentation of films in the megaplexes these days that it’s hard to say any one thing. —Zack Hall

Hiring projectionists. Proper masking for all films. Blocking all cellphone signals. Ejection of talkers, texters, performative laughers and those who maliciously, off-handedly or carelessly ruin movies for folk who really want an experience. —Jason Shawhan

Some movie-going “improvements” seem more like Apple “upgrades” — change itself as a perceived positive. So, I propose rolling back certain solutions-in-search-of-a-problem (e.g., point-of-purchase seat selection). Personally, I much prefer picking my seat in-theater — feel the room, scan the audience, determine location relative to screen. —Scott Manzler

More female directors, of course. —Allison Inman

Everyone needs to stop treating the movie theater like their personal living room, and maybe demonstrate some morsel of recognition that there are other people around them. Stop talking, maybe pay somebody to teach you how to whisper, and turn off your surveillance devices. I doubt that even the NSA wants to hear your overblown in-movie reactions to each scene. —Richie Millennium

What was the most effective/inspiring love story you saw at the movies this year?

Probably Arrival, actually, and not for the romantic love depicted in the film, but rather for the love between mother and daughter. It was powerful, and originally done. —D. Patrick Rodgers

Paterson was a great love story. Its central couple don’t spend a lot of time together. Despite both being (very different) artists, they don’t have a ton in common. Adam Driver’s Paterson rarely speaks. But they do love each other, and one way we can see that is that they’ve learned to tolerate the other’s quirks and neuroses. The unsexy thing about a relationship is that it involves forgiving your partner’s problems, maybe even learning to love them. Paterson and Laura have learned to slip into a routine, and rather than depressing, it becomes beautiful. —Matt Prigge

It’s a toss-up between Moonlight and Southside With You. I guess that’s a very bisexual answer, which makes perfect sense coming from me. —Odie Henderson

No traditional love story impacted me as deeply as Toni Erdmann’s “Greatest Love of All.” Two strong and strong-willed individuals who care deeply about each other but fiercely defend their distinct identities — a rare, perceptive and affecting (and funny) immersion in adult father/daughter affection. —Scott Manzler

The Lobster. Two people in a world of compulsory marriage find each other while living in a militant cult of singlehood. They invent a sort of full-body semaphore to communicate their love, and the only time they get to touch each other is when they are pretending to be a couple and pretending not to be a couple at the same time. This is the kind of love story I can root for! —Richie Millennium

Collateral Beauty. —Cass Teague

When Dawn Wiener and Brandon McCarthy found each other again after all these years [in Wiener-Dog], I openly, indiscriminately wept. I've been waiting 20 years for that reunion, and Todd Solondz presented it with typical deadpan panache. —Jason Adams

I was over the moon for The Handmaiden, a wildly entertaining erotic thriller that also suggests that even the wickedest scheme can be undone by the bond between two soulmates. —Noel Murray

Obvious pick, but Loving. It felt legit. —Jordan Hoffman

Moonlight. I walked out wondering, "Is this how straight white people feel all the time, to see themselves?" The film’s title — from the remark made in the film, that in moonlight black boys look blue — announces that it is a film about the reality of being seen always by another's lights. Chiron is given a different nickname in each passage — “Little,” “Blue,” “Black,” and none are right. Chiron learns to see himself, and to be seen for who and what he is, unadorned and undisguised, as the film’s astonishing cinematography struggles to do and convey the same. To be truly seen: I cannot imagine a better, or more sincere, version of what love means than that. —Anthony Oliveira

I’m not sure when Bright Lights is airing on HBO. Last I heard, it was sometime in the first quarter of 2017, though that may have changed due to recent events. But I went into it expecting some witty lines and a puff piece on fame diffusing through multiple generations of a family, and got my emotional ass handed to me. Is it cheating to say that a documentary had the most realistic portrayal of a loving relationship? I don’t think so. When this film airs, it’ll have a huge audience because of what happened to Carrie Fisher at the end of December. But it would deserve a huge audience even if Fisher’s heart attack had never happened, because it’s the most captivating portrayal of what it’s like to love someone who is famous and fucked up and going through difficult times, and it resonates with me still. —Jason Shawhan

The Handmaiden. —Tony Youngblood

Let me pick two films that are both about non-romantic love, but about something more than mere friendship and make a telling contrast. In the male department, look at the baseball team in Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! as a portrayal of fraternal love among a group of young men with (temporarily) no cares except each other, and how they express that love in … bro-y ways. And in the female department, the sisters in Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister, the film with maybe the highest Bechdel score, which is also about the different forms that sisterhood takes and the expansion of it to a new sister. —Victor Morton

To offer an alternative to all the inevitable mentions of Kevin and Chiron (an excellent choice, surely); I'll simply implore others to seek out A Bride for Rip Van Winkle to see one of the most complex, heartbreaking stories of love on its surface, while its many musings on identity in the internet age will hopefully entrance you much as they did with me. The story of Nanami Minagawa and her lover Mashiro Satonaka is one not to be missed. —Jacob Dornan

Loving. Shows that nothing ultimately matters more than how two people feel about each other, regardless of what others may say or how society views their union. —Ron Wynn

Jackie Onassis and Cigarettes. —John Leavitt

Uh, The Greasy Strangler? LOL. A well-oiled production documenting a father and son’s rediscovered love for one another. Bullshit artist. —Dr. Gangrene

Toni Erdmann's bittersweet father/daughter romance absolutely destroys me. So perfect. —Zack Hall

Not what you’d call inspiring, but Café Society knocked me for a loop. It’s a young man’s love story told with an old man’s wisdom, attuned to both the great regrets that haunt us for the rest of our days and also the weary acceptance that it all probably doesn’t matter very much in the end. It’s been a long, long time since a Woody Allen movie got under my skin the way this one did. I just wish Bruce Willis hadn’t gone and gotten himself fired, because Steve Carell is kind of terrible in it. —Sean Burns

It wouldn't call it love, but Sasha Lane and Shia LaBeouf were my on-screen couple of the year. —Allison Inman

Loving — by a long mile. So well-acted and directed. Such subtle and emotional character work. —Jonathan Roche

The love affair between Kleber Mendonça Filho’s camera and Sonia Braga in Aquarius. That story doesn’t work if that camera isn’t in love with that woman — with her face, her skin, her hair, her very presence. —Bilge Ebiri

Lily Gladstone and Kristin Stewart’s awkward-yet-sweet relationship in Certain Women — Gladstone’s charming performance captured the vulnerability and courage required to express unrequited feelings, and the scenes between the two provoked empathy as well as a sense of longing and excitement as we rooted for a union that simply can’t be. —Lisa Williams

Moonlight is a sublime screen romance, alive with longing and wonder. —Alice Stoehr

The love of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele for their kitty Keanu in Keanu gives me hope for humanity. (Except for the killing of people in the film.) The love of pets is real, yo! —Colette Divine

I'm not even sure it qualifies as a love story, but the relationship between Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone in Certain Women was a fascinating tale of obsession. Erotic? Needy? Merely friendship taken a bit too far? In any case, I was glad that Kelly Reichardt respected it and never made it feel like something out of Single White Female. —Steve Erickson

It's in the great documentary Gleason, where a former NFL star loses his limbs and speech to ALS. Throughout, his wife Michel Varisco is there, helping him live, raising their son, never giving up on him even as he runs himself ragged trying to be a force for change in the world. He loses everything but his will and his family, who stay by him through everything. Michel was the toughest woman in movies this year. —Scout Tafoya

A tie, both purely onanistic: avant-garde firebrand Nazli Dinçel's Solitary Acts 4, which combines graphic footage of the artist's masturbation with disturbing dialogue from her past; and Neruda, in which the poet (Luis Gnecco) invents a right-wing G-man (Gael García Bernal) whose pursuit of him is a barely disguised form of romance. —Michael Sicinski

Moonlight, Loving and Certain Women were all timely arrivals that testified to the ineffable power of love and its ambiguities. The Lobster left a unique impression on me — a chuckle at the absurd extent to which love can drive you crazy. The on-screen chemistry in American Honey and The Light Between Oceans could have convinced me the actors were actually falling in love. I appreciated the revelation that La La Land was a breakup movie. I really must give it up, though, to Moonlight and The Handmaiden for bringing to audiences their complex and powerful stories of homosexual romance with such bravery, tenderness and passion. —Sam Smith

What documentary elicited the most conflicted response from you, and why?

Pervert Park. It forced me to confront the basic humanity of convicted sex offenders. —Tony Youngblood

Zero Days — it's fucking terrifying, it's the future of warfare, and our election was fucking hacked. But also Fire at Sea. —Jonathan Roche

Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine is a film designed to give you a conflicted response, in the way it moves between a lived (but still, in some way, “staged”) reality and purposely ridiculous fictional passages. And then, in its mesmerizing and very strange final moments, it interrogates the audience, the filmmaker, the performer — everything and everybody. I like the film quite a bit, but it’s also a movie I have a different relationship with every time I see it. I think that’s very much intentional. It’s a movie designed to slip out of the filmmaker’s (and the viewer’s) control. —Bilge Ebiri

While I've yet to see many of the year's most acclaimed docs, I was left slightly perplexed by the overwhelming praise for JT + The Tennessee Kids. It's a fine film, but one that focuses on a white performer dominating the screen whilst black people and other POCs are relegated to backup roles. This is often par for the course with pop stars, but considering Demme is behind the even more dynamic and truly egalitarian Stop Making Sense — that is, a film that puts as much emphasis on the talent of its backup and crew as it does its star players — and, not to mention, Timberlake's history with Janet Jackson ... the whole experience left a slightly sour taste in my mouth. —Jacob Dornan

I don’t know if you can call it conflicted, but as someone with no interest whatsoever in the music being performed, I found Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids to be a genuinely extraordinary exploration of onstage dynamics and the interplay amongst the army of folks required to put on an arena show on that gargantuan scale. It’s a lot more than just a concert movie. —Sean Burns

To my mind, the year’s two best docs were I Am Not Your Negro and O.J.: Made in America, both of which express a kind of resigned hopelessness about the history of race relations in this country. I kept wanting to argue against what they were saying, even as I recognized their bitter truth. —Noel Murray

Weiner is absolutely fantastic, but the more we praise it, the more we feed Weiner’s ego. Can’t win! —Jordan Hoffman

Probably Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You because I so wanted to love it, as Lear is arguably the most influential man in the history of television and, as an introducer of America (I emigrated to this country as a minor in the late 1970s), a huge influence on me. But it’s his shows that matter, not really his person. The best moment in the film was seeing Lear’s reaction as he watched the All in the Family scene of Mike and Archie discussing their fathers in the Bunkers’ basement. But so much potential was wasted in the name of autobiography and ring-kissing. —Victor Morton

Weirdly, 13th elicited a very conflicted response in me. I loved it, though maybe overpraised it, because at the end of the day, it’s a little too straight-forward for my tastes. And yet that straight-forwardness is what makes it so effective. It seemed misguided when naysayers chided the film for telling smarter people what they already know. It’s not about offering new information but connecting the dots and building a solid cinematic argument. —Matt Prigge

Chicken People. I was as moved by each person's love of their chickens as I was conflicted by my own lifelong fear of poultry. —Colette Divine

I wish you’d asked me that question a year ago; I had a better answer. This year, I guess it would have to be Notes on Blindness, which kind of ruined its great sound mix by adding a weird visual approximation of what it’s like to go blind. Now, I’ve been half-blind since I was 14, so I know something about losing one’s sight. And this movie’s visuals were arty bullshit; it didn’t look like that in real life AT ALL. I had to give the film a mildly negative review despite my admiration for the many things it did right. The gimmick pissed me off. —Odie Henderson

The role that sensationalism in journalism played in the Amanda Knox documentary, and the complete lack of responsibility or even awareness that the journalists felt/perceived as to their role in demonizing Knox and contributing to her time in prison. —Roxanne Benjamin

13th. It's a really fine piece of work, powerfully rendered by the great Ava DuVernay, but she gave a lot of air time to racists and sexists like Newt Gingrich. They get enough airtime every day on TV and just in life. I don't need them on my movie screens, least of all in a film about the kind of systemic injustice they help keep in place every goddamn day. Enough. —Scout Tafoya

Do Not Resist opens with an incredibly affecting montage of footage from the Ferguson protests in one of the best scenes from any film, let alone documentary, this year. All the tension and passion is on full display as it sets up the helpless dichotomy of ideals that defined so much of 2016. From this compelling moment on, the film wrestles with the current state of police militarization and the future of surveillance technology in what can only be described as something close to a darkly comic origin story for a new George Orwell novel. I laughed out of fear and a sense of resignation, and that feeling has stuck with me and troubled me ever since.  Also, Peter and the Farm is a beautiful documentary about a charismatic alcoholic fuck-up of a farmer, and while it's completely engrossing, it becomes clear that the main character is a huge asshole who's ruined everything for everyone around him. Somehow, through it all, you still manage to sympathize with him. It's not the time for us to be feeling bad for a misogynistic white guy who tears down everything that's good with his suicidal narcissism, but I just couldn't not love the film for its lyricism and contemplative meditation on depression. —Zack Hall

I had some serious trouble with Dominic Gagnon's Of the North, a Canadian film composed of found footage from YouTube and other internet sources. The intent, it seems, was to show the poverty and immiseration of the First Peoples of the North, but a great deal of the footage (snowmobile stunts, drunkenness, loitering, drug use, burlesques of Native tradition) actually feels like mockery. Many Inuit artists have called for the film to be pulled from circulation. I personally think it's a vital document of "liberal" racism, and as such invaluable.  —Michael Sicinski

Weiner, because it really sold the story that Veep is a documentary and no one who gets into politics is a normal person you'd ever want to meet. —John Leavitt

13th. Mass incarceration disproportionately affects people of color, and has ravaged black communities, with thousands of young men's lives negatively impacted at an early age, often due to questionable enforcement of debatable laws and more severe sentences being handed out to them than their white counterparts for similar offenses. —Ron Wynn

In our post-truth era, documentary itself seems conflicted. Fact and fiction have become increasingly difficult to unpack and untangle — which has proven a boon for art. Two of my favorite 2016 “documentaries,” The Other Side and Kate Plays Christine, work this divide obsessively while exploring timely subject matter, flyover America and the meaning/value of one person’s life, respectively. —Scott Manzler

Robert Greene's Kate Plays Christine. I sympathize with Greene's misgivings about directing a woman's tragic story (Christine Chubbuck, a Florida news anchor who killed herself on air in the '70s). But he seems so convinced that Christine's essence is unknowable, and that trying to understand her — especially as a male filmmaker — is aesthetically and ethically wrong, that he winds up mystifying an emotion as common as depression and treating it as though it were as difficult to understand and portray on film as Auschwitz. —Steve Erickson

Life, Animated. On one hand, it's inspiring and hopeful to see a young man with autism find his voice and independence through movies. On the other, his path to independence relied on financial resources that most people just don't have. —Allison Inman

Author: The JT LeRoy Story. I find Laura Albert VERY fascinating, but this documentary is heavily one-sided in her favor. Obviously, I understand the desire to hide inside a character — I do it all the time. Sometimes it feels safer inside an identity of your own creation, and Laura was coping with the lifelong pain of not liking her real self. But Laura used her invented identity to exploit and manipulate, and she hurt a number of people in the process. It's interesting to see a different perspective in The Cult of JT LeRoy, if you can find it. —Richie Millennium

Do you consider it acceptable when a theater exhibits a film in a scope (>2:1) aspect ratio on a screen that has been locked flat? Do you complain to theater management in such situations?

I know it should bother me, but it rarely does, even though I always notice it. I don’t complain. I almost never complain about anything. —Bilge Ebiri

If the film looks wack, you must fight back! Although I'm not technically savvy enough to recognize such faux pas, I hope those who do find the courage to speak out. —Colette Divine

I left a press screening of Hacksaw Ridge four times to complain about the masking. Every time, AMC’s reps told me they were “working on it and it will be fixed soon.” As it turns out, they’d told another one of my colleagues, “It was broken and couldn’t be fixed.” This is how it is at these big chains. They just project movies improperly all the time and lie to their customers. Nobody gives a shit. —Sean Burns

It is not OK, but I do not complain, because who would possibly care? I just get a refund and leave. —Michael Sicinski

This is evil and I’m glad it so rarely happens to me, since I almost never go to normal theatrical showings with plebeians and such. When it does happen, I don’t complain, because I’m a wimp and I’m sure it won’t do any good. This is a widespread issue that no one in charge seems to care about. —Matt Prigge

If given the option, what film that you saw this year would you most like to record a commentary track for?

Probably Deadpool, just to roast it. Or Swiss Army Man — not so much a commentary track as an audio recording of me playing a “Take a Drink Every Time You Hear a Fart” drinking game. —D. Patrick Rodgers

White Girl. —Lisa Williams

Manchester by the Sea. It would just be me cackling like a lunatic (and sometimes crying like a baby). Scout Tafoya would join me. —Matt Prigge

The Wailing. It would just be me seeing it for the first time in my living room, yelling to my wife and/or the pets about that crazy shit that just happened and then nervously chuckling to myself. —Zack Hall

I'd love to do something for The Edge of Seventeen with friends. —Jacob Dornan

Hail, Caesar! but only if Karina Longworth from the You Must Remember This podcast was on it too, to point out all the references I missed. Also everyone listen to that podcast right this minute, OMG. Her series on the Manson Family murders as related to the film climate of that period is fucking phenomenal. —Roxanne Benjamin

Given how much time I’ve spent in my life thinking about and writing about Brian De Palma, I could probably talk over the master for 107 minutes and offer my own alternate narrative to the documentary De Palma. —Noel Murray

Hidden Figures. —Ron Wynn

I can certainly talk your ear off about Scorsese’s Silence. —Bilge Ebiri

Hail, Caesar! if only to re-create me poking my friend in the arm an going "OK, so this is a riff on a actual case where —" and then them shushing me cause no one cares. —John Leavitt

None. I am a terrible live act, as my students will tell you. —Michael Sicinski

This Jersey Boy would pick Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson for my commentary track. —Odie Henderson

The VVitch. I love that time period, and would research the hell out of witch trials and torture throughout the years, including Salem. And goats. Would be a fun project. —Dr. Gangrene

Both La La Land and The Neon Demon for their neo-Romano Albani looks: I love to geek out on cinematography tech stuff. And The Love Witch would be a blast to talk about. —Jason Shawhan

The VVitch, Neon Demon and Nocturnal Animals are all problematic in their own ways, yet fascinating to me. I would geek out on exploring their respective subtexts in a more organized, audiovisual manner. —Sam Smith

The Nice Guys. I believe this is the job I was born to do. —Sean Burns

Hidden Figures. —Cass Teague

Hail Caesar! Its crowded frame of Old Hollywood analogs, dense knotting of theological strands, and engagement with the New Frankfurt diaspora of cultural critics (including the cadre of Marxists who capture Clooney that seem to be stand-ins for Adorno, Horkheimer and their set) cries out for annotation. The VVitch — my own work in 17th-century literature would make this cat-nip! As the film itself notes, much of its dialogue and supernatural events have attestation in the trials and chronicles of the period; it would be fun to tie these stakes back and consider how their anxieties and paranoias reflected those of the Puritan “errand into the wilderness.” —Anthony Oliveira

Hell or High Water, purely for critiquing the Southern accents. —Allison Inman

Weiner, but only if I could avoid laughing all the way through it. It’s not only a very good film about a topic with which I have some familiarity, but it’s also the film that has most interacted with, and been recoded by, the “real” world since its release. One could make a halfway-plausible claim that we’re seeing one root cause of “President Trump” being planted. —Victor Morton

The Lobster. —Tony Youngblood

What was the single best performance you saw all year?

Since I have the precedent of the Oscars, the SAG and every film festival, I’m giving one per gender, and they’re very different performances. For sheer natural “being,” it’s Lily Gladstone as custodian of an unrequited crush who keeps everything socially perfect in Certain Women. For mannered hilarity, it can only be Tom Bennett as keeper of an unrequited crush who puts his foot in his mouth every time he opens it in Love and Friendship. —Victor Morton

Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea or Isabelle Huppert for Elle, with Things to Come not far behind. Weird that the Oscars might actually agree with me this year. —Matt Prigge

Isabelle Huppert’s one-two punch of Elle and Things to Come just completely blows me away. But we already knew she was the best, right? Serious runner-up love to Lee Zin-Mi from Under the Sun. That had to be the most taxing performance of 2016. Period. —Zack Hall

One actress, two roles: In Elle and Things to Come, Isabelle Huppert plays two very different women — one vulnerable and tentative, the other steely and indomitable — facing similar narrative trajectories. The fact that both are lived, fully realized creations is a testament to a great artist and an international treasure. —Scott Manzler

Mahershala Ali in Moonlight. —Colette Divine

This is a wholly unoriginal sentiment, but I’ve loved watching Emma Stone in movies for a while now, and I was glad to see her in La La Land using all of her tools: wit, emotion, grace and showmanship. —Noel Murray

Rebecca Hall in Christine. —Allison Inman

There were so many damn good performances, from the women of 20th Century Women and Hidden Figures to the men of Moonlight. I’ll have to say Denzel Washington in Fences. Nobody juggles charm and being unlikable better than Mr. Washington, and August Wilson’s play puts him at the height of his powers. —Odie Henderson

Sonia Braga in Aquarius is like a beachfront King Lear, her body full of both rage and joie de vivre. —Alice Stoehr

Annette Bening in 20th Century Women. —Jordan Hoffman

Michelle Williams in Manchester by the Sea and Michael Shannon in Midnight Special. —D. Patrick Rodgers

Tom Bennett in the dry-as-vinegar drawing room farce Love and Friendship, where he plays a gloriously rich idiot who is aware there’s something wrong with him but is in a position where no one will ever tell him why he doesn’t fit in. Quite humane and layered portrayal of a gussied-up plot device. —John Leavitt

John Goodman in 10 Cloverfield Lane. —Dr. Gangrene

Zhao Tao’s work in Mountains May Depart is almost certainly my favorite. Runner-up: Lily Gladstone in Certain Women. —Jacob Dornan

Isabelle Huppert in Elle and Rebecca Hall in Christine. —Lisa Williams

Jake Gyllenhaal’s double/not-so-double turn in Nocturnal Animals — from a party to a charming, snow-freckled meet-cute to disillusioned artistic failure, from anxious father to desperate revenger. An astonishing raw nerve of work. And I genuinely did not know Winona Ryder had her performance in Stranger Things in her. At once harried and warm, at her wit’s end yet radiating maternal kindness. —Anthony Oliveira

Trevante Rhodes in Moonlight. —Tony Youngblood

Lily Gladstone in Certain Women. —Scout Tafoya

Royalty Hightower in The Fits. She’s a 9-year-old playing an 11-year-old, tackling a nearly impossible part. And she’s utterly mesmerizing. If there were any justice in the world, she’d win every single Oscar. Not just Best Actress. She’d win Best Documentary and Best Original Score. —Bilge Ebiri

Besides Beyoncé in “Don’t Hurt Yourself”? Force-of-nature Alicia Vikander in The Light Between Oceans. —Sam Smith

Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange. —Cass Teague

Oulaya Amamra in The Divines. Honorable mention goes to James McAvoy in Split, which is ridiculously fun and over-the-top. —Roxanne Benjamin

Denzel Washington in Fences. —Ron Wynn

Ruth Negga in Loving. —Jonathan Roche

Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea cements his status as one of the all-time greats. To watch him work in it is to see a performer constantly fighting against the kind of “big scenes” that actors typically crave. He’s always building up walls, trying to keep the world out and disappear into a cocoon of his own private misery. The tiny glimpses of when those walls fall down — sometimes only for a moment or two — are what make his performance so brilliant. —Sean Burns

Of all the films that you wanted to see by the end of the year but were unable to, which one do you regret the most?

Moonlight. Moonlight, Moonlight, Moonlight. —D. Patrick Rodgers

Personal Shopper and The Love Witch are perhaps my biggest omissions. Silence and Paterson, too! The Ornithologist, OJ: Made In America. I still plan to catch up with many of these before the Oscars, though. —Jacob Dornan

Despite the best efforts of Allied Integrated Marketing’s Boston office, this was the first time in a couple years I was able to see everything I felt like I needed to see in order to cast my ballots in good conscience. This required a lot of skullduggery and sneaking around on my part, but hopefully the studios are beginning to realize that their expensive award campaigns are being sabotaged by vindictive regional flacks who value personal grudges over the films they’ve been hired to represent. —Sean Burns

Always Shine. —John Leavitt

Phantasm Ravager. I’m a HUGE Phantasm fan, but missed this one at the Belcourt. I especially hated missing it as Angus Scrimm passed away this year. I did catch the original Phantasm, however (but for some reason they were playing opposite each other, one screening only for two days. What the heck, Belcourt?) It’s On Demand now, so I’ll catch it soon I’m sure. I also really wanted to see Beyond the Gates. —Dr. Gangrene

Silence. —Roche, Shawhan, Smith, Tafoya

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Happy Hour. I couldn’t get myself over to MoMA, and the publicists only had viewing links available, which is a dreadful way to watch any movie, let alone a five-hour one. —Bilge Ebiri

Eyes of My Mother — everyone is talking about it, but its apparently grisly imagery has me still steeling myself. —Anthony Oliveira

Silence, but Paramount’s horrific handling of the movie for critics made me feel more anger than regret. —Odie Henderson

Read between the lines of even the most admiring coverage, and the films of Straub-Huillet sound difficult, even forbidding. Still, I was covetous of the opportunity for full immersion offered by MoMA’s career-spanning retro. Shame on Chicago’s Gene Siskel Center for not programming at least a curated sampling of this very important work. Runner-up: Based on only a brief review in Film Comment, the five-hour-plus Japanese Happy Hour sounds like just my kind of “slow” cinema. —Scott Manzler

Personal Shopper. —Michael Sicinski

Heaven Knows What — keep hearing great things. The Eyes of My Mother — mostly because of the mixed reviews I keep hearing; very love-it-or-hate-it responses. —Roxanne Benjamin

I still haven't seen Jackie, which is a horrific oversight on my part. I wasn't smitten with Neruda, but Larrain's a fascinating filmmaker, and I have always been on Team Portman. —Jason Adams

Arrival. —Allison Inman

Toni Erdmann! I've been so curious about it, and I direly need a good laugh. —Alice Stoehr

Jackie ... and American Honey and Personal Shopper —Zack Hall

Absolutely Fabulous. —Cass Teague

Toni Erdmann. Other films I didn't get to see: The Red Turtle, Tower, Paths of the Soul, Elle, The Wailing, Neruda, Jackie, Paterson, Fire at Sea, Kaili Blues, Aferim!, Loving, The Innocents, Into the Inferno, Our Little Sister, Demon, Chevalier, Too Late. —Tony Youngblood

Paterson. —Steve Erickson

I’ve been looking forward to Martin Scorsese’s Silence for decades, so I was disappointed that it didn’t screen in my little corner of the world before my various awards-voting deadlines. On the other hand, I kind of like it when I miss the movies that are making a lot of other people’s lists, because it makes more room for something that might not be as universally acclaimed. —Noel Murray

Probably Bonello’s Nocturama or Alvarez’s Don't Breathe. —Victor Morton

What films are you most looking forward to in 2017?

All Eyez on Me, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Blade Runner 2049. —Ron Wynn

The Dark Tower, DeathNote, John Wick: Chapter 2, Blade Runner 2049, A Cure for Wellness, Evan Katz’s Small Crimes, T2 Trainspotting, Macon Blair’s feature debut I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, Janicza Bravo’s Lemon, David Lowery’s A Ghost Story. —Roxanne Benjamin

Michael Haneke’s Huppert-led Happy End, plus Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled and Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria. —Sam Smith

The Beguiled, High Life, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, the Safdies’ Good Time, Wonderstruck, Zama and Logan Lucky. —Jacob Dornan

Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian The Salesman by the greatest domestic dramatist in the world. Excellent films also are forthcoming from Cristian Mungiu (Graduation) and the Dardenne Brothers (The Unknown Girl). —Victor Morton

I imagine that greater films will be released, but the only honest answer I can give is Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver. I know nothing about it other than the title. —Jake Mulligan

I’m grateful that we’re getting one last Resident Evil movie. And Twin Peaks, whenever that airs. —Alice Stoehr

A Cure for Wellness. —Scout Tafoya

It, XX, Personal Shopper and Star Wars: Episode VIII. Also, I’m hoping Kirsten Dunst and Dakota Fanning’s take on The Bell Jar will be here in time for 2017. —Lisa Williams

Things to Come. —Tony Youngblood

Alien: Covenant, The Beguiled, Call Me by Your Name, Colossal, Dark Night, Get Out, A Ghost Story, High Life, The House That Jack Built, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, Kedi, Life, Murder on the Orient Express, Roxanne Roxanne, Silence, Suspiria, Wonder Woman and XX. —Jason Shawhan

A slew of indies from Alex Ross Perry, Zoe Lister Jones, David Gordon Green, Gillian Robespierre. —Allison Inman

The Beguiled, Yeh Din Ka Kissa, The Favourite, Pasajera, Lady Bird, Happy End, Suspiria, Golden Exits, Star Wars: Episode VIII and whatever Paul Thomas Anderson is working on. —Richie Millennium

Get Out, Personal Shopper and the upcoming Leos Carax/Sparks collaboration. —Michael Sicinski

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Star Wars: Episode VIII, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, Thor: Ragnarok, Alien: Covenant, Beauty and the Beast, Ghost in the Shell, Tulip Fever and Luke Cage Season 2. —Cass Teague

Alien: Covenant and Kong: Skull Island. —Dr. Gangrene

I really hope Julie Dash finishes Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl this year. I’m also looking forward to Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. James Gray’s The Lost City of Z. Terrence Malick’s untitled film, which was once called Weightless. Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s next project. Agnes Varda’s next film. But what I’m really looking for is that film, like The Fits, which will come from an unknown filmmaker and knock my socks off. —Bilge Ebiri

The Nashville Scene's 2016 film poll lineup of participants are as follows. 

Jason Adams, Roxanne Benjamin, Sean Burns, Erica Ciccarone, Colette Divine, Jacob Dornan, Bilge Ebiri, Steve Erickson, Dr. Gangrene, Zack Hall, Odie Henderson, Jordan Hoffman, Allison Inman, John Leavitt, Craig D. Lindsey, Scott Manzler, Richie Millennium, Victor Morton, Jake Mulligan, Noel Murray, Anthony Oliveira, Brian Owens, Matt Prigge, Jonathan Roche, D. Patrick Rodgers, Frederick Schaefer, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Sam Smith, Alice Stoehr, Scout Tafoya, Cass Teague, Isaac Weeks, Lisa Williams, Ron Wynn, Tony Youngblood

Email arts@nashvillescene.com