People whine ad nauseam about the flaming bags of dog shit that the major Hollywood studios leave on their proverbial doorstep every summer (OK, most of winter and spring, too). They’re not wrong. Your typical first-half movie boasts more dodgy storylines and stunted logic than a Trump rally, and 2016 has been no exception. We have been sadistically subjected to laugh-free comedies like Zoolander 2, Dirty Grandpa, and Adam Sandler’s The Do-Over; the bloated disasterpieces Batman v Superman and Gods of Egypt; and whatever the hell Nina was. Sad!
But it hasn’t been all bad. Yes, many fine films have seen the light of day in the months before Oscar season kicks off—you just had to look hard to find them. So without further ado, here are The Daily Beast’s best movies of 2016 so far.
1. Green Room (Dir. Jeremy Saulnier)
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Filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier’s follow-up to his stellar debut Blue Ruin doesn’t disappoint. The premise is simple enough: The Ain’t Rights, a struggling punk band, are in the midst of a DIY tour across the Pacific Northwest. They meet a radio host who helps book them a gig performing in the woods of Oregon—for a bunker of neo-Nazis. After the show, Pat (Anton Yelchin) goes to the green room to retrieve a fellow band member’s phone, only to discover that a girl has been stabbed to death. This sparks a brutal, bloody war of attrition between the band and the venue’s Nazi proprietors, led by Darcy (a terrifying Patrick Stewart). Turns out these punk kids have plenty of fight in ’em. Saulnier knows how to ratchet up the suspense, and does so here in ways that make the film’s sudden bursts of ultraviolence, from flesh-eating dogs to broken limbs, hit you like shots to the gut. He further juxtaposes the carnage with shots of arresting beauty, from the lush green forests of Oregon to punkers’ limbs flailing in slow-mo to the music. This is not just the grindhouse film of the year, but the best movie of the year (so far). And the recent passing of its gifted star, Anton Yelchin, has imbued Green Room with an added layer of emotion, as you’re left rooting for his battered, ballsy hero to stay alive by any means necessary.
2. The Fits (Dir. Anna Rose Holmer)
The debut feature of filmmaker Anna Rose Holmer first gained traction at the Venice Biennale, where it received a funding grant, and later premiered to critical plaudits at the Venice and Sundance Film Festivals. It centers on Toni (Royalty Hightower, brilliant), an 11-year-old inner city boxer who soon finds herself fixated on a local dance troupe. When its members begin to come down with violent “fits”—fainting, nausea, you name it—Toni becomes even more emboldened to achieve success. Holmer’s film is visually sumptuous, ethereal even, and a haunting meditation on identity, puberty, and assimilation. You’ll be fully immersed in her world throughout its 72-minute running time thanks to its elegant presentation and newcomer Hightower’s mesmerizing performance—one that hopefully won’t be forgotten come awards time.
3. Hell or High Water (Dir. David Mackenzie)
Mackenzie’s drama Starred Up, about a young man who’s sent to an abusive U.K. prison where his father is holed up, was one of my favorite movies of 2014, and his follow-up proves it was no fluke. Written by Taylor Sheridan (Sicario), the gritty western follows Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster), two brothers who’ve decided to take matters into their own hands, robbing a series of banks in order to save their farm in West Texas. Two Texas rangers, led by veteran Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges), are hot on the hell-raising brothers’ tail. Every element, from the dialogue to the scenery to the score, drips with sweaty authenticity, and the performances are aces across the board—none more so than Bridges, whose grizzled, plaintive cowboy is the perfect generational foil to his live-wire targets. No other film is as grounded in a sense of place as Hell or High Water, which not only vividly captures the depressed rural South, but also the anger blue-collar Americans feel toward a system that’s let them hang out to dry.
4. Weiner (Dirs. Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg)
It hasn’t been a very rich year for feature-length documentaries—though television’s O.J.: Made in America was an unequivocal triumph—with the most notable exception being this batshit-insane chronicle of one of the most self-destructive politicians in recent memory. A metaphor for our celebrity-infused times, as well as the chaotic political climate, Kriegman and Steinberg were granted unprecedented access to Anthony Weiner during his notorious mayoral run—you know, the one that crashed and burned when it was discovered that the Democratic politician had, once again, sexted with strangers on the internet (only this time under the tabloid-ready handle “Carlos Danger”). It’s one of the most extraordinary and riveting portraits of political hubris you’re likely to see, as you watch this gifted, passionate horndog implode before your very eyes, dashing both his dreams and those of his long-suffering wife, Huma Abedin.
5. The Lobster (Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
While the execution doesn’t quite match the intrigue of its premise, Greece’s Yorgos Lanthimos has emerged as one of the more compelling surrealist filmmakers around. His follow-up to the Oscar-nominated (and considerably more brutal) Dogtooth is set in a dystopian society where singles are checked into a hotel and have 45 days to find a partner with similar traits lest they be transformed into an animal. David (Colin Farrell) manages to escape into the woods, where he hooks up with a pack of loners led by a draconian leader (Lea Seydoux) who prohibits romance of any kind. He soon finds himself falling for a fellow short-sighted loner (Rachel Weisz). Lanthimos’s film is a terribly funny and subversive satire. Variety’s Guy Lodge put it best when he wrote that The Lobster serves as a “brilliant allegory for the increasingly superficial systems of contemporary courtship, including the like-for-like algorithms of online dating sites” that plague modern society.
6. The Invitation (Dir. Karyn Kusama)
Since her thrilling indie debut Girlfight, Karyn Kusama has been chewed up and spit out by Hollywood (Aeon Flux, anyone?), but with The Invitation she reminds us how gifted a filmmaker she is. The setup is simple enough: Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his new girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) are, along with other close friends, invited to a dinner party in the Hollywood Hills hosted by his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and new hubby David (Michiel Huisman). Eden has been off-grid for two years, as both she and Will struggled to come to terms with the death of their child. Over the course of the evening, Will becomes increasingly suspicious of Eden’s erratic behavior, and convinces himself that this invitation was not to a dinner party, but something far more disturbing. Kusama is a master-builder of tension, upping it inch by inch until it hits its breaking point, culminating in a finale that will leave you breathless.
7. Sausage Party (Dirs. Conrad Vernon, Greg Tiernan)
Birthed from the fertile minds of longtime collaborators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the team behind Superbad (which they wrote at 16), Pineapple Express, and This Is the End, this R-rated animated comedy about a horny supermarket hot dog (voiced by Seth Rogen) who learns the awful truth about the “Great Beyond,” is not only the funniest—and raunchiest—movie of the year thus far, but also provides a fascinating commentary on theology, the afterlife, and tolerance. As our own Jen Yamato put it, Sausage Party is “a film that makes food bone food with explicit abandon but also champions rationality over blind faith, encourages healthy sexual expression and acceptance, and points out that plenty of our prepackaged notions of otherness and division are relics of misguided traditions that have passed their expiration date.”
Honorable Mention:
The Jungle Book: Jon Favreau’s adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling fable is the most stunningly rendered movie so far this year.
Captain America: Civil War: That the Russo brothers pulled this superhero extravaganza off as well as they did is a miracle.
Morris from America: A charming fish out of water tale about an aspiring MC that boasts two of the most winning turns of the year from newcomer Markees Christmas and Craig Robinson.
Cemetery of Splendor: A hallucinatory dream of a film by Thai master Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Look him up and watch all of his movies. You’ll thank me later.
