MY TOP 3 FILM'S YOU NEED TO SEE OF 2016 THAT YOU MIGHT NOT OF SEEN!!

 1) Silence

Silence has been Martin Scorsese’s passion project ever since he filmed The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. It tells the story of three Jesuit priests in 17th century Japan. One (Liam Neeson) arrived at the height of Japan’s colonization and saw fellow priests and converted peasants tortured for not denouncing their Christian god. Eventually, he did denounce. Decades later, via a letter smuggled out by a Dutch trader, his students (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) venture to Japan to find him.

The mix of martyrdom and colonization is an immense conversation and Scorsese wisely decides to present both sides and eschew many emotional cues. Instead of utilizing a moving score, the soundtrack mostly enhances the sounds of nature, which is important to both the Christian god and the Buddhist pantheon, and puts the warring spiritualties on a similar plane of earthly existence. And the scenes of the Jesuits journeys by sea are filmed with a beautiful foggy immersion that heightens the ambiguity to the necessity of Garupe (Driver) and Rodrigues’ (Garfield) journey.

Ultimately, Silence is a patient film and it’s very much about how Rodrigues’ spiritual journey runs astride nations converging. Universal truths no longer exist in the convergence of cultures. There’s a sadness to that awareness, but faith does become much more personal. And Scorsese’s deeply personal film is one of the most profound movies of his career. 

2) Manchester By The Sea

A great, wise touching film about grief in a year that brought a seemingly terminal wave of grim, deflating news. Kenneth Lonergan’s third film shows a lacerating understanding of how tragedy does not slow life down, and your grief does not create a vacuum of feeling or activity. Casey Affleck’s quiet, revelatory performance hints at a cold yet anxious inner life, one that often comes out in self-destructive fits of rage, and, at other moments, he’s surprisingly empathetic. A riveting ensemble that includes Kyle Chandler, Michelle Williams, Gretchen Mol, C.J. Wilson, Lucas Hedges, Kara Hayward, and Josh Hamilton, just to start, matches him but Manchester by the Sea is not a movie defined solely by the caliber of performance. As he did in Margaret and You Can Count on Me, Lonergan is after how humans process tragedy, how it changes a person, and how the outside world often doesn’t change as a result.

The movie is startlingly funny, and the laughs come from familiarity. Some people can still laugh after a family member has died and will have a chuckle as they mourn in memory of there loved one's. They will fart loudly, or try desperately to get laid. Life’s embarrassments not only don’t slow down for death, they act as a tremendously effective reminder of existence’s rampant pulse. In Lee, Lonergan has created a painfully relatable figure of immovable heartbreak, and few films have felt so patient and understanding of what depression and guilt really feel like in the deep end. “I can’t beat it,” Lee says towards the end, and that resounding feel of helplessness makes the final images of him trying to connect in some small way all the more eruptive. This film truly shows what my favourite Affleck brother is capable of he is a very underrated actor, which doesn't make sense as every film he is in whether it's a supporting role or the main man he is subliminal every single god damn time.

3) 13th 

Ava DuVernay’s overwhelming, damning documentary of the experience of being black in America after the passing of the 13th amendment comes on like a confident prizefighter. Each cut introduces another body blow to the argument that we, as a society, are over racism, a ludicrous and dangerous lie that has continued to be peddled by Fox News, the next President, and other institutions in the name of national pride. 

Memories of experience, historical accounts, relevant archival footage, and well-researched statistics are delivered at a rhythmic pace, segueing from rapid-fire to pauses for reflection. The argument against the Selma filmmaker’s furious documentary is that a lot of this information was already out there, as if DuVernay main goal was to simply impart new facts and anecdotes. Like with all great documentaries, 13th’s power is in it’s pacing, it’s style, and it’s texture as much as in it’s bevy of horrific truths, and the movie more than confirms DuVernay as one of the most audacious and direct filmmakers of our day.