Goodbye 2016: Top Movies of the Year

In many ways, this is the only thing copycat Internet Sites like this work towards all year. What is the Top 10? Which ten films rise above the rest and are thus immortalized on the Internet forever? Well, here at Norwegian Morning Wood we fully acknowledge that this is a fluid process. At a certain level, films aren't really any better than any other - it's more informed by taste, context, and timing than anything. Considering our Top Films from 2015, it's amazing how much they've shifted around. In fact, only six remain intact from last year's bizarre total of eleven that I couldn't decide between. This will change year after year, and you can be damn sure that I'll also be updating our Top 10 History come January including 2013-15 films. You can of course get a sneak peak of 2015 updated right here:

2015 Update:

#10: Straight Outta Compton
#9: Inside Out
#8: The Martian
#7: Bone Tomahawk
#6: The End of the Tour
#5: Sicario
#4: Dope
#3: The Duke of Burgundy
#2: Ex Machina
#1: Mad Max: Fury Road

Alright, so let's dive into this:

#10: High-Rise

Dragonslayer...avid dancer....pool partier

The first of many on this list that's sort of ducked and dodged its way out of real contention, High-Rise should have been part of Tom Hiddleston's great suave year between this and The Nigh Manager, but that didn't really take off culturally the way it could have, either. I suppose he had to make up for it by falling in love with Taylor Swift. Anyway, this film is nuts, categorizing the fall of society within a single apartment structure while cannily skipping the actual brink of destruction. It's more fascinating the more you watch it and realize that every stupid action the characters take doesn't make a lick of difference as the politics in the eponymous high-rise inevitably shift regardless of any one's motivation. Hiddleston, our ostensible hero, actually takes a backseat to the mania of Luke Evans, always kind of a bleh actor who takes charge here.

#9: The Neon Demon

Models are always hungry for models.

There's a lot of weird movies on this list, which ought to give away my personal taste in films, but The Neon Demon owns weirdness in 2016. It starts innocently enough. With a way too young wannabe model posing as if her throat is slit. If there's one knock, it's that Nick Winding Refn could surely use an editor to speed up the first half, but as we get through it and continue exploring the depths of everyone's insanity that's when this flick really gets going. I forgot to add the Jena Malone molesting a dead girl's corpse bit to my scenes of the year, but beyond mere shock value, this film does magical things with its lighting, symbolism, and thematic ruminations of the nature and value of beauty itself. It's a trip, man.

#8: The Love Witch

"Put a sawbuck on Captain Nemo in the fifth at Belmont."

This assuredly isn't getting any easier. It's amazing that 2016 is an age where you can essentially replicate a film from any time period. This is usually done horribly, but writer/director Anna Biller owns it here, melding a horror/romance, if you can even call it that, story with technicolor 60s aesthetics and both 2016 thematic sensibilities and technology. I dare say it's Archer-esque in its playing with nebulous time periods, which only heightens what it's trying to say about woman's power in this world.

#7: La La Land

But can it beat Gangster Squad (2013)?!

Your presumable Oscar frontrunner, unless Moonlight (2016) gains a lot of traction, La La Land is the best antidote to 2016 - cheery, bright, hopeful, and special in all the right ways. It's weird if 2016 will be remembered for this cinematically considering all the other insane shit that went down this year. Gosling and Stone hook up on screen for the third time in five years, and have never been better. Original movie musicals are actually rare as hell, and this is a fun one to route for. It's a love letter to Los Angeles, musicals, and dreams with everything sold in crisp efficient fashion by wunderkind director Damien Chazelle.

#6: Silence

Some would call Catholicism the "Godzilla" of religions.

It felt like this movie took forever to come out, and it was worth the wait. Scorsese is in full-on serious filmmaking mode here, not comical insane Wolf of Wall Street (2013) mode or serious but insane Departed (2006) mode. This is an at times epically slow meditation on faith, our relationship with God, and dangerous clashes of culture. It could very well be the most beautiful film Marty has ever shot, and although we're weary to miss some of the wit and panache of his recent work (is it weird how Scorsese has gotten more irreverent and modern in his twilight years as a filmmaker?), this retains all of his expert precision of the craft, which is still tops for any working director.

#5: Arrival

Watch out for that giant kidney bean!

I just ranted at great length about this one, so for a more in-depth look, check that out, but suffice it to say that despite my personal objections with a lot of Villeneuve's directorial choices, just from an irritant's point of view, it's also a phenomenally locked-in story with excellent character and thematic growth. It's a great parable for our current age where there's a plethora of communication but no one really talking with or understanding each other. Also that shot. Right there. Best of the year. It also spins alien arrival tropes in new and fun ways - Contact (1997) be damned! For real, fuck Contact. This was totally and honestly different.

#4: The VVitch

Waaaaahhh! How is this is the scariest image
of 2016! The eyes! THE EYES!!

My mid-year #1 pick has been reasonably supplanted, but not really by any film released in the back half of the year. My one complaint remains that I had to crank the volume way up and eventually turn on subtitles to understand Daddy McMumble, but dialogue is really second to visuals and tone here, which aren't flashy, but eternally depressing, which truly engrosses us int he plight of these hapless farmers. It all clicks towards the end as the eponymous Witch almost takes a backseat to Beelzebub himself. Kids shouldn't play with evil black demonic goats. Just sayin. I also love how this list includes The Witch AND The Love Witch. Witches are big in 2016 I suppose - despite Hillary not being elected! Ohhhh I feel so dirty. I love you, Mrs. Clinton.

#3: Swiss Army Man

MONTAAAAAAAAGGGEE

Someone really ought to discuss why 2016 was filled with such weird ass movies. We're not really even at the weirdest, although I did say that was The Neon Demon. Demon was probably the most fucked up, Swiss Army Man probably played with reality the most and our #1 pick played its bizarre reality straight. But sticking with our #3 pick, Swiss Army Man gets points not for its boffo premise, which I found easy to get passed (the farting Harry Potter corpse) and the fact that it's remarkably glib about what parts are real, symbolic, happening within Paul Dano's mind, or completely fictional. There's a sense that it plays with time and space with remarkable abandon, capturing the rationalizations of his hopeless stalker's mind who really just longs for some friendship and company. The corpse probably isn't the way to go. Or maybe Manny is real. Maybe he did go on a journey. Or, what's more likely, he just camped out creeping in Mary Elizabeth Winstead's backyard for a few weeks. Not great, Paul. Brilliant, weird, and totally comfortable and proud of itself, there's a lot to unpack here, from the subtle fact that they are supposedly miles from civilization but still feeding on discarded Cheesy Poofs, to the impossibility of his desert island escape without a farting corpse - everything clicks.

#2: Green Room

You know, the Nazis in Green Room got the candidate they voted for.

So I'm already changing my mind, after having named Green Room the highest 2016-made film I saw in the Calendar Year 2016, even if I actually ranked The Lobster higher, since at the time I was going by its true 2015 release rather than its 2016 US theatrical release. I need to stop digging these insane indie festival films. High-Rise presents the same issue. But since then I changed my mind - let's go by pure US release, which puts The Lobster ahead. Got it?

I still think that Green Room suffers from an anti-climactic ending, but that's also due to the first four-fifths of the film pouring on a steady breakneck tension. Anton Yelchin's farewell tour pairs him with Imogen Poots in a Fright Night (2011) reunion way better than Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011). Patrick Stewart is unrecognizable as a supremely evil yet tempered villain, and the whole Punk Rockers vs. Neo-Nazis in a confined space in the Pacific Northwest is a premise any 80s movie would have gone crazy with. The best moments are when that tension pops, though, and it's quick and merciless with its deaths, always accidental, sudden, and quick to move on since the characters don't really have a choice to sit and cry about it. Assuredly left off many Top 10's for the year, my love of genre flicks like this knows no bounds. Yelchin RIP.

#1: The Lobster

“You ever bully or hurt anybody again, I’ll come back and buttfuck your
father with your mom’s headless corpse on this goddamn lawn.”

As I was watching this insane exercise in cultural exaggeration I instantly knew it was the film I'd be rambling about at the end of the year. Somehow it's still Yorgos Lanthimos' most accessible film, as he swiftly introduces us to a simple premise - in whatever version of earth this is, and it's never quite clear whether this is just an insular city culture or the norm across the whole planet. If you are looking for love and haven't found it on the outside, you may check into this resort (it seems optional, right?), and either find someone in 40 days or be turned into an animal of your choice. You can obviously buy some time by pegging off deserters who choose to be single in some rebel camps that have rules to singlehood as stringent, if not more so, then those who believe you should be couples.

The whole film has a bone-dry sense of humour that works best when all the principal characters take their completely bonkers situation with the highest sincerity. There are some brutal moments, though. Colin Farrell plays a vulnerable love hack who fails at conning his way through and out of the system, and finally finds love in a place where it's forbidden. Rachel Weisz is equally as good as his near-sighted match, which in itself is a weird commentary on who we're supposed to hook up with. This is the kind of film you can talk forever about, but for me, hits on some big interests, namely cultural differences and restrictions, not so much the nature of love, but the nature of societal pressures to find (or not find) love, and a tone and premise that begs you to laugh then dares you not to. Everything clicks through a slow reveal of how the world works, which simultaneous simple yet drastically different than our own. The characters, most importantly, take all this world-building for granted, without winking at the audience or pausing to let us catch up. It's the kind of audience respect, another movie that knows and revels in what it is to wondrous results.

The Rest:

Again, I hate adding some honourable mentions. It's such a cop-out. But here are some other good films from this year, mostly bigger genre films that I really dug, but didn't stick with me as much. Except maybe Deadpool. Deadpool will stick with me forever. In no particular order:

Captain America: CIVIL WAR
The Nice Guys
10 Cloverfield Lane
Deadpool
London Has Fallen
Zootopia

Hell or High Water

Goodbye 2016: Top Movie Moments of the Year

Here we now exist in that most magical week of the year - the Final Week of 2016! A nebulous time between Christmas and 2017 where hopefully you aren't doing all that much. I for sure am not. Most web pundits and bloggers out there spend all of December going through their top picks for the year, but I'm of the opinion that you've got to wait until the last possible minute. After all - are we to capture the entirety of 2017 or what?! Our Official Top 10, which will be undermined to death in the years following what's hot right now and what has Legacy, will come shortly - but let's start off with the Top Movie Moments of the Year, along with other Superlatives. I always like this opportunity to highlight some great bits from otherwise sullied films, but this year a lot seem to be one in the same. Let's begin:

Airport Fight - Captain America: CIVIL WAR



CIVIL WAR won't ultimately make our cut, but damn if it didn't come close. There are a lot of great moments here, and the Cap vs. Stark one on one at the very end is surely the apex of their long-building personal conflict. Here is where almost all of our Superhero Movie wishes are granted though - the Battle Royale between an array of costumed weirdos. Everyone gets their little moment, with Spider-Man and Ant-Man the sure standouts, never better than when they turn against each other. It's pretty grimy but above all a hell of a lot of fun. Damn near perfect as an action sequence.

Baby Bath - The VVitch



So let's now go in the complete opposite direction. The VVitch has been left off many Best Of year lists for whatever reason, likely a combination of recency, unwatchability, and its genre-ness, but it wastes no time showing what kind of movie it is by undercutting all the main characters, immediately showing its hand that there is a real live Witch preying on this poor settlement, and thus setting the stage for everyone else to turn on each other in mystery, suspicion, and yeah, bewitchment. It's not the only scene of the year that shows up on this list for sheer brutality, but it's the kind of thing that will stick with you long after this film is done fucking your soul.

Reverse Gravity - Arrival

No clip available quite yet, but of all the well done scenes in Arrival, the most cinematic and visceral is the gravity change. The best shot for sure, likely for the year, is the initial approach seen above which is simply breathtaking. The best scene though, has got to be when Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner first board the giant black egg. It's a trip just to see that physics seem to work a bit different here, but you feel the unnerving experience all the way, along with the horrifying disorienting tension of turning around and seeing nothing but a plummet to your death so long as this mysterious anomaly holds. It's an excellent combination of acting, editing, and shot choice to combine for a really engrossing moment.

Orgy - Sausage Party



I still continuously debate whether or not Sausage Party was any good - the humour is extremely sophomoric, but conceptually it's brilliant. And I'm all about sophomoric humour, but even this was probably too far gone. It culminates by throwing off any shackles it may have purported and somehow finds a way to push things even farther. This scene is actually kind of sexy, but in a way that makes you feel exceptionally dirty and never really willing to look at tacos the same way again. It's a pansexual fiesta that you can watch over and over again without ever getting the answer to the most important question of all - how the hell is this a movie?

The Arm Cut - Green Room



Green Room is all-around amazing, at least until its flat ending, and it's tough to pick a singular scene, although this was one where I had to pause the movie and walk around a bit to shake it off. At first you only hear Anton Yelchin's yelps, and up to this moment you think that the bar's owners may not be so bad. Sure they're Nazis, but seem more shady than evil. Here's when everyone's intentions are laid bare without pretense of help or negotiation. Also super gross. It's a moment where no one can turn back from.

"SABOTAGE" - Star Trek Beyond



Years and years ago I posed about films that harness the Awesome Power of Rock to advance their plots. I actually only came up with two, but that was seven years ago when this site was pretty rough. Yeah. WAS rough. That post was in honour of Brutal Legend for fuck's sake. But here's #3, and as cliché as the song choice is (which every year unfortunately feels more dad-ish. What is wrong with us?), it's apt for Kirk and the marketing campaign. Who cares, the Beastie Boys destroys Aliens. Or mutated Humans or whatever the hell those assholes in Beyond were. It comes together sublimely.

Elephant - The Brothers Grimsby



Here's the first real curveball. I'm sure you didn't expect The Brothers Grimsby here. The scene where Harry Potter gets AIDS is tempting, but for a terrible bomb comedy, there's actually a lot of greatness here. It peaks with Sacha Baron Cohen hiding in an elephant vagina, which simultaneously feels like the obvious horrible animal to cum in your face along with a fresh comedy bit. Alright, maybe that's a stretch, but if your sense of humour is real twisted, this is gold. Again, squeamish readers ought to just keep scrolling.

"Would that it were so simple" - Hail, Caesar!



I don't know why this scene works so well in a film that's altogether kind of meh; striking for a Coen joint. Both Ralph Fiennes and Alden Ehrenreich had big years in their own right, and the chemistry here is fantastic in a scene that's plotwise fairly out of place (then again, everything is in Hail, Caesar!), but thematically sound. After a while you're not sure if you should laugh or continue sitting in amazement that all these characters exist, from the exasperated Fiennes just barely holding back his rage but maintaining true professionalism to poor Ehrenreich's Hobie Doyle who is hopelessly out of his element but just trying to do the best job he can. It's a subtle fantastic bit.

Hot Meat Lube - Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising



Another relatively forgotten yet competent comedy, everything comes together by use of Zach Efron's sexy distracting dancing. Ike Barinholtz's forever horribly misguided clown steals the show by popping up at the worst moments in a bravura madcap sequence through a tailgate in a film that never totally eclipses its predecessor.

Vader - Rogue One

Scene of the year picks should always be obvious, and this was an easy pick. No reliable clip up yet, but surely this will eventually be the most-watched Star Wars video on YouTube. Sneaking in with just a few weeks to go, the forty year cultural culmination that we didn't even realize we needed - Vader being Vader re-purposed but never lost is the most 2016-scene in a long year of franchise re-contextualization. He's re-earning the title as cinema's #1 bad guy and displays the kind of fearsome power we've always just merely imagined. There's an argument that his threat is scarier in A New Hope (1977), but I'd challenge any hater to watch this over and over.

Other Nominees:

Doctor Strange reverses time

Powers on full display in Midnight Special

Kevin describes his cat in Ghostbusters

Actors of the Year

This was a tough call. On the male side, Ryan Gosling made a damn good case for having the best 2016 out of anyone, although he just had The Nice Guys and La La Land, but with an incredible comedic performance against type (or at least angsty Drive [2011] type) in the former and the latter which could go on to big things come February, that's significant. The male actor of the year, though, has got to go to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, which is horribly unlikely considering The Rundown (2003). Or maybe that was an early signal of his endless charisma. He only had two entries on the year as well, but Central Intelligence was the most popular live action straight comedy of the year (if you ignore Deadpool and Ghostbusters which kind of straddle genres), and Moana, even if it's just his voice, was huge and totally an animated version of the big lug. He's also the Sexiest Man Alive and with 2016 sandwiched between two Fast and Furious films, it feels like he's non-stop.

The woman's side was a bit tougher to figure out. Melissa McCarthy had two big films, but neither really made a lasting impact. I bet you even forgot the non-Ghostbusters one. Amy Adams makes a strong case for herself with Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Arrival, and Nocturnal Animals, which presents a nice range of roles, genres, and exposure. I really want to lean towards Margot Robbie, though, whose three flicks include Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, The Legend of Tarzan, and Suicide Squad. While her role was minimal in the not-much-seen Foxtrot, and Tarzan didn't make too much of a splash, when Suicide Squad works at all it's largely due to her Harley Quinn, and with a slew of roles lined up, she's got 2016 in the bag.


Best Trailers of the Year

Lastly, let's go through the trailers. An art form in their own right, we got a lot of the same crap yet again this year - big Inception (2010) - level BRRRRMMPP's, fast cuts, rising editing, and a whole lot of footage that isn't in the final product. But a few stand out:

The LEGO Batman Movie (2017) - proving both that Will Arnett may indeed be the best Batman of our age and that there are endless interpretations of the Caped Crusader - including this one that seems to walk the line between camp and self-seriousness, at least in a self-aware way. It's complicated.
A Cure for Wellness (2017) - I like switching gears fast. This is the kind of film that needs a great trailer to draw interest, and it scores big here. Sure you've got the re-purposed pop song, but it works super creepy wonders here.
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) - Dropping a first look three months ahead of a release is bold, but when the trailer is this good you're good to go. This sells everything about you need to know about the tone perfectly.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) - so none of this footage made the final film, which is kind of crazy. As a mini-movie this is brilliant, even if the tone and even implication of plot doesn't fit the still fine final film. This still gives me chills though.

Logan



C'mon - the top trailer of the year couldn't be anything else. This is damn near perfect for a character's ninth outing, not counting appearing as a cut-out on Ryan Reynolds' face in Deadpool (2016). You know, Deadpool is the most successful X-Film, maybe the problem this whole time has been Hugh Jackman. One part Old Man Logan, one part Reavers, hints of Mr. Sinister, and a busted out old Professor X in the mix sounds like a damn good time, and the hollowed out, mutant-less tone seems less like a superhero film and more like a superhero dropped into Unforgiven (1992). I'm down.

Stay tuned for much more coverage of 2016, including our fabled Top 10 film list along with our look backs at television, music, and more!

First Impressions: 10 Cloverfield Lane

I'm tempted to name 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) as the first really great movie of 2016 (as much as I loved Deadpool [2016], though!), but this flick has a lot going for it. While it executes a lot of great script conventions really well and it's an enormous well-shot film with compelling actors in a carefully crafted taught story, it does however, borrow heavily from a lot of other films, ironically none of them being Cloverfield (2008). Let's discuss this film at length here with a crazy amount of SPOILERS dropping all over the place:

The only monster here is Fred Flintstone.

First of all, it should really be said that this film doesn't have the slightest bit in any way to do with Cloverfield. It's totally not a sequel. No big white goobers show up to eat plucky camera people. Sure there is some kind of monster attack, but it's not Kaiju. To some extent there are thematic similarities - both involve an intimate look at the people on the ground indirectly affected by an unprecedented attack, although the conceit of Cloverfield's found footage style is traded for a tense bottle story with extremely limited characters and locations. For the record I'm more into 10 Cloverfield Lane's style.

This of course begs the question - why attach the brand recognition at all? After seeing this fantastic trailer once two months ago I was all in, and although the Cloverfield connection intrigued me in a sense of "How will they connect the two?" when it turns out it's not connected at all, that didn't detract from the quality of the film except for the cognitive dissonance created by the separation between content and brand identity discovered after the fact. So, why not let it stand on its own?

Apparently the actors probably feel the same way, actually having no idea that their cool little movie was a Cloverfield tie in until days before the trailer was released. It's clear that this was a cheap way to stretch some life out of Bad Robot's earlier successful movie and capitalize on some kind of familiar name to push this film. I'm simply not sure any of that was necessary considering the strength of that trailer that comes off very unique and interesting on its own before the final Cloverfield tie-in is dropped. Still, it probably helped get some asses in seats (since it's been pretty successful, all things considered), although I'm not sure that inherent cognitive dissonance will help the film in the short term. Considering how good it is, though, I'm confident about its long-term cultural impact.

In general, this means really weird things for the future of film branding. There have already been other ideas thrown around that would very tangentially connect otherwise unrelated films. Some of these may share similar styles or more often, production houses, but it seems like a desperate attempt to employ name recognition, which is quickly becoming the most valuable way to make money in Hollywood.

I actually personally disagree with this assessment and I think it's missing a big point - the way to make money isn't name recognition but by simply putting out a project that connects with people. Is there a reason why Zootopia (2016) should make way more money than The Lone Ranger (2013)? No, they're both by studios that have had a ton of success in their genre with plenty of name recognition in actor and director. One film hit a niche and the other didn't. That's all it is, folks.

So enough of this production crap, let's actually talk about the film. Mary Elizabeth Winstead gets her car wrecked by John Goodman, who then captures her so she can be his daughter in a post apocalyptic bunker (that may or may not be the apocalypse) along with a local village idiot who stands around until Goodman shoots him in the head and dissolves him in acid. MEW escapes but then has to fight aliens outside because IT IS the apocalypse.

Got all that?

Each of the three principal actors does a fantastic job. John Goodman hasn't had a role this meaty in a while, although he's had memorable turns mostly in Coen Bros films and Best Picture Winners. Still, he's a powerhouse in this film, able to appear kind and reasonable one minute, albeit with an air of inherent decent, and then instantly crank up the rage, exploding all over screen and totally dominating the scene.

Against this mighty foe, though, is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who holds her own against the mad John Goodman. She's capable of a ton and it shows here when she's given long stretches of dialogue-free scenes to emote through problem-solving, creative ways to escape, and trade between moments of desperation and badassery.

Finally we have John Gallagher, Jr., who struck me as a young Jason Sudeikis with a beard. His role is mostly someone to bounce off of the two principal actors here, but he's an intriguing character nonetheless, who has his own failed dreams, naïve sensibility, and dumbness, but his heart is in the right spot, which ultimately gets him shot in his face. You know, you can't win them all.

And that's pretty much it. There's a brief bit with a woman with a burnt up face trying to get in the bunker, but she dies outside, and apparently Bradley Cooper's voice can be heard as MEW's BF who calls her right before the car accident. I only saw that in the credits, I have to watch it again for sure to train my ears on that. For as distinctive as Brad Cooper is, his voice tends to pop up in odd places melded pretty well with the source material. Alright, just Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), but I'm still impressed.

This whole film is a long game of claustrophobic subtlety, and MEW is really the star here. The screenplay inserts the most Chekov's Guns I've ever seen, but they're often organic, which lessens their obviousness in a good way. It walks this fine line between screenplay convention and trickery, giving our heroes all the items that would be found in an underground bunker and setting them upon the impossible task of figuring out how to get the hell out there. Towards the end it was almost like things came together too perfectly, as if there were all these bits hanging out there that MEW picked up and used for her final escape, but as I said, it's mostly organic enough that when all these items that are useful later are established you don't think about it that hard or believe it's out of place.

That said, there were a few continuity errors that seemed distracting. The timing of John Gallagher's character entering the bunker doesn't seem to fit in (he said he arrived a few days ago, but if Goodman was racing home and hit MEW the night before to rush in, that doesn't add up). The same goes for the previous abductee, Brittany, who supposedly went missing two years ago, although that also doesn't seem to add up with the conviction of Goodman's character to remain in the bunker that long. I'm normally never ever distracted by these things because despite the best intentions of "Everything Wrong With", it truly doesn't matter when a film is good, but it was distracting for some reason here. I suppose it's because everything is so confined and beautifully crafted otherwise, when your mind is scrambling to put together the mystery, when these impossibilities jack shit up it takes you out of the film.

That bitch Brittany stole some puzzle pieces!

The film also does a great job of slowly unraveling the madness of John Goodman's character. It drops hints to figure out rather than big dialogue or exposition, which is such a welcome rarity. You can eventually piece together that he's simply looking for another girl to be his daughter, regardless if Mary Elizabeth is into it or not. There are some awkward hints at a sexual desire, but I think it's more innocent than that. At least in the sense that forcing a woman to live with you in a bunker forever pretending to be your daughter but NOT raping her is innocent.

I would be remiss if I didn't think a little bit about Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. They end up being nice pairs for each other, on completely opposite ends of the "kidnap girls and keep them in a bunker while the fake apocalypse is happening outside" genre.

Of course, in a move that echoes Frailty (2001), it turns out that the Apocalypse is very real. I'm not sure if MEW's best course of action would be to settle into her role as John Goodman's fake daughter in a creepy bunker forever, but it's amazing that the film continues for quite a while after he explodes in a fiery, acidy mess as she fights some aliens. It's kind of an odd turn that suddenly vastly increases the scope of the film, although it retains the repetition of theme, tense mood, and MEW's ingenuity for finding Chekov's Guns.

We should talk about this a bit of course - namely that the final moment where MEW throws a Molotov Cocktail into the mouth of the weird bionic alien ship is totally an exact rip-off of War of the Worlds (2005), although it's arguably a little cooler. Actually, that weird green mist also reminded me of War of the Worlds in the sense that these cats are just spreading their shit everywhere to kill all humans.

Of course, this leads us to the most badass ending in recent memory where MEW is given a choice between the safety of Baton Rouge or to join in the mayhem in Houston. She elects to go to Houston. I had some fridge realizations though that this actually may not be that consistent with her character - wouldn't she want to just take a break? Or does she have those natural instincts, where she actually gets off on this stuff? I felt a little bit of  The Hurt Locker (2009) going on here. I'm not sure if it exactly lines up with the film thematically or with MEW's character, but it sure is a fist-pumping moment that really works as you're watching it. Maybe it works. I'm still going back and forth on it. Comments on this are appreciated. What do you think?

I'll rarely talk about more technical aspects of film because I'm still working on actually being able to credibly discuss them, but I thought the framing and camera work here was actually fantastic. There's a great moment after MEW whacks Goodman in the head with a bottle and tries to escape, but then he asks her to stitch up his brow. First-time director Dan Trachtenberg uses a wide shot with both characters melding with the edges of the frame until MEW reluctantly decreases the distance and comes to help him. It's a fantastic construction. The film is full of these really great shots and framing work.

So, it's not without its problems, but I really dug this flick. I'd stick it with Deadpool, Zootopia, and Midnight Special (2016) so far this year.

What did you think?