A Guide to the Best of 2016’s Junk Movies

In difficult times, a body needs some cinematic comfort food, films that you can turn to for succour, escape and a certain kind of spiritual nourishment. Even the most serious of cinephiles usually has a movie that they secretly relish. I’m not talking about a cute fondness for Kung fu films of old, or Joan Fontaine vehicles. I mean really embarrassing stuff, starring Cameron Diaz.  

Here’s an admission. Sometimes, when I feel extra sad about the state of the world, I watch Step Brothers. I am not sure why the sight of John C. Reilly’s curly-headed mug cheers me up, but it does.

Luckily, there was an ample supply of good junk this year. Let’s start with the primo stuff!

David Mackenzie’s film Hell or High Water actually ended up on a number of critics’ lists this year. It’s a lean, mean film, sharply written, with a couple of performances that are something to be reckoned with. Chris Pine, familiar to the universe as James Tiberius Kirk, and the face of Armani cologne, plays Toby Howard. Toby is the smarter half of a pair of brothers, who take to bank robbing to save the family farm. Actually, they only rob the bank that robbed them first. You can’t say that Texas Midlands Bank didn’t have it coming.

The other half of the Brothers Howard is Tanner (played by Ben Foster). Mr. Foster has been scaring audiences for a while now. (One need only look to 3:10 to Yuma for a gentle reminder of this fact.) In Hell or High Water, the actor is back in western territory, playing a more contemporary outlaw but still embodying the right combination of good old boy, shit-kicking lunatic and destroyed child. He is the heart and soul of the film, if not the brains. That job falls to his baby brother Toby. Here, Chris Pine is something of a revelation, his sculptural prettiness covered up by a mangy moustache and a good thick coating of dirt and sadness.

Hell or High Water is very much a writer’s movie, with dialogue that twangs and sings in equal measure. Full credit must be given to screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, who combines shades of Cormac McCarthy with James Lee Burke, to craft a modern western with nuance, colour and, yes, genuine emotion. Also, any film that starts with a song from Waylon Jennings has already wormed its way into my heart. 

The film’s plot is best summed up as revenge of the poor people, but there is real pathos at work here, helped along by the corruption visited upon rural folk by the institutions they were taught to trust. Before long, one is fully embroiled in the pursuit, and wanting the outlaws to escape the long arm of the law, personified by a gruff old cooter named Marcus Hamilton (played by Jeff Bridges) and his partner Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham). The Texas Rangers and the bank-robbing brothers are not all that different from each other. The real villain of the piece is a little something called a reverse mortgage. 

A world away, the corporate ethos of eat or be eaten was similarly at work in Korea.

This summer’s runaway hit Train to Busan boasted not only armies of the undead, but also undead baseball teams, rabid cheerleaders, and a little girl who could steal your heart, but hopefully not eat it. Director Yeon Sang-ho brought his animator’s eyeball to the proceedings so that the extended chase scenes between the zombie hordes and the perky humans resembled something Tex Avery might have envisioned after a big dinner. A social critique was also embedded in the flesh of the film, but it never got in the way of a romping chomping smorgasbord of all-you-can-eat mayhem. And finally, there was just something nice about a film set on a train, even if it involved people getting their faces eaten off.

Other Korean films that brought the good stuff this year were The Wailing and The Tunnel, two films that proved that you could combine grim horror, sweet schmaltz and cultural critique into a taste sensation that threatened to blow off the top of your head. Yummers!

Science fiction and genre films benefited from the presence of strong writers, directors and actors. Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival was only one example of what is possible in genre film when actors dig deep; another was Jeff Nichol’s Midnight Special. Michael Shannon gave heart to the film, elevating what was essentially science fiction goofiness into searing emotional territory. You have to give the wall-eyed son of a gun his due. This past year, Shannon embodied everyone from Elvis to the world’s nastiest real estate broker with an electric boogaloo kind of commitment that made women go weak in the panty area and men think he’s a solid guy. 

Good junk also came in the female form. I would argue that director Mike Mills’s 20th Century Women would qualify as primo cheese. The film meanders along, diddling about with puddles of story, but it has stuck with me. Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening) is a mid-fifties woman, with a teenage son, a crumbling boarding house and a couple of renters in the midst of personal crises. In the film's rambling shambles of a plot, there are moments of distinct charm. Greta Gerwig, everyone’s favourite gamine, is a flame-haired young woman, recovering from cervical cancer and uncertain of her next move. Billy Crudup is the resident hippy handyman who makes his own shampoo and supplies his penis and hammer skills to the women of the house. Like any good way station, Dorothea’s home is a place where people can take a moment to collect themselves before they move on. Inside this moment, there are dinner parties, dancing, cigarettes and conversation. The film ends on a bittersweet note that lingers long. We are only here for a short while, so we’d better make the best of it.

Another subcategory of junk I encountered this year was films to watch on airplanes. There were a few happy surprises here. The Nice Guys featured Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as a pair of none-too-professional private dicks who bumble and fumble and often shriek (Gosling’s girlish squeals are one of the film’s highlights) their way through the bloody action. The film also included the reunion of Crowe and Kim Basinger, not seen together since L.A. Confidential, another ripe and delicious slice of cinema cheese, as rank and funky as triple crème brie.

Zootopia was also an excellent way to painlessly pass the time on a transatlantic flight. The jokes were consistently amusing, the colours acid bright, and the action brisk and inventive. There was even an undertone of racial tolerance to add depth. 

Finally, if all else failed, or if one was felled by the flu, soul-sucking despair or ennui so enervating that you couldn’t get out of bed, there was always Netflix. The biggest surprise this year was, of course, Stranger Things. For all the buzziness and hoopla, it was still oddly pleasing. Yes, the characters were familiar tropes, the writing was kind of silly and the plot borrowed wildly from other sources (from Stephen King to Stephen Spielberg). But who cares. It did everything it needed to do: tell a story, make you care about the people involved and resolve in epic fashion, with a fierce little girl, a horrific monster and a mother and child reunion.

So, onwards to 2017! With another edition of Alien and a remake of Blade Runner, the larder of junk is looking good. And if 2016 was any indication, we may need all the escapism and cinematic soul food we can get.  

Happy holidays, everyone!