The 10 Best Films of 2016 You Probably Missed
We are getting closer to the end of 2016 and in a year that has been full of movies, chances are you have lost some of the best films of the year. Here I leave a brief list of 10 arthouse movies that you possibly missed this year.
Captain Fantastic
Ben (Viggo Mortensen) is the father of six children. For ten years they have lived in the remote forests of the Pacific Northwest, far from civilization. Ben has raised his children in an environment of high intellectual demand, rejecting all contact with capitalism. In fact, the family does not celebrate Christmas, they celebrate Noam Chomsky’s day. But when his wife commits suicide, the family is forced to leave their shelter. When leaving his paradise and returning to civilization, this peculiar family must adapt to modern society, which is not going to be anything easy.
The truth is that it is a movie that makes you think about many things. The movie has a clear message. The society is not going well, and people are lacking human emotions, more solid values. Modern society is not living in the jungle of nature, but in the jungle of wild capitalism.
10 Cloverfield Lane
A young woman suffers a car accident. When she awakens, she is locked in a cell under the ground, kidnapped by a strange man (John Goodman) who claims to have saved her from the doomsday. The eccentric captor assures that the outside world is uninhabitable because of a terrible chemical attack. This is how her nightmare begins in a spiral of ignorance. The criminal’s mind is blocked, and she will have to try to analyze her enemy in order to survive.
Very good movie with moments of great tension, good actors and a situation with happy moments and moments of despair. The director has very well played all his assets. The rhythm, the interpretation, and the suspense make it a movie worth seeing.
Cemetery Of Splendour
A school located in a rural entity in north-east Thailand is transformed into an improvised hospital to attend soldiers who fall sick from a mysterious sleep disorder. While they were sleeping, a strange experimental apparatus of therapeutic lights prevents them from having nightmares. They are visited by relatives and two volunteers: Keng, who possesses psychic powers with which she communicates with the sleepers, and Jenjira, a woman who suffered from polio and who gives peculiar attention to Itt, one of the soldiers whom she adopts almost as a son.
The cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a particular allusion to the universe and its correspondences. He often insists on pointing out that everything exists in harmonious communication. Although to a lesser extent than in his earlier films, Apichatpong Weerasethakul looks again at the nature and essence of things in the rhythmic notion of the Cosmos beats.
Sing Street
Conor, a high school student whose parents are on the brink of divorce, is forced reluctantly to join the benches of the public school whose rules of education differ from those of the private school that he used to. He finds himself in the midst of turbulent students who mishandle him and demanding teachers who quickly make him understand that as a little new he will have to spin gently. In order to escape from this violent universe, it has only one objective: to impress the most beautiful girl in the neighborhood, the mysterious Raphina. He decides to set up a band and embark on music, a universe in which he knows nothing and nobody except the vinyl of his adolescent room.
Dreams can make people forget misery, bring those who are different, bring joy. It’s a real good movie that makes you want to get back to the 80’s. All songs are sharply written, good screenplay, endearing characters interpreted by very good young actors.
L'avenir (Things to Come)
Nathalie is a professor of philosophy in a Parisian high school. Passionate about her work, she loves above all to convey her taste for thought. A married women having two children, she shares her life between her family, her alumni and her mother who is very possessive. One day, her husband tells her that he is going to live with another woman. Confronted with a new freedom, she will reinvent her life.
One of the best arthouse movies of the year. The story of this woman who passes from one time of her life to another can remind someone of her story, that happiness is made of hope, that life is neither miserable nor exalting but simply life and that, it is up to each one to find his or her way there.
Parched
Four women dare to oppose men and ancestral traditions that enslave them in a small village in the State of Gujarat, India. Driven by their friendship and their desire for freedom, they confront their demons, and dream of love and elsewhere. Revolt and hope are the basic elements of this film which led and interpreted its plot remarkably. Sublime image from beginning to end and a great lightness in the unfolding of an increasingly dramatic story as the film progresses to a magnificent image of the woman’s liberation without taking the lead.
It’s a thought-provoking film that depicts the condition of Indian women in rural areas. Very beautiful interpretation of the four main actresses. Overall, it’s a description of the odious reality on the status of women in many countries.
The Man Who Knew Infinity
The story revolves around the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan, one of the greatest mathematicians of our time. Raised in Madras in India, he joined the prestigious University of Cambridge in England during World War II, where he developed many mathematical theories under the guidance of his professor G. H. Hardy.
Very good film, an exceptional set of actors. I discover a beautiful story and surprised that this film is not well known, excellent film to see!
I, Daniel Blake
For the first time in his life, Daniel Blake, a 59-year-old English carpenter is forced to use social assistance as a result of heart disease. But although his doctor forbade him to work, he was forced to seek a job. During his regular appointments at the job center, Daniel meet Katie, a single mother of two children who has been forced to accept accommodation 450km from her hometown. Taken together in the net of the administrative aberrations of Britain today, Daniel and Katie will try to help each other.
It’s a shocking and social film. I was touched by this story and its interpretation. I, Daniel Blake is absolutely unforgettable, it is a film that marks for life. The best film by Ken Loach, a perfect palm of gold, an absolute masterpiece!
Aquarius
A very beautiful film that happens on the Brazilian coast. Clara lives in an old building that wants to be bought by an architect full of ambition. She soon finds herself alone, all other apartments having been bought by the architect’s company. The confrontation is rather hard between them while Clara is very surrounded by a family that is part of her. Very disturbed by this tension, she thinks back to her life, her past, those she loves.
It is one of the best art movies. An intimate masterpiece where the daily life is sublimated. It breathes the perfume of the family’s nostalgia, material, the authenticity of a world with intact values ... It is also a beautiful portrait of a woman.
Clash
The revolution is potentially chaotic. The film captures the moments of summer 2013 in Cairo just two years after the Egyptian revolution. In the aftermath of the dismissal of President Morsi, a day of violent riots, dozens of demonstrators with divergent political and religious convictions are embarked in a police van. Will they overcome their differences to get by?
A very strong film that makes us aware of the difficulty in making choices. It is not because my neighbor thinks differently that he is my enemy. Great film about tolerance and free will.
Conclusion:
Just because some of these arthouse movies did not receive much attention does not mean that they are not worth watching. Maybe you are one of those who missed these masterpieces from the world of cinema.
