Time to take a look back at 2016 in movies
This is the time of year that everybody reflects on the past 365 days, for good and bad. And in terms of movies, it's always interesting to see what shows up on the various best-films-of-the-year lists.
I've been concocting such a list since, well, I was old enough to contemplate such a thing. But I've been doing it professionally in Spokane since 1984, the year I began reviewing films for The Spokesman-Review. That job now falls to Nathan Weinbender, since I left the print edition of the newspaper in 2009 (on, fittingly, April Fools Day).
But I partner with Nathan, and Mary Pat Treuthart, to produce a weekly movie-review show on Spokane Public Radio. And one of our annual features is to come up with our individual best-of lists. Nathan publishes his in the print edition, but Mary Pat and I wait until our show airs to make public our own choices.
And that show will air on Friday, Jan. 13 (6:30 p.m. on KPBX FM 91.1; 1 p.m. on KSFC 91.9 on Saturday, Jan. 14).
The reason we hold off until nearly two full weeks into the new year is because so many of the year's best, or at least those that boast Oscar hopes, don't open wide here. Example: We just managed to see "Fences," Denzel Washington's adaptation of the August Wilson play, on Sunday. And we managed to see "American Honey" at home, courtesy of Amazon Prime.
As I've noted below, so many other top-rated movies haven't yet played here, which means our own lists of personal bests will hardly be complete. So, I've included links to some of the other lists that are already out there — some of which offer up some intriguing opinions.
Richard Brody, The New Yorker.
Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter.
Manohla Dargis, A.O. Scott, Stephen Holden, The New York Times.
Click on them. And let the arguments begin. We'll have our say on Jan. 13.