Best Albums of 2016

So it was mid-December and I realized I hadn't really listened to any new albums in 2016. Music has always taken a backseat to some of my other hobbies, but this was ridiculous. So I subscribed to Amazon Prime's music service, grabbed a bunch of albums I was interested in or that were getting end-of-year award buzz, and listened to them a couple times. That's right, I'm letting go of CDs. For the most part. To be honest nothing here truly grabbed me and refused to let go, but I enjoyed all of it a lot. Only featuring four artists I've ever really listened to before!

Best of 2016

10. Bon Iver - 22, A Million


Bon Iver's Justin Vernon is known for his folk leanings, but he's also interested in electronic elements, which is abundantly clear listening to this. There's a track or two that's just his autotuned voice with no accompaniment, and for every time he busts out his acoustic guitar, there's another where he's all about glitchy computer noises. He's exploring a lot of different directions he can go with his sound, which I like.

9. Angel Olsen - My Woman


My Woman sounds like it could have been recorded at almost any time since the 1960s, and I mean that in a good way. The songs range from punchy, immediate garage rock to a much dreamier and slower style, and Olsen's unique voice ties all of it together.

8. Kendrick Lamar - Untitled Unmastered


Even Kendrick's B-sides are better than a lot of peoples' singles. The songs here were recorded while he was working on To Pimp a Butterfly, and he performed a couple on television at the time. I'm glad he decided to release them like this, because even his experiments are really good. These songs are generally pretty chill in comparison to where he can go sometimes, and I enjoy all of his jazz influences.

7. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree


The recording of this album was influenced by the death of Nick Cave's son during its production, and I honestly can't tell how much that shows because I'm not very familiar with the band's work. It seems like a big part of things though, as the album sounds at times haunting and even apocalyptic, and Cave's unusual vocal delivery gives it a weight I really liked.

6. Solange - A Seat at the Table


Beyonce's younger sister is an accomplished musician in her own right. Solange has a nice voice, and a unique ear for R&B melodies that sound new and exciting. She's also not afraid to be political, with thoughts about blackness and how that matters in today's world clearly permeating the entire thing. It was a pretty common theme in the music of 2016.

5. Chance the Rapper - Coloring Book


What's the difference between an album and a mixtape? With production this high in quality, does it even matter? I wasn't familiar with Chance before this year, but I really like what he's doing. He has a unique style of rapping where he is sort of singing half the time, and it's hard to pin down where one begins and the other ends. He also has no problem talking about his faith in God in one moment and his desire to smoke weed the next, which makes him an interesting character. It's certainly the most joyful hip hop on this list.

4. David Bowie - Blackstar


David Bowie knew he was dying while he was making this, and it's obvious he decided not to go down quietly. I've only started to really get into his music, but he's a rock legend, and it's remarkable how much this album kind of kicks ass at times. It's also amazing how clearly he's singing about the end he saw coming, especially on great songs like "Lazarus" and the closing track. Every artist should hope to have a final statement as good as Blackstar.

3. Kanye West - The Life of Pablo


The Life of Pablo feels like a bit of a hybrid of Kanye's previous two albums - it has some of the eclecticism and vitality of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but also some of the abrasiveness of Yeezus. He calls it a gospel album, but he also raps about fucking models and making Taylor Swift famous. Everyone has a strong opinion on Kanye, and it seems like if anything he encourages it with what he's doing here. And damn if he isn't still the best producer in the business.

2. A Tribe Called Quest - We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service


I haven't listened to A Tribe Called Quest before, but I definitely need to check out their back catalog. It's amazing to me that they came together for their first album in nearly two decades, only months before Phife Dawg's unfortunate passing, and it's this good. Great rapping, great beats, and a great lineup of guests, probably mostly artists who they influenced with their earlier work. Good from start to finish.

1. Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 3


This was scheduled to come out in early 2017, but it was released online early as a surprise Christmas present. Run the Jewels 3 kicks just as much ass as their last album, if not more. You can just feel the rage behind every verse and every beat. Other albums will give you more variety or nuanced songwriting, but nothing is as propulsive and focused and ballsy as this.

Delayed Entry

This is the best album that wasn't released in 2016 but I didn't hear until then.

The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers

I easily could have put The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars here, but I already talked about Bowie and I might as well talking about The Rolling Stones too. In the last few years I've been opening myself up to classic rock more, and Sticky Fingers is one of the best albums from the era I've found. The band is just banging on all cylinders, with really great songwriting backing up a solid mix of rock with blues and other elements that created the genre in the first place.

Movie Update 32: Nolan and Scorsese

Martin Scorsese is one of the best directors who ever lived, and I think that Christopher Nolan is on his way to earning that distinction. In the last week I've watched the few remaining movies by both of them available for streaming on Netflix.

The Age of Innocence


Love stories are often passionate, but few let that passion boil just under the surface as much as it does in The Age of Innocence. Daniel Day-Lewis plays a lawyer from a wealthy family in 1870s New York City (only a few years after the chaos and violence depicted in Scorsese's other film Gangs of New York) who becomes engaged to a woman played by Winona Ryder, but when her cousin played by Michelle Pfeiffer returns from Europe, he realizes how much stronger his feelings are for her instead. Wealthy families always want to avoid scandal though, and Pfeiffer is already damaged goods since she's considering divorce from her powerful husband, and they struggle with whether to take a chance or avoid causing a stir. Innocence is a well made movie with really good lead performances, but because it's so wrapped up in that distant old wealthy people mode, I didn't really find it gripping for most of its duration. A good movie, but I didn't find myself very invested.

Boxcar Bertha


Boxcar Bertha was Scorsese's first film that wasn't connected to his student projects, and it took a while for me to figure out what was off about it. Eventually though, it hit me - it's an exploitation movie. Not a terrible one, and it's one based on unusual concepts for that sort of thing, but it's still an exploitation movie. It uses issues like labor unions and race relations to make a movie about a girl who gets naked sometimes and robs banks and shoots people with her partners. It's sort of a second-rate Bonnie and Clyde with worse acting. I don't want to be too harsh on the movie, because it does some interesting things that most B movies you'd compare it too wouldn't. But it still never reaches very high, so even its solid execution results in a movie that's decent at best.

Following


Following is Nolan's first film, shot independently in black and white on a very small budget. It concerns an unemployed aspiring writer who decided to start following random people to learn about them and get inspired. Eventually he repeatedly follows the wrong guy, and gets pulled into a world of small-time burglary and betrayal. Much like his next film Memento, Following has a complex plot that is further complicated by the script's non-linear approach to structure. It jumps back and forth between time periods, always revealing things that end up clarifying or contradicting what came before. The actual truth behind what's going on when it's finally revealed can be looked at in two ways. On one hand, it's really kind of an absurdly complicated scheme to resolve what wasn't that difficult of an issue, and it's sort of unlikely that the whole thing would come together correctly. But on the other hand, it's still a really fun mystery to unravel, and the fun of noir movies is always that moment of realization when it all finally makes sense. It's a really good first effort.

Insomnia


Insomnia is the only film Nolan's directed that wasn't based on his own screenplay, and it shows a bit. He was proving to studios that he could handle a larger budget and more recognizable cast, and he does a good job of that, though the movie underneath is merely solid and definitely the least interesting thing that he's done. It's pretty much a boilerplate detective story with a plot that wouldn't be out of place in a random episode of most cop shows, but there are a few things that make it work. The first act twist that provides Al Pacino's Detective Dormer with an internal conflict does a good job of complicating an otherwise standard plot, and the ensuing insomnia that plagues him adds a lot of flavor to the whole movie. The acting by him and Robin Williams is good, and it's a really well-shot film, particularly in a few really tense sequences that are unlike what you'd usually see in this type of story. Hilary Swank's character seemed really badly written, and there are a few other hiccups, but mostly it's an above average Hollywood mystery/thriller. Nolan's best asset is probably his screenwriting, but I think with Insomnia he shows it's not the only thing he can do.

The Last Temptation of Christ


Based on a book besides The Bible, The Last Temptation of Christ tells the story of Jesus Christ in a very different way than we're used to. Willem Dafoe's Jesus is tormented by his knowledge and his communications with God, and he is a much weaker man than he is ever depicted as being in the New Testament. The movie hits a lot of the expected notes from the few years that he worked as a prophet, from his wandering in the desert to his sermon on the mount to turning water into wine to the healing of the sick and of course, his arrest and crucifixion. But it shows these moments in different ways than we're used to, and considering these stories in a different light, seeing them as the actions of a man with weaknesses and desires that he must sacrifice rather than an all-knowing and serene son of God is very interesting. The most memorable and controversial sequence comes near the end, when we see Jesus as a man who raised his own family rather than one who died for our sins, but the resolution of this sequence, when everything finally comes together, is extremely powerful, and strikes me as something that would restore faith rather than challenge it. Definitely one of the best religious movies I've ever seen.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

David Lynch's unique style and direction make this movie enjoyable, though it's certainly a flawed one. People who haven't seen the show either won't understand at all what's going on or find what they do understand to be unsatisfying, and people who have seen the show will probably be disappointed by some of the things from the show's central appeal that are missing, and might find the material that is there a bit too well-worn to be really compelling. It was a project that was probably doomed to fail, though it was nice to visit the town that made the show such a joy one more time.

Fire Walk with Me is a prequel to the series that shows the initial investigation of Teresa Banks' murder and the events of the last few days of Laura Palmer's life, while also filling in a little bit about Agent Cooper's introduction to the case and what happened after the series finale. It begins with another pair of agents investigating Teresa's death, and after one disappears (the other is played by an enjoyably quirky Kiefer Sutherland), Cooper is put on the case. Before long though he hits a dead end, and the focus shifts to Laura's story, which takes up most of the movie. Here we see a whole lot more of the depravity and weird mumbo jumbo that made up the circumstances around her death, the former of which we mostly already knew about and the latter of which still doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Laura does drugs, ignores her friends, prostitutes herself, and becomes increasingly erratic as she learns more about the strange man who's been tormenting her. Eventually things spiral out of control as we see what really happened the night before the series starts.

None of the details are too unexpected though, and at times Fire Walk with Me feels less like a movie filling in gaps and more like a mythology-heavy flashback episode that the show never ended up really needing. Lots of characters return, mostly played by the same actors, although too often little is done with them besides reminding the viewer of little things. Hey, remember how Laura did Meals on Wheels with the diner? Or how Bobby scored coke for her? Now you get to watch it. I don't object to seeing the world of Twin Peaks expanded, I just wish that the movie had more of a point to it. I also wish it was a bit closer to the tone of the show. Twin Peaks had adult themes but was acceptable enough for prime time television in the early 90s, while the movie really earns its R rating with swearing, violence, and nudity. This would be fine, but the dark aspects of the film end up taking over the whole story, and the other side of the series, the goofy, charming side, is pretty much entirely abandoned after a certain point.

So I think the film is worth watching if you really loved the show, and would like to see more about the key events that shaped it in the beginning. It's actually a reasonably effective horror movie, an element that the series touched on but never really embraced. It doesn't really go out of its way to terrify you, but there's lots of spooky and creepy imagery, especially revolving around all the mystical stuff, and the last act of the movie in particular is brutal and uncomfortable to watch. Lynch has a handle on film making even when the material isn't top notch, and in saying goodbye to the show he loved but didn't completely deliver on, he made a reasonably entertaining movie. I know a lot of people really hated it, but if you go in knowing the limitations and what you're in for, I think it's worth seeing.

The Prestige

Written in participation with Bryce Wilson's Chris Nolan Blogathon at Things That Don't Suck...

After I saw this film yesterday and loved it for the most part, I realized I had to finally decide where I stood on Christopher Nolan. It's a bit of an awkward position because on one hand, he has made two of my favorite rewatch films, i.e. movies that would probably be better or at least as interesting in a different way if you see them again knowing fully what's going to happen, and also two of the best super hero films from a decade full of them. That right there is enough to make him one of my favorite directors, given my limited experience with some of history's great auteurs. There are a couple other things I have to acknowledge, though. Despite saying Memento would be a great rewatch film and having it on top of my list for best movies of the 00s... I haven't actually seen it more than once. And while he's made several great movies, I feel like his strength is pulling good work out of big name actors and writing good scripts, not necessarily shooting a scene. His work is consistent and competent, I'm just not sure he has enough style or ability to make a scene that isn't inherently compelling into a marvel like Scorsese or the Coens or Tarantino. Not that there's anything wrong with making good use of your cast and director of photography to put a brilliant story on the screen, it's just something I've thought about.

But yeah, the movie... it's really good. Strong thematically, as it's about two magicians who become rivals over time, and the film itself is mostly a magic trick as much as anything that happens on the screen. It basically invites you to try to figure it out before the two hour running time is over, and while I managed to puzzle out at least one aspect of its mind bending conclusion, there were still major pieces that managed to surprise by the end. Movies with twists can end up disappointing when you watch them again, if the twist isn't woven into the fabric of the entire story. Twists should leave you kicking yourself every time the movie basically tells you the secret, and it should tell you about a hundred times before it actually tells you. The Prestige definitely works on that front, with the sort of details littered around that make you slap your forehead shouting "oh!" hours after you've seen it, lying in bed. One unexpected factor is that the movie mostly presents itself as a plausible if extraordinary story, but there is one key plot element, introduced by Nicola Tesla himself (played by David Bowie, who is so perfect in the role that I somehow missed that it was him), which is impossible and you're just going to have to accept to enjoy the movie. But if you can, it's worth it.

And while I do have questions about Nolan's ability to carry a film, The Prestige is definitely well shot and well acted. Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman are both good as the main magicians, neither quite filling the role of protagonist or antagonist. They are both driven and tormented, and neither comes out for the better as the result of their rivalry. Jackman's American accent is a bit better than Bale's English one, but there were only a few times that it stuck out to me as false. Otherwise, they both do strong, passionate work that sells the unreality of what they're doing. Michael Caine is great as always in the mentor role for both men, Scarlett Johansson is again competent as a stage assistant who gets caught between the two men, and Andy Serkis manages to sell another slightly unusual character as Tesla's right hand. One of the main strengths of the story is how it's told, with a non-linear style that gives you information when you need it, and helps with the whole image of the film as an elaborate illusion by the filmmakers. For a movie about a couple of guys who like to do magic tricks, it's a pretty amazingly dark story with some pretty brutal implications, definitely worth seeing for any fan of films that make you think.