What was the best film you watched this week? (Christmas 2016)

Next Sunday is New Year's Day, and I will be posting a special edition of this thread called "What was the best film you watched in 2016?"

Think about all the movies you watched this year (not just new releases, but older films too) and tell us next week about the ones you liked the most!

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The way this works is that you post a review of the best film you saw last week. It doesn't have to be a new release, just any film you have seen over the last seven days that you feel is worth talking about. Here are some rules.

1. Check to see if your favourite film of last week has been posted already. If so, please reply to that comment instead of making a new thread.

2. Please post your favourite film of last week.

3. NO TV SHOWS!

4. ALWAYS use spoiler tags. Report any comments that spoil recent / little-known films (e.g. Rogue One) without using the spoiler tag.

5. Comments that only contain the title of the film will be removed!

Here are a few great comments from last week's thread:

• Saw Moonlight this week. Absolute masterpiece. The acting is spot on throughout, especially Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali. It's direction is crisp and meaningful from its sweeping and cyclical opening shot. It's a wholly unique experience at the theater, I really haven't seen a movie like it before and don't imagine I will anytime soon. I love the way Barry Jenkins shot black skin in this film. It's a wholly different visual experience when the bodies we're seeing onscreen are reflecting the purples and the blues that saturate the film right on their own faces rather than having it projected. The film's visual flare matched so perfectly with its thematic elements of the cycles of poverty and drug use, sexual repression and putting on masks, and expectation. I think it's an important film, maybe my favorite ever to tackle sexual identity. I was almost moved to tears by a guy wiping cum on the sand of a beach, I mean what the fuck, right?!

• High Rise (2016) - I read the original Ballard novel almost 15 years ago, and the imagery and general midnight-dark satirical tone of it have been stuck in my head since then. Its vision of capitalism leading to a kind of commercialized totalitarianism, a reverse Lord or the Flies where lust for status begets a complete societal breakdown. Ben Wheatley did an incredible job capturing both of those elements (imagery and tone) in this film......maybe better than any literary adaptation I've seen in recent memory. Plus the movie is fucking insane, some great performances, and just a fun ride. This definitely isn't a movie for everyone.......just read the reviews if you need proof. But that's just another fun aspect of the movie to me. Every once in a while a movie comes along that confuses and angers critics and moviegoers so much that their reception to it becomes a whole other level of entertainment. The reviews have gotten a bit better over the last 6 months or so, but when the film first came out at Sundance and then hit Netflix, reading the Rotten Tomatoes page was like being in a reddit abortion thread and sorting by "controversial".

• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. This is as good of a post-apocalyptic movie that explores every facet of the human condition as it can be. I really like the ratio of screen-time that we get for the humans and apes because it helps to not alienate and be bias to the audience (human) by considering the ongoing equilibrium struggle of two races. I also really like the outlook that when the chips are down and all morality and humanity is lost, both sides are driven by their inner-most "primitive instincts" to survive. Like I said before, it's the exploration of the human condition in its most pure, naked form. The CGI on the apes is phenomenal and I never felt like they were "unreal" during those ape scenes. Ironically, the performance and characterization of Caesar is one of the best and humane I've seen for a movie in recent years.

For further expansion of the rules, please read this link.

Have fun and play nice!

Submitted December 26, 2016 at 04:30AM by GetFreeCash http://ift.tt/2i5UGcZ