2016
The winner is listed first, in CAPITAL letters.
Filmsite's Greatest Films
of 2016
Best Picture
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/shots/moonlight.jpg)
MOONLIGHT (2016)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-arrival.jpg)
Arrival (2016)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-fences.jpg)
Fences (2016)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-hacksawridge.jpg)
Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-hellorhighwater.jpg)
Hell or High Water (2016)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-hiddenfigures.jpg)
Hidden Figures (2016)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-lalaland.jpg)
La La Land (2016)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/shots/titles-lion.jpg)
Lion (2016)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-manchester.jpg)
Manchester by the Sea (2016)
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Best Animated Feature Film
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-zootopia.jpg)
ZOOTOPIA (2016)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-kubo.jpg)
Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-moana.jpg)
Moana (2016)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-mylifeasz.jpg)
My Life as a Zucchini (Switz./Fr.) (2016)
(aka Ma Vie de Courgette)
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![](http://www.filmsite.org/moviescreens/titles-redturtle.jpg)
The Red Turtle (Jp.) (2016) (aka La Tortue
Rouge)
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Actor:
CASEY AFFLECK in "Manchester by the Sea," Andrew Garfield in "Hacksaw
Ridge," Ryan Gosling in "La La Land," Viggo Mortensen in "Captain
Fantastic," Denzel Washington in "Fences"
Actress:
EMMA STONE in "La La Land," Isabelle Huppert in "Elle," Ruth
Negga in "Loving," Natalie
Portman in "Jackie," Meryl
Streep in "Florence Foster Jenkins"
Supporting Actor:
MAHERSHALA ALI in "Moonlight," Jeff Bridges in "Hell or High
Water,"
Lucas Hedges in "Manchester by the Sea," Dev Patel in "Lion,"
Michael Shannon in "Nocturnal Animals"
Supporting Actress:
VIOLA DAVIS in "Fences," Naomie Harris in "Moonlight," Nicole
Kidman in "Lion," Octavia Spencer in "Hidden Figures," Michelle
Williams in "Manchester by the Sea"
Director:
DAMIEN CHAZELLE for "La La Land," Denis Villeneuve for "Arrival," Mel
Gibson for "Hacksaw Ridge,"
Kenneth Lonergan
for "Manchester by the Sea," Barry Jenkins for "Moonlight"
This
year marked the 89th annual Academy Awards. In
terms of themes, four of the nine Best Picture nominees were prominent
stories of diversity (with non-white subjects). (Note: There were
eight nominees for the top film last year.) Seven
of the nine were considered dramas (although some were hybrids),
while there was one sci-fi film and one musical. At the time of
the nominations, none of the Best Picture nominees had crossed
$100 million (domestic) at the box office, although Arrival was
the closest at about $96 million. This marked only the fifth time
this has happened in the past 20 years.
The Best Picture winner was Moonlight (with
three wins from its eight nominations), also taking Oscars for
Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali) and Best Adapted Screenplay
(for its director Barry Jenkins, from a story by Tarell Alvin McCraney).
The top film was a coming-of-age dramatic tale (the director's
second film) told in three chapters - about black youth Chiron
(a young gay black man) living in a crime-infested rough area of
Miami with a crack-addicted mother. Its tagline was: "THIS IS THE
STORY OF A LIFETIME."
In a major milestone, it was
the first LGBTQ film to win the Oscar for Best Picture. [Note:
LGBTQ = lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (and/or
questioning) individuals/identities.] And it became the first Best
Picture winner without a single white cast member. It was
the first Best-Picture winner from an African-American director.
At the time of the Oscar presentations, Hidden
Figures had become the highest-grossing Best Picture
nominee at $152.8 million (domestic). The winning film Moonlight hadn't
been seen by many audiences (it was the lowest grossing of all
the Best Picture nominees). It was ranked as the # 101st film
of the year at the time of the award presentations, with only
$22.3 million (domestic). Therefore, it was one of the lowest
grossing Best
Picture winners ever, had a very small production budget of $1.5
million, and was released by independent distributor A24, with
support from Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment.
The biggest box-office hit of the year, Rogue
One: A Star Wars Story, lost both of its nominations (Best
Visual Effects and Best Sound Mixing).
The other major Oscar winners among the Best Picture
nominees, in descending order of Academy Awards wins, included:
- La La Land (with six wins from its fourteen
nominations), an
old-fashioned musical by writer/director Damien Chazelle (his
third film) - a musical throw-back featuring the third on-screen
pairing of Ryan Gosling with Emma Stone as lovers in modern-day
Los Angeles. It had a tie-breaking number
of Oscar nominations (14), matching two other films in past cinematic
history: Titanic (1997), and All About Eve (1950).
Its Oscar wins included: Best Director,
Best Actress (Emma Stone), Best Cinematography, Best Original
Score, Best Production Design, and Best Original Song ("City
of Stars"). [Note: La La Land tied All About Eve
(1950) with the exact same totals: 14 nominations and six wins.]
- Manchester by the Sea (with two wins from
its six nominations), with Oscars for Best Actor (Casey Affleck)
and Best Original Screenplay (for its director Kenneth Lonergan)
- a sad family melodrama about a withdrawn uncle caring for his
fatherless teenaged nephew
[Note: With its nomination and backing, Amazon became the first
streaming-video Internet company to earn a Best Picture nomination.]
- Hacksaw Ridge (with only two technical
wins from its six nominations), with Oscars for Best Film Editing
and Best Sound Mixing - director-nominated Mel Gibson's true-to-life
WWII epic-drama about a conscientious objector/corporal who refused
to carry a gun, saved seventy-five men on the battlefield, and
subsequently was awarded the Medal of Honor
- Arrival (with only one win from its eight
nominations), an Oscar for Best Sound Editing - director
Denis Villeneuve' sci-fi, alien invasion drama-thriller about
a mourning female linguist tasked with deciphering the language
used by aliens
- Fences (with only one win from its four
nominations), with an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (Viola
Davis) - a family drama, and star/director Denzel Washington's
third directorial venture, directing himself as an African-American
garbage collector and his wife in the segregated city of Pittsburgh
in 1957
Three of the nine Best Picture nominated films went
away empty handed:
- Lion (with six nominations and no wins),
director Garth Davis' tearjerker drama (and feature-film directorial
debut) about a 5 year-old Indian boy (8 year old Sunny Pawar)
separated from his home, adopted in Australia, and on a search
for his lost family over two decades later (Dev Patel)
- Hell or High Water (with four nominations
and no wins), director David Mackenzie's western crime drama
about a Texas lawman pursuing a bank robbery case
- Hidden Figures (with three nominations
and no wins), an inspiring true-to-life NASA historical drama
set in the 1960s by director Theodore Melfi, about the African-American
female math wizards behind astronaut John Glenn's historic 1962
orbital space flight
In the Best Director race, all five of the directors
nominated in the category were also representing films nominated
for Best Picture. Damien Chazelle was the Best Director Oscar winner
for
La La Land. He was the youngest director
ever to win - at just over 32 years of age. It
was 44 years since a previous director (for a musical film)
won the Oscar - Bob Fosse for Cabaret (1972).
Barry Jenkins became the 4th black helmsmen to
be nominated in the category, and the first African-American to
direct a Best Picture-winning film, Moonlight.
[Note: Previous
black directors nominated included: John Singleton for Boyz
N the Hood (1991), Lee Daniels for Precious: Based on
the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire (2009), and Britisher/Trinidadian
Steve McQueen for Best Picture-winning 12 Years a Slave (2013).
There has never been a winning black director.]
[Also, four of the five Best Documentary Feature
nominees were also directed by black filmmakers. Ezra Edelman’s O.J.:
Made in America won the Best Documentary Oscar Academy Award,
becoming the longest Oscar winner ever (at 467 minutes)
- it was released as an episodic serial on ESPN. In length, it
bypassed the Best Foreign Language Film winner War
and Peace (1966, Russia) (previously the record-holder at
431 minutes), honored at the 1969 Oscars ceremony. Some detractors
of the 2016 winner claimed it was more eligible as an Emmy-contender
than as an Oscar-contender.]
The Academy was praised this year for increasing
the number of nominations for non-whites, in
contrast to the previous two years when there were no non-white
nominees. 2016
marked the first time ever that three black writers received Screenplay
(Adapted) nominations in the same year: co-writers Barry Jenkins
and Tarell Alvin McCraney (Best Adapted Screenplay for Moonlight)
(the ultimate winner), and August Wilson (Best Adapted Screenplay
for Fences). This
also marked the first year that black actors/actresses were
nominated in each of the four acting categories. In
this year's crop of nominees, there were seven black (or non-white)
acting nominations (among the possible 20 nominations) - six
African American and one Indian - in five different films (Fences,
Loving, Moonlight, Lion and Hidden Figures) - a major
record for a single year. There was also a
rare Best Cinematography nomination for black cinematographer
Bradford Young for Arrival.
A pair of African-American
actors - Moonlight star
Mahershala Ali and Fences star
Viola Davis - won both of the supporting categories: Best Supporting
Actor and Best Supporting Actress. Their awards marked the first time
in more than a decade that multiple Oscar acting honors went to
black actors.
The Best Actor race included one first-time
nominee, three nominees with their second nomination, and a two-time
winner. The winner was:
- 41 year-old Casey Affleck (with his second nomination)
as emotionally-numb Lee Chandler - a grieving maintenance man
appointed to be custodian for his teenaged, 16 year-old nephew
Patrick (co-nominated Lucas Hedges), and forced to return home
after the death of the boy's father (his own brother Joe (Kyle
Chandler)), in Manchester
by the Sea
[Note: Affleck was previously nominated
as Best Supporting Actor for The Assassination of Jesse
James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007).]
The other four Best Actor nominees included:
- 33 year-old UK/US actor Andrew Garfield (with
his first nomination) as soft-spoken WWII American Army Medic
Desmond Doss, and the first conscientious objector (as a 7th
Day Adventist) to become a recipient of the Medal of Honor, in
Mel Gibson's Hacksaw
Ridge
- 36 year-old Ryan Gosling (with his second nomination)
as passionate jazz pianist Sebastian, who fell in love with aspiring
actress Mia (co-nominated Emma Stone) in the modern day city
of Los Angeles, in La
La Land
[Note: Gosling's earlier Oscar nomination was Best
Actor for Half Nelson (2006).]
- 58 year-old Viggo Mortensen (with his second nomination)
as bohemian socialist father Ben Cash, living off the grid with
his wife Leslie and six children in the Pacific Northwest, in
writer/director Matt Ross' quirky independent film Captain
Fantastic
[Note: Mortensen's first Oscar nomination was Best
Actor for Eastern Promises (2007).]
- 62 year-old Denzel Washington (with his seventh
acting nomination and two previous Oscar wins - also nominated
for the first time as Best Director, making this his eighth career
nomination), as an emotionally-distraught, working-class African-American
father Troy Maxson (an ex-Negro League baseball player, and ex-con),
now married to Rose Maxson (co-nominated Viola Davis) and living
in 1950s Pittsburgh, employed as a sanitation worker, in Fences
[Note:
Washington has won twice before: Best Supporting Actor for Glory
(1989),
and Best Actor for Training Day (2001); his other nominations
include Supporting Actor for Cry Freedom (1987), and three
Best Actor nods for Malcolm X (1992), The Hurricane
(1999), and
Flight (2012). With this year's nomination, Washington
now has the most acting nominations for a black actor with seven.]
The Best Actress race was between five accomplished
candidates: two first-time nominees, a two-time nominee, and two
previous Oscar winners. The winner was:
- 28 year-old Emma Stone (with her second nomination),
as aspiring actress Mia in modern-day LA who fell in love with
a jazz pianist (co-nominated Ryan Gosling), in La La Land
[Note: Stone's previous nomination was Best Supporting
Actress for Birdman (2014).]
The other four Best Actress nominees included:
- 63 year-old French actress Isabelle Huppert (with
her first nomination, after more than 100 films in her career),
benefiting from a recent Golden Globe win, as wealthy and successful
video game company exec and rape victim Michèle
Leblanc in Paris, who sought revenge after the assault, in
director Paul Verhoeven's sexually-violent French film Elle
[Note: Only two other performers, both actresses, have won
an Oscar for a Foreign-Language performance: Sophia Loren for
Two Women (1960, It.) and Marion Cotillard
for La
Vie en Rose (2007, Fr.).]
- 35 year-old Irish/Ethiopian-born Ruth Negga (with
her first nomination) as wife Mildred in an inter-racial marriage
with white man Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton), who challenged
their Virginia arrest for miscegenation in the 1950s - a case
that reached the Supreme Court in 1967, in writer/director Jeff
Nichols' Loving (the
film's sole nomination)
- 35 year-old Natalie Portman (with her third nomination,
and one previous Oscar win) as widowed First Lady Jackie Kennedy,
in director Pablo Larraín's
biopic Jackie (with
three nominations, including Best Costume Design, and Best Original
Score)
[Note: Portman was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for
Closer (2004), and won Best Actress for Black Swan
(2010). Other nominated First Lady characters include Eleanor
Roosevelt (Greer Garson in Sunrise at Campobello (1960)),
Pat Nixon (Joan Allen in Nixon (1995)), and Mary Todd
Lincoln (Sally Field in Lincoln (2012)).]
- 67 year-old Meryl
Streep (with her record 20th nomination in 38 years - first nominated
in 1979) for her role as the title character - as aspiring untalented,
vain opera singer and 1940s New York heiress FFJ, in director
Stephen Frears' comical musical-drama Florence
Foster Jenkins (with only two nominations including Best
Costume Design)
[Note: Streep has the most acting Oscar nominations
for a single person in Academy history. She has 16 nominations
for Best Actress and four for Best Supporting Actress. Katharine
Hepburn and Jack Nicholson follow - each with 12 nominations.]
The Best Supporting Actor candidates included three
first-time nominees. The winner was:
- 42 year-old black actor Mahershala Ali (with his
first nomination), as neighborhood drug dealer Juan in a crime-stricken
area of Miami, living with his girlfriend Teresa (singer Janelle
Monáe,
in her acting debut),
and nurturing as a father figure to young bullied 9 year-old
male Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert), a young gay man, in the sobering
and poetic, 3-chapter drama Moonlight
[Note: A member of the Muslim faith, Mahershala Ali became
the first Muslim to win an Oscar. This year, he also appeared
in two of the Best Picture nominees. His second appearance was
as a military man in Hidden Figures. With his win for
Moonlight, Ali became the first actor to actually win
an Oscar in the same year in which he appeared in more than one
of the Best Picture nominees.]
The other four Best Supporting Actor nominees were:
- 67 year-old Jeff Bridges (with his seventh acting
nomination, with one previous win), as about-to-retire, southern-accented,
weary, wise-cracking Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton investigating
a string of bank robberies, in British director David Mackenzie's
crime-western Hell
or High Water
[Note: Bridges won his sole Oscar as Best Actor for Crazy
Heart (2009). His other nominations include three other
supporting noms, for The Last Picture Show (1971), Thunderbolt
and Lightfoot (1974), and The Contender (2000), and two other
Best Actor nominations for Starman (1984) and True
Grit (2010).]
- 20 year-old Lucas Hedges (with his first nomination),
as 16 year-old teen Patrick Chandler who lost his father and
was under the custodianship of his emotionally-distant uncle
Lee Chandler (co-nominated Casey Affleck), in Manchester
by the Sea
[Note: Hedges was the youngest nominee among the 20 performance
nominees.]
- 26 year-old British/Indian actor Dev Patel (with
his first nomination), as Indian boy Saroo Brierley who was adopted
in Australia by loving parents (the Brierleys), then located
his childhood home in India (and his birth family) by using the
Internet's Google Earth, in Lion
[Note: Dev Patel became the first Indian actor to be nominated in
13 years, for his performance in Lion, (and the third actor
of Indian descent in Oscar history). The
previous Indian nominee was part-Indian/Britisher Ben Kingsley for
Best Actor in House
of Sand and Fog (2003), and before that - Merle Oberon, nominated
for Best Actress in The Dark Angel (1935).]
- 42 year-old Michael Shannon (with his second Best
Supporting Actor nomination), as gruff Texas detective
Lieut. Bobby Andes (dying of cancer while working on his last case),
in director Tom Ford's noirish, psychological thriller
Nocturnal Animals (its sole nomination)
[Note: Shannon was previously nominated as Best
Supporting Actor for Revolutionary
Road (2008).]
The Best Supporting Actress category set an amazing
record: it was the first year in Academy history that a single
acting category (Best Supporting Actress) featured three black
nominees: Viola Davis, Naomie Harris, and Octavia Spencer. The
winner was:
- 51 year-old Viola Davis (with her third nomination,
and no previous wins), for her role as Rose Maxson, the patient
but trapped house-wife of gin-soaked, embittered, unfaithful
and erratic husband Troy Maxson (co-nominated Denzel Washington)
in 1950s Pittsburgh, in the Denzel Washington-directed Fences
[Note: Davis'
third career nomination was a record for a black actress. She
became the first black actress to earn three Oscar nominations.
She was previously nominated for her performances in Doubt
(2008) (supporting)
and The
Help (2011) (lead). She also became the first black
actress to win an Emmy, a Tony and an Oscar. Winning all
four major awards has become known as the EGOT foursome.]
The other four Best Supporting Actress nominees were:
- 40 year-old British actress Naomie Harris (with
her first nomination), as Paula, the troubled, crack-drug-addicted
loving yet negligent mother of Chiron (Alex Hibbert as a child
known as Little, Ashton Sanders as teenager Chiron, and Trevante
Rhodes as adult Black), in Moonlight
- 49 year-old Nicole Kidman (with her fourth nomination
and first supporting nom, with one previous Oscar win), as Sue
Brierley, the adoptive Australian mother of displaced Indian
boy Saroo (co-nominated Dev Patel), in Lion
[Note: Kidman's sole win was Best Actress for
The Hours (2002), and she had two other Best Actress noms
for
Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Rabbit Hole (2010).]
- 46 year-old Octavia Spencer (with her second nomination,
after one Oscar win), as real-life NASA pioneer Dorothy Vaughan
in the early 1960s, in Hidden
Figures
[Note: Spencer's previous Oscar win was Best Supporting Actress for
The Help (2011).]
- 36 year-old Michelle Williams (with her fourth
nomination, and no previous wins), as Randi Chandler, Lee's ex-wife
(co-nominated Casey Affleck) in a broken marriage, in Manchester
by the Sea
[Note: Williams' previous noms were for Brokeback
Mountain (2005) (supporting), Blue Valentine (2010) (lead), and My
Week with Marilyn (2011) (lead).]
Most Obvious Omissions and Snubs:
Best Picture:
It appeared that the scandal (a decades-long rape case) surrounding The
Birth of a Nation (2016) sealed its fate - with no honors, even
though the accused director was acquitted. The clever and off-beat
superhero box-office hit Deadpool was
also snubbed entirely, but could
have been the first superhero film to receive a BP nomination. Although
Fox's Jackie
had three nominations, it missed out in the Best Picture category.
Fox Studios suffered the biggest omission - it has usually
rated at least one Best Picture contender among the nominees since
Sideways (2004), and it recently won back-to-back Best Picture
Oscar awards for 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Birdman (2014).
The number 1 box-office hit of 2016, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,
the 8th Star Wars-related film, was nominated in two technical
categories only: Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects.
Best Director:
Mel Gibson's unexpected, redemptive comeback nomination (his
first since Braveheart (1995)) in this category for Hacksaw
Ridge shut
out two other contenders: (1) Martin Scorsese for his austere
passion project about 17th-century Jesuit missionaries in Japan
- the religious epic Silence (with
only one nomination for Best Cinematography for Rodrigo Prieto),
and (2) Garth Davis for Lion. And two other prominent
directors were also denied nominations: Clint Eastwood for Sully,
and Denzel Washington for Fences (although Washington
did receive a performance nomination for the film). Also, there
were no female directors, although there were some exceptional
possibilities for female nominees this year, such as Mira Nair
for Queen
of Katwe and
Kelly Fremon Craig for The Edge of Seventeen. [Note: Kathryn
Bigelow remains the only woman to win the Best Director award
for The
Hurt Locker (2008), and there
has been only a total of four nominated female directors in the
entire history of the Academy Awards!]
Best Actor:
Some might argue that Tom Hanks' time had come for
a deserving Oscar nomination for his role as All-American
pilot - Captain Chesley Sullenberger who heroically landed
a plane in the Hudson River, in Sully.
(Hanks was nominated five times between 1988 and 2000 and won
twice in 1993 and 1994 - his last nomination was 16 years ago,
for Cast
Away (2000).)
Best Actress:
Amy
Adams (with five career nominations and no Oscar wins), as linguist
Louise Banks who communicated with aliens - the star of Arrival,
did not receive an Oscar nomination. (If Adams had been nominated,
she most likely would have lost, making her a real record-loser
- tying with six-time losing actresses Deborah Kerr,
Glenn Close and Thelma Ritter.) Also, Taraji
P. Henson (with one career nomination and no wins) was not nominated
for her lead role as math savant Katherine G. Johnson in Hidden
Figures. Annette Bening (with four career nominations and
no wins) was snubbed for her role as struggling single mother
Dorothea living in SoCal in the late 1970s,
in writer/director Mike Mills' 20th
Century Women. (The film's sole nomination was for Mills'
Best Original Screenplay.)
Best Supporting Actor:
Hugh Grant (without any Oscar nominations) was snubbed for his
role opposite Meryl Streep as Florence's husband/manager St. Clair
Bayfield in director Stephen Frears'
Florence Foster Jenkins. Michael Shannon's nomination
as police officer Bobby Andes appeared to take away a potential
nomination in this category for fellow actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson
as nasty redneck Ray Marcus, in Tom Ford's Nocturnal
Animals.
Best Supporting Actress:
Best Animated Feature Film:
The year's # 2 box-office smash sequel Finding
Dory from
Pixar, a billion-dollar success (the highest-earning animation),
was missing from the nominees. The studio's many previous wins
for the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar was shattered. |