Elle

The pundits mostly said the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama this year was Natalie Portman’s to lose. And she certainly gave an impressive performance as the former First Lady in Jackie. But the Hollywood Foreign Press Association doesn’t listen to the pundits. (I guess they sort of are pundits, in a way.) And they went a different way, picking Isabelle Huppert as their Best Actress (dramatically) for 2016.

According to most people (on the internet, which is where most people live now), 2016 was horrific. It was a year in which we lost some of our best and brightest artists, a year in which we elected a president who will, according to Kate McKinnon’s Hilary Clinton, “kill us all,” and it was a year in which many blockbusters fulfilled the “bust” end of that promise. Despite all of this, 2016 delivered some truly remarkable films; because of all of this, we needed them.

How you define the “best” of something varies from one person to the next. The “best” movies can be the ones crafted with the most artistry, the ones that feel particularly culturally significant, the ones you can’t shake hours, days, or months after seeing them. Or perhaps the best films are the ones you simply love the most and are eager returning to again and again.

The actual Academy Award nominations won’t be announced until January 24, but plenty of categories get a jump on the process by winnowing down the slate of eligible films to a shortlist from which the five nominees can be culled. The Animated Feature category should come forward with their shortlist any day now, the Documentary Feature category feature has already done so, and last night, some global talents of cinema found themselves shut out in the cold when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released their nine choices for the Foreign Language Film shortlist.

Along with the great deluge of awards programs, the end of 2016 brings best-of-the-year lists from just about every publication under the sun. Those film obsessives who catalogue such things eagerly await rulings from newspapers of record, major film magazines, and critics’ organizations, and the ball just got rolling earlier today with announcements from a pair of reputable sources. (We continue to patiently await High Times’ Top 10 Films of 2016 list, however. Word is they were big into Manchester by the Sea, but c’mon, who wasn’t?)

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After over three decades, Paul Verhoeven remains one of our most provocative filmmakers, and his latest effort is no exception: Starring the incomparable Isabelle Huppert, Elle is a challenging and masterfully nuanced exploration of one woman’s atypical response to sexual assault. It’s also a remarkable balancing act between darkly comedic drama and psychological thriller, and, as with most Verhoeven films, it’s quite divisive. So it seemed fitting that I spoke with the iconic Dutch director the day after the presidential election.

They don’t make ‘em like they used to, and Paul Verhoeven’s disappointed. In this instance, “they” refers to Hollywood’s major studio system, “’em” refers to erotic thrillers, and “like they used to” refers to the ‘90s, when the esteemed Dutch filmmaker came stateside to bestow the masterpieces (not joking) Basic Instinct and Showgirls upon U.S. audiences. Verhoeven’s not pleased with the direction in which the film industry is headed, and he made that much clear during some headline-grabbing comments at AFI Fest in Los Angeles this past Sunday, The Wrap reports.

It’s been 10 years since we last saw a new film from Paul Verhoeven, whose darkly satirical style has made his body of work incredibly divisive. That perspective hasn’t changed much over the past decade, though Verhoeven’s approach to style and tone has certainly matured, as evidenced by Elle. Featuring a razor sharp performance from the incomparable Isabelle Huppert, Verhoeven’s latest effort is a crafty and expertly layered drama in which a successful woman experiences a rather unconventional midlife awakening.

If you look back on the last few years of the New York Film Festival, you’ll find a common, though unsurprising theme: a lot of male-dominated narratives, often about white men’s woes and triumphs. Last year’s line-up had The Walk, Steve Jobs and Miles Ahead, 2014 was notable for the premieres of Inherent Vice, Birdman, and Foxcatcher, and the 2013 fest debuted Her, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and Captain Phillips. There have been some notable exceptions, like Carol, Clouds of Sils Maria, and Gone Girl, but overall stories about women have been a relegated to the background at the fest. That is, until this year.