Best Screenplays 2016

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Vote for the best of each Screenplay category

Adapted Screenplay - Arrival
8
18%
Adapted Screenplay - Fences
1
2%
Adapted Screenplay - Hidden Figures
2
5%
Adapted Screenplay - Lion
1
2%
Adapted Screenplay - Moonlight
10
23%
Original Screenplay - Hell or High Water
0
No votes
Original Screenplay - La La Land
0
No votes
Original Screenplay - The Lobster
5
11%
Original Screenplay - Manchester by the Sea
13
30%
Original Screenplay - 20th Century Women
4
9%
 
Total votes: 44

Sabin
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Re: Best Screenplays 2016

Post by Sabin »

It's possible my vote will change but I'm one of the people who voted for The Lobster. I've yet to see it a second time but it's been about a year since I saw it and it hasn't escaped my mind. It has a fairly dull second half, but I'm hoping that it might enjoy it more on a second viewing or find something new to take away. As Tee correctly states, Manchester by the Sea ends in a pillow but it would easily be my second choice and on subsequent viewings maybe my first. Whiplash became the industry model screenplay for a while, and I'm seeing a similar thing happening to Hell or High Water. It's becoming revered but I can't shake the sense that there is a fair amount of water-treading in the second act. And La La Land...well, I think it's screenplay is a bit underrated. It's very smartly written. But...did both of them need to succeed as wildly as they did in the end? It slightly undermines the wonderful finale. I love this script but it's just a draft away. This is overall a very good lineup. Throw something stronger than 20th Century Women (although I don't know what it could be...Toni Erdmann?) and I'd be inclined to call it one of the best script lineups of my life. 20th Century Women's screenplay is meandering but well-observed. I'm hoping that it comes together a bit more on a second viewing but I'm not getting my hopes up. It's nice that he has a nomination from Beginners.

The top four are almost interchangeable.
1. THE LOBSTER, Yorgos Lanthimos & Efthimis Filippou
2. MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, Kenneth Lonergan
3. HELL OR HIGH WATER, Taylor Sheridan
4. LA LA LAND, Damien Chazelle
5. 20th CENTURY WOMEN, Mike Mills


As for adapted, my vote easily goes to Arrival. It gains so much from its direction but it's such a mathematical piece of screenwriting, from its flipped structure to its calculated midpoint that links the eventual direction of the story. Clearly, mathematical screenwriting is not better than a more organic piece like Moonlight, but every time I revisit Arrival in both film and script form, I'm more and more impressed. It gets my vote easily. Moonlight isn't undeserving. Michael Mann said that it was his favorite film of the year because it embodied the following sentiment: get in late, get out early. Clearly it does and it's very well-structured. Every time I watch the film, a different segment gets the chance to shine...but there's something missing. Maybe more of a wraparound than the final shot. I don't want to rewrite the film for the filmmakers but I wanted something a bit more.

As for the rest, Hidden Figures' screenplay is an effective hackwork. The screenplay for Lion is the weakest element for sure, revealing itself as barely a story. It would surely be the weakest nomination of any other year, but Fences' nomination is embarrassing.

1. ARRIVAL, Eric Heisserer
2. MOONLIGHT, Barry Jenkins [screenplay], Tarell Alvin McCraney [story]
3. HIDDEN FIGURES, Theodore Melfi and Allison Schreoder
4. LION, Luke Davies
5. FENCES, August Wilson
"How's the despair?"
The Original BJ
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Re: Best Screenplays 2016

Post by The Original BJ »

Original doesn't have a bum nominee in the batch, although I still prefer Jackie to all. I voted for Manchester by the Sea, and smiled along with Matt Damon on Oscar night.

Adapted has a lot more filler -- the only two scripts I'd consider would be Arrival and Moonlight, and in both cases, I found the direction the more exciting element of the films. A second viewing of Moonlight didn't exactly change my opinion that the earlier portion has some generic aspects, but I was reminded that the last act has some pretty wonderful writing in it, enough to give it my vote.
nightwingnova
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Re: Best Screenplays 2016

Post by nightwingnova »

Original:

La La Land - nice outline that is perfect for Chazelle's vision but wispy for this honor.

Manchester by the Sea - Honest, solid family drama...my only complaint is that the source of Affleck's character's trauma and pain is withheld until about the film's mid-point, leaving us to wonder why Affleck behaves as he does for too long. There does not seem to be dramatic rationale for waiting so long.

Adapted:

Arrival - I want so bad to vote for this mature sci-fi film that eschews the usual horrid, cheap use of the idea of time. The film teaches so much about communication and advances our intellectual horizons about time.

But,

Moonlight - The screenplay for this film is a substantive accomplishment of art and social revelation.
bizarre
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Best Screenplays 2016

Post by bizarre »

Adapted Screenplay looked for a while like it would suffer from a major dearth of deserving nominees - the Academy threw it a bone mid-season by reclassifying both Moonlight and Loving as adapted screenplays. But this is still a bum category.

Hidden Figures - more an important phenomenon than an important or good film, it's written like a trailer: snappy one-liners with no throughline. Melfi & Schroeder could write good ads, but this is not a good script.

Fences - here's where it gets tricky. Strength of the adaptation or the strength of the story and dialogue as they are realised on-screen? Wilson's words are dynamite, but by all accounts this is a play transposed to screen with minimal "adaptation" happening in between. Though it's great to see Wilson's legacy honoured.

Moonlight - Jenkins and McCraney write a valiant throughline for the film's tripartite structure, but while the last hour is dazzlingly written I feel there are some missteps earlier on, with naturally poetic dialogue sometimes turning purple on a dime. Still, a worthy winner.

Arrival - both a wonderful adaptation of a brilliant story and a stirring exploration of themes that are rarely given this kind of treatment in a big-budget production. It has my vote.

The also-rans: Nocturnal Animals is the major snub here, though I never felt convinced that the Academy would fall for it. Deadpool was cited, somewhat surprisingly, at the WGA, and I know a number of people breathing a sigh of relief when it wasn't nominated. Silence never really picked up the steam that many who had followed The Wolf of Wall Street's unorthodox journey to a grab-bag of major nominations expected it to develop. We should all be glad things like Hacksaw Ridge and Sully weren't cited. Love & Friendship seemed like a prime contender that was unfairly shafted, and I was surprised that Elle didn't pick up more traction for a very good script. On the bubble - Loving, A Monster Calls and Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

Original Screenplay clearly has a greater mean quality, perhaps due to the slim pool of contenders voters were drawing from - 20th Century Women, Jackie and Captain Fantastic were the only scripts with upset potential, and the best script of the year - Toni Erdmann, the most ambitious work so far by Maren Ade, whose first two films The Forest for the Trees and Everyone Else are already two of the best-written films of the 21st Century so far - failed to get mentions from even the smallest critics' groups.

Hell or High Water has a good energy but seems torn between decrying the social conditions it depicts and lionising a very clichéd trope of poor, rural Texan nobility - even outside of that, the dialogue is wooden and its ultimate descent into heavy thematic navel-gazing smacks of a dimestore No Country for Old Men. Pass.

La La Land is not poorly written, but - eh.

The Lobster is an interesting choice, and one that I thought wouldn't go the distance despite appearing at most of the major precursor awards That being said, while I admire its commitment to its absurd allegory, the idea around which it is built is far more interesting than its execution.

20th Century Women is a dream, crackling dialogue tracing a fully-realised portrait of the times, then and now. I would not have been upset had this won (and of course it never would have).

I have to go with the Oscar winner though - Kenneth Lonergan is brilliant at capturing the hectic rhythms of human speech and interaction in crisis (look at the brilliant Margaret for further proof of this), and the script hones in on some very interesting points about the ways both identities and traumas are shared and handed down within families. If at some point in the third act it forgets that it's supposed to be telling a story, I forgive it on the strength of its dialogue. A vote from me.
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