I just find it hard to think of a redeeming quality for that movie. The characters are empty caricatures for the most part, the plot is half-baked and is basically a collection of Hollywood cliches, the direction is unimaginative at best and the performances are mostly forced. I was about to laugh out loud during the musical interlude towards the end. I don’t know what to say, I just simply hated the whole thing. If that’s what qualifies for an empathetic view of the “other” these days, I’d rather just watch The New World.
I suppose there is some stuff I really liked from this year: Ladybird, Ex Libris, Get Out, Phantom Thread. You could add Personal Shopper or Graduation, though I saw those back in 2015 . It just doesn’t come close to 2016, when Moonlight, Toni Erdmann, Silence, The Handmaiden and even Manchester by the Sea were truly special, and you still had a number of excellent smaller movies like Arrival, Patterson, Elle and Nocturnal Animals, for example.