2016 got its cinematic groove on.
Director Tom Tykwer's too-cute adaptation of Dave Eggers' novel was a rare box office flop for America's dad Tom Hanks. Maybe it's because A Hologram for the King couldn't help but go easy on his character, a desperate American businessman who heads to Saudi Arabia to pitch his company's product to the monarch. The movie may not be have been memorable, but the so-weird-it's-good intro is impossible to forget, especially in the extended version above. Hanks speak-sings his way through a tweaked version of "Once in a Lifetime" as he explains the current wreck of his life, his beautiful house and beautiful wife disappearing in puffs in purple smoke.
Lionsgate
The dance the hotel throws in The Lobster is like an extraterrestrial's re-creation of a human ritual based on vintage holiday pamphlets. The women are all dressed in identical halter dresses, the men in identical suits. Couples sway dutifully on the dance floor or eye each other across the room, while the venue's manager provides the entertainment — Olivia Colman and Garry Mountaine solemnly belt out "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart" to inspire their charges toward mandatory romance.
A24
Moana's big "I want" song is not as inescapable as its Frozen predecessor's "Let It Go." But the Lin-Manuel Miranda-composed "How Far I'll Go" is still mightily catchy, a ballad about repressed dreams of traveling to the horizon sung by Auli'i Cravalho. In addition to its soaring chorus, "How Far I'll Go" offers the nearly universal Disney princess line of "I wish I could be the perfect daughter."
Disney
Like so much of Howard's (John Goodman) underground bunker, Tommy James and the Shondells' take on "I Think We're Alone Now" is vintage wholesomeness made creepy. The song, as played on Howard's jukebox, becomes the soundtrack to a montage in which the survivalist and his guests and/or prisoners Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) settle in to spend the apocalypse as a parody of a happy family — watching movies, playing board games, trying not to think about what's happening above ground. The lyrics are perfectly on the nose.
Paramount Pictures
