My 10 best movies of the year

It's always tempting to sum up the year in movies with a single word: "bad" or "good." Of course, every movie year includes abundant examples of both, and no 10-best list can -- or should -- be taken as the ultimate statement about anything. For me, the point of making such a list is to remember the year and honor the films that offered me stimulation, provocation and pleasure.

Of course, no list can be inclusive: I had fun at a movie such as Dr. Strange, but you won't find it among my absolute favorites. Same goes for parts of Sausage Party, a ribald bit of animation.

I also suffered through plenty of movies, but there's no need to rehash the year's disappointments here.

Looking forward isn't easy. Movies don't develop instantly, and it will be a while before we know how the Trump years influence what we're watching.

In the meantime, I offer my list in hopes that you'll make your own, and with a wish that you and yours enjoy a happy and healthy 2017.

1. Moonlight

Watching a young black man struggle to find his voice at three different stages of his life proved both instructive and stirring. Chiron, the movie's main character, doesn't say much, but director Barry Jenkins brings insight and small moments of grace to a story that's tough and tender in equal measure.

2. Manchester by the Sea

Director Kenneth Lonergan obtains a great performance from Casey Affleck as a young man carrying a tremendous burden of guilt and shame. At the same time, Longergan finds humor in characters who are deeply embedded in their Massachusetts milieu. A profoundly sad movie about how one man deals (or doesn't) with an unbearable past.

3. Arrival

Director Denis Villeneuve had the courage to make a sci-fi movie about the mind-bending effects of language, a heady theme presented with a welcome lack of apocalyptic special effects -- amazing considering that the movie involves the arrival of aliens on Earth. Amy Adams gives a fine performance as a linguist who needs to learn a whole new system of communicating.

4. The Handmaiden

Korean director Park Chan-wook's elegant masterwork, like some of his previous movies (Old Boy and Lady Vengeance) benefits from the perverse breezes that waft through the story in ways that spur Park's considerable imagination. This beautiful period piece takes place in Korea in the 1930s, but the sensibility is all Park's. The story kicks off when a con man hires a young woman to become the maid of an heiress. He hopes to steal her inheritance. The rest should be discovered in a theater.

5. The Fits

An 11-year-old (Royalty Hightower) at a Cincinnati recreation center attempts to choose between the world of boxing and the world of competitive drill. Director Anna Rose Holmer's movie mixes ambiguity and specificity in ways that prove haunting. Holmer brings a distinctive and welcome new voice to the movie scene.

6. 13th, OJ: Made in America and I'm Not Your Negro

Four sisters, one beautiful movie

Japan's Our Little Sister is a quiet gem.

Many of the life-changing events that determine the shape of the Japanese movie Our Little Sister take place before the movie begins, shattering personal developments that the characters already seem too have incorporated into their very beings.

Those with a taste for deliberately paced cinema with a deep humanistic streak will find ample pleasures in director Hirokazu Kore-eda's latest, the story of three grown sisters who attend their father's funeral and learn they have a 14-year-old half sister. The three women hadn't seen their father for 15 years.

As the story unfolds, we come to understand that the three sisters grew up on their own. Their late father fell for another woman and moved to another city. Overwhelmed by her husband's departure and daunted by the task of raising three children, Mom took off, as well.

As it turns out, the three sisters have settled into a routine. Haruka Ayase plays Sachi, the oldest and take-charge sister. Masami Nagasawa portrays the second oldest sister, a woman who works in a bank and seems to have questionable taste in men. Kaho, an actress and model, plays the youngest and most free-spirited sister.

Once Dad's funeral concludes, Sachi invites half-sister Suzu -- who faces life with a step-mother she can't stand -- to live with the sisters. Suzu's mother evidently passed away, leaving Dad to marry for a third time.

Suzu quickly adjusts to life in a new city, the coastal town of Kamakura. She makes friends and continues to develop bonds of affection with the sisters who clearly provide her with an emotionally supportive environment she very much needs.

Kore-eda (Like Father Like Son) makes it clear that young Suzu is learning how to be a woman from her three sisters, who also manage to charm an audience as much as the cherry blossoms that become the movie's symbol of renewed life and fleeting beauty.

A relationship between Sachi, the responsible older sister, and a married pediatric surgeon brings the movie close to a melodramatic plot twist, but Kore-eda remains far more interested in the rhythms of ordinary life than in romantic developments.

So when the characters gather for a meal at the local diner, run by an old and reliable friend, we're happy to be there with them. We're reassured when they carry on the family tradition of making plum wine.

Our Little Sister is like a reflecting pool: The surface may be calm, but emotions ripple deep beneath its surface and can be savored long after this lifelike portrait reaches its satisfying conclusion.

You'll have to make up your own mind about Yoko Kanno's lush score. I remain undecided about it, but I'd still insist that Our Little Sister feels as effortless as a summer breeze and should provide just as much relief for cinema-parched audiences. We should be grateful.