Then and Now: Best Albums of 1996

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I’ve always looking back on my own best-x-of-the-year/decade/etc. lists and thinking about what changes I’d make if I were to compile the same list today. I began making album-of-the-year lists at the end of 1996 and posted them annually online as of my first blog in 2002. Thirty years on, I’m looking back at what I liked then vs. now.

One caveat: until streaming and the adoption of Friday as a global release day in 2015, the occasional record release would often fall by country in different dates and in some cases, years. A few beloved albums on my lists were not available in the U.S. until the calendar year after their original UK/European release. For the most part, I’m sticking with those US release years for point of comparison, only using original release dates on the rare occasion when I bought the import instead of waiting for a release here.

My pre-blog best-of lists were always recorded in handwritten journals I kept as of 1995. No list for that first year, so we begin with ’96.

Then:

  1. Aimee Mann, I’m With Stupid
  2. Cibo Matto, Viva! La Woman
  3. Everything But The Girl, Walking Wounded
  4. Soundtrack, Trainspotting
  5. R.E.M., New Adventures In Hi-Fi
  6. Pet Shop Boys, Bilingual
  7. Luscious Jackson, Fever In Fever Out
  8. Cowboy Junkies, Lay It Down
  9. Suzanne Vega, Nine Objects of Desire
  10. Beck, Odelay

I’m With Stupid defined my 1996. A UK release the previous summer, it was delayed here until January. Not long after finally getting my hands on it, I wrote a review of it for my Critical Writing class at Marquette; the professor liked it enough to make copies and share it with the entire class (are teachers still allowed to do this w/out the author’s permission?) We didn’t have iTunes or Spotify back then and thus no easy means of keeping track of spins but I’m almost positive I listened to it more than anything else at the time.

Kooky Japanese-America duo Cibo Matto I discovered via their video of “Know Your Chicken” on MTV’s 120 Minutes. A week later, I found a freshly used promo CD of it at my regular used-record store, Second Hand Tunes. Along with Everything But The Girl’s full-on dive into club music shortly after the success of the remixed “Missing”, it was my soundtrack going into summer between Junior and Senior years; the Trainspotting soundtrack, R.E.M.’s final classic lineup release and late-in-the-year additions from Pet Shop Boys and Luscious Jackson would take over for the fall and winter.

Now:

  1. Belle and Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister
  2. Aimee Mann, I’m With Stupid
  3. Morcheeba, Who Can You Trust?
  4. Tori Amos, Boys For Pele
  5. Soundtrack, Trainspotting
  6. Cibo Matto, Viva! La Woman
  7. Ani DiFranco, Dilate
  8. Amy Rigby, Diary of a Mod Housewife
  9. Luscious Jackson, Fever In Fever Out
  10. Fiona Apple, Tidal

Only something I hadn’t heard at the time could possibly knock Mann off the top spot; I’ve written length about Belle and Sebastian’s near-perfect record here. Morcheeba and Ani DiFranco would become favorites in 1997 (and the former still gets plenty of spins from me in 2026.) I also bought Boys for Pele when it came out (two weeks before I’m With Stupid) but had difficulty absorbing all 70+ minutes of it, returning to some tracks often (“Hey Jupiter”, “Putting The Damage On”) while ignoring others altogether (“In The Springtime of His Voodoo”?) Only after a decade or two did I come to love it nearly as much as Little Earthquakes. A dense, demanding labyrinth, Pele is worth living with for the long haul as was 2002’s similarly sprawling Scarlet’s Walk (and, though too soon to tell, potentially this year’s In Times of Dragons.)

The only post-2000 discovery here is Rigby’s now-classic debut, as accomplished an introduction as Little Earthquakes (or perhaps Fiona Apple’s Tidal, which I also likely first heard in ’97.) I hemmed and hawed over including Diary of a Mod Housewife and/or Viva! La Woman in my 100 Albums project but already had six entries for 1996 and wanted to spread the wealth around to adjacent years. I still listen to Nine Objects of Desire and Bilingual regularly; Odelay, not so much. Walked Wounded is a good EBTG album but perhaps not one of the greatest in a fairly stacked discography.

Speaking of which, is 1996 one of the *best* years for music? I haven’t even mentioned Stereolab’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Pulp’s Different Class, Gillian Welch’s Revival, DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing…, George Michael’s Older or Fishmans’ Long Season. We’ll see if even 1997 measures up to it.

IFFBoston 2026: The Invite

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Any resemblance between The Invite and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is not coincidental. From a screenplay written by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones and directed by and starring Olivia Wilde as Martha surrogate Angela, it is almost entirely set in her and Joe’s (Seth Rogen) San Francisco apartment.  One night, Joe returns from his job as a music teacher to learn that Angela has invited a neighboring couple, Pína (Penelope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton) over to dinner within the next hour. Their bickering-cum-full-out-arguing hits a wild crescendo just as the doorbell rings announcing Pína and Hawk’s arrival.

While it roughly follows the trajectory of Mike Nichols’ classic film of the Edward Albee play, this is not a remake of it (actually, it’s a remake of the Spanish film The People Upstairs.) For one thing, despite the earlier film’s gallows humor, The Invite is unashamedly hilarious (the words “screwball cringe” came to mind early on) with its rat-a-tat-tat dialogue, one-liners and sight gags (Rogen struggling to bike up the city’s infamously hilly streets is a highlight of the latter.) It’s not long before sex-therapist Pína and ex-firefighter Hawk feel like near-kindred spirits to Angela and Joe, especially in their own neuroses. All four actors are a delight to watch with a reminder of still-otherworldly Cruz’s often obscured talent for comedy.

As the night lingers on, events become more outrageous before the film pulls back for pathos and some catharsis. The shifting tone is handled elegantly even as it slows the built-up momentum to a crawl. As for Wilde, this makes the misguided Don’t Worry Darling feel like an aberration in her filmmaking career. While more fun than profound, The Invite is worth sitting through to arrive at an affecting if ambiguous détente of a conclusion between two of its four characters.

IFFBoston 2026: Blue Heron

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“Write what you know” has become a cliché but it’s still valuable advice for anyone telling a story no matter how fantastical or accurately reflective of one’s own experience. At IFFBoston this year, I saw at least two features falling under this category: Romeria and Blue Heron. Both begin steeped in realism before unexpectedly shifting into dream sequences. The former imagines a meeting between the main character and her parents from before her birth; the latter, however, presents something more complex, using a sort of psychodrama to reinterpret a defining incident from one’s past.

In Blue Heron, filmmaker Sophy Romvari’s 1990s childhood comes to life in the form of a Hungarian family settling into a new home on Vancouver Island. Her surrogate, Sasha (Eylul Guven) is the youngest of four children and the only one to be born in Canada. Her oldest brother, Jeremy (Erik Beddoes) blatantly doesn’t resemble any of his siblings, much less his parents (his actual father was someone whom his mother previously dated; he didn’t have any involvement in raising him.) As the rest of the family studiously works on assimilating into this new environment, Jeremy acts out. At first, his behavior is that of your average frustrated teen (moody, argumentative). Then, it escalates. He gets caught shoplifting. He climbs on his home’s roof, refusing to come down. He smashes his hand through a window. He refuses to communicate, at all. His family becomes worried for his safety, and also their own.

The shift from a near-neorealism to a far more dreamlike scenario occurs when Sasha as an adult (played by Amy Zimmer) appears and attempts piecing together the decisive actions her parents took to deal with Jeremy. I don’t want to spoil exactly what happens, for it unfolds as an act of discovery but also one of analysis, sifting through facts to arrive at some conclusion even if it’s a subjective truth. Romvari paints as an impressionist, dotting her frames with cultural signifiers both shared (pop songs, ambient sounds, suburban talismans such as freshly cut grass) and singular (the elaborate fake maps Jeremy draws which are actual ones from Romvari’s own brother.) As a filmmaker/storyteller, Romvari fully grasps the slipperiness of memory. Following a series of acclaimed shorts, Blue Heron is a remarkable first feature due to such an understanding and her ingenuity in expressing it.

IFFBoston 2026: Romería

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In 2004, 18-year-old orphan Marina (Llúcia Garcia) visits the port city of Vigo, Spain. She’s meeting with her paternal grandparents to obtain a notarized signature for her to be recognized on her father’s death certificate so that she can attend university. Until now, she’s never met any of her blood relatives. They seem eager and welcoming to her—perhaps overly so as her grandparents want to shower her with money out of guilt or maybe as encouragement for her to keep silent about what little she knows of her parents, along with scattered clues she picks up on from her similarly-aged cousin Nuno (the single-monikered Mitch).

She gradually pieces together a version of what happened between her parents that varies slightly from what she’s officially told. Then, the film shifts into magical realism at the initially casual appearance of a stray cat, an impetus for Marina and the audience to discover the truth, or at least a version of it (maybe Marina’s idealized one?). As with previous feature Alcarràs, director Carla Simón has a keen eye for composition and framing naturally beautiful landscapes with more depth than your average pretty picture. Despite that, Romería is pleasant but sometimes dramatically static until that shift in the third act. Apparently based on Simón’s own experiences, it didn’t entirely express the urgency of why it was being told or how it may have shaped her adulthood and career. However, the post-cat material nearly saved it; I would not have minded seeing an entire feature (or at least a short) squarely focused on that story.

IFFBoston 2026: Remake

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Given our current tendency to document just about everything (especially ourselves) with our smartphones, will younger and future generations retain a seemingly infinite treasure trove of recorded media to reference, look back on and cultivate into living histories? Or will the ephemeralness, marginality, and sheer excess of it all render much of it forgotten detritus, lost to time, not anything worth sifting through and (re)discovering?

North Carolina born, Boston based Ross McElwee wasn’t the first filmmaker to conceive of documentary as memoir but his landmark first feature Sherman’s March (1986) suggested a manifesto of possibilities. Without the access and options we have today, he’d simply film himself and others with his 16mm or video camera and provide commentary. His mild southern accent and droll, self-deprecating humor were endearing identifiers as he tracked the titular Civil War route; in a parallel narrative, family and friends set up the still-single-in-his-mid-30s Ross with an array of (often questionable) female suitors. A surprise hit, McElwee followed it with a series of check-ins where he continued recording his life as seen through the prism of marriage and fatherhood (Time Indefinite, 1993) and as a middle-aged man parsing his family’s ancestral connection to the tobacco industry (Bright Leaves, 2003).

“I used to be a filmmaker” are his initial words spoken in Remake, his first feature in about 15 years. During that time, McElwee got divorced and remarried but the real focus is on his son, Adrian, whom in his mid-20s died of a drug overdose about a decade ago. Given his tendency to film himself and his family, McElwee has that treasure trove of footage; here, he includes it discriminately, often cutting from footage of himself and/or Adrian from one point in time to another to make sense of such life and loss. As a result, it almost resembles McElwee’s own version of Michael Apted’s Up series, which checks in on a dozen subjects every seven years with each subsequent film in the series incorporating previous footage to exhibit growth and change over a lifetime. Like Apted, McElwee has a knack for making connections and earning an emotional charge from viewing the same person at different life phases.

Remake has its own dual narrative. McElwee began work on it when a producer contacted him to buy the rights to turn Sherman’s March into a fictional feature, the process of which he intended to document, perhaps as a bonus feature. Naturally, this premise foregrounds McElwee’s sly humor as we see the adaptation-in-progress shuffle through many, many iterations (where it finally ends up is too good to spoil.) Putting everything aside after Adrian’s death, McElwee eventually resumed the project but with a different focus. Working through his grief and considering the events leading up to this tragedy, the adaptation material serves as a tonic of sorts while also expounding on the idea of remaking a life out of memories and archival footage.

While not as definitive as Sherman’s March, Remake could be the other primary bookend of McElwee’s career if it ends up his last feature. Incorporating Adrian’s own footage (he was also an aspiring filmmaker), drawings, animations and even some of his musical contributions to the soundtrack, McElwee’s rarely been this formally adventurous in his own aesthetic. Not all of it works (time-lapse sequences, Ross?), but what resonates is an impetus to firmly exist in and make sense of the present no matter how much the past informs or haunts it.

IFFBoston 2026: Rose of Nevada

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Having directed features since the early 2000’s, Mark Jenkin wasn’t on my radar until Enys Men (2022), which earned scattered raves (particularly from UK-based critics). Upon viewing it a year later, I appreciated the cinematography, editing and sound design, but couldn’t parse what the experimental narrative was attempting to achieve, and didn’t glean much meaning or feeling from it in the end.

I was hoping this follow-up would build on such promise, but Rose of Nevada is frustratingly more of the same. I’ve concluded that as an artist, Jenkins is a master technician—his compositions remain striking, the immersive, intricate sound design provides momentum and the often chaotic editing gives at least the impression that something exciting is happening.

Unfortunately, his approach to narrative remains fragmented (not necessarily bad in itself) and curiously remote and cold (a big problem). Without Jenkin offering much of an invitation to connect, I became a little bored, making snarky comments to myself such as “Hey, it’s Edgar Winter!” at the first sight of ancient Mrs. Richard with her long, straight white hair. George Mackay is serviceable with what he’s given (and a sight gag centered on him early on is a rare moment of actual physical humor), but I don’t recall anything about Callum Turner other than his abrupt act of violence at Mackay late in the film.

It’s especially disappointing given that Jenkin potentially has the skills to become a beloved weirdo auteur like Peter Strickland but films, no matter how challenging, must give audiences a reason to care about what’s going on.

IFFBoston 2026: I Want Your Sex

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Once renowned for his guerilla-style New Queer Cinema flicks (such as 1992’s The Living End), filmmaker Gregg Araki shifted to something more mature and earnest with Mysterious Skin (2005), still his best in my opinion. Since then, where he’d go next has been more difficult to foresee. Consider Smiley Face (2007), a loveably stoopid stoner comedy starring Anna Faris, or Kaboom! (2010), almost a Millennial update of his 90s work.

His first feature since the far more serious White Bird In a Blizzard (2014) fully resembles an Araki picture but it really has no logical precedent in his filmography. It is his wackiest comedy since Smiley Face, but it also borrows liberally from the structure of Sunset Boulevard as it begins near the end and flashes back to how just-out-of-college Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) scores a job as an assistant to Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde), a boundary-pushing visual artist whose risqué outfits, outrageous installations and over-the-top sexual forwardness faintly resemble Truth Or Dare-era Madonna. That she’s grooming Elliot from the start is obvious long before they begin a BDSM relationship (with Erika the Dom, naturally) that’s only clandestine on the surface; Elliot’s flamboyant co-worker, Zap (a funny, feline-esque Mason Gooding) suspects as much right away, given Erika’s torrid history with past assistants.

The film works because of its leads. Wilde is a near-revelation after a few years spent primarily behind the camera, clearly relishing the opportunity to play such a juicy part; her knack for comedic timing and commanding the screen has rarely gone this hard. Hoffman’s also developed as a performer since his debut in Licorice Pizza—of course he resembles his father but one may not necessarily make that connection without knowledge of it. If there’s a problem here (besides not including the classic George Michael tune of the same title on the soundtrack), it’s that Araki and co-screenwriter Karley Sciortino have little new to say about how titillating and ultimately empty modern art can seem. Without the twisted, misguided but palpable spark igniting between Erika and Elliot, I Want Your Sex might have ended up as fatuous as the scene it satirizes.

IFFBoston 2026: Cookie Queens

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I’d be hesitant to trust anyone who doesn’t like Girl Scout Cookies, so I understand its mass appeal as a documentary subject; my expectations, however, were moderate at best. Would there be enough story and dramatic weight to sustain an entire feature about four girls from different backgrounds selling Thin Mints, Trefoils and Peanut Butter Patties over one season?

Happily, Cookie Queens is as charming as one could hope and far deeper than one might expect. Director Alysa Nahmias deploys the tried-and-true formula pioneered by spelling bee documentary Spellbound over twenty years ago, cutting back and forth between a few primary subjects all working on a common task. Where this film varies is that they’re not necessarily competing against each other; instead, each subject has a personal goal in terms of how much they will sell. For precocious overachiever Olive (age 12), it’s 5,000 boxes (which she continues to increase as she sells that amount and more.) Little Ara (age 5), on the other hand, sets a more realistic goal (for her) of 45 boxes. Nikki (age 9) and her much older sisters all want to sell enough to earn money for the three of them to travel to Europe. Meanwhile, Shannon Elizabeth (age 8) just wants to sell enough to attend summer camp but has limited resources to do so compared to some of the other girls.

As these four narratives develop, they touch upon themes of sisterhood (Nikki), societal (and self) pressure (Olive), economic hardship (Shannon Elizabeth) and health-related issues (Ara). With each subject, Nahmias also focuses on both the various day-to-day struggles and often transformative wonder of simply being a kid. One roots for each of them because one comes to understand their hopes and fears via their backgrounds, environments and personalities. Crowd pleasing films occasionally get a bad rap for viewing everything through rose-tinted lenses; with humaneness and some nuance, Nahmias pinpoints unexpected substance in her subjects along with ample heart.

IFFBoston 2026: I Love Boosters

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I saw eight movies at this year’s Independent Film Festival Boston and will be posting reviews of them all over the next two weeks or so.

Five minutes into director/writer/rapper Boots Riley’s long-awaited second feature, I thought, “This seems almost prosaic compared to the wackiness of its predecessor, Sorry To Bother You.” Then, a giant, rolling object rambunctiously followed the film’s protagonists down San Francisco Bay-area streets as if threatening to flatten them (or adhere them to its ever-growing circumference) and I don’t know why I ever considered such a notion.

In Riley-world, “Boosters” are predominantly young female shoplifters who make a living selling their bounty to customers for a fraction of its worth (the full title comes from one of Riley’s own songs.) Led by the gimlet-eyed Corvette (an always fabulous Keke Palmer) and the far more open (if susceptible) Sade (Naomi Ackie), they encounter a common antagonist, Christie Smith (Demi Moore, applying newfound comedic skills cultivated in The Substance), a prodigious fashion designer, kind of a cross between Anna Wintour and a more charismatic Elizabeth Holmes. Corvette, herself a budding designer, idolizes Smith until she learns the mogul has stolen some of her work. Along with fellow booster Mariah (Taylour Paige), Corvette and Sade procure jobs at a franchise of a chain of stores where Smith’s highly sought-after couture is sold in order to boost the merchandise for revenge.

As I did at the start, you may be asking, “What’s so weird about that?” Well, Riley, for whom Looney Tunes is a self-admitted influence not only coats everything in exuberantly candy-colored palettes. Check out the entire vibe of Grayson (a game Will Poulter), the exquisitely passive-aggressive store manager at boutique the Boosters infiltrate, or a pyramid-scheme cult led by the wacked out Dr. Jack (Don Cheadle), or Poppy Liu as a Chinese Booster whose favored way of lifting warps this all into a sci-fi film. I haven’t even mentioned Sorry To Bother You star Lakeith Stanfield as a French-accented lothario with an outrageously sexual secret of his own.

I adore Riley’s can-you-top-this, live-action cartoon approach while also acknowledging that it is both an acquired taste and a tad exhausting over time. Still, he does excel at holding one’s attention even if you’re flummoxed by what you’re seeing. As his political subtext becomes very much the text in the last act, it ends up profound and affecting rather than sanctimonious or preachy. The real conundrum of this silly, fervent work is that while some polish and restraint could make for more consistent, less divisive entertainment, something crucial would be lost. No one else is currently making movies remotely like this and that’s no small feat.

2026 Movie Capsule Reviews, #1

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Pompei: Below The Clouds

Spent much of the weekend at IFFBoston; reviews to come, but for now, here are some recent brief reviews from other new-ish features originally posted on Letterboxd, roughly in descending order of preference.

Sound of Falling

Still piecing together all of its parallels and connections after a second viewing but can also say this is truly like no other movie I’ve seen. Even the camera roaming through rooms in a house creates a spark of anticipating what could possibly happen next and you still feel a resounding thrill whenever it does.

Pillion

Well, I’d want to push around someone who sings in a barbershop quartet, too. The rare film about going through the process of discovering what you like, both sexually and romantically. Alexander Skarsgaard is well cast as the dom but Henry Melling’s a revelation as the sub.

Sirat

An Arthouse equivalent of a horror or action film “thrill ride” (imagine what William Castle could’ve done with this concept), it gets off on its hallucinatory desert landscapes and nearly relentless EDM score but thankfully, its characters end up more than mere pawns in an apocalyptic scenario.

My Father’s Shadow

A quietly powerful first feature with a great lead performance from Sope Nisiru. While the pacing can be a little sluggish, so many moments linger long after they’ve dissipated and become rather poignant during the turbulent last fifteen minutes.

Father Mother Sister Brother

A solid ensemble does a lot of the heavy lifting in Jarmusch’s return to anthology-style filmmaking although the final third could serve as a nice capstone to the director’s career if this were to end up his last feature.

All That’s Left of You

A multigenerational Palestinian melodrama that profits greatly from its deployment of restraint, strong direction and a solid ensemble cast.

Young Mothers

Like the shelter employees in this film, the Dardennes’ approach is empathetic and optimistic but firm; that their narrative comes off more schematic than natural places this in a lower tier of a filmography with a very high bar.

Pompei: Below The Clouds

Can’t help but think I missed a considerable portion of the intended impact by not seeing this immersive, sometimes lyrical doc in a cinema even though I appreciated the bold visuals and recognized flashes of genius.

A Useful Ghost

Exceedingly strange and perhaps narratively uneven but I’m grading generously due to its overall chutzpah and meticulous, crazy production design.

Hoppers

Not bad for recent Pixar, I guess, but when peak Pixar was willingly weird like this, it was also far more inspired.