Newsletter: Indie Focus: The expected and the unconventional collide in ‘Fences,’ ‘Neruda’ and ‘Barry’

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen, and welcome to your weekly field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

We dropped a series of year-end best lists this week. Kenneth Turan put “Moonlight” and “Manchester by The Sea” at the top of his list, while Justin Chang went for “Silence,” “Moonlight” and “Toni Erdmann.” My top three were “Moonlight,” “The Lobster,” and “Silence.” (The big takeaway here seems to be: See “Moonlight.”)

I was surprised and pleased by the amount of overlap we had among the three of us — Kenny and Justin both included Arnaud Desplechin’s “My Golden Days,” for example — but also the places where we did not. I will humbly suggest that awards voters looking to make sense of their screener pile or film fans trying to prioritize holiday viewing could do worse than using these lists as a guide.

This past week’s Q&A with Nicolas Winding Refn and Cliff Martinez after a screening of “The Neon Demon” was something of a doozy, a veritable master class on movie music. There were cameras present, so a video should be available soon. Keep an eye out for upcoming events here: events.latimes.com.

‘Fences’

“Fences” has arrived in theaters a bit ahead of the Christmas crush. Directed by Denzel Washington from a screenplay credited to playwright August Wilson — who died in 2005 — the adaptation of the play stars Washington and Viola Davis. The actors are in the same roles they won Tony awards for when they were on Broadway in a 2010 revival of the play.

In his review for The Times, Kenneth Turan notes that the play has been opened up a little but not a lot and that “it is the achievement of this ‘Fences’ that, despite this lack of visual involvement, the combination of top acting and the powerful rhythm of the language in the drama’s celebrated high spots absolutely holds us. Every moment on screen may not be enthralling, but the moments that are are such knockouts they make the enterprise essential viewing.”

He added, “One of August Wilson’s great strengths is his ability to combine personal drama with broad social themes, and this film eloquently underlines that gift.”

At the New York Times, A.O. Scott also noted, “Fences” is much more than a filmed reading. Mr. Washington has wisely resisted the temptation to force a lot of unnecessary cinema on the play. … Confinement, however, is a theme implied in the play’s title, and opening it up too much would risk diluting the power of watching large personalities colliding in a narrow place.”

At Vox, Alissa Wilkinson wrote, “As a film, ‘Fences’ is itself a bit static, a serious movie most interested in showcasing its stars’ outstanding performances. But its story also feels fresh, as if it were written to slot itself into the concerns of 2016: Questions of race and privilege, agency, and responsibility are all here.”

‘Neruda’

Pablo Larraín is having quite a year, releasing both “Jackie,” his unconventional portrait of Jackie Kennedy starring Natalie Portman, and now “Neruda,” likewise a not-quite-a-bio-pic of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Though “Neruda” did not make the Academy’s shortlist for the Oscar of foreign language film, the film, which stars Luis Gnecco and Gael García Bernal, is a fascinating work.

In his review for The Times, Justin Chang wrote that Larraín’s latest film, along with the rest of his work, “sealed his reputation as one of the most distinctive and continually surprising talents in world cinema, though nothing he’s done to date has forced him to take such intuitive leaps, to abandon realism so completely, as ‘Neruda.’”

Chang spoke to Larraín when the film premiered earlier this year at Cannes. “We decided at some point that Neruda would create everything in the movie,” Larraín said. “Everything was just coming out of his head. … Every real artist is always doing something dangerous, at some point.”

Chilean film director Pablo Larraín has two high-profile movies debuting in December: “Jackie” and “Neruda.”

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times )

Carolina Miranda also spoke to Larraín and his collaborators more recently. “I’ve told people that if you are seeing this film to get to know Neruda, then you may have a problem,” says Chilean actor Luis Gnecco, who plays the title role in “Neruda.” “It’s a film about fiction, how fiction can save you, how fiction can shape things.”

Reviewing the film for the AP, Lindsey Bahr wrote, “The stories of both Jackie Kennedy and Pablo Neruda are already compelling on their own, but Larraín manages to go beyond the specifics and get to their essence through powerfully and uniquely cinematic storytelling. Larraín is not interested in dramatizing a Wikipedia page but getting to the truth in spite of the facts. In this way, even though he explains relatively little, he reveals quite a lot.”

‘Barry’

Vikram Gandhi’s “Barry” finds another approach to the bio-pic, choosing to explore a very specific moment from the life one Barack Obama, long before he was president and was simply a young college student who preferred to go by Barry.

Reviewing the film for The Times, Kenneth Turan noted “one of the best things about ‘Barry’ is that it doesn’t hammer us with its points. Director Gandhi makes sure the tone stays low-key, the way the future president himself would have liked it.”

Actress Anya Taylor-Joy and actor Devon Terrell, from the bio-pic “Barry,” which looks at an era in Barack Obama’s early adulthood.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times )

At the New York Times, Manohla Dargis compared the film to John Ford’s “Young Mr. Lincoln” and added, “The movie’s lived-in realism puts Barry on the ground, rather than in the air, where he experiences the usual coming-of-age agonies and joys. … The future beckons, but for now he’s here.”

At MTV News, Amy Nicholson included the film among her top 10 of the year. In her review, she said, “‘Barry’ is about someone trying — and often failing — to fuse to any group that will have him. He uses charm like a chisel. He’s always hacking into people’s armor to convince them he belongs. … ‘Barry’s’ questions are powerful whether asked by a future president or a future janitor. The script is great no matter who it’s about — it’s just that fewer curiosity-seekers would give it a watch were it about someone else.”

Email me if you have questions, comments or suggestions, and follow me on Twitter @IndieFocus.