2017: A Year in Movies
Hey, everybody! Thanks for taking a look at my round-up of the movies of 2017.
First things first: By far the best piece of narrative entertainment released in 2017 was the third and final season of The Leftovers. That show is the new bar for contemporary storytelling as far as I’m concerned, and honestly, very few works of art have ever made me reevaluate my values and the way I view the world to such an extent. Certainly no TV show has done so with the originality, humor, pathos, and beauty that The Leftovers did. Go watch it. Don’t be dissuaded by the first few episodes. The show quickly grows into a full-on, unqualified masterpiece.
Anyway! Onto movies:
This was a very hard Top 10 to make. Maybe the hardest time I’ve had deciding what made the cut since I started making annual Top 10 lists. 2017 was a dumpster fire of a year in every respect but at the movies. (And even the entertainment industry, amongst many industries, began painful yet necessary conversations about sexual assault and harassment, and power and gender dynamics in the workplace — conversations that will, with any luck, change our culture permanently for the better.) It was actually a incredibly solid year for film, with a lot of works I love and admire, if not ones that will be all-time favorites.
This is usually where I would disclaim a couple things: 1) All of these rankings are just based on the films I’ve seen, and I haven’t seen everything (Free Fire, The Breadwinner, Hostiles, and a whole bunch of foreign films are among the ones I haven’t gotten to yet); and 2) There are so many movies that I wish could’ve been in my Top 10, but there simply wasn’t room for them. However, as for (2), this year there are so many of those movies that I felt compelled to just list ten more anyway and give short write-ups of them. After all, many of the movies in my actual Top 10 don’t really need my recommendation, so be sure to check out all of these films as well:
20. BPM (Beats Per Minute) (dir. Robin Campillo): Rousing and intimate. Best ensemble cast of the year.
19. Mudbound (dir. Dee Rees): A moving, beautiful capsule of what has and hasn’t changed. How Jason Mitchell is not a shoo-in for Best Supporting Actor is beyond me.
18. Happy End (dir. Michael Haneke): Haunting. Engrossing. Classic Haneke.
17. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond — Featuring A Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (dir. Chris Smith): Better than the movie it is about. Jim Carrey’s commentary is truly insightful.
16. Brawl in Cell Block 99 (dir. S. Craig Zahler): A brutal slow-burn, anchored by a fantastic performance from Vince Vaughn. (Never thought I’d say that!)
15. Good Time (dir. Joshua Safdie and Benny Safdie): Robert Pattinson is unrecognizable and brilliant in a thrilling, intoxicating heist movie.
14. Logan (dir. James Mangold): The best superhero movie of the year is also the toughest, saddest, and most complex. Beautiful work by everyone involved.
13. The Disaster Artist (dir. James Franco): A hysterical, deeply human look at how sometimes the only way to fail is not to try.
12. A Fantastic Woman (dir. Sebastian Leilo): Features one of the year’s very best performances from the remarkable Daniela Vega, a trans actress portraying a complex trans character. (Shocking!)
11. Columbus (dir. Kogonada): A quiet, soul-piercing story of two souls at a crossroads. Haley Lu Richardson is going to be a star, and she’s absolutely incredible in the movie.
Cool? Cool. And now, onto the —
TOP TEN
10. Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele)
“I got hypnotized last night.”
The film of the year, all year, and for good reason. A hugely effective thriller, a cutting social parable, and a work of defiant entertainment, Jordan Peele’s Get Out has been an enlightening joy to revisit, read about, and digest. Buoyed by Peele’s brilliant script and the pitch-perfect cast (so glad that the wonderful and underrated Daniel Kaluuya is poised for an Oscar nomination), Get Out is a film built around microaggressions made violent, latent racism made overt, othering made co-opting. It is a film that defies categorization (it was decidedly out of place as a Comedy/Musical at the Golden Globes, but who cares about the Golden Globes), and will mean and encapsulate something slightly different to every audience that watches it.
It is a testament to how far this film has buried itself in the American cultural consciousness that so many images became instantly iconic: a spoon hitting the side of a teacup, a black gardener running straight at the camera, a ring of keys hanging from a rigid hand, and, of course, The Sunken Place. It is an artistic statement as much as it is a reflection of our times as much as it is simply Jordan Peele speaking his truth. It’s a remarkable work, and I suspect it will continue burrowing into our brains long past awards season.
09. Faces Places (dir. Agnés Varda and JR)
“Chance has always been my best assistant.”
Legendary French New Wave director Agnés Varda (whose films are mostly a hole in my film education, sadly) teams up for the first time with a co-director, the enigmatic and supremely-talented street artist known only as JR, for the delightful documentary Faces Places. Both a testament to the beauty and efficacy of street art, and a time-capsule of a rural France, Varda and JR’s real focus is on the personalities of not just everyone they encounter on their mural-making odyssey across the countryside — but on their own personalities as well.
Their friendship is really quite beautiful. Varda, who has been a pioneer her whole career and continues to innovate in fascinating ways (she turned 89 last year), clearly sees a kindred spirit in JR. His eccentricity of never removing his sunglasses even reminds her of her contemporary and one-time close friend, Jean-Luc Godard (who plays a devastating role in the film’s climax). JR, in turn, views Varda not as an icon, but as a flesh-and-blood person, and is fascinated with learning both about and from her.
Their collaboration ends up being as radical and humane as both of their individual work would suggest, and it is a wonder to behold. These are artists in it not for money or fame, but to make connections, to tell their truths. They are artists brimming with love. And we could use more of those these days.
08. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (dir. Rian Johnson)
“We are what they grow beyond.”
Star Wars bursts into the 21st century with a timely, rousing, and deeply moving ode to the heroism that is not confined to any select few. A constantly surprising continuation of the story set up in the very good Force Awakens, and a terrific movie in its own right, Rian Johnson has crafted a film that’s epic yet intimate, that has both brought me to tears and had me jumping out of my seat with giddiness all three times I’ve seen it.
I love this movie. I love this movie a lot. I’m not even the world’s biggest Star Wars fan, and I love this movie. I love the performances, the humor, the humanity. I love its complications, its contradictions. I love the inventive and exciting battle scenes, and yet I love that at no point in the movie do two lightsabers ever touch. I love that the film challenged me even as it delighted me. I love its emphasis on representation, and its ambition to empower every single person in the theater. And I love that I have no idea where the series is going next.
Johnson has been one of my favorite working directors since I saw his episode of Breaking Bad entitled “Fly” about six years ago. The fact that LucasFilm and Disney hired him — an artist who so clearly loves not only what this property is, but what it can be — and gave him free rein to make a movie so bold and singular was one of my great joys of movie-going in 2017.
07. Phantom Thread (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
“Yes, you can take the tea out, but the interruption is staying right here with me.”
Part sumptuous romance, part gothic horror story of emotions, part unbelievably-pitch-black comedy, Paul Thomas Anderson is in top form with his first movie set outside of his native California. What might at first seem to be a straightforward (and potentially tired) story of a tortured genius and his muse soon reveals itself to be entirely more complex and (ahem) delicious. Phantom Thread turns out to be a real pleasure to watch from beginning to end — entrancing photography, beautiful costumes, the best score of the year from Jonny Greenwood.
But most pleasurable of allis watching the subtle and surprising ways that the power dynamics shift and grow between the three central characters. And that is the result of a true collaboration between Anderson (and his historically keen eye for the peculiarities of family dynamics) and the central cast, all of whom are incredible. If this is really is Daniel Day-Lewis’ final performance, that is a shame, but we still have actors of the caliber of Lesley Manville and Vicky Krieps, who here prove themselves more than capable of rising to his level.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go listen to the soundtrack again and again.
06. A Ghost Story (dir. David Lowery)
“I don’t think they’re coming.”
Allow me to start this blurb about David Lowery’s meditative, playful, and sobering drama A Ghost Story by quoting a completely different movie. From Synecdoche, New York, spoken by a pointedly theatrical pastor: “And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it alright.”
Well, I was gonna say, let’s not get too morbid, but we’re already there, so let’s drive it home: Every life is a ghost story! That seems to be the idea at the center of both the above quote and Lowery’s film, which is profoundly concerned with the passage of time and the earthly preoccupations that follow us beyond the grave. Conveying lofty, challenging, and thought-provoking ideas with an ease that belies its 10-day shooting schedule, Lowery created an enthralling micro-masterpiece, one that pushes narrative forms as it delivers a hefty emotional blow. The themes of A Ghost Story should not be comforting, but somehow the film delivers something resembling peace, and is a compelling argument that there is a lot us humans could learn from ghosts.
And then there’s that ten-minute unbroken shot of Rooney Mara binge-eating a pie. That scene’s just fucking awesome.
05. Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villenueve)
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Exploding the neon-soaked noir of the 1982 Blade Runner into an operatic and epic slow-burn, Blade Runner 2049 is a remarkable film that I gladly would’ve watched for another 160 minutes. Ridley Scott’s dystopian vision of Los Angeles in the original film is cold and clinical, and the emotion of the film is earned in subtle and visceral ways. Villenueve’s gorgeously shot and impeccably directed film, on the other hand, wears its emotion on its sleeve. It mines humanity from code, focusing on what the 1s and 0s that make up the consciousnesses of many of its characters can tell us about us ourselves. Like the best of science-fiction, it is a distinctly human story.
Both films are about, amongst many things, authenticity — what are the qualities that define an “authentic” human? Is there even such a thing? No reasonable person would pass a Blade Runner-universe replicant on the street and immediately label them inhuman. So, if you can’t tell a difference, is there a difference?
What Blade Runner 2049 doubles down on from the original, is the internal experience of humanity. What is the “human” way to act? The central character in Blade Runner 2049, Officer K (Ryan Gosling), a replicant cop, ends his journey by realizing that he is not at the center of the story happening around him. His story does not concern the political and technological drama or intergenerational trauma that his investigation has led him through. His story ends up being simple — nothing to do with a replicant rebellion, but everything to do with morality that is bigger than humanity. With getting a person from one place to another. A small action in the scheme of the mythology of this world, but which carries tremendous weight for the characters and for the audience.
Maybe that is the ideal, what is “authentically” “human”: understanding you don’t need to be at the center of the story to do the right thing. It’s a beautiful moral going into 2018, and one I am so glad Villenueve and company had the audacity to build this incredible film around.
04. Dunkirk (dir. Christopher Nolan)
“He’s shell-shocked, George. He’s not himself. He might never be himself again.”
Less a history lesson than an impressionistic snapshot of the moment-to-moment realities of war, Dunkirk has Christopher Nolan at the top of his game, delivering his best work in over fifteen years. The fact that this is my favorite movie of Nolan’s since Memento (which is one of my favorite movies, period) is not a coincidence in my mind.
No one does the subjective experience of time better than Christopher Nolan.
In an absolutely brilliant move, Dunkirk splits up its action amongst three distinct storylines, each operating on a different time frame. On the beach, a week of boredom for scared young men is punctuated by moments of utter terror. On the sea, brave British citizens enter the murky waters (pun oh so intended) of war for a day. In the air, spitfire planes have their heroism confined to an hour of firecracker, life-and-death stakes. This structure allows Nolan to build a film where pace, tone, and intensity can be modulated, one that is both epic and intimate, and crescendos in the most surprising of ways. This film has the weight and intention of a master filmmaker at work, and I feel lucky to have seen it on literally the biggest screen I possibly could (a 70mm IMAX dome at the San Jose Tech Museum).
The evacuation of Dunkirk had a place in more than one movie this year (it is also at the center of the Winston Churchill character study Darkest Hour), and I’ve spent time wondering why it has made such a resurgence in the public consciousness. Wars are not won by evacuation, yes — but perhaps what historical perspective about Dunkirk has taught us is that defeat does not have to be an ending. It can simply be the beginning of the next fight towards victory. Dunkirk captures this idea with visual splendor and instinctual thrills.
03. The Big Sick (dir. Michael Showalter)
“Your driver will be ready as soon as he puts on his pants.”
The best screenplay of the year belongs to The Big Sick, in which Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani dramatize their real-life courtship with pathos, insight, and true hilarity. (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The 9/11 exchange is one of the best executed jokes I’ve ever seen in a movie.) Nanjiani plays a fictionalized version of himself, a wayward stand-up comedian stuck between the life his immigrant parents want for him, and the life he is aimlessly trying to form for himself. The Gordon surrogate Emily Gardner is played by the forever-underrated Zoe Kazan, and she charms the pants off of both Nanjiani and the audience as the central relationship in the film grows.
Though the title itself is a bit of a spoiler, I’ll refrain from divulging more plot details, as so much of the magic of this movie is in its unpredictability — which is especially impressive, given that even knowing who wrote the movie is a spoiler too. I can attribute the film’s unpredictability to its genuineness — no moment feels forced or false, and every development is surprising yet inevitable. Any notions that this is going to be a simple romantic comedy are quickly dismissed, as The Big Sick blossoms into a shockingly dense movie. The story covers everything from the immigrant experience to the trials of getting to know in-laws (played brilliantly in the film by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano) to discovering one’s artistic voice, all within the confines of the rom-com genre — a designation which itself is actually too simple, as at least three satisfying love stories play out over the course of the film.
There are no easy answers in the complex relationship Emily and Kumail embark on, and The Big Sick knows that. So it navigates these complexities in unexpected, emotional, and — once again — absolutely hysterical ways. Above all, though, I’m just so grateful The Big Sick exists, and that Nanjiani and Gordon were brave enough to tell their story. This is one of the few 2017 movies I’ve already actively revisited — and that’s because it’s a story of fundamentally good people all trying to do the right thing and do right by the people around them.
In a year like 2017, it was my cinematic comfort food.
02. The Work (dir. Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous)
“I feel him. It’s fucked up.”
“It’d be fucked up if you didn’t feel him.”
This is a riveting, heartbreaking, and eventually life-affirming documentary, that wrecked me while watching it and then left me completely rocked for a full day afterwards. Every year, Folsom State Prison allows select outside visitors inside their walls, to join convicted inmates for four days of intensive group therapy. The Work follows three such outsiders, each looking for a very different but not yet well-defined thing from the experience. The bulk of the film places us in the circle with these men and their incarcerated guides, with unflinching presence as the sessions unfold, led by absolutely incredible counselors and veteran inmates of the program.
The results are profound — both in the emotional availability of everyone involved, and in the concrete facts presented at the end about recidivism rates amongst alumni of the program who are eventually released. (Spoiler alert: it’s zero percent.) This is a monumental documentary that really should be viewed by everyone — it’s a perennially-necessary testament to the transformative power of vulnerability and empathy.
There is a moment towards the end of the film that has especially stuck with me. After a particularly startling and intense confession, two of the inmates share a long hug. For a moment, all realism the rest of the film has so carefully built up is shattered — the microphones the men are wearing are pressed against each other’s chests, muffling all sound. But the sound isn’t completely gone. What we hear are clothes rustling against each other. Muted cries and whispers. Two heartbeats pounding in two chests.
The sounds of human intimacy.
01. Call Me By Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
“Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spots.”
There is no movie moment this year more meaningful to me than the monologue delivered by national treasure Michael Stuhlbarg towards the end of the astonishing queer drama Call Me By Your Name. The specifics of the speech’s content don’t apply to my identity, yet its impact is universal — and that is the magic of Luca Guadagnino’s movie. Through beautiful performances, poetic writing, and sumptuous, tactile filmmaking, the specific becomes universal.
So much has been said about the work of stars Timotheé Chalamet, Armie Hammer, and Stuhlbarg, and all I can add is that I agree. They’re all next-level. Ditto with the writing, directing, and basically every aspect of the craft. But what is most impressive to me about Call Me By Your Name is how it really can’t be pulled apart in the way most movies can. Everything here is working in conjunction.
What’s haunting about this movie has nothing to do with capital-D Drama, with screaming matches or life-altering change. This movie lingers like a ghost in your mind because of its depth of emotion, its well-worn insight. The emotion and insight I’m talking about are rarely conjured up by stories. They’re more regularly conjured up by life itself, through perspective and wisdom. The moments Call Me By Your Name presents are stylized, yes, but they, in a very true way, exist. They always have existed and always will exist. The film is inseparable, as inseparable as a memory, bathed in the sun-drenched excess and heightened feeling that entails.
And it’s a memory I can’t wait to revisit again and again.
***
LINEUPS
BEST PICTURE
01. Call Me By Your Name
02. The Work
03. The Big Sick
04. Dunkirk
05. Blade Runner 2049
06. A Ghost Story
BEST DIRECTOR
01. Luca Guadagnino, Call Me By Your Name
02. Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
03. Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread
04. Denis Villeneuve, Blade Runner 2049
05. Dee Rees, Mudbound
06. Rian Johnson, Star Wars: The Last Jedi
BEST ACTOR
01. Timothee Chalamet, Call Me By Your Name
02. Robert Pattinson, Good Time
03. Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread
04. Jake Gyllenhaal, Stronger
05. James Franco, The Disaster Artist
06. Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
BEST ACTRESS
01. Daniela Vega, A Fantastic Woman
02. Sally Hawkins, Maudie
03. Brooklynn Prince, The Florida Project
04. Haley Lu Richardson, Columbus
05. Meryl Streep, The Post
06. Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
01. Jason Mitchell, Mudbound
02. Michael Stuhlbarg, Call Me By Your Name
03. Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, BPM (Beats Per Minute)
04. Armie Hammer, Call Me By Your Name
05. Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
06. Jean-Louis Trintignant, Happy End
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
01. Melissa Leo, Novitiate
02. Fantine Harduin, Happy End
03. Holly Hunter, The Big Sick
04. Lois Smith, Marjorie Prime
05. Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread
06. Betty Gabriel, Get Out
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
01. The Big Sick
02. Get Out
03. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
04. Phantom Thread
05. Columbus
06. Ingrid Goes West
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
01. Call Me By Your Name
02. The Disaster Artist
03. Blade Runner 2049
04. Molly’s Game
05. Mudbound
06. Logan
***
ROSTER
A
01. Call Me By Your Name
02. The Work
03. The Big Sick
04. Dunkirk
A-
05. Blade Runner 2049
06. A Ghost Story
07. Phantom Thread
08. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
09. Faces Places
10. Get Out
11. Columbus
12. A Fantastic Woman
13. The Disaster Artist
14. Logan
15. Good Time
16. Brawl in Cell Block 99
17. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond — Featuring A Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton
18. Happy End
B+
19. Mudbound
20. BPM (Beats Per Minute)
21. 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene
22. Jane
23. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
24. Lucky
25. Okja
26. Spider-Man: Homecoming
27. Stronger
28. The Square
29. Ingrid Goes West
30. The Florida Project
31. The LEGO Batman Movie
32. Lady Bird
33. War for the Planet of the Apes
B
34. Brigsby Bear
35. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
36. Mother!
37. Marjorie Prime
38. It Comes At Night
39. Coco
40. Molly’s Game
41. Raw
42. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
43. The Lovers
44. Gook
45. Menashe
46. The Force
47. Loveless
B-
48. Logan Lucky
49. Thor: Ragnarok
50. Wind River
51. I, Tonya
52. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
53. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
54. Song to Song
55. I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore
56. The Beguiled
57. John Wick: Chapter 2
58. Battle of the Sexes
59. As You Are
60. Dark Night
61. In the Fade
C+
62. The Post
63. The Lost City of Z
64. Last Flag Flying
65. The Incredible Jessica James
66. Baby Driver
67. Win It All
68. Murder on the Orient Express
69. Darkest Hour
70. Patti Cake$
71. Maudie
72. Novitiate
C
73. Kong: Skull Island
74. Kingsman: The Golden Circle
75. Cars 3
76. It
77. Colossal
78. Sleight
C-
79. The Shape of Water
80. Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
81. All the Money in the World
82. Beatriz at Dinner
83. Split
84. The LEGO Ninjago Movie
85. The Hero
86. Beauty and the Beast
D+
87. Wonderstruck
88. The Discovery
89. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
90. Life
91. Detroit
92. Alien: Covenant
D
93. Shimmer Lake
94. Radius
95. Crown Heights
96. Lemon
D-
97. Downsizing
98. Atomic Blonde
99. Person to Person
100. The Boss Baby