2017 Top Ten

Award season is upon us, and it is once again the time of year when film critics share the films that meant the most to them over the previous year, and naturally, I don’t want to miss out on the fun. 2017 was an unusually busy year for me with a move across the country, and a few more films than usual slipped through the cracks – so I delayed posting this by one week to try to catch up on a few more. However, The Breadwinner and Call Me by Your Name are two major films I still need to watch.

2017 was also the year of #metoo, and recognizing the humanity of the downtrodden and those who have been systematically repressed by society for years, and that theme played out in several major films of the past year, including likely best picture nominee The Shape of Water, Anne Hathaway’s ambitious star vehicle Colossal, and the brilliantly unnerving Get Out.

Another major theme of this past year was the idea of questioning our heroes and reexamining what it means to be victorious, which very notably played out in the year’s most anticipated film, Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. That theme was also prominent in The LEGO Batman Movie as well as Christopher Nolan’s grandiose blockbuster Dunkirk.

Finally, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks certainly blurred the line between cinema and television, but I still believe it should be classified as the latter; otherwise I would just list every episode as the top 18. I jest, but only partially.

Good Films Worth Noting (35-21):

The Greatest Showman, The Wedding Plan, I, Tonya, Mudbound, Baby Driver, Columbus, Wonder Woman, The Lost City of Z, The Meyerowtiz Stories (New and Collected), Good Time, Lady Macbeth, The Big Sick, Hunter Gatherer, The Work, Son of Joseph

Honorable Mentions:

20. The Lure (Agnieszka Smoczyńska) – A modernized take on The Little Mermaid, setting the classic fairytale in a sleazy nightclub in Soviet Poland. Emphatically not a film for all tastes, this horror/fantasy/musical mashup is an impressive display of light and music capturing the danger and excitement of coming of age in far less than perfect world.

19. The Florida Project (Sean Baker) – Mostly shot from the perspective of six-year-old Moonee, (an outstanding Brooklynn Prince) Sean Baker’s deeply compassionate tale about the cycle of poverty in a Florida housing project just outside of Disneyworld captures the joy and hope common to kids even as it details the injustice of a painfully broken world.

18. A Ghost Story (David Lowery) – A meditation on time, grief, and moving on, the use of a fullscreen aspect ratio boxes the viewer into a world where a deceased husband is forced to watch time unfold in the home where he and his wife had blissfully lived, as he learns to live there as a ghost.

17. Get Out (Jordan Peele) – Both a horror film and a satire, Get Out simultaneously explores the frightening nature of racial relations in America and exposes the shallowness of liberal white people who pretend to be allies while perpetuating harmful stereotypes.

16. The Unknown Girl (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne) – A seemingly simple and normal act of selfishness ends up having unexpected repercussions when an unknown girl ends up dead. Jenny, (Adèle Haenel) a doctor at a local clinic, feels particularly responsible and begins a quest to find the girl’s name so she can be buried in a grave and her family can know what happened to her. This effort to repair some of the damage ends up revealing a much more widespread tragedy of all the ways we fail our societal responsibility to one another.

Runners-up:

15. Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve) – An unnecessary sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece, but a brilliant one that respectfully builds on the world of the original film without ever trying to surpass it or engage in derivative fan service, the next chapter in the world of replicants takes a simple yet thrilling mystery and explores human nature, memories, and how we treat others in a world where machines and humans are viewed as commodities. The alternate future is as chilling here as it was in the original, and Roger Deakins’ cinematography makes the bleak world menacing and breathtaking.

14. The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro) – A beautiful and haunting fairytale about giving a voice to the voiceless and repressed, The Shape of Water merges fantasy and civil rights for the least of these in moving and powerful way. Sally Hawkins gives a powerhouse performance as a mute cleaning woman who risks everything she has to help a strange creature from the Amazon whom most of the world rejects as a freak, because she sees someone as broken as she. While a little heavy handed at times, del Toro’s film is nonetheless a splendidly filmed reminder of the value of the most vulnerable in our society. (full review)

13. Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan) – Arguably Nolan’s most ambitious film to date, and unquestionably his most hope-filled, Dunkirk is a celebration of an unorthodox heroism that finds victory in retreat, capture, and loss. Crosscutting effortlessly between three timelines on land, air, and sea, Nolan places the viewer right beside the soldiers and civilians as they all do what they can to survive and to rescue the allied troops from the impending threat of the marching Nazis. Even with big name stars such as Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance, no character stands out as the humanity and value of all the characters is equally important. (full review)

12. The Post (Steven Spielberg) – Thrilling newsroom drama about the importance of freedom of the press and the first amendment, Spielberg takes deadlines and interviews and turns them into life or death stakes that are as riveting as the best actions scenes he has ever directed. He also does not shy away from showing past failures of news outlets and still insists that it is essential they be allowed to do their jobs without censorship. As Katherine Graham, Meryl Streep as phenomenal as the reserved owner of the Washington Post making her way in a male dominated world and proving her small family paper is a major news outlet that won’t be intimidated by any corrupt politicians.

11. Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh) – Contrary to what many of this film’s detractors have claimed, this is not a film about redemption and how everyone has their own demons and how even the most racist scumbags deep down are good people. This is a film about damnation and how a perfect model for righteous outrage allows herself to become as corrupt, ruthless, and violent as the monstrous racists she claims to despise. Mildred (Frances McDormand), whose daughter was brutally raped and murdered, initially earns all our sympathy in her quest to protest the injustice of the local police department, but her understandable anger soon erupts out of control as the film escalates into a full-blown Greek tragedy. It’s a painful cautionary tale, but one timelier than ever. (full review)

The Top Ten

10. My Happy Family (Nana Ekvtimishvili & Simon Groß) – A moving and intimate look at the dynamics of a family across generations and genders and the struggles and expectations that occur when one member wants to move out from the tight-knit unit. As we witness the different ways family members often take one another for granted and the tole that can take, frequently changing dynamics make us reconsider our own preconceptions. Masterful use of long takes with handheld cameras are incredibly effective at making the viewer another member of the family as the film invites us to observe and reflect on the dynamics of how we interact with our own family members.

9. Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas) – An intense and beautifully filmed, genre shifting work of art about grief and the ways we deal with it (or don’t). The entire film is basically a MacGuffin, or several, as Maureen (a phenomenal Kristen Stewart) works in Paris as a personal shopper solely for the excuse of staying there to try to communicate with the spirit of her deceased brother. However, until she comes to peace with his passing and the unusual heart condition which also affects her, the materiality of her career, the unnerving mystery she gets caught up in, and the possibility of other supernatural entities haunting her, will be as meaningless and shallow as Hitchcock’s famous trope, which is why Assayas’ brilliantly detailed focus on those seemingly important subplots makes the narrative abandonment of them in favor of something greater all the more potent.

8. The Beguiled (Sophia Coppola) – Meticulously crafted and gorgeously filmed, Sophia Coppola does a fantastic job of letting the tension within an all-girls Southern boarding school slowly simmer into a toxic boil during the Civil War after they invite a stray Union soldier into their domicile. Exploring the notion of Southern hospitality gone awry and human susceptibility to be beguiled by the easiest solution to our problems, the selfish ulterior motives for doing the right thing slowly create cracks in the picturesque world the Southern women have envisioned for themselves. When the third act erupts into full-blown melodrama, Coppola skillfully drives the film all the way to its memorable final shot.

7. mother! (Darren Aronofsky) – A horror film fantasy, a Biblical allegory, a contemporary parable on care for the environment, a feminist tale of the injustices society inflicts upon women, a meditation on the nature of art and the artist’s need to create, Aronofsky’s latest bizarre fever dream is all those things and then some. A nameless artist (Javier Bardem) and his doting wife, the titular mother, (Jennifer Lawrence) live in a sort of Eden removed from society, but when his desire for fame brings an increasingly unpleasant stream of guest to their home, the disregard and contempt they all show for mother’s vocation results in a tale about the purpose of art and its corruption. Featuring some of the most bombastic imagery of the year, Aronofsky’s commitment to his vision is truly remarkable. (full review)

6. Graduation (Cristian Mungiu) – “I don’t do things like this,” says the school principal in a conversation with a student’s father. The father, a respected surgeon played by Adrian Titieni, responds that he doesn’t either. And yet, the entire film is about his efforts to do such a deed and his rationalizations for it. After an early tragedy, which he is attempting to rectify, it’s easy to excuse his choices, and nearly everyone in the film does. However, that creates and endless cycle of corruption in a society where good intentions are often the closest thing to actual goodness. This portrait of the consequences of sin at all levels of society is not devoid of hope as the film quietly observes its characters, occasionally offering glimpses of a more noble, if difficult way.

5. The Salesman (Asghar Farhadi) – Winner of last year’s Oscar for best foreign language film, The Salesman did not receive a wide release until this year, and it is one of Farhadi’s most powerful films yet. The imitation between art and life blurs after two married actors are forced to evacuate their apartment and find themselves dealing with an unexpected tragedy, which results from the previous tenant’s dissolute lifestyle. The different ways the husband and wife respond to that tragedy threatens not only to derail their production of Death of a Salesman but to break apart their marriage as well as the husband’s quest for justice becomes less about his wife and more about his own desire for vengeance. The most remarkable aspect of the film is the way it handles questions of forgiveness, reputation, and healing, reminding us to whom those abilities belong.

4. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Luc Besson) – Easily the most imaginative film of the year, and one of the most downright enjoyable as well, Luc Besson’s comic book adaptation is everything that a sci-fi film should be: fun, action-packed, and visually splendid. Besson’s world building demonstrates the full potential of CGI and 3D technology, taking them to dazzling heights previously unexplored. Cara Delevingne and Dane DeHaan make an unorthodox but thoroughly enjoyable screen couple, as they join Besson for his wild ride across galaxies and planets, which always takes time to appreciate the incredible creatures and places Besson puts on screen along with the importance of mercy and forgiveness. No film this year unlocked the full potential of digital cinema more powerfully than this. (full review)

3. A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies) – An intimate portrait of the tortured soul of an artist, interspersed with several of her most famous works, Terence Davies’ unusual biopic covers the life of Emily Dickinson from her school days to her death, highlighting her tempestuous but compassionate relationships with her father, sister, brother, and other New England socialites. Cynthia Nixon’s performance as Emily is unquestionably my favorite of the year, and Jennifer Ehle’s turn as her younger sister is wonderful supporting work that enables Nixon to play Emily’s moods off Ehle’s quiet and sympathetic presence. Focusing on Emily’s growing agnosticism, insecurity, and sense of perfectionism, Nixon makes us empathize with a “difficult” character who struggles to fit into the world and uses her poetry as the primary means of communicating the longings of her soul.

2. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson) – When high-end London dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) takes a foreign waitress named Alma (Vicky Krieps) into his home with the intention of remaking her into a suitable model for his flawless dresses, the Vertigo style tale of a neurotic man controlling and reworking a doting woman takes a delightfully sinister turn as two self-centered people attempt to prove their love for their obsessions in increasingly demented ways. Paul Thomas Anderson seamlessly – pun intended – weaves Jonny Greenwood’s lush continuous score into the film, creating a sort of fantasy world where Woodcock’s neuroses and desire dictate every action. When the continuous score gives way to traditional cues, that world is shaken, and the new one that replaces it beautifully shows the destructive selfishness which permeates the world of an artist who only lives for his desires.

1. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig) – I’ve made no secret that Gerwig’s directorial debut is my favorite film of the year. But I have now watched Lady Bird four times, and besides always growing richer with each viewing, the one thing that is truly apparent is that it is first and foremost an act of love. Gerwig’s love for all her characters, for Sacramento, for New York, for mothers, for fathers, for theater, for first boyfriends, for Catholic school, for prom, and for best friends shines through in every scene, every line of dialogue, and every frame. As the headstrong, titular protagonist Saoirse Ronan is phenomenal as she chases her dreams and aspirations through her final year of high school, and the coming of age tale reflects an appreciation for all of life’s ups and downs, and the juxtaposition of successes and failures is a reminder of how life is often a funny and heartwarming combination of both. (full review)

Seeing and Believing Podcast: Best Films of 2017

A big thank you to Wade Bearden and Kevin McLenithan for inviting me onto Seeing and Believing’s podcast to discuss my favorite film of 2017, while they counted down their top ten films.

https://christandpopculture.com/seeing-and-believing-137-the-top-ten-films-of-2017/

(I’m at the 49:14 mark). I’ll be posting my own top ten list in the next week.