As always, the trick in sorting through a diverse collection of quality movies is coming with some criteria to use. This year I’m going with, “what level of reaction did it get from me?” This doesn’t have to be to emotional (though that helps); it could be fear, anger, or even laughter. As we go through these films, however, we’ll see that even that’s an oversimplification.
First, I still haven’t been able to make it to Phantom Thread, so its not currently up for consideration for me despite being a best picture nominee. It’s not for lack of trying, I just haven’t been able to see it yet. I’m a little lukewarm on Paul Thomas Anderson overall, though I’m always curious about what he’ll do next. I’ll be surprised if his career never produces a best picture winner. And I love Daniel Day Lewis and really hope Phantom Thread isn’t his last movie as he’s supposedly retiring.
Next, I do want to give an honorable mention shoutout to a handful of movies, in no particular order. Mudbound on Netflix is very much worth your time. It’s dark and well-done. It deals with race in rural Mississippi in the 1940s and goes all the places you fear it will.
The Post is as well-made as it is unremarkable. It’ll be shown in classrooms for the next decade and then forgotten. You’ll enjoy it, but won’t be able to pick it out of a lineup in the future.
I might argue that the only reason Blade Runner 2049 isn’t getting more attention is that we live in a world where we’ve been sequelled and rebooted to death. It’s a film that takes its time in a way most mainstream movies of the last 30 years just don’t. Director Denis Villeneuve’s previous two movies were Arrival and Sicario and he’s definitely one to watch going forward as he’s willing to make bold choices.
Okay, I can appreciate what everyone sees in Get Out and I think I absolutely lost out on part of the experience by not seeing it in theaters, but isn’t it basically just an episode of the “Twilight Zone” or “Black Mirror?” I think it’s good, I think it’s clever, but I think it’s overrated. Though it may include the best “I told you so” moment of all-time.
Thor: Ragnorok was a little more of a traditional Marvel movie than I had hoped it would be. I was really hoping the whole thing would be even more peripheral to Thor’s overall storyline than it was. And the trailers completely ruined the Hulk’s reveal. Basically, I only mention it here because the rock monster voiced by New Zealand director Taika Waititi is very likely my favorite character of the year. He steals the whole show.
And I was just able to check out Coco at the discount theater. Very good. Very clever. I was smiling the whole time. It didn’t get me as emotional as I kind of expected from Pixar. I don’t want to say it was predictable, but its surprises did come pretty much right on cue. But it’s also one of those movies that should prove timeless and will be watched by kids for generations.
And two more movies that JUST missed out on my top ten – I guess these are technically just honorable mentions too, but they almost made the cut and are really in the same tier as my #9 and #10.
First Logan, another R-rated superhero movie following in the wake of Deadpool, but it goes in a completely different direction. While Deadpool is arguably just a standard superhero movie with more violence, Logan isn’t really a superhero movie at all. It’s a movie about a superhero trying to avoid being in a superhero movie. We see Wolverine in the not-too-distant-future as his powers are waning and he has no interest in being pulled back in to help anyone. It’s far from perfect, but it’s engaging and did get me to tear up at the end.
The only reason The Florida Project missed my top 10 was really because I just didn’t like the last shot of the movie. I get what he was going for, but it just didn’t work for me. I also think I’ve been hearing and reading this title wrong. Everyone says, The FLORIDA Project, but it should really be The Florida PROJECT as it’s about people who live in a cheap hotel in Orlando. The star of the film is a 6-year-old girl, but the whole thing is filmed almost like a nature documentary where we follow her around in her environment along with her friends and her mom. Willem Dafoe is great as the building manager/owner who’s a sort of noble, slum-lord hero – always looking out for what’s right and never seeking any credit or losing his temper.
Now, here are my top 10 movies of 2017:
10. The Salesman – Now, I probably do consider The Florida Project more memorable than The Salesman here, but it was close enough that I wanted to highlight The Salesman and its director, Asghar Farhadi. As I sat down to write this and pulled up Farhadi’s wikipedia page, I realized this is a bit of a cheat. The Salesman already won best foreign film at last year’s Oscars. But it was released in the U.S. and the U.K. in 2017, so I’m calling it eligible as it wasn’t something I could have included last year. The movie is about a married couple dealing with the aftermath of the wife being attacked in their new apartment. They debate whether or not to even involve the police – this is all set in Iran – and the wife wants to move on (though she can’t seem too), while her husband wants to track down the bastard who did it. This is not a thriller, however. Farhadi is amazing at finding the intensity in real life moments. The film plays like a slice-of-life indie movie, making its twists and the emotional punches hit that much harder. It’s called The Salesman because the couple are actors and are currently starring in a production of “Death of a Salesman.” We get great scenes of their real-life drama spilling over into their on-stage performances. This was the second of Farhadi’s films to win the Oscar for best foreign film. A Separation won for 2011 and also earned Farhadi a best original screenplay nomination. I (and you) need to check out more of his stuff.
9. Call Me By Your Name – This movie highlights a theme present in many of the year’s best films, and I suppose it’s a common theme in general – self exploration; figuring out who you are and what your role in the world will be. While a movie like Brokeback Mountain focused on the taboo around homosexuality, or at least had it as a significant plot-point, Call Me By Your Name never really goes there. Set in the 1980s in Italy, two intelligent young men really get to know each other. The story’s relatively simple, but also covers a lot of ground in a short amount of time. You don’t have to be gay to appreciate the longing, the tension, and the heartbreak that everyone goes through. The acting and filmmaking here create an atmosphere that can be tense, but is ultimately cathartic. There’s some controversy over the fact that the romantically involved characters in the movie are 17 and 24 years old. I guess I’ll just say, don’t judge the filmmakers – judge the characters… which should probably apply to all films (I’m probably putting my foot in my mouth there, based on counterexamples that aren’t coming to mind, but moving on…).
8. Dunkirk – I’ve been a Christopher Nolan fan since I saw Memento in the theater (twice) back in May of 2001. While I still think that’s his best film (or maybe The Dark Knight), I appreciate the bold inventiveness he continues to show as a mainstream director with massive budgets. When I saw the trailers for Dunkirk I was kind of shocked that Nolan was just going to be tackling a standard WWII movie. I should have known better. This is still very much a Christopher Nolan movie. I’m going to tell you what I wish I had known going in (not a spoiler, but if you’re really particular, skip ahead) – we have three storylines running parallel, one covering a week in time, one a day, and one an hour. It does put titles on the screen early on in an attempt to explain that, but I didn’t really catch on until later that that’s exactly what was meant. So it leads to some standard Nolan mental gymnastics when you see a character from one timeline show up in another. Basically the ending point is the same for all. So the hour timeline is the last hour of the day timeline which is the last day of the week timeline. Got it? No? Well, yeah, I need to rewatch it too. It’s all attempt by Nolan to put you in the chaotic headspace of the men living through this famous impossible evacuation from Dunkirk, France – just as he played with your memory in Memento. Can’t wait to see what he does next.
7. Lady Bird – This is one of those movies I’d love to champion more if it wasn’t getting enough love, but it’s actually received so much love that it’s in the best picture conversation and I have a hard time not saying, “well, it’s not that good is it?” Saoirse Ronan is captivating as the title character – a girl named Christine who insists everyone call her Lady Bird for no particular reason really. It really is a great film; beautifully capturing family dynamics through passive-aggressive judgement, shared joy and sorrow, and how feelings can change on a dime. The writing is great, the acting is great, everything is great. I just don’t know that it treads any particularly new ground. It’s not ambitious, but what it is going for, it does near perfectly. Hmm, maybe I’m talking myself into moving it up. Too late!
6. The Big Sick – Unlike Lady Bird, The Big Sick does tread new ground – a romantic comedy where the girl is in a coma for a huge chunk of the movie. And, to top it off, it’s based on a true story written by the people it happened to – Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon. Kumail even plays himself in the movie, which at first I found odd that he does and his wife doesn’t, but I think the answer is simple – he’s an actor, his wife isn’t. This is a film that could have easily have become sappy and boring, but it’s smart enough to undercut those moments and keeps the comedy sharp. The primary focus is Kumail’s struggle between his traditional Pakistani family and wanting to live a typical American life. Ultimately, however, there’s nothing typical about his relationship with Emily and that’s what makes it so memorable.
5. Darkest Hour – I do get that this one isn’t for everyone and most people don’t have it this high on their lists for 2017, so this is more for my history nerd side. But it did earn a best picture nomination, which does mean enough voters actually considered it their favorite film of the year. (If you don’t know how Oscar voting works, you have to have certain percentage of voters rank you as the best film of the year to even stay in the race – if a movie was the second favorite movie for literally every Oscar voter, it would not be nominated for best picture). Gary Oldman is certainly taking home his first Oscar for his portrayal of Winston Churchill here. Indeed, Gary Oldman is gone. To the best of my knowledge they resurrected Churchill and put him in the movie. He’s helped also by the best make up I’ve ever seen. They do tight closeups of his mouth while he’s talking and nothing feels false. I’ve always been fascinated by Churchill. Yes, he was probably a bit of a racist who thought people like Gandhi should know their place, but that’s not what he’s known for – an important distinction, I believe, to make when we judge historical figures. On the surface, I always liked the idea that Churchill was this disgraced public figure, who became England’s last hope against their greatest threat and won the day. Darkest Hour goes behind the scenes for all that, focusing on several speeches Churchill gave in the early days of WWII and the politics at play both for and against him. The key debate is whether to negotiate peace with Nazi Germany or to fight to the end. That may be an easy question for us to answer more than 70 years later, but this movie shows with great emotional depth just how hard that decision was for all involved. The last rousing speech got me ready to watch another two hours, but instead the credits rolled. And, incidentally, in one of the best, accidental Oscar pairings of all-time, the evacuation at Dunkirk is happening concurrently to Darkest Hour. Watch ’em both!
4. Baby Driver – This movie is so freaking cool, I really wish it was getting more love this year. I get that it’s not particularly realistic, but it’s not trying to be. It’s a simple, fast-paced story that’s hyper-stylized about the best getaway driver in the world – a young man named Baby. It’s just the most fun I had at the movies all year. If it had a stronger ending, it’d probably be in contention for my number one spot. Directed by Edgar Wright, it’s similar maybe to Drive with Ryan Gosling and the Tarantino-scripted True Romance. I’ve heard plenty of interviews with Wright; the guy just loves movies and it shows. He’s great at taking standard ideas and putting a new spin on them. He broke out in 2004 by making a zombie movie comedy with Shaun of the Dead. In Scott Pilgrim vs the World he asked if people can randomly break into song in a musical, why can’t they randomly break into video-game-style fighting? Baby Driver isn’t necessarily as novel an idea as those two, but it still manages to be my favorite Edgar Wright movie. It’s just a blast. Check it out.
3. The Shape of Water – I expected to be more emotionally moved by this film and the fact that I wasn’t is the only reason it’s not my number one. From a filmmaking standpoint, this movie is virtually flawless which is why Guillermo del Toro is likely to win his first Oscar for directing it. It’s gritty, intense, and heartfelt. Even small characters feel well-rounded and the whole world of the film is dirty and real. It fits right with my theme of self-exploration as the mute Elisa (played by Sally Hawkins, who earned her second acting nomination for the role) takes a liking to a fish-man from South America being held captive in the government facility she works at as a cleaning lady. It leads the way at the Oscars this year with 13 nominations, but it may ultimately lose out my number 2…
2. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – This is just the third movie by Martin McDonagh, the first two being In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, which are an 84 and 82%, respectively, on rottentomatoes. Like Wright and del Toro, he’s a bold director. I mean, come on, who names a movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri? In many ways it feels like a tribute to the Coen brothers, right down to casting Frances McDormand in the lead. She stars as a woman devastated over the rape and murder of her daughter who wants to know why no arrests have been made. She pays for three billboards to be put up calling out the town’s sheriff, played by Woody Harrelson, for his inaction. He and Sam Rockwell, who plays one of his deputies, are both nominated for best supporting actor. At every turn this movie plays with your expectations. McDonagh knows where you think it might go then turns the whole movie and its head. Once you realize he’s messing with you and you start to reformulate your expectations, he proves you wrong again. It’s a movie that’ll have you white-knuckled against your armrests one moment and laughing out loud the next. It challenges you the whole way as it explores right and wrong and redemption. It has a great chance to win best picture of the year and it deserves it. It sat in my number one spot for quite awhile until I saw my number one movie of the year…
1. I, Tonya – This may have been the most unexpected moviegoing experience of my lifetime. I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to make time for it this Oscar season, but heard it was fun and Allison Janney is one of the favorites to win best supporting actress for it. It was one of the last movies in this write-up that I saw and as I sat enrapt throughout, it firmly entrenched itself in my number three spot. As it was ending and the credits were starting to role, it crossed my mind that it might need to be number one. I was embarrassed at the thought. Movie-nerd though I am, was I willing to put my ego aside and admit a figure-skating movie was my favorite movie of the year? As I was crying during the credits – yes, tears streaming down my face – I knew I had no choice. I said I decided that my sorting criteria was the impact the films had on me. Well, I, Tonya hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. On the surface I agree that this makes no sense. It’s a largely comedic biopic about disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding and the idiots in her life that ruined her career by attacking Nancy Kerrigan (whether or not Tonya knew about it ahead of time). But, there is so, so much more going on here.
This film is about greatness – just the very concept of being the best in the world at something, anything. I’m not going to make any judgements or decisions about the real-life events. I’m just talking about the movie that’s given to us. For one brief, brief moment Tonya Harding was the best figure skater in the world and it was ripped away from her by the very circumstances she overcame to get there in the first place. I’ve been wracking my brain and I can’t think of a comparable figure… ever, in anything. Yes, lots of professional football players and basketball players have overcome rough childhoods to make it big and could disappear again if they fall back in with the wrong crowd, but that’s that world. Professional mens’ sports are comprised of rough-and-tumble guys many of whom had it rough growing up. But that’s not the world of figure skating. The Tonya Harding we get here grows up poor and abused, smoking and cursing just like her mother. They have no place in the prim and proper world of competitive figure skating. A judge even straight-up tells her that they don’t want her representing their sport. A tearful Tonya pleads, “why can’t it just be about the skating?” She can’t afford the fancy costumes and everything else that goes along with it. And, again, despite all that, she ever-so-briefly reached the pinnacle on the strength of her triple axels – one of the few women in the world who have ever done them in competition. Irreverent, yes, but she was just the best athlete on the ice.
She has nothing else (except maybe the on-and-off love of her abusive husband), but she has skating. The movie constantly breaks the fourth-wall, often to humorous effect, but when she talks about becoming a villain and national laughing stock in the aftermath of the attack on Nancy Kerrigan (orchestrated by the moronic friends of her husband) she looks straight at the camera and calls out us, the audience, for becoming her abusers as well. That was a gut punch that floored me. It’s all too easy to dismiss Tonya Harding as a caricature and doing so diminishes us all. Life is far more complicated than that and she had the courage to put herself out there and keep fighting. Again, I’m speaking only about the movie, though I can’t argue that the weight of being a biopic doesn’t add to it. Allison Janney does seem poised to win for playing her abusive mother who had the foresight to see her daughter’s gift and pour what little money she had into lessons for the young girl. And, though Tonya does love skating, she grows to hate and resent her mother. Her mom argues that that was the price of greatness, which instantly reminded me of Whiplash from three years ago. JK Simmons is taking about how hard Charlie Parker’s teacher was on him and that maybe being harsh will drive some away, but those who stick it out will be the best, because they’ll work harder than anyone else. He says, “there are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job.'” As a coach, I don’t want him to be right, but what if he is? I don’t know. I don’t have the answers, but greatness is out there and I have to tip my hat to those who achieve it, however fleeting it might be.