Buy and large, 2017 was one of the best years for movies we’ve had in a while (mediocre superheroes and a few sci-fi abominations not withstanding). It’s safe to say that making this list was very difficult, as there was an embarrassment of riches to pick from. Needless to say, several great movies will get little more than an honorable mention here.
But enough preface. In a post-truth world full of lies, scams,
and fake news around every corner, the people need a Top 10 Movie list they can
trust, so without further ado:
10) Raw
What’s not to like about a stylish French body-horror movie
about college-aged cannibals? While it didn’t blow me away, Julia Ducournau’s
genre-bending effort was more engaging than most films this year. And despite all the salacious headlines, the
film is, at its core, a coming of age story, one that focuses on an often
overlooked part of growing up: facing down one’s demons and coming to terms
with the dark, unpleasant aspects of one’s self. And it does this very well,
using stylish cinematography, art direction, and great performances to tell a
thoughtful, gross, and engrossing story of a young woman’s struggle with her
own demons, ones that blur the line between sex, love, hunger, violence, and
self destruction.
The directorial debut of writer/actor/Jeremy Saulnier’s best
friend Macon Blair is basically a Jeremy Saulnier movie if the guy was into
comedies. And it’s great. When lead actress Melanie Lysnkey’s Betty becomes fed
up with literally everyone and all their bullshit, she goes on a quest for
revenge against the burglars who stole her grandmother’s silverware,
accompanied by a wonderfully weird Elijah Wood. They end up stumbling into more
than they bargained for as the movie offers up more surprises and genuine
suspense than most Hollywood thrillers can manage along with plenty of laughs.
Macon Blair proves himself to be a creative force on in his own right, and this
movie only makes me even more excited for 2018’s Hold the Dark.
Some people judge movies based on their marketing. Those
people are very stupid and should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery.
While not a horror movie, It Comes at Night is a
nauseatingly suspenseful drama with enough tension and anxiety to make most
popcorn horror films look tame by comparison. The acting, production design,
sound, and cinematography are all excellent and this bleak-as-hell story about
survivors of a viral apocalypse is executed flawlessly. The grimness becomes a
bit much as the film goes on, but I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.
I’m still not sure if Charlie Hunnam can act, but this movie
is so good, he doesn’t really have a chance to do any damage. The film follows
real life explorer Percy Fawcett (Hunnam) and his many expeditions to South
America, all of which lead to his eventual obsession with finding a supposed
lost civilization and the many conflicts that arise from that obsession. The
movie is an excellent example of technique and atmosphere making up for a story
that, while surprisingly true to the facts, feels like it has a few too many contrivances thrown in for drama’s sake. Every frame is gorgeous and the film
does a great job of explaining the right things and leaving the right things
ambiguous. It’s totally enthralling from beginning to end and, as a bonus,
features a great performance from Robert Pattinson, who is proving himself to
be one of the great chameleonic actors working today.
A gritty grindhouse thriller with enough gore and great
dialogue for two movies, Brawl is pure genre excellence. S. Craig Zahler, the
writer/director/composer behind Bone Tomahawk, outdoes himself here, with a
much leaner and meaner flick. It’s story and technical aspects are fairly
straightforward, but the dialogue and simple, yet devastatingly effective fight
sequences take precedence here. And to boot, Vince Vaughan (who was always
better suited for drama than comedy) delivers his best performance yet as a
taciturn criminal who has to fight his way into the nastiest prison on earth in
order to save his wife and unborn child in a thrilling videogame-style dungeon
crawl.
5) Logan Lucky
People these days seem to talk a lot about how serious
blockbuster movies are and how they need to be more “fun”. Well, no movie in
2017 (except one) was more fun than Logan Lucky. Steven Soderberg, Mr. “Not
Boring” himself, is back and as great as ever. The film features many of
Soderberg’s favorite topics (heists, double-crosses, clever underdogs going up
against more powerful people, money) as well as his signature off kilter,
never-use-the-same-angle-twice camera work. It’s also impeccably cast, with a
few winks at the audience thrown in (i.e. Daniel Craig and Hillary Swank). While
held back a bit by some odd choices near the end, Logan Lucky is a blast to watch, a rare movie that does almost
everything well.
The Lobster writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos doubles down on
all his stylistic eccentricities in this tale about a father who must choose a
family member to sacrifice as part of a bizarre, mystical revenge scheme. An
interesting mix of multiple genres, deadpan deliveries, excellent camerawork (so many
zooms!), and plenty of tar-black comedy makes this one of the most unique and
well-executed ideas to come out in the past few years. It’s dark, strange,
obtuse, and wonderfully funny. Comparisons to Kubrick are dime a dozen for this
film, especially in relation to the late master’s best and final work, Eyes Wide
Shut. But Lanthimos does plenty to help this movie stand well enough on its
own, outside of the great Kubrick’s long shadow. While not for everyone, and
hampered by a weak ending, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is well worth the price of
admission.
3) Dunkirk
What I’m about to say might sound insane, but I think
Dunkirk is criminally underrated. The conventional western narrative structure
demands a clear, single protagonist, who has a clear goal, and is impeded by a
single, defined antagonist. Dunkirk is often faulted for not fitting into this
basic paradigm, but that’s kinda the point. Dunkirk may be the first
slice-of-life war film, more documentary than narrative, more Battle of Algiers
than Saving Private Ryan. It’s not about following an individual character,
it’s about getting the audience to experience and understand the totality of
the Battle of Dunkirk, and in that respect the film succeeds masterfully.
Dunkirk captures the essence of a single event with immense clarity and precision
and as a result, creates more tension, suspense, and anxiety than most
blockbusters could ever hope to muster. One goes through the entire film with a
knot in one’s stomach, truly feeling like anyone could die at any time. The
film's editing is superb; it’s toying with time an excellent vehicle for
exploring the battle. All the technical aspects are great and Tom Hardy’s in
it, so extra brownie points for that.
When I walked out of the theater on opening night, I was
worried I had seen the best movie of 2017 with 10 months left in the year. I
was (almost) right. John Wick 2 is fucking awesome. It’s so fucking awesome
that all I could think about while watching every other action movie this year
was, “I could be watching John Wick 2 instead”. It’s the 2nd best
action movie of the last few years (behind Mad Max: Fury Road) and one of the
best of all time. Chad Stahelski and Co. manage to perfectly balance
ridiculousness and seriousness while walking the tightrope of badassery all the
way from beginning to end. It takes everything that made the first one good:
great choreography, stylish lighting and production design, precise camerawork,
disciplined editing, and a comically blunt performance from Keanu Reeves, and
raises it all to dizzying new heights while managing to raise the stakes to a
level that manages to be both enthralling and absurd in a self-aware way. The
film also features a roster of great character actors like Lawrence Fishburn,
Ian McShane, Peter Serafinowizc, Peter Stormare, and Franco Nero all delivering
hilariously hammy performances. And the action…my God…I can’t even begin to
describe how great it is. I was giggling like a schoolgirl for over 2 hours. John
Wick 2 was the most fun I had at the movies all year.
1) Good Time
It’s hard to give John Wick 2 the #1 slot, mainly because it
isn’t “about anything”, at least anything other than stylish murder. Good Time,
however, is the “serious” movie that matches John Wick 2 in terms of
excellence. From New York’s Josh and Ben Safdie, Good Time is a film about
desperate people trying to survive in a world that’s entirely too much to bear.
Its style and mood reminded me a lot of the original Bladerunner, oddly enough.
It follows Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) who has to scrap together enough
money to get his mentally handicapped brother out of Ryker’s Island before he
gets himself killed. But Connie, a generally shitty person, finds himself
getting farther from his goal over the course of a single night, as his antics
and manipulations continually make things worse and worse. The story, like
Connie’s scheming, becomes more convoluted as it progresses, strange characters
come and go, problems are solved only to introduce new ones, until the whole
damn thing threatens to crumble under its own weight. The whole movie oozes
style, with fittingly frenetic cinematography, excellent on-location lighting,
and the best score of the year from musician Daniel Lopatin as well as a great
original song from Iggy Pop. To boot, the entire cast delivers great
performances. The movie pulls off a difficult high-wire act: It indulges in
plenty of absurdity, but lets that absurdity comment on the narrative without
overwhelming it. It manages to be sincere without being mawkish. And ultimately,
it’s a story about a bad man trying to do one good thing: to save his brother
and, by extension, himself. It’s about trying to care for and do right by the
people you love, even if you’re not the right person to love them. It’s a movie
that left a strong impression on me, one that’s lasted long after the screen
faded to black and it’s the best damn movie of 2017.
So that’s that. The 10 best. Period.
Now of course this year’s was a crowded field, and a lot of good and great films were left on the outside looking in. Films like: PhantomThread, The Disaster Artist, Super Dark Times, Baby Driver, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Get Out, Personal Shopper, and A Ghost Story.
~ G
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