The best movies of 2017

Cinemagoers like to complain that there’s nothing new under the marquee. 2017 tested our patience with The Nut Job 2, Smurfs 3, Diary of a Wimpy Kid 4 and a whole lot of fives – Annabelle, Transformers, Underworld and Pirates of the Caribbean. But at this time of year, 10 is the magic number, so here are 10 of the year’s best movies, with not a sequel among them. Well, except for 1 ...

10. Faces Places Technically a documentary, this is really more of a breezy travelogue, as famed filmmaker Agnès Varda roams around France with a young photographer named JR, taking large-scale photographs and pasting them up in unexpected, extraordinary places. The result is beautiful, whimsical, adorable and even philosophical; in short, all the best (non-edible) things France has to offer.

9. Dunkirk Christopher Nolan expertly slices the story of the British retreat from France in 1940 into three chapters – roughly, land, air and sea. Fionn Whitehead stars as Tommy, trying to get off the beach and back to Blighty, while the great Mark Rylance pilots one of the many civilian vessels that helped in the evacuation, and doubles as the film’s quiet voice of moral authority. Excellent editing and mostly bloodless but breathtaking action creates tension you can cut with a bayonet. What Churchill called the “miracle of deliverance” is a filmmaking miracle itself.

8. The Post Another January release, Steven Spielberg’s latest is his strongest since 2012’s Lincoln. And you could be forgiven for thinking the title on the movie’s poster is Streep/Hanks, so chuffed is the director with the powerhouse duo playing the editor and publisher of the Washington Post in 1971. That’s when leaked documents about the Vietnam War threatened to topple Nixon’s government. A timely and thrilling “prequel” to All the President’s Men, and quite possibly its dramatic equal.

7. Hostiles This one won’t open in Canada until January, so keep your eyes peeled for the release of one of the greatest westerns to hit the screen in recent years. (No, Logan doesn’t count.) Set in 1892, it stars Christian Bale as a U.S. Army Captain charged with transporting his former enemy, a dying Cheyenne chief (Wes Studi), back home. Rosamund Pike is a widow struggling to overcome a horrible tragedy, while Bale’s 3:10 to Yuma costar Ben Foster pops up as a convict who also needs transportation. It’s a tale for the ages.

6. Baby Driver Watching Kevin Spacey as a smoothtalking criminal mastermind may turn off some viewers, but there’s still so much to enjoy in this musical carchase/love-story, starring Ansel Elgort as the wheelman in Spacey’s intricately plotted heists, and Lily James as Debora, the waitress who falls for him over a shared love of tunes with names in the titles. Of course, there aren’t too many Debora songs, but you can’t beat a Baby-inflected soundtrack.

5. A Ghost Story That sounds like a horror-movie title, but David Lowery’s debut feature is in fact a ghost’s story. After an unnamed man played by Casey Affleck perishes in a car crash, he finds himself turned into a giant sheet with two big black spots for eyes – I know it sounds stupid, but bear with me. Untethered in time though apparently not from the house in which he once lived, the ghost’s quiet curiosity takes him into past and future days, and quite possibly to posthumous wisdom. It’s as beautiful as a summer’s day, and about as scary; fear not.

4. Lady Bird Greta Gerwig’s solo writing/directing debut explains why I always mistype her name as “Great Gerwig.” Saorise Ronan shines as a high school senior in 2002 Sacramento, grappling with young love, friendships, parents (Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts are the perfect movie mom and dad) and university choices. No surprise, Gerwig was also a senior in ’02, giving the movie the ring of truth but the harmonics of great fiction.

3. The Shape of Water The newest from Guillermo del Toro is a very grown-up Beauty and the Beast, except that in this version the real beast is a sadistic G-man played by Michael Shannon, while the beauties are Doug Jones as a misunderstood semi-aquatic creature from the Amazon, and Sally Hawkins as the mute cleaner who falls in love with him. Richard Jenkins plays a marvelous and vital supporting role as her neighbour. 2. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Possibly the darkest movie of the year – Frances McDormand stars as a woman mourning the murder of her daughter – Martin McDonagh’s morality tale is also easily the funniest. And there’s not a weak link in a cast that includes Sam Rockwell as a racist cop and Woody Harrelson as his surprisingly kind-hearted boss, whose farewell speech puts the tears in “you’ll laugh; you’ll cry.” 1. Blade Runner 2049 Denis Villeneuve’s inspired followup to Ridley Scott’s 1982 science-fiction classic feels at once familiar – flying police cars, replicants, Harrison Ford – and shockingly new, thanks to the central story of an L.A. cop (Ryan Gosling) trying to crack an existential mystery to which he himself may be a clue. Themes of free will, memory and what it means to be human play out in a stunning new landscape in what I suppose must now count as the future’s future.