A FINE YEAR IN FILMMAKING
We pick the top 10 movies of 2017
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.
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.”
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 semiaquatic creature from the Amazon, and Sally Hawkins as the mute cleaner who falls in love with him. Richard Jenkins plays a marvellous and vital supporting role as her neighbour.
4 Lady Bird
Greta Gerwig’s solo writingdirecting debut explains why I always mistype her name as “Great Gerwig.” Saoirse 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.
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.
6 Baby Driver
Watching Kevin Spacey as a smooth-talking criminal mastermind may turn off some viewers, but there’s still so much to enjoy in this musical car chase/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.
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 co-star Ben Foster pops up as a convict who also needs transportation. It’s a tale for the ages.
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.
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. It has excellent editing and is 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.
10 Faces Places
Technically a documentary, this is really more of a breezy travel- ogue, 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 the European country has to offer come together in this movie.