Movie magic
It was a great year to be confused at the cinema in 2017.
The divide between art houses and multiplexes seemed a lot less obvious, as crowds thronged to the intimate stories of such festival favourites as Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name and Sean Baker’s The Florida Project.
Strict genre definitions were scared away by Jordan Peele’s racially charged horror satire Get Out, which attracted both serious Oscar speculation and midnight movie fans. Guillermo del Toro’s sci-fi fantasy The Shape of Water, meanwhile, made hearts swoon with a romance sparked by the writer/ director’s love of 1950s monster flicks.
Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 filled the screen with blockbuster smoke and thunder, while making artful commentary on history and humanity.
They all make my annual Top 10 list of the year’s best movies, which also includes 10 runners-up to cherish and five bombs to run away from:
1. Lady Bird The funniest and most heartfelt movie of 2017 marks Greta Gerwig’s debut as solo writer/director, an outstanding achievement for the loveably daffy star of Frances Ha and Mistress America. This coming-of-ager achieves flight in its own unique way, like the aerodynamically unorthodox ladybug the title tips to. Saoirse Ronan is a riot as the college-bound title rebel; Laurie Metcalf hits all the right notes as her sweet-and-sour mom. Expect Oscar nominations for both and also Best Picture/Director/Screenplay kudos for Gerwig. It’s her year to soar.
2. Call Me by Your Name Luca Guadagnino finds summer idylls (and idols) in a young man’s sexual awakening in the Italian Riviera of 1983. Visiting scholar Oliver (Armie Hammer) befriends and fascinates bookish teen Elio (Timothée Chalamet) at the family vacation villa of a culture professor and his translator wife (Michael Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar). Oliver and Elio begin a sexual relationship, slowly, allowing viewers to drink in the intoxicating sights, sounds and moods of this sensual film. Stuhlbarg delivers a father-son talk for the ages — dads, let those tears flow!
3. The Florida Project Tangerine director Sean Baker’s empathy for the underclass remains fully intact, as do his storytelling smarts, in this tale of children growing up poor but full of wonder in the motel-strip shadow of Orlando’s Disney World. Brooklynn Prince plays the irrepressible Moonee, the 6-year-old daughter of blue-haired grifter Halley (Bria Vinaite), a rebellious woman but devoted mom. Willem Dafoe downshifts into regular guy mode with abundant grace — and serious Best Supporting Actor prospects — as a motel manager with a heart.
4. Dunkirk Christopher Nolan’s Imax-sized telling of a signal drama of the Second World War is an intense experience of pure cinema. It far exceeds the standard “miracle at Dunkirk” narrative about the 1940 rescue of 340,000 endangered Allied soldiers from the Nazi-encircled beaches of the French port city. Approaching the immersive qualities of virtual reality, the film at times disorients with its lack of ready screen markers. The sights and sounds of air, sea and land skirmishes, as well as the desperate struggle for survival, achieve maximum impact.
5. Blade Runner 2049 Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi stunner is a movie of beautiful disorientation, vibrantly lensed by Roger Deakins. It digs into the mystery about who is real and who isn’t, in a future populated by humans and “replicants.” The film makes us wistful for a past that hasn’t happened yet — the year 2019 of Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner — while also contemplating three decades hence with awe and dread. Harrison Ford reprises android assassin Rick Deckard with soulful resonance; Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas and Sylvia Hoeks lead the intriguing new faces.
6. Get Out The year’s most talked-about movie is also one of its most provocative, taking the debate over liberal racism and cultural appropriation to horrifying extremes. Comedian Jordan Peele’s audacious debut as feature film writer/director stars Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, a photographer dating the liberally minded Rose (Allison Williams). It’s time to meet Rose’s parents: her neurosurgeon dad Dean (Bradley Whitford) and therapist mom Missy (Catherine Keener). Think Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner crossed with The Stepford Wives, but don’t stop there.
7. Faces Places The power of the imagination fuels this documentary road trip by French New Wave master Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR. They make quite the amusing pair as they roam the French countryside, passing fields of lilac and sunflowers as they visit small towns (and a couple of large cities) to create jumbo photos of the people they meet. JR drives a van resembling a giant Polaroid camera, which dispenses large-format photos that are attached as murals to walls, trains, water towers and other public objects. C’est la félicité!
8. The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro’s finned fantasy makes the deepest dive into romance this year of any movie: literally, figuratively and on both sides of the camera. It’s a Beauty and the Beast fantasy about a mute cleaning woman who falls in love with a humanoid water creature, set during the Cold War hysteria of 1962 when all strange things seemed possible. Almost from the moment Elisa (Sally Hawkins, magnificent) locks her enchanted brown eyes upon the beseeching blue orbs of Amphibian Man (Doug Jones), the two are swept away by unfathomable rapture.
9. Personal Shopper Olivier Assayas and Kristen Stewart confront materialism with spiritualism, conjuring chills in an artful take on horror. It’s almost as if Stewart jumped to this film from her earlier collaboration with Assayas, Clouds of Sils Maria, with the mystery even deeper and darker than before. Stewart’s melancholic Maureen transfixes as a fashion gofer who moonlights as a medium, scooting between Paris and London via motorbike and Chunnel train. A stalking texter haunts her; so do thoughts of her recently deceased twin brother.
10. The Square Ruben Ostlund’s Cannes 2017 Palme d’Or winner takes aim at the pomposity and hypocrisy of artists — and indeed all people — who seek to provoke reactions without considering the consequences. Elisabeth Moss ( The Handmaid’s Tale) and Dominic West ( The Wire) give strong support to a cast led by Danish actor Claes Bang as Christian, the smug chief curator of a Stockholm contemporary art institution that seeks to arouse people with its high-minded installations. Christian is about to find out what the road to hell is paved with.
Runners-up (in alphabetical order)
The Big Sick, Coco, Columbus, Darkest Hour, Dawson City: Frozen Time, The Disaster Artist, A Ghost Story, Loveless, The Post, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
And five of the worst of 2017 (in satanic reverse order)
5. Justice League DC Comics’ franchise fumble is marginally better than last year’s sour and dispiriting Batman v Superman, but that’s like saying that dental surgery is preferable to passing a kidney stone.
4. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword Guy Ritchie turns King Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) into a Cockney combo of Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger. This is not something to brag about, or to watch.
3. The Dark Tower A dumb fantasy movie adapted from Stephen King’s most derivative novel series. Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey earn their paycheques mouthing inanities with a straight face.
2. Transformers: The Last Knight Michael Bay and his giant digital robots sally forth from their gilded dungeon to once again inflict damage on the world’s brain cells, making me fear for the sanity of the planet.
1. The Mummy Tom Cruise snoozes in a monster misfire. This movie is so awful, it makes me want to write a personal apology to Brendan Fraser for hating on his dumb-but-fun The Mummy franchise of 20 years ago. Peter Howell’s book, Movies I Can’t Live Without, is available in premium paperback through StarStore.ca/movies.