2017: Sneaky good
Most of the best films came in the second half of the year
Every year there’s one that gets away. This year, as I write my annual look back at the year in movies, it’s P.T. Anderson’s Phantom Thread that I’m missing.
At least it’s one I know I’m missing that I would have considered for inclusion on the following lists. There are dozens of other movies I missed with which I might have connected. But knowing Anderson’s work, I’m sure I would have a strong opinion on Phantom Thread. It’s the movie I most want to see at the moment. (Second is video-essayist-turned-first-time director Kogonada’s Columbus.)
As usual, the year is ending before I’m done with it. I’m way behind on foreign language films. I haven’t seen Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father (even though it’s streaming on Netflix). I haven’t had the opportunity to see Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless, Michael Haneke’s Happy End, Jang Hoon’s A Taxi Driver or Dome
Karukoski’s Tom of Finland.
I haven’t seen highly touted documentaries Spettacolo, Ex Libris: The New York Public Library and City of Ghosts.
But I have seen an awful lot. Most of it in the past month or so.
And so it’s a surprise that the film I’ve thought most about this year is a modestly budgeted project from a first-time director released at the end of February that became a huge hit. The Box Office Mojo website has it as the 14th highest-grossing (domestically) movie of the year, returning more than $175 million on its $4.5 million budget.
I’m talking about Jordan Peele’s wonderfully inventive Get Out, which kicked off a good year for mainstream Hollywood films — movies of which casual fans are likely to have heard. Dunkirk, War for the Planet of the Apes, Wonder Woman, Logan, The Post, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Wonder, Atomic Blonde, Girls Trip, Coco, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and The Lego Batman Movie are all fine examples of popular studio movies that are showing up on end-of-the year lists.
I scratched Wind River from my Top 10 list at the last second.
Like every year, most of the good stuff came out in the second half, though Logan and Kong: Skull Island
were released in March. Split, a film I don’t care much for despite a tremendous performance from James McAvoy, came out in January; John Wick: Chapter Two (which some critics love) in February. The calendar wasn’t quite as reliable an indicator of cinematic quality as it has been in the past years when — after the awards contenders straggled out — we were left with misbegotten projects that studios weren’t willing to totally write off and cheap horror fan service.
So what follows is a snapshot of how this year played out for one particular moviegoer. This is my list and you are not under any circumstances to take it any more seriously than I do. And please keep in mind the words of screenwriter and author William Goldman, who long ago assured us: “Nobody knows anything … Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work.”
TOP 10
1. Get Out — The movie of the year for a lot of people and a surprise winner in some critics’ polls is a work of remarkable precision. Director Peele does a masterful job of controlling the tone and keeping the audience balanced between bemusement and unease. This is a machine of Hitchcockian cleverness, a genuinely satirical film that works because a lot of people don’t perceive it as a comedy.
2. Personal Shopper — The first of a number of ghost stories that emerged from the collective subconscious this year, Olivier Assayas’ artful and beautifully detailed film ought to convince any holdouts that Kristen Stewart is an actor of uncommon depth and sensitivity.
3. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri — Another comedy that didn’t strike some people as funny, I’d put Martin McDonagh’s movie on this list just for the sake of Woody Harrelson’s character’s posthumously delivered letters (count him as ghost No. 2). Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell are terrific in showy roles that are underpinned by human frailty.
4. Lady Bird — Part of me wants to resist this sweet coming-of-age memoir, to suggest that it’s not a whole lot better than similar films like The Spectacular Now or Edge of Seventeen, but you have to factor in how good a movie makes you feel. And Lady Bird made virtually everyone feel good, even skeptical movie critics.
5. I, Tonya — Rollicking docudrama recalls To Die For, the 1995 Gus Van Sant movie that first announced Nicole Kidman’s unassailable talent. This ought to do the same for Margot Robbie.
6. A Ghost Story — Allegations of Casey Affleck’s bad behavior have probably harmed the film’s award prospects, but David Lowery’s fine Polaroid-framed meditation on what it’s like to be without being perceived is still raw and beautiful.
7. Good Time — In which Robert Pattinson stakes his own claim on being an electrifying screen presence in a furious and frenetic film by brothers Josh and Benny Safdie that feels like the spiritual inheritor of all the great New York crime movies (Dog Day Afternoon, The French Connection, Serpico, et al.) of the 1970s.
8. The Shape of Water — While I did not like Guillermo Del Toro’s high-concept Cold War period romance as much as some other critics, give me Sally Hawkins — maybe especially a mute Sally Hawkins — and Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins and Michael Shannon in a soulful, grown-up fairy tale, and I’m good.
9. Princess Cyd — My inner Armond White wants to simply state “Princess Cyd > (greater than) Lady Bird.” But that’s not true, though I’d be reluctant to say Lady Bird > Princess Cyd either. Both of these coming-of-age stories are gentle and humane, but Stephen Cone’s Cyd feels more like a conflicted reallive girl than Greta Gerwig’s L.B., who is at least partly a product of nostalgia. Cone is a filmmaker to be watched.
10. Call Me By Your Name — There’s something about this love story, between Americans in Italy in 1983, that feels classical, and the cast is uniformly committed and properly scaled.
ANOTHER 10
In no particular order, here are 10 movies I hated to leave off my Top 10 list.
Super Dark Times — Firsttime director Kevin Phillips made something smarter and less reductive than just another teen slasher movie. And he had the taste to resist injecting undue quirkiness and black humor into this truly horrifying tale of boys making mistakes.
I Don’t Feel at Home in the World Anymore — I had a feeling this was going to be a different sort of year when this Sundance favorite popped up on Netflix a week or so after it wowed them in Utah.
Dunkirk — Needs to be seen on the big screen. And I’m not much concerned with platforms.
I Called Him Morgan — The year’s best documentary explores the relationship between jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan and his common-law wife, Helen, who was implicated in his murder in 1972. It’s streaming on Netflix.
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) — Another Netflix movie, this might be Noah Baumbach’s best since The Squid & the Whale.
Faces Places — Director Agnes Varda and French pop art star JR journey through rural France taking photographs, installing photorealistic murals and becoming unlikely friends. A little contrived, but absolutely charming.
In the Fade — Diane Kruger is mesmerizing in her first German language film about a woman who loses her family to neo-Nazi terrorists.
The Square — There’s been critical blowback on this artworld satire written and directed by Ruben Ostlund, but my only problem with it is its nearly three-hour running time.
The Florida Project — I caught on to Sean Baker in 2012 when I admired his film Starlet. I thought his “breakthrough,” 2015’s iPhone-shot Tangerine, was a step backward. But with the harrowing The Florida Project, all is forgiven.
The Big Sick — Somebody needed to come to the rescue of the romantic comedy. Kumail Nanjiani may seem an unlikely champion, but he wrote and stars in the sort of three-hankie movie Americans need to see this year.
AND 10 MORE
1. The Post — Not poetic Spielberg, but it delivers the civics lesson and the vicarious thrills. And while he won’t be considered, someone should credit Bob Odenkirk’s portrayal of Ben Bagdikian. I’ll review it when it opens here Jan. 12.
2. Wind River — I enjoyed this; why is it all the way down here? It’s a measure of how sneaky good the year in film was.
3. Wonderstruck — I’ve got a long review of Todd Haynes’ children’s tale waiting to run when (if?) it opens here. If not, I’ll run it when it goes to DVD or starts streaming.
4. Wonder Woman — It takes a lot for a superhero movie — especially a DC superhero movie — to make any impression on me. This one did.
5. Darkest Hour — Gary Oldman really wants an Oscar.
6. Atomic Blonde — > Baby Driver or either John Wick film.
7. A Quiet Passion
8. My Journey Through French Cinema
9. Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold
10. The Killing of a Scared Deer — Chilly, but beautifully shot.
Honorable mentions: The Ornithologist, Their Finest, Logan Lucky, Wonder, Colossal, The Beguiled, Downsizing, Menashe, Lucky, The Little Hours, Molly’s Game, The Hero, The Dinner.
NOTABLE PERFORMANCES NOT PREVIOUSLY NOTED
Allison Janney, I, Tonya Mathieu Amalric, Ismael’s Ghosts (and Son of Joseph) Holly Hunter, The Big Sick Sally Hawkins, Maudie (and The Shape of Water) Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird Tracy Letts, The Lovers (and Lady Bird)
Cynthia Nixon, A Quiet
Passion
Benny Safdie, Good Time Kate Winslet, Wonder Wheel
Charlie Trahan, Super Dark Times
Michael Stuhlbarg, Call Me By Your Name
Rebecca Spence and Jessie Pinnick, Princess Cyd
Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller and Elizabeth Marvel, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
BEST DOCUMENTARIES
1. I Called Him Morgan
2. Faces Places
3. Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold
4. My Journey Through French Cinema — French director Bertrand Tavernier, obviously inspired by Martin Scorsese’s documentary memoirs Personal Journey Through American Cinema and My Voyage to Italian Cinema — conducts a three-hour plus lecture on the movies that nourished and inspired him.
5. No Man’s Land — David Byars embedded himself and his crew with anti-government protesters during their 41-day occupation of Oregon’s Malheur Wildlife Refuge in 2016. He came back with an astonishing, raw piece of cimena verite.
BEST DVD RELEASES
1. Notfilm/Film (Milestone)
2. The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (Arrow Video)
3. Daughters of the Dust
(Cohen Media Group)
4. The Vietnam War (PBS)
5. Fritz Lang: The Silent Films (Kino Classics)
6. Lost in America (The Criterion Collection)
7. A Town Called Panic: The Collection (Shout! Factory)
8. The Whales of August
(Kino Classics)
9. Heat and Dust (Cohen Media Group/Sony Pictures)
10. Barry Lyndon (The Criterion Collection)
BEST ANIMATED FILMS
1. Loving Vincent
2. The Breadwinner 3. The Lego Batman Movie
BEST ARKANSAS FILMS
Dayveon The Revival
AND FURTHERMORE …
Movies everyone loves but I don’t get: The Lost City of Z, Mudbound, Baby Driver Movie I like that no one
else does: Brad’s Status
Movie that was just fine: mother!
Movie that made me cry: Lucky — Harry Dean Stanton’s final performance
A good Tom Cruise movie for a change: American Made Funniest movie: The Little Hours
Not-bad movies that are hard to separate from the lives of their creators: Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy; Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel
Best cinematography in an unlikely film: Vittorio Storaro’s stunning work in Wonder
Best cinematography in a film you knew was going to be visually sumptuous: Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049; Edward Lachman, Wonderstruck
Good luck charm: Caleb Landry Jones had roles in Get Out, The Florida Project, American Made, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and David Lynch’s 18-hour return to Twin Peaks.
Always welcome: Bill Camp had roles in Molly’s Game, Hostiles, The Only Living Boy in New York and HBO series The Leftovers.