To begin with my standard disclaimer: This may be my list of the Top 10 Movies of 2017 – but it’s not necessarily a rundown of the year’s 10 Best Movies. Because, quite frankly, I haven’t seen every single movie released anywhere in the US during the past 12 months. But this most certainly is a list of my
favorite films to open in US theaters in 2017. These are, of course, purely arbitrary and totally subjective choices. And I’ll freely admit that, a decade or so hence, I might look back on the following lineup and want to make additions or deletions. (Maybe I’ll even get over my traditionalist hang-ups, and toss a Netflix-only title or two into the mix.) At this point in time, however, I can honestly state these are the 2017 releases that impressed me most. And best. So there. And before anyone asks about any films that are
not on this list, let me offer this blanket response: Those films may indeed be noteworthy. But I liked these more.
Colossal. For me, writer-director Nacho Vigalondo’s audacious genre mashup was the
perfect movie for 2017, a year bound to be forever remembered as the moment in time
when the tide started to turn for women who have been intimidated, subjugated and
otherwise humiliated (verbally or physically) for far too long. Better still, it’s a splendidly imaginative
and exceptionally well-acted entertainment, with Anne Hathaway perfectly cast
as a self-destructive and psychologically wounded writer who finally finds the
strength to save herself — after fortuitously mind-melding with a humongous
kaiju — and Jason Sudeikis boldly cast
against type as a deceptively ingratiating under-achiever who’s unveiled as a control-freakish
monster. As I said: The perfect movie for 2017, and maybe even better as the
gateway to the year of
Time’s Up.
To repeat what I
wrote in
my Variety review after the 2017 SXSW premiere of John Carroll Lynch’s directorial
debut: “Everything Harry Dean Stanton has done in his career, and his life, has brought
him to his moment of triumph in
Lucky,
an unassumingly wonderful little film about nothing in particular and
everything that’s important.” Stanton gives the performance of a
lifetime in this life-affirming dramedy about a proud eccentric facing death. (Ironically,
the much admired character actor
passed away, at age 91, just weeks before the movie’s
theatrical release.) And he gets strong support from an ensemble supporting
cast that includes David Lynch as the distraught owner of a runaway tortoise, James
Darren as a putatively reformed ne’er-do-well, and Beth Grant as the gregarious
but not infinitely patient owner of the title character’s favorite watering
hole.
Wind River. Howard Hawks
famously defined a good movie as one that has three good scenes and no bad
ones. Taylor Sheridan’s furiously mournful yet ultimately hopeful drama about
violent crime and cruel punishment in a wintery stretch of Wyoming is a
great movie with at least three great scenes, two of them featuring extended conversations
between Jeremy Renner as a soul-wounded animal tracker pressed into service as a
manhunter, and Gil Birmingham as the grieving father of the young Native
American woman whose murder has sparked the manhunt. The third scene? Take your
pick: Either an edgy standoff between two heavily armed groups that builds
slowly, mercilessly, to chaotic mayhem, or the brutally efficient
forced-feeding of just desserts during the hugely satisfying climax.
Kedi. Yes, Ceyda Torun’s
magically graceful and effortlessly engaging
documentary about free-roaming
felines in Istanbul is the greatest cat video ever made. You have a problem
with that?
Truman. Cesc Gay’s richly
amusing and deeply affecting film about two friends (Ricardo Darin of
The Secret in the Eyes and Javier Camara
of
Narcos and
The Young Pope) who enjoy a final reunion under the shadow of
impending death made only a fleeting appearance in US theaters in 2017, nearly
two years after I reviewed the Spanish-produced dramedy at the 2015 Toronto
Film Festival. On the other hand: For what it’s worth, it’s one of the very few
2017 release to score a
100 percent Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So don’t
just take my word for it: This is an unjustly overlooked gem that is more than
worth the effort to seek it out.
I, Tonya. Equal parts
inspired faux documentary and incisive character study, Craig Gillespie’s
casually astonishing satirical drama is an altogether worthy showcase for Margot
Robbie’s gold-medal-worthy performance of notorious ice skater Tonya Harding as
a world-class athlete who was never allowed to completely transcend her
white-trash roots. And speaking of golden prizes: Here
’s hoping Allison Janney winds up in the winner
’s circle on Oscar night for her fearless performance as Tonya
’s spectacularly appalling mother.
The Big Sick. Arguably the
most warm-hearted and explosively funny movie ever made about generation gaps, cultural
clashes, and medically induced comas, director Michael Showalter’s
Sundance Film Festival favorite is a marvelously messy love story crossed with
an arrested-adolescent coming-of-age narrative, shrewdly and sensitively written by
real-life marrieds Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon, and skillfully performed by Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan as lovers driven apart by his feckless indecision
and reunited by her life-threatening illness. Extra added attractions:
Scene-stealers Holly Hunter and Ray Romano as the ailing woman’s seemingly
mismatched parents, and Zenobia Shroff and Anupam Kher as the immature fellow
’s traditional Muslim immigrant mom and dad.
Last Flag Flying. Richard
Linklater’s “spiritual sequel” (or whatever) to 1973’s
The Last Detail — which, like this film, was based on a novel by
co-scriptwriter Darryl Ponicsan — works beautifully on its own terms as
a profanely funny and affectingly melancholy dramedy about three Vietnam War
vets (a dead-solid-perfect trio of Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence
Fishburne) who are reunited, whether they want to be or not, when one of them
is informed that his son has been killed in the Iraq War. Better still, and more so than any other film I can think of since Alexander Payne
’s Nebraska (2013), it ends precisely when it should.
The Post. I remain
convinced that Steven Spielberg’s
Lincoln
(2012), a fleet and gripping drama about the backroom arm-twisting and
deal-making that led to passage of the 13
th Amendment to the US
Constitution, actually was a metaphor for President Barack Obama
’s campaign to
win passage for the Affordable Care Act. (And not just because co-star Hal
Holbrook looked so much like an aged Ted Kennedy, a strong supporter of the
legislation.) Likewise, I am convinced that Spielberg’s
The Post, a similarly
swift-paced and engrossingly suspenseful film about the Washington Post’s 1971 decision to print The Pentagon Papers, actually is an inspiring exhortation for
watchdog journalism in our Age of Trump. As critic David Thomson wrote in The
New Republic about Spielberg’s earlier film: “It’s very good, but that’s not
the point. It’s necessary.
”
Lady Bird. The amazing
Saoirse Ronan is by turns endearing and annoying and selfish and sympathetic
and all kinds of other amazing things that she absolutely has to be as the
self-named title character in writer-director Greta Gerwig’s free-form yet
tightly disciplined coming-of-age comedy-drama. Set in Sacramento, California during
her 2002-03 senior year at a Catholic high school, the film charts Lady Bird’s sometimes
warm, sometimes rocky and sometimes surprising interactions with, among others,
her passive-aggressive mom (Laurie Metcalf), her mild-mannered and newly
unemployed father (Tracy Letts), the best friend she briefly betrays (Beanie
Feldstein), the caddish boyfriend who’s altogether unworthy of claiming her
virginity (Timothée Chalamet),
and Sister Sarah Joan (Lois Smith), the principal who knows Lady Bird almost as
well as we come to know her by the end of Gerwig’s irresistibly embraceable movie.
