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| Scene from Get Out |
The end of 2017 is upon us. That could only mean one thing for Listmania. It is officially time to honor the best of cinema in 2017. Over the next two days, I will be counting down the Top 25 movies of the year, recognizing the wide variety of films that made the year a little better and will be talked about for years to come. It was an excellent year for dramas as well as genre films ranging from horror to action. It's hard to say goodbye to the year, but at least these films will be with us to remind us of how great it was to sit in a cineplex and cheer in awe as the images moved on screen. It's the one thing that's always pure about years as fraught with tension as this.
10. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Director and writer Martin McDonagh delivers one of the most versatile movies of the year with a cast of complex characters who change over the course of the film. It's not one with pleasant answers, but more of an interesting look at the different levels that come with being human. Frances McDormand delivers one of the year's best performances as a woman who wants justice for a past crime. As much as it sells itself as a drama about getting revenge on an ignoring society, it's a film that shows you the message, but tells you what it really means. There's few films that intertwine in such discreet manners as this one.
9. The Beguiled
Director Sofia Coppola makes her first adaptation by exploring a drama about a different kind of civil war. This time, it's as much about the north and south fighting during the Reconstruction Era as it is the evils of men trying to pollute women. With one of the best casts of the year, it's a calculated drama that manages to find humor and horror in the quiet moments within the confines of this beautiful old house. With gorgeous cinematography, it's a film aching with beauty and tension that never fully reveals itself. If nothing else, it features a great scene involving the anatomy book, which may be one of the best props of 2017 in film.
8. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Along with Baby Driver, the real hero of film this year was the soundtrack. The music effectively makes this a quasi-musical exploration of just how colorful space can be. Director James Gunn has created his magnum opus with one of the weirdest studio films with a budget exceeding $100 million. It helps that the humor is rich with slapstick absurdity and the plot rich with emotional resonance. This is the epitome of what superhero cinema can be if it's not forced to do nothing but serve as building blocks to the next entry. With a phenomenal third act that is literally Earth-shattering, this is the best exploration of space, music, and family in 2017, which is an extremely odd thing to say for a film featuring talking trees and homicidal raccoons.
7. Call Me By Your Name
The past few years have been a golden age for LGBT cinema, most recently with Moonlight winning the Best Picture Oscar. This year's best love story is one where there's poignancy in silence, or dancing to The Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way." Timothee Chalamet gives the greatest performance of the year as a young bisexual frustrated by his budding sexuality. It's a film aching with honesty and candid energy that he shares with the charming career best performance by Armie Hammer, and a heartbreaking turn by Michael Stuhlbarg. The film is a flat out masterpiece of love that is eternal but doomed to not last. As the credits play over the great new Sufjan Stevens song "Visions of Gideon," the audience has been taken on a visceral and emotional roller coaster unlike any other. If you've ever been young and in love, it feels all too real and makes it all the more powerful.
6. Get Out
The greatest surprise of 2017 didn't take long to show up. This horror movie, released in February, was one of the strongest commentaries on race relations in America. It chose to explore the horrors both in a literal and implicit sense, with director Jordan Peele layering every frame with shocking historical detail that suggests how deep racism goes. Some of it is forgivable, but the film is a dissertation the likes of which cinema could excel at with greater frequency. If you've only ever seen the film, take some time to read the many papers explaining the details behind any scene. It will only make everything all the more fascinating and, in some ways, more disturbing. It's the film that's likely to age the best of any this year, serving as a distillation of the social climate of this era.
5. The Disaster Artist
Who knew that one of the most passionate explorations of friendship would be found in a quasi-homoerotic story (played by brothers) about making the worst movie ever. James Franco gives one of his best performances as Tommy Wiseau in a film that transcends drama by finding the humor in Wiseau's integrity. This is a character who is so removed from common sense that even at his most clairvoyant, he is an enigma. He's a man who is hard to understand, but whose emotional struggles are always clear. It's the magic that Franco brings to the role that inevitably elevates this beyond merely a farcical look into one of the strangest films of the 21st century. This is the Ed Wood of modern times, and with more references to Alfred Hitchcock shooting movies in nothing but a sock.
4. Logan
It's crazy to think that there have been three different actors who have played Spider-Man in the time that Hugh Jackman has played Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine. Logan is essentially his swan song from the much beloved X-Men character with a performance that is vulnerable and captures him struggling to find a moral balance as he sees the brighter future for his daughter Laura, a.k.a. X-23. It's a cross-country neo-western that gives Wolverine fans plenty of insane violence, but also some of superhero cinema's best dramatic payoffs of the millennium. This is a pinnacle of modern superhero cinema that captures the essence of what these characters mean to audiences, and how they impact our lives. Jackman saved the best for last, and it's hard to say goodbye to an icon who has been around for almost two decades.
3. Personal Shopper
There has never been a film that captures the intensity and nuance of a text message conversation as Kristen Stewart does aboard a train. It's a conversation with the dead, who encourages her to change her life in meaningful ways. The story is slow and calculating in its ability to explore how death and grief can impact people's lives. This is another career best performance from Stewart, who finds plenty to do as she stares longingly into a vacant hallway, wondering if she's being haunted by ghosts. It elevates horror to an art form that has a philosophical maturity and technical ingenuity unlike any other film this year. It lingers through each scene with a power that cannot be shaken, and it helps that every frame has a deeper poignancy.
2B. World of Tomorrow - Episode 2: The Burden of Other People's Thoughts
Director Don Hertzfeldt turned in a late contender for the best of the year with this follow-up to the amazing Oscar-nominated short. Here marks the return of Emily Prime as she explores the strange world of the future, albeit with a few depressing twists. The imagination of Hertzfeldt is impeccable as he does the most fusing together animation that would initially seem incongruous, but creates the best sci-fi story of the year. Who knew that the best animated short of the year would feature a child's baby dinosaur destroying someone's brain? It's an absurd piece of entertainment, but it also has a depth the likes of which capture the essence of melancholic adulthood in ways nobody else has been able to. It's the perfect head trip for those who want to see the world differently, but simply can't.
2A. Dunkirk
Despite making a war movie, director Christopher Nolan's latest may as well be a reimagining of Jaws (down to its intense perfection in the Hans Zimmer score) where the danger lies off screen in the sky. With explosions going off everywhere, the story of transporting soldiers from Dunkirk, France to England becomes a harrowing vision of community in the face of an unbeatable foe. What's more incredible is that Nolan manages to make three stories, taking place at different time intervals, all flow together in a breathtaking fluidity. Each catastrophe will put audiences on the edge of their seat with a sound design begging for IMAX treatment. This is a film where everyone's a supporting player, and it only makes the triumphant conclusion a little bit more wonderful. No film felt like a group effort quite like this, and it did so by reinventing the traditional narrative in emotional and harrowing ways.
1. Lady Bird
The best film of the year was an exploration of post-9/11 adolescence in a Catholic high school through the eyes of a teenage rebel. She has given herself a new identity and struggles to use it to full effect without upsetting her parents. It's a great comedy about growing up in a small town and dreaming of life in the big city. However, there's also plenty of honesty and humanity that will connect with the teenagers of 2002/2003 who watched footage of the war on terrorism during dinner and had to deal with nuns interrupting their romance at school dances. It's a film rich with nuanced details and emotions that will appeal to those who had trouble finding their identity in their youth and how it works with their developing faith. You don't have to be religious to appreciate the film, but it's a revelation to those who ever had to stare into boredom while kneeling at a church pew.
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