The 10 best movies of 2017
This year, the movies of Hollywood were overshadowed by the scandals of Hollywood. The sexual depredations perpetrated by studio chiefs, directors, and actors took top billing in an ongoing cavalcade of accusations and apologias by no means exclusive to the movie business.
Under the circumstances, the movies themselves often seemed more like a sideshow than the main event. Some commentators attempted to bridge this gap by indulging in dubious psychobiography posing as criticism. Woody Allen鈥檚 admittedly not very good 鈥淲onder Wheel鈥� was a conspicuous recipient of this syndrome. His alleged crimes were cited as a way to indict his movie.
It is the height of naivet茅 to assume that only the pure of heart are capable of making good movies, or that 鈥渂ad鈥� people are incapable of creating great art. There are simply too many historical examples to the contrary. But I am also enough of a humanist to believe that, by definition, there is no such thing as inhumane art. D.W. Griffith was a great artist except when, as in 鈥淭he Birth of a Nation,鈥� he was a vile racist. Leni Riefenstahl was a great artist except when, as in 鈥淭riumph of the Will,鈥� she was a vile Nazi propagandist. The list goes on.聽
Because I am a film critic and not a sociologist (though sometimes the disciplines overlap), I find it vacuous to discuss a movie鈥檚 鈥渕essage鈥� without first evaluating the movie鈥檚 worth. That is to say, I am beholden to point out that films with all the right socially conscious credentials 鈥� such as 鈥淢udbound,鈥� set in the virulent Jim Crow South, or 鈥淒etroit,鈥� about the police brutality-inspired riots in the summer of 1967 鈥� can nevertheless be subpar as movies. In the current highly charged political climate, it鈥檚 tempting to celebrate certain films as vehicles for social change while also dismissing, or ignoring, their deficiencies. To do this is to take the easy way out. One of the many reasons I was grateful for Jordan Peele鈥檚 highly original 鈥淕et Out鈥� was because it鈥檚 a terrifically funny-scary jape that also expresses far more than any other current movie the paranoia underlying modern black-white tensions. You can champion it with a clear conscience, no special pleading required.
Movies, of course, often reflect the historical eras in which they are made, whether by design or circumstance. Given how long it takes to develop most films, it鈥檚 not surprising that we do not yet have Trump-era movies.聽
And yet I was nonetheless somewhat taken aback at how blithely apolitical most of 2017鈥檚 dramatic movies were (as opposed to such documentaries as the climate change treatises 鈥淐hasing Coral鈥� and 鈥淎n Inconvenient Sequel,鈥� or John Ridley鈥檚 voluminous and evenhanded 鈥淟et it Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992,鈥� which chronicled civil unrest in Los Angeles leading up to the Rodney King verdict).聽
The only movie that was reportedly rushed into production to connect with this year鈥檚 zeitgeist was Steven Spielberg鈥檚 鈥淭he Post,鈥� a conventionally crafted freedom-of-the-press clarion call about The Washington Post and the Pentagon Papers that stars Tom Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham, the first female publisher of a major American newspaper. I suspect that the next year or two will bring far more pointed and contemporaneous dramas. Or not. Hollywood, aside from its headline-
grabbing denizens, has never waded very far into the weeds of controversy.
With all the international crises shaking up the world right now, Hollywood instead offered up surrogate crises from the past 鈥� inspirational stand-ins for the real deal. Perhaps this is why we had multiple, overlapping movies about British resilience during World War II: 鈥淒unkirk,鈥� 鈥淒arkest Hour,鈥� and 鈥淭heir Finest.鈥� All feature comprehensible villains and predictable victories. You could argue that the onslaught of superhero sequels feeds the same need: Just substitute comic book baddies for terrorists.
2017 was also a movie year in which actresses, more so than actors, grabbed most of the attention-getting roles. Some of them, like Streep鈥檚 Katharine Graham, or Emma Stone鈥檚 Billie Jean King in 鈥淏attle of the Sexes,鈥� were all about women triumphing over male privilege. I didn鈥檛 think Gal Gadot鈥檚 Wonder Woman, with her spandex and lasso, was exactly a feminist breakthrough for the ages, but it was kicky watching her lead the charge. If we are talking female indomitability, I would rather cast my ballot for Sally Hawkins鈥檚 intensely watchful performances as the deaf-mute cleaning woman in 鈥淭he Shape of Water鈥� and the hobbled outsider artist in 鈥淢audie.鈥澛�
The most resonant roles for women centered on the sometimes loving, frequently fraught relationships between mother and daughter as displayed in such films as 鈥淭he Florida Project鈥� (where the roles were played by Bria Vinaite and Brooklynn Kimberly Prince); 鈥淢arjorie Prime鈥� (Lois Smith and Geena Davis); 鈥淭he Big Sick鈥� (Holly Hunter and Zoe Kazan); and 鈥淟ady Bird鈥� (Laurie Metcalf and Saoirse Ronan). I suppose I should also include here Allison Janney and Margot Robbie in 鈥淚, Tonya,鈥� except resonant is not exactly how I would describe their one-note face-offs.
But enough of my carping and cavils. Onward and upward to my top 10 list, in roughly descending order:
The Florida Project: Sean Baker鈥檚 movie about wayfarers living week to week in run-down budget motels outside Disney World is one of the most lyrical evocations of childhood I鈥檝e ever seen. As a harried motel manager, Willem Dafoe gives his finest performance to date, and the mother-daughter teaming of Vinaite and Prince is peerless.
Get Out: The most astonishing writing-directing debut in years, Peele鈥檚 mash-up of horror and comedy and social satire is, also, flabbergastingly, the most trenchant new movie about American race relations.
Afterimage: The great Polish director Andrzej Wajda鈥檚 final film, and one of his best, features a towering performance by Boguslaw Linda as a real-life Polish avant-garde artist suffering for his intransigence under Communism.
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library: Fred Wiseman鈥檚 novelistically rich documentary is a celebration not only of a great New York institution but also the people who serve and inhabit its many branches. It鈥檚 ultimately about the sense of freedom that a great library can engender.
Faces Places: The great 89-year-old French New Wave director Agn猫s Varda, and the photographer and muralist known as JR, who is 34, travel the French countryside creating large-scale photo portraits of villagers that they then plaster onto the sides of buildings. From this unlikely pairing arises a near-masterpiece of a documentary that, in its evocation of friendship and mortality, is both gently, piercingly humane and wonderfully funny.
The Breadwinner: Animator Nora Twomey鈥檚 small gem, wistful and harrowing, is about a girl in Kabul, Afghanistan, who fights to rescue her family from the Taliban.
The Big Sick: A culture-clash comedy about a Pakistani-born Muslim stand-up comic and an American grad student, and the mayhem that ensues when she becomes seriously ill and both sets of parents frantically intervene. The script by married couple Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, who also co-stars with Zoe Kazan, is based on their lives, and perhaps that鈥檚 why it feels so true.聽
Kedi: A documentary about Istanbul鈥檚 teeming population of stray cats may not sound very promising, but director Ceyda Torun brings us right inside the felines鈥� world and, in the process, offers up a rhapsodic portrait of the people who care for them and the thronged Turkish city they share.
The Phantom Thread: Daniel Day-Lewis plays a famed dressmaker in 1950s London in Paul Thomas Anderson鈥檚 fascinating, inexorably creepy movie that Day-Lewis has stated will be his last. Say it ain鈥檛 so.
Mother!: I realize I鈥檓 going to take some heat for putting this widely loathed film on my best list, especially since I was less than enthused by the overrated critic faves 鈥淭hree Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri鈥� and 鈥淐all Me by Your Name,鈥� but Darren Aronofsky鈥檚 fantasia about a self-infatuated poet (Javier Bardem) and his suffering muse of a wife (Jennifer Lawrence) is, like 鈥淕et Out,鈥� both horrific and satiric in ways that move beyond the easy confines of genre.聽
In addition to the films favorably cited above, I would also single out 鈥�1945,鈥� 鈥淭he Wedding Plan,鈥� 鈥淣ovitiate,鈥� 鈥淔irst They Killed My Father,鈥� 鈥淒awson City: Frozen Time,鈥� and 鈥淏aby Driver.鈥�
