The Best Films of 2017

I enjoy a great deal of film. This is known, many times over. Every year we are witness to a flood of beautiful, compelling, and challenging experiences. Film excites me in a way that no other art form does (although food offers up a mighty challenge).

This year had a changing of the guard. We had people, communities, and movements rise up and challenge the systemic norm of the Hollywood machine. Whether it was serendipitous or preemptive, some of the best films of the year held up a frightfully real and compelling mirror to our society. This year offered us treasures that amazed, confounded, thrilled, and energized us.

I don't know where to begin or end with this list. Any words tend to distract from the films themselves. But considering it's almost time for the Oscars, now is as good a time as any to put out a list.

This is how the best films of 2017, to me at least, shook out -

20. 'The Lost City of Z' - Directed by James Gray

A grand adventure that hearkens back to the golden age of Hollywood, with stirring performances by Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson.

19. 'Baby Driver' - Directed by Edgar Wright

Like watching your favourite mix tape come to life, Wright's giddy and stupendously exciting crime/chase/musical is a rapturous feast for the senses.

18. 'Logan Lucky' - Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Low-key Soderbergh still pulls off some vintage and ingenious tricks in this heist caper that has Channing Tatum and Adam Driver as some intelligent and well-meaning rednecks, Riley Keough as their do-it-all sister, and Daniel Craig channeling his Munich role as an explosives mastermind.

17. 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer' - Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

More so than his previous work The Lobster, Lanthimos has managed to strip away any and all veneer of human-like emotion for this dark, farcical and at times, frustrating drama.

16. 'The Big Sick' - Directed by Michael Showalter

Written by Kumail Najiani and Emily V. Gordon, and detailing how the real life couple met is a wonderfully moving comedy that deftly sidesteps any sense of vanity for an honest depiction of modern cross cultural relationships.

15. 'Mother!' - Directed by Darren Aronofsky

You're either with it or against it. Aronofsky's singular vision dares you to love and hate it. What it means is a million things and nothing. A tremendous, helpless performance by Jennifer Lawrence somehow makes it even more divisive. Just be ready to feel....unsettled.

14. 'Blade Runner 2049' - Directed by Denis Villeneuve

At first it seems like a cold and calculating work. More interested in the world building and the heady philosophical themes. But underneath, the story of Blade Runner K (Ryan Gosling) uncovering a decades old secret that may shatter or resurrect a desolate world reveals a stunning sense of humanity and power that will only grow in stature over the years. It steps out of the shadow of its masterpiece original to become its own beast to sit, brooding in the rain and neon of a futuristic LA, right alongside it.

13. 'Colossal' - Directed by Nacho Vigalondo

A biting satire, a drama about deep-seated depression and toxic masculinity, and a damn fine monster movie to boot, Vigalondo's film skips between a bunch of different genres and tones, mostly landing. It's got a brilliantly game performance by Anne Hathaway that really should have got more awards recognition, and a narrative depth too, that feels way more relevant now.

12. 'Good Time' - Directed by Benny and Josh Safdie

Robert Pattinson has become a chameleon in the span of a few years. The 'Twilight' series vapidness is a thing of the past. His work here for the Safdie brothers' neon-drenched film about a low-level crook who is desperately seeking to get bail money for his mentally challenged brother is grimy, immediate, desperate, heartfelt, and just a little off-kilter. A perfect extension of the film.

11. 'Lady Macbeth' - Directed by William Oldroyd

A dark tale with a concentrated hurricane of a performance at the centre by newcomer Florence Pugh as a young woman who enters a loveless, arranged marriage. It's period drama setting plays against brutally relevant concerns and modern takes and a bubbling, caustic romance that culminates in some of the most quietly disturbing final scenes of the year.

10. 'The Shape of Water' - Directed by Guillermo Del Toro

A beautiful fairy tale that gives voice to love, friendship, and acceptance in a way that words could in no way convey. Del Toro's love of monsters is at it's most human here, anchored by a performance from Sally Hawkin's that is breathtaking in its honesty, sweetness, and quiet determination.

9. 'Columbus' - Directed by Kogonada

First time director Kogonada, sidesteps art house pretentiousness to tell a story of two lost souls (John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson) who develop a series of deep connections in their reflected fears, desires, and passions as they take in the astounding architectural designs of the titular town. A quietly powerful film, that brilliantly conveys a platonic and intimate relationship. It's one of the most visually striking films of the year.

8. 'Call Me By Your Name' - Directed by Luis Guadagnino

An achingly beautiful coming of age tale that is sumptuous, heartbreaking, and a fantastic picture of young love awakening. Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer exquisitely portray the dance of romance through unguarded looks, cues, small gestures, and loaded words, before fully blooming in a scarily honest and relatable way. It's final twenty minutes will have you sobbing.

7. 'Phantom Thread' - Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Enough cannot be said about the greatness of Daniel Day-Lewis, and he once more delivers a performance worthy of the Smithsonian in PTA's dark romance set in the post-war London fashion world. It reveals hidden details, much like the notes Day-Lewis' Woodcock leaves in his designs. A film of appetite and arrested development, of the what it feels like to live with a restless, particular creative. Vicky Krieps is astounding and holds her own against Day-Lewis. Their back and forth's are tense and crackling with loaded desire, lust, eroticism, and ultimately, love. A beguiling, left field masterpiece.

6. 'Get Out' - Directed by Jordan Peele

What hasn't been said about Peele's scathing social horror film that tears off the covers of the racism that runs like a sieve underneath modern day America, that would somehow add to the conversation? It's become instantly relatable, even the memes somehow have kept their relevancy, and endlessly studied (it's already in university curriculum's for crying out loud).

Get Out shows a new master at work. Peele's grasp of plot, camera, and structure is so assured and disarming in its efficiency and effectiveness that it recalls the masterwork of Hitchcock and Bergman in their control and manipulation of the audience. He's aided by Daniel Kaluuya's performance that pretty much sums up African-American fears in his dexterously expressive eyes. Each viewing, each recall, the film becomes even more powerful.

5. 'Logan' - Directed by James Mangold

As we see a drunk, hurting, and aged Wolverine stumble out of his leased limousine and brutally takes down a gang attempting to steal the wheels, we've gone past the hero part of the superhero genre. Logan is a remarkable film, a masterpiece of the genre that transcends what it ostensibly is. It's a western, a dying breed, a gunslinger on the verge of death. Hope and redemption are mirages in the desert. Logan tends to an aging Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) with only sun-fearing mutant Caliban (Stephen Merchant) as company.

Hugh Jackman infuses 17 years of emotional and physical toll into a performance that may be the most compelling this side of Heath Ledger's Joker. But what sets this apart from most other movies in the genre is its breaking down of the genre's conventions while also, somehow, shining a light on the legend and fantasy, and yes, hope, that these stories convey. This is distilled into Daphne Keen's Laura - savage, violent, lost and goddamned determined to make it to a place where a new life may begin. It's a story about family, legacy, consequence and grabbing hold of a semblance of redemption. Also, probably the first superhero film where people out and out burst into tears.

4. 'Lady Bird' - Directed by Greta Gerwig

I was completely enraptured by Lady Bird almost immediately. A deeply personal film that anyone could relate to. The more I think about it, the more it's come to highlight the uncertainties, loves, struggles, small triumphs, determination, and the sincere ordinariness of stepping out into the adult world. Greta Gerwig's script picks up the small moments that can define and build a life, the moments we don't necessarily want to think about, or believe are worth remembering.

At it's centre, it is a wonderfully real and turbulent mother-daughter relationship. Saoirse Ronan as Lady Bird, and Laurie Metcalf as her mother, Marion, perfectly capture that relationship and all its variations, alternating between loving and hating on a dime. While it does many of the usual coming-of-age beats, it does them in a way that feels like Gerwig is snapping up these moments to put them in a scrapbook to hold onto. It's like a dream that we didn't know we had, but glad that we were able to look back on.

3. 'The Florida Project' - Directed by Sean Baker

Sean Baker already might be the most humane and empathetic storyteller going around. His endlessly joyous film about people living beyond the fringes of society offers reality and fantasy at a time that feels like the extremes will destructively cancel themselves out. Through the eyes of children, led by Moonee (a revelatory Brooklynn Prince) we see life unfold that recalls the vague and hazy memories of childhood.

It's a film of undying wonder, a jolt that holds reality in check. One that you can't help but fall into, forgetting that it's a film, morphing into an experience, a window we've jumped through. With Willem Dafoe never better in an extraordinary, moving turn as the hotel manager Bobby, we see this world from a multitude of perspectives that never feel patronizing or romantic.

2. 'A Ghost Story' - Directed by David Lowery

A Ghost Story creeps up on you. Its concept is outwardly ridiculous, yet there hasn't been a more powerful or devastating tale of love and time in recent memory than Lowery's strange, haunting film. Casey Affleck's bedecked in a white sheet ghost lingers, trapped or unwilling in the house he once shared with his partner, played by Rooney Mara.

The film explores the tendrils of love that can hold beyond mortality. The intensity that can never quite fade away. The march of time that seems to whittle away memory. The house becomes the universe, people pass through it, lives come and go, the death of the world, the tribulations of holding onto a memory, of something that seems gone, of waiting, of having no use for time. Of wanting to know. It's an epic romance that speaks to all of us at a level beyond the simple and primitive frame of time and place.

There are moments in A Ghost Story where words are inadequate, and when you step back, taking in the experience as a whole—as the story billows out in a third act that leaves you thinking about the time you had the one true love and everything, EVERYTHING, that came with it to the point that you sad smile the whole way through and has you leave with bittersweet elation.

1. 'Dunkirk' - Directed by Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan's stunning, beautiful, visceral film centered around Operation Dynamo - the British army stuck between enemy forces and the English Channel, plays out in an experimental key that is practically unheard of in major Hollywood filmmaking, the majority of the action dialogue free. Survival and war, neither needs an explanation. A minimalist epic wrought upon the largest canvas possible. It’s a towering, bewildering achievement of filmmaking that defies the narrative convention of war films. A triptych where time is manipulated, drawn together, the valve continuously tightened. Nolan’s obsession with time (and his slightly lesser one with drowning) is crystallized to perfection here. His technical mastery both serving and dominating the story.

It's a technical masterwork. A furious wave of sound and images. Unexpectedly moving and endlessly thrilling. The structure keeps you from breathing for most of its run time. It is also, arguably, his most complete film, his predilection for precise world building and stringent logic cast off for something more immediate. You can see it in the astounding aerial dog fights - by far the most amazing action scenes of the year, the use of sound to convey feeling and emotion (usually terror), a refreshing lack of grand speeches or bogged down philosophical discussions. We’re experiencing, not watching or consuming. In contrast to the unbearable, tightly wound, and claustrophobic tension, Nolan is operating at a level of freedom that is almost galling if it weren’t so accomplished.

The switches in time and place (the mole, the sea, the air), transfers urgency at multiple levels, often at the same time. It enhances the emotion. Time is always out of whack, and we are isolated to what others are experiencing. So to create such an intimate epic that threads these timelines together in a way that has you dropping your jaw at the precise moment it happens: as the bomber circles, the oil slicks across the water, the soldiers scramble to another boat, and help is temporarily unseen in the sky... well, that’s why. It’s the boldest, most powerful film of the year.