A good year for the moving pictures, 2017. We didn’t review every movie, but we sure saw a lot of them, and feel pretty good about pulling together the best of 2017. To that end, I asked all of our reviewers to give me their top 2 films of 2017, their runners up, their honorable mentions, and bunch of other questions. Then I used my purview as the editor to represent our writers.
There were some surprising inclusions, and unexpected omissions (I was sure Phantom Thread would be here…) So, what did the collective mind of The Stake think was the best cinema of 2017? Our list, and a bunch of favorites, below.10. A Ghost Story
So it is with the film—it’s haunting and defiantly original, but ultimately there’s just not enough happening on-screen literally or conceptually to completely reward the audience’s attention, which has been amply taxed by the time the credits roll.
9. Good Time
The film’s breathless pace and amoral presentation of criminals had me thinking of the films of Martin Scorsese, particularly Mean Streets and Goodfellas. (Scorsese is thanked in the credits.) Other reviewers have mentioned Dog Day Afternoon, which I suppose would make Pattinson’s performanceakin to Pacino’s. That’s a big claim, and I’ve no idea if it will hold up over time, but at the moment it feels right. Good Time is a head rush of a crime film, with a performance for the ages.
8. The Big Sick
Written by spouses Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, and directed by Michael Showalter, The Big Sick is a humane, family comedy for this moment in our national life. That’s cliche, but accurate, just like all the cliches of romantic-comedies are also, in one way or another, accurate. Families are crazy! Love is complicated! Prejudice is terrible! Tradition is restrictive! Tradition is powerful! Different cultures are different! Nanjiani and Gordon have the lived experience to power through these screen cliches, and with that experience they’ve crafted a screenplay that is sophisticated and profound. If the movie is a rom-com, and it is, it’s as elegant in its construction as you are likely to find in that particular genre.
What for me makes The Shape of Water a remarkable love story–and it is truly a remarkable film–is that the relationships in the film exist only for themselves. The Shape of Water is not an allegory, or metaphor; the Amphibian Man is not a symbol pointing away from himself, but a man, who is amphibian, and lonely, and scared, and who falls in love with a human woman.
6. Lady Bird
From its writing and direction to its performances, Lady Bird is a film made with deep attention and love. It’s one of the best movies of the year.
5. Raw
Raw is the debut feature from 33-year old Julia Ducournau. And what a debut it is. Ducournau walks a fine line in an ambitious mash-up of poetic teenage drama and psychosexual cannibal horror, and she does it with the assuredness of an experienced and talented filmmaker. Raw is confident and exciting in execution, beautiful and disturbing in its imagery, and familiar and challenging in its content.
4. Dunkirk
Nolan’s film does not pound its fists upon the table, spelling out moral lessons or cultural correlatives. Instead it looks at human experiences through the honest lens of a film camera, and finds uncertain outcomes, fear, and hope.
Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name may be the year’s most lush, sensual movie. Telling the story of a 17-year-old named Elio who falls in love with a graduate student named Oliver, the film evokes an aimless, sweltering, and erotically charged Italian summer in ripe sensory detail: the gorgeous curves of a recovered Roman sculpture, glasses of cold apricot juice, the heat, piano music, the flesh of a ripened peach. Armie Hammer is good as Oliver, but it’s Timothy Chalemet as broody Elio who anchors the movie with a chiaroscuro performance cycling from boredom and resentment to yearning and heartbreak, often in the same scene or even the same shot.
Like its protagonists, it stubbornly defies categorization: it’s about kids but for adults, bleak but uplifting, narrative but meandering, timeless but ephemeral. And beautiful, which is why it should’ve been as hotly anticipated as the next Marvel movie. But this seems unlikely, and that’s because this is a film that doesn’t tell us how or what to feel.
An amazingly successful satire of white liberal attitudes in an era of white liberal back-patting, Get Out is scary and funny in equal parts. It’s the perfect movie for this moment in time, and just happens to also be a near-perfect movie.
Runners Up:
Our rest of the best: mother!, It Comes At Night, I Am Not Your Negro, Brad’s Status, Wonder Woman, Baby Driver, Blade Runner 2049, Thelma, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Intimate Battles, Jim and Andy, Coco
Favorite Performances:
Bria Vinaite in The Florida Project, Hugh Jackman in Logan, Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out, Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman, Robert Pattinson in Good Time, Laurie Metcalf in Lady Bird, Jennifer Lawrence in mother!, Anthony Gonzalez in Coco
Favorite Film Moment:
Andrew DeYoung: Rooney Mara eats a whole pie in A Ghost Story
Robert Algeo: That part in Thor: Ragnarok when Jeff Goldblum trails of mid-sentence while explaining his age.
Rachel Woldum: Either when Jennifer Lawrence screams “Get the fuck out of my house!” in mother!, or when Gal Gadot runs across the battlefield (you know, THAT scene) in Wonder Woman
Josiah Armstrong: When Kylo Ren and Rey have their back-to-back light saber battle with the First Order Red Guard
Christopher Zumski Finke: Watching as the South Korean thriller The Truth Beneath turns from political drama to truly delightful insanity.
Biggest Laugh:
Robert Algeo: That part in Thor: Ragnarok when Jeff Goldblum trails of mid-sentence while explaining his age.
Rachel Woldum: The Little Hours
Josiah Armstrong: Matt Damon in The Great Wall, wearing a ponytail trying to defend The Great Wall of China from monsters
Andrew DeYoung: James Franco in Disaster Artist as Tommy Wiseau struggling to remember his lines
Christopher Zumski Finke: that laugh of lightness from Baby Driver, as you enjoy something skillful, playful, and executed with such pleasure you can’t stop smiling.
Biggest Disappointment:
Robert Algeo: Alien: Covenant
Rachel Woldum: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi: I’ve been waiting since the age of five for more Luke and I still wanted MORE LUKE. Or Blade Runner, (considering that an hour after I saw it I FORGOT what I had done that night.)
Andrew DeYoung: The Dark Tower wasn’t even worth watching…but there were plenty of other great King adaptations so it’s ok.
Josiah Armstrong: The conclusion of Wonder Woman
Christopher Zumski Finke: Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Special Category:
Robert Algeo: Highest Production Value Film That Was Apparently Written, Produced, Directed, Cast, Acted and Marketed to Specifically Reduce Robert James Algeo’s Interest in Watching it to Absolute Zero: Downsizing
Rachel Woldum: Best movie to watch with your entire family that is not animated and will upset neither Democrats nor Republicans: Logan Lucky
Andrew DeYoung: Best homoerotic nemesis robot doppelgängers: (there’s a better way to say this): Michael Fassbender seducing himself as androids Walter and David in Alien: Covenant. “I’ll do the fingering.”
Josiah Armstrong: Best Performance by a Kitchen Sink in the History of Kitchen Sinks in Film: The Kitchen Sink - mother!
Christopher Zumski Finke: Best fight scene that lasts so long that it starts to become a joke but comes back around and you realize this is possibly the best fucking thing you’ve ever scene: John Wick 2.
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