I’d be happy with any of these 10 in the top 10 –
but there just wasn’t room.
20.
Logan (James Mangold)
Every once in a while, the debate reignites, when
someone says that superhero movies are just this era’s version of the Western.
The comparison falls apart, for the most part, because the Western genre
contained many more multitudes than the superhero genre has – John Ford,
Anthony Mann, Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood all made great
Westerns, and all are very different in almost every man (and that’s just
scratching the surface). But if you really wanted to make the comparison, than
James Mangold’s Logan is the film to start with – the best superhero movie
since The Dark Knight, and the only one to really try something altogether
different with the genre. It helps that Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart were,
in essence, done with X-Men – which allowed Mangold to structure this film as a
final installment – and that both actors are doing career best work here as
well. It really is akin to Eastwood’s Unforgiven – with a more heroic main
character – and aside from an overly long trip to a farm, it pretty much nails
the genre perfectly, and will hopefully point future filmmakers in a bold, new
direction.
19.
Blade Runner: 2049 (Denis Villeneuve)
There are a lot of nits you could pick with Blade
Runner 2049 – mainly having to do with the absorbent runtime, and confused
storytelling in places – and yet, for sheer awe-inspiring filmmaking craft on
this scale, Blade Runner 2049 is tough to beat. Villeneuve and his crew made
one of the most visually stunning films of the year – and really did seem to take
seriously the world created in Ridley Scott’s original, and the way you can
build on top of that. Ryan Gosling anchors the film with a solid performance, I
quite liked Harrison Ford essentially playing a damsel in distress in the last
act – and I liked how they used the various female characters. But really, this
is about the filmmaking – and it’s tough to argue that on this skill, we had a
better looking or sounding film at the multiplex this year. The flaws will fade
– the film will last.
18.
Lucky (John Carroll Lynch)
Lucky is such a small, intimate film that I think
it becomes easy to overlook it at this time of year. The whole film is
essentially the late, great Harry Dean Stanton – playing a 91 year old atheist,
walking around his small town, day in, day out, grappling with his own
morality, and interacting with various characters who really do care about him,
but don’t really know him. No one knows him – he’s outlived his contemporaries,
has no family, and spends his routine, going about his routines, and not
thinking about what’s next. It is a great performance by Stanton – truly one of
the best of his brilliant career. He is perhaps the only actor you could have
done this movie, and not made it overly sentimental or sappy. The sequence in
the middle of the film, of him spending a long night by himself set to Johnny
Cash, is one of the best of the year. Lucky doesn’t bowl you over like some
films do – and it’s all the better for that.
17.
The Square (Ruben Östlund)
Ruben Ostlund’s Palme D’Or winning The Square is a
big, bold, art world satire that seems to morph and shift from scene to scene –
some of them are over-the-top outrageous, and others are more down to earth.
The film runs the risk of being just a strange series of vignettes looking for
a purpose – except that Claes Bang’s performance in the lead role, as the lead
curator at a Swedish modern art museum – keeps the whole thing on track – while
the movie may seem all over the place, his character is consistent from scene
to scene – as he grows increasingly exasperated, as he digs himself deeper and
deeper into trouble, while never quite understanding how he got there. It is a
great performance, in one of the more provocative films of the year.
16.
Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadanino)
The year’s most romantic film, is this love story
between an Italian teenager (a wonderful Timothee Chamalet, in a star making
performance) and a visiting American student (Armie Hammer). Set in the long,
lazy, hazy summer in Northern Italy, where there is nothing to do but sit
around, and the film is at its best in the first half, as these two circle each
other, being wary, holding back their feelings and desires – and yet undeniably
attracted to each other. The second half, when they finally give way to those
desires, is intimate and quietly moving. The film really is quite simple in
many ways – it is about the importance of going through things like this, even
if we know they must end, because it’s better than being closed off (a
brilliant Michael Stuhlbarg delivers the year’s best monologue near the end,
making this point clear). Director Luca Guadanino has once again made a
sensual, beautiful film – and a devastatingly emotional one. 
15.
The Beguiled (Sofia Coppola)
Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled is about a group of
women and girls, holed out by themselves in a boarding school in the South,
during the Civil War – and what happens when a man (Colin Farrell) enters their
lives, even if he is a Yankee. Farrell plays what is essentially a con man –
sizing up the different women, and pretending to be exactly what each one of
them wants – a father figure, a sexual object, husband material, etc. – and
tries to play each of them. Of course, he can only do that for so long, before
the women will find out, and essentially get angry. This is the closest thing
to a genre film Coppola is ever likely to make – it isn’t the horror film that
Don Siegal and Clint Eastwood made in the 1970s, but something that falls
directly in line with everything Coppola has done before. It got lost in some
controversy this summer, but don’t let that deter you – it’s one of Coppola’s
best.
14.
Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)
Olivier Assayas’ haunting Personal Shopper is a
ghost story, of a sort, but it’s really a study of grief and longing. It stars
Kristen Stewart – once again proving she’s one of the best actresses in the
world – as a woman whose twin brother dies of the same heart condition she has.
Racked with grief, she goes about her job picking up fancy clothes for a model
around Paris – but starts to receive strange text messages that may be from her
dead brother. The film is slow moving and methodical, slowly gripping you, and
getting you to the edge of your seat (never have those three little dots on the
iPhone text app been more nerve jangling). Personally, I would like the film more
(perhaps even enough to have it on the top 10) if the ending hadn’t gone a
little too far in trying to solve things – but that’s a very minor complaint,
about an overall masterful film.
13.
Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan)
Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk really is a masterclass
in structure – expanding and compressing three different timelines – on the
beach, in the air, on the water – so they play out simultaneously, really is a
brilliant strategy for Nolan. The film is all about the moment – the here and
now – of what happened placing us alongside all of the different players in the
rescue mission as it plays out. It is, in some ways, Nolan’s simplest film in a
long time – a straight ahead war movie – and yet, structurally, it is one of
his most complex. It’s also his shortest in a while, which helps because it
would have been difficult to maintain this level of suspense and action for
much longer than the 106 minutes he does. Inevitably, it does lose something on
the small screen – so hopefully this is one of those movies that theaters keep
bringing back, so audiences can see it how it was meant to be seen.
12.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson)
The Last Jedi is the best Star Wars movie since The
Empire Strikes Back – and the only one since then to do some genuinely
surprising things with its narrative. If The Force Awakens was all about fan
service – given them exactly what they want – than The Last Jedi is about
smashing those expectations – setting them up, and then twisting them in
surprising ways. The action is the best we’ve seen in a while, the writing is
clever and funny – but also brings a few different layers to what could be one
dimensional characters, and the acting is the best we’ve seen in these films
for a while. If we are now in an age when we’re going to be getting a new Star
Wars movies every year, than we need filmmakers like Rian Johnson willing to
come in and smash the mythology, to come up with something completely
different. That is what makes The Last Jedi so good. 
11.
Baby Driver (Edgar Wright)
Baby Driver is one of the most flat out,
entertaining films of the year – from the opening car chase, right into the
films many musical moments and other action sequences, this is Edgar Wright at
perhaps his shallowest (his last film, The World’s End had some genuine insight
into it characters – something he doesn’t bother with here) – but most high
octane. The film is a jolt of adrenaline for two hours, and the film never
slows down long enough for you to register its implausibility. It’s just pure
entertainment, expertly crafted by Wright and his team, and acted by his great
cast.
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