A very fine top 10 this year. And no further intro
is needed.
10.
mother! (Darren Aronofsky)
If you are going to do a movie as metaphor, than
dammit, you have to go as far with it as Darren Aronofsky does in mother! The
film is one of the most daring high wire acts of the year, about a husband and
wife (Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence) living an idyllic life, in their
country house that she is restoring for them, so he can concentrate on his
writing. But people just will not leave them alone – and just keep coming, and
destroying everything. I’ve read a number of different theories on the central
metaphor (and that’s just from Aronofsky – shut up Darren – let the film do the
talking for you), although I think the obvious one is the one that sprang to me
for me, although there are layers upon layers of others. Aronofsky has always
been a daring filmmaker, and mother! is one of the most daring films a major
studio has released in years – they likely won’t again, and that’s a shame. I
understand if you hate mother! – but I loved every over-the-top moment, and
admired everyone involved for swinging for the fences, and mainly, connecting.
9.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Director Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest exercise in
discomfort and pitch black comedy is this film, based (loosely) on Greek
mythology, in a story of a surgeon (Colin Farrell) who when presented with a
difficult moral choice (he has to choose to kill one of his two kids or his
wife, or they’ll all die) decides essentially to do nothing. It is a study in
his inactivity, and disbelief to what is happening, and his faith in his
profession to be able to fix whatever is wrong. This is all done in Lanthimos’
signature, flat, nearly emotionless style with long, languid camera shots and
movement, flat delivery by a great cast, who nevertheless reveal great things
about themselves in doing so, and often disturbing imagery. The whole cast is
great – Farrell is almost as good here as he was in The Lobster, from Lanthimos
last year, and Nicole Kidman shows why she’s one of the best, and most risk
taking, actresses working. Its newcomer Barry Keough (seen, ironically enough,
as the personification of selfless, naïve heroism in Dunkirk) who steals the
movie, as the young man who puts Farrell in this position. Lanthimos continues
to make some of the most thought provoking, disturbing and unforgettable films
of anyone currently working.
8.
Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)
Greta Gerwig’s solo directing debut is this deeply
felt, deeply humane, deeply funny film about a high school senior, who goes
through her final year of high school, wasting time with two different boys,
the drama club, friends who aren’t really her friends, and fighting – non-stop
– with her mother. This probably sounds like a typical high school comedy, and
yet it isn’t – it’s deeper than that, because it gets all of these
relationships exactly right, and grounds them in real emotion and humor.
Saorise Ronan is great in the lead role – she can be bratty and obnoxious, but
she’s also smart and funny. Laurie Metcalf is even better as her mother – who
really does want the best for her, but doesn’t always know how to express that.
The rest of the cast is great. Gerwig has been a special talent for a while now
– she is often the best thing about the movies she stars in, and her writing
work on two Noah Baumbach films has helped that filmmaker a great deal. Now,
behind the camera, she proves to be a natural – precisely the kind of filmmaker
we need more have right now. Lady Bird is a brilliant film.
7.
Raw (Julia Ducournau)
Julia Docournau’s debut film Raw is the bloodiest
female coming of age horror film ever made – a film that made one person
pass-out when it played as part of the Midnight Madness program at TIFF in
2016. It’s almost too bad that is the reputation the film has gotten however –
since the film really is much more than a gross-out horror film. It tells the
story of a brilliant, teenage girl (Garance Marillier, in one of the year’s
great performances) who goes off to vet school a strict vegetarian (because of
her parents), and soon hungers for raw meat – her appetites become harder and
harder to ignore, until she can no longer resist. There is a moment, late in
the film, where Marillier – who we have felt great sympathy for – directly
challenges the audience to still feel that sympathy for her, indicting us in
the process. I’m not entirely sold on the very last scene – but other than
that, Raw is a genre masterwork – and will be remembered for a long time to
come.
6.
A Ghost Story (David Lowery)
David Lowery’s A Ghost Story is a low budget
stunner – a film about grief and longing, love and death, all told in a
haunting fashion. The film follows a young couple (Casey Affleck and Rooney
Mara) – who live in a house together, than he wants to stay in, and she wants
to leave. When he dies, he returns to the home – under a sheet, like a child’s
ghost costume – and watches her, and then the others who come and go from the
house after – all the time waiting for something. Score by wonderful,
melancholy music, the film moves forward through time, and then back – and then
brings us full circle again. The strange effect this has on a viewer cannot be
totally, adequately described. Yes, it’s cliché to call A Ghost Story haunting,
but that is what the film is – it’s one that never leaves your mind, and grows
as you think about it, and revisit it. 
5.
Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri (Martin McDonagh)
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri has
become one of the most controversial films of the years, with people arguing
about the films racial politics. While I understand the arguments against the
film – that it redeems a racist cop that it focuses exclusively on white
characters, while making the few black characters one dimensional – I don’t
agree with them. I think Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri is a story
about violent, revenge and anger – and the cycle that continues them, and how
they poison everything they touch. Frances McDormand is great in the lead role
(which I don’t see at all as a heroic one) – a woman who will do anything to
try and find the man who raped and murdered her daughter, no matter the cost to
all those around her. Woody Harrelson is just as good as the dying Sheriff, who
really does do his best, but whose vision is too short sited. Sam Rockwell
completes the triptych of great performances as a Deputy, who we both revile
and feel empathy for (though that doesn’t excuse his action, or redeem him – I
think he’s brought to almost biblical lows, and is forced to see himself in a
different way). Add to that the most quotable screenplay of the year, and some virtuoso
sequences (Rockwell getting beat up in the bar), and you have a film that is at
once entertaining, and troubling – it makes you laugh, and then punches you in
the gut. The shifts in tone are masterfully handled, and I find the film a
fascinating portrait of white people in America – the type of people who would
deny they are racist, but have never really examined those feelings, because
they live in an almost all white area. Whether intentional or not, I find that
aspect one of the best in the movie – and make this film one of the best of the
year.
4.
Get Out (Jordan Peele)
Jordan Peele’s Get Out may not (quite) be the best
film of 2017 – but it is probably the film that best represents 2017 at this
moment. Peele knows his horror films inside out and backwards, and has crafted
a film that works in the same vein as films like Rosemary’s Baby or The
Stepford Wives – the slow dawning horror of the main character, who knows
something isn’t right, but cannot quite put his finger on it (or, won’t say it
out loud). He has also, however, crafted the most incendiary critique of
American race relations since Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing in 1989 – a film
that shows that perhaps even more dangerous than out and out racists, is the
kind hearted liberal, who doesn’t really understand black people, but couch
their discomfort behind a veil of nice platitudes. The film is scary on a
horror movie level – but even scarier on a deeper level, as Peele’s themes
start to emerge. The film is meticulously crafted, and has great performances –
especially by Daniel Kaluuya (it really did take second viewing to fully
appreciate all that he is doing in this film). Get Out is the type of film that
will last – that will be discussed for decades to come, and is the perfect film
to kick off the Trump years.
3.
The Florida Project (Sean Baker)
The most deeply empathetic film of the year, is
Sean Baker’s The Florida Project. The film takes place at a seedy, rundown
motel in the shadow of Disney Land in Orlando, where the residents do what they
have to in order to survive. The film concentrates on a single mother (Bria
Vinaite) and her 6 year old daughter (a truly remarkable Brooklynn Prince) and
their lives. As Prince travels around with her friends, in a world only 6 year
olds can truly inhabit, her mother gets more desperate, and does more extreme
things in order to get by. In one of the great performances of the year, Willem
Dafoe plays the motel manager, a man who really does care for the people who
stay at his motel – and does his best to help them – but he still has a
business to run. This is a film that never steps wrong, never feels more than
wholly authentic (even the fantasy ending), and mixes the happiness that Prince
feels now, with the sad realization that this vital child, will likely not stay
this way forever. A truly great film.
2.
Good Time (Josh & Ben Safdie)
In terms of pure energetic, propulsive filmmaking,
nothing topped The Safdie brothers Good Time this year. The film has the look
and feel of a 1970s Sidney Lumet New York, but undeniably has its sites sight
on modern time, this crime thriller about white privilege is the great crime
film of the year. Robert Pattison, giving the year’s best performance (you
heard me) stars as one of a pair of brothers who rob a bank, and the try to
escape on foot – he gets away, his mentally disabled brother does not. This sets
up the bulk of the film, which is one long night as a descent into hell, as he
tries to break his brother out of the hospital he was transferred to when he
was beat up in jail. Pattinson’s character keeps getting away with everything,
keeps seeing others – mostly black – people take the fall for him, as he
continues to fall deeper and deeper into the whole he makes for himself. The
Safdies are among the most exciting young filmmakers around – specializing in
films that make you somewhat like their main characters, and then expose them
as clearly awful as the film moves along. Fans of gritty, 1970s style film can
do no better than this film – a modern version of those classic films. 
1.
Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)
There is a reason why Paul Thomas Anderson is the
best filmmaker currently working – and it’s on full display in Phantom Thread.
No one creates films that are as meticulously crafted as Anderson – where every
detail from the beautiful costumes, to the set design, to the cinematography (by
Anderson himself) – which is designed to look like an old Merchant Ivory film,
to the smallest inflections by the actors (Lesley Manville should win an Oscar
for her background acting alone in this film) – and yet, still feels so raw,
fresh and alive. Phantom Thread is a bizarre mixture of Hitchcock, Ophuls and
Kubrick – a demented love story between two people, who are the surface are
anything but. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a great performance ( a fitting farewell
if this truly is his last work) – as a man who needs everything to be just so,
or else he loses it – and Vicky Krieps is perhaps even better as his latest
lover – an enigmatic woman who keeps things close to her chest. Gradually the
depths of their relationship – their sick connection – is revealed, and yet the
movie doesn’t explain away all of its mysteries. It is the type of film that
snaps into focus in its final minutes, and yet doesn’t feel like a cheat at
all. It is somewhat strange to me that in a year, in which most of the best
films, speak to something larger in society right now, that Phantom Thread –
which really doesn’t – is the year’s best. But it is – masterfully directed,
written and performed – a film to get lost in, over and over and over again.
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