Nathaniel's Top Ten of 2017
Saturday, February 24, 2018 at 5:00PM by Nathaniel R
Better late than never. If you've been wondering why your TFE host has been so in and out of the proceedings this season, let's just say life has proved significantly challenging offline: the end of a decade-plus relationship, homelessness (not the dramatic kind but the sleeping on friend's couches kind), a long bout with the flu, a new side gig, etcetera). So this list carries a bit of melancholy with it as 2017 was one of the hardest years of my life. (If you also had a rough year: I feel you. Hugs in solidarity). Due to all of this I didn't see as many films as is my preference and couldn't rewatch the key films I usually would have before "voting".
But in the end you have to move forward. Time changes everything... and time changes all top ten lists also! Some of these placements that you scratch your head about now, you'll either understand in ten years time OR I'll join you in scratching my head about them with a "what was I thinking?" blush. Top ten lists are but time capsules.
People change for better and worse. Circumstances shift dramatically or perception does. The movies of 2017 helped me understand all this, many of them zeroed in on definitive months in someone's life, others hopping around in time, and still more juxtaposing the past with the present...
HONORABLE MENTIONS
The following fifteen films had significant strengths that I admired (and, yes, in some cases weaknesses that I had trouble setting aside) or they just got me square in the heart or eyeballs in some way. In other words these pictures took up plentiful mental real estate and the cinematic year coalesced around them. Consider them the films that wouldn't leave my inner multiplex.
the color and guitar strums (and tears) of Coco
that muscular flamboyance within the stuffy genre-casing of Darkest Hour
the bewitching elegies of A Fantastic Woman
the horrifying wintry void of Loveless
and those ominous texts and curious hauntings in Personal Shopper
the lux metaphoric coupling of Phantom Thread
the fascinating triad of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
the austere genre-mashup named Thelma
yes even the aggressive ugly provocations of Three Billboards...
the unique spirituality of the Israeli romcom The Wedding Plan
that four-hankie family drama Wonder
...and the zeitgeist smash of Wonder Woman!
And three runners up to the top ten...
the elegant mystery of Frantz
that psyche-slipping social media headspace of Ingrid Goes West
...and two men at odds and in deep within God's Own Country
TOP TEN LIST 2017
*some minor spoilers follow*
Princess Cyd
(Stephen Cone)
Wolfe Releasing. November 3rd
96 minutes
It's a shame that this feature barely saw theaters and must fend for its little self in the noisy streaming marketplace where people are likely to but sample it briefly and flit away to something louder. Its power is in the cumulative, the film being more akin to a good book than a flashy scene-by-scene entertainment. Princess Cyd understands this, one of its leading ladies being an author and a bookworm.
One pivotal scene before the final act between an aunt (Rebecca Spence) and her niece (Jessie Pinnick) illustrates the movie's profound empathy best. The young woman, infinite in knowledge as young people (think they) are, has been quick to judge her aunt throughout the movie. The older woman has just had it with her niece's jabbing advice, however well-meant. She dresses her down righteously. The beauty of the scene is in the eye of the beholder; sympatico audiences will realize that both women, in subtle ways, are correct despite their conflicting points of view. You want nothing more than for them to gently come together in the space between them.
mother!
(Darren Aronofsky)
Paramount. September 15th
121 minutes
My initial grade for the year's weirdest movie was "ABCDF". I stand by it... but also suspect Time will do a ABCDF to mother! I want to have been with it on the ground floor, shaking a glass of spiked lemonade in one hand. The next time Aronosfky convinces his actors to rip their hearts out for the camera (this isn't the first time... at least not figuratively) or the next time he finishes a creation and I place it on my bluray shelf, I will remember this desperate, vulgar, wild, outrageous, earnest and winking portrait of the artist fondly.
Battle of the Sexes
(Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Feris)
Fox Searchlight. Sept 29th
121 minutes
The title is sadly ageless. In 1973 when Billie Jean King and Bobby Briggs were having their epic tennis match before a mammoth television audience, the culture was grappling with combative gender politics, pay disparity, and its patriarchal problem of not taking women seriously. AKA the same things the culture is grappling with right now. Steven Spielberg's The Post, set even earlier than BotS, has some of the same feminist concerns but is weirdly proud of its perfect hindsight. Battle is content to just tell its story and it falls in love with every character along the way, the personal being political. What was it that kept this graceful, funny, and even-handed match from connecting with audiences? I normally want movies to be shorter but I could have sat through an entire miniseries version of this one.
Lady Macbeth (William Oldroyd)
Roadside Attractions. July 14th.
89 minutes
When I learned that this was a debut feature, I went as mute as the Lady Katherine's traumatized servant Anna (Naomi Ackie). Unbelievable! Oldroyd's exceptionally promising drama moves with the bold entitled confidence of a master. It's so visually confrontational (all that centered looking-back-out-at-you framing) and emotionally severe that it might be unbearable if the running time were indulgent but there's not an ounce of fat on this nasty drama. What will Oldroyd do for an encore? I keep thinking of that slender cat staring at Lady Katherine (?) the camera (?) the audience (?) at the dining table. Its shape mesmerizing, its mind unknowable, its soul amoral. Like the lady it deigns to share its home with, it will do as it pleases with no concern for others.
[DOUBLE FEATURE TIE]
Atomic Blonde (David Leitch)
Focus Features. July 28th. 115 minutes
Baby Driver (Edgar Wright)
Tri-Star Pictures. June 28th. 112 minutes
They used to call them Motion Pictures. Theatrical feature, today's term, is so dull in comparison! These Movie-Movies deserve the earlier title. They've got PICTURES with beautiful color and lighting, and compositions worth freeze framing. They've obviously got adrenaline-pumped dizzying MOTION and they've got it from start to finish. The latter is achieved in different ways, though. Baby Driver ties every image rigidly but non-clumsily to the sound (even acting gestures). It's like a musical without the singing or dancing. Atomic Blonde focuses less on the editing (though it does that well, too) and achieves its mastery through jaw-dropping choreography and stunt work as in the movie's climactic continuous shot setpiece in a vacant building.
There are those who claim that one or both of these movies are 'all style and no substance,' a familiar dismissive shorthand. My articulate rebuttal is "So what?" Numerous motion pictures have been lauded every year in history for 'all substance and no style'... look it up!
And my "Best Picture" nominees...
The Florida Project
(Sean Baker)
A24. October 6th
111 minutes
Most movies choose to pinpoint a specific defining moment in their protagonists's lives. You get the sense very early on in Baker's beautifully constructed drama about poverty and childhood, that any day would have done for Moonee (complete natural Brooklynn Prince) every day being essentially the same. Her looping structureless adventure will one day become adolescent monotony. Despite its gleeful childish nonsense and seemingly erratic wandering, The Florida Project is one of the most schematic movies of the year. The final genius image, a rush of dubiously jubilant chaos and manufactured escapism, incinerates everything you've seen before. This motel/project's happy fresh paint of color and Moonee's total freedom are as illusory as Disney World. Suddenly those railings she shouts from, hangs on, and spits through look like prison bars.
Call Me By Your Name
(Luca Guadagnino)
Sony Pictures Classics. November 24th
132 minutes
Whenever you hear a book is unfilmable, don't believe it. Just call James Ivory by his name. The legendary director of complex literary adaptations was an incisive choice to resculpt the indulgent diary-like first person novel into something cinematic. Luca Guadagnino, an Italian sensualist attuned to minute details, beautiful actors, and tactile gestures, was the perfect choice to film it. The end result is both mundanely intimate and emotionally epic; nothing much happens but everything changes. What's most impressive is the feeling that it's both fixed in stone and ephemeral... like the experience of repeatedly replaying those defining memories from the cusp of adulthood, first love, and sexual discovery.
Get Out
(Jordan Peele)
Universal. February 24th
104 minutes
Everyone heard that spoon scraping against the teacup, like some kind of subliminally resonant message of our precarious social contracts. Who can forget the tears and slack jaw of Kaluuya as he entered the Sunken Place? Or the impotent haunted "Nononononononono" which worked on every level simultaneously: character-based drama, traditional horror scare, and weirdly funny pop culture bullseye. Jordan Peele's smash hit has so many indelible moments, and it's all so smartly acted. People will be unpacking its brilliantly elastic Sunken Place metaphor, wickedly funny dialogue, and unique scares for years to come.
BPM (Beats Per Minute)
(Robin Campillo)
The Orchard. October 20th
140 minutes
Dreamy artful touches punctuate this French drama -- sensual abandon with abstractly dissolving interludes, dreamlike visions as fantasy or memory -- but BPM is grounded first in mundane reality. It continually returns to contentious ACT-UP meetings in what looks like a college classroom where a whole slew of activists mingle, collaborate, argue, flirt, and speechify. To express solidary with a thought or plan, the characters finger snap; it's quieter than applause but sends the supportive message.
Filmmakers interested in making historical civil rights dramas (and we know there are a lot of them) really ought to study BPM. This sprawling bloody messy sexy despairing joyful tear through the AIDS epidemic and ACT-UP's response in Paris is truly cinematic and gets the heart racing. Like all civil rights dramas based on reality, it uses facts and events and political happenings for its narrative, but BPM does so in the way people actually process these things: as messy complex witnesses with their own full lives to lead. The vivid characters move erratically in and out and in and out of the public and the personal spheres, through dance floors, bedrooms, offices, schoolyards, and streets. They burn so bright that it's no surprise when the light flickers out. In the absence of applause and a standing ovation (too stuffy) or a moment of silence (too joyless), I finger snap furiously in BPM's honor.
Lady Bird
(Greta Gerwig)
A24. November 3rd
94 minutes
Lady Bird ends suddenly with a seemingly innocuous shot of freshman college student Christine MacPherson (Saoirse Ronan) alone on the streets of New York. She takes a breath. Cut to black. Greta Gerwig memorably stated in an interview that the exhale would be a different new chapter. It's this kind of emotional precision that makes Lady Bird such a masterpiece of both the high school comedy and the coming-of-age drama. And you can feel that attention to detail from the first reel, as the movie charts both Christine's restless fantasies of escape, her irritable relationship with her mother (the extraordinary Laurie Metcalf) and her messy head-first romantic dives. It's great. And it's hilarious! We'd normally weep when a great actress abandons her gift to retreat behind the camera, but Greta Gerwig's inimitable spirit and fresh voice transfers. She's just begun her new chapter. Time to fly.
And, yes, this means the Film Bitch Awards have finally begun!
Reader Comments (70)
Thoughts with you during a difficult time. Your site, posts, work and voice in this cinematic universe are something we don't take for granted. Keep doing what you do and very best wishes for the next chapter. Now, bring on the awards! ;-)
Sending you some healing energy Nathaniel. Thank you for all your inspired writing and beautiful passions.
Thinking of you, Nathaniel. I hope 2018 will be much better for you. :)
The Wait is Over,I also stand in solidarity with my fellow experiencers in saying a big thanks to the host.
Thanks for this Nathaniel! That top 5 is just gorgeous. Would love to have heard more of your thoughts on Phantom Thread!
Much love to you in a difficult time. You make our lives so much richer - I hope 2018 goes your way.
Much love, Nathaniel.
And excellent taste— we share four of the same films in our Top Five. ;-)
Send you all love Nat.
I've been a daily reader for over 10 years now, all the way from Portugal. You do great work here, always have done. Wishing you the best for 2018
Excellent top ten, Nathaniel!!
Also, sending positive vibes. You're an amazing writer and such a fun presence on your site and Twitter. Hugs!!!
To quote a rather famous nun: "When the Lord closes a door. . . . . .somewhere He opens a window."
I was not expecting to see Baby Rider on here, considering your review, but I'm actually OK with it being next to Atomic Blonde! Also, HELL YEAH to Lady Bird being the gold medalist for BP.
Great list. Wish you well. Been a fan of this site for awhile now
Oooh, what an unexpected Top 10! Some I haven't even seen! (Lady Macbeth, Wonder, and Professor Marston and the Wonder Woman, respectively).
I always look forward to your favorites of the year (way back to 2007!!) because you write so lovingly about each piece. I know you're going through it but thank you for putting this out any way! When life sucks, turn to art!
First things first: My thoughts are with you in this difficult time. I am wishing you changes for the better.
Now onto your list. I love your inclusions of Battle of the Sexes and Atomic Blonde. I loved both of those movies. Call Me By Your Name is currently my favorite movie of 2017 and I love that you love it. Get Out was phenomenal! I feel bad that I have yet to watch Lady Bird (hides due to embarrassment). Coco would be in my top 10 for sure just because it got under my skin so easily.
Chris -- that review was from Chris Feil I believe hence the difference of opinion.
Brian -- I liked Coco a lot too I want to say all the other ones listed are tied for 14th place ;)
Evan -- we have BOTH always had great taste ;)
Andrew -- i feel like i need to see Phantom Thread a second time. I'm not sure my thoughts on it have fully formed. And I saw it during the craziest part of the homelessness while still sick.
Everyone -- thanks for the kind thoughts. I have to agree with Bushwick who wrote
so it felt great to finally publish this!now let's hear more comments on these movies please? what surprised you most here? what do you disagree with? what haven't you yet seen?
I'm sorry to hear how hard 2017 was for you, but I'm so happy that the Film Bitch Awards have started up again - I love to read your write-ups and ballot more than anyone else in the film Internet landscape. Even when life gets hard, please know that your writing is valued all over the world (including down in New Zealand!)
Wow so many thought-provoking surprises and interesting viewing tips in this list. I'll return to it (probably repeatedly) once I've caught up with a few more of these titles.
Thrilled to see The Florida Project and Get Out among your top 5. And I'm so down with you re Gerwig's formal mastery and precision behind the camera (as well as of course in front)
Sad to hear 2017 was a hard year for you personally but kudos to maintaining the awesomeness of TFE without a blip throughout. You should be very proud
Also, I apologise if it's unnerving to have your opinion turned into sport, but I do little predictions for your ballot, and I feel quite proud to have successfully guessed your top five! My only big mistake in Director and the top ten was overestimating your love for mother!.
Looking forward to the acting categories!
Princess Cyd. First time I heat about it! I hope I get to see it.
P.S. Love the inclusion of Battle of Sexes.
God bless for doing so much with this site while you were going through so much in your personal life. Hope 2018 is a good to you as the movies always are. And I loooove this Top 10. So many great movies, and so very very gay, which is always a plus. Makes me wanna watch all of them again.
I’m pretty sure my top 5 will include Lady Bird, Phantom Thread and Florida Project, possibly mother, too!
I’m so glad you’ve been beating the drum for Frantz. It really stayed with me, and I can’t wait to see it again.
Not sure if you saw Beatriz at Dinner and Brad’s Status, but I thought Mike White had a low-key terrific year.
Thx for the great list & best wishes to U in this diff time, Nat! 2017 maybe a messy chaotic & melancholic year but 2018 will be a brand new start! Juz imagine yourself as Christine takin that deep breathe at the end of Lady Bird! xoxo
On ano note: U mentioned the top 5 as your Film Bitch Award nominees, so they haven't been ranked yet rite? cos u'll be awarding Gold, Silver & Bronze in all the categories like previous years?
Yes Nat, definitely give Phantom Thread another go. I think it might be my favourite of the year. Delicious.
As for your top 10. The top 5 are all superb. I really do not understand the love for Atomic Blonde and Baby Driver. I enjoy their pop elements but ultimately they are empty exercise in aesthetic. Particularly Baby Driver, which is about 1/3 too long and is such a dodgy script. The choreography is superb in both though and some of the best fight choreography out there.
Absolutely love that Mother! made your Top 10. I think those of us that can see its brilliance will be on the right side of history. Can't wait for future generations to discover this one and be as disturbed as I was/am.
Great choice, Nathaniel.
Now my own top 10 list (all premiered this year in my country,with some comments:
1- Call Me By Your Name (the most atriculate, high eyed-brow critic in my country, someone who turn down what the Oscars represents in terms of quality, has said this is a MaSTERPIECE. That the OSCARS don't deserve this film). And I concur.
2- Get Out: the most dymamic chunk of food for thought entertainment and mashed up genres from the boldest and most unlikely of sources. Endlessly rewatchable.
3- TIE/ A quiet Passion: Terence Davis is too finesse a fillmaker to be comprehended by largers audiences. Shame this American Original haven't received praises enough from their compatriots. He's making Kubrickian period pieces with the heart and panache of peak James IIvory. /Phantom Thread. So does PTA, but more wicked and with a kinky gusto for malice. A Lady subverting the patriarchy of a proud male narcissist requires extreme measures and a hint of selected mushrooms. The Boss Lady of the Lowlands.
4- Paterson: I know it's llast year. But premiered ealy this year for me. And here's the anti. Billboards. No McGuffins or lame jokes. He speaks for small towns' Americans who wake up early to do their job... and make some poetry along the way. And receive love in return. Its meekness it's both hypnotic and alluring. A hushed fanfare for the ordinary men.
5- The Other side of Hope: Shame Aki Karismakki's tale of inmigrant refugees wich doesn't play with the usual tropes has received the cold sholder. The humanistic but never condescending version of every political film about this subject everywhere. God bless his deadpan, absurdist humour. One who treats his creatures with love, even if they do nasty thing, and manages to extract truth from ALL involved McDonagh only wishes for.
6- BPM- What Nathaniel says in his blurb. All of it.
7- Zama- The misanderstood masterpiece by an original: Lucrecia Martel. You need to know more about our continent conquest by the SpanishEmpire to really appreciate its subttleties. What she does with sounds is delirouly novel. A fever dream of endless languages and ethnias and cultures that's too much to bear for insignificant bureocrats. A plea for a more diversified, multicultural understanding of our species. And often very funny, too.
8- The Fabric of Nothing. Pedro Pinho's libertarian storytelling of a group of workers that are about to get out of the tracks, for good. Their resposte: A cop out? A panphletarian flick?
As if! A poignant and a hair raising musical that comes out of nowhere. They're singing their hearts out for the right to fight like it's a party! You don't wanna miss this original!
9- Lady Bird: Poignant, honest, funny, relatable. Would be higher if Gerwig slow down the 4th. gear to digest its multiples pleasures. A"punk" director, she'll become really great when she learns the power of a discomfitting ballad (and a dissolve) in between the raw-quick short nuggets she sings with such wisdom. That's when we'll really know how its TRUE range really is. Less "Call the Doctor" and "Dig Me out". More "The Hot Rocks" and "All Hands on the Bad one". She''ll get there.
10. God's Own Country: The second best queer movie of the year has the authenticity of an early Ken Loach film, without the panphletarian and eye rolling discurse. Best inmigration depiction after The Other Side of Hope. Gemma Jones is a treasure. And the two stars hotties for days. And an upñifting final to boot, too!
Somebody make a musical out of John Baxby and Gheorge, please!
My pleasure. Love the site.
Sorry, the translation is the Factory of Nothing. Shame on me!
I consider it high praise you weren't entirely dismissive of Phantom Thread. Since you believe PTA has lost his mojo since abandoning Julianne Moore for sausage gazing.
Great selection. I’ve not been given the chance to see BPM yet so I cannot comment on that unfortunately. I’m overjoyed that Lady Bord is your number one because I feel there is a slight backlash to the films ptaise and as a Stan for the film I appreciate whenever I see it top someone’s list. I look forward to your individual nominations because while announcing the beer in overalls for me it’s the individual craft categories I look forward to reading more.
Lots of love, Nathaniel. Take all the time you need. I'm always happy when you bless us with some writing (I've read so many Top 10 Lists this year and this is still such a standout, a total pleasure to read—your time away has only sharpened your insight and incisiveness) but I for one won't go away if you need to take more breaks. <3
Good list. You lknow I've always been a big fan of your blog . Looking forward to visiting for many years to come. I've had more than my share of tough years and there's always so little to hang on to it seems , but the thing I know is true is 'this too shall pass. Hang in there. We're all rooting for you.
Good thoughts to you Nathaniel! Your posts in my feed reader are the ones I save so I can savor every read.
I'm a bit surprised by "Lady Bird" as your number one - I loved it too, it just brought up so many feelings about mothers and daughters and I think it is almost universally recommendable - but I think "Get Out" and "Call Me by Your Name" execute at such a higher technical level.
"Lady Bird", to me, is so likable in it's script and performances, from Ronan & Metcalf to Feldstein and Henderson, that it would be top 10 in almost any year, but it's a fairly formulaic coming-of-age tale.
"Get Out" is a movie that I've tried to explain to those that haven't seen it - it's a horror movie, but also a satire of horror, and also a trenchant exploration of racial politics. Not a usual mix to bring to the screen, but it is done incredibly. Jordan Peele has said that he wanted to make a movie that could be rewatched, and though I have only watched it twice, on the second watch I a) noticed the ways the character's actions and reactions could be interpreted differently, and b) was itching to watch it again.
"Call Me by Your Name" is another animal entirely. It is so overwhelmingly sensory and beautiful, and I felt the Italian sun, cooling waters, and juicy fruits of every scene. It's not only emotionally resonant, but artistically much more forward than "Lady Bird."
So glad that you saw (and loved) Lady Macbeth!
What a nasty, compulsive movie - Florence Pugh is a revelation and carries the whole thing, though special mention to Cosmo Jarvis (swoon!) and Naomi Ackie - a case of colour-blind casting making a film's themes even more political and insidious.
It has stayed with me for months and (alongside Get Out) is my favourite of the year.
I was so confused and delighted when I saw the synopsis for Lady Bird on Google search which described it from Marion's perspective.
MY BEST PICTURE NOMINEES:
1. Call Me by Your Name
2. Lady Bird
3. Dunkirk
4. I, Tonya
5. Phantom Thread
Sending lots of love and best wishes your way!! Best of luck for this new chapter in your life!
Was Mudbound eligible here? Are you anti-Netflix?
The movie is terrific.
My ten favorites of the year:
1. Call Me by Your Name
2. Frantz
3. Lady Bird
4. BPM (Beats per Minute)
5. Personal Shopper
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. Battle of the Sexes
8. Wonder Woman
9. Blade Runner 2049
10. Wonderstruck
Lovely to see Atomic Blonde here, even if it's paired with Baby Driver. I adored it. Stylish, fun and it's Charlize, for God's sake.
Cal -- yes, if you click on the first page of the film bitch awards at the end of this list you'll see that it has a screenplay nomination
Great list as always! Here’s mine at the moment:
1. The Shape of Water - magical and fun the whole way through
2. Phantom Thread - can’t get the story (or dialogue!) out of my head
3. Lady Bird - instant classic coming-of-age, right with Boyhood
4. Battle of the Sexes - Sarah Silverman, tennis, I’ll be able to rewatch this anytime
5. The Big Sick - Great to have the always killer Kumail as a lead
6. The Lost City of Z - James Gray Adventure Film!
7. Baby Driver - so cool, fun, and such amazingly made sequences
8. Get Out - another instant classic. So many Easter eggs
9. Wonder Woman - “No Mans Land” was just the best!
10. A Bad Moms Christmas - I love the bad moms and their moms (esp. Christine Baranski) and I just want them to make a million more of these movies
I am really thrilled to see Lady Bird as your #1 pick. I have never seen my personal experience at that age reflected onscreen quite that precisely.
I still need to see BPM, but I believe it will be out on DVD in early March. Otherwise the only film on your list that I could not connect with is The Florida Project. I think it would have been a far more interesting film if it focused on the boy and his mother the waitress.
My top 10:
1. Lady Bird
2. Phantom Thread
3. A Ghost Story
4. Personal Shopper
5. The Meyerowitz Stories
6. LA 92
7. Call Me by Your Name
8. Atomic Blonde
9. Logan Lucky
10. Dawson City: Frozen Time
Runners-up: Baby Driver, Ingrid Goes West, The Post, Bright Lights, Battle of the Sexes
My favourites of the year!
01. DUNKIRK
02. COCO
03. THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER
04. THE SHAPE OF WATER
05. THE DISASTER ARTIST
06. THE FLORIDA PROJECT
07. GET OUT
08. WONDER WOMAN
09. CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
10. WONDER
@chofer
I watched "The Fabric of Nothing" and I simply loved it!!!! What a gem! Hope it qualifies next year for a Best Foreign Picture competition. Seriously, the movie is "delicious"
Ed & Chofer -- what country is that from?
Yay! We have the same number one, as we've had for the past few years. Carol, 20th Century Women, Lady Bird. All films I love passionately. I've been pretty happy with the last few years in terms of movies and great actressing.
Somehow, I've yet to compile a top 10 for last year! I would go with...
1. MUDBOUND
2. THE SHAPE OF WATER
3. WONDERSTRUCK
4. LADY BIRD
5. THE BIG SICK
6. VICTORIA AND ABDUL
7. IT COMES AT NIGHT
8. GET OUT
9. WONDER
10. MOTHER!
Ha! you put the two movies I hated the most in the same spot (Baby Driver, Atomic Blonde).
Best Wishes for a Happier 2018- interesting list- my #1 film would be "Call Me By Your Name" a film that I was compelled to see twice in the theater - and I will probably see it again.
I think this is the closest our lists have been in years. Three of my Top 10 are in your honorable mentions (Personal Shopper, Three Billboards..., and Wonder Woman) and 4 of your top 11 made my list (The Florida Project, mother!, Get Out, and Lady Bird). I also had Colossal, The Shape of Water, and The Disaster Artist in my Top 10.
It's so funny that we both put mother! at number 9. Our reasoning is the same, too. I love it, I hate it, I'm fascinated and repulsed by it, all in equal measure. It's like The Paperboy all over again, only as a horror film with Michelle Pfeiffer instead of a drama with Nicole Kidman.
Ed
Can you believe it? Also, very very political!!
Nat,
Here's the UK Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hxy5Trp6YA
It's "The Nothing Factory" (my Spanglish betrayed me!)
8 Women with a better script, anti.burguois and ferocious politicals as these workers try to negotiate their jobs. The "singing" isn't spectacular but it's its freedom and charm that wins the day! Also, Imagine Dancer in the Dark without the nihilism. You'll love it!
It's from Portugal. A country which, with Miguel Gomes alone, should deserve an Oscar nomination long ago! Portugal it's "the Asian cinema" from Europe. Completely neglected. Always.
Hope you're doing well, I've read about your issues, which I had no idea about. Cheers for a great year! A bihg hug from Argentina.
Here's my tentative Top 10:
1. Loveless
2. My Life as a Zucchini
3. The Post
4. Coco
5. Your Name.
6. Maudie
7. After the Storm
8. The Florida Project
9. Graduation
10. Lady Bird
Interesting selection. as usual. I'd like to read your thoughts on Phantom Thread (I've just seen it twice in just three days! I can't stop thinking about it) and The Shape of Water. Surprised the latter didn't make your cut, not even as honorable mention.
Here is my top 5
1. The Shape of Water
2. Call Me By Your Name
3. Phantom Thread
4. Coco
5. Lady Bird
Nathaniel, Hope you're settling into your new place, and hope you have a great year.
I enjoyed reading your Top 10 and honourable mentions as ever.
This year also, I have many of the same ones.
Here's my Top 10 for 2017:
1. Call Me By Your Name (I've seen it in the cinema three times now and it gets better each time: so full of love and tenderness and emotionally unsparing - it finds our weakest spot)
2. Get Out (Just watched it for the second time and it's tense and alarming and funny and scary)
3. Lady Bird (So charming and insightful)
4. Phantom Thread (Very funny and convincingly staged)
5. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (The best effects I've seen in a movie for years, and a fun story with two shining leads - I can't understand the negative reviews)
6. Loveless (A tragic story, but exhilarating because the filmmaking is so honest)
7. Loving Vincent (Beautiful visually, and even if the story is quite straightforward, it's a grand achievement and a loving tribute to a truly great artist)
8. The Florida Project (Willem Dafoe is so warm-hearted and the film is so full of energy and life)
9. Menashe (A smart and absorbing look at a week in the life of a Jewish father and son after the mother's death - very impressive work on a tiny budget)
10. 120 Beats Per Minute (Strong drama, sliding into sadness, acted with great ensemble skill)
Honourable mentions: The Big Sick and The Other Side of Hope (Two fine comedy-dramas that were a whisker away from the Top 10 - both bittersweet and memorable)
I see far fewer films than most posters here, but these would be mine:
1. Lady Bird
2. Call Me By Your Name
3. I, Tonya
4. Get Out
5. Wonder Woman
6. Battle of the Sexes
7. The Killing of a Scared Deer
8. Kedi
9. The Beguiled
10. Wonderstruck