The Ten Best Films of 2017, and other Films

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• Richard Neer says:

  December 18, 2017 at 8:10 pm

  Thank you for this! I lurked on this blog for years (well, less now of course) and I think I pos­ted com­ments like twice. So thanks are way overdue.
  And thanks also for con­stantly advoc­at­ing Edward Yang. I was all over Brighter Summer Day when it came out on Criterion because of how you’d been hyp­ing it since forever and it was everything claimed and more. And for giv­ing moth­er! the time of day.

• Phil says:

  December 19, 2017 at 12:30 am

  Baby Driver should be on more people’s lists. Where’s Good Time? Okja? Honorable men­tion for The Last Jedi?

• Chris L. says:

  December 19, 2017 at 1:58 am

  Phil, the vivid impres­sion I’ve got­ten from fol­low­ing Glenn on Twitter (which provides at least 90 per cent of the fun & edu­ca­tion that site has to offer!) is that Good Time might very well come in last out of all the new films he’s seen this dec­ade, if not cen­tury. I won’t get into why, as he’s also indic­ated he’s done talk­ing about it; just thought I’d men­tion in case any­one else thought it was an oversight.

• Phil says:

  December 19, 2017 at 3:39 pm

  Thanks, Chris L. You know what, now that you men­tion it I seem to recall see­ing that on Twitter, too. I’ll have to keep my eye on the ball bet­ter next time!

• Andrew Del Monte says:

  December 20, 2017 at 3:19 pm

  Curious if you’ve seen Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2? I thought it did the “action-set-to-music” thing more dynam­ic­ally than Baby Driver, which prob­ably sounds like some asshole con­trari­an pos­i­tion but except­ing the first twenty minutes and Jamie Foxx’s per­form­ance I found Baby Driver pretty ho-hum. Also, I thought Guardians sub­ver­ted the “chosen hero” nar­rat­ive in a more pro­voc­at­ive and less pre­ten­tious way than this year’s Blade Runner & Star Wars movies.
  I’ve already bugged you about this on Twitter but I just don’t get what I’m sup­posed to feel at the end of The Bad Batch. During that final shot, everything about the movie’s tone would indic­ate that I should be happy about the form­a­tion of this new fam­ily… am I fail­ing to detect some irony? And if I’m not and there isn’t any, am I really sup­posed to for­get that the hero played by the bland white mod­el point­lessly murdered the little girl’s black moth­er like 40 minutes earli­er? I think part of my unease about the movie in gen­er­al stems from the trans­par­ent cyn­icism of cast­ing [trendy white mod­el’s name] as a ploy to garner some main­stream interest in the movie. I thought her per­form­ance was bland and empty and I’d have much rather seen Yolonda Ross in the lead­ing role. It’s hard to think of this movie as “Exciting New Feminist Content” when it seems unwill­ing to chal­lenge the pre­cept that I should be more inter­ested in watch­ing the young blond white mod­el with no act­ing skills than the cha­ris­mat­ic black act­ress. But again maybe I’m not get­ting something.
  Anyway if you think Gaurdians 2 isn’t worth your time maybe this scene will con­vince you oth­er­wise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZTwuDi49uA

• Glenn says:

  December 20, 2017 at 3:52 pm

  To Andrew Del Monte:
  I’ve not seen “Guardians 2” and likely won’t for some time. It’s not a mat­ter of wheth­er or not it’s worth my time. It’s a mat­ter of the time I have, and how I choose to spend it.
  As for “Baby Driver,” yes, we saw it differently.
  I don’t know how you are “sup­posed” to feel at the end of “Bad Batch.” I found the end­ing not exactly uplift­ing, and no, I did not for­get that the “bland white mod­el” “point­lessly” murdered the black moth­er. I guess you could call the murder point­less, although cer­tain factors—the bland white mod­el’s miss­ing leg and arm, the not-small-chance that the black moth­er would kill the bland white mod­el giv­en the chance—could be seen as mit­ig­at­ing factors. One of the reas­ons I found “Bad Batch” inter­est­ing and pro­voc­at­ive was that it avoided mak­ing choices that com­for­ted its ostens­ible tar­get audi­ence, instead treat­ing the title realm as a Hobbesian night­mare in which race and gender con­cerned were replaced by a mind­less amor­al sur­viv­al­ist atav­ism from which “Comfort” seemed the only reas­on­able escape, until of course you find out that “Comfort” is an utterly venal pat­ri­archy. The movie’s end­ing pos­its a “third way” and mock-sentimentalizes it, but it provides no assur­ance that it’s sustainable.

• partisan says:

  December 21, 2017 at 12:13 am

  Four com­ments: (1) It’s good that some­body remembered A QUIET PASSION this year. Why can­’t more? (2) Is the idea that LOVELESS, ISMAIL’S GHOSTS and LET THE SUN SHINE IN are all going to be released next year? Because quite frankly they all sound more inter­est­ing that most of the crit­ic­ally admired movies this year. (3) I per­son­ally thought GET OUT was some­what muddled as a meta­phor, and it would have been much less suc­cess­ful had Trump had lost by fif­teen points or if Rubio had been the nom­in­ee. (4) Everybody loved THE FLORIDA PROJECT. Everybody that is, except Richard Brody, who cer­tainly best summed up my dis­like for the film. Personally, I found it exhaust­ing, like watch­ing a small, and very annoy­ing, child play with a loaded gun for 95 minutes.

• Louis says:

  December 22, 2017 at 2:41 pm

  Oh man, I totally missed Glenn rip­ping into Good Time on twit­ter – I deleted my account a while back, one of my bet­ter life decisions – but I’m sure it was fant­ast­ic (no sar­casm). I won’t ask him to revis­it it, as I’m no way entitled to his feel­ings if he does­n’t want to share them.
  2017 was the year I could­n’t sum­mon much hate for any movie I saw, nor was there any­thing I would ride or for. A lot of stuff I really like, some I did less so, but it was really… fine. Am I get­ting old and arriv­ing at the end of the long road to the middle? I’ll need anoth­er year to know for sure.

• Louis says:

  December 22, 2017 at 2:43 pm

  Some massive typos in that last post. Please for­give me.

• Jon K says:

  December 22, 2017 at 3:28 pm

  I’d say “cine­mat­ic con­triv­ance” gets “Baby Driver” exactly right. I’ve enjoyed nearly all of Edgar Wright’s films, imper­fect as they’ve been, and I was really look­ing for­ward to “BD.” But I enjoyed it the least by far. Very dif­fi­cult to get past the lame plot even if the crafts­man­ship was top shelf.
  “Personal Shopper” riv­eted me for most of it’s run­ning time, but the end­ing was a pretty big let­down as far as I’m con­cerned. (I can­’t recall for sure, but I may have laughed out loud.) As with “Baby Driver,” I admire the tal­ent at work, espe­cially the con­trol of tone, but it was in the ser­vice of some­thing I could­n’t con­nect with at all.
  Does James Gray build whole films around one killer shot he has in mind to end with? He did it in “The Immigrant” and again now with “…Z”. The one from the lat­ter prac­tic­ally took my breath away.

• titch says:

  December 23, 2017 at 3:29 am

  I’ve man­aged to over­look that Taipei Story was included on Criterion’s Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 2 – too many good blu-ray releases this year and not enough time to see them all. I’ll clear the sched­ule for this now.

• Robby Baskin says:

  February 7, 2018 at 12:04 am

  Extremely late to the game, but I’m happy to see you enjoyed Lost City of Z. That film seemed strangely absent from most of the end-of-year lists I read. Spot on with the Lean com­par­is­on, one of the film’s many pos­it­ive char­ac­ter­ist­ics is that it func­tions as a wel­come revi­sion­ist take on the Heroic Brit in the Colonies trope (albeit without renoun­cing all the awe­some pleas­ures of the genre).
  I really need to get to Taipei Story, and Yang in gen­er­al. Thanks for all the great writ­ing on this blog, I hope it continues!

• Herb Heller says:

  February 11, 2018 at 11:24 am

  “Marty”
  Ernest Borgnine and Betty Blair are per­fect in this tender tale of a grow­ing rela­tion­ship between these bypassed loners.I cry at the memory of this sweet romance. I’m 91;a Jewish boy from Williamsburg.Herby