In a year where escapism from the news cycle was desperately needed, escapism in the best films of 2017 took the form of extreme emotional catharsis. Whether that meant the unleashed ecstatic nightmare of mother! or Raw or the free-flowing tears induced by Logan Lucky or Coco, the biggest reactions from the year's best worked on a primal, gut level. Quieter intellectual films like Phantom Thread or Lost City of Z didn't take up nearly as much air as the reaction to the more elemental Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. That gap between what works subjectively in the moment and the objective feeling of certainty that one's watching masters at work means that the year might not have as many all-timers as other years. Revisiting Logan in the future might dull its sharp edge and bring out more of its flaws, but in the year that was, the heart needed some reinforcement, whether it came from animated orphans or mutant Mexican girls.
20 |  mother! Darren Aronofsky's nightmarish allegory about the Bible or fame or inspiration or whatever the viewer takes from it fits squarely in Aronofsky's filmography of extremity. Like so many of his other films, mother! tests the boundaries of heated emotion, pushing his characters past the breaking point. Jennifer Lawrence is on the chopping block this time, driven to madness by the likes of a feline Michelle Pfeiffer and a vain Javier Bardem, amongst many sink-breaking others. The discomfort is intense enough to leave the viewer's head pounding with a stress headache, a little side effect from some powerful medicine. |
 Dunkirk Christopher Nolan's best film equals the spectacle of his Dark Knight trilogy, but it takes a wholly different approach to heroism. No one man is going to staunch the Nazi advance at Dunkirk, to say nothing of the stranded thousands amassed on the beach. Nolan stresses the role of dumb luck in his opening scene. This is a war film that's closer to a horror film. The victory isn't in slaying the monster, but in outlasting it. | 19 |
18 |  Your Name Japan's smash hit anime from Makato Shinkai starts as a straightforward body swap farce, getting laughs from teens waking up and finding themselves in the opposite gender. As it goes on, Your Name gradually worms its way into the viewer's heart as a sweet love story, shot through with Japanese cultural specificity and anime's typical earnestness. Despite the mystical turns the otherwise-contemporary story takes, the film stays grounded in its two main characters, both recognizable and likable as people rather than teen archetypes before culminating in a poignant ending scene. |
 The Lost City of Z James Gray's epic deserves credit for proving that the oft-wooden Charlie Hunnam can deliver a great performance, but that's just one asset in The Lost City of Z. A biopic of English explorer Percy Fawcett, Gray puts the lie to any kind of Western superiority. He opens with a nonsensical aristocratic rite of fox hunting and slights based on ancestry before plunging his characters into the pointless meat grinder of World War I. All this is happening when the South American tribes that Hunnam's Fawcett wants to investigate are being slandered as the know-nothing savages. Beautifully shot and intelligently crafted, The Lost City of Z is that rare thing; a film for adults. | 17 |
16 |  Thor: Ragnarok Marvel had one of its best outputs in 2017, with each of its three releases delivering the jaunty and competent films that fans expect. Thanks to the idioscyncratic tastes of Taika Waititi, the best of the bunch was Thor: Ragnarok. Waititi made a weird film in the vein of James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, both indebted to chintzy space operas caught in the wake of Star Wars and borrowing a silly tone that is perfect for superhero storytelling. Waititi's films are often some of the funniest of the year they come out, with Ragnarok no exception, but for as many jokes and sight gags it crams in, this is also one of the MCU's most thoughtful films, addressing the stories that societies tell about themselves. Stellar casting and an unleashing of Chris Hemsworth's potential as a comic action star seal the deal. |
 The Killing of a Sacred Deer Yorgos Lanthimos' unique brand of deadpan insanity is at its least earthshaking in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, but the man's incapable of making a quotidian film. There aren't any society-altering changes taking place in his transplanting of a Greek myth onto a wealthy American family, beyond Lanthimos' trademark of flat this-is-what's-happening cadence. What the film does contain is a superb breakout role for Barry Keoghan, eerily disconcerting as a needy teenager spending too much time with Colin Farrell's patriarch. Perfect for Lanthimos' growing stable of actors, Keoghan is in control of every aspect of his performance, making a spaghetti breakfast of what's hopefully the first of many collaborations. | 15 |
14 |  Get Out As assured a debut as any, Jordan Peele's Get Out is a film built to last. As perceptive as it is about race and the tragedy of manners black men have to regularly navigate, Peele's also made a crowd-pleasing, can't-miss thrill ride, balancing the medicine with spoonfuls of sugar in the form of judicious laughs and earned scares. Led by exceptional performances from Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams, Get Out will be gracing Oscar clip shows for a very long time. It's the 2017 film most likely to be iconic. |
 My Life As a Zucchini A bracingly unsentimental tale of children betrayed by or separated from the people supposed to take of them, French clay-mation film My Life As a Zucchini acknowledges darkness at what's supposed a bright time. The children at the orphanage where the film takes place are all very much their ages, prone to pillow fights and resistant to bedtimes, but they know too much about the world. They know enough to look longingly through their giant clay eyes at a doting parent and consider why no one's doting on them. There's a deep well of earned sadness here, but sadness easily remedied by some roughhousing. | 13 |
12 |  Jane Composed of recently discovered footage of Jane Goodall's early forays into her chimp investigating, Brett Morgan's documentary is an enthralling and thorough look at an enduring icon of natural science. Morgan tracks the first decade of Goodall's public career through personal and professional accomplishment and setbacks with occasional input from present day Jane. An underdog in the academic community and amongst the public who judge her appearance and her role as a wife and mother, Jane is a photogenic and likable presence, completely at home in the jungle preserve where she does her research. |
 The Big Sick Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon fictionalize the circumstances of their courtship in Michael Showalter's Platonic ideal of a romantic comedy. For a genre so often dinged for its false happy endings and movie-elongating stutter steps and fake conflicts, The Big Sick is a necessary corrective. The hurdle in the relationship, driven by culture clash and dishonesty, is real and palpable, and the film doesn't reunite its couple until both parties are believably onboard with it. The nonsense that consumers have been sold for decades about relationships can only be thwarted by stories rooted in authenticity, though hopefully, future writers of romantic comedies don't have to fall into comas to reach some kind of truth. | 11 |
10 |  Ingrid Goes West The descendant of anti-hero satires like Wolf of Wall Street and Spring Breakers, Ingrid Goes West sets its bar as 'can we make the viewer care about this destructive individual without excusing her behavior?' First-time writer/director Matt Spicer succeeds thanks to the barbed, absurd daring of his script and the wounded magnetism of Aubrey Plaza as Ingrid, a woman obsessed with social media validation in the wake of her mother's death. Introduced assaulting a bride on her wedding day, Ingrid proceeds to walk viewers through her empty and vacuous world, but she cares so much about it, there's a twinge of relief when she experiences some kind of ephemeral success. On an unrelated note, please like the MMC Facebook page. |
 Phantom Thread Paul Thomas Anderson's latest and Daniel Day-Lewis' probable last is objectively the best film of the year. Anderson is in complete control of every frame and every detail, packing the screen with purpose. Phantom Thread is one of his lower stakes entries, as it's set amongst the upper echelons of post-war England, but the pomp and artistry of the film makes every stitch feel meaningful. Day-Lewis is predictably great as famous tailor Reynolds Woodcock, acerbic and funny in his deadpan proclamations, and he's matched by the genuine Vicky Krieps as his love interest and by Lesley Manville, playing the imperious power behind the Woodcock throne. An unimpeachable sound design seals the deal, making a breakfast in the Woodcock home sound exactly as portentous as the beaches of Dunkirk. | 9 |
8 |  The Square As a follow-up to his family drama Force Majeure, Ruben Ostlund shifts his interrogating eye from masculinity to the art world in The Square. Stuffed with ideas from the opening scene to the final one, the film is a thought-provoking exhibit unto itself. As the curator of the Swedish Art Museum, played by Claes Bang, puts out public relations fires and starts some of his own, Ostlund takes hearty swings at the low-hanging fruit that is pretentious intelligentsia. Is it too easy to have a swearing Tourette's sufferer in a press conference for an insufferable capital-A Artist? Probably, but it's incredibly funny as well. |
 Wonderstruck Todd Haynes' homage to free-range parenting in the beautiful Wonderstruck is one of the year's greatest pleasures. He follows two deaf pre-teens, one in the twenties and one in the seventies, as they go on an adventure in New York City, primarily involving museums. This would be a pure delight for Haynes command of silent movies in the 20's section, or for the awe and, uh, wonder that the kids bring to natural history exhibits and curio cabinets. Haynes kicks it into another gear late in the film, triggering the tears and all of a sudden, it's the viewer's turn to be in awe. | 7 |
6 |  Logan Lucky Steven Soderbegh's made half a dozen capers and Logan Lucky has the biggest heart, by far, of all of them. Where the thieves of Ocean's Eleven wanted to rob casinos because they could, the Appalachian masterminds of Logan Lucky are merely trying to persist. They don't have big plans for their lucre, just a continuation of their modest lifestyles freed from the harsh economic conditions of West Virginia. The warmth beating beneath Logan Lucky is complemented by the humor of the film, combining to make Soderbergh's return from his brief retirement the most fun film of the year. |
 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri The film that inspired the most backlash has a hard time disputing the root issues. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri does put its black characters in the background, and it does foreground a racist and abusive cop. Outside of the political realm, it also is either too short to service all its characters or its too long and those underserved characters are unnecessary. In spite of its flaws, Martin McDonagh's film works in spite of its flaws as a rageful howl and a plea for grace. Maybe I'm a sucker for a film that has a blistering monologue aimed at a self-righteous priest. Three Billboards is hardly perfect, but the sharp slap to the face it felt like can't be ignored. | 5 |
4 |  Logan The best superhero movies of the past few years most succeed when they're smaller. The world can't be at stake every time. Nowhere is this more true than in Logan, Hugh Jackman's sorrowful farewell to the character of the Wolverine. No one's going to blow up the earth in James Mangold's masterwork, but if Logan fails to simply get a girl from point A to point B, a cruel world gets a little crueler. The supernaturally long-lived Logan has seen plenty of that cumulative cruelty at the beginning of the film and he'll see some more by the time it's over, but in between is easily the most affecting entry the genre has ever seen. Accompanied on his journey by a ferocious Dafne Keen and a wizened Patrick Stewart, Logan's a road movie to go along with its western and comic book roots. Out of many genres, one of the year's best. |
 Coco Pixar makes one of its best films in Coco, a tremendously warm dedication to Mexican culture and the families that perpetuate it. It's no surprise that a story about life and death from the premiere tear-jerking studio does indeed jerk some tears. What does surprise about Coco is how effortless it's all made to feel. The animation may as well be live-action for how empathetically warm so many of the gestures and actions are. The music that plays such a big part is so elemental and so irresistible from the first note. On the heels of Moana, another deeply-felt film about non-white Western Hemisphere occupants, Disney and Pixar are charting a new course. If the result is as good as Coco, then there's a plucky Inuit protagonist waiting for her story to be told. | 3 |
2 |  Lady Bird A film that continues to rise in my estimation the further away I get from it, Greta Gerwig's directorial debut contains no false notes and could conceivably run for twice its runtime and lose nothing. Despite being about the titular, semi-autobiographical high school senior (Saorsie Ronan), everyone Lady Bird interacts with could get their own film. Her best friend, her drama teacher, her parents, either of her boyfriends, and many more; if Gerwig puts them onscreen, they instantly feel like a lived-in character. There's an embarrassment of riches to be had here. Lady Bird is about a lot of things, one of which is the uselessness of hipster detachment and the value of being genuine. I can genuinely say I love this movie. |
 Raw Julia Ducournau's electrifying debut automatically catapults her into the upper tier of directors. Who could craft this kind of imagery, or even come up with such a potent idea? College is a universal time of awakening and experimentation, and in Raw, Ducournau pushes this to its furthest limit. Where most college students pick up intoxicants or carnality for the first time, Garance Marillier's Justine sees that bet and raises it considerably. Raw takes the viewer down a twisted rabbit hole of depraved body horror, with scene after scene of perfectly-lit extremity. It's ability to shock is bottomless, but it's hardly gore for gore's sake. Ducournau takes a circuitous and counter-intuitive route to make a film about tolerating and parenting an ill child, but she somehow gets there. This is a marvel, full stop. | 1 |
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