10. Baby Driver (dir. Edgar Wright)
Seeing "A Film by Edgar Wright" conjures certain expectations. Best known for his "Cornetto Trilogy" with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World's End), Wright's name immediately conjures expectations of clever action comedies that have a sharp sense of editing and riff on popular genres. Baby Driver, however, is something else. First, it's not a comedy: even though it has funny moments, Wright flexes the genre skills he honed in his earlier satirical films. It's an action movie, but of the old-school variety: Baby (Ansel Elgort) is the getaway driver doing one last job before he's out of his debt to Doc (Kevin Spacey). It's also a musical, not in the sense that characters suddenly break into song, but that music is so essential to the film's style that the soundtrack influenced how Wright and his team assembled the film in the editing bay. The result is a film that buzzes along on its own livewire energy, proprolsively moving forward through a cast - including Jamie Foxx, Eiza González, and Jon Hamm - completely in tune with Wright's rat-a-tat rhythms. In a summer full of by-the-numbers blockbusters, Baby Driver was a welcome burst of ingenuity.
9. Dunkirk (dir. Christopher Nolan)
Speaking of blockbusters, the form's reigning maestro, Christopher Nolan, returned to multiplexes with a curveball from someone best known for making twisty sci-fi extravaganzas: a World War II film. It is always a mistake to assume Nolan would do something straightfoward, however. Focusing on the famed evacuation of British troops - surrounded by German forces - from the French commune of Dunkirk (Dunkerque) in 1940, Dunkirk is Nolan's most pure action film, going long stretches without any dialogue and many scenes where dialogue is barely intelligible. The film vividly conveys the chaos of battle and the scale of the evacuation, in large part thanks to Hoyte Van Hoytema's gorgeous 70mm cinematography (the larger format makes focus sharper within the image, effectively dwarfing characters on the expanse of the beach). The most impressive feature of the film, however, may be its nesting-doll narrative structure following the action from the point of view of soldiers escaping (Fionn Whitehead and Aneurin Barnard), British civilians in personal boats coming across the Channel for assistance (Mark Rylance), and fighter pilots protecting the evacuation from the air (Tom Hardy and Jack Loudon). With a persistently tick-tocking score from Hans Zimmer underlying each, all three threads eventually converge in an exhilarating climax that is at once classically Nolan and unlike anything he's done yet. That serves as perhaps the biggest twist of the film: it makes a well-worn genre feel fresh again.
Numbers 8-1 after the jump.
8. Mudbound (dir. Dee Rees)
Mudbound is based on a novel by Hillary Jordan, yet Rees' film most frequent recalls the work of William Faulkner; in fact, it is a much better evocation of Faulkner's work than most Faulkner adaptations. Set in the Mississippi Delta during World War II, the film chronicles the lives of two families living on a cotton farm: the McAllans, a white family consisting of naïve patriarch Henry (Jason Clarke), his ne'er-do-well brother Jamie (Garrett Dillahunt), his wife Laura (Carey Mulligan), their two daughters, and Henry's racist father Pappy (Jonathan Banks, and the Jacksons, led by Hap (Rob Morgan) and his wife Florence (Mary J. Blige) with their children, the oldest of which, Ronsel (Jason Mitchell), enlists to fight in Europe. Though both families appear to be on a collision course, Rees and co-writer Virgil Williams wisely disseminate the narrative across multiple characters' perspectives, opening the film up and allowing empathy for almost every character. The result, like Faulkner's novels, is a vision of a South crumbling under the weight of a past it refuses to let go of. None of this is as academic as it sounds, however, as the film is anchored by a number of fine performances, including Mulligan, Blige, and especially Mitchell, as well as gorgeous cinematography from Rachel Morrison. Like Dunkirk, it's a refreshing take on an old-fashioned genre.
7. Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele)
Like Edgar Wright, Peele was previously known for his comedy as one half of Key & Peele. Any fan of that Comedy Central sketch show knows that Peele is an avid cinephile and a fine satirist, drawing on a number of genres to parody over the course of the show's five seasons. And similar to Wright's Baby Driver, fans of Peele's work could have hardly expected the straight-faced horror on display in his feature debut, Get Out. Described by Peele as a "social thriller," the film follows Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) as he visits the family of his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) in upstate New York, only to discover that these seemingly-liberal folks harbor a sinister secret. Completed before the 2016 election, the film nonetheless feels like a response to that night, as evidenced by the plethora of "Sunken Place" memes throughout 2017. That's a testament to the way the film weaponizes horror conventions to perform a powerful interrogation of race in 21st century America, particularly the strand of white liberals who reveal themselves to be less progressive than they care to admit. Yet it's a testament to everyone involved, from Peele's masterful direction and script to Kaluuya's alternatively incredulous and scared-shitless performance, as well as the remarkable work by Williams, Bradley Whitford, and Catherine Keener as Rose's family and Betty Gabriel as their off-center housekeeper, that the film never feels like a lecture (LilRel Howery's comic relief as Chris' TSA agent best friend cuts the tension without detracting from it, itself a remarkable feat). No film seemed like it had a finger on the country's pulse this year quite the way Get Out did, and it was all the better for it.
6. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (dir. Rian Johnson)
Star Wars, at its core, has always been a series about myths. Earnest heroes are locked in a conflict of clear good and evil, fighting for valor and principle against an enemy that favors darkness and death. This was true of the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, and The Force Awakens, all of them dealing, to a great degree, with the dramas of the Skywalker family and its centrality to this galactic conflict. The Last Jedi, written and directed by Johnson, proved divisive among fans for the very reason that it shows up on this list: it is at once one of the most entertaining Star Wars films to date but also interrogates and dismantles its own myths. This is a film that dares to reveal its heroes as human beings, prone to mistakes and regrets. This is a film that cynically examines the failures of previous generations in this conflict, and how the next generation will try to do things differently. But above all, it's a rip-roaring adventure that finds the Rebellion cornered by the First Order while Rey (Daisy Ridley) trains with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). The film is loaded with great performances from John Boyega, Oscar Issac, Ridley, Adam Driver, Kelly Marie Tran, Carrie Fischer, Hamill, and Laura Dern (the fact that this is a Star Wars movie with Laura Dern also contributes to its placement on this list). Oh, and there are the porgs, the latest edition of cuteness to a universe stuffed with cute creatures that annoy the fanboys but sell tons of toys. But the key to it all is Johnson's direction, which keeps things moving even as the film passes the two-and-a-half hour mark. This is blockbuster filmmaking at its finest.
5. Logan (dir. James Mangold)
The common knock against superhero films is that they're all factory-made spectacles that have very little substance. Overall, I disagree (I am writing my dissertation on superhero films, after all), but there is a very valid point that most films follow the same basic narrative: build character and conflict in the first two acts, while reverting to CGI mayhem in the third act. It's a formula that Marvel has perfected and that DC cribbed (it's really the only thing that kept Wonder Woman off this list). Logan, however, is something different. Serving as Hugh Jackman's (alleged) swan song as his most well-known character, the film finds Logan, aka Wolverine (Jackman), hiding out in the Mexican desert with a dying Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart, magnificent). Mutants have been largely exterminated, but when a young girl (Dafne Keen) with very familiar abilities falls into his care, Logan embarks on a journey to protect his loved ones from sinister forces hunting them down. Logan filters the superhero story through a Western lens, with Mangold hewing to the conventions of the latter genre as a way of opening up these characters in ways previously ignored. The film also embraces the brutality of Wolverine's carnage, fully earning its R rating but also weighing the impact of its violence. The superhero film's dominance over Hollywood shows no sign of ebbing soon, but Logan provides a beacon of hope for what these films can become when the formula is, at the very least, modified.
4. The Shape of Water (dir. Guillermo Del Toro)
Del Toro may be modern cinema's preeminent creator of fairy tales. Many of his most beloved films, from The Devil's Backbone to Pan's Labyrinth, take on the form of a Brothers Grimm tale filtered through classic monster movies, and The Shape of Water is no different. In the 1950s, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute housekeeper at a secret government facility, falls in love with an aquatic creature (Del Toro muse Doug Jones) that will supposed help America win the Cold War, according to deranged authoritarian Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon). It is, in many ways, "Beauty and the Beast" with a fishman, except that the film goes to a place previous iterations of the story (especially the Disney versions) would never dare. Moreover, it stands out as the queerest film in Del Toro's oeuvre, and not just because of the prominent role given to Elisa gay neighbor/best friend Giles (Richard Jenkins). The film is brimming with non-normative love and a group of marginalized people (disabled, women, queer, black) fighting back against a toxic white man (though it should be noted that the queer romance being between a human and a "monster" carries certain connotations that trouble this reading). Yet the true love story in the film may be Del Toro's love of cinema: Elisa lives in an apartment above a movie theater, and one breathless sequences make a solid case for the filmmaker to try his hand at an Astaire/Rogers-type musical. Like the best fairy tales, the film is dark, but it casts a powerful spell.
Despite the title, A Ghost Story is not a horror film (not a traditional one, anyway). Borrowing equally from David Gordon Green's independent features and Terence Malick's magnum opus The Tree of Life, Lowrey's film traces the haunting of a house from C's (Casey Affleck) death through...well, quite possibly the history of the universe. Portraying the ghost as a person in a bedsheet (complete with eyeholes) sounds laughable on paper, yet in the hands of Lowrey and the performer (it's questionable whether Affleck is really under the sheet the whole time) it becomes one of the year's most empathetic characters. Rooney Mara delivers a quietly devastating performance as M, C's widow, and Will Oldham's (Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy) scene-stealing mid-film monologue provides a possible avenue for understanding everything that follows. This ghost story isn't likely to be retold around campfires, but it possesses enough wonder, longing, and thoughtfulness to merit viewing.
2. Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig)
"I wish I could live through something," Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) declares early in Gerwig's magnificent film after listening to Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men on book-on-tape. It's a doubly loaded statement: the film is set in Sacramento in 2002, meaning much of Lady Bird's young adult life will be defined by two foreign wars, the Internet boom, and the Great Recession. But it also sounds exactly like an American teenager, blissfully ignorant of the realization that adolescence is definitely something you live through. Lady Bird's senior year of high school - a Catholic school - is complete with fights with her best friend (Beanie Feldman), the beginning of a new friendship with a popular girl (Odeya Rush), two relationships with rough but different endings (Lucas Hedges and Timothée Chalamet), and a contentious relationship with her mother (Laurie Metcalf). Gerwig demonstrates a generous gift as a director, giving beautiful moments to a plethora of characters while empathizing with almost everyone onscreen. The film's depiction of a working-class family making ends meet is refreshingly honest, as is Lady Bird's acne. And the film is brimming with great performances, especially Ronan - who is among the very best actors working right now, period - and Metcalf, a veteran of television and Broadway who is simply incredible. The film's final scene may be among the most heartbreaking and tender of the year. It's rare to find a coming-of-age film this fully in-tune with its subject, humanely and lovingly presented in all of her contradictions.
1. mother! (dir. Darren Aronofsky)
What sort of Faustian bargain did Aronofsky sign to get this film made and distributed by Paramount, a major Hollywood studio? Or was it, perhaps, the reverse? Either way, it is remarkable that mother! exists in a system dedicated to sprawling franchises with bloated budgets and maximum international appeal. Aronofsky's latest film may be his most audacious, casting Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem as a couple in a secluded home weathering a barrage of visitors and intruders. Bardem oozes negligent charm as a gaslighting writer who relishes the spotlight, while Lawrence - in what may be the most remarkable turn of her career - buckles under the weight of everything thrown at her, a decidedly non-star performance that fully captivates. Critics have alternatively interpreted the film as a Bibilical allegory, an environmental parable, a Marxist history of civilization, and a maternal horror film. It's probably all of the above: a film about creation doused in kerosene and cynically set ablaze (the film's opening and closing images imply a nihilistic cruelty that's strong even for Aronofsky). What it certainly is, however, is an uncompromising, provocative, and delirious pipe-bomb of a film coming from the heart of the Hollywood system. It is also the year's best film. Even in a year as drunk as 2017, that's a remarkable and wholly unexpected achievement.
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