It’s pretty much impossible to write a year-end review of 2017 without acknowledging what a tremendously massive shit-show this entire year was. So there it is. Let’s just get that out of the way now. 2017 was awful, but miraculously we’re still here. We haven’t exploded in a nuclear holocaust, no matter how many times we might have begged for the end. It was a stupendously stupid year to be alive. It was a year that began with an openly racist, xenophobic reality show host with signs of dementia being sworn in as President of the United States and ended with an emotional viral video of a bullied kid demanding to know why kids were putting ham in his clothes, only to be outed as a racist who was being bullied because he’s, well… apparently super racist.
Nazis marching in the streets with tiki torches. Dumb Watergate. The deadliest modern mass shooting in US history (for now). A tax bill unapologetically aimed at destroying poor peoples’ lives. Massive fires and hurricanes. A movie about emojis. Fucking Bill Paxton died. Oh, and every famous white male you might have respected or admired is probably a scumbag.
That last part is actually a good thing. In fact, one of the worst parts of finding out Louis C.K. and “Insert Your Favorite Actor Here” are predatory scumbags is the inevitable series of conversations you have to endure with your white friends who want to tell you why non-consensual masturbation in front of a woman or you know, raping someone, is just a character defect and that “we’re all human”. Really, this year taught me the power of unfriending, unfollowing or a good old fashion face to face “Go fuck yourself”. It’s sad but ultimately satisfying to weed out the racist, sexist, scummy people in your life you never knew existed.
Anyway, you came here to read about film or television or just to skim through my list and see what you agreed with or want to call me an idiot for including. That’s okay too! I enjoy writing about film because I love film. Writing, directing, acting, editing, anything creative, I love it. Watching film, analyzing it, talking endlessly about it and alienating strangers in the process of doing so. This year, I saw nearly 100 films released in 2017 (I know, this is why I’m still horribly in debt, it’s okay.) Of those films, I decided to write about 25 of my favorites and then a few others. Below that, there’s some smaller write-ups on some of my favorite series of the year. Maybe you’ll read this far, maybe you won’t. Either way, I hope you see some things you haven’t seen and can maybe discover somewhere down the road.
So here’s a list of favorites that will obviously include Paul Thomas Anderson and “Good Time”. Enjoy.
Michal Marczak’s pulsating, rhythmic love letter to youth and aimlessness plays out like the film Terrence Malick has been striving to make since “The Tree of Life”. A free-spirited ode to long nights and the existential conversations between friends and strangers that links them all together, “All These Sleepless Nights” is the cinematic equivalent of listening to LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” on repeat. I don’t think any film has captured what it’s like to be on drugs, recounting events from the not-so-distant past this accurately in some time, if ever.
Streaming on Netflix.
An indictment of upper-class miserabilism and political detachment, the film uses the disappearance of a child to explore the spiteful relationship between a divorced couple and the satisfaction they’ll never receive from life. It’s two of the bleakest hours you’ll ever spend in a theater, but for the patient, possibly masochistic viewer, they’re also two of the most rewarding hours you’ll have all year.
Coming to US theaters in March 2018.
Bong Joon-ho’s latest genre mash-up is a modern satire of capitalism and faux-liberalism and the best summer blockbuster you didn’t get to experience in a theater. But the two of the most talked about parts of “Okja” had nothing to do with the director or the adorable overgrown pig at the center of it all. First, there was the unfortunate circumstance of the films release. Like dozens of other titles released by the streaming giant this year, “Okja” was the most unfairly dumped. A crowd-pleaser that deserves to be seen on the big screen with a packed house, the film is now lost in the endless catalogue of streaming titles you’ll be lucky to stumble upon at one in the morning while browsing for something to fall asleep to.
Then there’s that wacky Jake Gyllenhaal performance that doesn’t chew the scenery as much as it completely devours everything in its path, taking over the entire film anytime he’s on screen. It’s debatably a bad performance… if that was an actor’s first major role. But I would argue that because it’s Jake Gyllenhaal, a performer who has climbed to the top ranks of working actors, it’s actually a brilliant performance. He took an opportunity to work with a director known for conjuring batshit performances out of his actors and ran with it, delivering a performance some actors wouldn’t be brave or confident enough to give in a scene study class and fucking knocked it out of the park.
Streaming on Netflix.
Also known as the movie where Rooney Mara eats a pie for five unbroken minutes, David Lowery’s secretive, shoestring budget “A Ghost Story” is so much more than you’re able to grasp in a single viewing. A haunting and mournful look at what it means to be alive and the precious time we’re given on this Earth, Lowery risks being ridiculed by following a dead man under a sheet for 90 minutes and ends up with something truly sublime.
Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Noah Baumbach has become one of the most consistently reliable writer/directors working today as he’s graduated from prodding the internal misery of intellectuals to finding the whimsical, humanistic side of their misery, revealing a much more mature and mainstream director in the process. That’s not to denounce any of Baumbach’s earlier efforts as anything less than exceptional, but Baumbach appears to have found a groove in the last five years that has been the most prolific of his career thus far. “The Meyerowitz Stories” works as well as it does because it finds a way to marry the best of both worlds for Baumbach. It’s filled with disappointment, disillusionment and artistic frustrations, but it’s also deeply human and painfully relatable.
Baumbach also gives an overdue and necessary showcase for Adam Sandler to show off once again that he’s one of the most effortlessly interesting actors in American film. I’ve argued for years that Sandler is one of the most dramatically undervalued actors in the industry, and not just because of his career-crowning work in “Punch-Drunk Love”, but because even in his weakest comedies (and there are plenty) he still possesses an uncanny ability to channel depression in ways most actors can only scratch the surface of.
Streaming on Netflix.
Eliza Hittman’s “Beach Rats” could have been a breakout sensation at the Sundance Film Festival in the late 90’s or early 2000’s, but today it got unfairly lost in the shuffle of summer indies. Featuring a breakout, revelatory central performance by Harris Dickinson, Hittman’s slow-burn study of masculinity is a film that feels like another step in the right direction for LGBTQ films in this era. It doesn’t preach or give its central character an obvious arc towards coming out, it gives a stone-cold look at the reality of its protagonist. “Beach Rats” is a defining film in modern queer cinema because of its authenticity, but also its brutal honesty and portrayal of modern masculinity in American culture.
Available to rent on iTunes and Amazon Video
There’s not much more that can be added to the conversation of Jordan Peele’s breakout, surprise hit “Get Out”. It’s really the most thematically essential piece of filmmaking to come out this year and it’s a conversation starter that’s also a massive, crossover hit. Is it acomedy? A satire? A social horror film? It’s all of that and more. It’s not without its flaws and I do think the ending is abrupt, but no other film launched more think-pieces this year than “Get Out”. In the age of Trump and centrist, neo-liberalism, I can’t think of a more important film to not only skewer the racism on display from the right we’ve seen for ages, but also the closeted, deep-seated racism of the Bill Maher watching left that has gone unchecked for far too long.
Streaming on HBO GO.
Few films this year took me on the emotional and intellectual journey that “Nocturama” did. An often mesmerizing, complex, yet frustrating thriller set in the aftermath of a terrorist attack conducted by a team of young Parisians, Bertrand Bonello’s newest outing is a film that might actually work better as a thesis than an actual cinematic experience, but that’s entirely up to the viewer to decide what they take away from it. The film’s handling of mass consumption in a capitalistic society sometimes veers on the obvious side, but Bonello posits questions for the viewer that few films, especially American films, are interested in asking. Employing De Palma-esque imagery with the dread-inducing tension of paranoia thrillers from the 1970’s, Bonello shines a depressingly acute light on a the age of mass-consumerism. A film that’s angry, meditative and ultimately tragic because it skewers our idea of what it means to protest and rally against a system that’s already got us firmly in its grips.
Streaming on Netflix.
In an age of Walter White, Don Draper and every character in Nic Pizzolato’s toxic wasteland of unfettered masculinity, I can’t express how refreshing it is to see a woman get the opportunity to be the anti-hero. From the surface, “I, Tonya” might be the “Goodfellas of figure skating” it’s been hailed as, but on closer inspection, Craig Gillespie’s satirical black comedy is one of the boldest and unflinching looks at sexism and domestic violence put on film in ages. The trick that Gillespie manages to pull off is that he made a film that’s so entertaining, absurdly funny and stylistically exciting, you don’t notice how fucking brutal the violence in film really is. He presents domestic violence and abuse as just another component of our protagonist’s life. The normalization of violence against women has never been as unflinching and shocking as it is here, because Gillespie doesn’t sugarcoat or fetishize it. It’s a subtle piece of directing in a film that is anything but.
In select theaters now.
Parental poisoning, excess wealth gone wrong, desperate pleas to be murdered and the most depressing karaoke scene ever put on film. Who needs the Marvel cinematic universe when you can have the cynical, sadistic cinematic universe of Michael Haneke? One of the best living directors summoned all of his best skills as a director, including the magnificent brilliance of Isabelle Huppert, and made a greatest hits collection of his nihilistic cinema. It’s pure Haneke and the funniest film of the year.
Showing at the Laemmle Royal in West Los Angeles.
Koganada’s debut feature “Columbus” is a masterclass in silence. The way the film values silence and the spaces we occupy is astonishing, especially for a first-time filmmaker. It’s rare to see a film that can completely enrapture you with its delicate attention to character and setting and actually takes its time. It avoids every Sundance indie cliché every step of the way and gives John Cho the chance to shine in a way he’s never been able to. It’s a force of nature you never see coming.
Available to rent on iTunes and Amazon.
Much like it’s breakout lead actress, “Lady Macbeth” is beautiful, cold and calculating. It’s a film that preys on the viewers expectations of morality and through the brilliant, fierce performance of newcomer Florence Pugh, it’s a film that also operates as a fascinating, chilling character study. William Oldroyd carefully plays his audience, withdrawing sympathy where you usually expect, only to tread down morally murky waters in its second half with a winking, darkly comic nod throughout.
Available to rent on iTunes and Amazon.
I can’t think of a more winning combination of personalities this year than that of veteran filmmaker Agnes Varda and prolific French artist JR. A film that is teeming with warmth, vitality and wisdom, “Faces Places” is so much more than the best documentary of 2017. It’s a 90 minute travelogue through France that explores generational artistry, the overlooked work forces of the world and the very definition of what art means to all of us. If you’re looking for a bright spot in the shitshow of 2017, look no further than this quietly affecting ode to the journey of life.
Coming soon to rent on iTunes and Amazon.
Sofia Coppola abandoned some of her earlier defining stylistic qualities and went full trash for her newest, a darkly funny and absurd period drama about a household full of Civil War-era women fawning over the recent arrival of an injured soldier. The result is her best film since “Lost in Translation” and a welcome change of pace in her career.
Available to rent on iTunes and Amazon.
Edgar Wright has been making some of the most technically efficient, well-oiled machines of the 21st century for over a decade now, but with “Baby Driver”, he’s made his masterpiece. A thrilling, cinematic ballet of kinetic energy and technical prowess, “Baby Driver” feels like the film Wright has been working towards for years now. A dazzling marriage of everything you love about going to the movies, backed by a killer soundtrack and some of the best modern chase sequences committed to celluloid, “Baby Driver” is Edgar Wright’s firing on all cylinders and its a beautiful thing to behold.
Available to rent on iTunes and Amazon.
What qualifies as a creative success? There’s the obvious subjectivity of personal taste, obviously. But if a piece of art is able to illicit a passionate emotional response from you, has it succeeded? I don’t know the answer and I’d hate to say that “Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri” is a success because it was able to stew negative, outraged feelings inside of me for weeks on end, but it did leave a mark on me. With Darren Aronofsky’s ambitious, pretentious and batshit allegory “mother!”, the patience of millions of viewers was tested. Watching the film, I was utterly transfixed and bowled over by the bonkers display of craftsmanship, comedy and dedication on display, but by the last 30 minutes, I felt exhausted. I felt like I just had Darren Aronofsky beat me unconscious the way an angry group of fans beat Jennifer Lawrence’s central character in a particularly upsetting and unnecessary moment towards the end.
But when the credits rolled and half the audience started boo’ing — something I’ve never actually witnessed in a theater — I realized something… I think I kind of liked it. I think I liked being taken on a ride and laughing at some of the sickest, most sadistic shit ever backed by a major studio. I think I liked the self-aware depiction of male artistry and ego. I think I liked Jennifer Lawrence’s purposefully stilted, melodramatic delivery. I know I loved Michelle Pfieffer’s best performance in more than a decade. I know I just experienced something unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life. I know the ending is silly and as pretentious as the scarfs Aronofsky wraps himself up in during press interviews. But… I fucking liked it. It stayed with me. It effected me. It left my friends and I in a state of passionate disagreement for an hour after the film ended. It made people fucking angry. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film cause this much of an uproar and divide people into a love it or hate it camp the way “mother!” did. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s a committed film and it owns its mad, fucked up vision. We get bullshit from Marvel and Disney spoon-fed to us several times a year with the same regurgitated arcs and endings and franchise tie-ins. So when we get a gonzo black comedy from one of the biggest studios in the world about the destruction of Earth featuring Kristin Wiig executing people in the midst of the apocalypse, I say thank you.
Robin Campillo’s cinematic gut-punch about the AIDS crisis in 1990’s France is one of the most searing, devastating pieces of filmmaking to come around in a long time. A film that slowly builds you up, inundating you with facts and debates, only to sideswipe you with a hurricane of emotions in the final act. It’s the only film this year I was grateful to watch at home, because it gave me the opportunity to take a step back and breathe in the middle of it. Campillo’s stunningly authentic and compassionate direction is particularly highlighted in the way he lingers on the smallest moments in relationships, knowing that those fleeting moments are the vital memories we cherish the most.
Coming in January to rent on iTunes and Amazon.
Denis Villeneuve made the most ambitious, intelligent and patient blockbuster in ages and it was completely forgotten. It barely made a dent at the box office and while most critics backed it, it has sadly been ignored and left for dead at the end of 2017. For shame, because “Blade Runner 2049” is the rare sequel that doesn’t feel like a cynical cash-grab. It’s a three hour detective story that faithfully, but organically follows in the steps of its predecessor, without ever feeling like fan-service. It’s the opposite of the new “Star Wars” films. It respects its audience, but it doesn’t indulge in their nostalgic desires. It wants to be its own thing and with Villeneuve on board, the film is its own beast. A visually arresting, surprisingly emotionally adept, dread-filled sci-fi masterwork about existential anxiety that, in my humble opinion, stands head and shoulder above the original.
Available to rent on iTunes and Amazon.
A calculating, manipulative teenager infiltrates a doctor’s life to seek revenge for his father’s death by psychologically and emotionally blackmailing him, resulting in the funniest spin on “Sophie’s Choice” ever put on film. It also features a monologue about an incestual hand-job and a fetish for anesthetized sex. In other words, it’s another diabolically creepy, savagely funny chapter in the career of Yorgos Lanthimos. It’s gleefully fucked up, keeping you enraptured in his windy road of perversion and sadism for the entirety of its gloriously batshit two hours.
Available to rent on iTunes and Amazon.
“Lady Bird” is a perfect screenplay. Every line counts. Every character is a fully-dimensional human being that we’ve all encountered in our lives. It makes brilliant use of its 2002 setting, littering the film with just the right amount of specificity and nostalgia. It gives Saorise Ronan another opportunity to prove she’s probably the next Meryl Streep. It’ll give Laurie Metcalf the career recognition she’s long deserved. It’ll make you miss your childhood and wanna hug your mother. It’ll warm even the most cynical of hearts. It will further establish Greta Gerwig as one of the the most unique voices of her generation and make you excited for whatever she does next. And against all odds, it will give you a newfound appreciation for Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash”.
Now playing in theaters nationwide.
I’m a major advocate of the second viewing for almost any film. The circumstances of watching a film can make or break it in some cases. You can wait in line for hours. You can rush in and miss the opening scene. You can be carried in on the hype train and leave majorly disappointed because you feel like you haven’t seen the film you were told you would. So many factors can contribute to one’s enjoyment of a film.
When I first saw “Dunkirk”, I felt the latter. I saw in the Cinerama Dome in 70MM on opening night with a surge of excitement and I left feeling like I’d seen a different film than most of the population. For months, I wondered if maybe I just didn’t get it or maybe this was another case of “Boyhood”, where no matter what awards and accolades were bestowed upon the film, I simply would never come around to it. But I went back for a second round. I sat in one of the front rows in a half-filled theater on Christmas Day and revisited Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” in 70MM with one of the best sound systems in LA. Everything had changed. The nagging feelings I had throughout my first viewing had dissipated and were replaced by a complete awe of the spectacle I was witnessing. It was fucking bliss. The “you are there” sound design, the clock-ticking score from Hans Zimmer, the gorgeous blue hues shot by Hoyte von Hoytema. The structure I was frustrated by before became essential to my enjoyment of the film. It was a complete 180 for me. I left in a daze, utterly transfixed and dazzled by what Nolan had accomplished. It was that same excitement you get when you’re a kid being completely transported to another world where you don’t think about the mechanics of the filmmaking. You’re just in it. That was the feeling I was looking for the first time, but it took some distance and time to find it the second time. For whatever reason, everything clicked for me and I now consider it to be Christopher Nolan’s most accomplished film. It’s spare, relentless, devoid of his usual exposition, impeccably acted across the board and didn’t leave me feeling cold. I left alive and inspired and grateful for the gift of cinema.
Available to rent on iTunes and Amazon, but please for the love of god, try to see this in a theater if you can.
There’s a giddy sensation I felt about 30 minutes into “Phantom Thread” when I realized Paul Thomas Anderson had not made the Oscar-friendly, restrained period piece that was hinted at in the trailers. Only a master of their craft can have this effect on you. To lead you down a road, promise you one thing and continue to pleasantly surprise you at every twist and turn. Anderson has been making consistently brilliant films for twenty years now and to see the diversity and range of his skills over that time has been astonishing. From the sprawling, epic ensembles of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia” to the off-kilter love story of “Punch-Drunk Love” and the impenetrable, ambiguous nature of “The Master”, Anderson has zig-zagged through genres, refusing to be pinned down.
With “Phantom Thread”, Anderson has put his own spin on the Merchant Ivory period piece, the costume drama, the artist story and the romantic comedy. Exploring male ego, the demands and obsessions of being an artist and toxic relationships through the backdrop of 1950’s couture London and still managing to put his own definitive stamp on the film is a just another major accomplishment in the career of our generations best. But what’s so thrilling about watching “Phantom Thread” is that he can continue to subvert how we watch films and what we expect from them. Anderson can take us on a journey and write stories that are outside his wheelhouse, but can still subtly sprinkle insights into his own psychology and insecurities throughout.
In “Sydney”, he showed us a man seeking a father figure. In “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia”, he showed us a piece of his family and upbringing. With “Punch-Drunk Love”, we get a glimpse of Anderson’s deepest insecurities and battles with rage. With “The Master”, his stubbornness. And with “There Will Be Blood” and “Phantom Thread”, we see his own internal struggle with ego and obsession. Through the eyes of determined men guided by their own self-preservation, we get conflicting, often vulnerable insights into Anderson’s process and artistic ambitions. But in “Phantom Thread”, he acknowledges the weakness of the male artistic ego better than any director has in recent memory. He shows us a man obsessed with his work, his name and his legacy who longs to be loved and coddled and nurtured, but only when its convenient for him. The magic of “Phantom Thread” is that Anderson puts his protagonist up against a stronger woman with equal determination, who understands his games and knows how to win. A period piece, costume drama, relationship comedy and haunted house film all rolled into one, watching “Phantom Thread” is one of the greatest cinematic pleasures of 2017.
See it in 70MM at the Arclight Hollywood or Landmark West LA.
Sean Baker has been making films for almost twenty years now but you might not know it. In the last several years, he’s began cultivating a distinct eye for stories about people living on the margins of society. In 2012, he focused on the amateur porn industry in the San Fernando Valley with the heartfelt and unexpectedly touching “Starlet”. In 2015, he made noise at the Sundance Film Festival with his first major breakout (shot entirely on the iPhone 5s), “Tangerine” by shining a light on the transgender community in Los Angeles. With “The Florida Project”, Baker’s first major seven digit budgeted feature, he’s made his best film to date. A sun-drenched fairytale grounded in a gritty reality, Baker’s sixth feature film feels like the his coming out to the mainstream in the best way possible. Making the leap from iPhone to anamorphic 35MM, Baker and his superb DP Alexis Zabe perfectly capture a lost summer where fantasy and reality collide, slowly building towards a rapturous, ambitious and controversial finale. A film of infinite, vibrant power and one that will surely solidify Sean Baker as one of the distinguished, exciting voices in independent film.
Still playing in very limited release, but coming soon to rent on iTunes and Amazon.
“Most of us can’t help but live as though we’ve got two lives to live, one is the mock-up, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there’s only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there’s sorrow. I don’t envy the pain. But I envy you the pain.”
Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name” will fill your heart and enrapture you with the feelings of love found and lost and then quietly, but severely break your heart into a million pieces. It’s impossible to list off everything that’s so special about “Call Me by Your Name”, but I remember leaving the theater completely refreshed by the fact that I just saw a queer film that was simply a love story. It didn’t trap its characters in the “will they get caught?” sub-plot. We never feel the danger of violent repercussions for their relationship. We’re simply invested in a story of two men who have fallen in love over the course of one summer and know deep down, it must come to an end. Guadagnino’s film is one of striking, incomprehensible beauty. It captures the feeling of falling in love like no other film in recent memory. The excitement, the longing, the carefully timed glances, the silliness of it, the inevitable heartbreak of it all. It made me grateful for the love I’ve felt in my own life, the heartbreak I’ve grown from and unlike any other film this year, it made me happy to be alive.
Showing in limited release.
Every year, there’s at least one film that I become borderline obsessed with. In 2010, I watched David Fincher’s “The Social Network” six times in theaters. In 2011, “Drive” was all the buzz. In 2013, “Inside Llewyn Davis” became my ultimate comfort film that I watched repeatedly every night before bed. Last year, “Moonlight” brought life and affirmation to the end of a shitshow of a year. In May, I woke up one morning and watched the trailer for the new Safdie Brothers film “Good Time”. The moment I heard Robert Pattinson‘s spot-on Brooklyn accent utter the words “You’re incredible”, I was on board. Then after a thirty-second intro, the enigmatic voice of Iggy Pop emerges over an immediately haunting piano track from Oneohtrix Point Never. I got chills. The neon-soaked cinematography of Sean Price Williams. The desperation Robert Pattinson oozed on screen. It felt dangerous. More dangerous than any American film in some time. It was love at first sight.
Two and a half months later, I’m sitting in the Arclight in Hollywood watching an advanced screening of “Good Time” with a packed theater filled with middle-age Robert Pattinson groupies who don’t have the slightest inclination of the on-screen transformation they’re about to witness.
Within the first five minutes of “Good Time”, you know pretty much everything you need to know about Connie and Nick Nikas. They’re Greek-American brothers living in Queens, New York who dream of a better life. Nick is mentally handicap and Connie is his protector. They want to escape. They want to be free of the roles society has given them. Victims of circumstance. Victims of their own environment. The next 95 minutes is a race against the clock, all-night descent into madness and late night depravity in the tradition of “After Hours” and “48 Hours”, a grimy and detailed depiction of New York crime and desperation a la Abel Ferrara and a timely indictment of the judicial system and capitalist failures in America. In short, “Good Time” is a product of its time and a product of its influences. The Safdies have such an infinite, rich knowledge and love of cinema that they bring to the table but they also so clearly have their finger on the pulse of this generation, that everything they put on the screen feels 100% them. Like Sean Baker with “The Florida Project, “Good Time” was the Safdie’s coming out party. It was their announcement to the mainstream. It’s the feeling you might have gotten watching “Taxi Driver” in the 70’s or “Boogie Nights” in the 90’s. You know you’re in the hands of a gifted filmmaker, in this case two gifted filmmakers, who know exactly what they want and exactly how to get it. They’ve made a film that’s instantly iconic and will excite a whole new generation of filmmakers.
Sometimes you hype yourself up so much on a film, it’s impossible for it to live up to your expectations. “Good Time” not only lived up to my highest expectations, it shattered them and reawakened something in me I hadn’t felt in quite some time. It made me excited to make films again. It made me excited to discover films I had never seen like I was a teenager in a video store again. It gave me hope for the future of cinema. “Good Time” is an electric shock of cinema in its rawest and most exciting form. It’s the kind of urgent, uncompromising, bold and relentless filmmaking we need right now. The Safdies represent a new tide in cinema and might just be the future of it.
Now available to rent on iTunes and Amazon. Coming in February to Amazon Prime.
The Best of the Rest
“Donald Cried”, Kris Avedisian
“Happy Death Day”, Christopher Landon
“Dawson City: Frozen Time”, Bill Morrison
“The Lost City of Z”, James Gray
“Rat Film”, Theo Anthony
“A Cure for Wellness”, Gore Verbinski
“The Disaster Artist”, James Franco
“Stronger”, David Gordon Green
“Strong Island”, Yance Ford
“Molly’s Game”, Aaron Sorkin
“Logan”, James Mangold
“John Wick: Chapter 2”, Chad Stahelski
Best Director
Luca Guadagnino, “Call Me by Your Name”
Best Actor
Robert Pattinson, “Good Time”
Best Actress
(tie) Vicky Krieps, “Phantom Thread”
Florence Pugh, “Lady Macbeth”
Margot Robbie, “I, Tonya”
Best Supporting Actor
Barry Keoghan, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”
Best Supporting Actress
Michelle Pfieffer, “mother!”
Best Foreign-Language Film
“BPM (Beats Per Minute)”, Robin Campillo
Best Documentary Feature Film
“Faces Places”, Agnes Varda & JR
Best First Feature Film
“Columbus”, Kogonada
Best Ensemble Cast
“Lady Bird”
Best Original Screenplay
Greta Gerwig, “Lady Bird”
Best Adapted Screenplay
James Ivory, “Call Me by Your Name”
Best Original Score
Oneohtrix Point Never, “Good Time”
Best Cinematography
Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, “Call Me By Your Name”
Best Film Editing
Paul Machliss, “Baby Driver”
Most Underrated Films
“A Cure for Wellness”, Gore Verbinski
(Besides “mother!”, this was the most bonkers studio released film of 2017. It’s trashy material gorgeously dressed up by Gore Verbinski and Bojan Bazelli. Seek this one out where you can because it’s a blast.)
“Happy Death Day”, Christopher Landon
(A throwback to 90’s slasher films with a fresh, fun script that gives its central character a depth that most modern horror films wouldn’t dream of. Genuinely well made, exciting, hysterical and refreshing in the age of found footage and bleak indie horror.)
I didn’t watch a majority of TV shows this year. Who can? There’s seemingly a dozen shows dropping every week on multiple streaming platforms, it’s nearly impossible to catch up. While there were a handful of returning series that continued killing it (“Better Call Saul”, “Baskets”) and some that felt like they were spinning the wheels despite their undeniable achievements (“The Americans”, this year I picked ten series that stayed with me more than any others in 2017.
HBO started out 2017 with a truly fucking insane mini-series about the contradictions of faith, seen through a pitch-black, absurdist filter. It occasionally felt like Paolo Sorrentino was playing a multi-million dollar, elaborate prank on his audience, while other times it felt like the bravest thing HBO had ever produced. Jude Law gave his best performance in over a decade as a morally conflicted, vengeful and spiteful pope having something along the lines of a crisis of faith and existential crisis. Far from perfect, but without a doubt the most audacious thing a prestige network was willing to let loose on the world, that wasn’t created by David Lynch.
Like an American answer to the upper-class miserablism seen in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Loveless”, the second season of STARZ’s criminally underseen series “The Girlfriend Experience” tackled two unrelated stories that couldn’t have felt more timely. Returning directors Amy Seimetz and Lodge Kerrigan spun two very different tales of misogyny, corruption and greed over the course of 14 episodes, both connected by their bleak visions of sex and toxicity in 2017. Kerrigan’s story in particular was exciting because it felt like a vintage Brian De Palma story seen through a 2000’s era Fincher lens, giving it just the right amount of sleaze and detachment. Seimetz’s story occasionally veered off course, but its portrayal of the stupidity and desperation of men in the face of a beautiful woman was pitch-perfect. It also provided the most inspired casting of any show in 2017 with Harmony Korine’s guest role as a sexually insecure, suspiciously friendly self-help guru.
What would happen if Alfred Hitchcock directed an episode of “Girls”? A bizarre question, but one that could be met with one answer: TBS’s super underrated comeback season of “Search Party”. No, it’s not a cinematic masterclass in tension like a Hitchcock thriller but it’s way better than any season of “Girls” by a long shot. It skewers the delusional millenial entitlement that “Girls” helped normalize, but still manages to make you care about the characters even when you’re cringing at their behavior. The second season was darker, funnier and raised the stakes, discovering exciting new roads to lead its self-obsessed 20-something’s down. The entire cast is a knockout, anchored by Alia Shawkat’s deadpan delivery and dramatically rich internal conflict, but John Early walks away with the entire season. Watching Early’s character disintegrate into madness and paranoia was one of the most best comedic arcs of any character in 2017.
“Master of None” returned with a more confident, stylistically adventurous second season and maintained its status as the most visually stunning comedic series on TV. Along with the help of Alan Yang, Lena Waithe and Eric Warheim, creator and star Aziz Ansari concocted an emotionally rich season of cinematic throwbacks to vintage Italian cinema, New York love stories and the best Thanksgiving special ever. While the last chapters of the season came dangerously close to falling prey to “But I’m a nice guy” territory that the first season so hysterically satirized, the love story nonetheless felt just as romantic and exciting as anything in an Antonioni film.
The biggest small screen surprise this year came in the form of David E. Kelley’s “Big Little Lies”. Yes, the stacked cast of A-listers and the presence of Jean-Marc Vallée would tip most viewers off to how great it would be, but from the outset the series had all the makings of a glossy, big budget soap opera. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The mini-series event of the year was so much more than the airport novel set-up it was built on. It took a group of predominately white women living in an affluent Northern California town mixed up in a murder mystery and delivered one of the most profound, necessary portrayals of womanhood and domestic violence in quite some time. The series was an uphill climb to greatness, with every episode being somehow better than the last. While there was a tremendous amount of solid groundwork laid for the series, it simply wouldn’t be elevated to the heights it was without the stellar work of Jean-Marc Vallée and his typically fantastic, kinetic editing and of course, the phenomenal work of the cast. Every single actor was firing on all cylinders, but it was Nicole Kidman that gave what might be the best work of her career. If you want a masterclass in acting, look no further than Nicole Kidman in every therapy scene. She should be a goddamn national treasure after the work she did on this series.
One of the most compelling and remarkable transformations I’ve seen any series go through is Nathan Fielder’s brainchild “Nathan for You”. Fielder is the closest thing our generation has to an Andy Kaufman type figure that’s impossible to pin down and even harder to separate from his on-screen persona. Over the course of multiple seasons, Fielder has slowly switched focus from satirizing American capitalism to the awkward, lonely life of himself. In the possibly final season of “Nathan for You”, the series delivered its usual laughs at the expense of unsuspecting, often shockingly bizarre human beings, but it’s the shows epic, Errol Morris-esque finale that solidified the series as one of the greatest comedic achievements of the 21st century. Fielder made what was essentially a feature-length documentary on the only man that could make Fielder himself seem normal by comparison. Following a lonely, possibly sociopathic Bill Gates impersonator as he attempts to track down his long-lost love that may or may not exist, the series became something truly magical. “Finding Frances”, the possible series finale of the remarkable “Nathan for You”, stands head and shoulders beside the very episodes of television all year.
In 2016, I wrote that “Vice Principals” was the years most painfully accurate depiction of Trump-era white privilege and delusion. Creators Jody Hill and Danny McBride have made a career out of cringe-inducing portraits of ego-driven white men on the verge of a breakdown, but “Vice Principals” might just be their most wholly successful effort to date. The second season, almost entirely directed by David Gordon Green, was funnier, stranger and most surprising of all, oddly compassionate. While season MVP’s Walton Goggins and Edi Patterson definitely earned the most laughs and gave the most committed performances, I’d argue it’s Danny McBride that really is the glue of the series. Not many actors can portray the balance of narcissism and insecurity that McBride can and his unexpectedly sympathetic portrayal of male fragility gives the show an admittedly fucked-up moral compass, but nonetheless one that anchors the absurdity and provides the series with a reality grounded in a deep-seated sadness.
The first of two series that could arguably called films on this list, Errol Morris’ hugely engrossing miniseries “Wormwood” was a late entry that towered above most achievements in film and television this year. A hybrid of talking head documentary style and gorgeously shot reenactments, Morris made the most unexpectedly timely and effective piece of mainstream journalism seen on any screen this year. At a time when centrist liberals are rallying behind the FBI to take down Trump, Morris is here to remind us all that we’re rallying behind one of the most corrupt institutions in America to take down the dumbest human being to ever be elected to a position of power. A scathing, meticulously researched tale of the beginnings of the controversial, immoral LSD testing conducted by the CIA in the 1950’s and a family whose entire life was turned upside down because of it. One of our greatest living documentarians, Morris puts that Netflix budget to the best possible use and delivers his most stellar work in over a decade. Disturbing, horrifying and exhilarating, “Wormwood” is one of the most essential pieces of art released this year.
There are countless series that shine out the gate and end up overstaying their welcome, ultimately souring their legacy. “The Leftovers” is not one of those shows. After a spotty but sporadically intriguing first season, creator Damon Lindelof went back to the drawing board and hit the restart button. When he returned a year later with the second season, he hit a home run nobody saw coming. The show that nobody expected to even get a second season came roaring back to life as one of the most emotionally rewarding, intellectually stimulating series HBO had ever produced. It was ballsy, darkly funny and ambitious as hell. In its third and final season, “The Leftovers” stayed the course of its stunning second season and claimed its place with the top tier of HBO series, alongside “The Sopranos”, “The Wire” and “Six Feet Under”. The show continued to surprise, taking us along for an existential, allegorical ride into a mad world. Unlike a show like “Lost” that dragged its story out for six seasons and of course disappointed its core fanbase, “The Leftovers” knew when to quit and didn’t try to pull the rug out from under us. Its confidence and deft humanity led to a conclusion that was as perfect as you could as for from a show that knew it never had any of the answers. It centered its focus to the heart of the show and gave its gifted leading actors one last opportunity to prove they were the most underappreciated performances on TV. I’ll miss the painful humanism and apocalyptic satire of “The Leftovers”, but I’m grateful it knew when to pull the plug and look forward to revisiting it in the future.
We live in a cultural moment where studios and networks are constantly looking to the past to define the kind of entertainment we consume today. Yes, technology and accessibility is always advancing and changing, but ideas are sparse and nostalgia reigns over originality. Studios like Marvel and Disney profit on the nostalgia of our childhoods. Major networks turn mediocre film properties from yesterday into multi-season television series and revamp 90’s “Must Watch TV” for a quick buck. It’s cynical and profitable.
But sometimes nostalgia can be mined for something truly interesting. Twenty-five years after “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me”, David Lynch returned to the sleepy Pacific Northwest town to finish his story. Or so we thought. Or maybe we didn’t. The beauty of the return of “Twin Peaks” is that nobody really knew what to expect. Would it be a full blown disaster? Would it be a quick cash grab? Of course not, it’s fucking David Lynch.
What most of us didn’t know is that Showtime was going to fork up 50 million for David Lynch to make an 18-hour experimental film with no regard nor interest in tying things up or servicing fanfare. So when most of the shows core fanbase returned, they didn’t get early 90’s David Lynch. They got post “Inland Empire”, no-fucks-given David Lynch. Some rebuked the new vision of “Twin Peaks”, while the rewarded viewer gave themselves over to it and let Lynch take us down an 18-hour rabbit hole of madness, delivering the most insane sequences ever put on TV.
Not much more can be said of the greatness of episode 8, but I’m just here to once again reiterate how absolutely astonishing that hour of television was. I still think its the greatest 60 minutes of filmmaking I’ve seen all year. There was also Kyle McLachlan’s criminally underrated performances. That insane five minute scene featuring Michael Cera as a Brandon-obsessed motorcyclist. The fat woman screaming while a zombie-like child spews vomit all over itself. Caleb Landry-Jones being Caleb Landry-Jones in a David Lynch universe. Jim Belushi being not shitty. The bartender sweeping for four minutes! What a gift the entire season was. It took sky-high expectations and blew them out of the water.
There was really nothing like “Twin Peaks” this year. It was genuinely shocking, nightmarish, laugh out loud funny and ultimately, it was horrifying. Not horrifying because Lynch is a master of conjuring up some truly fucked-up, nightmare-inducing imagery. It was horrifying because Lynch did mine our nostalgia. He took a look back at a world over 25 years old and brought back familiar faces, showing us where they are today. It wasn’t warm and familiar, it was sad. Their faces have aged, but their lives remain relatively the same. They work in the same diners and police stations. They’re still haunted by the same past they can’t escape. Their nightmares are reoccurring and endless. Watching “Twin Peaks” was like being welcomed back into a world we missed and yearned for, only to have the walls close in slowly all around us, eventually trapping us in its grip. You can’t escape the past and you certainly can’t change it. The last moments of the series are still its most chilling because we’re hit with the cold truth that you can’t rewrite history. The words “What year is this?” have never felt more haunting.
