2017 was the first year going back was very necessary. There were a LOT of great releases I missed, some of which ended up in the top 10, and some like Columbus that just missed the cut but were great. There’s a whole lot of shakeup actually: out of the top 10 are Dunkirk, Three Billboards, I, Tonya, and the Best Picture Winner, The Shape of Water, which after time, has fallen out of the top 15 altogether. What replaced them? Well, thanks to the last 5 years of catching up, I’ve learned this is one of the best post Studio-Ghibli anime years of all time: there are 3 incredible anime films this year, proudly earning their way into the best of the year!
A strange, shocking merger of indie dramedy and science fiction movie. Anne Hathaway is wonderful playing a thoroughly unlikable woman irritated she has to move back to her hometown. Even more impressive is Jason Sudeikis, a usually super nice guy going to some deep dark places in this film. And maybe most impressive is Nacho Vigalondo, who fuses these disparate genres into a really potent combination unseen since.
I wasn’t super excited to see the “Kristen Stewart is a medium” movie, but Olivier Assayas’s story like a ghost just hovers in your presence and refuses to leave. Stewart forever shed the “Twilight” girl moniker thanks to this film for me; she’s amazing here, often acting against a phone, or in an empty house, frequently by herself. Assayas helps her out by creating this constant pervasive dreamlike haze and dread, which allows the story to constantly go in unexpected and interesting directions.
A good horror movie can scare the hell out of you in 10 minutes, just like It does. But a great horror movie channels something within everyone that the audience can connect to and root for, which It also does, tapping into teenage adolescence and overcoming childhood trauma through friendship, which has you rooting for those Derry kids to overcome those horrifying fears.
There are plenty of WWII movies about the US, and how amazing it was that we won the war…by using the nuclear bomb, the most devastating weapon known to man. We don’t see a lot of Japan’s point of view, especially what life was like for the normal citizens. This anime film based on a famous manga series gives us that viewpoint via a coming of age story about a girl living on the outskirts of Hiroshima in WWII times. Yes, this movie is filled with encroaching dread everywhere, but like Mrs. Miniver, it shows the simple heroism of taking care of your family during perpetual hardship: a shining light amongst the encroaching darkness.
A western masquerading as a superhero movie. But not since the Dark Knight have I been so emotionally moved by a superhero movie, the first one that actually deals with old age and moving on in a real, substantive manner. Hugh Jackman’s swansong is almost perfect, including the last shot, which brought me to tears.
Maybe the best story about bullying I have ever seen. Another anime based on a famous manga, this movie, makes a lot of daring choices in its narrative. We have to watch this vile teenager make life hell for the new deaf girl in his class, and rightly get ostracized for it. But then instead of having the deaf girl plan to get even, we instead spend time with this terrible bully, who’s become maybe more depressed than even the deaf girl is. This movie comes at bullying with an open heart, showcasing how soul sucking it is for the bullier and the bully-ee alike, and how listening, learning, and love can change even the evilest of people, a wonderful message especially for teenagers.
Another movie about a new perspective on WWII. Now we’re in the Mississippi Delta. Dee Rees paints this amazing canvas of a time and place through the study of two families in the area: one black, one white, and how WWII completely changes the trajectory of their lives. Despite the movie’s ambition, Rees manages to wrangle it into something special via her direction and maybe the most surprising cast of the year, with people like Garrett Hedlund, Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige, and Rob Morgan each giving riveting, giant arc’ed performances that like the mud in the delta, leave the audience stuck there, pondering the amazing movie they just saw.
Hey comedy world, Jordan Peele has conquered you, and now it looks like he’ll do the same for the horror world too. Like It, Get Out also connects with people, but by using very pointed social satire, the scares are doubly terrifying because they come from a place of truth. Peele crafts a modern tale of race relations to perfection, filling his movie with pointed brilliant symbolism and metaphors. Culminating in the final scene, where Peele completely hammers home the point that this is a different, modern, and amazing new type of film we’ll be watching from him, hopefully for years to come.
This came out in Japan in 2016, but in April in the United States. In the search for the next great anime filmmaker, Makoto Shinkai firmly cements his name as the top contender with this masterpiece. The premise starts out pretty simply, a teenage boy and girl realize that they’re body swapping randomly. But through that tired premise Shinkai takes us on a breathtaking, magical, journey, increasing the scope and breadth of the story with each new scene. And if that’s not enough for you, this might be the most beautiful movie I’ve ever seen, and maybe will ever see, using color, setting, and music to beautiful, tear inducing magnificence.
What an amazing first feature for Greta Gerwig. This movie is for the dreamer from a smaller town that wants to get out to a bigger one; this movie is for mothers and daughters, and their fraught complicated relationship; and most ubiquitously, this movie is about how growing up is shaped by people and the world around you as much as you and your dreams. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll connect. And you’ll realize that if this is Gerwig’s first feature, this is just the beginning!
