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chrisoncinema · 7 years ago

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The Year in Review: 2017 Honorable Mentions

Originally this post was just going to list my top ten films of the year and provide a brief commentary on the honorable mentions that didn’t make the cut but I got carried away with the latter and wrote way too much. So here’s a holiday surprise: a full summation of my year at the movies for you to enjoy as I work on my top ten list.

2016 Addenda

Silence and Paterson were two 2016 films that I was only able to see in early 2017. Had I been able to view them when they were first released, both would have made my 2016 top ten list (which never got a proper post but is accessible via my twitter) and both would have vied for spots in my top three. I highly recommend that everyone watch both films. They are both challenging films in their own ways. Silence is emotionally exhausting; moments of shocking brutality and quiet delicacy abound. It’s an examination of faith worth mulling over regardless of your worldview or philosophy because, in the end, faith is an emanation of our basic humanity. Paterson is similar to Silence in its singular voice and vision. It is meandering, seemingly plotless, and deceptively simple, but sometimes one has to walk slowly in order to see clearly.

Films I Missed

As seen above, every year there are a number of films I am unable to see because I didn’t have time or it wasn’t playing in Michigan or I didn’t have the press credentials to get into a screening. This year, the most disappointing miss was Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Threadwhich, apparently, didn’t make it to my local art theater. I’ve loved Anderson’s last three films (and enjoy his entire filmography, in varying degrees) and believe Phantom Thread would have made it onto my top ten list this year, had I been able to see it. Other films I missed this year, in no particular order, include: A Quiet Passion, The Post, Menashe, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, I Tonya, Menashe, Graduation, Manifesto, Dawson City: Frozen Time, Call My By Your Name, and The Square.

Honorable and Dishonorable Mentions

Despite missing a lot, I saw more films this year than I have in a long time. This meant that my top ten list was an enjoyable challenge and that a number of films, for a variety of reasons, didn’t make the cut. These are their stories…

Lemon was the worst movie that I saw this year – or, at the very least, it was the movie I disliked the most that I watched all the way through nonetheless. The anti-comedy antihero that Tim Heidecker played to cringey perfection in the weird and wonderful The Comedy should be hereby retired with Brett Gelman’s new film. I think Brett Gelman is a very funny comedian and his wife, Janicza Bravo, who directed Lemon has a unique enough directorial voice but, in a year of terrible men, we didn’t need this one. In a year of interesting commentary on race, we didn’t need this half-hearted, cynical, frustrating attempt.

Lemon

I swore off comic book movies years ago and have only watched DC movies out of morbid, masochistic curiosity (I did not see Wonder Woman or Justice League, for the record, and don’t plan on ever watching them). That said, the first superhero movie to pique my interest in years was Logan. I hadn’t seen an X-Men movie since First Class, which I found rather pointless, but, as a childhood fan of the X-Men comics, something about Logan seemed different. And indeed it was.

Logan works incredibly well as a neo-Western road movie that happens to feature mutated humans with superpowers. Hugh Jackman is probably the best actor to ever lead a comic book movie and here he finally has a movie that is worth his time. The three leads that form a quasi-familial unit in the form of Patrick Stewart, Jackman, and young breakout Dafne Keen, all perform incredibly well together and individually. The movie falters when it tries to introduce its villains and an action-y plotline. The dude with the Anakin Skywalker hand was sufficient, the evil doctor guy played by Richard E. Grant was introduced too late to matter, and the robo-Wolverine or whatever he was called was just kind of awkward and weird and dumb. Still, I was genuinely moved by the end of this movie – brought closer to tears by this movie than any comic book movie I’ve watched. It’s not a great film, but it’s a very good comic book movie. Count it among the few classics.

Another movie that I was surprisingly moved by was Okja. I felt like I had this film’s number from the start. Not that predictability is inherently negative, I just didn’t think I’d get that much out of it. But this movie is incredibly well-crafted. The performances from Jake Gyllenhaal and Tilda Swinton are so over the top that they actually work as caricatures of evil people. This movie feels like a live-action anime. It has the energy, the flow, and the colorful cast of characters. The message is simple and perhaps a bit obvious but it works. And while I will continue blaming it on the severe cold I had while watching the film, I did get choked up at the end. Also, Paul Dano continues to be a tragically underrated performer who needs to be cast in way more projects.

Okja

Okja was very good at world-building and, unsurprisingly, Blade Runner 2049 was great at it. I was wary of this film going in and didn’t even know if I’d ever watch it – tired as I am of reboots and unnecessary sequels. Much to my surprise, though, I was captivated by this movie when it was simply following Ryan Gosling’s K through his detective work and personal life. His relationship with his holographic girlfriend is as weird and sweet and inventive as Her. Denis Villeneuve is a director I’ve written about beforewhose work I enjoy – Arrival remains his best film. Roger Deakins, as widely reported, does great work as he always does in this film. Unfortunately, 2049decided to be a legacy act. The second half of the movie is bogged down in a plot that ties the film in with the original completely unnecessarily.

2049 falls apart when it dredges up old Harry Ford in his all-too-ordinary gray t-shirt. Is he playing Rick Deckard or is he someone’s aging stepdad? Credit where it’s due: Harrison Ford performs dutifully and effectively in this movie but 1: I can’t watch Harrison Ford in a movie anymore without it completely taking me out of the narrative (Oh look, it’s ancient curmudgeon Harrison Ford. Remember Indiana Jones?) and, more importantly, 2: there was no reason why this film needed to bring him back. As I said, there were so many interesting directions this film could have gone but, like The Force Awakens, it grinds to a halt so we can see Harrison Ford react to stuff related to a movie he was in a hundred years ago. Also, Jared Leto is a scenery-chewing nuisance who should not be cast in anything ever. My suggestion: if you didn’t see this movie in IMAX, just wait and watch the 90 minute version I’ll inevitably make in 2018.

And while Blade Runner and Star Wars provided science fiction fodder for franchise devotees, horror fans were treated to a vast array of unique offerings. A horror/drama that got a little over-hyped for me was Raw. As with most gross-out horror films, there were early reports of people passing out and throwing up in screenings. With that in mind, I prepared myself for something truly shocking and was, honestly, somewhat disappointed. The story centers on a college freshman who discovers she has a hunger for human flesh. It’s a fun film if you’re a fan of body horror but even so the scenes get rather formulaic. There’s some great, atmospheric stuff in this movie, including some solid cinematography, but the moments when something gross is about to happen are never a surprise. Raw's great failure is its ending which ties such a deliciously messy story together too neatly.

Raw

Another horror film that could be accused of receiving too much early hype was, of course, mother! This movie is incredibly effective as a comedy of manners. Darren Aronofsky does an amazing job of capturing the panic and confusion of actual nightmares where you know the people populating your dream should be able to hear and understand you but their blank, unresponsive stares simply add to the horror. I had no idea what mother!was actually about or where it was going while I watched it and I found myself disappointed in myself once I realized. The thing is, though, even when the film’s narrative fully commits to its pedestrian eschatology, it’s still churning out moments that are absolutely bonkers. The ways mother! doesn’t work might be more interesting than the ways it does (Javier Bardem and Michelle Pfeiffer are particularly effective; Jennifer Lawrence remains an amateurish performer) but…I kind of loved this film in all of its sadistic, messy glory.

I really wanted mother! to make it into my top ten list simply because it felt so different. That is, until I saw another film about the dismantling of domesticity: The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I should state for the record that I was not a huge fan of Yorgos Lanthimos’s last film The Lobster. That film always felt a bit obvious and stunted to me – though I’m a big fan of both Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz. Sacred Deer is a similar beast. The deadpan, monotone dialogue takes a lot of getting used to and I’m sure it’ll be a sticking point for a lot of viewers. It remains an interesting and puzzling choice by Lanthimos who seems to want to strip his films of melodramatic artifice while writing screenplays that contain the drama of Greek tragedies.

Sacred Deer is a film that knows it’s weird, knows you think it’s weird, but also knows it’s weirdness is making you feel weird. If you can let yourself get into it, this is a pretty rewarding film reminiscent of The Shining (I know this is blasphemy but I actually like it more). Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman both give incredibly performances with what is surely challenging material to work with. The film’s real star, though, is Dunkirk breakout Barry Keoghan. As his character grows more strange and sinister, he somehow becomes even more magnetic. Regardless of what you think of the movie, Keoghan is one of the best performers of the year.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Of course, one cannot discuss the year’s horror films without mentioning Get Out. I have to admit I had trouble with this film for a number of months. I really struggled to see what everyone else was seeing in it. That is, until I watched Detroit. Both films are ostensibly horror flicks where the great evil is white power. Kathryn Bigelow’s film posits itself as a visceral work of journalism but beneath that facade, it’s clear she has nothing to say. Her camera is in a constant Paul Greengrass-esque tremor whether it’s a tense moment or not. Detroitis false immediacy. Detroit is torture porn. Get Out, on the other hand, has a voice and it came to make a statement. Get Out, like They Liveor Night of the Living Dead before it, is not high art. It is, for better or worse, a reaction to the sociopolitical milieu that surrounds it. Hopefully it will soon be considered the first of innumerable, blockbuster works by filmmakers of color that invades the cultural consciousness. For now, Get Out is a film that manages to be both scary and funny thanks to Jordan Peele’s vision and direction.

Logan Lucky and Baby Driver were two films by directors whose work I enjoy and admire immensely that just didn’t quite bring enough to the table to make it into a top ten list. Both films are self-assured, fun, and full of magnetic characters (save for the titular Baby) but they also seem to be exercises in style over substance. Still, I’d recommend both films in a heartbeat.

Another film that comes highly recommended by yours truly that seems to have been completely forgotten is The Red Turtle: an animated, nearly-wordless folk tale about nature, love, and letting go. The Red Turtle is refreshingly simple and unassuming – I’ve heard it described as a children’s film and, while a patient child may be able to sit through it, there’s a depth and maturity to the story that will speak to anyone who would stop to listen. Come for the animation, stay for the beautiful score and sound design.

The Red Turtle

Speaking of design, a couple films that look incredibly good are A Ghost Story and The Beguiled. Both films held spots in my top ten list but were knocked out. I really wanted to love A Ghost Story – I felt like I was really giving it my all – but about two thirds of the way through the film, it starts to preach about what it is and some of the mystery and nuance is lost. Visually, it remains one of the most interesting films of the year, but the story remains half-baked. The same could be said for Sofia Coppola’s new film. It features some of the best cinematography of the year and incredible performances from everyone involved. The aforementioned Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman give it their all; Kirsten Dunst is strong as ever; and Elle Fanning continues to prove she is one of the great young actors working today. The film’s only real fault is its table manners. Reserved and cautious, when the film finally boils over, the room has already chilled.

I also saw The Florida Project this year. I have very little to say about it, apparently. As I’ve been putting it off through this whole post. I thought it was…fine. It’s good, not great. Willem Dafoe is very good in it. If you want to know how I feel about the ending, I’m in the camp that thought it completely undercut the emotional depth and complexity that the film was just about to reach.

So there you have it – my year at the movies, save for my upcoming top ten films of the year. As I said above, many of these films could have, or perhaps should have, been in my top ten list. And if you were to ask me in a few months, some of them might return. As these things go, art is subjective and fluid, but I’m very excited to share the films that I found the most engrossing and moving this year. Some will be obvious, but hopefully some will be new discoveries for you. Come back New Year’s Eve to find out!

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