What was your fav. movie of 2017

[dgold44]

Mine was either Dunkirk or Blade Runner 2049



really have zero interest in Star Wars as the last 2 were very average and recycled

Looks like Call me by your name will get best picture.
I don't think I will ever see it but who knows. Really not a movie I care for both actors are very talented .

I went to the show about 7 times this year.
Planet of the apes was a total disaster and John Wicks 2 was pretty stupid

 

[Vcore89]

Spider-Man: Homecoming

 

[fireandwind]

There are not many good movies for this year. It is quite shocking. I am very interested in foreign movie field. I heard about " Ayla" but I couldn't find any theater playing it.

 

[Harry_Wild]

Saw a lot of movies this year most are comic book based. They all blend together now, but all are good experience! Secret agent is the second type of category that I enjoy. All were good too! Good movies all of them. No bad movies to complain about this year! Stay away from the PC based movies however!

 

[NonP]

I'll need to think about this stuff more, but from a cursory look I can come up with the following (these films might have shown up before '17 in other areas, but I'm going by their date of release in DC and its environs):

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail dir. by Steve James (Amazon Prime)
Blade Runner 2049 by Dennis Villeneuve
Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary by John Scheinfeld (Netflix)
City of Ghosts by Matthew Heineman (Amazon)
Dawson City: Frozen Time by Bill Morrison
Faces Places by Agnès Varda and JR
The Florida Project by Sean Baker
Ingrid Goes West by Matt Spicer
Lost in Paris by Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon
Manifesto [feature version] by Julian Rosefeldt
Moscow Never Sleeps by Johnny O'Reilly
Obit. by Vanessa Gould (Amazon)
Polina (or Polina, danser sa vie) by Valérie Müller and Angelin Preljocaj
Sami Blood by Amanda Kernell
Whose Streets? by Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis (Hulu)
A Woman’s Life by Stéphane Brizé

(Apart from Moscow and Sami most of these titles should or will be available for streaming, and where I could I put in parentheses the name of the subscription service currently hosting the movie.)

Let me say up front that these are my favorite movies, not necessarily the best of 2017, though many of them should be in contention even after the award season. I should add that this has been an unusually strong year for documentaries, undoubtedly due in no small part to the rise of noxious populism in much of the world, and my list reflects that bittersweet reality, not only in its inclusion of textbook documentaries but even in its fictional titles with strong documentary aspects (The Florida Project and Polina, for two).

As you can see these titles are in alphabetical order and I'll need more time to rank (or add/subtract) them properly, but I can say with some confidence that Dawson City will most likely end up at or near the top of my faves of 2017. I was fortunate to have attended its screening at the National Gallery of Art with director Bill Morrison in attendance which was followed by a highly informative Q&A, and with one exception or two (to be continued in a later post) no other film I've seen so far this year has further enhanced my understanding of cinema and its place in the world. Rarely has the title of a work of art seemed so deceptively simple or inadequate with respect to its true scope, and Morrison's carefully curated footage and Alex Somers' (Sigor Ros fans would probably recognize the Baltimore native as one of the band's regular collaborators) ethereal score are a match made in cinematic nirvana. And as a knockout bonus it ends with a most haunting fade-out of an actress seemingly dancing to Somers' music, forming the last of the film's many wondrous links between the past and the present, and which for my money is the most drop-dead gorgeous ending since that of the late Manoel de Oliveira's swan song Um século de energia. (It's probably no coincidence that both of these endings feature dancers going about their own business and also arguable that such solitary activities border on solipsism, but I'd counter that the greatest pleasures indeed tend to be solipsistic.)

Also I'm frankly not sure yet how I feel about the new Blade Runner movie and would need to see it at least one more time before I could formulate a less wishy-washy opinion (I saw it in 2D IMAX and was hoping to give it a second go in 3D, but alas life/work interfered). I still chose to include it because I've been rather irritated by the widely varying reactions to it, on one hand judging it a failure for not doing better at the box office (never mind that it has grossed $256.6 million and counting against a $150-185 million budget, which even after the marketing costs should put the studios firmly in the black) and on the other hand declaring it a misunderstood major work if not a masterpiece that has yet to be embraced by the unsophisticated hoi polloi. Given the initial chilly reaction and convoluted history (to put it mildly) of its predecessor you'd think the critics would take a little more time to reflect before firing away at the keyboard. In any case Villeneuve's invention is unimpeachable, and I hope the wiser heads will prevail and greenlight a new sequel before too long.

 

[MasterZeb]

 

[NonP]

Now that I've had more time to go over my viewings this year I see that I forgot to add one more title: BPM (Beats per Minute) by Robin Campillo, yet another picture with strong documentary elements. In fact if this were a test of pure authenticity BPM would be close to the top of my list, as I don't recall seeing a more powerful and sympathetic depiction of the AIDS crisis and its victims (who in this film reach beyond the LGBTQ community), no doubt informed by Campillo's own experience in its midst. What keeps the film from being a masterpiece is its tenuous relationship or the lack thereof with the present, and this is one area where Campillo's background might have hurt rather than helped his effort. Still BPM is a major film that should be considered for any respectable best-of-2017 list.

There are two more titles that escaped my attention last time, as both were 2016 releases that did not screen in my hood till this year. Michael Dudok De Wit's The Red Turtle is a hypnotic wordless reverie that holds your interest throughout and poses challenging questions, but it's frankly not something I'd like to revisit anytime soon and thus left off my list. Terence Davies' A Quiet Passion is a valiant effort to extol the cryptic polyphony of Dickinson's life and poetry and an improvement over the overly melodramatic The Deep Blue Sea (I've yet to see his 2015 feature Sunset Song), but I was irritated by the constant focus on its subject's failed romantic aspirations which I found more successful at mythologizing the poet than at shedding additional light on the poetry (here's a fun game for you: guess which of her poems accompanies Dickinson's death near the end of this film). On the other hand Cynthia Nixon is terrific as adult Emily; even more so is Catherine Bailey as the riotously witty Vryling Buffum, a friend of Emily's sister Vinnie's who eventually succumbs to the social protection of matrimony. Not quite enough to make this film one of my faves of 2017, but I suggest you see for yourself.

Another one that deserves your attention is Lady Macbeth, a masterful adaptation of the underrated Nikolai Leskov's novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by William Oldroyd in his feature debut. Its misanthropy which is largely absent in the original Leskov story overrides for me any of its positive aspects (and there are many), but Oldroyd is certainly an emerging talent to watch and Lady Macbeth probably would still get my vote for the best debut feature of 2017.

Also upon further reflection I must say Chasing Train probably should've been excluded from my list (even in order of pure personal preference it'd probably lag behind most of the above titles), but since it's now available on one of the world's most popular streaming services I've decided to leave it in.

Check back for more additions/subtractions/demurrals.