2017 was a very weird year, so it's fitting that many of its movies were pretty damn weird too. A lot of franchise films flopped (this is despite the fact that over half of the year’s top 10 at the box office were sequels), a STAR WARS movie was divisive between critics who loved it, and longtime fans of the series who hated it; and there were a number of films with strangely similar titles like LOGAN, LUCKY, and LOGAN LUCKY, and WONDER, WONDER WHEEL, WONDERSTRUCK, WONDER WOMEN, and PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN.
Then there were WTFWT (What the F*** Was That?) movies like A GHOST STORY and MOTHER! So yeah, it was one weird year.
A lot of the movies of the last year blur together in my head. I mean, I had forgotten about such dreary titles as THE CIRCLE, THE BEGUILED, and BEATRIZ AT DINNER until looking at a list of 2017 releases just now. And there were also a few films I only liked the first halves of like DOWNSIZING, and THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI, that are also fading in my memory.
But now’s the time to concentrate on the cinema I best responded to, and I thought I'd do what I did a few years back and add what quotes stuck with me as well to the list.
So here goes Part 1 of my picks, in descending order, with their key lines or exchanges, and some links back to my reviews (click on select titles):
10. THE POST (Dir. Steven Spielberg)
Kay Graham (Meryl Streep): “You know what my husband said about the news? ‘News is the first rough draft of history.’”
Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston): “Every generation has their war. Men make the wars, and wars make the men. It never ends!”
Reverend Richard Mueller (Lawrence Fishburne): Maybe one day we’ll try something different.”
8. DARKEST HOUR (Dir. Joe Wright)
Winston Churchill (Gary Oldman): “Please tell the Privy Seal that I’m sealed in the privy and I can only deal with one shit at a time.”
7. LADY BIRD (Dir. Greta Gerwig)
Marion McPherson (Laurie Metcalf): “I want you to be the very best version of yourself that you can be.”
Christine ‘Lady Bird’ McPherson (Saoirse Ronan): “What if this is the best version?”
6. THE FLORIDA PROJECT (Dir. Sean Baker)
Moonee (Brooklynn Prince): “I can always tell when adults are about to cry.”
So that’s 10-6 of my favorite films. See 5-1 at Part 2.
More later...
