Top 10 Films of 2017

It is true that Top 10 lists are by their nature arbitrary, frivolous and wholly unnecessary. If you were to wipe my memory and force me to make this list again a month from now, there's no guarantee it wouldn't be considerably different from what you're reading today.

But it's equally true that these sorts of lists are fun to write and fun to read. They spur conversations and disagreements about what is right and wrong about today's cinema. In short, they get people talking about movies, which is quite possibly the only thing I like more than watching them.

I found 2017 to be a quite good year for film. I awarded four movies my highest rating -- 4 stars, 5 Yaps or an "A," depending on where it was being published -- at the time of their release, and have since upgraded one more to that level. I consider all them masterpieces, and saw at least a dozen more I would deem only a half-step down from that.

In making my top 10 list, I had a much easier time deciding on #1-5 than #6-10, particularly in deciding what would drop off the list. That's why I always make sure to also include a list of also-rans: films I adored that that didn't quite make the top 10. This year the counting of contenders runs to 18.

You'll notice that my list(s) are dominated by smaller indie movies this year. I offer no explanation or apology for this. In deciding my favorites, I deliberately try to avoid any overarching theme or bias. I likes what I likes. For whatever reason, in 2017 it was the low-budget, the offbeat, the overlooked.

So without further ado:

1.    Blade Runner 2049

I feared this film more than any other. I thought there was no way to do a sequel to "Blade Runner," one of my favorite movies, that was narratively and emotionally logical. I was wrong. It's a brilliant, beautiful, disturbing look into a future that is very different from what we have today, yet easy to see the pathway from here to there.

2.    Lady Bird

After more than a decade cementing her place as the queen of indie films, then apprenticing as a screenwriter, Greta Gerwig forcefully announces herself as an important new filmmaker. A look at teenhood that is very specific yet universal. Smart, brave and riveting.

3.    Brigsby Bear

At first I took this to be a quirky hipster comedy about a manboy who finds himself living in a strange and frightening new world. Instead, I found the most emotionally satisfying journey of any film in 2017. It's a story of overcoming our fears and reaching out to others.

4.    The Shape of Water

"Pan's Labyrinth" is probably still my favorite Guillermo del Toro movie, but this makes a strong case for second. Sally Hawkins is great, but the film also boasts a half-dozen supporting characters whose stories are just as distinct and compelling as the heroine's. Dark, offbeat, mysterious.

5.    Maudie

The year of Sally Hawkins. She'll get her Oscar nomination for "Shape of Water," but her work in this beautiful little indie about a meek Canadian artist was the performance of the year for me. And Ethan Hawke wasn't bad, either.

6.    The Florida Project

Willem Dafoe may well win his own Oscar for this movie, but for me it's one of the best examples of a terrific ensemble cast. An unflattering portrait of the underside of my hometown of Orlando, it resonates with strength and truth.

7.    Patti Cake$

Danielle Mcdonald wowed me as a girl who's been degraded her entire life, and spits back her resentment in the form of vicious volleys of rap lyrics. An audacious debut by filmmaker Geremy Jasper.

8.    Wind River

This bleak drama looks at two Caucasian protagonists working a murder case inside an insular Native American reservation. It's a story of outsiders and aliens, belonging and frontier justice.
 

9.    Baby Driver

By turns funny, jazzy and dangerous, "Baby Driver" is tonally all over the map -- yet somehow it all works. Ansel Elgort enhances his acting credentials as a young getaway driver with a few twists.

10.  The Post

Steven Spielberg's historical drama examines the bravery of Washington Post maven Katharine Graham and a few others in defying the White House to publish the Pentagon Papers, detailing the country's shameful history in Vietnam.

 

Other contenders

Any one of these films had a real shot at making my top 10 list. If you twisted my arm and made me pick a #11, it would have been "A Ghost Story," which I had on the list until the very end. "Stronger" or "Dunkirk" would be next. Listed alphabetically.

The Ballad of Lefty Brown -- Very offbeat Western in which Bill Pullman essentially plays the classic Walter Brennan "incompetent old coot" character, who takes over the story when the John Wayne type bites it.
Coco
Crown Heights -- The male performance of the year for me by Lakeith Stanfield as a wrongfully imprisoned man.
Dunkirk -- A different sort of war picture; not about individual heroes but the concept of heroism.
A Ghost Story -- Slow, deliberate, haunting. Not the sort of picture I usually go for.
Goodbye Christopher Robin
The Hero -- It looks like Sam Elliott's greatest role is being forgotten during the awards race. Pity.
Hostiles -- There is dour. Then there is grim. Then there is bleak. Then there is despair. Then there is "Hostiles." 
It Comes at Night
Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992
Paris Can Wait
The Promise
Stronger
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri -- Frances McDormand is amazing. So is Woody Harrelson, though it's Sam Rockwell who's being pushed for awards.
Tommy's Honour -- A drama about fathers and sons, Scotland and the history of golf. Another picture I didn't expect to adore.
A United Kingdom
War for the Planet of the Apes
Wonder Woman -- The superhero movie of the year.

The Underwhelmed

These are films that were widely praised, often by people whose opinions I respect, yet I found them on some level disappointing. Many I still liked, just not crazy about them. If there was one unifying theme in movies that let me down this year, it's that they were too long. I saw so many 140-minute films that could've been 96.

Get Out -- Yes, it's a smart horror film that also boasts snappy humor and social commentary. A pillar for our times? Please.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi -- I've liked all the Star Wars movies, though this is easily the weakest. I mean, an entire plotline set off by illegally parking your starship?
The Meyerowitz Stories -- Clever portrayals of people you don't think for a minute could exist in the real world. Also, I'm still confused: was the inside joke supposed to be that they're all actually shitty artists?
Call Me By Your Name -- The last 40 minutes or so packs an emotional punch. The first hour-and-fifteen should've been edited down to about 20.
Good Time  -- Chase, chase, chase, why, why, why? All existential peril with no interior life. 
The Big Sick -- Ray Romano and Holly Hunter were the best things about this.
Mudbound -- As depressing as "Hostiles," without anything compelling to make it worthwhile. During all the different characters' narration, I kept hearing Mr. Mackey from "South Park" droning, "Cuz racism is bad."
The Disaster Artist -- A funny movie with a spot-on impression by James Franco. And nothing more.
IT -- At least it didn't end in a preteen gangbang.
Lucky -- Harry Dean Stanton can act the hell out of anything. David Lynch cannot act, other than doing that one hard-of-hearing speech pattern he always does. As someone who's hard-of-hearing, I was offended.
Beats Per Minute
Marjorie Prime
Happy End -- "Hi, we're French and rich and awful, come spend two hours with us."
Thelma
Blade of the Immortal -- Martial arts movies are like baseball movies: they're better the less actual baseball/swordfighting it has. There's a great 84-minute flick in there somewhere.
Novitiate
Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool

Review: "Patti Cake$"

Patricia Dombrowski has a lot of nicknames. She prefers “Killa P,” though most call her Patti, which she has bedazzled up to “Patti Cake$,” which is also the title of the movie about her.

The license plate on her crumbling Cadillac is “PATTIWGN.” A 23-year-old aspiring rapper from the harder Jersey neighborhood, she and a fellow dreamer go by “Thick & Thin,” a reference to their respective body types. The one she really hates, though she pretends to embrace it when it’s hurled at her incessantly on the streets, is “Dumbo,” given in middle school and unfortunately what stuck.

One guy, whom Patti secretly has a crush on, disparagingly calls her “White Precious” during an impromptu rap battle, and that’s probably the one that’s most descriptive.

This audacious debut film from writer/director Geremy Jasper and starring Danielle Macdonald is in many ways an inheritor to 2009’s “Precious,” which spotlighted an obese, illiterate girl. It also borrows from “Hustle & Flow,” in that it’s the story of a person rapping about their circumstances and stuck dreams as a way of breaking out of the crabbed role other people have defined for them.

The movie is not so much about Patti being fat as the disparagement that comes with it. Patti has spent her whole life being told she’s less than because of her outsized body. That dynamic has bled into her work, her relationships and every other aspect of her existence. She’s come to internalize that pain, forge it in the fire of her resentment and spit it out back into the world in the form of brash, boastful raps.

“Patti Cake$” is not about overeating, but feeding an undernourished soul.

Macdonald is astonishing in the lead role, her broad face often buried underneath a tangle of blonde frizzles, her eyes peeking out with a mix of fear and self-assurance. We feel the crush of how others disregard her, sense the artist behind the façade of the woman who bartends and works catering events, intuitively understand her need to strive for something more.

Her best friend is Hareesh (Siddharth Dhananjay), a pharmacist and her rapping partner. He’s the ebullient ying to her downtrodden yang. They hang out, bust some rhymes and dream of one day getting onstage. Like most other Jersey kids, black and white, they idolize the O-Z (Sahr Ngaujah), a local rapper who made it big and is referred to as the “godfather,” or simply “God.” Patti has green-tinged dreams about becoming O-Z’s protégé.

Patti’s most fraught relationship is with her mother, Barb (Bridget Everett), a powerhouse of a woman who owns a big personality, big voice and big everything else. Fiftyish, a former rock singer, now a hair stylist with money problems clinging desperately to the shreds of her sexpot renown, Barb has poured all of her disappointment about life into her kid.

Cathy Moriarty shines as her grandmother, laid up by ill health and her own woes, who nonetheless gives Patti encouragement and unmeasured love.

I was also really impressed with Mamoudou Athie as a vagabond musician who reluctantly joins their group, lending his technical expertise and a gentleness that hides behind a deliberately dangerous exterior. Athie has gobs of what Hollywood used to call “presence” -- you can’t not watch him.

The scene where they compose their first song in the unlikeliest of venues, dubbing themselves “PBNJ” with a little sampling help from grandma, is pure magic. These are all people who society has told they’re nothing, coming together to create something.

I’m not a rap aficionado, but it’s hard not to be sucked into the beats and bravura rhymes of the music (by Jasper and Jason Binnick). Highlights are the catchy PBNJ intro song and “Tough Love,” which borrows from and describes Patti’s family dynamics.

“Patti Cake$” is the sort of fine little movie that can get lost in the wasteland of September releases, so I’m hoping it will find the audience it deserves, as well as some attention during the awards cycle.