1. Lady Bird, director: Greta Gerwig
2. Phantom Thread, director: Paul Thomas Anderson
3. Dunkirk, director: Christopher Nolan
4. Get Out, director: Jordan Peele
5. Detroit, director: Kathryn Bigelow
6. The Shape of Water, director: Guillermo del Toro
7. Okja, director: Bong Joon-Ho
8. The Lost City of Z, director: James Gray
9. Good Time, directors: Safdie Brothers
10. The Big Sick, director: Michael Showalter
I feel less strongly about this year than 2018. Much less strongly. What makes matters worse is that there's an embarrassing amount of films I still haven't seen from this year! Including:
Call Me By Your Name
The Florida Project
Killing of a Sacred Deer
You Were Never Really Here
First Reformed
A Ghost Story
The Beguiled
The Square
Death of Stalin
Song to Song
All the Money in the World
Hostiles
Lean on Pete
Wonderstruck
Happy End
Let the Sunshine In
Yeah. Yikes. I'm positive, after seeing some of those movies on the unwatched list that my top 10 would likely be altered. In fact, consider every movie after "Shape of Water" to be placeholders. 2017 was a busy year for me. I graduated grad school and started a new job. Maybe that's what kept me from being up-to-date
But let's briefly go over what's currently on my list. "Lady Bird" is one of my favorite movies of the decade and a second viewing made me love and appreciate it more. It's gonna be hard for any of the unwatched movies to top it. I'm an unabashed fan of Greta Gerwig, I'll follow her wherever she goes. That's also true for Saoirse Ronan. It's just such an accomplished, sure-handed, confident film that expertly darts back and forth between drama and comedy without screwing up its tone. It's also very well-crafted and gets all the little details right. Plus, Laurie Metcalf. She's so authentic as Lady Bird's mom, it doesn't even feel like a performance, it feels life-like. I love "Lady Bird". It's #1 with a bullet.
Paul Thomas Anderson is a filmmaker I have so much invested in, someone whose career I've been following for over 15 years now. He played a big part in me wanting to talk about movies and dissect them. So I can't help but feel biased when I do a list anytime he had a movie coming out in a given year. But "Phantom Thread", I can say without a doubt, deserves its #2 placement. There's another movie that'll be hard to bump. Lead by the remarkable Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Kreips, who I wish would've had more notable roles since this film came out, "Phantom Thread" simply feels like a filmmaker at the peak of his powers, continuing to make glorious work. This is such a delicate, beautiful, oddly sinister film. Shades of "Punch Drunk Love", shades of "The Master". But, I'm always impressed with how PTA is able to adapt his style to different eras and weave it into the inner-workings of whatever story he's trying to tell. Every movie he's made after "Magnolia" feel like distinct different pieces and yet they're undeniably from one filmmaker. With "Phantom Thread", PTA continues to elevate himself.
I'm writing too much. I have to go to bed. Dammit, it's hard to do this blog now. I can't emphasize enough how little extra time I have for it, but I wanna get this out. So, let me give out blurbs on these next three movies. "Dunkirk", "Get Out", and "Detroit" are all fantastic films that have really stayed with me since they came out. "Get Out" was a landmark film from Peele that gets better with repeated viewings. "Dunkirk" is Nolan at his leanest, but also technically impressive with a story that actually delivers emotionally. "Detroit" was forgotten days after it was released, which still blows my mind. It's riveting and gripping, not an easy film to watch but important and vital. I'll follow Bigelow to the ends of the earth.
The last five on the list, though, while I enjoy them greatly, they're not immovable. So, I gotta catch up on all those other 2017 releases I haven't seen and we'll see what stands after that. I don't even think I've re-watched any of those films in the bottom 5 of my list. So, yeah, even more work to be done for me.
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