2017 certainly had it’s fair share of awful movies. However, it also has been one of the best years for cinema in recent memory, with original dramas, comedies, thrillers, and more. Here are a few of the best that have come out this year.
8.
Get Out
Perhaps it came out at the perfect time about a month after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. In a time where racial tensions seemed to be blowing out of the water from different sectors of the country. So here we have a small budget horror comedy from the mind of Jordan Peele, best known for his work on the comedy sketch show Key and Peele. Not only was this movie a complete surprise in how entertaining it was, but it built elements of suspense and horror and comedy that blended together for a delightfully good time. Is it perfect ? No. Did it come out the right time with the right hype? Definitely. But is it still a quality film with some nice crafted cinematic plot elements and ideas that are pretty damn original and bat-shit crazy? Hell yes.
7.
It
The 2017 version of Stephen King’s It, a story of a group of friends who encounter a demonic entity taking many forms of fear, particularly a creepy clown, which likes to feed on the children living in Derry, Maine. What could have been an awful remake of an already subpar television mini-series(the only redeeming quality being Tim Curry’s whacky performance as Pennywise) turned out to be the biggest box office surprise smash hit and critical success of a movie that many did not see coming, at least not that exponentially. It, even with all the major hype and anticipation surrounding it, lived up to the expectations, even surpassing them in ways that were suprising. For one, every member of the “Losers Club” consisting of these young child actors, are fantastic. Finn Wolfhard as Richie Tozier, the foul mouthed comedian of the group, Jeremy Ray Taylor as the quiet, loveable Ben Hanscom, and Jack Grazer as Eddie, a child with an overprotective mother and germaphobe, are all standouts among the talented young cast. Bill Skarsgard as the child eating clown is fantastic and creates a chillingly grotesque, weird, funny, and menacing villain who beats Tim Curry’s Pennywise by a long shot. He is threatening, creepy, and original.
6.
The Big Sick
Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily Gordon wrote a delightful, heartwarming, hilarious script on the real life occurence of their relationship before they eventually married, and how Kumail’s parent’s strict cultural spectrum on marriage and love intervened with his love with Emily, a white woman, which leads to a temporary breakup and Emily going into a coma due to an unknown illness. What follows is a story of love, acceptance, pain, forgiveness, and family that is charming, original and heavily lifted by the superb performances by Nanjiani and Holly Hunter and Ray Romano as Emily’s parents. This is a touching story on how tough love can be, but it’s always there, one way or another to comfort us all.
5.
A Ghost Story
David Lowery brings to life a film that includes themes and ideologies on death, love, afterlife, and our existence in the universe through the journey of M, a ghost played by Casey Affleck, who misses his opportunity to go to the other side and finds himself back in his home where he experiences his grieving wife and two other timelines pass through in conjuncture. A Ghost Story is a profound, sad film that is emotionally flooring. It doesn’t spoon feed what the message is as Lowery allows the audience to project themselves into the mind of the ghosts as we see things that would anger us, frighten us, and have us wonder about our very own existence and purpose in life. This is a truly haunting, beautiful film.
4.
Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan’s war epic has no central characters, minimal dialogue, and we never see the enemy once in the film. Yet, all three of these elements strengthen an already masterclass vision of a film. Told through three different perspectives with culminating timelines, Dunkirk is a visual and technical masterpiece with emotional depth that can only be fully taken in on the IMAX screen. Every sequence is intense and heart-pounding, every story told layered in moral depth, every action meticulous in the relevance of time.
3.
Wind River
Jeremy Renner is fantastic and gives his best career performance as a tracker who helps a rookie FBI agent hunt down the killer of an 18 year old girl in the unforgiving Wind River reservation of Wyoming. Taylor proves his worth as a screenwriter once again and his directorial debut is spectscular in this thrilling, emotional ride.
2.
Logan Lucky
Steven Soderbergh’s triumphant return to the big screen is a crime-comedy for the ages! Smartly written, superbly acted and hilarious throughout, Logan Lucky is a smart, funny, and beautiful looking film. A cult-classic and overlooked masterpiece in the years to come.
1.
Good Time
Robert Pattinson gives the performance of his life in this non-stop thriller through the city of New York as Nicky, played to perfection by Pattinson, tries to get 10,000 dollars to bail his mentally challenged brother out of Riker’s Island Prison after a robbery gone wrong. Good Time is non-stop intensity for the majority of 110 minute run-time with Nicky finding himself in bad situation after situation. The Safdie Brothers use of medium to close up shots makes the film feel necessarily claustrophobic and the film is finely crafted to the point where flaws are seamless and can be overlooked. This film is a great time.
Honorable mentions: Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Brigsby Bear