Another year is almost in the books. I’m still
hammering out my official top 10 movies of 2017. It’s a list that had ballooned
to about 25 contenders at one point. That’s why I’ve put together a list of my
honorable mentions that I couldn’t find room for on the final list, which will
run on New Year’s Day, as per my Halfstack tradition. While these movies may
fall short of all-time classic greatness, each spoke to me, some in profound
ways. Let’s celebrate the year that was in cinema, folks.
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| Photo credit: The Florida Project/IMDb |
The Ballad of Lefty Brown
Thanks to travel commitments and the holidays, The
Ballad of Lefty Brown wound up being my final Halfstack film review of the
year—and what a way to go out. This western recalls the best of John Ford and
George Stevens, but recontextualizes those stories with a modern attitude
toward crooked politicians screwing over the little guy. This film’s little guy
is Lefty Brown, a dimwitted ranch hand and sometime lawman played by Bill
Pullman in one of his best-ever roles. Lefty’s arc of self-determination is
moving and inspiring without ever being treacly.
Berlin Syndrome
This claustrophobic kidnapping thriller plays
around with ideas like Stockholm Syndrome (but it takes place in Berlin, get
it?) and gender politics, leaning into and subverting them simultaneously in
complicated, messy, and extremely uncomfortable ways. When an Australian woman
(Teresa Palmer) living in the German city goes on a date with a dashing and
seemingly sweet man (Max Riemelt), she goes home with him. But she can’t leave
thanks to his elaborate locking-from-the-outside system designed to trap her,
and the relationship that follows is horrifying and invigorating, with a
climactic chase that really made my ears perk up.
The Big Sick
The love story of co-writer-star Kumail Nanjiani
and co-writer Emily V. Gordon (played here by an enchanting Zoe Kazan) is put
on display in one of the year’s sweetest and most love-filled movies. Nanjiani
gets to be more than the painfully repressed nerd he plays on HBO’s Silicon
Valley, and he gets to be real about his discomfort with his family’s
attempts to impose Pakistani traditions—especially arranged marriage—on him
even though he’s pretty dang American in every other way. But it’s his
relationship with Emily and her parents (played by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano)
that makes this movie so special. When Emily falls ill with a rare infection
and is placed in a medically induced coma, Kumail and his would-be girlfriend’s
parents bounce off each other uncomfortably, annoyed with each other’s quirks
and stressed out by the situation—and they get to know each other more deeply than
you typically get to see on the big screen.
The Florida Project
Filmmaker Sean Baker has carved out a niche for
himself as perhaps American indie cinema’s most humanistic voice. After the
success of his 2015 film, Tangerine, he got a bigger budget and didn’t
have to shoot The Florida Project on an iPhone. He focused his actual
camera (shooting with film!) on a low-rent Orlando motel, where young Moonee
(Brooklynn Prince) runs around for a summer while her mother (Bria Vinaite)
struggles to be a provider for her. Devastating stuff happens, but when you’re
at eye-level with Moonee, about three feet off the ground, things can seem a
little magical—much like the Magic Kingdom that looms only a couple miles down
the road.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Vol. 2
Even the coolest parents disappoint their
children. And Ego the Living Planet (Kurt Russell) is one of the coolest dads a
guy could have. He literally creates planets from scratch. Star Lord’s (Chris
Pratt) long-lost daddy finally finds him in this year’s sequel to the best
Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, and he wants the younger man to join him in
creating life in the universe—but there’s a pretty big catch. The movie shows
how meaningful it is to build a family out of people who aren’t your blood
relatives, because sometimes the ones who share your blood aren’t the ones who
have your best interests at heart. Also, it’s hilarious, every set piece is
thrilling, and every color looks like it was borrowed from the set of Star
Trek: The Original Series.
I Don't Feel At Home In
This World Anymore
Macon Blair’s directorial debut made all kinds
of waves at Sundance and was unceremoniously dropped on Netflix a couple months
later, where it kinda withered as the cultural conversation moved on from it.
That’s a mistake, because this is a mean and dirty pop thriller that feels like
it could have been based on a long-lost novel by Elmore Leonard. Melanie
Lynskey’s fed-up nurse-turned-vigilante is one of the year’s most engaging
characters, especially once she gets in over her head. Plus, who can say no to
Elijah Wood with a rattail haircut?
Landline
Relationships are hard. It’s especially hard to
see your parents’ relationships for what they really are as you get older.
That’s the thing that dawns on Dana (Jenny Slate), a soon-to-be-married woman
in 1995 New York City, as she learns via her teenage sister (a delightfully
grumpy Abby Quinn) that their playwright father (John Turturro) has been
carrying on an affair. The period details mostly feel right, but it’s the emotional
beats that strike hardest when watching Landline, which makes you feel
ever-so-slightly better about your own reservations and idiosyncrasies.
Director Gillian Robespierre has such empathy for her characters that, even
when they become colossal screw ups, they are never painted as truly bad. Their
good qualities matter and Robespierre says that maybe it’s okay to not burn
every bridge, even when the person on the other end has wronged you.
Three Billboards Outside
Ebbing, Missouri
This dark comedy makes no bones about the fact
that its characters in a fictional small town in Missouri are wretched. They
don’t deserve redemption for being crooked cops who abuse minorities (like Sam
Rockwell’s character) or for firebombing a police station (Frances McDormand’s
character does that). What writer-director Martin McDonagh says is something a
little funnier, a little meaner: Even the worst among us can sometimes be
guilted into doing something halfway decent from time to time. The joke of this
movie’s ending is that they just twist the decent thing until it becomes a
monstrous idea.
Valerian and the City of a
Thousand Planets
The ultimate space opera, Star Wars, got
its best installment in 30 years in 2017, so it’s easy to see why the year’s other
space opera could be so overlooked by American audiences. But don’t sleep
on Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Luc Besson’s (The
Fifth Element, Lucy) bonkers take on the French sci-fi comic book
series of his youth about an enormous, multicultural (as in, filled with every
type of human and alien) space station hurtling through space a few
centuries from now. As the title character, Dane DeHaan is a little stiffer
than you might want from a swashbuckling space cop, but Cara Delevingne, who
plays his no-nonsense partner, is a charming revelation. But the real star is
Besson’s unmatched imagination—every corner of the space station looks wildly
different from the last, and each creature is so fully fleshed out that you
understand their backstory just from looking at them. It’s remarkably rich and
plenty of fun, to boot.
Wonder Woman
Put aside the superb superhero action sequences
(the trench warfare scene in particular is masterfully powerful). What sticks
with me is how Wonder Woman (both the movie and the character) believes
in joy in all its forms, from friendship to dancing to ice cream. She is
hopeful and she is hope. That stuff matters more than any CGI explosions or
swooping camera techniques, although director Patty Jenkins brings the goods
there, too.
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