ScreenAnarchy's Favourite Films of 2017

2 Votes: Baahubali: The Conclusion, By The Time it Gets Dark. A Cure for Wellness, Coco, The Disaster Artist, Faces Places, Five Fingers for Marseilles, The Girl With All The Gifts, I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore, John Wick Chapter 2, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Kong: Skull Island, Love off the Cuff, mother!, Raw, Split, T2: Trainspotting, The Third Murder, Thor: Ragnarok, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Tigers are not Afraid, Tragedy Girls, Twin Peaks: The Return, War for the Planet of the Apes, Wind River, Wormwood

1 Vote: 29+1, 78/52, Alien: Covenant, Ancien and the Magic Tablet, Angamaly Diaries, Arrival, Ava, Bad Genius, The Beguiled, Blade of the Immortal, Bodied, Call Me By Your Name, El Ciudadano Illustre, Claire's Camera, Closeness, Colossal, Craiglist Allstars, David Lynch: The Art of Life, Dawson City: Frozen Time, The Day After, The Death of Stalin, Despicable Me 3, Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?, The Edge of Seventeen, Elle, The Endless, Endless Poetry, A Father's Will, Felicite, Free Fire, The Future Perfect, Gerald's Game, Good Manners, Haunted: A Last Visit to Red House, Have a Nice Day, High Fantasy, La Hora Final, Hounds of Love, I, Tonya, Icarus, In This Corner of the World, It, Journey to the West: Demons Strike Back, Jupiter's Moon, Lady Macbeth, The Last Family, Last Flag Flying, Let the Corpses Tan, La Libertad del Diablo, The Little Crusader, Liyanna, The Lost City of Z, Lowlife, Lucky, El Mar La Mar, Marjorie Prime, Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts, Mayhem, Meteorlar, The Meyerowitz Stories, Molly's Game, Mon Mon Mon Monsters, Motherland, Mudbound, Newton, November, Obit, On Body and Soul, On the Beach at Night Alone, Our Shining Days, The Outlaws, SPL3: Paradox, The Party, Paterson, Pin Cushion, The Post, Prevenge, Professor Marsten and the Wonder Women, Rat Film, The Relationtrip, Rey, The Rider, Scary Mother, See You Up There, Shin Godzilla, Sisterhood, Sleep Has Her House, Spoor, Starless, La Telenovela, Thelma, The Untamed, The Villainess, The Void, What Will People Say, Wilson, Win it All, Winter Brothers, The Woman Who Left, Wonderstruck, World Without End (No Reported Incidents), The Wound, XX, Zama

Honourable mentions:

11. Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins, USA)

12. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (dir. Rian Johnson, USA)

13. The Square (dir. Ruben Östlund, Sweden)

14. Logan (dir. James Mangold, USA)

15. Brawl in Cell Block 99 (dir. S. Craig Zahler, USA)

16. Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai, Japan)

17. Phantom Thread (dir. P.T. Anderson, USA)

18. Super Dark Times (dir. Kevin Phillips, USA)

19. Loveless (dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev, Russia)

20. Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig, USA)

10. Baby Driver (dir. Edgar Wright, USA)

After the Ant-Man debacle, writer-director Edgar Wright triumphantly returned to what he does best: distinctive and personal genre cinema, in which the style is part of the substance. Baby Driver is arguably his best film so far, right up there with the comedic masterpiece Hot Fuzz. This time Wright is more subtle with his characteristic close-ups and quick cuts in the montages, letting the complex action sequences - with impressive stunt work - he has ever filmed, flow. The eclectic soundtrack is not only brilliantly adapted to what we are watching (whether it’s a car chase, a shoot-out, or just Baby buying coffee), but it also plays a vital role in the life of the protagonists, Baby (Alsel Elgort) and Debra (Lily James), and is perfectly used for specific moments of joy or drama. Baby Driver, though, is not a mere exercise in style, it’s also one of Wright’s warmest films, with a juvenile love story that, unlike Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, develops in a rough, violent and greedy world. Thus, Baby Driver has more soul, and certainly better action, than countless films in the genre.

Eric Ortiz Garcia

9. Personal Shopper (dir. Olivier Assayas, France)

There's been a narrative building that we are in the second coming of Kristen Stewart. After her thoughtful and earthy supporting turn in Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria, her return team-up with the French auteur is now the new high mark in her career, and likely in Assayas' also. Personal Shopper’s expert balancing of late Kieslowski metaphysics and European thriller trappings, with a hint of Kiyoshi Kurosawa chills and a haunted grace that is all Assayas' and Stewart's, turns a curiously mundanely-titled film into a spine-tingling ghost story for the digital age.

Ben Umstead

8. The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker, USA)

Director Sean Baker (Tangerine) digs deeper into the flipside of the American Dream with The Florida Project. Again, he brings out unbelievable performances from a cast of non-professional actors, portraying ordinary people living in the margins of society. Willem Dafoe also shows up, reminding us that it’s all a make-believe, but the film’s immersive and emotional power is hard to deny.

Dustin Chang

7. Okja (dir. Bong Joon-ho, South Korea)

Bong Joon-ho once again proves himself to be one of the top directors in the world, with the gripping adventure, eco-thriller, and unabashed joyride that is Okja. Harkening back to his monster movie The Host, Bong delves into the greed of corporate America and its effect on the little guy – or in this case, little girl, who will stop at nothing to save her best friend, a giant pig destined for the slaughterhouse. Allowing a level of violence not often seen in family-friendly fare, Bong’s film wears its heart firmly on its animal-loving sleeve, keeping the action apace and the laughter and tears coming in equal amounts.

Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg

6. Good Time (dir. Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, USA)

The title of sibling filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie's finest work to-date may describe exactly the opposite of what their characters experience, but that's certainly not the case for viewers lucky enough to encounter this artful and intensely propulsive thriller. Good Time features a collective of cinema artists working at the top of their game, from Robert Pattinson's career-best performance, to ace cinematographer Sean Price Williams' near-psychedelic neon color schemes, to Benny Safdie and Ronald Bronstein's relentless and breathless editing, to Oneohtrix Point Never's nervy electronic score. All of this may evoke 70s and 80s crime films, but its portrait of economically depressed and desperate souls speaks powerfully to our socially, racially, and politically fractured present.

Christopher Bourne

5. A Ghost Story (dir. David Lowery, USA)

In A Ghost Story, director David Lowery creates a poignant elegy on love, loss, time, and existence. Contemplative and resonant even with its sparse use of dialogue, meanings are conveyed more profoundly, more intimately, through its use of Malick-ian visual poetry and subtle yet affecting performances from leads Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck. A Ghost Story, silent yet subversive, will haunt you, just not in the ways you’d normally expect.

Tristan Daine Zinampan

4. Dunkirk (dir. Christopher Nolan, USA)

Christopher Nolan is a singular talent, and although his latest strays far from the epic and character driven narratives he is known for, the director proves once again that he can master almost any coda in the cinematic language. Dunkirk is also, refreshingly, a very different war movie that eschews violence and death on a global scale, and instead replaces the urgency and danger of near-certain death with a series of terse moments and tense music akin to the anxious ticking of a clock already out of time. Split across the land, the sea and the air, Dunkirk is relentless and captivating without a single dull moment.

Kwenton Bellette

3. Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve, USA)

The very suggestion of making a sequel to Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi noir Blade Runner was a bad enough idea to send most self-respecting film aficionados into a conniption fit, as Harrison Ford seemed determined to resurrect all of his most beloved characters and do his best to destroy their legacy one by one. But then Canadian director Denis Villeneuve came on board, fresh from his wonderful alien invasion drama Arrival, while Ryan Gosling seemed perfect casting as Agent K, a replicant blade runner for a new generation. Slowly a cast and crew were assembled that made the entire enterprise rather less frightening. Nobody, however, could have anticipated the masterpiece that materialised. Rather than rehashing the ideas of the first film, Villeneuve and original screenwriter Hampton Fancher advanced those themes in bold new directions. Los Angeles, too, has been allowed to evolve - or devolve - over the three decades since Deckard’s encounter with Roy Batty. Add to this a heartbreaking romance between a robot and his holographic girlfriend, and the suggestion that one's purpose might transcend their function, and the results resonate on an emotional level that Scott’s film was never able to reach. Enshrined in Roger Deakins’ stunning cinematography (this year, finally…?) and an epic soundscape score from Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Walfisch, Blade Runner 2049 is, in my humble opinion, the best film of the year.

James Marsh

2. The Shape of Water (dir. Guillermo del Toro, USA)

Guillermo del Toro’s newest film surprised me in a multitude of ways. While the world-class director will often do “a film for them, a film for me”, meaning that they’ll do a slick Hollywood movie and then a smaller, more creative work — The Shape of Water feels like a mesh of both. Under del Toro’s fantastic artistic direction — plus a dose of Amélie and The Creature From the Black Lagoon - you get a sense of the wonder and magic of the film. What’s more, The Shape of Water focuses on what it’s like to be “other” in a world that would rather shove you into a cookie cutter shape — exactly what this society needs right now.

Michele “Izzy” Galgana

1. Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele, USA)

Get Out is that somewhat elusive film: one that perfectly combines a strong and necessary socio-political theme with fantastic genre tropes. Writer-director Jordan Peele does not waste a single frame or line of dialogue in his full-frontal assault on the insidious nature of racism in the United States. A combination of The Stepford Wives and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Get Out both matches and exceeds those expectations. Never underestimating his audience, Peele combines slow-burn psychological horror with thrilling jump scares, a disconcerting score, and top-notch performances. Get Out may well be the definitive horror film of the decade.

Shelagh M. Rowan-Legg