My favourite films last year:
1. 20th Century Women
2. The Vietnam War
3. Ex Libris
4. Citizen Jane
5. Dawson City: Frozen Time
6. The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith
7. Certain Women
8. The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography
9. Beatriz at Dinner
10. California Typewriter
First some math, in the style of Steven Rubio and courtesy ILX’s “Last (x) movies you saw” thread,
my personal cloud for keeping track of everything I see.
Starting with a post on January 21, 2017--where I listed and rated the last 10 films I’d seen; I’m
sure I saw all them within a three-week window, so they all fall under 2017 viewing--I watched
about 150 films last year. I’ll count 41 of them as new--meaning festival screenings mean nothing
to me, ditto Christmas-week openings to qualify for Academy Awards; it’s when the film gets a
regular opening that matters--and I’ll include Twin Peaks. In addition to the 10 listed above:
Personal Shopper, The Founder, Get Out, David Lynch: The Art Life, Long Strange Trip, Nobody Speak:
Hulk Hogan, Gawker and Trials of a Free Press, Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary, Mans-
field 66/67, The Fabulous Alan Carr, The Beguiled, Get Me Roger Stone, Baby Driver, Lady Macbeth,
Mother!, My Cousin Rachel, Julian Schnabel: A Private Portrait, Lucky, LBJ, The Meyerowitz Stories,
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, It, The Florida Project, The Circle, Mark Felt, Detroit,
Columbus, My Friend Dahmer, The Post, All the Money in the World, Phantom Thread, Twin Peaks: The
Return, I, Tonya.
A few of these (the last six, specifically) I didn’t catch up to until 2018, after I’d drawn up my
Top 10. None of them would have made it on to the list. Phantom Thread: Lewis is very good, but when
a kinetically gifted director makes a fussy, high-minded masterpiece that inspires people to trip all
over each other somberly praising its subtlety--see also The Age of Innocence, Gosford Park, and half
the Spielberg films since E.T.--I’m reflexively wary. I feel like I’ve seen it twice: not sure there
was anything in the film I didn’t already glean from the trailer. (The kinetic gifts of mid-'70s Alt-
man were different than those of the other two--words bounced all over the place, not the camera.)
The other two big critical hits that left me cold were Get Out and Baby Driver. I liked the conception
of the first but found it eventually settled into the kind of gross horror-film frenzy I just don’t
enjoy anymore. Baby Driver was worse than that. (I’m not counting Mother! as a big critical hit, since
half the people who reviewed it seemed to hate it as much as I did.)
I’ve been holding off a few months on a second viewing of 20th Century Women. I wrote a little bit
about it on the music-movie blog I keep with Scott Woods, and I think I’ve posted this clip a half-
dozen times on Facebook and ILX.
My favourite films last year:
1. 20th Century Women
2. The Vietnam War
3. Ex Libris
4. Citizen Jane
5. Dawson City: Frozen Time
6. The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith
7. Certain Women
8. The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography
9. Beatriz at Dinner
10. California Typewriter
First some math, in the style of Steven Rubio and courtesy ILX’s “Last (x) movies you saw” thread,
my personal cloud for keeping track of everything I see.
Starting with a post on January 21, 2017--where I listed and rated the last 10 films I’d seen; I’m
sure I saw all them within a three-week window, so they all fall under 2017 viewing--I watched
about 150 films last year. I’ll count 41 of them as new--meaning festival screenings mean nothing
to me, ditto Christmas-week openings to qualify for Academy Awards; it’s when the film gets a
regular opening that matters--and I’ll include Twin Peaks. In addition to the 10 listed above:
Personal Shopper, The Founder, Get Out, David Lynch: The Art Life, Long Strange Trip, Nobody Speak:
Hulk Hogan, Gawker and Trials of a Free Press, Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary, Mans-
field 66/67, The Fabulous Alan Carr, The Beguiled, Get Me Roger Stone, Baby Driver, Lady Macbeth,
Mother!, My Cousin Rachel, Julian Schnabel: A Private Portrait, Lucky, LBJ, The Meyerowitz Stories,
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, It, The Florida Project, The Circle, Mark Felt, Detroit,
Columbus, My Friend Dahmer, The Post, All the Money in the World, Phantom Thread, Twin Peaks: The
Return, I, Tonya.
A few of these (the last six, specifically) I didn’t catch up to until 2018, after I’d drawn up my
Top 10. None of them would have made it on to the list. Phantom Thread: Lewis is very good, but when
a kinetically gifted director makes a fussy, high-minded masterpiece that inspires people to trip all
over each other somberly praising its subtlety--see also The Age of Innocence, Gosford Park, and half
the Spielberg films since E.T.--I’m reflexively wary. I feel like I’ve seen it twice: not sure there
was anything in the film I didn’t already glean from the trailer. (The kinetic gifts of mid-'70s Alt-
man were different than those of the other two--words bounced all over the place, not the camera.)
The other two big critical hits that left me cold were Get Out and Baby Driver. I liked the conception
of the first but found it eventually settled into the kind of gross horror-film frenzy I just don’t
enjoy anymore. Baby Driver was worse than that. (I’m not counting Mother! as a big critical hit, since
half the people who reviewed it seemed to hate it as much as I did.)
I’ve been holding off a few months on a second viewing of 20th Century Women. I wrote a little bit
about it on the music-movie blog I keep with Scott Woods, and I think I’ve posted this clip a half-
dozen times on Facebook and ILX.