2017 has been a brilliant year for the movies.  And they were good in so many ways, let me try to count them: They offered novel subject matter, woman falls in love with fish-man in The Shape of Water; a despised ex-athlete gets her cinema redemption in I, Tonya; a younger man falls heads over heels in love with a washed-up movie star who is played for sexy and seductive in Movie Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool; an interracial romance becomes a horror story, Get Out.  They offered superb performances from actresses, who played young (Lady Bird, I, Tonya) and old (Movie Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri); beautiful (Vicky Krieps in Phantom Threads) and plain (Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water); serious (Meryl Streep in The Post) and hilarious (Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird ); the highborn (Lesley Manville in Phantom Threads) and the working class (Sally Hawkins and Olivia Spencer in The Shape of Water). 

The movies showed us that directors still have ideas worth exploring, and worth exploring in unique, sometimes exhilarating, cinematic expressions.  I, Tonya blended documentary-style segments with feature filmmaking, and offered multiple versions of the same moment. Movie Stars has the main characters literally moving from past to present, then back again—this was done physically, with real sets, rather than through special effects, which gave the transitions the bracing power of the present tense.  And cinematic stylist extraordinaire Christopher Nolan told a war movie, Dunkirk, in three-time frames, which eventually collapsed into one. 

What follows are my top favorites from 2017—catch them on DVD if they’re no longer at your local theater:

All the Money in the World dir. Ridley Scott. The somewhat fictionalized true story of the sensational kidnapping of 16-year-old J. Paul Getty III, held for ransom by a succession of desperate criminals in Italy in 1973. Meanwhile, his grandfather, THE J. Paul Getty (played with greedy glee by Christopher Plummer), the man who set up the Getty Museum, keeps trying to bargain down the price.  Scott skillfully spins this morality tale, about how greed becomes addiction and no good can come of it.  As Gail, young Getty’s determined mother, Michelle Williams gives her most powerful performance yet.  (Just as her talents were totally wasted in The Greatest Showman, alas.)

Dunkirk dir. Christopher Nolan.  It’s a war film with nuance—the story of how over 300,000 allied soldiers were trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk during World War II.  Nolan retells the eventual evacuation from the point of view of land, sea,and air, and in three different time frames which converge.  Strapped for ships, the British Navy requisitioned civilian boats—and the image of hundreds of small boats coming in for the rescue is a stirring one.  Shot on 65mm film—yes, film—it was released in glorious 70mm. 

Get Out  dir. Jordan Peele.  It’s time to meet the parents!  A young black man, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), goes with his white girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams), to her parents’ country estate—it looks rather like Connecticut to me.  There he encounters their live-in domestics, a black couple who smile a little too much. He then realizes every black person in this town is a little… odd.  Okay, I don’t want to give away too much here, but the skillful injection of issues of race into the horror genre makes for one of the most original and watchable movies of the year—and relevant. Peele directed from his own screenplay.

Loving Vincent  dir. Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman.  This was an impossible project, but what a thrill to see its fruition—an all hand-painted feature animation about the final days of Vincent van Gogh.  Based on filmed segments of actors acting against a green screen, 125 artists painted 65,000 oil-on-canvas frames, adopting an Impressionist style similar to van Gogh’s.  A number of his most famous paintings are used as inspiration and as backdrop, as if we were moving in and out of his swirling images.  Simply stunning.

Movie Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool dir. Paul McGuigan.  Well, first, there’s chemistry—real chemistry between Annette Bening and Jamie Bell, who play Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame and the Liverpool lad Peter Turner who became besotted with her late in her life. Grahame was no angel, but she lived life big, and for a while Turner shared that romantic, tempestuous life with her in Malibu and New York City.  Based on Turner’s autobiography, the movie is a masterful tale of a passionate love between flawed people, who in the end give the other what they most needed.  Bring the Kleenex.

Phantom Threads  dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. This is a deliriously gorgeous tale of obsession and adult love, the kind we don’t often see in the movies—Movie Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool  is another from last year.  It’s the 1950s, and successful London couturier Reynolds Woodcock  (Daniel Day Lewis) falls for a beautiful young waitress, Alma (an enchanting Vicky Krieps). They shack up in his posh London townhouse, but alas, he’s no Prince Charming.  Soon he begins to tire of her, as it is his habit with pretty young things he takes in, then tosses out.  Except Alma is going to find a way to weaken his armor.  Some of the story doesn’t quite hang together—such as how Alma falls quickly from muse/model in the showroom, to another seamstress in the atelier—but it’s a delicious ride.

The Shape of Water dir. Guillermo del Toro.  Sally Hawkins, Sally Hawkins, Sally Hawkins!  Hawkins is one of the greatest actresses today, and while her choice of roles seem quirky, they are actually brilliant.  Here she plays Elisa, a mute cleaning lady in a top secret American facility during the Cold War—her world of loneliness is depicted with exquisite empathy.  She stumbles upon a fish-man the government has kidnapped from the Amazon, teaches him sign language, falls in love, and sets out to rescue him—with the help of her spunky co-worker/buddy (Octavia Spencer) and equally lonely neighbor (Richard Jenkins).