Regarding The Movies That Were Released In 2017

(1) twin peaks the return
the best thing lynch has created. it's not cinema, but it's easily the best thing i saw this year. it captures modern life perfectly, while still being otherworldly

other great tv episodes i saw this year:

the oa - homecoming
girls - goodbye tour
the leftovers - the most powerful man in the world (and his identical twin brother)
the deuce - pilot
smilf - eighteen hundred filet-o-fishes and one small diet coke

(2) raw
always eat your friends

(3) lady bird
this is a crisp experience. feels like a mark mulder curve dropping into the zone

(4) the meyerowitz stories (new and selected)
it's among baumbach's best, mistress america and greenberg. i love the characters baumbach creates, in this one there's career-best adam sandler

(5) valerian and the city of a thousand planets & (10) dunkirk
valerian is a remarkable visual experience with characters as good as they need to be. a comic-book movie without preposterous self-importance. the story is smaller, and the leads more haphazard. some narrative beats miss, but it matters less since it lacks plodding exposition. dunkirk is a war movie about survival that lacks heavy-handed moralizing. it's arguable that that's a flaw not a feature, but it makes for a good time in the theater. it's under two hours!

(6) win it all
love joe swanberg's chicago. like drinking buddies and easy, it's full of interesting performances. people grinding through their problems

(7) logan lucky
a can't-miss soderbegh heist film. love channing tatum in these soderbergh films, see magic mike, one of this decade's best!

(8) american made
i love action movie tom cruise, though this is a little off the beaten path. he's a charming bad guy you'll root for. i'm still hopeful that the mummy is good :)

(9) the unknown girl
i have a weakness for the dardennes and this is no exception

(11) song to song & (28) blade runner twenty forty-nine
two films with ryan gosling in them. song to song continues where knight of cups left off. it's a love story where romance is captured tonally--love for the image. ryan gosling is better when he's less serious--

lone exception to this statement is in only god forgives where he's serious to the point of self-parody

the playfulness he has with rooney mara is something lovely. compare that with blade runner twenty forty-nine, where gosling is completely internal. his actions merely maintain the tone of the film, which is anti-septic and uninteresting. sure, the shots look nice, but it's boring as hell. its only great scene is two and a half hours in as if rewarding you for making it all the way through. song to song has moment-to-moment energy that's truly a marvel. blade runner has nice-looking stills

(12) the snowman & (24) alien covenant
if you're looking for a narrative that deftly manuevers to a satisfying conclusion, you'll be disappointed. but i go to movies to see fun performances, and michael fassbender and rebecca ferguson are channeling some shit here. it's winter in norway and someone's been murdered... fassbender is walking the streets without suitable layers. he smokes, he sleeps in the street. he interviews beats-wearing senior citizens in factories. he is far less compelling in alien covenant (he plays an android), but i loved the first forty to sixty minutes of this. there's a foreboding sense that something is gonna happen. there's nothing like thinking this is a horror movie before it becomes one. once things start happening, though, it veers into dull westworld-type philosophical explorations. it's worthwhile, just could've cut forty minutes out

(13) the big sick
i like romantic dramedies with likable leads. these two hours fly by. ray romano is excellent as everyone's dad

(14) thor ragnarok
fun! cate blanchett is the best villian in marvel or whatever. these movies can be decent if they chill out a bit. civil war i'm looking at you

(15) personal shopper
my favorite assayas film, though i'm a little miffed it wasn't better. kristen stewart is perfectly cast, but its conclusion is mildly disappointing. assayas's films work only insofar as their narrative is compelling, which is why summer hours and clouds of sils maria fail so miserably

(16) okja
the super-pig cgi works! it's refreshing to see cgi used as a supplement, rather than encompassing the entire visual framework. okja has batshit performances from jake gyllenhall and tilda swinton. they're aiming for the east asian style of a kurosawa film, but it doesn't quite land. unsettling tbh

(17) joan didion the center will not hold
a documentary about reading, made me feel guilty for not reading much anymore :(

(18) the last jedi
stawww wors

(19) landline
kinda like girls i guess

(20) ghost in the shell
looks amazing! with a coherent script, this could've been one of the year's best!

(21) the florida project
love it when people run around outside in the summer. been waiting for this since american honey

(22) molly's game
jessica chastain is great at sorkin, unfortunately sorkin can't direct, or something? hardest cliff-drop for a movie in awhile. possibly admirable

(23) atomic blonde
i just wish they'd rethought having stalker screening in a theater a decade after its release. how dare they!

(25) john wick chapter two
keanu reeves action movie is good what else is new

(26) phantom thread
(27) get out
fun horror movie. love the genre flourishes, wish it leaned more into that...

(29) the beguiled
i loved the first half. doors closing, shoes hitting the floor. once colin farrell wiles out though... it made me sad

(30) jumanji welcome to the jungle
(31) the fate of the furious
(32) princess cyd
(33) good time
what is this

(34) a quiet passion
(35) the lost city of z
i want to like this movie more than i do

(36) to the bone
lily collins is compelling

(37) logan
the best part of the film is when logan and xavier stay at a black family's house and eat dinner with them

(38) mother!
(39) a ghost story
i loved rooney mara in this. unfortunately, she is not the lead. a white sheet is

(40) call me by your name
i loved a bigger splash but this was boring. oppressive score, watch a rohmer movie instead

(41) brawl in cell block ninety-nine
vince vaughn! few redeeming qualities other than that. s craig zahler's world is dull

(42) three billboards outside ebbing, missouri
woody harrelson is the only good performance

(43) it
the only good king adaptation is the dead zone

(44) fifty shades darker
the first film in this series created a sense of romantic fantasy that was interesting and modern. two people were into each other but afraid of what closeness means. there is a sense that their relationship is headed toward mutually assured destruction. the next two (one came out this year!) remove the sense of an internal threat, and replace it with absurd external threats (camp! camp! camp!). overall successful trilogy imo

(45) forty-seven meters down
they could've cut out the last fifteen minutes and this would've vaulted forty spots

(46) the shape of water
i took so little from this experience. sally hawkins is good. that's it. seriously. del toro imposes his boring-ass aesthetic on the viewer. fish man unpleasant to look at

(47) orbiter nine
a space movie with a twist: it's not a space movie

(48) the disaster artist
this is outright terrible. there's a considerable gap before this. i've listened to a little of sestero's audiobook and have decided franco completely squandered an opportunity here. tommy wiseau is an actually interesting subject, but the screenplay and franco's performance reflect none of the subject's depth. they should've called it tommy talks funny

(49) a cure for wellness
i had semi-positive vibes after seeing stills of the dental scene, but nope

(50)  the discovery
cool premise in an r/movies sense, but abominable save rooney mara