From Get Out to Wonder Woman, These Were the 10 Best Movies of 2017

March 20, 2019 0 By JohnValbyNation

All told, 2017 was a surprisingly great year for movies. There were wickedly smart horror flicks like Get Out, wonderfully imaginative superhero movies like Thor Ragnarok, and brilliant dramas like Lady Bird. There was also a little thing called Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Not every flick was perfect, but there were a lot of gems out there—many of them in places you wouldn't expect. (Who knew Guillermo del Toro would put out one of the most romantic movies of the year?) Want to know the best of the best? Well, we collected those for you right here.

Get Out

For one to properly discuss even the bare essentials of Get Out, Jordan Peele’s social thriller about a white and seemingly liberal family that, secretly and for generations, has lobotomized black people, one must make peace with an obvious truth: white evil has always been a characteristic of American life, from the earliest days of colonization, when the blood of slaves first dampened U.S. soil, until now. Evil has always lived in the open here, in the land of the free. Still, our America—the one that gives rise to plutocratic womanizers, the one that fetishizes the death of black men and women, the one that has done its very best to gut the middle class and believes in lawless gun control despite a continuous wave of mass shootings—makes it easy to hide a particular kind of evil (or just as easy to broadcast it). The genius of Get Out, framed as it was in a more psychologically perverse vision of Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, was its insistence on airing what many black people have long known to be true—just how draining white people can be on our existence, sometimes quite literally. I don’t know if Peele’s film will trigger a real and needed shift in Hollywood, if it will open up more doors for more inclusive stories to be told, or if white people actually confronted their demons in the months since, but I do know the feeling the film left me with, the feeling of acknowledgement, Peele’s knowing head nod. As I sat in a darkened midtown theater in late February, watching Peele put a name to a shape and color of evil I’d encountered before, I remember thinking: Yes, that’s it. That’s it right there. —Jason Parham

The Shape of Water

The movie gods blessed Guillermo del Toro when they gave him the inability to pick a genre. Gothic horror, blockbuster bang-'em-ups, art-house romances—del Toro has made them all, one right after the other. HIs latest, Shape of Water, is at heart a love story. But because it's from a monster master, it's about a romance between a mute custodial worker and a fish-man. Set in the 1960s, the janitor, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), meets the aquatic creature, called the Asset (and played by Doug Jones), because he's being studied by the US government at the facility where she works. It's a sensitive examination of how society treats "the other" and wonderful testament to the fact that love can, truly, take any form. —Angela Watercutter

Wonder Woman

First things first: Wonder Woman was a really good time at the movies. Gal Gadot could not be a better embodiment of Diana Prince and Patty Jenkins directed the hell out of the superheroine’s first theatrical feature. But what was really great about Wonder Woman as a phenomenon was just how big it all was. After years of female superheroes never getting their due on the big screen, scores of fans showed up to see one lasso the bad guys and save the world—hero shot and all. The film went on to earn more than $820 million at the worldwide box office, making it the highest-grossing superhero origin movie ever. It was a lot of money—and also a lot of proof that audiences wanted female-led comic book movies all along. —Angela Watercutter

Lady Bird

Up until one critic ruined it for everyone, writer-diretor Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird had a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. And you know what? It earned it. Led by a stellar cast that included Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, and newcomer/soon-to-be-powerhouse Beanie Feldstein, Gerwig's movie is a wonderful picture of a life spent trying to live beyond the suburbs (this time in Sacramento). But don't let the "misunderstood teen" thing fool you. What makes Lady Bird great is that very few of Gerwig's characters are tropes. She lets everyone be faulty and heroic, from the teens right down to their parents (big congrats to Metcalf on a career-topping performance). And in that respect, maybe it's OK the movie now has a 99 percent on RT—even the most perfect things have flaws. —Angela Watercutter

Girls Trip

When the nominations for the 2018 Golden Globes were announced, one name was notably left out—Tiffany Haddish, the breakout star of Girls Trip, the summer comedy that starred four black women and surpassed $100 million in a historic box office showing. Jada Pinkett-Smith, who starred alongside Haddish, spotlighted one of the many perils within the movie industry. “Hollywood has systems in place,” she wrote on Twitter in response to the snub, “that must learn to expand its concepts of race, gender equality and inclusion in regard to its perceptions of art across the board.” In this case, the underlying “perception of art” was obvious to many. One of Hollywood’s unspoken and long-practiced traditions, is the recognition of a certain genre of black film come award season—those that peddle in the business of pain, poverty, and suffering. (Think 12 Years a Slave, Precious, Selma, even Moonlight.) Girls Trip, though, was an entirely different outfit: an ensemble comedy that followed four college friends over the course of a weekend in New Orleans. Though Pinkett-Smith, Queen Latifah, and Regina Hall were marquee names, it was Haddish who stole the show as Dina, an uninhibited riot of a woman, all heart and sincerity. The result landed her a standup special on Showtime, a book deal, and a starring role alongside Kevin Hart in an upcoming film. When Pinkett-Smith took to Twitter in mid-December, it was emblematic of the one true message threaded throughout Girls Trip: no matter what, your girls will always have your back. —Jason Parham

Thor: Ragnarok

Of all the mini-franchises in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Thor movies have always been the biggest wild-card. Some people love ‘em, some people find ‘em … well, meh. They were a necessary bridge to the outer reaches of the galaxy, but they didn’t always have the swagger of Iron Man or the gang’s-all-here appeal of the Captain America films. Thor: Ragnarok proved the God of Thunder didn’t really need any of those things. Imbued with delightfully warm humor thanks to director Taika Waititi, and a surfeit of attitude thanks to Cate Blanchett’s Hela and Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie, Ragnarok was the most rocking Thor yet. Not every hero loses his power when someone cuts off all his hair. —Angela Watercutter

Blade Runner 2049

It took 35 years to get a sequel to Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic. Denis Villeneuve's follow-up was worth the wait. Chock full of the same lush visuals, existential crises, and Harrison Ford scowls as the first, it rebirthed the magic of Scott's original and pushed it forward into a new generation. It wasn't perfect, but considering the myriad pitfalls that are possible in sci-fi, its mere existence is a downright miracle. Dreary dystopia never felt so good. —Angela Watercutter

Baby Driver

A music video trapped in a heist movie, everything about Edgar Wright’s latest was meant to get pulses racing. Car chases, whip-smart dialog, and the kind of soundtrack that’ll make you build a raft of new playlists, it was the perfect shake-off-the-blues summer movie. It even turned locker-door crush object Ansel Elgort into something of an action star as the movie’s titular steering wheel jockey. Baby Driver is, on the page, about a young kid trying to drive his way out of a mob debt, but really it’s about that perfect moment when life syncs up to the soundtrack in your head, or on your headphones. Apple couldn’t have paid for better product placement. —Angela Watercutter

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

C'mon, it's a Star Wars movie; just existing would probably get it on this list. But TLJ amply qualifies on its own merits. For the eighth installment in the franchise, writer-director Rian Johnson went all-in with epic space battles, an emotional core stronger than almost any Star Wars before it, and more pleasant surprises than Ahch-To has porgs. (Also, porgs!) Petulant rage from Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Jedi heroism from Rey (Daisy Ridley), and a brilliant turn from newcomer Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico: Johnson's film has everything fans want and need. By the end of the film, the Resistance is quite nearly in tatters, but the franchise has never looked so full of hope. —Angela Watercutter

The Post

The magic combination of Steven Spielberg and historical dramas pretty much never fails, and The Post is no exception. A tick-tock about the Washington Post's decision to publish stories based on the Pentagon Papers after the Nixon administration slapped The New York Times with an injunction for its own reporting on the documents, Spielberg's movie could not feel more of-the-moment in the age of "fake news" accusations. Editorial decisions aren't always the most adrenaline-producing scenarios, but thanks to strong performances from Meryl Streep as Post publisher Kay Graham and Tom Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee it moves with a swiftness that never loses its rhythm. The news never seemed so real. —Angela Watercutter