MGK’s Top Ten Movies of 2017

10.) John Wick Chapter 2. Here is the interesting thing about John Wick 2: it is, fairly blatantly, a critique of capitalism. John Wick is imprisoned in an economic system with rules designed to benefit the powerful and all he really wants to do is not be a part of it any more, but when he negotiates his exit it turns out there’s a catch (there’s always a catch) and the catch is that he has to do the bidding of a power broker “one last time,” except that he knows that it’s never one last time because the last time was supposed to be the one last time, and when he takes action against that power broker, his supposed friend – another power broker in the system – “reluctantly” brings the entire system to bear against him. It’s honestly kind of brilliant, and on top of that it’s also a balls-to-the-wall action movie, even better than the first one was, and the first one was pretty damn good. (Now, if they’d only start using decent subtitles in these movies instead of the drama queen shit they instead use for some reason.) My Letterboxd notes on it are here.

9.) Logan. Comic nerds so often express the wish for a film version of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, which is not surprising because that story is basically about the denial of old age: Batman can solve everything, even getting older! Logan is subversive because it turns everything about superhero story on its ear: it straight-up tells you that aging sucks, and not everybody gets a happy ending, and that the world is getting steadily worse, but it doesn’t do this in some sort of boring gothy way where the movie takes pleasure in telling you “stuff is bad” but rather goes matter-of-fact about it in a way that superhero movies just don’t do. Logan having a tantrum and trying to beat up a car with a tree branch in a fit of rage – not cool Wolverine berserker rage, but shitty tired old-man rage – is one of the great scenes of the year. And, even with all of that, it finds its peace with these terrible truths. It’s a hell of a thing. My Letterboxd notes on it are here.

8.) Get Out. Many, many people who are smarter about movies than me have written much, much more that is smart about Get Out already and I am not the one to explain how it brilliantly combines racial politics with body horror in a way that is completely compelling and immediately empathetic. I just wanna say how smart it is that at one point, the hero literally escapes from the clutches of his captors by picking cotton, because that’s a brilliant metaphorical inversion, and that the entire movie is filled with smart details like that in service of a story that’s both intelligent and affecting. And scary. Damn is it scary. My Letterboxd notes on it are here.

7.) Okja. If Bong Joon-Ho’s previous film Snowpiercer is a critique of capitalism, then Okja is a critique of capitalists themselves, and this is a fine distinction; the movie practically admires one of the two sisters Tilda Swinton plays because she is amoral and can thus be dealt with expeditiously, whereas the other has distinct beliefs about how she both wants to be rich and wants to be morally in the right. This extends to the protestors who are ostensibly on the side of the good guys in this movie: Paul Dano speechifies at length about the need for nonviolence, but then fucks up Steven Yeun’s shit when he finds out that Yeun has (in some way) betrayed him. Nobody in this movie is perfect, except of course for Okja and her kin, because they are adorable. More than most movies on this list, Okja isn’t entirely sure what it is, but it’s that aimlessness that allows it to say so much about so many things. My Letterboxd notes on it are here.

6.) I, Tonya. The single funniest movie I have seen this year and possibly the darkest as well, I, Tonya manages to find comedy (and a lot of comedy) in a series of viciously abusive relationships and not be tasteless about that, which is sort of amazing. It uses fourth wall-breaking and interview cutaway gags to maximum effect, creating a story that is intentionally meta all the way through to get you through the violence and discuss both a career and a scandal in detail. It only stops being funny when it takes a moment to be devastating, and those moments come quickly and with only enough warning so you aren’t still snickering when the freight train hits you. My Letterboxd notes on it are here.

5.) The Florida Project. Most movies that are about childhood don’t remember that children are hilarious but also often just little shits. Most movies that are about poverty don’t remember that although poverty sucks, everybody has happy moments to which they cling. The Florida Project understands both of these truths completely and many more besides, making it the best film about being a poor child in living memory, with a cast mostly comprised of young, new and untrained actors to boot – the cops are real cops, the social workers are real social workers, and Willem Dafoe is… well, Willem Dafoe, he’s always great in everything, but it’s so nice to see Willem Dafoe get to just be a friendly, considerate person instead of a guy who screams at the camera for dramatic effect while gunfire happens at other points in the movie. My Letterboxd notes on it are here.

4.) Columbus. Two-character movies (and although there are a couple of other characters in this, Columbus is about John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson, and they dominate 90 percent of all screen time together) are a tightrope of a thing: the two characters have to be likeable but not cloying, layered but not inscrutable, interesting but not so much that their inner lives become frenetic. These two characters pair together better than any pas-de-deux since the Before trilogy – the entire movie is in their hands and they do not fumble it, not once, and you expect John Cho to be good but he’s amazing, and Haley Lu Richardson is a revelation – and their conversations and the story are accentuated by Kogonada’s shot choices, which are some of the most beautiful and striking tableaux I’ve seen set to film in a long time. My Letterboxd notes on it are here.

3.) The Big Sick. Here is the thing about serious medical crises that nobody will tell you: when you’re in one, you have to laugh or you’ll collapse. That sense is what permeates The Big Sick – the characters at all point have to laugh, because the stresses being placed on them are unimaginable, and I’m not just talking about the medical crisis that is the heart of the film’s plot but also the expectations of growing up as a member of an immigrant family or the realization that you’ve potentially fucked up the most important thing in your life. What The Big Sick does is invite the audience to laugh with the characters, because what else are you gonna do? And that’s pretty special, a warmhearted gesture from a film that feels like a real hug from family – comforting, but filled with complex associations as well. My Letterboxd notes on it are here.

2.) Lady Bird. It’s probably a little banal at this point to agree with the chorus of people saying “this is what high school was like for me” – in part because it’s just under a decade off for me to really say “this is what high school was like.” I mean, we didn’t even have the Dave Matthews Band yet. Also, I was never a high school girl, and this is most definitely a movie about being a high school girl. That having been said, though, yes, the film feels like high school in a way that so many films don’t: it captures that synthesis of feeling awkward and cool at the same time, recognizes the desperation of wanting to find your own individual identity and the conflict of also wanting at the same time the comforts to which you’re accustomed, and understands that wanting to grow up isn’t the same thing as growing up while also understanding that ultimately, you do both of them at the same time. Also, Laurie Metcalf deserves ALL THE AWARDS. I AM NOT KIDDING ABOUT THIS. I WILL BURN SHIT DOWN, HOLLYWOOD. My Letterboxd notes on it are here.

1.) A Taxi Driver. My favorite movie in 2014 was Pride (and it is still one of my favorites and always makes me cry a little), because Pride is a movie about ordinary people coming together in the face of oppression, and so is this, but this one is so much more of everything than Pride was – as much as I love that story and that movie, it’s still at its heart a Plucky Working-Class Brits Do A Thing! movie. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that genre, but.) A Taxi Driver is both a comedy and a drama, but it’s about the most vicious and violent form of government oppression rather than the slow-motion assault on the working class or the attacks on the dignity of minorities, and thus everything about it is more intense than Pride was – and also because whereas in Pride the conflict in the story is between natural allies who have to learn to accept one another, in A Taxi Driver the conflict is internal, about an everyman who has to overcome his own fears and selfish impulses to recognize his true responsibilities as a citizen, and that’s honestly even more universal than Pride was, and that makes all the difference between the two. (Plus, Song Kang-Ho is probably one of the ten best actors working on the planet today, so that helps.) My Letterboxd notes on it are here.

NEXT TEN: Dunkirk, Bad Genius, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Good Time, IT, Wind River, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Logal Lucky, Wonder Woman, Thor: Ragnarok.

STILL HAVE TO SEE: Call Me By Your Name, The Post, Coco, Brigsby Bear, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri.

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