Rob Goald’s Top 10 Movies of 2017

 2017 was a challenging year for the motion picture business and the place of movies in our society and its culture. While the formula of the tent- pole is stronger than ever (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) the independent film is heading towards a robust era of new storytelling techniques based around the internet and streaming.

1. Call Me by Your Name:    Italian director – Luca Guadagnino (“I Am Love”, “A Bigger Splash”) finishes his third film in his “Desire” trilogy with this  amazing and most acclaimed work of 2017.   It is replete with sexual longing that is as remarkable for its verisimilitude as its honesty. Year’s best pic!
2. The Florida Project: Sean Baker(“Tangerine”) does it all: writes, directs and produces in this hardscrabble take on transient life in the environs on the outskirts of Disney World where the children grow up to be hustlers just like mom and the Super ( a superb, Dafoe) will not leave the light on for you.
3. Get Out: First-time director, Jordan Peele delivers the world’s first horror-comedy about race relations, smug liberalism and sexism.
4. Lady Bird: The multi-talented Greta Gerwig directs for the first time   a fresh perspective on a coming of age story and a mother –daughter love relationship in Gerwig’s home town of Sacramento.
5. Wonderstruck: Director Todd Haynes, working with the gifted DP Ed Lachman, adapts a magical story about two deaf children growing up, some seventy years apart, who ironically run away from home to NYC in search of their heritage.
6. The Shape of Water: Auteur Guillermo del Toro crafts a fabula for young thinking adults in this story of a lonely, mute cleaning lady named Elisa (Oscar –worthy Sally Hawkins) who befriends an aquatic creature. (Doug Jones)
7. I Am Not Your Negro: This documentary by Raoul Peck is based on the book James Baldwin never finished, a radical narration about race in America, using the writer’s original words, as read by actor Samuel L. Jackson. Alongside a flood of rich archival material, the film draws upon Baldwin’s notes on the lives and assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, …
8. Phantom Thread: Auteur Paul Thomas Anderson’s portrait of an obsessive/compulsive artist portrayed by Oscar winner Daniel day.
9. I’Tonya: Director Craig Gillespie crafts a sports drama about Tanya Harding       with an extraordinary performance by Margot Robbie. 
10.  Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Luc Besson is a genius of sci-fi extravaganza-way beyond “Star Wars- The Last Jedi”!!!

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