mother!

Speaking of pushing buttons. Kudos to the studio for not only releasing this wide, but promoting it like any other film on their slate. A film that works as allegory or just horror, or both, and then in about six other different ways. Imagine if Fellini released Satyricon or Bunuel got The Exterminating Angel released in theaters in 2017, with everyone's favorite young starlet in the lead role and marketing? If you couldn't imagine how audiences would react to that before mother!, now you can. And it rules.

4. Get Out 

The best theater experience of the year. Usually this means with an audience of like-minded cinephiles, for a late fall release of an anticipated Oscar movie met with clapping at the end. Not this one. This was in February, with an audience of regular moviegoers who were not ready -me included- for what we were seeing, in the best possible way. That's when you know a movie really works. A regular American audience was getting worked by a film that was pushing buttons that some didn't know they wanted pushed.  

3. Lady Bird 

The best female performance of the year directed by a true visionary in Greta Gerwig. Free from most tropes, insightful, hilarious and heartbreaking, this was the most charming film of the year. Ronan is just so great here at capturing the angst of a teen in the early 2000s, while still being aware of how silly high school decisions can be - but that doesn't make it any less important to any of us.

2. Good Time 

This Safdie Brothers film is both thrilling and a wonderful character study on ugly people with hearts that are capable of being golden - if only they knew how. Seeing Robert Pattinson navigate thru the night was watching a master actor weave in and out of chaos and I was there with him. This one has really stuck with me, especially the ending, and it kept climbing and climbing up my list since summer. 

1. Logan

This was my favorite movie all year, unchallenged. There were a few I may have thought were going to change my mind, but every time I kept returning to this film, I just kept thinking it was more and more a perfect film. It is. Ebert said a perfect film was 3 great scenes and no bad ones, and even better if one of those scenes is the last one. Check. "So this is what it feels like?" is the line of the year. So much of what it means to be human comes from that one line, and one that has been permeating for the last 17 years as this character and the actor who who portrays him gets the deserved treatment in all aspects of the film.