Year in Review: Top 10 Moments of 2017

A film is a snapshot of the world at a place and time. It says, “This is who we are now,” and to future generations, it will say, “This is who we were then.” Films provide a metric for how far we have come or how little we have changed. What I would like to do here, then, is to take a snapshot of the snapshot, to pick images or sequences from some of the year’s best films that somehow represent a larger piece of our collective puzzle.

Traditionally, I have used this space in my annual Year in Review series for the Best & Worst column, identifying the positive and negative trends taking place in the film industry and filmgoing experience. That column frankly felt like a futile gesture this year in the wake of the ongoing sexual harassment and abuse scandal that has shaken Hollywood to its foundation. To call such abuse a negative trend feels glib and dismissive, however accurate, and no film business trends column would be complete without such a discussion.

Briefly, the rampant sexual abuse perpetrated by powerful members of the Hollywood community – almost universally men – has been dispiriting but not shocking. I say not shocking because throughout history, wherever power has been consolidated abuse has thrived. This is true of the political and business worlds, as well as film. However predictable these behaviors, it does not diminish their evil. If any good can be said to have come from this, it is the hope the #MeToo movement has raised awareness of the disheartening prevalence and disgusting banality of these abuses and the problem, now named, can be fixed sooner rather than later.

Elsewhere in the cinema world, things continued apace with theater revenues dropping even as ticket and concession prices rose. The MoviePass subscription service rocked the industry with its business model of essentially giving away movie tickets to those willing to take them, and the theater business, ever fearful of change, tried to battle back the upstart by incentivizing the theatergoing experience any way it could. This will be an interesting development to watch as 2018 unfolds and perhaps serves as a litmus test for new vs. old business practices. It may even provide the key for just what it will take to get people going to the cinemas again, if this is even possible.

A State of the Cinematic Union, however, feels less vital this year than years past, which is not to say it will not return in future installments of this column. Instead, this year, I wanted to introduce a new feature, the Top 10 Moments. This will not be the first site to compile such a list, and I have thought for years about introducing one. Now, the time feels right, and two moments this year made it feel so – the No. 10 moment on this list and the No. 1.

These are the moments that will stay with us once the rest of 2017 has fallen away, the moments that will remind us of who we were and just what it meant to be us. These are the Top 10 Moments of 2017:

10. When Bobby lights a cigarette, and the motel lights come on – from The Florida Project, directed by Sean Baker

Bobby (Willem Dafoe) stands on the balcony at dusk. It has been another hectic day managing the Magic Castle, the motel on the outskirts of Disney World where mostly poor families have made their temporary homes. If this is a castle, then Bobby is its king, but he does not feel much like one. In fact, he has stepped out on the balcony to steal a moment of peace, a quick cigarette before returning to the backbreaking work of running his little kingdom.

He lights his cigarette, and the porch lights of every room in the complex come on. It is a fleeting moment – blink and you might miss it – but it encapsulates his character perfectly. The motel lights are on a timer, surely, coming on as the sun goes down, and we realize Bobby is, too. He lights his cigarette and the lights come on because they are on the same schedule, part of the same entity, inseparable from one another.

All of the moments discussed below take place over entire scenes or sequences. They build, some slowly, some rapidly, to an apex of shock or catharsis. This moment, though, is a flash, a brief flicker, and then it is gone. In the time it takes to light a cigarette, we learn almost all we need to know about Bobby and his world, and all the filmmaker asks of us is to pay attention. We’d be foolish not to.

9. When we learn what happened to the Engineers – from Alien: Covenant, directed by Ridley Scott

I am among the few who think Scott’s earlier Prometheus is a misunderstood masterpiece. In fact, I might be the only one. Its investigation of the origins of human life and religious belief resonated for me on a level it didn’t for most observers. That’s okay. I don’t mind being in the minority. But it was hard not to watch Alien: Covenant and feel vindicated. The latest installment in the Alien franchise is much more highly regarded than its immediate predecessor, but I believe for any issues viewers had with Prometheus, any lingering questions or doubts, the answers are there in Covenant.

Now, one could argue it shouldn’t take a whole second movie for the first movie to make sense, but that is neither here nor there. As great as I think Prometheus is, everything in Alien: Covenant makes it that much better, that much more interesting. Covenant brings the Alien franchise full circle in a way that is both satisfying and shocking. It somehow makes perfect sense yet is so radical it boggles the mind.

Prometheus leaves off on the question: Where did the Engineers, those mysterious beings from deep space who seem to be the creators of life on Earth, come from? Did some other being create them? I will not discuss the specifics here because they would constitute major spoilers if you have not seen the film – for which it would be best to go in blind – but Alien: Covenant’s manner of dealing with these questions raises the level of the entire Alien franchise to high art. The moment we learn what happened to our creators is at once profoundly beautiful, philosophical, nihilistic, and perfect.

8. When Kay makes the decision to publish – from The Post, directed by Steven Spielberg

All of The Post builds to this moment. The audience, if it has any sense of history, knows what is coming, knows what must come. That it lands so well is a testament to the genius of Spielberg, the brilliance of Meryl Streep, and the wonderful script by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer. While characters like Tom Hanks’ hard-charging journalist Ben Bradlee and the rest of the newsroom are clear in their aims, Kay Graham, as portrayed by Streep, is a slow burn.

Kay is the owner and publisher of the Washington Post, a position she inherited through her husband’s death but would have gotten by birthright alone, if not for the sexist nature of the industry. She is questioned and doubted and patronized by the men around her who don’t wield her power but by virtue of their gender believe they should have a seat at the table. It is difficult to watch as Kay struggles to find her voice, to find her cause, and that is what the Pentagon Papers provide.

Her business – and by association, the past and future of her family – is at stake. She stands to lose everything she built and worked for, so the decision to publish does not come lightly. Finally, though, she can longer bow to the men in her life – not even Ben. She makes this decision because she believes it is right, because she decides it is her time to come out of the shadows and flex the muscle she has always had but was afraid to use. She will no longer be silent, and neither will her paper.

7. When a dinner party art show goes wrong – from The Square, directed by Ruben Östlund

We talked in yesterday’s feature about Östlund’s investigation in The Square of how little separates order and chaos and how quickly the rule of law can devolve into the law of nature. We are not so far from our primal selves, Östlund argues, and the repeated use of primates and a primate-man performance art piece drives this point home.

The museum at the center of the story hosts a dinner party for its donors and patrons. The moneyed elite gather to be entertained, to be pampered, to be coddled, and in some respects, to be thanked for their contributions. In essence, they are here to reaffirm to themselves and everyone else there would be no museum without them. It is a giant pat on the back, a self-congratulatory evening of conspicuous consumption. It is, by most definitions, order. 

Enter chaos, in the form of the aforementioned performance art piece in which the artist, aided by a pair of mechanical arm apparatuses, bounces around the opulent dining hall, imitating a chimpanzee or other primate. It begins innocently, amusingly enough, but ever so slowly, the situation escalates. This is no longer performance art but assault – an assault on these wealthy donors’ values, on their primness, on their beloved social structure. When they sense what is under attack, they fight back in the most shocking and brutal way imaginable. It is precisely what the artist intended, if perhaps not the outcome he predicted.

6. When Mildred Hayes sees a deer in the field – from Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, directed by Martin McDonagh

McDonagh’s moralist revenge thriller is a lot of things, but peaceful it is not. There is no peace in Mildred Hayes’ (Frances McDormand) life, not since her daughter was brutally raped and murdered. There is no certainty even that her quest to find the killer, if completed, will bring anything to her but more grief and ever-more focused rage. The world has let her down time and again, and her remorseless path of destruction through the system is what keeps her going.

But it can’t all be pain and rage. There must be some relief. As Mildred tends to the flowers she has planted in front of the billboards that give the film its title, a deer arrives in the meadow. It stands just yards from Mildred. They lock eyes. It is an otherworldly moment in an otherwise heavily grounded film. Time seems to stop. They linger in silence. McDonagh’s cinema brand is such that you half expect a gunshot to ring out and a hunter’s bullet to pierce the animal’s heart. But no such break in tension is coming.

Finally, Mildred tells the deer: “You’re pretty. But you ain’t her.” In a beautiful stroke of the pen, McDonagh denies us the easy metaphor. Of course we see in this beautiful, innocent creature the daughter Mildred lost so senselessly and violently. That is what we are meant to see. But Mildred will not be placated by such symbols. She has already turned away god in the form of the town preacher, and now she turns away nature itself. Only the real-world justice she seeks will do. And like that, the deer is gone.

5. When two inmates hug and all we hear is the beating of a heart – from The Work, directed by Jairus McCleary and Gethin Aldous

Toxic masculinity is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot, enough that its meaning has somewhat muddied, particularly for the uninitiated. It is essentially the cultural pressure felt by men to uphold standards of masculine gender roles – violence and anger, mostly, with a general inability to express emotion thrown in for good measure. This leads to all sorts of societal ills and takes men places both privileged and less so. For the subjects of McCleary and Aldous’ magnificent documentary, it has brought them to Folsom Prison.

The men in this film are almost all criminals, most of them violent offenders, but what they truly share is the capacity to change. They are the film’s subjects because they have chosen to break the cycles of neglect, abuse, and violence that brought them here. They choose to undergo intensive rounds of group therapy that at times devolve into primal screaming sessions. It is all meant to unleash the emotions these men have so long held back, to force them to confront their deepest fears and insecurities with no safety net but the support of the group.

It is a powerful film, deeply moving, and it feels revolutionary to watch hardened criminals bawling unselfconsciously about thoughts of suicide, their fathers, their friends, and all the promises they have broken and lives they have damaged. In one particularly brutal stretch, an inmate suggests he will kill himself, and another pleads with him not to. They lock eyes, and one makes the other promise not to kill himself. Then they hug, and they hold each other so closely, the microphones strapped to them pick up only their hearts beating. It is the thump of pain, resilience, and ultimately change.

4. When “the incident” goes down – from I, Tonya, directed by Craig Gillespie

The filmmakers know what you came to see. Everyone knows. We all want the same thing here in one way or another. Yeah, there’s the interesting character study and the wonderful dissection of class in America. There are the bravura performances and stellar direction. The finely tuned writing. All of that is there, and surely some of us entered the theater to be wowed by it. But deep down, we are all a little curious. We want to see what the film refers to as “the incident.” We want to watch as poor Nancy Kerrigan’s knee is busted by some thug.

Gillespie has taken heat in some corners for directing I, Tonya like Scorsese-lite. The film’s trailer even plays up these comparisons, proudly wearing the badge as the “Goodfellas of figure skating” movies. Admittedly, there are flashes of that, but Scorsese’s influence is far and wide, and it is to be expected even in the most unexpected places – say a figure skating biopic. But this gives Gillespie too little credit. He has constructed something else, something that operates on its own time, its own wavelength. When this sequence arrives, it feels like it could only be a piece of the puzzle I, Tonya is meant to reveal.

Just before the sequence plays out, as we all know it must, Margot Robbie, delivering the year’s best performance, snarls into the camera: “This is what you all came to see!” Then from the low gliding camera to the pulsing music, the performances to the dramatic irony of the whole situation, Gillespie does not disappoint. It is tense, propulsive, wild, and inevitable. By this point, it is more Shakespeare than Scorsese, a grand, fatalistic tragedy. And we got to see it all.

3. When Elisa and the Amphibian Man share a dance – from The Shape of Water, directed by Guillermo del Toro

For everything else The Shape of Water wants to be – all of which it is, from Cold War thriller to satire to romance – it is most of all a loving tribute to film itself. There is no other reason to put Elisa’s (Sally Hawkins) apartment directly above a movie theater than to proclaim loudly and for all to hear that this movie loves the movies. Del Toro has spoken of his direct influences, including the great old monster-movie actor Lon Cheney, and those drip through in every frame.

Yet it is not a monster movie that inspires the film’s most lively and gorgeous sequence. Rather, the inspiration comes from the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, rewritten for a deaf-mute woman and the lonely Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) she loves. In a fantasy sequence of the highest order, the soundtrack swells, the real world melts away, and Elisa and the creature are transported to a black and white wonderland where the curtains shimmer and dance floor reflects their love back up to them.

It is a perfect choice, made all the more perfect by the actors’ performances. Hawkins, of course, is brilliant, but Jones truly mesmerizes in this sequence. Buried beneath layers of prosthetics, make-up, and visual effects, Jones makes us feel the warmth and passion simmering within this ancient creature. He makes the unknowable known, and it is no longer a question of how a woman could fall in love with an Amphibian Man, but rather how the rest of the world couldn’t.

2. When a woman cries in the rain – from Foxtrot, directed by Samuel Maoz

On their surface, the top two moments here deal with much the same subject matter, but each film comes at its story from a markedly different angle. While the No. 1 moment is about fostering empathy, this moment of quiet devastation is achieved by demonstrating a complete lack of empathy. We spoke yesterday about Maoz’s film as a condemnation of the dehumanizing effects of war, both on soldiers and citizens. In this heartbreaking moment, the writer-director drives that point home.

The second act of Foxtrot takes place entirely at a roadside checkpoint manned by Israeli soldiers. We see the monotony of their day as minutes and hours tick by, offering little interest or excitement. It is rare even that this road is used, but the soldiers sit at their posts, automatic weapons in hand, ready for the action or adventure the army promised them. Instead, day after day, there is just boredom. So they make their own brand of cruel fun.

With the exception of Israeli military personnel, the only cars that ever seem to come by here belong to Palestinian citizens. One evening, in a torrential downpour, a car pulls up. The soldiers stop it and notice a well dressed husband and wife, clearly on their way to an event. For no reason in particular, they force the man and woman to get out of the car and stand in the rain. As the woman’s gown and makeup and hair are ruined, the soldiers just look on. She tries to remain strong, but the effect of their cruelty – in fact the very reason for it – is to break her. She cries, and in the rain, it appears as a never-ending stream of tears. And we cry with her for a world so drained of humanity and decency.

1. When Jeannine sees her portrait on the front of her home – from Faces Places, directed by Agnès Varda and JR

Another woman brought to tears on a dreary day, but this time, it is because she is overwhelmed by the depth of feeling and connection she senses. Faces Places is an attempt by Varda and JR to recreate through their art the souls of the people they meet and places they visit. Their canvasses are found in the world around them, and their subjects are the individuals who inhabit those worlds. Fleeting as the physical portraits they create may be, their impact remains long after the poster paper JR works with has been washed away.

The film is broken down into a series of scenes and meetings. Varda and JR visit several farms. They visit the docks. They visit an industrial work site. They visit a small seaside town. In all of these places, they document what it means to be a person existing among other people, inseparable from your environment. Each sequence has its own style of resolution and catharsis, and each sticks its landing wonderfully, but none hits as hard as the filmmakers’ first visit to a small mining community that has been left almost entirely abandoned.

A row of houses, where once legions of miners came back after long, grueling days of work, now sits mostly empty but for one woman, Jeannine, who refuses to leave. This is her home, and she will not be going anywhere. Varda and JR rightly see in her the spirit of a freedom fighter, a revolutionary, and they post her portrait on the front of her home as big as the house itself. When they bring her out to see it, it is as though she is seeing herself for the first time. She is seeing herself in a new way, through the eyes of a pair of admiring filmmakers who saw in her something worth capturing and preserving. One wishes more films even tried to capture such beauty and soul, if only for a moment.

Check back tomorrow as we conclude our Year in Review series with Last Cinema Standing’s 10 Top Films of 2017, and be sure to go back through all of the Year in Review pieces posted throughout the week.

Year in Review: Top 10 Quotes of 2017

To be honest, this is the column I look forward to writing each year. The best performances, best films, all of that, they are fun but sometimes feel like work. The Top 10 Quotes of the year are a joy to write about, a joy to compile, and a joy to share.

In the past, there has been an overarching structure or theme to the quotes – whether it was to define the movies they were contained within or to speak to the world outside – but this year more than any other, I went with my gut. These are the quotes that stood out immediately for one reason or another. And in ways large and small, I have thought about each since seeing them spoken on the big screen.

Last Cinema Standing’s Top 10 Quotes of 2017:

10. “It’s good in a peculiar way” from School Life, written Etienne Essery, Neasa Ní Chianáin, and David Rane

School Life is the kind of gem of a film it is hard to find and even harder to see. By which I mean, even for those of us lucky enough to live in a place where it might play in theaters, it does not necessarily stand out as a must-see or appointment viewing. It is a little documentary about a year in the life of a modern Christian boarding school in Ireland, and I can identify at least four words in that sentence that will drive some people away. They shouldn’t.

The film follows the day-to-day travails of husband-and-wife team John and Amanda Leyden, teachers at the Headfort School. They are nearing the ends of their careers, but through all the years, they seem to have maintained a sense of duty and pride in their work, helping children take their first awkward steps into adolescence and eventually adulthood. They act as educators, confidants, wardens, and substitute parents all at once, leading the kind of quiet, humane lives so often ignored by a world obsessed with the grand and the flashy.

In one of the film’s many standout sequences, Amanda helps the students put on a Shakespeare play, and after a particularly odd, energetic performance, she tells a student: “It’s good in a peculiar way.” This is kindness distilled to its most basic form, telling a child – away from home, away from his parents for the first time, lonely and scared – something positive in a way that doesn’t sugarcoat, coddle, or condescend. The same could be said of this film, which is peculiar only in its commitment to generosity and openness, so rare in these times.

9. “The square is a sanctuary of trust and caring” from The Square, written by Ruben Östlund

Östlund is perhaps the foremost progenitor of high comedy rung from the slowly cracking social facades that keep us bound within ourselves. In his superlative Force Majeure, he took a broad swipe at the falseness of masculinity and the social structure that requires reverence to such. At Cannes in 2017, where Östlund walked away with the prestigious Palme d’Or, he returned with The Square, broadening his critique and sharpening his sense of satirical wit on a story of class, entitlement, and the thin line between order and chaos.

Christian (Claes Bang) is the curator of a contemporary art museum, confronted on all sides by both the ludicrousness of the art world and the need to find meaning in something greater than the self. He glides through his world, often seeming to hold himself at a remove from it, perhaps for fear of realizing he is no better than anyone else in his orbit. He engages with few and engages deeply with even fewer. His connections are surface-level at best, a start contrast to the art he surrounds himself with, where the surface does not begin to reveal its meaning.

“The Square” is an art installation in front of the museum. It defines the brutality and inhumanity of the outside world by creating a separate space, outlined only by a series of lights arranged in a square. “The square is a sanctuary of trust and caring” reads the plaque placed next to the installation, and the implication is clear. If within this space – no more than a few feet by a few feet – there has been made room for trust and caring, then we have failed to make in our world space for such values.

8. “We don’t like each other, but we’re friends” from BPM (Beats Per Minute), written by Robin Campillo and Phillipe Mangeot

Activism depends, more than anything, on the group, on collective action, on working together to achieve a common goal. Thanks to great leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi – or rather, the way we are taught and learn about such figures – we tend to have a romanticized view of protest and rights movements. We envision an impassioned man or woman standing up in front of a giant faceless crowd and pointing the way forward. We revere these people and study them, but in truth, as great as they are, it is the faceless crowd and every individual therein who truly effects change.

If you saw the great 2012 documentary by David France How to Survive a Plague, you will be familiar with the American chapter of ACT UP, the AIDS activist group that pushed for change in the medical and health care rights of AIDS and HIV patients. In BPM, Campillo portrays the work of the French chapter of the group, of which he was a member, showing the nitty-gritty details of putting together and maintaining a real movement, the work often ignored by more perfunctory histories.

The film’s greatest strength comes in showing how groups of people from disparate backgrounds, sometimes sharing only the goal of living with their disease just a little longer, can come together and how tough it is to stay together. Members fight, they bicker, they back bite, they disagree, but at the end of the day, they have only one goal, which they all share: to survive. So they don’t have to like each other, but they are friends.

7. “Hi. This is Jonathan. I’m at the end of the world and have no reception. I’ll call you back someday” from Foxtrot, written by Samuel Maoz

War, even at its most righteous, is an absurd endeavor. It devalues the lives of those fighting, those dying, and even those nowhere near but still touched by it. All arguments toward war are founded on the same premise – that somehow the lives of others are less than our own. It is, at its base, the worst of us-vs.-them thinking. The act of war is an act entirely devoid of empathy.

Now comes the brilliant Foxtrot, from Israel, where it should be noted military service is mandatory. It addresses the falsehoods of war at home and abroad in personal terms that cut so close to the bone they are hard to watch. It deals with grief in ways so painful and daring, few films have ever endeavored to portray them, and many of those that have pale in comparison.

In the film’s enthralling first act, a father and mother learn of the death of their son at war. They grieve in separate ways, and eventually the father (Lior Ashkenazi) finds himself pulling out his phone and calling his son over and over, knowing he will never answer. Instead, he calls to hear his son’s voice the only way he can, on his outgoing voicemail message: “Hi. This is Jonathan. I’m at the end of the world and have no reception. I’ll call you back someday.” That he will not call back now is a given because he was sent to wherever the end of the world may be, for what reason no one can say.

6. “The only way to protect the right to publish is to publish” from The Post, written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer

Steven Spielberg’s handsomely mounted The Post is about one thing above all else: the importance of speaking truth to power. Set in the 1970s amid the Pentagon Papers scandal and the administration of Richard Nixon, its modern-day parallels are immediately obvious. One need not look closely to see modern counterparts in the Nixon administration, a group of powerful men doing whatever they can to stay in power by obfuscation, intimidation, and outright abuse.

Yet as much as the film is a critique of the current administration and its many failings and abuses, it is also a celebration of the freedom of the press and need for that press to perform its duties and perform them well. After The New York Times is barred from doing its job by a fearful government, the Washington Post takes up the mantle of defender of the First Amendment. The movie revolves around the decision whether to publish the classified documents that will unveil to the people – you know, those from whom the government derives whatever power it has – the full history of the Vietnam War.

Early in the film, the paper’s editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), makes it clear where he stands, when speaking about an entirely unrelated matter. The Post has been barred from attending Nixon’s daughter’s wedding, and Bradlee says they will write about it anyway, even if it angers the government. “The only way to protect the right to publish is to publish.” This is the film’s mission statement, and it does not matter if you are printing wedding gossip or classified government secrets, its truth remains. In the end, we must defend our rights by exercising them, whatever the cost.

5. “We’re all looking for something real” from Blade Runner 2049, written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green

If I haven’t made it clear by now, I think we have a hard time as a society fostering empathy for each other. On the whole, we are too wrapped up in ourselves and those closest to us – read: those most similar to us – to worry about anyone else. Yet, as bad a job as we do feeling for our fellow humans, that doesn’t compare to our failures to consider the rest of intelligent life on this planet. For the most part, if it isn’t human, we treat it like it isn’t alive.

This is perhaps not the primary concern of Denis Villeneuve’s belated Blade Runner sequel, which is several movies at once and most of them pretty good, but it is among them. K (Ryan Gosling) is a replicant, in the film’s parlance, investigating a mystery, at the end of which he believes he will discover something miraculous about his own origin. Similar to Spielberg’s AI: Artificial Intelligence, it is at its core a Pinocchio story. The android dreams of being more than he is, even if he cannot be quite human.

His boss, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), visits one night and offers her insight into K’s predicament, which will take him to the far reaches of their society in a search for what he believes is the truth. But it never gets more honest than Joshi’s assertion: “We’re all looking for something real.” We all want truth. We all want meaning. We all want something more. It is often an endless search, and as K will discover over the course of the story, even if we reach the end, we do not find what we were looking for.

4. “Anyway, it amused us at the time” from T2: Trainspotting, written by John Hodge

Trainspotting, from 1996, is a modern masterpiece. A sequel has never felt particularly necessary to Danny Boyle’s rollicking ode to and indictment of a generation raised on sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. T2: Trainspotting, down to its tongue-in-cheek title, disproves this notion handily. Reteaming with Hodge, who wrote the original, Boyle finds new life and fresh ideas to mine still from Irvine Welsch’s dense, inscrutable work. They combine these with their own observations on being 20 years older and having little to show to produce another searing work of depth, insight, and not just a little fun.

The best remembered sequence of that original film is probably its opening, set against the thumping strains of “Lust for Life.” It is the “Choose life” speech, wherein Renton (Ewan McGregor) lays out his and his friends’ philosophy on getting high, getting laid, and getting through your miserable life by numbing everything that makes life worth living. It was a gutsy call to revisit the speech for the sequel, but this updated version, while perhaps lacking the energy of the earlier incarnation, earns its place by being something even deeper and darker.

Renton, speaking to his betrayed old friend’s girlfriend, Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova), unleashes 20 years of anger, regret, and pain in explaining what he and his friends meant by “Choose life.” He attempts to undercut it by framing it as a joke on an old anti-drug ad, but the feelings it evokes are real. Finally, he ends the speech with a melancholy chuckle: “Anyway, it amused us at the time.” As so much did 20 years ago, but nothing remains the same. Time colors all things a little darker, a little sadder, and that which we loved so much then no longer means what it once did.

3. “Love’s tough. That’s why they call it love” from The Big Sick, written by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani

No one knows what they are doing. We are all just feeling along in the dark, hoping we make good decisions. Hopefully, those decisions bring joy to us and others or, at the very least, cause no pain. But no one has any answers. No big ones, anyway. Within all that randomness, we cling to those we love in an attempt to make some sense of it and not feel so alone. Even that isn’t always easy, but it’s all we have, so we keep going.

Gordon and Nanjiani’s real-life love story is the basis for this delightful romantic comedy that speaks to the similarities among all people at heart. It argues that love is enough of a guiding force to carry us through even the darkest times. The crisis in The Big Sick comes when Emily (Zoe Kazan) is struck by a mysterious illness and put into a medically induced coma. Through this ordeal, Kumail (Nanjiani) bonds with her parents, Terry and Beth (Ray Romano and Holly Hunter), while they endure their own marital strife.

Terry ends up on Kumail’s couch after an argument with his wife, and the two men talk late into the night. Kumail looks to the older man for advice, and Terry offers up: “Love’s tough. That’s why they call it love.” Kumail rightly points out this is nonsense that means nothing. Terry confesses this is true, but it speaks to the deeper truth they share – no one knows anything. These are good people trying to do the best they can, and that’s all that can be asked of them.

2. “Why walk if I can’t dance” from Mudbound, written by Dee Rees and Virgil Williams

Set in World War II-era Mississippi, director-co-writer Dee Rees’ Mudbound is a masterful portrait of multigenerational racial tensions in the rural south. Two families – the McAllans and the Jacksons – live in a fragile peace founded on the understanding that the white McAllans are in charge and their authority is not to be questioned. In return, the Jacksons are allowed to work the McAllans’ land, to live in a home on the McAllans’ land, and to lead a life under the thumb of their supposedly benevolent masters.

They work themselves near to death for not a fraction of what the McAllans have. The McAllans are not so well off themselves, but at least they own their fate. They determine their destiny in a way the Jacksons cannot. This point is driven home when the Jacksons fall behind on planting their crops after Hap (Rob Morgan) breaks his leg. Due to economic, social, and racial pressures, he is compelled to try to return to work too soon, injuring his leg even worse in the process.

As he heals from this second disaster, he shares a tender moment on the porch with his wife, Florence (Mary J. Blige). His leg still in a cast, he stands and asks his wife to dance. She warns him he will hurt himself even further and, if he does so, may not even be able to walk. He asks: “Why walk if I can’t dance?” Then he shares a dance with his wife. He will determine his fate. If only in this small matter, he will say what he can and cannot do, and in this moment with his wife, no tragedy befalls him.

1. “It all depends on how one sees things” from Faces Places, written by JR and Agnès Varda

In its quiet, delightful way, Faces Places is as experimental as anything you will see this year. A travelogue documentary collaboration between a young artist on the rise and an old master on perhaps her last go-round, the film is a tribute to the people and things we touch without knowing it and those that touch us. It is about finding beauty in places where few see it and creating beauty in places that lack it. JR and Varda travel the French countryside, spreading love and joy in the ways only they can.

Varda is the French New Wave genius who brought us such great films as Cleo from 5 to 7 and The Gleaners and I, but this may be her crowning achievement. And go figure, the 89-year-old genius hits her stride just as she is losing her eyesight. What a terrible thing to happen to anyone, but particularly someone who has changed her small corner of the world by the very way in which she sees it. It is her unique view of life that has always been her greatest asset, so to lose her eyesight must truly be a tragedy.

Well, “It all depends on how one sees things,” she tells JR. And that is the beauty of this collaboration. While JR has the vitality of youth and a willingness to try anything, Varda has taken the long way to get here and has gained the perspective that comes with it. JR, who never removes his dark sunglasses, has his head down, buried in work, ready to produce at a moment’s notice, but Varda is more measured, less mercurial. She’s here not only to smell the roses but to reflect on what they mean. Eyesight or not, in her reflections, she will still find new ways to see things.

Check back tomorrow for more of Last Cinema Standing’s Year in Review as we present the Top 10 Moments of 2017, and keep checking back each day for more reflections on the year that was, leading up to the reveal of the Top 10 Films of 2017.

Fall of the House of Usher(s): 10 Most Anticipated Movies

Ruben Ostlund's Palme d'Or winner, The Square

Labor Day has passed, the film industry’s official end to summer, and this will go down as the worst summer box office in 25 years. Labor Day weekend was the worst on record. Grosses are way down, which means, given the steep rise in ticket prices, attendance has fallen off a cliff. Studios will fall all over themselves, trying to figure out where they went wrong, then come back next year and repeat the same mistakes. Analysts will present their theories, and some will be compelling, others less so. Ultimately, cause and effect will remain murky, and business will proceed as usual.

There certainly is not one answer to this problem, if we want to call it that, but if I may humbly suggest a possibility: This summer’s movies just were not that good. Audiences see good movies. This is a fact of moviegoing. People go to films with positive reviews and see movies their friends like. Should a movie tick both boxes, so much the better. Over the past four months or so, there has been a dearth of films that meet either category, let alone both.

As someone who spends much of his life in theaters, even I have had a hard time getting excited about any of this year’s crop of films thus far. I hope soon to take a deeper dive into the year so far – both the highs and lows – but suffice it to say I am ready for the fall movie season, when smart movies made by and for adults rule the day.

Last year’s list featured what would turn out to be some of the best films of the year, including Martin Scorsese’s Silence, which was the No. 1 most anticipated film and finished at No. 2 on our year-end best-of list. Beyond that, there were Jeff Nichols’ Loving (No. 3 most anticipated) and Ava DuVernay’s 13th (No. 8), which both earned honorable mentions. I have no doubt we will be talking more and more about the following films in the months ahead, so without further ado, Last Cinema Standing’s 10 Most Anticipated Movies of the Fall:

10. Downsizing, directed by Alexander Payne

Release date: Dec. 22

Payne really started to catch fire around Election in 1998. I was a little later to the party, going into Sideways blind and with no forewarning of the acerbic wit and naked humanity (and naked humans) I would witness. Since then, the director has refined his observational style and honed his ability to make us care about and root for even the schlubbiest schlubs. Here, he reteams with his Sideways and Election co-writer Jim Taylor to take on a fantastical science-fiction premise to which they will no doubt add a grounded sense of reality and frailty.

9. Suburbicon, directed by George Clooney

Release date: Oct. 27

A double-dose of Matt Damon to kick things off, this one looks like a wild ride indeed. If the trailer, particularly its final joke, gives you the impression of a latter-day Coen Brothers comedy – think Burn After Reading or Hail, Caesar! – there is a good reason for that. Joel and Ethan Coen share a writing credit with Clooney and his writing partner, Grant Heslov, on the script. While Clooney the director has tackled an array of filmmaking styles to varying degrees of success, this satirical take on suburban paranoia looks to be right in his wheelhouse. With the Coens jumping in, as well, expect this to be one you cannot miss.

8. Lady Bird, directed by Greta Gerwig

Release date: Nov. 10

Gerwig is the talented writer-actor behind films such as Mistress America and Frances Ha, and after appearing in three of last year’s best films – Jackie, 20th Century Women, and Weiner-Dog – she steps behind the camera with a chance to deliver one of this year’s best. This will be Gerwig’s first solo directorial effort – she co-directed the 2008 mumblecore comedy Nights and Weekends with Joe Swanberg – and she appears to be sticking firmly to what she knows, subbing in her Northern California hometown for her usual New York City milieu. With the promise of a great Saoirse Ronan performance in tow, Gerwig needs only to bring her consistently deft touch with human foibles to make this a sure-fire success.

7. Kings, directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven

Release date: TBA (Toronto International Film Festival

Halle Berry, in Kings

Ergüven, the writer-director behind the brilliant coming-of-age protest film Mustang, would at first seem an odd choice for this material. A Turkish woman with a French education would not likely jump to the top of most people’s list to direct a film about the Rodney King riots, and indeed, there has been controversy around Ergüven taking on the project. However, she proved with her directorial debut Mustang she is capable of making an angry, powerful film about tearing down the structures that oppress and dehumanize. If that is not precisely what we want from a film about the L.A. Riots, then I don’t know for what it is we are looking.

6. Battle of the Sexes, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

Release date: Sept. 22

Dayton and Faris do not work nearly often enough. The list of projects the husband-and-wife team have had fall through is extensive and storied. After breaking through with the influential independent hit Little Miss Sunshine in 2006, it took six years for them to return with the underappreciated romantic comedy deconstruction Ruby Sparks. It is now five years since that feature, and Battle of the Sexes arrives. The performances by Emma Stone and Steve Carell look to be stellar, the subject matter timely, and the approach dead-on. Dayton and Faris have been gone from cinemas too long. Let us hope they do not depart so long again.

5. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, directed by Martin McDonagh

Release date: Nov. 10

Another director gone from multiplexes since 2012, McDonagh’s absence can be attributed mostly to the fact he is a rock star in the theater scene. The famed Irish playwright has written and directed just three feature films, but each is an event, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri looks like his best chance yet for mainstream cinematic success. Although, if mainstream success were something McDonagh were interested in, I am quite certain he already would have achieved it. Operating in the darkest possible realms of comedy, as always, here McDonagh brings along Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, and Woody Harrelson for a journey that looks to be his most fun but most human yet.

4. Mother!, directed by Darren Aronofsky

Release date: Sept. 15

Not that she needs the help, but Jennifer Lawrence looks here to be getting the Black Swan treatment from Aronofsky, which is to say the director will run the “it” actress of her generation through the emotional wringer. Aronofsky’s most recent film, Noah, was troubled but unfairly maligned, mostly due to its impossibly high budget. This time, he scales back for the kind of psychological horror story that put him on the map in films such as Pi and Requiem for a Dream. Aronofsky is as much the stylist as ever, and Lawrence seems to be taking her gifts to another level. The combination of the two should produce nothing short of magic.

3. The Killing of a Sacred Deer, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Release date: Nov. 3

Greek auteur Lanthimos made the jump to English-language features with last year’s wondrous The Lobster, in which he teased out career-best work from Colin Farrell. Farrell now is joined by Nicole Kidman and Alicia Silverstone for a film that won the best screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Co-written by Lanthimos and his The Lobster collaborator Efthymis Filippou, The Killing of a Sacred Deer seems to take the director’s icy, detached view of human endeavors and marry it to the intense thriller we might expect from someone such as Michael Haneke – think Cache or Funny Games.

2. The Square, directed by Ruben Östlund

Release date: Oct. 27

As the winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, The Square would already be high on my must-see list. That it comes from Östlund only raises its profile. The Swedish filmmaker’s previous effort, Force Majeure, is among the century’s best films, a landmark of emotional exploration and familial disintegration that should be watched and studied for years to come. If The Square, the satirical targets of which seem fitting for our current era, equals or even nears those heights, it will be a transcendent experience.

1. Wonder Wheel, directed by Woody Allen

Release date: Dec. 1

My favorite filmmaker directing my favorite actress, there could be no film more anticipated for me. Allen’s late-career output at this point is famous for its unevenness. For every Match Point, there is a Whatever Works. For every Blue Jasmine, there is a To Rome with Love. I am a fan even of much of the director’s most slapdash work, while still admitting to some of its haphazard construction. The reason: Despite it all, Allen still has the potential to dazzle – Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Midnight in Paris being just two recent examples.

In Wonder Wheel, Kate Winslet is said to deliver a career-topping performance. The New York Film Festival has selected it as the closing-night film, not an honor bestowed lightly. It is scheduled at the height of awards season, whereas much of Allen’s work lately has been offered up as a summer trifle. For these reasons and more, there could be no other film at the top of this list.

*A quick note: Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film surely would have made this list if I could be reasonably certain it would come out this year. I cannot be. As of now, it has no official title and a tentative release date at the end of December. Anderson can work as long as he wants to make the best possible film, and when it finally does come out – with what is sure to be another brilliant Daniel Day-Lewis performance, I will be first in line.