Best Films Of 2017

We’re firmly into June now, and fast bearing down on the midpoint of 2017, a year that’s shaping up to be the longest goddamn year in history (fun fact: at the start of 2017, Barack Obama was President of the United States!). Fortunately, in between the insanity of the news, it’s been a pretty strong film year on the whole.

Sure, not all of the blockbusters have been great (*side eye toThe Mummy”*), but some have been terrific, and we’ve also seen several great and unexpected movies get their due at the box office. And in the arthouses, it’s been a typically rich selection too. As we traditionally do at this time of year, to help you start to work out what you might have missed, we’ve picked out the 25 best movies of 2017 so far.

We excluded films that have only premiered at festivals, but included ones that we’ve already seen that are set to open in theaters before the end of June, and therefore are in the first half of the year. Agree with out picks? Disagree? Let us know your own favorites in the comments. Otherwise, find our 25 best below, with links to all the original reviews.

“John Wick: Chapter Two”
On its release, two and a half years ago, “John Wick” proved to be one of the more pleasant surprises in recent memory. From a distance, it felt like it could be the sort of barely-released actioner that Nicolas Cage mostly stars in, a throwback to a time in the 1990’s when everyone was ripping off John Woo left, right and centre. But it was actually one of the best actioners in years, creating its own strange universe, populated with great actors shooting each other in the head in immaculately choreographed sequences. This year’s “Chapter Two”  built on that: an arthouse actioner drawing on Dario Argento, Orson Welles and Paolo Sorrentino, among others. It makes Wick’s world stranger and more beautiful, and delivers more thundering shootouts that, despite a hefty running time for the movie, always feel like they’re the exact right length. [Our review]

“Raw”
There’s a moment during Julia Ducournau‘s breakout French-language indie horror when many right-thinking folk (in my screening, anyway) simply upped and walked out. It was also the moment that those of us who remained started to feel a slow grin creep across our features: there’s something so subversively delicious about this nasty little story that it actually makes you feel like you are getting away with something if you’re on its wavelength. A cleverly contained, woozy tale set in a veterinarian school where new enrolee Justine (Garance Marillier), a lifelong vegetarian, gets a taste for meat following a grotesque initiation. It brings Ducournau into the cinematic fold fully-formed. This is exactly the kind of intelligent, tonally assured debut that promises greater things to come. And yet it also makes a virtue of its lo-fi, low budget aesthetic, bedding down the horror in gray, woozy yet banal reality, the better to turn your stomach when it goes unflinching, full-on gross. [Our review]

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki“The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Mäki”
We tend to groan when we’re sent off to see a new boxing movie these days: more than most, the genre’s prone to cliche and formula, and there’s a lot more “Hands Of Stone” than there are “Creed.” But even if you’re feeling as boxed-out as we are, we’d still suggest making time for the delightful “The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Maki.” The debut feature from Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen, and winner of Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year, it follows (in gorgeous black-and-white) the real-life Finnish boxer Olli Mäki (Jarkko Lahti) as he heads towards a battle with American fighter Davey Moore. But really, it’s a love story, as Olli falls hard for Raija (Oona Airola), and while it’s perhaps not the most substantial film here, it’s executed with immense craft, charm and wit, suggesting we’ll see a lot more of Kuosmanen down the line. [Our review]

“Colossal”
It’s a film with one of those premises that sounds like a joke – Anne Hathaway plays a woman who discovers that when she goes on a drunken bender through a children’s playground, a giant kaiju monster mirrors her movements in Seoul. But the surprising, strange set-up for Nacho Vigalondo‘s utterly original genre-defier is only the beginning for a movie that starts as one thing and ends up in entirely another. The film takes an unexpected shift into being a vital and topical examination of toxic masculinity and entitlement – and not once feels whimsical or overtly quirky. Hathaway is terrific, Jason Sudeikis revelatory, and while the film has its flaws, its ambition and utterly singular nature allows you to forgive them easily. Vigalondo’s been one to watch since his terrific “Timecrimes,” but this suggests he’s finally starting to deliver on his promise. [Our review]

“The Big Sick”
Judd Apatow has a knack for nurturing comedic talent early in their careers (Lena Dunham with “Girls”), but sometimes, he’s just giving a platform for a fully-formed voice. That’s the case with “The Big Sick,” comedian Kumail Nanjian’s (“Silicon Valley”) autobiographical comedy about the relationship with his then-girlfriend who was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness early in their romance. Starring and co-written by Nanjian and his wife Emily V. Gordon, “The Big Sick” co-stars Zoe Kazan (as Emily), Holly Hunter, Ray Romano attending to their ailing daughter. But the movie, sad, funny and touching, also focuses on the comedian’s strict Pakistani family (Adeel Akhtar, Anupam Kher) and how that complicates Nanjian’s relationship. Directed by Michael Showalter, the filmmaker/comedian’s light touch does a great service to a charming story that delivers bittersweet insights into the precious frailties of love, life and family. [Our review]