The 25 Best Films Of 2017 So Far

“I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore”
It’s a definite sign of the times that the film that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year was on Netflix barely a month after the end of the festival. And perhaps a sign of Netflix’s wobbly approach to their own movies that it still feels like a lot of people haven’t seen it. But you should: it’s just a few clicks away, and it’s pretty great. The directorial debut of “Blue Ruin” star Macon Blair, it stars the great Melanie Lynskey as a nursing assistant whose titular (and relatable) feeling of injustice and hopelessness boils over when her house is broken into, and she enlists her weirdo neighbor (Elijah Wood) on a quest for revenge. It’s a shaggy dog story for sure and doesn’t totally satisfy at its last. But for 90% of its running time, it’s a pleasingly demented, grisly, oddly meaningful shaggy dog story at that. [Our review]

“Logan”
When is a superhero film not really a superhero film? When it’s James Mangold‘s surprisingly resonant meditation on aging and physical deterioration starring Hugh Jackman, with a terrific grace note performance in the role that made him a star. There were reasons to be wary of “Logan” before it screened: Mangold had disappointed with this character before and the world needed another grimdark, self-serious comic book hero like it needed a mom called Martha. But “Logan” earns its somber tone, with a storyline set in a disillusioned, dystopian not-too-distant future that feels worrying familiar – a place where no one believes in heroes anymore, not even the heroes themselves. The straining, sinewy, steroidal effort shows in every painful slash of Wolverine’s malfunctioning claws and the (admittedly somewhat overabundant) gore and graphic violence combine to deliver an R-rated superhero flick that for once feels grown-up as well as “adult” – a fittingly gnarled, broken elegy for one of the most multifaceted supermen of them all. [Our review]

“The Levelling”
If it takes three to make a trend, we’re still one away. But along with Francis Lee‘s wonderful “God’s Own Country,” Hope Dickson Leach‘s “The Levelling” might represent the start of a small cinematic movement designed to rescue stories of contemporary rural English life, with all its specific hardships and challenges, from relative cinematic obscurity. Combining an authentically unsentimental eye for life (and death) on a modern, failing farm, “The Levelling” is a remarkable debut, examining grief, guilt and very English repression under damp gray skies. Centered on a breakout performance from “Game of Thrones” actor Ellie Kendrick, the film follows Clover, a student veterinarian returning the family farm after her brother dies. The circumstances of his death, as well as the misfortunes befalling the farm, put further strain on Clover’s already fractured relationship with her father; the story may be intimate in scale, but it’s so authentically rendered, with such earthy pragmatism, that it feels big: a sober, melancholic elegy for a threatened way of life. [Our review]

“Graduation”
You know a Cannes lineup is terrific when a film as strong as “Graduation,” from former Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu, can go relatively overlooked. But over a year later, its glowery intelligence and brooding mood lingers. It’s a film in which the morality story plays out as a sort of downward spiral, as devoted father Romeo (Adrien Titieni, surely only beyond consideration for acting prizes because his performance is so naturalistic as to seem completely invisible) makes a series of extremely well-intentioned snowballing moral decisions after his beloved daughter is attacked and traumatized just prior to an important exam. Part of the cruel ambivalence of the plotting is that we can never be sure if the ends justify the means: would she have passed the test anyway, even without Romeo’s massaging of the system? All we can know is that he won’t be able to get out of the politely Faustian pacts he’s made, and in trying to help Eliza escape Romania, he’s becoming the very thing he wants so badly for her to escape from. [Our review]

“Your Name”
If it was the films of Hayao Miyazaki that opened the Western door to Japanese animation, Makoto Shinkai‘s “Your Name” is the first non-Ghibli movie to stroll right through. A melding of fantasy and science-fiction, it’s an oddball riff on the body-swap genre as Taki, a boy living in Tokyo, starts to intermittently wake up in the body of Mitsuha, a young girl living a more traditional life in the country. What’s sets it apart from and above most Western animation is its narrative complexity: amongst some coming-of-age angsty observations, and a gender swap mined for gently juvenile humor, it also makes time to explore the rural/urban divide, and the paradox that lies at the heart of Japan, with its deep, ancient traditions and rituals at odds with its rush toward ever more advanced modernity. But really it’s a strangely mature kind of love story, unlike many films with concepts so sky high, it even manages its landing gracefully. [Our review]