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When someone tells you that he or she has watched all of the movies in 2017, he or she is probably lying. For the world makes so many films each year it would probably be impossible (or at least very difficult) to watch each one of them. But people watch what they watch, and inevitably they have a number of cinematic experiences that are for keeps.
Today I'll be talking to you about fifteen of my favorite films from world cinema in 2017. This list does not include Philippine films, which we tackled in the two previous parts of this yearender special. This is hardly a representative sample of the entirety of cinema around the world to be sure, and opinions can change over time. What I want to do is provide a snapshot of my moviegoing life in 2017, perhaps for posterity, perhaps so that I can laugh about it five years from now, perhaps both.
First I have to mention films from that weird place in between 2016 and 2017: Oscars Award season films. I'm not including them in this list, since they occupy the limbo between a 2016 release date in the US and a 2017 release date here so I'm not sure where to put them (and that would expand my list to 18 films, which would bloat my list too much for my taste.) Three of the films for consideration in the 89th Academy Awards are excellent enough to mention, and in rough order from 3rd to 1st, they are: Damien Chazelle's La La Land, Barry Jenkins' Moonlight and Denis Villeneuve's Arrival. All three are great films: the first is a nostalgic (if a bit rose-tinted) look at old Hollywood, the second is a fascinating bildungsroman intertwined with heartbreak and broken dreams, and the third is astounding high concept science fiction with a very human heart.
Honorable mentions for this year include Naomi Kawase's Sweet Bean, Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, Yoji Yamada's What a Wonderful Family! Ildiko Enyedi's On Body and Soul, James Gray's The Lost City of Z, Oliver Assayas' Personal Shopper, Joachim Trier's Thelma, Andrey Zvyagintsev's Loveless, Robin Campillo's 120 BPM, Naoko Yamada's A Silent Voice and Hong Sang-soo's On The Beach at Night Alone.
With that out of the way, I present to you:
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John Tawasil's
2017 World Cinema Favorites
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15. Okja (Bong Joon-ho, 2017)
This was a year where streaming services caught the attention of the movie establishment in a big way. Bong Joon-ho's Okja premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to both cheers (because of the movie itself) and jeers (because it was sponsored by and is primarily distributed via Netflix). Controversy aside, Bong's latest film may not be top tier Bong, but it's still a fascinating film about the corporate machine and about language itself through translation.
14. Newton (Amit Masurkar, 2017)
2017 was a year where democracy faced attack from fronts both overt and insidious, where deceit and lies obscure truth and justice. But what is democracy anyway? What is the responsibility of an electorate? Masurkar's film, Newton, explores the meaning of democracy by looking at an uncompromising, almost intransigent poll worker working in one of the most dangerous polling stations in India. His idealism instantly clashes with the social realities of the world's largest democracy. Newton traces its roots back to some of the most meaningful Indian political satire films and continues that tradition, which puts forward the notion that in a democracy, true and lasting change comes only from uncompromising, unceasing work.
13. The Third Murder (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2017)
Meanwhile, while other democracies fall, others stand on dubious ground. Films like The Third Murder explore their respective countries' justice system and how broken it can be. Whether it be institutional corruption or notions of convenience, the dilemmas explored in The Third Murder ring true in countries like our own.
While it can be frustrating to those used to the mystery or crime procedural drama genre, the questions raised by this film are in my opinion far more meaningful than any concrete answer or admission of innocence or guilt.
12-11. (Tie) Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino, 2017) and Before We Vanish (Kurosawa, 2017)
Call Me By Your Name and Before We Vanish both explore different kinds of love: the former dwells on a finite love that lingers painfully for a long time, while the latter dwells on a love that is infinite, a love that changes the world, a kind of love that can be just as painful.
10. Breath (Narges Abyar, 2016)
This year seems to be the year of child's perspective films; the Philippines has Nervous Translation, Spain has Carla Simon's Summer 1993, and there's Sean Baker's The Florida Project. But in my opinion the film that did it the best this year is Narges Abyar's Breath (Nafas), whose whimsical, playfully meandering story takes place during the devastating Iran-Iraq war.
9. Clash (Mohamed Diab, 2016)
There were many films about the fallout of the Arab Spring released in this year and the last, most of them were about the continuing civil war in Syria. In Clash, a group of protesters from opposite sides of the Egyptian civil war are trapped inside a hot, claustrophobic prison van. It's tense all throughout up to a certain tragic point where we realize back in the day, these were people united in a cause to overturn a dictatorship, and now we see them deeply divided, clutching at each others' throats.
8. Logan (James Mangold, 2017)
2017 seems to be the year where I have officially become fed up with superhero movies. But there are a few exceptions, and Logan's the best exception of them all for 2017. Maybe it's because it's such an un-superhero movie, since it deconstructs the whole mythos of being a hero in the first place. It's the Wolverine movie I've always wanted for a while, and a perfect send off to Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. It uses the Western genre to perfectly capture the end of an age and the enduring legacy of a beloved character.
7. Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)
Before I knew Jordan Peele as just "that guy from Key and Peele." But after seeing Peele's remarkable first film Get Out - horror film, satire, and critique of white liberalism all in one package - Jordan Peele has cemented himself as a filmmaker to watch out for in the future. It's a dark and twisted subversion of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, made even more relevant in post-Trump America.
6. Bad Genius (Nattawut Poonpiriya, 2017)
Thailand had a great output of films this year both mainstream and arthouse, and Bad Genius counts as one of this year's best. This tense thriller about academic renegades plays out like a bank heist, except the target is not a huge cache of gold, but answers to test questions. It's by far the most riveting two hours of cinema I've experienced this year.
5. Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (S.S. Rajamouli, 2017)
In a time where conventional Hollywood blockbusters have lost much of their luster comes brave and bold filmmaking from the largest and most prolific movie industry in the world. Baahubali as a combined epic is ambitious, technically masterful and poetic, and it's a shame not a lot of people outside of India managed to see this film. Baahubali isn't just my favorite blockbuster film of the year, it's also my favorite superhero film of the year as well.
4. In this Corner of the World (Sunao Katabuchi, 2016/7)
In 2016, Sunao Katabuchi's In this Corner of the World served as a foil to teenage romance anime films such as Your Name and A Silent Voice. Katabuchi's film may draw some similarities to Ghibli classic Grave of the Fireflies, but this film differs significantly in that it's unabashedly hopeful despite its (at times) overwhelming darkness, finding happiness in perseverance and in hope itself.
3. Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)
A caveat: had Arrival been included in this list, I would have counted that as the better film instead; nevertheless, Villeneuve's follow-up to the 1982 Ridley Scott science fiction classic is amazing science fiction in itself, discussing human relationships and connection, (un)reality, and existential questions of purpose and being. It's one of my most unforgettable experiences on the big screen this year.
2. The Square (Ruben Ostlund, 2017)
The Square is an interesting creature, exposing the hypocrisy of highbrow art circles and examining the social contract under a microscope. The characters in The Square are kept walking in circles by their own egos and notions of self importance, unable to see real societal problems happening underneath their noses, unable to effect real social change. Of course art can be used as a force for good, but when misused or buried underneath postmodern gobbledygook, what happens to it? That's one of many questions asked by this film.
1. Harmonium (Koji Fukada, 2016/7)
A thematic evolution of Fukada's earlier films, Harmonium dissects the Japanese family unit with surgical precision, tackling themes of redemption, social responsibility and parenthood. Slow-paced yet absorbing, and devastating up to the very last frame, Harmonium is my favorite film of 2017.
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That's the end for Present Confusion in 2017. Thank you all for spending the time to read this blog for the past year. This has been the blog's most prolific year, and I only wish for the site to grow more in the coming years. I'm not as young as I used to be when I started writing about movies in 2005, but I think I still have a few more years left in me. I've always told myself I'll keep doing it as long as I love doing it, and I still do.
Now, for a little announcement: for real life reasons, I probably won't be around as much for the first few months of the year, but worry not; I'll still be around. Happy New Year and see you guys at the movies in 2018!
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