2017 Top 10
Kenneth R. Morefield shares his ten favorite film experiences from 2017.
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3 Screenshots: The Unknown Girl
Cummings's essay is informed and far-reaching but also very accessible -- a quality I admire in the best film criticism. He deals with the influence of Murnau (particularly Sunrise) on the Dardennes and charts the theological foundation for their empathetic, humanistic cinema.
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The Man Who Invented Christmas (Nalluri, 2017)
The ghosts of Christmas Carols past cling to The Man Who Invented Christmas making me wonder just how many more movies can be squeezed from this admittedly beloved but well-milked source material.
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Steve McQueen: American Icon (Erwin & Erwin, 2017)
“I’d like to think I’m a good Christian. I’m trying to be; it’s not easy.”
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Favorite Film Series — Army of Shadows (Melville, 1969)
When we speak of our "favorite" movies, books, or music, repetition is the most common metric to measure our enthusiasm. There is an inescapable (if at times embarrassing) logic to that measurement. If I have watched Zoolander a half dozen times and Army of Shadows only twice, does that not indicate that I like the former more than the latter?
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Served Like a Girl (Heslov, 2017)
You can be a soldier and still be feminine. You can be a soldier and still be a mom. You can be a soldier and still be homeless just months after leaving the armed forces.
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The Dixie Chicks: MMXVI World Tour
It's been eleven long years now since the three long years when the "top of the world came tumbling down," and while the outrage and Natalie Maines's off-hand criticism of President George W. Bush looks retrospectively hyperbolic and affected in the age of Trump, the album that was born from the Chicks' experience in the eye of the hurricane has held up very well.
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Favorite Film Series: Planet of the Apes (Shaffner, 1968)
"Take your stinking paws off me, you damn, dirty ape!"
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Into The Wild — 10 Years Later (Penn, 2017)
Into the Wild is one of the few films I’ve reviewed for this series that has risen significantly in my estimation upon revisiting it a decade after its initial release.
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The Beguiled (Coppola, 2017)
In between when Sofia Coppola's The Beguiled premiered at Cannes and when it opens in domestic theaters Patty Jenkins's Wonder Woman managed to become all the rage.