my favorite movies of 2017:

(1) Ingrid Goes West

(2) The Trip to Spain

favorite of 2017:

Ingrid Goes West

(Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Billy Magnussen, Wyatt Russell. Directed by Matt Spicer.)

A review in the Los Angeles Times says:

No film has yet captured both the lure and the psychosis of social media quite like “Ingrid Goes West,” a dark comedy — or is it a warning? — about a lonely soul who seeks connection and finds it, unfortunately for everyone in her orbit, on Instagram. This is … a true horror story for our digital times. In the most acutely relatable ways and built around deft turns by Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen, it skewers how we live and lurk these days in timelines fraught with angled sunlit selfies, artisanal avocado toasts and the FOMO-frothing torment of scrolling compulsively through other people’s bliss.

Aubrey Plaza says she was inspired by Taxi Driver (my favorite movie of 1976) in playing the title role of Ingrid Goes West and producing the movie. There are also parallels to my 1962 pick, Lolita. Instead of the older man, Humbert Humbert, who’s inappropriately fixated on the teenage girl in Lolita, Ingrid is a young woman inappropriately fixated on another young woman. Both Humbert and Ingrid rearrange their lives around her, moving into a new place and spinning a web of lies and manipulation in order to be near her, while living in constant fear that someone will see through their facade of normality. Lolita is about a twisted relationship with an age gap, where the obsessive person is a sex addict in the more traditionally dominant position of being older, while Ingrid Goes West is about a twisted friendship with a gap in social status, where the obsessive person is an internet addict in the less dominant position.

Stream Ingrid Goes West on these sites.

2nd favorite of 2017:

The Trip to Spain

(Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Margo Stilley. Directed by Michael Winterbottom.)

One of the sequels to my top 2010 choice, The Trip, with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon again playing themselves.

50 is, in many ways I think, the best age.

Oh, we’re in a sweet spot.

It’s the sweet spot. You still got — touch wood — time.

We’re ripe — we’re ripe fruit. If you hang onto the branch any longer, you’re just gonna wither on the vine, and I won’t do that.

So what do you do then?

Drop!

Or do you want to be plucked? … I’d much rather be plucked than dropped. But who’s gonna pluck you at this age?

Stream The Trip to Spain on Kanopy or these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.