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.

my favorite movie of 2016:

Graduation

[Romanian: Bacalaureat] 

(Adrian Titieni, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Lia Bugnar, Mălina Manovici, Vlad Ivanov, Rareș Andrici. Directed by Cristian Mungiu.)

My post about my favorite movie of 2007 — 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days — talked about writer/director Cristian Mungiu’s style of unflinching realism in showing young women trying to obtain an abortion in Romania under Soviet communism. In Graduation, he applies a similar style to corruption in the same country, but in the present day.

After a girl on her way to high school is sexually assaulted and injures her wrist while defending herself, she seems to be in no physical or psychological condition to take a series of exams which she needs to do well on to be admitted to a prestigious London university. The outside world responds coldly: exam administrators don’t offer her any accommodations (and aren’t even sure whether to allow her to take the exams wearing a cast), while the police are feckless at solving the case. Without support from the system on any legitimate level, the girl’s father feels driven to help her through unscrupulous means by exploiting his connections.

From a Washington Post review:

Of course, Romania isn’t the only country in which social capital is king. Because of that, “Graduation” resonates not just as a vivid portrait of a culture at a particular moment in time, but also of the most enduring and confounding contradictions of human nature itself. Although he’s contemplating age-old arguments about means vs. ends, Mungiu nonetheless infuses them with timely relevance, both in the context of a world order that has become broader and more cosmopolitan, and a society that, 30 years after its rebirth, still struggles with establishing agreed-upon norms, expectations and rules of the road. …

The power of the film is cumulative, as the filmmaker spins a mesmerizing morality tale from the dross of daily life. In his skillful hands, the ordinary turns out to be anything but.

One of the few negative reviews said Graduation “suffers from too many narrative threads that don’t resolve.” It’s true that this movie deprives us of clarity and finality, leaving us to wonder what exactly happened and how it’s all going to turn out. That might bother you … or you might find meaningfulness in the uncertainty.

Once she starts on this path, there’s no going back. … You know in your heart that it’s not right. …

If there were any other way, I wouldn’t even think of it. … All that counts is getting to a normal world.

How you get there matters too. It’s not fair to —

Being attacked in broad daylight in a crowded place, is that fair? … You ended up in some library because you were fair. Sometimes the result is all that matters.

Stream Graduation on these sites.

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

my favorite movie of 2015:

Victoria

[German]

(Laia Costa, Frederick Lau, Franz Rogowski, Burak Yigit, André Hennicke. Directed by Sebastian Schipper.)

This whole thriller was done all in one take!

The director (Sebastian Schipper) and the lead actress (Laia Costa) talk about how they did it in this half-hour interview:

The director has a small part in another German movie on my list: the man riding a bike in Run Lola Run (my favorite of 1998).

You can stream Victoria on Kanopy or these sites. Just don’t stream it on any site that interrupts it with ads, because this is a movie where the flow of the whole experience is more important than the plot.

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

my favorite movies of 2014:

(1) Gone Girl

(2) They Came Together

(3) Mitt

favorite of 2014:

Gone Girl

(Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris. Directed by David Fincher.)

A “top-shelf mystery and pitch-black comedy” according to this review, which says:

Gone Girl may come advertised as a thriller, but that’s [director David Fincher] being a trickster — he’s gone and made the curtest, nastiest, most acidic black comedy about the marital accord since The War of the Roses … borne out of the view that, basically, it’s surprising husbands and wives aren’t all murdering each other. And that’s also its more serious subject — the “narcissistic armor” that we don, “the vision of ourselves that we all project and construct, for our parents, for our teachers, and as we go out in the world and try to mate,” as Fincher explained.

Ever hear the expression: simplest answer’s often the correct one?

Actually, I’ve never found that to be true.

Stream Gone Girl on these sites.

2nd favorite of 2014:

They Came Together

(Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Ellie Kemper, Bill Hader. Directed by David Wain.)

This could be mind-numbing if you’re not in the mood for a parody of romantic comedies. But go into it with the right mindset, and They Came Together is uproarious. This review sums it up:

Lovelorn, “handsome in a non-threatening way” Joel (Paul Rudd) and adorably klutzy Molly (Amy Poehler) bump into each other on the street, fall in love, split before the holidays and then make up via a grand public gesture. If it all sounds familiar, that’s the point. Starting from the glistening aerial shot of Manhattan, this film knowingly and cleverly spoofs every rom-com cliché this side of When Harry Met Sally … The irreverent jokes are often fiercely funny — and prodded along by the sparkling, gung-ho leads. We’ll have what they’re having.

Stream They Came Together on Amazon Prime or these sites.

3rd favorite of 2014:

Mitt

(Documentary. Directed by Greg Whiteley.)

This look behind the scenes of Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns is different from The War Room (my favorite movie of 1993), in which the candidate, Bill Clinton, is seen only occasionally, and the real stars of the movie are his campaign managers. Mitt focuses on the candidate and his family, who are hard not to like, regardless of your politics.

A year ago, we told you we’d love you no matter how this thing turned out. And —

Now you’re not so sure?

Stream it on Netflix.

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