Late last year, Talkhouse Film contributors and a select few friends of the site voted on their favorite theatrical releases of 2017; you can see the aggregated results here. Below are ballots from a selection of the filmmakers who took part in the voting process.
Theo Anthony
1. Twin Peaks: The Return
2. Get Out
3. Casting JonBenet
4. Good Time
5. Another Planet
6. Nathan for You: “Finding Frances”
7. Photon
8. A River Below
9. Communion
10. Graduation
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
[to tell other people’s stories] by Zia Anger
Rodney Ascher
1. Get Out
2. Jane
3. (Tie!) Wonder Woman / Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
4. (Tie!) Thor: Ragnorok / The Boss Baby
5. (Tie!) mother! / A Ghost Story
6. I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore
7. Twin Peaks: The Return
8. Adventure Time: “Islands”
9. Channel Zero: “The No-End House”
10. Nathan For You: “Finding Frances”
Comments
Adventure Time: “Islands” made me laugh and made me cry, blew my mind, and answered questions that probably shouldn’t have been asked, but whose answer deepened everything that went before. (I haven’t seen Phantom Thread or The Disaster Artist or 100 other probably great movies, but those two are already being celebrated pretty broadly. This is a year where the lines between TV and the movies are blurring and I may be part of the problem here, but the shows I listed just felt like movies to me, as opposed to many shows I watched and enjoyed (GLOW, Mindhunter, The Good Place, non-“Islands” episodes of Adventure Time) but whose pleasures felt more “television-like” whatever that means.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
The Primal Moment by Alexandre O. Philippe
David Lynch’s Alternative Facts, or How Twin Peaks is the Only Response to Trumpian Surrealism by Matthew Wilder
Janicza Bravo
1. Get Out
2. The Florida Project
3. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
4. Thirst Street
5. The Square
6. Happy End
7. Dina
8. Mudbound
9. Phantom Thread
10. Call Me By Your Name
Patrick Brice
1. Twin Peaks: The Return (Lynch)
2. HyperNormalisation (Curtis)
3. Nathan For You: “Finding Frances” (Fielder)
4. Good Time (Safdie & Safdie)
5. The Florida Project (Baker)
6. 555 (DeYoung)
7. Sorcerer (Friedkin)
8. On Cinema: “The Trial” (Heidecker)
9. Get Out (Peele)
10. Tarantula (Mell)
Comments
I know this list is supposed to be U.S. CINEMA RELEASES ONLY and I’ve included TV shows and a web series and one film from 1977. It’s really hard for me to get out these days. I have a small baby who does not sleep. I throw myself at the mercy of the court. Also I’d argue strongly that everything I’ve included here counts as “Cinema”!
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
I feel bad choosing myself but it’s because of Talkhouse that I got to spend an afternoon hanging with Miguel Arteta, the sweetest man in the land.
Zach Clark
1. Endless Poetry
2. Twin Peaks: The Return: Part 18 – “What is Your Name?”
3. Get Out
4. Call Me By Your Name
5. Twin Peaks: The Return: Part 17 – “The Past Dictates the Future”
6. Good Time
7. Ma
8. The Beguiled
9. Atomic Blonde
10. I, Olga Hepnarová
Comments
Not yet seen: Phantom Thread, On the Beach At Night Alone, The Other Side of Hope
Stephen Cone
1. Personal Shopper
2. Song to Song
3. Call Me By Your Name
4. A Quiet Passion
5. Marjorie Prime
6. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
7. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
8. Person to Person
9. Dunkirk
10. Logan
Comments
Plenty more to see, per usual. Twin Peaks: The Return joins Mulholland Drive as one of the great works of 21st century art, period. The cinema of the year, as essential to our time as Leaves of Grass was to its. My favorite movie nobody saw, which sadly seemed to not get a theatrical release, was Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson’s exquisite Heartstone. Lastly, few movies moved me as deeply as Alexis Bloom/Fisher Stevens’s HBO documentary Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, a surprisingly worthy companion piece to none other than Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie.
Luke Davies
1. Call Me By Your Name
2. Phantom Thread
3. Lady Bird
4. Hounds of Love
5. Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Missouri
6. Thelma
7. War Machine
8. Get Out
9. The Florida Project
10. Thor: Ragnarok
Comments
The most obscure film in my list is probably the small Australian serial-killer drama Hounds of Love, directed by Ben Young and starring Emma Booth, Ashleigh Cumming and Ben Curry. Its darkness means I probably don’t ever want to see it again – like Irreversible or The Snowtown Murders, say – but like those films, it’s hard not to acknowledge the seer craft and tightness. Superior low-budget filmmaking from a first-time director. And Emma Booth is extraordinary.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
The Pervert/Genius Problem by Megan Griffiths
Josephine Decker
1. Get Out
2. Imperial Dreams
3. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
4. White Sun
5. Princess Cyd
6. Bobbi Jene
7. Patti Cake$
8. Beatriz at Dinner
9. Buster’s Mal Heart
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Comments
White Sun gripped me and ripped through me. So alive, nuanced, funny, startlingly real.
Dustin Guy Defa
1. Phantom Thread
2. Call Me By Your Name
3. All These Sleepless Nights
4. On the Beach At Night Alone
5. Nocturama
6. Get Out
7. The Florida Project
8. Good Time
9. Dunkirk
10. A Ghost Story
Bret Easton Ellis
1. Phantom Thread
2. Call Me By Your Name
3. Dunkirk
4. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
5. The Disaster Artist
6. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
7. Wonder Woman
8. The Fate of the Furious
9. Spider-man: Homecoming
10. A Quiet Passion
Jeanie Finlay
1. Almost Heaven
2. God’s Own Country
3. Raw
4. Call Me By Your Name
5. In Transit
6. Get Out
7. City of Ghosts
8. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond – Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton
9. Strong Island
10. After the Storm
Nelson George
1. Get Out
2. Dunkirk
3. I Am Not Your Negro
4. Coco
5. The Shape of Water
6. The Big Sick
7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
8. War for the Planet of the Apes
9. Wonder Woman
10. Marshall
Comments
Get Out captured the socio-cultural moment, while Dunkirk was a pure cinematic pleasure. I Am Not Your Negro masterfully matched images with James Baldwin’s prose, while Coco was a crowd pleasing, tears inducing joy.
Megan Griffiths
1. Get Out
2. Sami Blood
3. Call Me By Your Name
4. Beach Rats
5. Detroit
6. Wonder Woman
7. The Shape of Water
8. The Florida Project
9. Lane 1974
10. First They Killed My Father
Comments
The only reason Free in Deed is not on this list is because I saw it in 2016 and prematurely included it on last year’s list. But now that it’s available, seek it out. It’s a stunner.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
The Particular Cathartic Ecstasy of Watching Wonder Woman by Lynn Shelton
Chad Hartigan
1. The Florida Project
2. Personal Shopper
3. Suntan
4. The Square
5. Get Out
6. The Lost City of Z
7. Lady MacBeth
8. Lady Bird
9. Phantom Thread
10. Call Me By Your Name
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
A Letter to My 14-Year-Old Self by Lauren Wolkstein
Pat Healy
1. Twin Peaks: The Return
2. Get Out
3. Lady Bird
4. Phantom Thread
5. Patti Cake$
6. The Florida Project
7. The Post
8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
9. Long Strange Trip
10. Downsizing
Comments
Admittedly, I didn’t see a lot of this year’s new movies, especially many foreign titles & documentaries. Hoping to catch up on some in the next few weeks. Outside of my top 4, the best movies I saw for the first time in 2017 were It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) D: Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen, Der Blau Engel ( 1930) D: Josef Von Sternberg, Carrie (1952) D: William Wyler, A Matter of Life And Death (1946) D: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and Only Angels Have Wings (1939) D: Howard Hawks.
Jim Hemphill
1. Dunkirk
2. mother!
3. The Post
4. Detroit
5. Alien: Covenant
6. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
7. Get Out
8. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
9. The Florida Project
10. Phantom Thread
Comments
Biggest surprise/most unfairly maligned/most underrated/guiltiest pleasure of 2017: Transformers: The Last Knight
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
What I Learned “Co-Directing” Ultra Warrior for Roger Corman by Kevin Tent
Jim Hosking
1. Suntan
2. After the Storm
3. The Death of Louis XIV
4. Harmonium
5. On the Beach at Night Alone
6. Columbus
7. Call Me by Your Name
8. Graduation
9. Happy End
10. Good Time
Comments
Columbus seemed the most beautifully realised film to me. But Suntan excited me the most. The first scene in Good Time is brilliant. And the Isabelle Huppert violence at the end of Happy End is also cracking.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
The Independent Film System is Broken (and Some Advice on How to Succeed Anyway) by Rod Blackhurst
Aaron Katz
1. Kedi
2. The Square
3. Lady Bird
4. A Ghost Story
5. Dunkirk
6. Phantom Thread
7. The Beguiled
8. After the Storm
9. Columbus
10. Beach Rats
Bruce LaBruce
1. BPM (Beats Per Minute)
2. Loveless
3. A Fantastic Woman
4. Body Electric
5. Chavela
6. Faces Places
7. Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
8. Frantz
9. The Disaster Artist
10. Bones of Contention
Comments
And yes, I have seen Call Me By Your Name.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
Why BPM (Beats Per Minute) is the Film 2017 Needed
Natalia Leite
1. Call Me By Your Name
2. M.F.A.
3. Get Out
4. Raw
5. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
6. Ingrid Goes West
7. The Florida Project
8. The Disaster Artist
9. The Shape of Water
10. Good Time
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
Why Women Need to Tell Rape Stories 🙂
James Marsh
1. The Handmaiden
2. A Ghost Story
3. Lady Macbeth
4. The Florida Project
5. Of Body and Soul
6. Dawson City: Frozen Time
7. Wormwood
8. Daphne
9. Blade Runner 2049
10. I Called Him Morgan
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
How Filmmaker and Street Photographer Jay Giampietro Saw Trump’s New York on Election Day 2016
Michael Mohan
1. The Square
2. Columbus
3. The Big Sick
4. Mr. Roosevelt
5. Lady Macbeth
6. Newness
7. Before I Fall
8. Blade Runner 2049
9. (I was too busy this year and saw very few movies.)
10. (But if I could cheat and include the final episode of 13 Reasons Why on this list, I totally would.)
Comments
Uh, okay, so as I am sitting here typing this up on my phone, outside a great mediterranean restaurant in Atwater, the director of my #4 top film sat down at the table next to me. I do not know her. This is too weird. For real, what are the odds of this happening?
Terence Nance
1. Get Out
2. Whose Streets?
3. Dina
4. Lemon
5. Kuso
6. Raw
7. I
8. Didn’t
9. See
10. Anything this year 🙁
Comments
More ppl should have seen Lemon and talked about Janicza and Nia Long in general
Kent Osborne
1. Get Out
2. The Florida Project
3. Lady Bird
4. Good Time
5. Baby Driver
6. Sylvio
7. A Ghost Story
8. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore
9. Donald Cried
10. Thor: Ragnarok
Comments
Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding and James Franco as Tommy Wiseau
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
She’s All That and the Power of Transformation by Kentucker Audley
Lou Pepe
1. God’s Own Country
2. LA 92
3. All These Sleepless Nights
4. Get Out
5. Phantom Thread
6. Logan Lucky
7. Dunkirk
8. Handsome Devil
9. Boone
10. Spettacolo
Comments
Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone loves Call Me By Your Name. For my buck, though, God’s Own Country outshines it in subtlety, complexity, characters, sexiness, and just the sheer ability to make the audience feel something profound about the nature of love.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
Cell Phones and Fireworks, or the Ineffable Magic of Building Trust with a Documentary Subject by Lana Wilson
Alex Ross Perry
1. Dunkirk
2. Phantom Thread
3. Beach Rats
4. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
5. Princess Cyd
6. Donald Cried
7. The Life and Death of Louis XIV
8. Good Time
9. Blade Runner 2049
10. The Beguiled
Comments
For the sake of a proper poll, I added more movies made by friends (or friends of friends) because they deserve a vote, though generally I try not to highlight one friend over another because that is unfair.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
My Brilliant Ideas on How to Fix the Oscars by Chad Hartigan
James Ponsoldt
1. Get Out
2. Twin Peaks: The Return
3. Lady Bird
4. Faces Places
5. The Florida Project
6. Phantom Thread
7. Call Me By Your Name
8. Lovesong
9. Mudbound
10. The Shape of Water
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
A Letter to My 14-Year-Old Self by Lauren Wolkstein
Joel Potrykus
1. Good Time
2. Donald Cried
3. mother!
4. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore
5. A Ghost Story
6. Brawl in Cell Block 99
7. Actor Martinez
8. Lady Bird
9. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Comments
I think The Last Jedi is a bad movie, but I keep wanting to watch it again.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
I Wanted to Believe in Morrissey (Or His Music, at Least) by Jamie Stewart
Calvin Lee Reeder
1. Dunkirk
2. Raw
3. Small Crimes
4. Get Out
5. A Ghost Story
6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
7. The Void
8. The Florida Project
9. Baby Driver
10. Blade Runner 2049
Comments
I also loved Halt and Catch Fire.
Dash Shaw
Blade Runner 2049
Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, program 2
Get Out
The Girl Without Hands
Good Time
The Magic Lantern and Moving Images from Another Time (part of Richmond, VA, French Film Festival 2017)
On the Beach at Night Alone
The Ornithologist
Twin Peaks: The Return
Your Name (U.S. release in 2017)
Comments
These are alphabetical… My fave this year wasn’t a movie, but the Jim Henson exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image, and all of the rarer Jim Henson work going up on Filmstruck.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
Allison Anders writing about The Love Witch, and Julia Pott’s mother’s voicemail about Get Out.
Leah Shore
1. The Lure
2. Get Out
3. Girls Trip
4. Lady Dynamite (BREAKING THE RULES! TV show! Sorry (not sorry)!)
5. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
6. South Park (BREAKING THE RULES! TV show! Sorry (not sorry)!)
7. Baby Driver
8. Chewing Gum (BREAKING THE RULES! TV show! Sorry (not sorry)!)
9. The Breadwinner
10. Rat Film
Comments
most of these tv shows are better written, more entertaining than any film I’ve seen this year, bishes. DEAL WITH IT. Lady Dynamite is one of the best damn shows ever made, same with Chewing Gum and South Park‘s game is always on point. DEAL. With. IT.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
Zia Anger gives her personal take on the controversy surrounding David France and his film The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson.
Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith
1. Lady Bird
2. Wonder Woman
3. I, Tonya
4. Patti Cake$
5. Dunkirk
6. The Big Sick
7. Ingrid Goes West
8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
9. Battle of the Sexes
10. Personal Shopper
Riley Stearns
1. Phantom Thread
2. The Square
3. The Florida Project
4. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
5. Good Time
6. Call Me by Your Name
7. Lady Bird
8. The Lure
9. A Ghost Story
10. Donald Cried
Aaron Stewart-Ahn
1. The Shape of Water
2. Phantom Thread
3. Twin Peaks: The Return
4. The Lost City of Z
5. Whose Streets?
6. Dunkirk
7. Get Out
8. Prevenge
9. Good Time
10. Hong Kong Trilogy: Preschooled Preoccupied Preposterous
Comments
Because I was working on a feature this year I saw very few movies, and yet I still struggled to make a list of only ten films. With the exception of Twin Peaks, I saw all of these films theatrically. In the case of The Lost City of Z, Good Time, Dunkirk and Phantom Thread, I found their celluloid print versions to be vastly superior to the highest quality versions with crazy ugly acronyms trailing off their names I could watch at home on a 4K TV. There are only two of these 35mm prints in existence of The Lost City of Z, and it is a completely different experience in that format. While I’m fortunate to live in a city where I can see regular 35mm presentations, the distinction of cinema and what screen it occupies has become null and void most importantly because of how audiences perceive the act of watching moving images and what they have access to. For better or worse, we are now in a landscape where the screen has everted away from the movie theater and filmmakers must always pursue the commercial mechanisms that offer the most creative freedom, which is often the result of random business confluences. This is a time when cinema is going through a tremendous change and we are around to witness it or shape it.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
Sabaah Folayan on the conflict of making & then selling Whose Streets?, Elvira Lind on the conflict of filming your own life, Heidecker x Adam Curtis podcast
Ondi Timoner
1. Lady Bird
2. I, Tonya
3. Stronger
4. The Shape of Water
5. Get Out
6. Molly’s Game
7. Baby Driver
8. Call Me By Your Name
9. Edith & Eddie
10. Jane
Onur Tukel
1. Lemon
2. The Square
3. Lady Bird
4. Sylvio
5. California Dreams
6. Thirst Street
7. En El Septimo Dia
8. Person to Person
9. Mudbound
10. Spider-man: Homecoming
Comments
The more I go to the movies, the more I’m convinced that the real threat to the theatrical experience isn’t streaming content. It’s FUCKING ASSHOLES WHO CHECK THEIR CELLPHONES! I think it’s everyone’s duty to SHUT THESE FUCKERS DOWN! The theater is a sacred place! TURN OFF YOUR FUCKING CELL PHONE! That said, I didn’t see enough films in 2017. That’s going to change in 2018 (thanks Moviepass)! I’d also like to mention that my two favorite shorter works this year were Snowy Bing Bongs Across the North Star Combat Zone and The Poet & the Professor.
Aisha Tyler
1. Get Out
2. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
3. Mudbound
4. Good Time
5. Atomic Blonde
6. Lady Macbeth
7. Split
8. Last Flag Flying
9. The Big Sick
10. The Foreigner
Comments
My #1 won’t surprise but my #10 is a shocker. I loved The Foreigner – classic political intrigue action paired with Jackie Chan’s most captivating emotional work to date. Slick, pleasurable, and surprising at the same time.
Favorite Talkhouse Film piece of 2017
Amber Tamblyn Talks with Aisha Tyler for the Talkhouse Film Podcast
Joshua Z. Weinstein
1. The Florida Project
2. Phantom Thread
3. My Happy Family
4. Slack Bay
