#she was given those things. she was exceptionally lucky and living in exceptional circumstances.

[edmundhoward]

on the topic of stanne's being incapable of viewing feminism through any other lens than 'not like the other girls'... would anne even be regarded as so exceptional if she wasn't as privileged as she was? would the idea of her innate exceptionalism, her standing out at court as more fashionable/passionate/moral/intellectual/exotic still persist? i just have to wonder how many women could have been remembered by history as exceptional, if only given the ability to — if they had the resources from birth that anne had etc.

[thecinephale]

Best Movies of 2017

I’m so excited that many of the great films this year did so well at the box office and are such a big part of the awards conversation. I’m grateful that every year brings great works of cinema, but it’s even better when a bunch of people actually get to see them.

This is the first year I’m not counting miniseries. The lines are becoming too blurred between TV and film and also nobody needs me to say again how much I love Jane Campion and Top of the Lake: China Girl.

Still need to see: All the Money in the World, Berlin Syndrome, Graduation, Happy End, In the Fade, Loveless, Lovesong, Prevenge, Princess Cyd, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, A Quiet Passion, Slack Bay, Staying Vertical, Thelma, Woodshock

If your favorite movie isn’t on this list maybe I didn’t see it because a sexual predator was involved or maybe it was just a really crowded year with a lot of really good movies!

Honorable Mentions: -Battle of the Sexes (dir. Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton) -The Beguiled (dir. Sofia Coppola) -Call Me By Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino) -Colossal (dir. Nacho Vigalondo) -Columbus (dir. Kogonada) -A Fantastic Woman (dir. Sebastian Lelio) -Good Time (dir. Josh and Benny Safdie) -Landline (dir. Gillian Robespierre) -Lemon (dir. Janicza Bravo) -Logan Lucky (dir. Steven Soderbergh) -Parisienne (dir. Danielle Arbid) -Phantom Thread (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) -Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins)

15. Planetarium (dir. Rebecca Zlotowski)

The first two movies on this list got fairly bad reviews so take my opinions as you will. And I get why many struggled with this film. Not only is it dealing with a wide swath of issues, but it’s also doing so with a variety of different tools. It dabbles in the occult, but it’s not a horror movie. It’s a period piece, but feels of the present. It suggests romance, suggests betrayal, suggests familial tension, yet… But here’s what’s great. It’s gorgeous. With some of the best cinematography of the year (Georges Lechaptois), some of the best production design of the year (Katia Wyszkop), and easily the best costumes of the year (Anaïs Romand) it’s compulsively watchable. Combine that with Natalie Portman’s incredibly grounding performance and I was more than willing to go along with Zlotowski as she explored the history of images, the power of images, and the danger of images without committing to a conventional structure.

14. It’s Only the End of the World (dir. Xavier Dolan)

I don’t know how anyone could love Dolan’s other films and dislike this one. It’s such a perfect embodiment of Dolan’s career thus far. Dolan’s films are operatic because he understands that for individuals their problems are operatic. Pretty much every family has conflict, disagreements, scars, but that can’t be dismissed so easily when they are OUR conflicts, OUR disagreements, OUR scars. I love how much respect Dolan always has for that truth. The cast is filled with French cinema royalty and they fully live up to the material’s grounded melodrama.

13. The Lure (dir. Agnieszka Smoczynska)

There’s one key reason this vampiric Polish horror-musical retelling of The Little Mermaid works in a way that other adaptations fall short. Sure, the sheer audacity of that genre mashup makes for a fascinating and unique viewing experience. But what ultimately makes it work emotionally and thematically is that it’s about two mermaids. This was always intended as the initial concept was a horror-less, mermaid-less musical about the Wrońska Sisters (who wrote all the songs in this). But still Smoczynska and her screenwriter Robert Bolesto really manage to keep all that’s wonderful about the source material while contextualizing its complexity. I’ve softened on the Disney version over the years, but it still can be painful watching Ariel change herself for a man (especially when one of those changes is not speaking). Here the presence of her sister, sometimes judging, always worried, creates a circumstance that allows this film’s “little mermaid” to make the realistic mistakes of a teen girl in love with a boy and in hate with herself, without the filming giving its seal of approval. There’s no judgment one way or the other. It’s just real. All that aside this is a vampiric Polish horror-musical retelling of The Little Mermaid. Like, come on. Go buy the Criterion edition!!

12. The Rehearsal (dir. Alison Maclean)

This is the only film on this list that isn’t available to watch. I was lucky enough to see it at the New York Film Festival two years ago, then it had a one week run at Metrograph, then nothing. The real shame is that this isn’t some avant-garde headscratcher to be watched in university classrooms and backroom Brooklyn bars. This is a deeply humanistic, very accessible movie that almost demands wide conversation. And given its setting at an acting conservatory I especially wish all the actors in my life could watch it. Well, hopefully it pops up on some streaming site someday. But until then check out this early Alison Maclean short film that’s equally wonderful albeit wildly different in tone (this one is more like feminist Eraserhead): Kitchen Sink (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt58gDgxy9Q&t=1s).

11. Novitiate (dir. Margaret Betts)

The history of cinema is a history of queer subtext. But it’s 2017 and while it may be fun to speculate whether Poe Dameron is gay and I’d be the first to say “Let It Go” is a perfect coming out anthem, it’s no coincidence that the best queer allegories of the year ALSO had explicitly queer characters. This film in particular is so special because it’s both the story of a young woman’s repressed sexuality and a story about how faith of all things is comparable to said sexuality. Sister Cathleen’s mother does not understand her affinity for Jesus the way many parents do not understand their children’s sexuality or gender. While coming out stories are a staple of very special sitcom episodes, I’ve never seen one that captures the pained misunderstanding the way this film does. Part of this is due to wonderful performances by Julianne Nicholson and Margaret Qualley and part of it is that religion is oddly the perfect stand-in for queerness… even as it represses queerness within this world. The movie begins with a series of flashbacks that feel stilted and conventional in a way that’s totally incongruous with the rest of the movie. It’s unfortunate because otherwise this would’ve been even higher on my list. But this is Betts’ first film and the majority of it is really special. And while I do think she’ll make even better films in what will hopefully be a long career, this one is still really worth checking out. I mean, I haven’t even brought up Melissa Leo’s frightening and absurd (yet somehow grounded?) performance that makes Meryl Streep in Doubt look like Amy Adams in Doubt.

10. The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker)

As marketing extraordinaire A24 has managed to spread this film to a wider audience, they’ve made a lot of fuss about this film’s political depiction of Florida’s “hidden homeless,” Baker’s approach of mixing professional and non-professional actors (shout-out to Bria Vinaite who deserves as much awards attention as Willem Dafoe), and how the film “feels like a documentary.” And while I’m glad this strategy has worked, I tend to balk at the tendency of marketers and critics alike to call any movie with characters who aren’t all rich and/or white “like a documentary.” But regardless of its realism which I feel in no position to comment on, it’s certainly a great film about childhood and fantasy and how sometimes it’s easier to be a parent to everyone except your own kids. And not to build it up too much if you haven’t already seen it, but the ending is truly one of the best endings in recent years, not only in and of itself, but how it contextualizes and deepens everything that came before.

9. Whose Streets? (dir. Sabaah Folayan)

This is an exceptionally well-constructed film. I feel like most documentaries in this style have great moments but show a lack of restraint in the editing room and/or struggle to find a clear narrative. But this film moves along at an exceptional pace while still feeling comprehensive. Every sequence feels essential even when the scope expands beyond the two central individuals. This can be credited in part to the editing, but the succinctness wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the footage captured. The intimate moments we’re able to watch are stunning and enhance the already high stakes of the surrounding film, the ongoing narrative of the country. This is an essential reminder of the humanity behind activism, the sacrifice behind news stories, and that for many people political engagement is not something to do with an open Sunday afternoon but a necessary part of survival.

8. Their Finest (dir. Lone Scherfig)

Easily the best Dunkirk-related film of the year, this is the rare movie about movies that doesn’t feel self-satisfied, but instead truly captures the joy of cinema and storytelling. It’s odd to me that romantic melodrama, a genre so celebrated when it comes to classic film, is often written off as fluff in contemporary cinema. Yes, this movie is romantic. Yes, this movie is wildly entertaining. But it’s also painful, it’s also telling a story of women screenwriters we haven’t heard before, it’s also showing how powerful art can be as an escape and a mirror in difficult times. If you’re interested in filmmaking and/or British people, check this out on Hulu. Gemma Arterton is really wonderful and Sam Claflin is good eye candy if you’re into that sort of thing.

7. Starless Dreams (dir. Mehrdad Oskouei)

This documentary about a group of teenage girls living in an Iranian “Correctional and Rehabilitation Center” is proof that sometimes the best approach to the medium is simplicity. Oskouei pretty much just lets the girls talk. But it’s truly a testament to his abilities as a filmmaker (and person) and the girls’ vulnerability and storytelling prowess that the movie remains compelling throughout. As the girls tell their stories it becomes clear that the center isn’t simply a prison, but also almost a utopic escape from the daily horrors they faced outside. Both options are so completely insufficient when compared to the lives these young women deserve this realization is enraging. And while the film takes place in Iran it doesn’t require a lot of effort to realize young women have similar stories and circumstances all over the world. This movie is on iTunes and I really, really recommend checking it out. The subject matter is heavy, but because the girls are allowed to determine the narrative it never feels maudlin or unbearable and at times is even quite funny and joyous.

6. Raw (dir. Julia Ducournau)

I really appreciated how Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl captured the all-consuming lust of teenagehood. So, um, think that movie, except cannibalism. A lot of cannibalism. I feel torn between being honest about how truly gross this movie can be and pretending otherwise because I really don’t want to scare anyone away. I’ll put it this way. It’s really, really worth it to watch this through your fingers if you even maybe think you could handle it. Because it’s just a really great movie about being a teenage girl, discovering sexuality, being away from home for the first time, having a sister, having a first crush, a first sexual experience, feeling completely out of control of your desires and needs. Hey, even Ducournau insists this isn’t a horror movie. So don’t eat anything beforehand, but definitely check this out.

5. Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele)

I hardly need to add any analysis to what has easily been the most talked about and written about movie of the year. But I just need to say that it makes me so happy that a socially aware horror movie (the best subset of my favorite genre) not only made a huge amount of money but is also considered an awards frontrunner. That is so wonderfully baffling to me and a testament to the greatness of this movie. Many great horror movies capitalize on people’s fear of otherness, but those who are othered in our society are much more likely to be victims than villains. That Peele managed to show this without ever feeling like he was exploiting real pain is truly an accomplishment. The tonal balance this film achieves is certainly something I’ll study when I make a horror movie writing back to Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, Sleepaway Camp, etc.

4. Faces Places (dir. Agnès Varda, JR)

Agnès Varda has spent her entire career blending fact and fiction, opening up her own life for her art. But there’s something different about this film which is likely to be her last. While so much of her work places her vivacious spirit front and center this film feels almost like a cry of humanity. Oddly enough I’d compare it to Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky in that it seems to say, “Don’t fetishize my happiness, don’t mock my joy, don’t infantilize me, just because you can’t enjoy life like I can.” I look to Varda as the kind of artist (and person) I want to be in how open she always seems to be. But what this film made me realize is that part of that openness is how sad she can be, how angry she can be. Varda is often called “the grandmother of the French New Wave.” I guess this is the only way the film community knows how to contextualize a woman being the one to start arguably the most influential film movement. Varda is the same age as all those guys! She’s not the grandmother! She just happened to make a bold, experimental film about five years ahead of the rest of them. By ending with Godard, and pairing up with JR who is basically an incarnation of Godard and friends as young men, Varda is really exploring her place in film history and the world, and how difficult it is to be to be a pioneer. No country has more contemporary films directed by women than France and this is in a large part due to Varda. But being the one to create that path is exhausting. I realize I’m making what’s easily the most life-affirming, humanist film of the year sound like an angry, self-eulogy, but I think this aspect of the film and Varda’s career should not be ignored. If you’ve never seen anything by Varda, this film will read very differently, but still be wonderful (and honestly more joyous). I recommend seeing it, watching 20 of her other films, and then seeing it again.

3. The Shape of Water (dir. Guillermo del Toro)

The trailer for this film shows the main character, Elisa played by the always wonderful Sally Hawkins, doing her daily routine. Alarm, shining shoes, being late to work, etc. But even the redband trailer leaves out one of her daily activities: masturbating. Maybe it’s odd to associate masturbation with ambition, but the choice to show that early on and then repeatedly seems like a perfect microcosm of why this film is so great. It’s not afraid. Guillermo del Toro has made a wonderful career out of celebrating “the other” through monster movie pastiches, but this to me is his very best film because of how willing it is to be both clear and complicated. This movie is many things, but one of those things is a queer love story. And even though human woman/amphibian man sex is maybe even more taboo to show on screen than say eating a semen filled peach, this movie just goes for it. I’m not sure if this movie succeeds in everything it tries to do but I so deeply admire how much it tries. Not only is one of Elisa’s best friends gay, but we spend a significant amount of time getting to know that character and see that maybe his obsolete career hurts him even more. Not only is Elisa’s other best friend black, but we see how being a black woman affects her specifically in what is expected of her versus her husband. Fantasy and sci-fi often use real people’s struggles as source material for privileged protagonists, and while this film certainly does that, it works because the real people are still shown on screen. Also del Toro is a master of cinematic craft so this is really a pleasure to watch.

2. Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig)

Before diving into this specific film it’s worth noting that this is one of six debut features on this list. It’s so exciting that we’re hopefully going to get full and illustrious careers from all of these people. But when it comes to Gerwig it feels like we already have. She has been proof that if the film community is going to insist on holding onto the auteur theory, they at least need to acknowledge that actors and writers can be auteurs. Gerwig is known for being quirky, but this really sells her talent short. She is clearly someone who has a deep understanding of cinema and, more importantly, a deep understanding of people. Part of being a great director is casting great actors and then trusting them and it’s so clear that’s what happened on this film (let me just list off some names: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, Tracy Letts, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Lois Smith, I mean come on). They really make her wonderful script come alive. This is a great movie about female friendship and a great movie about mother-daughter relationships, but more than anything it’s a great movie about loving and hating a hometown. Even though I’ve only seen the film twice I think back on moments in the film like I do my own adolescent memories. They feel familiar even when I don’t directly relate to them. This movie feels big in a way only a small movie can.

1. Mudbound (dir. Dee Rees)

This is when my penchant for hyperbole really comes back to bite me in the ass. I use the word masterpiece way too much. But when I say Mudbound is a masterpiece I don’t just mean it’s a great movie I really loved that I recommend everyone see. I mean, it’s The Godfather. It’s Citizen Kane. It’s the rare movie that has a perfect script, perfect cinematography, perfect performances, is completely of its time, and will stand the test of time. If we ever get to a place where art by black women is justly celebrated it will be in the 2070 AFI top 10. It’s that good. Part of what sets the movie apart is its almost absurd ambition. It breaks so many movie rules (not only does it have heavy narration, but it has heavy narration from multiple characters), and yet it always works. I love small movies, I love weird and flawed movies, but there is something so spectacular about watching something like Dee Rees’ third feature. I’m so excited to watch this movie again, to study it, to spend a lifetime with it. I feel like it really got lost in the shuffle by being released on Netflix, but that also means right now it’s on Netflix and you, yes YOU, almost certainly have or have access to Netflix. So you could watch it. Right now. Watch it. Stop reading. Turn the lights off. Find the biggest TV or computer screen you have so you can really appreciate Rachel Morrison’s cinematography and watch it. It is perfection wrapped in a bow of perfection and I really must insist you watch it.

Television!

Still Need to Catch Up On: The Girlfriend Experience (S2), Queen Sugar (S2)

Honorable Mentions: -Big Little Lies -Broad City (S3) -Girls (S6) -Insecure (S2) -Master of None (S2) -One Mississippi (S2) -Orange is the New Black (S5) -Search Party (S2) -Shots Fired

10. Twin Peaks: The Return 9. Jane the Virgin (S3/4) 8. Transparent (S4) 7. Better Things (S2) 6. I Love Dick 5. The Good Place (S1/2) 4. Sense8 (S2) 3. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (S2/3) 2. Top of the Lake: China Girl 1. The Leftovers (S3)

[him-e]

Hi Claudia. just wondering are you going to talk about american gods? i'm very interested in what you thought about Laura and Mad sweeny. basically i'm interested in your opinion with all of it tbqh!

Sorry for the late reply, I wanted to catch up on the whole season before answering this. 

Laura/Mad Sweeney is one of those cases where the characters are individually good and interesting and all, but you smash them together in the same storyline, link them through the same mission (pursued by each for their individual reasons), add an improbable road trip that makes them care for each other even though they don’t want to, and BAM, they become SO MUCH MORE. their chemistry is weirdly explosive, which is funny because you never saw it coming.

A prayer for Mad Sweeney (a fantastic episode btw) got me hooked on this dynamic, although I’ve liked it since the beginning and had seen gifsets of it even before I caught up on their episodes so I was sort of expecting something interesting. I also have been reading the book as I watched the season—I’m being exceptionally slow, but I’ve read and loved the part about Essie McGowan’s coming to America, and it was a total surprise to see Emily play Essie too, which adds a new layer to Laura’s interactions with Sweeney (it’s SO “I’ve crossed oceans of time to find you”, isn’t it). I don’t know how the whole Laura thing plays out in the book—it is my understanding that she has a much smaller role in the novel, and they expanded it in the show? If so, they made a brilliant decision.

like Laura is SUCH A GOOD CHARACTER OMG?

she starts out as the most boring, sexist, predictable trope on earth. The dead girlfriend. Well, wife. Dead before she even appears on screen in tragic circumstances, so that the male hero can begin his journey while also sympathetically grieving for this terrible loss. How interesting. Did they really cast Emily Browning for this?

then we learn she was actually a cheating, lying bitch who died with another man’s dick in her mouth (her best friend’s husband, no less), while her husband was in jail because of her. THAT’s where we start suspecting there might be more to the trope, even if it’s not pleasant. Suddenly it’s incredibly hard to romanticize the Dead Wife.

but she doesn’t stop there. she literally walks out of the fridge the narrative had seemingly put her in, and comes BACK FROM THE DEAD, not as an ethereal ghost to motivate the Hero, but as a foul-smelling, decaying corpse with superhuman strength and a REALLY BAD ATTITUDE (including towards gods). Who is Very Determined to get her husband back, (also) because he’s apparently the only thing that makes her heart beat (literally). So you have some nice trope-inversion here because suddenly the (Alive) Hero becomes the Dead Wife’s motivating factor, idealized lover AND object of the quest, and she becomes the protagonist of her own storyline.

I mean she gets an entire episode dedicated to her backstory. which isn’t even THAT interesting (except it is, because she is). That’s really cool, even more so since it was a departure from the book itself.

what I like about Laura is that she’s actually a very repulsive person… in a relatable way. She’s selfish. She’s self-destructive (her addiction to the fly-spray is a superb use of foreshadowing). She doesn’t seem to have genuine feelings for anyone, let alone Shadow. She annoyingly calls him “puppy” which is both infantilizing and dehumanizing (esp. for a MoC). On a whim, she decides she wants to be “happy” and that happiness involves for some reason robbing the casino she works in, so she convinces Shadow to rob it for her, and he is arrested. Bottom line, she’s either just a total jerk with little redeeming qualities except being a cat person, or severely depressed (and it’s probably the latter).

She dies because of her self-destructiveness (subverted later, because after spending so much time blaming herself for that, she learns that the car crash wasn’t her fault, but Wednesday’s), is scorned and rejected for her unpleasantness even by the god of the underworld himself, but Mad Sweeney’s lucky coin, unwittingly given to Shadow, brings her back to life. So she comes back with a purpose, and that’s when she starts actually living, ironically. It’s funny because Shadow and Laura are linked through Mad Sweeney’s coin, because that’s what reanimated her, while Laura and Mad Sweeney are linked through Shadow, who is Laura’s purpose and unfinished business on earth, the spiritual reason why she’s alive (and able to physically meet Sweeney in the first place).

You know what else is funny? that Sweeney’s ~heart desire~ (his lucky coin) is ~literally~ IN LAURA’S CHEST. 

It’s her ersatz heart now. HE NEVER MEANT IT TO BE. So he tries to get it back through sheer force and manipulation at first, which is obviously not working because Laura has no problem beating his ass, then decides to help her so he can take her heart, er, his coin, from her chest without killing her. And THEN, ta dah character evolution, he sees her lying on the floor, dead as a doornail, chest open, all he has to do is reach out for his coin and just forget about her… but he puts it back in her chest. OMG? maybe he only needed Laura’s strength to move the truck… but the best romantic sacrifices are those that remain debatable in the eyes of the wider audience (see: Jaime jumping in the bearpit).

I say romantic even though there’s nothing explicitly romantic in their interactions (YET), which of course is why I fell for it. That, and other things (the ~hate at first time~ dynamic, the bickering, the height difference, the ~age~ difference—Sweeney being hundreds of years old— subverted by the fact that the *older* one really is just a whiny teenager, the ~small girl repeatedly kicks big foul-mouthed guy’s ass and is actually one of the few things he’s afraid of~, etc.)

I guess interacting with Laura (and Salim) was an A+++ thing for Sweeney in particular. Like Laura, he also starts out as a slightly opaque character. A minor one, to be honest. he’s huge (a tall leprechaun! LOL!), he’s ginger, he’s angry, he loves brawls, he has a bunch of magic coins. As a supernatural being, he’s not even a truly powerful one. While Laura’s zombie storyline is actually pretty interesting on its own, it would have been super easy to use Sweeney just as a comic relief, but thanks to this sideplot he’s allowed to reveal his softer side and humanity and hopefully have his own identity arc. So fingers crossed that there will be more next season!