Szlia
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Like we have been doing every year for more than 10 years, five of my friends and me met in late February in a restaurant, each of us with a list of our 20 favorite movies released in the previous year. We then talked and ate and combined all our lists to form the Top 20 movies of the year: the Grottino Awards (named after the italian restaurant we used to go to do this). Note that we are often out of synch with the Bafta, Academy Awards, Golden Globes, etc because many movies are released in Europe after the award season to benefit from the prizes they might have won (that's why a movie like La La Land ends up in our 2017 list instead of the 2016 one and why The Shape of Water, Lady Bird or Phantom Thread will be for 2018).
So:
20: Lucky
Dark comedy around "a 90-year-old atheist and his struggle against encroaching old age." One of Harry Dean Stanton's last part.
19: Faces Places (Visages Villages)
French documentary about aging film maker Agnès Varda and young photographer JR traveling the french countryside to make giant portraits of everyday people.
18: Ismael's Ghosts (Les fantômes d'Ismaël)
French mix of dramedy and auto-fiction about a film maker struggling to make a movie, who suddenly see his wife, who dissapearded 20 years prior, barge back into his life.
16 tied: Ex Libris / Baahubali 2
It's very much in the spirit of the Grottino that these two long movies ended up being tied: The first is a documentary by Frederick Wiseman about the New York public library and the second is an over the top Indian epic.
15: Get Out
Meet the parents cleverly turned into a racial horror film.
14: A Violent Life (Une vie violente)
French film about a corsican man living in Paris dragged back to his beloved island because of his family's troubles with organized crime and independentist armed struggle.
12 tied: Miss Sloane / The Lost City of Z
Jessica Chastain as a Washington lobbyist who has both a backbone and principles (clearly a work of fiction!) and James Grey's biopic about explorer Percy Fawcett's multiple trips to the Amazon at the beginning of the XXth century to find, as the tile implies, the lost city of Z.
11: Manchester by the Sea
A suffocating drama about the consequences of a dramatic events on people.
10: Detroit
Kathryn Bigelow dives into a clusterfuck in the middle of the 1967 race riots in Detroit: The Algiers Motel.
9: Tomorrow and Thereafter (Demain et tous les autres jours)
French drama film about a young girl living alone with her mentally ill mother thinly disguised as a light fantasy film. For a number of reasons the film got stuck in development hell, but additional shooting allowed for a magnificent and poetic ending.
8: La La Land
Damien Chazelle's love letter to musicals.
7: Blade Runner 2049
Denis Villeneuve's serious sequel and heir to the cult classic movie.
6: Loveless
Andrey Zvyagintsev continues after Leviathan his chilling portrait of contemporary Russia, this time through the prism of a separating couple whose son disappeared.
5: Your name
Makoto Shinkai's masterful take on the classic body-swapping genre, here used a bit for comedy but mostly for drama. Apparently, it's the highest worldwide grossing japanese animated film ever.
4: Neruda
Communist senator and acclaimed chilean poet Neruda has to go into hiding, but he still wants to be the star and writer of his own story. Pablo Larraín creates an extremely clever and funny movie about someone trying to write his own legend.
3: Battle of the Sexes
Maybe it's the contrast between what one could fear the film would be and what it actually is that pushed this comedy so far up the list, but surprisingly beautiful photography, smart direction, great performances, a tenderness for most characters (sorry Margaret Court fans!) and a mostly nuanced look behind the scene of the structuration of a professional sport certainly helped!
2: American Honey
Part coming of age movie, part musical portrait of marginal youngsters, part road movie, part comment on capitalism and entrepreneurship, Andrea Arnold's handheld camera captures the energy of an ensemble cast lead by newcomer Sasha Lane and a surprising Shia LaBeouf.
1: Jackie
Pablo Larraín is a second time in this list for his anti-biopic centered on a Jackie Kennedy trying in her last actions as the first lady to enshrine her dead husband in the american legend. A feat of solemn film-making and a standout performance by Natalie Portman.
So:
20: Lucky
Dark comedy around "a 90-year-old atheist and his struggle against encroaching old age." One of Harry Dean Stanton's last part.
19: Faces Places (Visages Villages)
French documentary about aging film maker Agnès Varda and young photographer JR traveling the french countryside to make giant portraits of everyday people.
18: Ismael's Ghosts (Les fantômes d'Ismaël)
French mix of dramedy and auto-fiction about a film maker struggling to make a movie, who suddenly see his wife, who dissapearded 20 years prior, barge back into his life.
16 tied: Ex Libris / Baahubali 2
It's very much in the spirit of the Grottino that these two long movies ended up being tied: The first is a documentary by Frederick Wiseman about the New York public library and the second is an over the top Indian epic.
15: Get Out
Meet the parents cleverly turned into a racial horror film.
14: A Violent Life (Une vie violente)
French film about a corsican man living in Paris dragged back to his beloved island because of his family's troubles with organized crime and independentist armed struggle.
12 tied: Miss Sloane / The Lost City of Z
Jessica Chastain as a Washington lobbyist who has both a backbone and principles (clearly a work of fiction!) and James Grey's biopic about explorer Percy Fawcett's multiple trips to the Amazon at the beginning of the XXth century to find, as the tile implies, the lost city of Z.
11: Manchester by the Sea
A suffocating drama about the consequences of a dramatic events on people.
10: Detroit
Kathryn Bigelow dives into a clusterfuck in the middle of the 1967 race riots in Detroit: The Algiers Motel.
9: Tomorrow and Thereafter (Demain et tous les autres jours)
French drama film about a young girl living alone with her mentally ill mother thinly disguised as a light fantasy film. For a number of reasons the film got stuck in development hell, but additional shooting allowed for a magnificent and poetic ending.
8: La La Land
Damien Chazelle's love letter to musicals.
7: Blade Runner 2049
Denis Villeneuve's serious sequel and heir to the cult classic movie.
6: Loveless
Andrey Zvyagintsev continues after Leviathan his chilling portrait of contemporary Russia, this time through the prism of a separating couple whose son disappeared.
5: Your name
Makoto Shinkai's masterful take on the classic body-swapping genre, here used a bit for comedy but mostly for drama. Apparently, it's the highest worldwide grossing japanese animated film ever.
4: Neruda
Communist senator and acclaimed chilean poet Neruda has to go into hiding, but he still wants to be the star and writer of his own story. Pablo Larraín creates an extremely clever and funny movie about someone trying to write his own legend.
3: Battle of the Sexes
Maybe it's the contrast between what one could fear the film would be and what it actually is that pushed this comedy so far up the list, but surprisingly beautiful photography, smart direction, great performances, a tenderness for most characters (sorry Margaret Court fans!) and a mostly nuanced look behind the scene of the structuration of a professional sport certainly helped!
2: American Honey
Part coming of age movie, part musical portrait of marginal youngsters, part road movie, part comment on capitalism and entrepreneurship, Andrea Arnold's handheld camera captures the energy of an ensemble cast lead by newcomer Sasha Lane and a surprising Shia LaBeouf.
1: Jackie
Pablo Larraín is a second time in this list for his anti-biopic centered on a Jackie Kennedy trying in her last actions as the first lady to enshrine her dead husband in the american legend. A feat of solemn film-making and a standout performance by Natalie Portman.
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