Best movies of 2017

[oscar jubis]

It's award season and time to celebrate the rich accomplishments of 2017. Top 10s and "best of" lists have been ubiquitous, as usual. There are so many movies (and series, programs, etc.) vying for the attention of the increasingly distracted audience always pressed for time to catch (discover) the new thing. It's a whirlwind. Generally speaking, we live in a world in which neither audiences nor critics spend enough time with a movie to get to know it the way the great films deserve. Film reviewing is an exercise in rationalizing first impressions. It's always been that way but now there's more of it and everything's faster. I'm thinking about how unprepared I am at the moment to say which are the best movies of 2017 in a conclusive way. This is true for many reasons, one being that time has a way to change the importance of an accomplishment and esthetic judgements become clearer. I like many 2017 movies but no new movie was more important to me than the 2017 release of the version of The Sage of Anatahan that Josef von Sternberg edited in 1958, five years after a censored version flopped in its limited theatrical release. It's his last film. I am very happy that The Library of Congress, the Film Foundation and other institutions collaborated to restore it and re-release it. As for new films, I will soon post a list of titles that show promise.