2017 Movies That Should Be On Your Radar

These are movies either out now or opening soon. I’ll do a more comprehensive round-up of all the movies later in the year once I’ve seen more.

In the meantime:

Director: Sean Baker
Screenplay: Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch
U.S. release date: October 6, 2017
U.K. release date: November 10, 2017
From the film-maker of Tangerine (shot on an iPhone, famously), The Florida Project is extremely difficult to describe. Critics have been acknowledging this in their reviews! Something happens in this movie – a mood, a vibe – completely separating it from the grim surroundings. Taking place in a purple-painted motel on the outskirts of Orlando, it features a cast of little kids having adventures, sassing the grown-ups, running wild, scheming, plotting. Behind this is a bleak landscape of adults on the verge of homelessness. Or, basically homeless already, holed up in the motel staving-off the inevitable. Willem Dafoe (in his best role in years) plays the harassed motel manager who does his best to keep the motel running smoothly. None of this, though, accurately describes the powerful experience of Florida Project. I thought my heart would explode at the end (for example). For my money, Stephanie Zacharek’s review in Time is the one to read. See this movie.

Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy
U.S. release date: September 29, 2017
U.K. release date: November 24, 2017
Billie Jean King – #1 in the world – agrees to a match with Bobby Riggs – more hustler than tennis pro. He challenged women to play against him, so that he could prove that men were basically superior in skill, muscle, blah blah blah. In this charming film – Steve Carell plays Riggs not so much as a sexist pig as a Showman who saw an opportunity to keep himself in the limelight. Bill Pullman plays Jack Kramer, the truly sexist one, who refused to pay the women players equal to the male players (even if the women players won more matches, and sold more tickets). Emma Stone plays Billie Jean King and she’s surprisingly good. I love Emma Stone but when I think “world-class athlete” I don’t think “Emma Stone.” But Stone gets the competitive jock vibe, the independence of this woman … her fearlessness at going up against an unfair system. Carell is excellent too, and the film really makes the case that he wasn’t a bad or evil guy. He was more of a PT Barnum type. I really enjoyed it.

Director: John Carroll Lynch
Screenplay: Drago Sumonja, Logan Sparks
U.S. release date: September 29, 2017
U.K. release date: TBD

The irreplaceable Harry Dean Stanton just died (my obituary here) and at the time I wrote that essay I had not seen Lucky, his final film where he plays the starring role. Stanton plays “Lucky,” an old guy who lives in a small house in the middle of the desert, doing yoga every morning, and then making the rounds: tromping into town to shop, to drink, to chat with the convenience store cashier (he buys a couple of packs of cigarettes a day). Over the course of the film, we meet all of the people he intersects with, including a good friend (played by David Lynch) who can’t get over the loss of his beloved turtle, who just took off one day. If you’ve never gotten enough of Stanton – if you’ve always been happy whenever he shows up in something – then please see Lucky. He has moments as good as anything he’s ever done. Because it never seems like he’s acting. It never DID seem like he was acting. Beautiful film.

Director/Writer: Macon Blair
U.S. release date: Earlier this year: it is currently streaming on Netflix

Tripped over this one, written/directed by Macon Blair (whom I absolutely love: he has a small role in Florida Project too). Starring Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood, “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore” is about the aftermath of a robbery. How being robbed changes the life of Ruth (Lynskey), a nurse’s assistant, living in her parents’ house. What happens is so unique, so … bizarre … that to describe any of it would be giving essential stuff away. You just have to experience Ruth’s choices, filtered through Lynskey’s very funny – and very committed performance. Wood is hilarious as her neighbor sidekick. The stakes aren’t all that high. But the LENGTHS Ruth goes to get justice for herself, and her stolen silverware, are increasingly nutty – but always justified by Lynskey (an actress I adore). There’s a free-wheeling chaotic feeling to the film, and yet you never get the sense that Blair is just making it up as he goes. He knows the story he wants to tell. Wonderful film!

Director: Luca Guadagnino
Screenplay: James Ivory, based on the novel by Andre Aciman
U.S. release date: November 24, 2017
U.K. release date: October 27, 2017

One of my most anticipated films of the year. Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash was on my Top 10 last year. Call Me By Your Name has a similar locale, a similar vibe: hot Mediterranean sun, beautiful people, tactile: sun and cool water and delicious food and hot nights … it’s easy to describe these things, but less easy to actually express those things in an immediate way on film. You have to care about light and skin and shadows. Calling it “erotic” is not exactly right. I’d call it earthy. The sheer AGONY of first love – first sex – yearning, hunger, aching, writhing in bed wanting something you don’t even know how to name, obsessing, the boredom of a teenager, and yet the sensitivity of a teenager too. Incredible performances, but understated – grounded (earthy, again). The film operates on a slow slowwwwww burn. If you’re looking for sexual pyrotechnics, you won’t find it here. It’s about the intensity of longing, the agony of being touched when you’re so horny you can’t even TOLERATE a hand on your shoulder. Timothée Chalamet, as the teenager, is phenomenal (he’s also very good and very funny in Lady Bird where he convincingly plays a comPLETELY different type of person. A humorless jaded poseur reading Howard Zinn). Armie Hammer is getting a lot of the attention – and he’s wonderful too – but Chalamet is the one I can’t stop thinking about. To play such a role AS a young man is to be so honest about what it means to be a virgin, and a nervous virgin at that. It’s hard to be honest about such things. There’s a real tenderness in this movie. It’s not just about the sex. It’s to die for.

Director: Paul McGuigan
Screenplay: Matt Greenhalgh (based on the book by Peter Turner)
U.S. release date: December 29, 2017
U.K. release date: November 17, 2017

I have not read Peter Turner’s book about his May-December romance with Gloria Grahame in the final years of her life. Gloria Grahame, a favorite of mine, had a pretty scandalous life (look it up), and because of those scandals (well, one in particular), her film career kind of dried up. Well, that and because she committed the sin of aging. She was unforgettable in films like The Big Heat, In a Lonely Place, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Bad and the Beautiful (for which she won an Oscar), and then as Ado Annie in Oklahoma! as the girl who “caint say no.” Annette Bening plays Gloria Grahame in the late 70s, when Grahame is playing Amanda in a British production of Glass Menagerie, living in a rooming house. She befriends a young actor living in the same rooming house – a marvelous Jamie Bell. It soon blossoms into a romance. Bening has always been good. She took off a bunch of years to raise her kids – not totally, but definitely removing herself from the main field of action – her prime years. But what’s interesting and what is an object lesson here is that as women get older they get more interesting. (This is true of most human beings, but unfortunately women lose cultural currency as they get older: In many cases, especially with actresses, if you get old, nobody wants to even see you anymore.) So Bening’s career, in particular (I could name many more right now) is a reminder that while she was always good – she’s even BETTER now with more miles on her. I’m a huge Gloria Grahame fan and I went into this pretty skeptical, feeling protective of that sashaying tart with the little girl voice (which also managed to sound super tough) … who played so many unforgettable roles back in the day. Bening is so good that when actual clips from Grahame’s films are shown, you BELIEVE you are looking at a younger Annette Bening. The film is heartbreaking in many ways but also a celebration of Gloria Grahame, an actress revered by those of us who are cinephiles, but unknown to many many people. Hopefully this film will rectify that. Loved it.