THE YEAR 2017.

Yes, I’m still doing it. After another year of movie going I notice that the fringe operations are edging out the multiplexes as the major source, though whether you can count as fringe the Asian movies in a Chinese owned city center complex is speculative.



The films which impressed me when I saw them for the first time this year in some sort of order were LA LA LAND (Dominic Chazelle just getting into the new year and nobody fiddled the cards for this announcement), KONO SEKAI NO KATASUMI NI (In This Corner of the World, Sunao Katabuchi’s Hiroshima manga), THE VIETNAM WAR (another great Ken Burns & Lynn Novack TV series),  AUS DEM  NICHTS  (In the Fade - Fatih Akin with Diane Kruger), SILENCE (reverence from Martin Scorsese), DUNKIRK (Christopher Nolan in 70mm.), The YOUNG POPE (Paolo Sorrentino TV), La TENEREZZA (Tenderness - top flight Gianni Amelio), BACALAUREAT (Graduation - Cristian Mungiu, Rumanian), WONDER WOMAN (Patty Jenkins pick of the strip catoons) WO BU SHI PAN JINLIAN (I Am Not Madame Bovary - Xiaogang Feng), The Edge of Seventeen (Kelly Fremon Craig), Zhan lang II (Wolf Warrior II /Jing Wu), Felices 140 (Happy 140 - Gracia Querejeta), Incendies (Denis Villeneuve), Churchill (Jonathan Teplitzky) Wind River (Taylor Sheridan), Terra madre (Alessandro Blasetti 1931 ), El ciudadano ilustre (The Distinguished Citizen - Gastón Duprat, Mariano Cohn, Argentia), Trinadtsat (The Thirteen - Mikhail Romm 1936), Dvoryanskoe gnezdo (A Nest of Gentry - Andrey Konchalovskiy 1969), Patriots Day (Peter Berg), Fang hua (Youth - Xiaogang Feng, El destierro (The Exile - Arturo Ruiz Serrano), Bahubali 2: The Conclusion 

Bahubali : Prabhas

(S.S. Rajamouli), Que Dios nos pardone (May God Save Us -  Rodrigo Sorogoyen),  Les premiers les derniers (The First, the Last  - Bouli Lanners), Wilson (Craig Johnson), Capitan Kóblic (Sebastián Borensztein), Tarde para la ira (The Fury of a Patient Man - Raúl Arévalo), L’intrusa (The Intrusion - Leonardo di Costanzo), Dangal  (Nitesh Tiwari),  Sanpo suru shinryakusha (Before We Vanish / The Strolling Invaders - Kiyoshi Kurosawa), Plan de fuga (Escape Plan - Iñaki Dorronsoro), Visages, villages  (Faces Places - JR, Agnès Varda), Denial (Mick Jackson), Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve again), Naples '44 (Francesco Patierno), Mugen no jûnin (Blade of the Immortal - Takashi Miike), Lady Macbeth (William Oldroyd), Railroad Tigers (Ding Sheng), Khaneye dokhtar (The Girl's House - Shahram Shah Hosseini Iran), Cerca de tu casa  (At Your Doorstep - Eduard Cortés), Otôto (About Her Brother/ Younger Brother - Yôji Yamada). 

Tenerezza - Carpentieri & Germano.

The Spanish and Italian film events made a disproportionate contribution (thank you). Nearly as many Hispanic as Hollywood films listed. A few people are getting to be repeat offenders on these lists - notably Woody Harrelson, Feng Xiaogang and Ricardo Darin. Add in the novelty of  Hun Jang’s Korean Taeksi Woonjunsa (A Taxi Driver) and Saman Moghadam’s surprising Iranian Sperm Whale 2 :  Roya's Selection which I seem to be constantly referencing.

A lot of material admired in other places will take years to get to me here. Look at old overseas ten best lists and notice how many no shows there are. Also, since the theaters stopped listing their programs in the press and apathy and lack of support dismantled the enthusiast groups, word of mouth network, it’s easier to miss the oddities that do make it.
 

WO BU SHI PAN JINLIAN : I Am Not Madam Bovary : Fang Bingbing.