Flower, Beauty and the Dogs, Final Portrait, Ready Player One, Outside In, Claire's Camera, Gemini, Back to Burgundy, The China Hustle, Blockers

Blockers

The China Hustle

Back to Burgundy

Gemini

Claire's Camera

Outside In

Ready Player One

Final Portrait

Beauty and the Dogs

Flower

The Party, Game Night, Golden Exits, Red Sparrow, Oh Lucy!, Leaning Into the Wind: Andy Goldsworthy, The Death of Stalin, Thoroughbreds, Love, Simon, Unsane

Unsane

Love, Simon

Thoroughbreds

The Death of Stalin

Leaning Into the Wind: Andy Goldsworthy

Oh Lucy!

Red Sparrow

Golden Exits

Game Night

The Party

PODCAST: If We Chose the OSCARS® 2017

Adrienne Green joins me to cast our votes in the major categories and reveal what would happen if we chose the OSCARS®.

‘OSCAR®’ is the registered trademark and service mark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

 Subscribe in a reader

The Films of January-February 2018, The 2017 Oscar-Nominated Short Films

Paddington 2

The Insult

The Commuter

Den of Thieves

The Road Movie

Lover for a Day

A Ciambra

Double Lover (L'Amant Double)

A quick catchup on the films of January and February, plus notes on all three categories of Oscar-nominated short films:

The Ten Best Films of 2017: #1

We've saved the best for last: Luca Guadagnino's poignant and haunting "Call Me By Your Name," a story of first love lost and self found with a (huge star-making) lead performance by Timothée Chalamet that's fifty decibels softer than Oldman's in "Darkest Hour" yet infinitely truer, more penetrating and more memorable.

The Ten Best Films of 2017: #2

Reminiscent of Bill Forsyth’s great “Housekeeping,” Aisling Walsh’s “Maudie,” a biography of the Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis, staked claim to the highest in cinematic achievement in the first half of 2017. Profoundly moving without a hint of the maudlin, it stands on the shoulders of Oscar-worthy performances by Sally Hawkins and, as Maud’s husband Everett, Ethan Hawke, and a Sherry White script that speaks volumes in few words.

The Ten Best Films of 2017: #3

The Safdie Brothers' "Good Time" plays like a contemporary update of Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" with a criminal overlay. An unrecognizable Robert Pattinson (whose "Maps to the Stars" scene as a chauffeur driving a boldly suggestive Julianne Moore through Beverly Hills is perhaps the sexiest of recent years) stars as a hood who enlists his slow younger brother (Benny Safdie) in a botched bank robbery, then tries to break him out of Rikers, eventually plucking the wrong handcuffed guy (Buddy Duress) out of a hospital on a perfervid and hallucinatory nighttime odyssey through the underbelly of New York. Events feel increasingly disconnected from reality, culminating in a did-that-really-just-happen moment that I will never forget. The cast, featuring the terrific Barkhad Abdi and Jennifer Jason Leigh in small supporting roles, is uniformly excellent, led by the chameleonic Pattinson, a serious and thoughtful cineaste who's going to be around for a long time. So will the supremely stylish, adrenaline-fueled and draining "Good Time," which more than half of my audience watched enraptured to the last of the closing credits.