My favourite films of 2017 #20-11

Take the leather with you: The Villainess is full of twists and crazy action

20. Certain Women
Director: Kelly Reichardt  UK release date: 3 March
The Meek's Cutoff director presents three loosely-linked stories about the lives of four very different women, the best of which sees a naïve young Native American (Lily Gladstone) desperately trying to forge a romantic connection with Kristin Stewart's oblivious teacher. Gorgeous-looking, low-key, and poignant, just as you'd expect from director Reichardt.

19. God's Own Country
Director: Francis Lee  UK release date: 1 September
Yorkshire-set love story in which Josh O'Connor's disillusioned young farmer falls for Alec Secareanu's Romanian migrant worker. There's more mud, sex and beautifully-photographed scenery than you can shake a stick at, but it's the growing tenderness of the two men's relationship that is the real star here. Beautifully written, beautifully acted.

18. Lady Macbeth
Director: William Oldroyd  UK release date: 28 April
The title's a warning about what to expect in this merciless Victorian-set drama about a young woman (Florence Pugh) sold to a wealthy landowner as his wife. While he's away, she commences an affair with a stable-hand and, soon emboldened, her thoughts turn to darker matters. A blisteringly bleak meditation on class, race and sex, based on Nikolai Leskov's 1865 novella.

17. City Of Ghosts
Director: Matthew Heineman  UK release date: 21 July
Cartel Land director Heineman returns with another visceral, eye-opening documentary, this time focusing on citizen journalists in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which was seized by ISIS in 2013. It's horrifying and inspiring by turn, our band of journos risking life and limb (quite literally) to bring the world news from inside the city, as ISIS strengthen their grip on its populace and infrastructure.

16. The Villainess
Director: Byung-gil Jung  UK release date: 15 September
Cracking revenge thriller from South Korea that doubles as the year's maddest action film. A twisty plot sees assassin Sook-hee (Ok-bin Kim) on the trail of the man who murdered her father, but it's the film's numerous action scenes that remain in the memory, particularly the climactic chase and confrontation on a fast-moving bus.

15. I Am Not Your Negro
Director: Raoul Peck  UK release date: 7 April
Narrated by Samuel L Jackson, Peck's documentary about black novelist, playwright, poet and activist James Baldwin focusses mainly on an unfinished book featuring his memories of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. "The story of the negro in America is the story of America. It is not a pretty story," writes Baldwin. Peck shows us how and why that story hasn't got any prettier.

14. The Levelling

Director: Hope Dickson Leach  UK release date: 12 May
Compellingly dark British drama about a young woman (Ellie Kendrick) returning to her family's farm following the suicide of her younger brother. Director Leach conjures an atmosphere of dread and claustrophobia in which grief is a palpable ingredient. These are helpless people caught in life's vicious crosshairs. David Troughton – as shattered patriarch Aubrey – is immense.

13. A Ghost Story
Director: David Lowery  UK release: 11 August
There's rather more to Pete's Dragon director Lowery's film than Rooney Mara's famous pie-eating scene and Casey Affleck dressed in a white sheet. It's actually a powerful, poetic exploration of love, grief and the impermanence of life. We die but the world keeps turning, our loved ones move on, our legacy is small and soon fades. Rarely has so harsh a notion been so elegantly expressed.

12. Mudbound
Director: Dee Rees  UK release date: 17 November
A boldly ambitious and all-too-resonant tale of two American families – one white, one black – in the years before, during and after WWII. Despite its large cast and multiple narrators, Rees' film is perfectly paced, with the climactic melodrama and its fallout providing scenes both memorable and horrifying. Breaking Bad's Jonathan Banks, as racist patriarch Pappy, is the personification of toxic hatred.

11. On Body And Soul
Director: IIdiko Enyedi  UK release date: 22 September
Unconventional love story in which two abattoir workers – Géza Morcsányi and Alexandra Borbély – share dreams of being together in an Eden-like forest as deer, and slowly grow closer in the real world too. You quickly come to care about Enyedi's characters, especially lonely, vulnerable Maria (Borbély), whilst marvelling at the sheer chutzpah of the film's setting and storytelling.

**Next up: The countdown concludes with #10-1**

My 25 favourite films of 2017 so far: Part One #25-11

The first six months of the year pretty much flew by, didn't they? It doesn't seem like five minutes ago that it was January and I was sat in my local multiplex watching A Monster Calls - my first new movie of 2017. Since then we've had the usual parade of the good, the bad and the downright terrible (I'm looking at you Assassin's Creed). This is Part One of my top 25, with Part Two - featuring my top 10 - following tomorrow. If you see anything you violently disagree with, feel free to let me have it in the comments below...

To qualify for inclusion, films had to have been released into UK cinemas between 1 January-30 June 2017. Just because a film was released in the US or other territory last year doesn't preclude it from inclusion on this list. Movies that went straight to DVD, Blu-ray or VOD (including releases exclusive to Netflix and Amazon Prime) are not eligible for inclusion...

25. Frantz
Director: Francois Ozon UK release date: 12 May
Haunting post-WWI drama from prolific French director Ozon (The New Girlfriend). A young German woman (Paula Beer), still in mourning for her dead fiancé, meets a mysterious Frenchman (Adrien Rivoire) at his grave. He has a devastating secret and the way Ozon handles that revelation and its consequences is never less than utterly compelling.    

24. Their Finest
Director: Lone Scherfig UK release date: 21 April
Gemma Arterton's best role in years sees her signed up as a screenwriter for Allied propaganda films during WWII. In this sexist milieu, she is assigned the task of writing the 'slop' (i.e. dialogue for women). Suffice to say, she soon shakes things up in an absorbing book adaptation that nicely balances broad comedy and heart-rending drama.

23. My Life As A Courgette
Director: Claude Barras UK release date: 2 June
Beautifully-realised animation from France about a young boy - the titular Courgette - sent to a children's home after the death of his alcoholic mother. Barras's film (with a screenplay by Girlhood's Céline Schiamma) handles some incredibly heavy issues with sensitivity, warmth and winning humour. Lovely.

22. Hacksaw Ridge
Director: Mel Gibson UK release date: 27 January
Gibson returned from the Hollywood naughty step with this powerful World War II epic about Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), an army medic and staunch pacifist who refused to take a gun into the hell of Okinawa. Garfield's terrific, while the visceral nature of the battle scenes make his character's point about the horrors of combat better than any dialogue ever could.  

21. Colossal
Director: Nacho Vigalondo UK release date: 19 May
Alcoholic Anne Hathaway realises she is psychically linked to a monster rampaging through South Korea in this odd and highly original indie flick. Cut through the Kaiju hijinks, though, and Vigalondo's film is really about the affect self-destructive behaviour can have on those around you. Jason Sudeikis provides the toxic masculinity to give things an extra kick.

20. Suntan

Director: Argyris Papadimitropoulos UK release date: 28 April
Unsettling drama about an emotionally disturbed doctor (the excellent Makis Papadimitriou) on a small Greek island falling in love with a beautiful young tourist initially happy to play along with his obsession. An odd but satisfying mix of pitch-black humour with deluded middle-aged men in its sights and sheer, unadulterated creepiness.

19. Kong: Skull Island
Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts UK release date: 9 March

The only blockbuster this year that had me gripped from beginning to end. A weird amalgam of monster movie and war film (Apocalypse Now's influence looms large), it may have wafer-thin characters but more than makes up for that deficiency with some terrific action set-pieces and a kickass Kong.

18. Neruda
Director: Pablo Larrain UK release date: 7 April
Off-kilter but visually sumptuous biopic of the famous Chilean poet, Nobel Prize winner and communist. Luis Gnecco's titular lead becomes a fugitive in his own country during the 1940s as he is pursued by Gael García Bernal's disturbed police officer. Larrain (Jackie) takes all sorts of liberties with real events, while his portrayal of Neruda is enjoyably unflattering.

17. Mindhorn
Director: Sean Foley UK release date: 5 May
Julian Barratt (The Mighty Boosh) is a washed-up former TV detective in this Isle Of Man-set comedy which comes on like a cross between Bergerac and The Six Million Dollar Man. Some critics suggested it petered out before the end but I think the opposite is true - the crazier it gets, the funnier it gets. Sequel, please!

16. T2 Trainspotting
Director: Danny Boyle UK release date: 27 January
Spud, Sick Boy, Begbie and Renton are reunited on Edinburgh's mean streets after 20 years in a nostalgia-soaked meditation on ageing and coming to terms with your past. It's certainly not as good as Boyle's original movie from 1996 but is extremely funny, endlessly entertaining and, ultimately, oddly moving.

15. Certain Women
Director: Kelly Reichardt UK release date: 3 March
The Meek's Cutoff director presents three loosely-linked stories about the lives of four very different women, the best of which sees a naïve young Native American (Lily Gladstone) desperately trying to forge a romantic connection with Kristin Stewart's oblivious teacher. Gorgeous-looking, low-key, and poignant.

14. Free Fire
Director: Ben Wheatley UK release date: 31 March
It turns out a 90-minute shoot-out in a filthy warehouse between two gangs of inept criminals is a hell of a lot better on the big screen than it sounds on paper. Michael Smiley, Sharlto Copley, Brie Larson, and Armie Hammer are all on top form in a violent and riotously funny piece of work that doesn't owe quite as much to Reservoir Dogs as you'd imagine.

13. The Levelling
Director: Hope Dickson Leach UK release date: 12 May
Compellingly dark British drama about a young woman (Ellie Kendrick) returning to her family's farm following the suicide of her younger brother. Director Leach conjures an atmosphere of dread and claustrophobia which is only a hop, skip and a jump away from proper horror. These are helpless people caught in life's vicious crosshairs.

12. Silence
Director: Martin Scorsese UK release date: 1 January
Based on Shûsaku Endô's novel, Silence sees two Catholic missionaries (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) searching for their lost mentor (Liam Neeson) in 17th Century Japan, at a time of great religious persecution. Bloated, self-important and old-fashioned? Maybe, but nobody does heavyweight epic with quite as much pizzazz as the Goodfellas director.

11. Lady Macbeth
Director: William Oldroyd UK release date: 28 April
The title's a warning about what to expect in this merciless Victorian-set drama about a young woman sold to a wealthy landowner as his wife. While he's away, she commences an affair with a stable-hand and, soon emboldened, her thoughts turn to darker matters. A blisteringly bleak meditation on class, race and sex based on the Nikolai Leskov novel.

Your Week In Film will return next week. Look out for #10-1 here tomorrow...

Certain Women, Doctor Strange, and Hell Comes To Frogtown: Your week in film (March 6-12)

The Doctor is in: Strange is the latest addition to Marvel's superhero ranks 

This week's highlights on DVD, Blu-ray, VOD, and in cinemas...

I don't know whether it's a backlash against bigger, brasher, faster blockbusters but movies that are low-key and slow-burning are definitely all the rage right now. Moonlight and Spotlight - the last two Best Picture winners at the Oscars - are both subdued, leisurely-paced affairs, while films such as Loving, Arrival, and Manchester By The Sea have racked up plenty of awards, nominations and critical plaudits, too. Even Logan, the latest instalment in the long-running X-Men saga, eschews super-powered pyrotechnics for a darker, deeper, altogether more brooding tone.

Kelly Reichardt (Meek's Cutoff) has been making small, intricate, thoughtful films for years and her latest, Certain Women (in cinemas now) WWW, is therefore very timely. Set in Montana and based on Maile Meloy's short stories, it features three loosely linked tales of four women. Laura (Laura Dern) is a lawyer trying to rid herself of Fuller (Jared Harris), an unstable client obsessed with his unfair dismissal case, while Michelle Williams plays Gina, a hard-nosed business owner more interested in building her "authentic" Montana dream home than saving her failing marriage. Finally, there's Beth (Kristin Stewart), an overworked lawyer (yes, another one) making an eight-hour round trip twice a week to teach an adult-education class she really doesn't have time for. A young Native American rancher - brilliant newcomer Lily Gladstone - develops a crush on her.

These aren't character studies as much as warts-and-all snapshots of the women's lives. The stories are all very different but, if there is one thing these people share, it's a certain disaffection; Laura is frustrated that, after badgering her for eight months, Fuller wants the second opinion of a male lawyer, Gina's relationships with her husband and daughter are in turmoil, harried Beth barely has time to think straight while Gladstone's character (known only as 'The Rancher') exudes awkwardness and loneliness in equal measure. With the exception of Gladstone, they aren't always the most sympathetic bunch either. Dern is conducting an affair with a married man, Gina is trying to finagle a pile of sandstone out of a vulnerable elderly man, and Beth lives in her own head so much she doesn't see, or perhaps even care, about The Rancher's obvious feelings towards her.

The first two segments are compelling in their own ways (especially when Laura becomes involved in a hostage situation that Reichardt plays for laughs) but it isn't until we get to the Stewart/Gladstone story that the film really fizzes into life. Unrequited love is, of course, a staple of all kinds of fiction but I haven't seen its resultant longing and heartache articulated on screen quite so winningly in a while. Reichardt's preference for slow pacing and long takes is perfect for Gladstone's clumsy attempted courtship of the young lawyer, especially in the film's most perfect scene as the pair ride one of The Rancher's horses together. Conducted at night, in silence, it's a lovely moment that the director gives all the time and space it needs to breathe. Elsewhere, particularly in Gina's segments, proceedings and relationships feel a little less perfectly cooked but this is a real return to form for Reichardt after 2013's clumsy eco-terrorist drama, Night Moves.

Wonder Women: Kelly Reichardt is back on form 

When it comes to those aforementioned "bigger, brasher, faster blockbusters" few do it better than Marvel. But Doctor Strange (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) WW isn't up there with the company's best efforts (Iron Man, Guardians Of The Galaxy). It boasts a great cast (including Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Tilda Swinton) and some truly mind-boggling effects (of which more in a moment). But, frustratingly often, Scott Derrickson's film is little more than a bunch of smart set-pieces in need of a better script, and a real hotchpotch of different influences (everything from Doctor Who to Harry Potter via Inception). Worse still, some of that great cast are either given little to do (Rachel McAdams) or straddled with lifeless characters (Mads Mikkelsen).

Doctor Stephen Strange (Cumberbatch) is a rich, successful, brilliant and arrogant New York neurosurgeon whose career is destroyed when a car accident leaves his hands shattered. Desperate to get his old life back but beyond the help of regular surgery, Strange travels to Kathmandu, in hopes of discovering a miracle cure. There he encounters a powerful being called The Ancient One (Swinton), who inducts him into a head-spinning world of magic and alternative dimensions. He soon finds himself pitted against Kaecilius (Mikkelsen) - a former student of The Ancient One's - who has turned bad and plans to conquer the planet in the name of an immensely powerful creature.

Despite my misgivings, and the fact they won't look nearly so grand on the small screen, director Derrickson nevertheless serves up a couple of visual moments to treasure. The climactic battle between Strange and his monstrous foe, Dormammu, is a time-twisting treat but even better is an earlier scene in which Swinton's Ancient One blows the Doctor's mind with a gloriously trippy whistle-stop tour of the universe and its many dimensions - an experience so overwhelming even Timothy Leary might have baulked at it.

Stranger things: Cumberbatch casts his spell

Hell Comes To Frogtown (DVD) WWW is a long-lost classic of the Italian neorealist movement, which has been recently rediscovered and restored by... no, I'm kidding, it's a gloriously silly post-apocalyptic slice of low-budget sci-fi from 1988 (the Blu-ray came out back in December but the DVD has only been made available from today). Donald G Jackson and RJ Kizer's film is noteworthy for two reasons - the fact it stars They Live's cult wrestler/action hero 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper (who passed away in 2015) and also because it was so clearly the inspiration for last year's magnificent Mad Max: Fury Road.

Piper is Sam Hell (brother of 'Shia' and 'Evan', I sincerely hope), one of only a few fertile men left after nuclear Armageddon has wiped out two thirds of America's male population. He is captured by Med-Tech (a team of female scientists who seem to hold sway in this bleak new world), made to wear an explosive electronic codpiece and press-ganged into a mission to liberate a group of young women from their kidnappers in the mutant wasteland. (The idea is that Hell rescues these ladies, then gets them pregnant to help with the repopulation effort). Cue a race of frog people, gratuitous nudity, punch-ups, a surprising amount of dancing, explosions, and a script with its tongue wedged so firmly in its cheek, you'd need some sort of special tongue/cheek wrench to pry them apart again.

The film is daft in a way that is actually quite hard to pull off. Silly and camp, yes, but also rather knowing and, at times, quite clever. There's a great bit near the beginning featuring the Statue of Liberty that I won't spoil but perfectly illustrates what I mean. And Frogtown is full of such playful, pleasing moments - some visual, some spoken - that suggest everybody involved was not only in on the joke but also having the time of their lives, including Piper, a charismatic screen presence, for sure, but one barely on nodding terms with anything you'd call 'acting'.

It's amusingly odd that a film so obviously intended as a Mad Max spoof/homage/cash-in should end up inspiring Fury Road, director George Miller's finest and most successful instalment of the Road Warrior saga, whose adventures he kicked off in 1979. There's one particular sequence here that really gives the game away, when, having rescued the kidnapped women, Hell and his companions (including Cec Verrell's Centinella, a badass proto-Furiosa) are pursued by Frogtown's Commander Toty (Brian Frank). The resultant car chase may lack the ambitious acrobatics, unfettered imagination and bludgeoning violence of Fury Road's best moments but its influence on the multiple Oscar winner is as plain as the mullet on Piper's head.

Let's get Rowdy: Piper invades Frogtown

What I shall be watching this week: I haven't seen a good, old-fashioned monster movie in a while, so I'm hoping Kong: Skull Island will sate my creature feature needs... at least until someone finally gets around to releasing Shin Godzilla over here.

Ratings

WWWW - Wonderful

WWW - Worthwhile

WW - Watchable

W - Woeful