My favourite films of 2017: #30-21

Top gun: Brie Larson fights for survival in Ben Wheatley's Free Fire

30. 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 policeman. Larrain (Jackie) takes all sorts of liberties with real events, while his portrayal of Neruda is enjoyably unflattering.

29. Dunkirk
Director: Christopher Nolan  UK release date: 21 July
Nolan expertly utilises three different timelines (a week, a day and an hour) to tell the story of the famous WWII evacuation in an artistically bold and emotionally potent way. Aided and abetted by Hans Zimmer's frantic score, this is immersive, inventive filmmaking to take the breath away. Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance supply the actorly gravitas.

28. It Comes At Night
Director: Trey Edward Shults  UK release date: 7 July
Krisha director Shults turns up the paranoia to 11 in this post-apocalyptic thriller-cum-horror, grabbing you hard by the lapels in its first few minutes and refusing to let go until its haunting closing shot around an hour and an half later. A great cast - including Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo, and Riley Keough - are the icing on the cake.

27. 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.

26. Land Of Mine
Director: Martin Zandvliet  UK release date: 4 August
Fact-based drama about young German POWS forced to clear thousands of land mines from Danish beaches after WWII. Roland Møller is the sadistic sergeant charged with completing the task - whatever the cost to his prisoners. An under-appreciated gem that powerfully explores notions of human decency and forgiveness.

25. The Age Of Shadows
Director: Kim Jee-woon  UK release date: 24 March
I Saw The Devil director Kim's blistering period piece set in Japanese-occupied Korea centres on members of the resistance and a cop (played by Song Kang-ho) with divided loyalties. It's breathless, it's brutal, it's sumptuous to look at - it also happens to be one of the year's richest and most rewarding action films.

24. Thelma
Director: Joachim Trier  UK release date: 3 November
A supernatural "coming out" story with shades of Carrie about a young university student, played by Eili Harboe, with terrifying psychic powers. This is far from a super-powered CG fest, though, as Trier (Louder Than Bombs) focuses as much on Thelma's burgeoning sexuality, and repudiation of her strict religious upbringing, as he does on her abilities.

23. In Between
Director: Maysaloun Hamoud  UK release date: 22 September
Hungarian-born Hamoud's directorial debut is a compelling story of three Palestinian women living together in Tel Aviv, and torn between embracing modernity and the more conservative diktats of their families' culture. Mouna Hawa as Leila is a revelation, while the friendships are beautifully explored and believable. The final shot is perfect.

22. 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.

21. La La Land
Director: Damien Chazelle  UK release date: 13 January
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone can't sing or dance like Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds, but this musical love letter to old Hollywood, romance and jazz is utterly charming. The song and dance numbers are mostly terrific (especially the opener, Another Day Of Sun), and Chazelle serves up a bravura ending a million miles from the schmaltz-fest I was expecting.

**Up next: #20-11**

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...

Rogue One, The Void, Neruda, and The Discovery: Your week in film (April 10-16)

Suicide squad: Jyn Erso and her team take on the Empire

UK home entertainment thrills and spills for the coming seven days. All films available now, unless otherwise stated...

Calling Rogue One (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) WWW my favourite Star Wars film since The Empire Strikes Back is a lot like calling Barack Obama my favourite US president since JFK - it sounds like faint praise because I really didn't care for any of the ones in between very much.

But Gareth Edwards' sci-fi heist flick is actually a clever, compelling prequel to George Lucas's original 1977 film, with posh Brit Felicity Jones (The Theory Of Everything) smartly cast as Jyn Erso, a head-strong young renegade with a grudge against the Empire, joining a suicide mission to steal plans for the Death Star from under the noses of Darth Vader and Co.

The franchise's cultural ubiquity annoys the life out of me for the most part but even a Skywalker-sceptic knows intriguing characters when he sees them. Erso's a proper old-school sci-fi heroine - resourceful, brave, loyal, feisty, smart. If I was a 10-year-old girl, my room would be a shrine to her. And, as someone who comes out in hives at the very mention of C-3PO, I found the amusingly rough and ready K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) a real tonic. Add a blind Jedi warrior (Donnie Yen), his mercenary companion (Jiang Wen), plus Riz Ahmed's pilot defector and Diego Luna's Rebel captain, and you have a Dirty (Half) Dozen worth rooting for.

Star Wars has always been about more than spaceship battles and exotic aliens. Self sacrifice for the greater good and familial strife are motifs that loom large in the cannon, and you get both in abundance here, especially when it transpires Jyn's long-lost father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen, in another rather underwritten role) has been forced into working for the Empire on its monstrous Death Star programme. 

I could have done without Peter Cushing's CGI resurrection as the first film's Grand Moff Tarkin (a horrible, unconvincing misstep), but Rogue One is pretty close to cracking otherwise. It even holds its nerve to deliver an ending that is at first satisfyingly bleak, then thrillingly uplifting, as it segues seamlessly into the beginning of the very first Star Wars movie. It's been called "pointless" and "self-referential" by some, but "lost tales" that fill in continuity gaps are a staple of any fictional universe. Perhaps not essential, then, but pretty close.

Mission Impossible: Steal the plans to the Death Star 

I've given up trying to understand Netflix. Films pop up like weeds on a lawn - you know they're coming but have no idea when, where, or what variety you're going to get. Now the streaming service has introduced this new thumbs up/thumbs down ratings system, which informs me some sappy Jennifer Aniston comedy, called Mother's Day, is a 98% match for me. Go home, Netflix, and this time lay off the meth.

Sometimes, though, either through dumb luck or endless scrolling of obscure lists named things like 'Edgy US comedies featuring a goat, a blancmange and a fight scene in a toilet', I turn up a gem, and The Discovery WWW½ certainly fits that category. Snapped up by Netflix during this year's Sundance Film Festival, it's a sci-fi love story set in a world in which scientist Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford) has proved beyond doubt that the afterlife exists. However, this knowledge has had terrible consequences. Hoping for a better life on the 'other side', millions of people worldwide have committed suicide.

Despite the mounting death toll, Harbor (whose wife killed herself a couple of years before his big discovery), has continued his research into the phenomenon and, ensconced in a vast mansion populated by a cultish community of suicide survivors, believes he has even found a way to record what happens to the deceased once they pass over. Stepping into this bizarre scenario is Harbor's son Will (Jason Segal), who has saved the life of a troubled young woman (Rooney Mara) and brought her to the mansion to convalesce.

Directed and co-written by Charlie McDowell (son of Malcolm), this is a smart and effecting piece of work that successfully merges lots of different genres and ideas. You can see its SF roots in movies like Another Earth, Triangle, and even glossy '90s potboiler Flatliners, but it's also a love story, a melodrama, and a mystery, with moments of pure black comedy thrown into the mix for good measure. In other hands, it would probably be an unholy mess but McDowell gives it real pace, despite its frequent melancholy, and delivers a canny twist at the end. The cast - which also includes Jesse Plemons and Riley Keough - are top-drawer, none more so than former sitcom stalwart Segal who, after this and 2015's The End Of The Tour, has proved himself a very fine dramatic actor indeed. It's a definite thumbs-up and 98% match for me.

Suicide solution: Sci-fi love story The Discovery

I'd rather hoped The Void (VOD now, DVD and Blu-ray 24 April) WW would be rubbish so I could accuse it of being deVOID of ideas and suggest you aVOID it like the plague. But, actually, it isn't at all bad, albeit made up of lots of bits and pieces from elsewhere, including the fiction of HP Lovecraft, and films such as Hellraiser, The Thing, and Assault On Precinct 13. Written and directed by Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski, it sees a diverse group of characters - including a small-town cop (Aaron Poole) and his estranged doctor wife (Kathleen Munroe) - holed up in a hospital laid siege by a group of knife-wielding cultists. Things are even more dangerous within the hospital itself as monstrous creatures from another dimension are using a portal in the building's basement to cross over and possess people in our plane of existence. It's breathless, barmy stuff, full of gross-out chills and a couple of neatly delivered twists. I usually prefer my modern horror movies a little subtler (The Witch, It Follows) but there's something about The Void's gore-filled exuberance that I rather enjoyed.

Enter The Void: Exuberant tentacle horror

For the first time since 2012's No, Chilean director Pablo Larrain delves into his home country's painful past in Neruda (cinemas and Curzon Home Cinema) WWW. It tells the story of titular Marxist poet/politician Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco), who became an enemy of the state in the years immediately after WWII, when communism was banned, its adherents routinely rounded up and imprisoned. Far from a full biopic, it concentrates on the years 1948 and '49 when Neruda was on the run from the Chilean authorities, flitting from one safe house to another, before attempting to cross the border into Argentina.  

But this is no overly-reverential, sombre reading of the poet's life during this time, as Larrain adds a cat-and-mouse element to proceedings in the form of Oscar Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal), an oafish police officer, only a hop, skip and a jump away from Inspector Clouseau, who is determined to put Neruda behind bars. Peluchonneau not only gets roughly equal screen time with the titular character but also provides voiceover narration too. It at first appears to be as much his story as it is Neruda's but the policeman's true role is revealed towards the end in a masterful scene with the poet's wife, Delia (Mercedes Morán), as Larrain merges truth and fiction, and the rest of the film veers off at a bizarre but brilliant tangent.

Larrain has become a very interesting filmmaker who never does what you expect. I found his most recent film, Jackie, a cold, distancing affair at times but appreciated both its craft and desire to do something very different with subject matter (the Kennedy assassination) that has been picked over many times on the big screen and elsewhere. This is a much warmer, far more playful piece of work, that dwells as much on Neruda's poetry and politics as it does upon his contradictions and eccentricities. It also boasts superb central turns from Gnecco and Bernal, who also appeared together in the aforementioned and well worth checking out, No.

Poetry in motion: Pablo Larrain's Neruda

Previously recommended...
1. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (Tonight, 11.35pm, Film4)
2. The Brand New Testament (Sky Cinema Premiere/NOW TV, from Wednesday)
3. Selma (Good Friday, 9pm, BBC2)
4. The Neon Demon (Netflix UK, from Saturday)
5. The Babadook (Netflix UK, from Saturday)

What I shall be watching this week: A trip into London beckons to see feminist cannibal horror flick, Raw. And to finally catch Free Fire.

Ratings guide
WWWW - Wonderful
WWW - Worthwhile
WW - Watchable
W - Woeful