My Top Films of 2017

Despite the fact that 2017 has been an extremely busy year for me (due to the release of London Symphony), I still managed to watch around the same number of films as I did in 2016 (actually, I watched ten more). Within that, I think there was a slightly better balance of old and new films – although, as ever, there were omissions from the new ones I did see (I was particularly saddened to miss Get Out, Frantz, Lady Macbeth and The Red Turtle, all of which may well have cracked this list had I seen them). 

 

The quality of the films I saw was generally very high, and the lists below therefore feel a little arbitrary (this is especially true of the list of old films). 

 

Given all the travelling I've been doing while touring London Symphony, I've had more time than usual to read this year, so I've decided to include my top five books below. Whether I do this again next year will depend on how much I manage to read in 2018. 

 

London Symphony doesn't, obviously, appear on the list below but, equally obviously, it is the film release that has meant the most to me this year on a personal level, so I hope readers of this blog will seek it out, if they haven't already done so (writing this I realise that, somehow, I haven't updated this blog with any information about the release, so I'll do a separate post sometime soon – but in the meantime you can check the film's website for all the latest info on how to see it/stream it/own it). 

 

Unlike many others, I've decided to exclude TV from my lists, but Scott Frank's Godless was the best series I saw this year. 

 

In the lists below, directors' names will take you to their IMDb pages and, as always, I've limited myself to one film per director in each list. (I've likewise restricted myself to one work per author in the book list, though I've cheated by including a whole trilogy in my number one spot…).

 

My Top Films of 2017

01) 1945 (dir. Ferenc Török)

02) On Body and Soul (dir. Ildikó Enyedi)

03) Certain Women (dir. Kelly Reichardt)

04) Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade)

05) A Wedding (dir. Stephan Streker)

06) Leaning into the Wind (dir. Thomas Riedelsheimer)

07) Manchester by the Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan)

08) I Dream in Another Language (dir. Ernesto Contreras)

09) Paddington 2 (dir. Paul King)

10) A Quiet Passion (dir. Terence Davies)

11) Their Finest (dir. Lone Scherfig)

12) The Beguiled (dir. Sofia Coppola)

13) Logan (dir. James Mangold)

14) Spider-Man: Homecoming (dir. Jon Watts)

15) Logan Lucky (dir. Steven Soderbergh)

 

The Best Films from Previous Years that I Saw for the First Time in 2017

01) Last Year in Marienbad (1961, dir. Alain Resnais)

02) The Night of Counting the Years (1969, dir. Chadi Abdel Salam)

03) By the Law (1926, dir. Lev Kuleshov)

04) The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972, dir. R. W. Fassbinder)

05) The Fireman's Ball (1967, dir. Milos Forman)

06) Homeland of Electricity (1967, dir. Larisa Shepitko)

07) The Devil's Trap (1962, dir. Frantisek Vlácil)

08) The Sun in a Net (1962, dir. Stefan Uher)

09) The Deep Blue Sea (2011, dir. Terence Davies)

10) The Pumpkin Eater (1964, dir. Jack Clayton)

11) The War Game (1965, dir. Peter Watkins)

12) Grand Hotel (1932, dir. Edmund Goulding)

13) Mademoiselle Fifi (1944, dir. Robert Wise)

14) Witchhammer (1970, dir. Otakar Vávra)

15) The Goose Women (1925, dir. Clarence Brown)

 

The Best Books I Read for the First Time in 2017

01) The Best Intentions/Sunday's Children/Private Confessions – Ingmar Bergman

02) The Dwarf – Pär Lagerkvist

03) On Solitude – Michel de Montaigne

04) No Bed of Her Own – Val Lewton

05) The First Men in the Moon – H. G. Wells

Eight key actors in the Ingmar Bergman universe

I wrote a piece for the BFI on Eight key actors in the Ingmar Bergman universe. Read it here.  

Witchhammer

In my first piece for The Skinny Magazine, I reviewed Otakar Vávra's excellent Witchhammer. You can read the review here.

Where to begin with Richard Linklater

I wrote another piece for the BFI: Where to begin with Richard Linklater.

LONDON SYMPHONY Update

If you're reading this, you're probably aware that my main directorial project at the moment is a modern day city symphony entitled LONDON SYMPHONY. If you've not been following the film's progress elsewhere, here's a little roundup of some of the recent news:

The film will have its World Premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2017, where it has also been nominated for the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film. Tickets for the festival screenings are on sale here.


The film will receive a boutique theatrical release in the UK on September 3rd 2017, when it will screen at the Barbican Centre in London (with its score performed live), before 'touring' around a number of carefully selected venues. Full details of the 'tour' will be announced nearer the time, but tickets are already on sale for the Barbican launch event here.

The film will also be released internationally later this year through Flicker Alley, one of my favourite distributors of silent film. I'm a long-time admirer and collector of their discs, so I'm very honoured that LONDON SYMPHONY has been chosen to join their collection.

Finally, we have released a trailer for the film, which you can watch here. Enjoy!

10 great German Expressionist films

Here's another BFI piece, this time looking at 10 great German Expressionist films, that I co-wrote with Pamela Hutchinson from Silent London.

10 great island films

Sam Wigely and I wrote about 10 great island films for the BFI. It's always nice to be able to write about films you admire, and I highly recommend all five of the films I covered here if you've not seen them - Stromboli and The Naked Island are among my all time favourites.