Film critic Demetri Ravanos shares his opinion on the five best movies of the year, and he also tells us about one he hated.
By Demetri Ravanos
Raleigh, N. C. — This shouldn’t surprise you, since I am a film critic that lives in North Carolina, but I am a member of the North Carolina Film Critics Association.
The week after Christmas we are voting on our year end awards. I thought it might be fun to share with you my thoughts on what the best movies of the year were and the ones that I intend to submit as nominations for Best Narrative Film, which is our version of the Oscars’ Best Picture. These are not ranked in any way. They are only submitted in alphabetical order.
In the comments, you are allowed to try and lobby me, or I guess try to convince me, that Justice League wasn’t a huge pile of farts. For fun, at the end of this, I’ll tell you what the worst movie I saw in 2017 was!
Kumail Nanjiani wrote and stars in this autobiography. Romantic comedies are well-worn territory in Hollywood, so the elements of one character facing a life-threatening disease they have never heard of and the other dealing with the pressure his family puts on him to meet and marry another Pakistani are welcomed monkeywrenches in the formula.
Nanjiani is great as a wide-eyed would be comedian. I mean, how could he not be? He is playing himself after all. The best thing about The Big Sick though is the faith the filmmakers have in the script and that the other actors have in each other. No one is out to steal the show, and that pays off in the interactions between Nanjiani and Ray Romano, who plays his girlfriend’s dad. I would see this again a thousand times!
Without a doubt, one of the funniest movies I have seen all year. It is the story of Tommy Wisseau (played masterfully by the equally enigmatic James Franco) and his film The Room, which is often considered the worst movie ever made. Don’t worry if you’ve never seen The Room or if you even know what it is. At its heart, The Disaster Artist is about Tommy and his friend Greg (played by Franco’s younger brother, Dave) who is dragged along for a strange ride by one of the strangest people you could ever imagine.
The Disaster Artist isn’t the typical weed-fueled humor of so many movies starring Franco and his pal Seth Rogan. It is a genuinely sweet and funny story. If you love movies, you have to check out the story of the worst movie ever made! Don’t be surprised if you hear serious Best Actor buzz for Franco.
This movie is a mess in the absolute best way! You’ve never heard of anyone in this movie aside from Willam Defoe, who may have delivered the best performance of his career as the manager of a $20-something per night motel in Kissimmee, Florida. This movie is about a world far removed from the Magic Kingdom.
We follow Moonee, a little girl who lives at the motel with her mother and other members of what we’ve started calling “the hidden homeless” in recent years – they don’t technically have a home, but they aren’t out on the street. Moonee’s mother, Halley turns a trick here. She sells stolen good there. Anything to make ends meet. The movie itself is simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting and paints a very clear picture of the “other side of the tracks” in a town so many of us have vacationed in. That absolutely will stick with you.
Okay, so I know I said I wasn’t going to rank these, but Get Out is the best movie of 2017 so far and it isn’t even close. Jordan Peele is a talented dude, and if you told me he was going to direct my favorite movie of the year, I would have said “okay, the best movie of 2017 is going to be a comedy.” Get Out is anything but a comedy. I know how it is getting pushed for awards, but Get Out is a legit thriller that cannot get enough credit.
The story is well-written and even shocking in places. The nods to horror movies of the past show a real passion for the genre from Peele, and it is so perfectly cast. If you never thought a cast member from The 40-Year-Old Virgin clinking a spoon on a teacup could be scary, you’re in for a treat!
The next sentence is going to sound like I do not like The Post, so it is important for me to reiterate that I liked it A LOT! It doesn’t matter what came out in 2017, because The Post is about the media taking on the president, and of course Hollywood will reward that.
The Post is about the Washington Post’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers in the mid 70s. Those papers exposed a cover up that carried on through four presidencies and showed just how long the government knew the Vietnam War was unwinnable and how long those presidents let it continue anyway.
Tom Hanks is great as the Washington Post’s editor. Meryl Streep is even better as the paper’s owner. This might be Steven Spielberg’s best work in 20 years.
Those are my favorite movies of the year. So what is the worst thing I saw in 2017? Well, the good news is it comes out this week!
Remember in 2004 when Sideways came out and we all said “Oh my God! Alexander Payne might be a genius!”? Yeah well, he’s not. Downsizing is the dumbest movie I have seen all year, and just like Get Out on the other end of the spectrum, it isn’t close. Downsizing may actually be Payne’s way of telling us that he hates making movies and he hates people in general.
Matt Damon plays a schlub of a guy in the not-too-distant future. He is in a dead end job. He is depressed. He feels like whatever he was supposed to be or do is never going to happen.
So, he convinces his wife to join him in the newest trend, which is shrinking yourself down to 5 inches tall to leave a smaller impact on the environment and make your money go further. The only problem is at the eleventh hour, after Sad Matt has already gone through the procedure, his wife abandons him. Now he has to navigate this whole tiny, wacky world!
On the surface, this is an interesting premise, and there are plenty of glimpses of interesting directions Payne could have steered this movie. Instead it becomes a “learn to appreciate what you have” fable complete with the worst speech about love you will ever hear in your life.
You know how all these people online now are saying “Wow, I didn’t realize what a jerk Matt Damon was until he started defending sexual harassment?“ Well, remember that if Downsizing is out now, that means he started making it at least a year ago.
