DrogeMiester's Top 10 BEST Movies of 2017

Every year I have a lot of fun watching and reviewing as many new movies as I can and it all builds to this point. The end of year list. My favorite post of the year. 2017 was a unique year in that there really wasn't the one or two movies that rose to the top as the favorite. That's really apparent when I look at all the other lists and notice that most people have a different No. 1. Most of the awards shows are also favoring different movies. It's exciting. That holds true with me as well as there wasn't a super obvious choice for movie of the year like "La La Land" in 2016. The other thing that made 2017 unique is that there seemed to be a higher percentage of good movies than there normally is, which made this list really tricky to make because I think there's more than 25 movies that belong in this top 10. I had to make a lot of surprising cuts that made me sad and might shock you. But after much thought I feel comfortable with these 10 in this order. A few quick notes. No, I didn't see every movie this year. And that's OK. And yes, I completely ignored the scores I gave in my reviews when ranking these movies as well as my mid-year list. If you keep track of either of those, you might be ever more surprised, which should make this fun. So let's begin!

10- Wind River

Taylor Sheridan made my 2016 list as a writer for "Hell or High Water" and could've easily done the same in 2015 as the writer for "Sicario," even though that one missed the cut. In 2017 he stepped into the director's chair for "Wind River" and hit yet another home run. "Wind River" can best be described as a bone-chilling thriller. I saw this movie during the summer when it was warm outside, but yet I wanted to put on my coat in the theater. It's set on a modern-day Native American reservation during the winter, thus the characters were walking around in the snow the whole movie, so it literally looked cold. But also thematically this is dark and chilling as this is a crime thriller where Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen are there trying to solve a murder case where a Native American girl wound up dead in the middle of the snow, miles away from any of the residences. The movie sends the message that there are shockingly high number of murder cases on the reservations that go unsolved, which I find devastating. The movie builds slow, but is never dull as it builds to a final act that is absolutely phenomenal and is carried by career performances from both Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen. Taylor Sheridan, you definitely have my attention.

9- Wonder Woman

I have no idea what the current state of the DCEU is. After the failure of "Justice League" and the rumored departure of Ben Affleck as Batman, they look like they are in all-out panic mode as they are on the verge of everything exploding in their face. Regardless of what happens, though, at least we can rest at ease knowing that we were able to receive a proper Wonder Woman film. It's also a sign to DC that if they get their act together, audiences will gladly forgive them for past failures as "Wonder Woman" not only ended up as the highest grossing superhero movie of the year, but the fifth highest of all-time domestically as well as being the highest-grossing origin story. And I think it's absolutely fantastic that girls around the world now have a superhero that they can look up to. The sheer volume of Wonder Woman costumes during Halloween is a sign of how big of a cultural phenomenon this movie became. This because the movie was fantastic. I had goosebumps all over and a giant lump in my throat while watching this for the first time because I was just so happy that I was finally watching a classic DC film in theaters. I like Marvel a lot, but DC is closer to my heart, so seeing this movie done so well by Patty Jenkins was essentially a dream come true.

8- Baby Driver

What happens when you combine "The Fast and the Furious" (car chase scenes), "Ocean's Eleven" (heist film), "Goodfellas" (gangster movie), "Guardians of the Galaxy" (clever use of music) and "Cinderella" (romance + Lily James), all brought together while the magical touch of Edgar Wright? You get "Baby Driver." This is a movie where you might not walk out reflecting on the meaning of life, but if you don't walk out with a huge smile on your face, there might be something seriously wrong with you because this is definitely the most fun I had in theaters all year. If you look at this concept on paper, you might be legitimately concerned with how much is going on and how many genres they're trying to shove into one movie, but that's why Edgar Wright is a genius because this works perfectly. I'm glad he finally got the recognition he deserved after all his previous films have to be given the label of cult classics. I mean, for a director who's done "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz," "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" and "The World's End," you would think he's had more success outside the U.K. Crazy thing is, despite how much I love "Baby Driver," I look at these five films and I'm not sure "Baby Driver" is my favorite. In fact, you could claim it's the fifth best and I couldn't argue with you.

7- I, Tonya

The story of Tonya Harding isn't one that I was super familiar with as I was only five years old when Nancy Kerrigan got her knee bashed in, causing a lifetime ban from figure skating for Tonya Harding and 20 years worth of being the butt of every joke. Thus I was excited to learn about all of this when I went into this movie. What I wasn't expecting was to get a movie-going experience that could very well stay with me my whole life. The movie is told mockumentary style and does a lot of fourth-wall breaking. There's a moment when Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding looks out at the audiences and says, "You are all my attackers." That cut me deep. I may have been too young to know about Tonya Harding, but how many other athletes, celebrities or other people have I simply read a story about in the news and made an immediate judgment of how awful a person they are without even stopping to think about their background, their history or why they may have made certain decisions? Way too many. And now I feel awful for doing so. It's not too often that a movie completely changes my perspective on things, but "I, Tonya" did just that. The only disadvantage this movie has is that I just saw this like a week ago. This could end up even higher in the future.

6- A Ghost Story

This movie wins the award for the movie that stuck with me the longest. When I first saw it in theaters, it absolutely mesmerized me. I went home and gave it a good review. Then I moved on with life and saw many more movies in theaters as the weeks and months went by, but this movie never left my head. It stayed at the top of my head the whole entire year and I almost literally couldn't stop thinking about it. When it came time to put this list together, I told myself that this had to be on here because no movie this year had the same impact as this one did. In typical A24 fashion, this is a very unconventional film, so there's a chance that you could watch it and think I'm crazy. All we have going on is a man who dies and comes back as a ghost where he is forced to watch his now widowed wife live life without him. That's it. A simple premise to a simple movie. Yet it's hauntingly devastating. The most famous scene is simply one long shot (nearly five minutes) of the wife sitting on the floor eating a pie. Yet it's the most uncomfortably, fascinatingly honest scene in film all year when it comes to dealing with the death of a loved one. I was near tears re-watching this movie the other night. It has now shown up on Amazon Prime, so go give it a chance.

5- Logan

We live in a day where there's an over-saturation of superhero movies thanks to the enormous success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that has them giving us three movies a year and every other studio desperately trying to catch up with them. The winner of all of this is definitely all of us comic book fans as we're living in a golden age of comic book movies. I'll be honest and say that I still really enjoy all of these movies. It doesn't take a whole lot to entertain me, especially when the quality is consistently high. But I'll also be honest and say that because we've had such an overabundance of these movies, they aren't the ones that rise to the top for me when I create my end of year lists. You have to do a bit more to truly blow me away. And that's why I love "Logan." This doesn't feel like a comic book movie at all. This feels like an independent film following the lives of two aging superheroes. The emotion is sky high throughout the whole movie as it's devastating watching Professor X in such bad health as well as old man Wolverine having seemingly given up. We can thank "Deadpool" for opening the door for this movie to be made as we all finally got the Wolverine movie we deserve. The final result is the best superhero movie since "The Dark Knight."

4- Split

As I've read through and watched all of the end of year lists this season, I feel like a lot of people have forgotten about this movie because it came out a year ago in January 2017. I definitely didn't, though. I actually purchased it brand new, which is something I don't usually do, and have watched it on multiple occasions throughout the year, including re-watching it again yesterday in preparation for this list. "Split" marks the triumphant return of M. Night Shyamalan. This is a man who roared onto the scene in the late 90's and early 2000's with movies like "The Sixth Sense," "Unbreakable" and "Signs." People were calling him the next Spielberg. But then he spent the next decade as a laughing stock because he forgot how to make movies. But now he's back with perhaps his best movie yet. I'd say calling him the next Spielberg was erroneous. The correct comparison would be calling him the next Hitchcock as Shyamalan is great with his thrillers and "Split," in my opinion, is a modern-day "Psycho" as we follow a villain suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, just like Norman Bates. Unlike Norman, Kevin Crumb has 23 different personalities instead of just two and I get more fascinated with his character the more I watch. The twist ending is also so fantastic.

3- War for the Planet of the Apes

I think there's a lot of people who don't fully comprehend what it is we've received with this new Planet of the Apes trilogy. I will step on my pedestal and boldly declare to the world that this is one of the best trilogies ever made. Yet this beautiful finale that is perhaps the best movie of the trilogy got far less attention than it deserved. I blame Fox for sandwiching it right in between "Spider-Man: Homecoming" and "Dunkirk." And perhaps the filmmakers for giving it the wrong title. If you saw "War" in the title and were expecting "Helms Deep: The Movie," you might have walked out disappointed. Because this was not a war movie or an action movie. This is a drama following Caesar the ape, who goes on a revenge tour after his family gets killed, making a lot of bad decisions on the way, causing the apes to get trapped in a concentration camp where we then meet the evil Woody Harrelson. But is Woody really that evil? He's just trying to help the human race survive and things are getting desperate. This movie beautifully runs into the original Charlton Heston film, proving that it's actually possible to make a really good prequel trilogy and even improve on the original.

2- Star Wars: The Last Jedi 

You're either going to love me or hate me for this one, but so be it. Rian Johnson is a director who has built a career on taking risks with his filmmaking and that's exactly what he decided to do when he was given the key to the car here. He just may have not completely understood what the consequences would be to taking said risks with such a beloved franchise as a lot of Star Wars fans were unhappy with the decisions that he made. He had my full support, though, as I genuinely think that he crafted one of the most powerful Star Wars films to date that is second only to "The Empire Strikes Back" when it comes to quality Star Wars films. What they did with Luke Skywalker was the absolute perfect way to complete his story, even though it wasn't the ending we thought we'd get. And what they set up with Rey and Kylo Ren was cinematically poetic. I even had a lot of fun with the space battles and I don't hate Finn and Rose, even though Canto Bight won't go down in history as my favorite Star Wars planet, if you know what I mean. If you hated it, then it's whatever. I'll just take comfort in knowing "The Empire Strikes Back" also received mixed reaction initially due to how bold it was. Difference there is social media didn't exist back in 1980 when "Empire" was released.

1- Lady Bird

We had two truly epic franchise entries in "War for the Planet of the Apes" and "The Last Jedi," yet "Lady Bird" managed to top both of them? I know, I'm impressed, too. The more I thought about this movie, though, the more I felt this was the right decision. I reflect back to when I was in the theater and mentally I was ready to watch these characters for the next 10 hours. When the credits rolled, I was upset because I wanted more. As I was driving home, I was powerfully overcome with feelings of homesickness. I missed my parents. I missed my family. I missed my high school friends. I missed the hometown I grew up in. The more I thought about the movie, the more I realized that Lady Bird was the character that I felt the strongest connection with this year. I want to go hang out with her and be her friend. Give her a hug when things are going wrong. Celebrate with her when things are going right. I also realized upon reflection that I can't find a single flaw with this movie. Greta Gerwig as a director perfectly captured what it's like to transition from an adolescent to an adult. "Lady Bird" serves as a perfect companion piece to "Boyhood." Given that "Boyhood" ended up as my favorite movie of 2014, it's only fitting that "Lady Bird" end up as my favorite movie of 2017.