The 10 Best Movies of 2017

2017 was an excellent year for film, probably the best since 2013. As often seems to be the case—including —I wrestled for a while with two contenders for best film of the year before one ultimately emerged as my clear favorite. The bigger surprise, perhaps, is that numbers three (especially), four, and five didn’t feel as though they were far behind. Unlike many years, when I’ve included at least one big-budget blockbuster, I didn’t this year, in part because there were several that might have been good enough—, , , etc.—but not one that stood out clearly above the rest. As for smaller films, there are two, and , that I liked, but clearly not as much as many other critics. And, as always, there are inevitably movies that I didn’t see, in particular some foreign films and documentaries. For a change, I stuck to a top-10 list and, by consequence, allowed myself an unusually large number