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Why wait until Next January to look at the best of the best? We've reached the
halfway point of 2017 and it's time to take stock. It’s hard to believe, but
true: 2017 is already half over. The most prestigious films of the year usually
come out in the fall in an attempt to make a run at the Oscars. But this year
has already yielded a bumper crop of great movies, including three excellent
superhero films, a bunch of horror films with a message on their mind, several
riveting and unconventional documentaries, a few revenge flicks, some of the
year’s best comedies, and a movie about a giant superpig. Not all of the movies
played in theaters; not all of them are to everyone’s taste. In fact, it’s hard
to imagine a more eclectic list. What they have in common is their ability to
surprise and confound and even infuriate the audience. Here are the 10 best
movies of 2017 so far, how you can watch them, and why you should.
 10.
Wonder Woman
The record-smashing Wonder Woman is popular for a reason: Not only does it tell
the origin story of a beloved superhero, but it does so with aplomb, feminism,
and good humor that has both critics and audiences cheering. The film’s
director, Patty Jenkins, took the story of Diana (played by an ass-kickingly
awesome Gal Gadot), an Amazonian woman who becomes part of the effort to stop
World War I after a pilot (Chris Pine) crashes on her island, and infused it
with a vitality that hasn't been seen in a superhero movie in a long time. The
result is pure joy — a visually beautiful, often very funny film with a heroine
who is more interested in saving the world than smashing up cities.
How to watch it: Wonder Woman is currently playing in theaters.
 9.
Logan
Logan is the best X-Men movie, and very likely the final film in which Hugh
Jackman will play Wolverine, a character he's been portraying onscreen for 17
years. Burned out, weary of life, but still burdened with a self-healing body,
Logan (that is, Wolverine) has been tending to a periodically senile Professor
Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who has trouble controlling his powers. The
pair find themselves on the run with a young mutant named Laura (Dafne Keen),
whose profound connection to Logan has deep implications for everyone's futures.
Logan skillfully draws on a cinematic language that’s half post-apocalyptic,
half classic Western, to great effect. Concentrating more on characters than big
bang-up stunt scenes, Logan is the kind of comic book movie even the pickiest
cinephile can love.
How to watch it: Logan is available on DVD and Blu-Ray, which also
include the black-and-white “Noir” cut of the film.
 8.
Colossal
Colossal actively defies categorization. Sometimes the movie (which stars Anne
Hathaway as a burned-out alcoholic) is a romantic comedy; sometimes it’s
something much darker. And sometimes — quite unexpectedly — it’s a monster
movie, with actual, city-flattening monsters. All of those components mashed
together make for an oddly entertaining, refreshingly original movie. But it’s
not just entertaining: Colossal is about how complicated addiction can be, and
about the ways our relationships and our histories can make healing messy.
Sometimes the people we think are our friends turn out to be monsters. And
sometimes we’re the monster.
How to watch it: Colossal is slated for digital release on iTunes and
Google Play on July 18, and on DVD and Blu-ray on August 1.
 7.
Okja
It’s a bonkers corporate satire starring Tilda Swinton, a brave little Korean
girl, and a giant superpig. ‘Nough said. Need more? Fine. Okja is a rare breed
of movie: It boasts a multi-hemispheric setting and cast, extended use of two
languages (Korean and English), and the distinction of combining action,
arthouse, and political satire in one funny, biting, disturbing, often kind of
adorable package. The movie ruffled some feathers (and resulted in a policy
change) as part of a Netflix controversy at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival
this year, and it will probably ruffle a few more as it becomes more widely
available, since the film is every bit as weird — and, on the whole, as
wonderful — as you’d expect from Bong Joon-Ho, the director of Snowpiercer and
The Host. At its core, Okja is a movie about the horrors of factory farming, and
sometimes it turns into a horror film to make its case. But it’s also skewering
the absurd ways in which corporations co-opt the language of environmental and
localist movements to reel in consumers. The result is kind of a masterclass in
how vocabulary can be twisted for insidious ends.
How to watch it: Okja is in limited theaters in the US and streaming on
Netflix.
 6.
Lost City of Z
This is a stately, elegant epic paced like an elegy. Based on David Grann’s 2010
book about explorer Percy Fawcett, The Lost City of Z feels like a movie from an
earlier era. The film follows Fawcett's travels in South America over his
lifetime as he hunts for a rumored city, painting him as a hero who feels
earthbound by his ancestors and longs for something greater, some experience
that defies definition, to discover something beyond what his own civilization
has managed to produce. It is a dreamlike film that feels like a bittersweet
lament, a wish that man could know the world more fully in the time he’s
allotted. In the end, Percy Fawcett is the manifestation of a powerful,
universal idea: that we humans can only find ourselves by losing ourselves to
something much bigger than us.
How to watch it: The Lost City of Z is available to digitally rent on
Amazon, iTunes, and Google Play. The DVD and Blu-Ray are slated for release on
July 11.
 5.
Personal Shopper
It’s an eerie, meditative ghost story that glides between worlds, from high
fashion and wealth to the search for the supernatural. In her second
collaboration with French director Olivier Assayas, Kristen Stewart plays a
personal shopper to a wealthy socialite and, on the side, an amateur ghost
hunter who's searching for her dead twin brother. Personal Shopper isn’t to
everyone's taste (it was booed at Cannes), but it’s deeper than it seems at
first blush, a meditation on grief and an exploration of society’s “between”
places — on the fringes of wealth, and in the space between life and death. It
also has one of the most tense, extended text-messaging scenes ever seen
onscreen.
How to watch it: Personal Shopper is slated for digital release on iTunes,
Google Play, and Vudu on July 10.
 4.
Your Name
Director Makoto Shinkai’s achingly gorgeous animated feature was a worldwide
smash last year, but it only opened in the States this spring. Thank goodness it
finally did. Shinkai’s strange, poignant body-swap tale—about a city boy and a
country girl who are cosmically linked somehow—is as sweet and magical as a
first kiss. (A good first kiss, anyway.) Your Name is wistful and full of
wonder, a dreamy tearjerker that is blissfully transporting. If you don’t spend
several hours afterwards contemplating the many possible ways in which your life
may have been impacted by the life of someone you don’t even know living miles
away from you, I don’t know what to tell you.
How to watch it: Your Name is currently playing in art house theaters.
 3.
Baby Driver
Part heist movie, part jukebox musical, Baby Driver is a 100 percent satisfying
action-comedy from Edgar Wright, a director known for playful but reverent genre
filmmaking. Though it boasts a crack ensemble that includes Jamie Foxx, Kevin
Spacey, Lily James, and an excellent, menacing Jon Hamm, the movie turns on
Ansel Elgort’s charismatic performance as Baby, a getaway car driver who lives
his life under headphones in order to drown out the ringing in his ears, a
souvenir from a traumatic childhood car crash. From that contrived-seeming
premise, Wright builds an action-comedy like no other, one that cannily uses its
omnipresent soundtrack to narrative, thematic, and stylistic ends. Baby Driver
is a stealth movie musical, choreographing its vehicular mayhem like dancers in
Busby Berkeley production, but beyond that, it’s the sort of singular and wildly
entertaining genre movie that’s all too rare at the multiplex.
How to watch it: Baby Driver is currently playing in theaters.
 2.
Get Out
Racism is scary. But Get Out (written and directed by Key & Peele's Jordan Peele)
isn’t about the blatantly, obviously scary kind of racism — burning crosses and
lynchings and snarling hate. Instead, it’s interested showing how the parts of
racism that try to be aggressively unscary are just as horrifying, and it’s
interested in making us feel that horror in a visceral, bodily way. In the
tradition of the best classic social thrillers, Get Out takes a topic that is
often approached cerebrally — casual racism — and turns it into something you
feel in your tummy. And it does it with a wicked sense of humor.
How to watch it: It is also available to digitally rent or buy from
Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, and Vudu, and the Blu-Ray and DVD are available to
purchase or rent.
 1.
The Big Sick
It’s hard to imagine seeing a more charming movie in 2017 than The Big Sick,
which hits all the right romantic comedy notes with one unusual distinction: It
feels like real life. That’s probably because The Big Sick is written by
real-life married couple Emily V. Gordon and Silicon Valley's Kumail Nanjiani,
and based on their real-life romance. The Big Sick — which stars Nanjiani as a
version of himself, alongside Zoe Kazan as Emily — is funny and sweet while not
backing away from matters that romantic comedies don’t usually touch on, like
serious illness, struggles in long-term marriages, and religion. As it tells the
couple’s story, which takes a serious turn when Emily falls ill with a
mysterious infection and her parents (played by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano)
come to town, it becomes a funny and wise story about real love.
How to watch it: The Big Sick is currently playing in theaters.
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