But then I hadn’t reckoned on Raw, the flesh-ripping French-Belgian debut from writer/director Julia Ducournau. In my review of Moonlight in February I wrote: “I doubt I will see a better film this year”. The subject of the Academy’s most infamous “mix-up”, Barry Jenkins’s Oscar-winner Moonlight was a kaleidoscopic gem which found great beauty in tough surroundings – a quality that also characterised Sean Baker’s vibrantly honest The Florida Project. There were also several Netflix-backed movies that cried out to be seen on the big screen, most notably Bong Joon-ho’s creature-feature Okja. My favourite Bollywood film of 2017 was Advait Chandan’s Secret Superstar, which cleverly interwove dark themes of domestic abuse into its musical fantasy narrative.
Home-grown triumphs included William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth (which made a star of Florence Pugh) and Francis Lee’s passionate God’s Own Country, while Zambian-born, Welsh-raised Rungano Nyoni emerged as a major new talent with the uncategorisable I Am Not a Witch. Even so-called mainstream cinema seemed particularly adventurous this year, ranging from Patty Jenkins’s rip-roaring Wonder Woman to Christopher Nolan’s overwhelming Dunkirk, Kathryn Bigelow’s gripping Detroit, Edgar Wright’s pulse-racing Baby Driver and Darren Aronofsky’s bewildering Mother!.
From Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden (brilliantly adapted from Sarah Waters’s novel Fingersmith) to Anocha Suwichakornpong’s dazzling By the Time It Gets Dark, Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (featuring an Oscar-nominated Isabelle Huppert) and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius (with Sônia Braga in breathtaking form), there was a dizzying array of delights on offer.
T o get a sense of how many great movies played UK cinemas in 2017, just look at some of the outstanding titles that didn’t make my top 10 list.
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