2017 was an absolutely stacked year for entertainment. I thought it was a really strong year for both mediums, but the amount of great TV that’s coming out every single month now is staggering. There’s lots of great movies coming out too, but you just have to look a little harder for them underneath all the ‘blockbusters’ (though some of those are pretty great too). Netflix absolutely crushed it this year, with 7 TV shows on my list. Here’s what I really enjoyed this year.
TV
The Leftovers
Legion
My two favorite shows in 2017 were Legion and The Leftovers. While very different shows they both ask similar questions: Am I crazy? Or is the world around me crazy? Am I in control? Or are larger, unknown forces at work? How do we deal with grief and guilt? The two best performances I saw on TV all year came from Carrie Coon of the Leftovers and Aubrey Plaza in Legion. Everyone was superb on the Leftovers, but Carrie Coon was on another level, mining the depths of Nora Durst’s anger and grief for explosive, devastating acting. The gut-wrenching emotion displayed on her face in so many different scenes was extraordinary. Aubrey Plaza on the other hand broke out of her role as April on Parks and Rec, bursting through as the literal and figurative monster pulling the strings of David, the protagonist in Legion. I’ve always liked Plaza, but she leaves behind her apparent one-note dryness and explodes into mania, a monster in control and having fun.
The Leftovers was brutal, beautiful, emotional and gorgeous. Every performance was superb and I think it was the best season of television this year. Legion was a close personal second for me. It was off the wall fun, and you never knew what type of show you were going to get each week. It felt like Legion, along with Logan, showed what a comic book adaption could really be, which is, anything it damn well pleases. Legion isn’t a super-hero show. It’s a show about mental illness and the struggle to grasp and then control our potential, and recognizing it as both a gift and a curse. The Leftovers is one of the most powerful examinations of grief I’ve seen in art, and was also funny, unpredictable, weird, and heartbreaking. I think both of these shows might have slipped under the radar for a lot of people and I highly recommend checking them out.
Steven Universe
Adventure Time
Rick and Morty
Bojack Horseman
I wrote about these cartoons previously, and there’s nothing more to say other than it still blows my mind how deep each show can get in it’s respective world-building and pathos.
Game of Thrones
Obviously. People ragged on it a bit this year because of some iffy writing, deservedly so, but god dammit we finally got dragons fucking shit up!
Mindhunter
For as much TV as I watch, I don’t really ‘binge’, or at least as compulsively as I think that word suggests. I like to space it out a bit, even if just for a week if it’s on Netflix. But I ripped through this show and finished it in a weekend. David Fincher’s directing, the joy of seeing a show almost purely constructed on conversation between characters, and diving into the psychology of monsters and men made this show enthralling. I’m not a huge true crime/serial killer guy, but I loved this show.
Nathan For You
This show can be uncomfortable to watch, to say the least. It’s also the hardest I’ve laughed at a TV show this year and I’m amazed and horrified at how this genius/psychopath commits fully to his weird, elaborate social experiments/pranks. Completely unlike anything else on TV. So good, one of the greatest documentary filmmakers ever, Errol Morris, just wrote about how much he loved it.
Stranger Things 2
Honestly, I went into the second season not expecting much, because the first season was so good, and since the show wasn’t conceived as continuing the first season’s story, I thought this would just be a typical kind of rushed sequel job. I thought it’d be good, just not as good. And I was wrong. Somehow the second season might have been even better than the first, in part because I thought the ending was a lot stronger this time around. Now can Will Byers have one god damn day of peace?
GLOW
Maybe it’s on me for not looking more widely before, but I felt like this year there was a ton of wonderful TV shows with strong female characters and performances. The Leftovers, Legion and Godless featured some of my favorite performances of the year, all by women. And GLOW was a kick-the-door-in celebration of this fact, as almost the entire show is made up of and focused on women. This show surprised me. I really liked it and look forward to the next season, and more shows like it.
Master of None
Big Mouth
These two comedies couldn’t be more different, but they’re both hilarious and surprisingly deep. Both shows look at dating, sex, and relationships, and the volatile changes and emotions that come with it, yet each does so with vastly different formats and points of view. It’s cool to see Aziz Ansari and Nick Kroll, two good friends, come up together and each create such distinct, original shows.
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Long live Larry David. I hope he keeps making Curb until the day he dies.
Godless
Godless was the best Western of the year, a 7 episode mini-series that felt like one long, gorgeous, old-school movie. Filled with deep characters dealing with tremendous trauma and loss, there’s still bits of real humanity, history, laughter, and beauty sprinkled throughout. Every actor is perfect, but Merrit Wever’s tough as nails Maggie steals the show. Godless was written and directed by Scott Frank, who had quite the year. He wrote the first movie on the list below. You might have heard of it.
Honorable Mentions:
Billions continues to be entertaining with strong performances. The Good Place is good. The Americans keeps on chugging along in moody silence, just like Phil, but I’m very excited for their next and final season. I jumped into Preacher‘s second season without watching the first and enjoyed it. Fargo was very slow starting off but picked up nicely at the end. Broad City is still killing it. Love is an underrated comedy on Netflix that I’ve really enjoyed.
MOVIES
Logan
Logan was the best comic book movie of the year, and one of the best movies of the year, period. A brutal neo-Western properly closing out both Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart’s Wolverine and Professor X, with their best performances yet. Scott Frank wrote this as well. Both Logan and Godless are masterpieces of their form.
Get Out
A stunning, perfect debut for Jordan Peele, timely, scary, and god damn funny. It’s very cool to see this in Oscar contention, especially with how far back it was released. Can’t wait to see what he makes next.
Thor: Ragnarok
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
The Marvel contingency. They’re ranked in the order I liked them. Thor was fun and gorgeous. I felt like this was the first time my version of Spider-Man was on the big screen. I’m pumped he’s in the Marvel fold. Guardians, while also visually stunning, was a bit of a letdown, if only because of how original and fresh the first one felt. That movie floored me in theaters and is one of my favorite Marvel movies, so a high bar to live up to. Black Panther and Infinity War next year!!!
The Big Sick
Baby Driver
Dunkirk
I want more movies like these three in the summertime. Original movies with their own unique style, viewpoint, or message, unattached to any ‘property’. And really, any summer you get new Edgar Wright and Christopher Nolan is a huge win.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
What a fucking movie. Made by the same writer-director who gave us In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, this movie has the pitch black humor and violence he’s known for, but with more raw emotion, grief, and pathos running throughout. There was uncomfortable laughter and audible gasps in my theater. Martin McDonagh makes you sickened by, and then empathize with, a violent racist and root for and cringe at what a grieving mother’s willing to do for justice (or revenge). I walked out wanting to immediately see it again and will do so soon. Sam Rockwell’s a god damn gift.
Honorable Mentions:
It, I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore, Wind River, Logan Lucky
Best movies I watched for the first time that didn’t come out this year:
Spotlight, 20th Century Women, The Wrestler, Bone Tomahawk, Moonlight, The Lobster, Moana, Life Itself, Memories of Murder
These movies were all astounding and among my favorites of the year.
Movies that came out this year that I still want to see:
Ladybird, Call Me By Your Name, Phantom Thread, The Disaster Artist, Downsizing, The Florida Project, Coco, The Last Jedi, The Shape of Water, I, Tonya, The Post, Molly’s Game, Mudbound
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So, what’d I miss?