A Constant Visual Feast

It’s rare that a single movie becomes the prism through which I view every other piece of popular culture I engage with in a given year; this is partly because movies capable of being that prism come along but rarely, and partly because when they do, they don’t typically appear in theaters during February, previously one of the studio system’s favorite dumping grounds, now a month ripe for releasing spicy genre pictures (a’la John Wick: Chapter 2, Deadpool, and so on).

This is a long-winded way of cutting to the chase and announcing Get Out as the best film I’ve seen all year long, and also as the most influential film I’ve seen all year long, influential in the sense that I can’t watch other media without reconsidering it. In a few specific cases, that probably makes immediate sense: Little Boxes, for instance, another movie about interracial couples dealing with outsiders’ perceptions of their relationship. In other cases, it might be something of a surprise: Orange is the New Black, XX (as regards the bit directed by St. Vincent), The Bad Batch, Baby Driver, It Comes at Night, Master of None, The Beguiled, and even Gypsy. A film about American racism, released at a time when American racism is much more out in the open than it has been even in the last eight years, is no small thing to unpack, and I’ve put a lot of time into unpacking it through the rest of my pop culture intake. I’m still not fully there. But I do know that Get Out is great, and I won’t stop thinking about it in 2017 (and likely beyond).

Anyways. That probably isn’t what you clicked on this for, but throwing a best-of list out there is a thankless task (even more so when it’s only fucking June), so permit me my indulgences. For the rest, you only have to scroll below to learn the truth:

10) The Lost City of Z
9) Tramps
8) It Comes at Night
7) Prevenge
6) Colossal
5) Lemon
4) My Happy Family
3) The Beguiled
2) Okja
1) Get Out