We continue with the review that at Xataka we are doing one of the most outstanding audiovisual productions of 2017. This past Tuesday it was the turn of the television series and now we are going to focus on the best films of 2017, focusing on those titles released in Spain throughout these 365 days that are about to come to an end.
For this we have consulted the opinions of thirteen members or collaborators of Weblogs: Sergio Benítez, Jorge Casanueva, Juan Luis Caviaro, Adriana Izquierdo, P. Roberto Jiménez, Victor López G., Sara Martínez Ruiz, Lucía Ros, Fernando Siles, Marina Such, John Tones and Esther Miguel Trula and myself, Mikel Zorrilla; and six invited firms, Tonio L. Alarcón and Roberto Morato. Directed by Current Images, Fernando Ganzo and Alberto Lechuga. by SoFilm . and Daniel Martínez Mantilla and Juan Sanguino. of Oscar Awards. The results are below:
‘La La Land
The film that seemed destined to sweep the past Oscars and that did… for a few minutes. Then it was announced that the real winner of the night was ‘Moonlight’, but that does not mean that the second feature film was a huge success that captivated both critics and the public. Esther Miguel Trula, editor of Magnet, explains the reasons why it is one of the best films released in Spain in 2017:
” On an extra-cinematic level, ‘La La Land’ has given us the undefeated best moment of the seventh art of 2017: the Oscar for Best Film that never was. Memes aside, Damien Chazelle has had to endure how half the world manipulated his film, reducing it to an idealistic refuge from politically dark times, a bad regurgitation of the classic musical, or a fantastic vehicle of neoliberal ideology. That is to say, with a medium budget it has managed to create an entire media phenomenon that, let’s not fool ourselves, has kept us very entertained.
Beneath all these layers remains what almost everyone has already seen, a beautiful story about the tension between submission to circumstances and vital and creative sovereignty; with sequences of shy dances, illusions, and disappointments in love wrapped in an artifact with a great sense of spectacle and an unforgettable soundtrack. As if that were not enough, La La Land is an anomalous film, almost monstrous. Despite being a film that wants with all its might to please everyone, it ends up contesting the ultimate truth that romantic Hollywood cemented in our collective subconscious: forget about the better half, the only true love is your own. The rest, cinema, and dreams. “
‘Dunkirk’
Christopher Nolan has earned on his own merits by being a director who interests the public. So much so that he could afford to ask for 20 million dollars and 20% of the proceeds for making ‘Dunkirk’ since he was the star. Warner did not regret it due to its excellent performance at the box office, also supported by enthusiastic reviews that have paved the way for a probable victory at the 2018 Oscars. Victor López G., editor of Espinof, values it as follows:
” Christopher Nolan’s latest work is, quite simply, a masterpiece. The work of one of the last remaining craftsmen in the industry who combines surprising narrative time management with impeccable craftsmanship to give us one of the most important films of all time. that we have been through this century. “
‘Mother!’
The most controversial movie of 2017 was financed by a big studio. The idea that you can only love her or hate her passionately is widespread, although there are also intermediate points. In our case, it is Tonio L. Alarcón who points out the strengths of this unusual new work by Darren Aronofsky:
” After that splendid (re)reading of the Bible that was ‘Noah’, Aronofsky launches into the void (and without a net) in another visceral reinterpretation of Catholic religiosity as a mother! which, between the lines, also reflects on the demiurgic and arrogant character that masks the creativity of great artists, and that, if that were not enough, is a love letter taken from Jennifer Lawrence, the nerve center of a project that came from the bowels of its head. “
‘Your Name
Unfortunately, it is not common for an anime to reach Spanish cinemas, but Makoto Shinkai’s film has enchanted millions of viewers – not for nothing is it the highest-grossing anime of all time – with the story of how two young strangers connect. in a most unique way. Hollywood is already preparing the live-action remake, but it is the animated production that has been among the highlights of 2017 and Roberto Morato tells us why:
” There is a debate that runs through all contemporary animated cinema: The confrontation between the historical legacy and the new forms imposed by technology. In Your Name, this reflection on the past and the present is taken to a paroxysm, establishing a beautiful dialogue “about animation and Japanese society. Shinkai dialogues with the tradition and history of his country’s cinema and elevates a beautiful story of teenage love to a key work of contemporary animation. “
‘Veronica’
One of the great sensations of horror cinema came from Spain with the famous Vallecas Case as a great reference but without fear of changing everything convenient to achieve the desired effect. It was also the definitive consecration of the talent of Paco Plaza, who until then was still considered by many to be the other director of the ‘Rec’ saga. P. Roberto Jiménez, editorial chief of Weblogs, tells us what makes it such a special proposal:
” In a year in which there have been very few great films, several of those that stand out do so by understanding the limits of what they tell and treating them with care. Verónica, Paco Plaza’s Vallecano horror fantasy, shines precisely in that. As many of its stories demonstrate (the blind nun, the improbable teenage party, the discovery of the period…), this could have been a major disaster. But ‘Verónica’ takes flight with an intimate purpose, a coming of age that pampers its characters (the only ones who matter, the brothers of the family) and that transmits what all our adolescents do: fear, disgust, sorrow, joy of life and absolute incomprehension, from the world towards you and from you towards the world.
With very few elements, very local but at the same time very relevant and used with affection (the Estrella jingle, the newsstand fascicles, the brothers’ performance), ‘Verónica’ is built into a must of the genre in Spain. ‘Veronica’ is a brilliant horror film that doesn’t look for a single scare (well, just one); a successful exploration of loneliness in pubertal times (without ever stopping loving almost anyone); and the best possible film about Heroes of Silence. Wow, they were right: everything burns if you apply the right spark. “
‘Baby Driver
The greatest success of Edgar Wright’s career, to such an extent that the person responsible for the Cornetto trilogy has reconsidered his position towards the sequels. From the beginning, it already shows us that it is not going to be the typical robbery movie and also that music is going to play a more fundamental role than ever in the construction of the film, but let’s let Fernando Siles, collaborator of Xataka, be the one who tells us. explain its virtues:
” ‘Baby Driver’ is a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart that not even Mia Wallace. For a little less than two hours, Edgar Wright makes us breathe to the sound that he makes with the great songs he chooses and the non-stop but millimeter-planned action that accompanies her. You end up exhausted and enchanted, as after… yes, well, you understand me. The poor in spirit will say that it’s just a video clip. But what a video clip! What a joy! What virtuosity! Quite an experience “The coolest movie of the year. Without further ado. “
‘Summer 1993’
The Oscar dream for Carla Simón’s debut film faded even before the announcement of the Hollywood Academy Award nominations, but it does not detract any merit from a small film that in most cases would have completely passed unnoticed This has not been the case and Adriana Izquierdo, a collaborator of Xataka and Espinof, tells us what it is that she has that makes her unique:
” Frida loses her mother and must move to the countryside with her uncles. ‘Summer 1993’ makes us connect with that innocence in the process of breaking down, with her difficulty in managing something so emotionally complex, and she achieves it through subtlety and everyday life. so eloquent and full of emotion that each sequence is gold. A gem. “
‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’
Superhero cinema has been dominating Hollywood for years and it doesn’t look like that is going to change in the future. At least in terms of the box office, since it is not so common for films starring these characters to sneak into the lists of the year’s highlights in artistic terms. The sequel to ‘Guardians of the Galaxy has earned its presence here and Juan Luis Caviaro, editor and coordinator of Espinof, explains the reasons:
” In 2014, James Gunn surprised everyone with his fun and exciting adaptation of the comic ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’, featuring characters as eccentric and adorable as Rocket Raccoon and Groot. It was a milestone; Spielberg lists it as his favorite superhero film And three years later, Gunn has achieved the unthinkable, surpassing himself with a sequel that offers the usual spectacle of this type of proposal but that goes deeper into the characters and confronts them with greater conflicts, closing the story with a message. fabulous about coming of age and real family. At the very least it’s the best superhero movie of 2017. “
‘Z. The Lost City
For several years now, James Gray has earned a reputation as one of the most interesting American filmmakers of our time. Of course, not everyone agrees with that statement, but the person responsible for ‘El Sueño de Ellis’ has earned critical appreciation and Fernando Ganzo tells us how he has achieved it with his latest work behind the cameras to date. :
” Michael Cimino’s path is still open. A great film about obsession with a fixed idea, about family, about opening cinema and its characters to something bigger than themselves. As Gray does with his cinema, and without the need for Pharaonic budgets. The last American filmmaker. “
‘Coconut’
It is difficult to understand that there are viewers who still feel a certain disdain towards animated films, seeing them as inferior to stories with flesh and blood characters or simply as pastimes intended for the little ones in the house. Studios like Ghibli or Pixar have not been able to make it clearer that this is not the case and ‘Coco’ has reached heights that very few titles have come close to. In this case, it is myself, Mikel Zorrilla, who shares my assessment of her:
” Pixar has been synonymous with quality for many years, but its latest works had not yet reached the level that made it, with Ghibli’s permission, the great benchmark of world animated cinema. In ‘Coco’ they have shown that it remains intact his ability to create charming stories that combine an exciting adventure with a more emotional component that gradually seduces us until we touch the sky with our hands in an impeccable ending. “
‘Detroit’
Hollywood still has an obvious shortage of female directors and it’s a shame to think about the great female filmmakers that we will be missing because simply no one gives them a chance. What would become of us if no one had trusted Kathryn Bigelow at the time? Well, a worse world and we would also have been left without ‘Detroit’, an exciting approach to a real incident that Victor López G. tells us about :
” With ‘Detroit’, Kathryn Bigelow signs what we could define as a real punch in the pit of the stomach in cinematographic terms. An impeccable exercise halfway between thriller, judicial drama, and the suffocating and wonderfully executed history lesson that will take you it shred your nerves and strengthen your social conscience. Brilliant in every way. “
‘Let me out
What could have been an efficient film and little else has ended up becoming one of the biggest film phenomena of the year in the United States. It swept the box office and it wouldn’t be surprising if it also earned several Oscar nominations. What is this all about? John Jones, editor of Espinof, clarifies it for us:
” The best horror film of the year: Beyond indie efforts with excessive cryptic symbolism, it has a clear and direct (and necessary) message and is intelligently stated. It connects with big names in social metaphorical terror, from ‘They are Alive’ to ‘Society’, going through the best moments of ‘Twilight Zone’, and for that reason, it is still an extraordinary horror film, tense, aggressive, in a continuous crescendo and truffled with extraordinary pills of poisonous humor. “
‘Moonlight’
Its historic victory at the Oscars helped the general public decide to give a chance to a difficult film that tells three stages in the life of its protagonist in a unique way. Lucía Ros, editor of Espinof, assesses the second feature film written and directed by Barry Jenkins as follows:
” ‘Moonlight’ snatched – with a small error in the reading involved – the Oscar for Best Picture from ‘La La Land’. But, without detracting from Chazelle’s film, Barry Jenkins’ feat was much greater: without having a particularly original story and with a very small budget of four million dollars, Jenkins achieves a sensitive narrative, with a lyrical tone and resplendent staging about the life, from childhood to maturity, of a young African-American who has grown up surrounded by violence and crime. “
‘Multiple’
M. Night Shyamalan never left (completely), but the public did seem to turn their back on him for a few years. That trend already began to change with ‘The Visit’ and ‘Multiple’ has confirmed that viewers have once again embraced the Indian director’s cinema. Here it also offers a unique opportunity for James McAvoy to exhibit that talent that not so many filmmakers have known how to exploit. Juan Sanguino offers us his impressions of the film:
” At a time when Hollywood neutralizes the identity of its films to build expanded universes, Shyamalan threw the board out the window with ‘Multiple’. The most violent slasher, the most grotesque thriller, and the most twisted sequel. James McAvoy offers the (s) performance(s) of the year and poses a perverse game for us in the face of ‘Glass’: that villain causes us revulsion, but we can’t wait to see it again. “
‘You were never really here
Joaquin Phoenix is an actor that any director should want in their cast. He has long been very careful about the roles he accepts, making it little less than a guarantee that he will be worth it. Here he also has the support of Lynne Ramsay, one of the most interesting directors in American cinema who once again displays all her talent. Sara Martínez Ruiz, editor of Espinof, tells us about his virtues:
” ‘Lynne Ramsay’s ‘You Were Never Really Here’ is brilliant in every way: from its enigmatic script to its stylized staging, clever elliptical editing, and superb sound design, rounded off with the presence of an overwhelming Joaquin Phoenix. An example of Cinema is conceived as a total art, which absorbs the viewer and challenges him from beginning to end. “
‘Manchester by the Sea
It never had any chance of taking the jackpot at the last Oscar gala, but Kenneth Lonergan’s last film, but it is not because it had anything to envy of ‘La La Land’ or ‘Moonlight’. It simply had other weapons that captivated many with the heartbreaking emotional journey of its protagonist. Daniel Martínez Mantilla explains why it is one of the premieres of the year:
” It starts like the typical Sundance movie, lasts longer than it should, and dares to build a depressing universe around an unfriendly and gray character, but ‘Manchester by the Sea’ ends up emerging as a masterful study of guilt and inability. of leaving the pain behind. Some superb Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges (the great revelation of the film is responsible for providing light and irony to the whole) further elevate this brilliant study of male emotions with which Kenneth Lonergan marks one of the “great comebacks of 2017 after the ‘Margaret’ disaster. “
‘Colossal’
Spanish cinema does not deserve Nacho Vigalondo. Whether you like his films more or less, what is undeniable is that he is committed to a type of proposals that go beyond the canons of our industry, even if we include genre films in them. In ‘Colossal’ he fused giant monsters and feminism in such a way that he ended up shocking a few, but there were also not a few who were captivated by a very special film. Marina Such, Espinof’s collaborator, gives us her impressions about her:
” Nacho Vigalondo is completely right with this story of a girl with a disastrous life who finds the capacity for resistance not to let herself be carried away by guys who try to “rescue” her. She doesn’t need it. And that monster that devastates Seoul makes it very clear. It is a film that has unfairly gone unnoticed. “
‘War for the Planet of the Apes
The closing of a trilogy in which I practically had no faith and which has ended up becoming one of the best in the history of cinema. The first part was already a notable surprise, going even more with the second installment, and ‘War for the Planet of the Apes was the finishing touch, as Jorge Casanueva, editor of Espinof, explains to us:
” A perfect ending to the most important science fiction trilogy since the original Star Wars. Matt Reeves forgets about the blockbuster status and redefines the term with an adult film, full of influences from the classic war and Western that makes us forget its photorealistic CGI rule-changer to focus on his tremendously beautiful (anti)humanist speech. “
‘Personal shopper’
Some actresses would have succumbed to the temptation to limit their careers to different variants of a character as popular as Belle from The Twilight Saga, but Kristen Stewart has spent several years demonstrating a much greater range of registers. Her new collaboration with Olivier Assayas -they already worked together on ‘Viaje a Sils Maria’- completes our list of the best films of 2017 and Esther Miguel Trula explains in detail what makes her worthy of it:
“Postal ghosts or how to make a horror movie whose climax takes place in a WhatsApp conversation. If you know Olivier Assayas, strong emotions level ‘Demonlover’. If not, we will contextualize him: a French author very concerned about the discomforts of the society that manifests itself from its capitalist structures whose camera films half the time through an ironic lens, and that makes the subtext its flag.
And there he goes and places Kristen Stewart (her body, her jaded grimaces) at the center of a story about precarious young people acting as personal shoppers, dead twins, and liquid realities by which work, friendships, and desires take place in a series of aseptic tangible environments but displaced in importance by technology, the authentic scene of contemporary existence, a spectrum that keeps us all in a one-person purgatory and the reason why physical manifestations end up having such great importance in our lives. In this situation, it is logical to ask: Are the images shown real or just an ideation of the protagonist? Beautiful people respond. “
Sharlene Meriel is an avid gamer with a knack for technology. He has been writing about the latest technologies for the past 5 years. His contribution in technology journalism has been noteworthy. He is also a day trader with interest in the Forex market.
