The film stars Hiroshi Abe (who previously appeared in Kore-eda’s I Wish) as Ryota.

But because it springs from the mind of Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda, this look at a middle-aged man who’s only slowly coming to the realization that he’s a right bastard is gentle, wistful-serene even. And Matt Brennan bemoaned the quandary of us critics reviewing and ranking films that most readers can’t see-in fact, more than half of our staff hasn’t seen Phantom Thread, because we don’t live in NY or LA-which still didn’t keep those films out of the top 50.ĭepending on the filmmaker, After the Storm’s storyline could be grist for a dark comedy, a tear-jerking melodrama or a bilious character study. Kyle Turner panned Call Me By Your Name, but then it found a prominent place on other lists. Similarly, The Shape of Water was a consensus pick, though Dom Sinacola recently wrote about how much he dislikes the way Guillermo del Toro tells stories.

Which is to say: if you’re pissed or elated about anything being on here or not being on here, then chances are at least one Paste Movies staff writer agrees with you.įor example: A Cure for Wellness, our #50 film, was despised by a few staff members, but it was Oktay Ege Kozak’s favorite movie of the year.

The goal was and has always been to provide an overview of staff tastes, however much individual lists differed. Each staff writer put together a top 20 of their favorite movies of the year, contributing to an aggregate list based on points assigned according to where each film ranked. One idea to ultimately keep in mind, as you count down the best movies of the year with us, is that this list is the result of math.

Best movies 2017 released