The Best Movies of 2017 — The Year in Review

2017 was widely considered one of the strongest years for cinema in the decade, marked by breakout directorial debuts like Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird and Jordan Peele's Get Out. If you spent that year sitting in dark rooms watching the schedule fall apart on indie sets or tracking box office returns, you felt the seismic shift. It was a twelve-month stretch where traditional boundaries between studio blockbusters and micro-budget passion projects blurred. Auteurs took the reins of massive intellectual properties and actually retained their voice.

Too many filmmakers make the mistake of treating Rotten Tomatoes percentages as an objective measure of artistic quality rather than an aggregate of critical approval. The Tomatometer—the percentage of positive reviews given by certified critics—is a marketing metric, not a badge of eternal cinematic truth. A film with a 98% score can be entirely forgettable, while a 78% film can spark an entire movement. You also cannot dismiss genre films as purely commercial enterprises while ignoring their function as profound cultural mirrors. When you build a schedule or draft a narrative, you need to understand what makes these nineteen films structural masterclasses.

Let's look at how the best of 2017 actually constructed their worlds, handled their budgets, and delivered on narrative risk.

20. The Big Sick#

Perhaps no genre of film is filled with tropes and cliches than the romantic comedy. It can be hard to make it feel fresh, but somehow, The Big Sick manages to do precisely that. It doesn’t make fun of the genre or incorporate meta-humor. Instead, it focuses on a unique story involving a Pakistani comedian and a grad student who struggle to maintain their relationship when she’s diagnosed with a severe illness. The film earned a stellar 98% Tomatometer score and won Best Comedy at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards.

The structural brilliance of The Big Sick lies in its tonal whiplash. You are laughing at awkward family dinners in Chicago one minute, and sitting sterile under fluorescent hospital lights watching an induced coma the next. Most indie writers fail at this balance because they try to signal the emotional shifts with heavy-handed score cues or lazy dialogue. Here, the transition mirrors how actual crises hit a set or a life: unannounced, messy, and without a transition cue. If you are writing a script that attempts dual tones, study how this screenplay handles the rhythm of dramatic turns.

19. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri#

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was one of the most difficult watches of 2017. There is a lot at play here, especially regarding feminine anger and racism. The characters are complex, and while the film doesn’t necessarily forgive their shortcomings, it makes them fully fledged-out people who are neither wholly good or wholly evil. The film excels due to a handful of incredible performances, particularly Frances McDormand turning in one of the defining acting masterclasses of the decade.

The writing lesson here is about refusing to let your characters off the hook. Too many indie screenplays populate their worlds with pure heroes and obvious villains because they are terrified the audience will lose sympathy. Three Billboards leans directly into abrasive, deeply unlikable behavior and forces you to stay in the room with it. The editing and cinematography actively construct this hostile Missouri landscape rather than serving as passive visual wallpaper. You feel the heat, the dust, and the localized claustrophobia in every single frame.

18. I, Tonya#

Female rage and anger were on full display in 2017, an appropriate response given the cultural reckoning of the #MeToo movement. I, Tonya recontextualizes a story most Americans know of Tonya Harding hiring someone to beat Nancy Kerrigan. However, this film digs into Tonya’s psyche in a way we haven’t seen before and how the men in her life coerced her into cheating to win at the Olympics. It functions as a tragedy about a woman who dedicates her life to one pursuit only to come up short time and time again.

The film relies on a bold framing device: fourth-wall breaks, contradictory talking-head interviews, and an unreliable narrator who openly tells the audience that everyone lied about everything. As an independent creator working on a tight budget, you can learn a lot from how this production handled its constraints. The skating scenes look utterly real despite modest resources, achieved through a smart combination of stunt doubles, face-replacement visual effects, and relentless camera choreography that hides the limitations of rented ice rinks.

17. The Killing of a Sacred Deer#

Yorgos Lanthimos’s films are not for everyone, but if you have a taste for bleak, dark humor, then The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a clinic in controlled dread. It’s a darkly hilarious yet horrifying portrait of what goes on behind the scenes of pleasant suburbia. Much of the film is about setting a tone that something is fundamentally wrong between Dr. Steven Murphy and Martin, a teenager Steven has a strange, inexplicable relationship with. From there, it twists into a modern-day allegory on crime, punishment, and the absurd pleasantries people maintain to keep the peace.

Lanthimos relies heavily on wide-angle lenses, creeping dolly shots, and deadpan, rhythmic delivery that drains all warmth from the frame. If you want to evoke unease, stop relying on cheap jump scares and start looking at camera placement. A wide lens tracking down a sterile hospital hallway tells the audience they are trapped long before a single line of threatening dialogue is spoken. It is a masterclass in using visual composition to build psychological pressure.

16. Baby Driver#

Much like a well-executed heist, Baby Driver moves fluidly from one beat to the next without missing a step along the way. Edgar Wright proves himself to be a master of genre as he simultaneously makes a slick action movie that feels entirely like an extended music video. The witty dialogue and perfectly placed needle drops work in absolute lockstep, making for an entertaining theatrical experience that stands apart from every other mainstream blockbuster of that year.

The real triumph of Baby Driver is editorial precision. Every single tire screech, gun cock, and windshield wiper swipe was cut directly to the tempo of the soundtrack before production even wrapped. That requires storyboarding every single setup with music playback rolling on set. If your action sequences feel sluggish or disconnected, look at your edit. Sound design and picture editing are not cleanup tasks for post-production; they are foundational narrative elements that must be baked into the very first draft of your script.

15. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore#

Netflix proved a polarizing force in the film industry throughout the decade, sparking the modern streaming wars while simultaneously funding stories that would never survive a traditional studio greenlight process. Enter I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. After a nurse’s home is robbed, she teams up with her aggressively unhinged neighbor to get her stolen goods back. It sounds simple enough on paper, but the film serves as a pitch-black springboard to discuss modern civility, gender roles, and societal collapse.

The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance by keeping its scope relentlessly small. You do not need a twenty-ton lighting package or a thirty-person grip truck to make a statement about modern anomie. You need a clear point of view, actors who understand the dry cadence of dark comedy, and locations that look lived-in and slightly stained by reality. It is a reminder that a compelling indie feature starts with a character who has crossed a minor ethical Rubicon and cannot find a way back.

14. Coco#

Coco is a prime example of Pixar working at absolute peak capacity. It uses the vehicle of a visually stunning family film about the Mexican Day of the Dead to discuss heavy themes related to family legacy, sudden death, and fading memories. It is easily one of the most vibrant and beautifully animated films to come out of the studio, but where it truly soars is how it handles its emotional beats without pandering to the youngest viewers in the theater.

Animation often gets dismissed as a purely commercial children's enterprise, ignoring its function as a profound canvas for philosophical exploration. Coco refuses to pull punches when dealing with the inevitability of forgetting and being forgotten. For live-action filmmakers, the lesson here is structural: high-concept premises only work if the emotional core is brutally honest. If your audience isn't crying by the final reel, no amount of render power or visual effects wizardry is going to save your story.

13. The Florida Project#

It’s hard to put into words, but The Florida Project is one of the most viscerally real films from 2017. It follows a ragtag group of kids as they go about their summer vacation around the pastel-colored motels of Kissimmee, Florida, even as the desperate adults around them struggle just to keep the lights on. The characters are fully realized, and it is one of the most visually striking independent films of the decade, an achievement made even more impressive by the fact that it was shot on location in budget motels right down the road from Disney World.

Director Sean Baker balanced professional actors like Willem Dafoe with untrained local kids plucked straight from the area. The result is a naturalism that money simply cannot buy. If you are casting an indie feature, stop holding out for agency-represented talent if local non-professionals possess the exact lived experience your script demands. Surround them with a seasoned crew, lock your locations down tight, and let the environment do half the heavy lifting for you.

12. Ingrid Goes West#

Regarding modern social media and technology dependency, it is remarkably easy for a film to come across as condescending or out of touch. However, Ingrid Goes West manages to expertly satirize all the insecure elements of the Instagram age with surprising bite. The film follows an unstable woman obsessed with social media who begins emulating the life of Taylor Sloane, a well-known influencer living in Los Angeles, eventually manipulating her way into a superficial friendship.

At its core, the film asks a terrifying question about modern connection: what does it mean to actually know someone when every interaction is filtered through an aestheticized highlight reel? Aubrey Plaza delivers a masterclass in playing someone who is simultaneously pathetic and genuinely dangerous. The screenwriting structure tracks Ingrid's downward spiral with surgical precision, showing how digital validation acts as an addictive narcotic that warps basic human empathy.

11. Wonder Woman#

It is exceptionally difficult to make a superhero film feel fresh once the market has been flooded with cynical franchise entries. You can go down the postmodern route like Deadpool, or you can return to making genuine expressions of heart and warmth, which is the exact route Wonder Woman took. The film is an almost mythic experience, bringing out a positive message on how even in the darkest, most trench-filled times of human history, we need to maintain our capacity for empathy and kindness.

Directed with a clear classical eye, the film proved that characters who stand for truth and justice do not have to be written as corny or outdated. They have a permanent place in the cinematic landscape if you have a director at the helm who understands blocking, scale, and emotional stakes. The No Man's Land sequence works because it is anchored entirely by a character choice, not just a barrage of computer-generated destruction.

10. Call Me by Your Name#

Call Me by Your Name is a languid coming-of-age romance about a seventeen-year-old student spending his summer in northern Italy and the older research assistant who arrives to stay with his family. The film doesn’t feel the need to propel forward through artificial plot contrivances. It deliberately takes its time portraying the sun-drenched world these characters live in, letting the heat, the music, and the unspoken tension do the narrative work.

The sheer aesthetic beauty of the film is enough to anchor the runtime. The cinematography captures the orchards, the rivers, and the historic stone villas with an intimacy that makes you feel like you are trespassing on a private memory. For independent filmmakers, this film is proof that atmosphere is a plot point. If you give your audience enough sensory detail—the sound of cicadas, the taste of a peach, the glare of midday sun—they will forgive a slower narrative pace because they simply want to inhabit your world.

9. Blade Runner 2049#

Sequels that arrive thirty-five years after a culturally sacred original are almost always cynical cash grabs designed to fleece nostalgic audiences. However, Blade Runner 2049 feels like a profound, natural progression of the source material and an essential component to fully understanding the philosophical themes of Ridley Scott's 1982 original. Denis Villeneuve proved he could take a massive intellectual property and turn it into high art without sacrificing an ounce of its bleak, rain-soaked atmosphere.

Every single frame of this film is a masterclass in color theory and lighting design. Roger Deakins utilized precise palettes—drenched in burnt oranges and clinical neon blues—to finally win his first competitive Academy Award for cinematography. The visual effects do not look like digital wallpaper; they feel physical, heavy, and exhausted. If you want to understand how production design and lighting actively construct theme, look at how the neon bleeding through the blinds reflects K's internal isolation.

8. Logan#

While Wonder Woman showed how to sincerely introduce a classic hero to a new generation, Logan showed how to bring a legendary character arc to a definitive, uncompromising end. It is a deeply personal, neo-Western story that puts you inside the mind of an aging mutant who has lost virtually everyone he has ever loved, clinging to one last chance to do something right in a broken world. The film foregoes traditional superhero plot points to deliver a gritty survival narrative that works whether you know the comic book origins or not.

The R-rating was not applied as a marketing gimmick; the profanity and brutal violence are essential narrative tools for establishing an exhausted, dying world. The script strips away the spandex and multi-film setup obligations to focus on intimate family dynamics, regret, and mortality. It remains the gold standard for how to close out a multi-billion-dollar franchise with actual dignity and emotional weight.

7. The Shape of Water#

With The Shape of Water, it’s easy to see Guillermo del Toro’s boundless, lifelong love of classic creature features and practical monster cinema. He crafted a lush, romantic fairy tale of finding love amidst institutional discrimination and Cold War paranoia. It is a modern-day variation on Beauty and the Beast that argues all human beings—regardless of speech, status, or biology—require physical connection and emotional acceptance to survive.

Setting the film in 1960s Baltimore was a deliberate structural choice. Every single major character is marginalized in some capacity—whether by race, sexuality, disability, or occupation—and they are all fighting for dignity in a hostile system. Del Toro blends practical creature suits, Stan Winston-level animatronics, and precise art direction to create a world that feels tactile and handmade. It won Best Picture at the 90th Academy Awards because it wore its beating, bleeding heart right on its sleeve.

6. Phantom Thread#

Phantom Thread is just as breathtakingly gorgeous as the bespoke couture fashion present throughout its narrative. Watching it now carries an extra layer of melancholy, knowing it marked Daniel Day-Lewis's final film performance before his retirement. His meticulous portrayal of Reynolds Woodcock is wonderfully complemented by Paul Thomas Anderson’s direction, which utilizes an intimate mix of tight close-ups and slow tracking shots to capture the quiet domestic warfare of an obsessive artist.

The film is surprisingly, darkly hilarious. Day-Lewis plays uptight upper-class neurosis with the same intensity he brings to historical drama. The script explores the strange, co-dependent power dynamics of a relationship where love is weaponized through poisoned mushrooms and rigid breakfast customs. It proves that high-stakes drama doesn't require car chases or explosions; sometimes, the most terrifying battlefield in cinema is a dining room table in the English countryside.

5. Paddington 2#

It sounds absurd to some, but Paddington 2 achieved a rare, flawless 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes across more than 240 reviews, placing it among the most universally acclaimed films ever made. What could easily have been a cynical, low-effort family IP cash-grab turned into a masterclass in pure cinematic joy, empathy, and visual comedy. Every single background detail, prop, and character arc in Brown's London is constructed with absolute precision.

The screenwriting lesson here is about earnestness. In an era where cynicism is often mistaken for sophistication, Paddington 2 commits entirely to kindness without ever feeling cloying or saccharine. Hugh Grant delivers a legendary performance as a washed-up, narcissistic actor because he plays the villain with absolute theatrical conviction. It is a reminder that children's cinema, when executed by genuine artists, can outclass prestige adult drama any day of the week.

4. Star Wars: The Last Jedi#

Few films in the modern blockbuster era generated as much fierce cultural division as Star Wars: The Last Jedi. While critics praised its willingness to deconstruct legendary mythologies and subvert tired franchise expectations—landing a 91% Tomatometer score—a vocal segment of the fanbase rejected its structural pivots. The film actively interrogated what it means to be a hero, arguing that failure is the greatest teacher and that legends are often built on myths that need to be burned down.

Deconstruction is the act of taking apart a well-worn genre or trope to examine its underlying mechanics and cultural assumptions. Rian Johnson took the sacred text of a multi-generational space opera and asked uncomfortable questions about war profiteering, moral gray areas, and the burden of legacy. Whether you loved or hated where it took the narrative, you cannot deny that it took massive structural risks. In an industry currently paralyzed by safe, algorithm-tested intellectual property management, that level of narrative courage remains deeply admirable.

3. Lady Bird#

Greta Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical directorial debut, Lady Bird, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that hyper-specificity in regional setting yields universal emotional resonance. By anchoring her coming-of-age story in the specific quirks, economic anxieties, and Catholic high school culture of early-2000s Sacramento, California, Gerwig created a film that felt immediately recognizable to anyone who has ever tried to outgrow their hometown.

The film earned five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, on the strength of its dialogue and character dynamics. The mother-daughter relationship at the center of the story is written with terrifying accuracy—full of sharp barbs, sudden tenderness, and unspoken compromises. If you are writing your first feature, stop trying to write universal themes. Write about the exact street you grew up on, the specific brand of cereal your parents bought, and the exact shade of yellow on your childhood bedroom wall. Specificity is the only doorway to universality.

Looking back at 2017, the common thread across all these varied masterclasses is conviction. Whether operating on a micro-budget in Sacramento or commanding massive visual effects pipelines for a sci-fi sequel, the filmmakers who mattered took structural risks and refused to pander. Take these lessons into your own writing software, lock your page counts, and build stories that demand to be made.