I think we can all agree that 2017 was a weird year. Is that how I started this same post last year? Unimportant. There was some really great movies this year,

Get Out

How is this Jordan Peele’s first movie?! From the cold open to the final shot I was sure I was watching a seasoned directors 6th and greatest film. A biting satire of Cultural Appropriation in liberal America, the movie had me laughing and jumping out of my seat, sometime during the same scene. A young black photographer (Daniel Kaluuya) is invited by his new white girlfriend (Allison Williams) to her parents house in the suburbs, and things are, as always, not what they seem to be. Or they’re exactly what they seem to be. An absolutely brilliant movie that we’ll be holding up as a benchmark of horror-comedies for years.

Wonder Woman

Finally, the DC movie we deserve. Director Patti Jenkins managed to make a fish-out-of-water movie, a period war movie, and a superhero origin story that is all at once coherent, exciting, and emotionally resounding. Gal Gadot is a fierce breath of fresh air into a dark, overserious, and mostly boring DC Extended Universe. A movie by women, for women of all ages that I, as not-a-woman, will cherish forever.

Call Me By Your Name

I’d just recovered from last years “Moonlight” when this movie decided to sock me in the jaw. A heartbreaking movie about a love affair between a teenage boy (Timotheé Chalamet) and the grad student (Armie Hammer) living with his family for the summer. One of the most beautiful movies i’ve ever seen, with a devastating final shot that has remained with me since I left the theater. You may never look at a peach the same way again.

Lady Bird

You owe it to your mother to see this movie. Greta Gerwig’s first movie is about the relationship between an exuberant girl ready to fly away (Saorise Ronan) and an exhausted mother (Laurie Metcalf) who is jealous of her daughters new freedom. It’s a practically perfect movie, a delicate recreation of teenage life in the 2000’s and one of the most realistic movies about a teen girl that i’ve ever seen. See it with your mother and bring loads of tissues.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri

I have always loved a good revenge movie, but i’ve never seen anything quite like this. Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) is furious that her daughters brutal rape and murder has gone unsolved, so she takes action. What I love about this movie so much is that while the acts of violence are tough to watch, the movie doesn’t try to take sides. Nobody is right, everybody is wrong. By the end, the person you’re rooting for has changed 10 times.

Thor: Ragnarok

Watching Cate Blanchett chew scenery has been a 2017 hobby of mine (Please see her indie movie Manifesto, which was too weird to include on this list) and nothing’s more fun for an audience than seeing an actor as good as her playing the villain in a Marvel movie by a great director like . This movie is weird AF (but still a Marvel movie) and freaking hilarious. Plus I really appreciate seeing my favorite of the 1000 Chris’ get to play the funny guy for once.

Baby Driver

Hot Take: Driving movies are played out. The Fast and The Furious franchise has managed to make them both overly extravagant with CGI and paint-by-numbers boring at the same time. Baby Driver is not either. The video above is the first 6 minutes of the movie, which are nearly wordless besides the music and more fun than Fast and Furious has been in years. Ignore the presence of Kevin Spacey, we know he’s the worst but the movie shouldn’t be forgotten because of one piece of shit.

Spiderman: Homecoming

Tom Holland is the best Spider-man we’ve ever had, and we’re blessed to get him in a spiderman movie that doesn’t involve the death of Uncle Ben. Zendaya steals every scene she’s in, even though she’s not featured enough for my taste. It’s a really solid Superhero movie, but it’s also one of the best High School movies we’ve had in a really long time, and all the kids starring are around High School age, for once.

The Big Sick

Has there ever been a Romantic Comedy with a middle eastern man as the lead and a female lead who is literally comatose for 75% of runtime? There has been now. Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily Gordon wrote this movie loosely based on their love story. It’s a heartfelt and very funny take on the rom-com, and I would love to see more rom-coms like this one.

A Ghost Story

Finally, one of the weirdest movies i’ve seen this year. Casey Affleck stars as a man who dies and haunts the home he owned with his wife (Rooney Mara) as a ghost in a white sheet. He watches her move on, move away, and then watches families and people come and go. The movie is more about the passage of time and grief that never fades away, than it is about actual ghosts. It’s punctuated with tiny moments of humor, including a conversation between our ghost and the Ghost Next Door, who is played by Kesha, although you’d never know it.