In May of 2017, I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 twice in theaters – once with my movie-going friends, and then again only days later with my coworkers as part of a Teacher Appreciation Day surprise. I enjoyed it even more the second time. A movie this stocked with the goodies is always going to be worth a revisit.

I would discuss this movie with friends for weeks after. We would laugh about the same jokes and express amazement at how understandable yet awful Ego’s plan was. We expressed our love of the new characters and the new relationships that formed with them.

We had a lot of movie to work with. A lot to appreciate.

But I left, both times, with the same astonishment at one fact: “I never thought I’d hear ‘The Chain’ played in the action climax of a superhero movie.”

Yes, the song is pounding, with that unmissable bass line and drum kick. But it’s still a song about discord, about pain and commitment and the way the two intertwine. It’s about a bond that’s tested to the point of being broken. The chain will at some point snap. It’s a matter of when, not if. It’s a matter of deciding what will be done with the loose ends.

In the context of the film – and for the characters involved – the song completely clicks. The Guardians of the Galaxy, especially as writer/director James Gunn has configured them, have always been a group of cast-offs who found family in each other. Peter Quill is a thief raised by the Ravagers. Gamora and Nebula are the extremely deadly adopted daughters of Thanos. Rocket Raccoon is a military experiment gone awry. Drax is a warrior bent on revenge. Groot is Groot, the one they don’t really deserve. They have all been, at some point, rejected, pushed away, or told they were not good enough. They hated each other before they found family in each other.

Everyone grows up with two families: the one they’re born with, and the one they find.

The Guardians of the Galaxy were given shitty cards. They couldn’t do anything about that. So they found, when not bickering with each other, some solace in their bond. They fought and sacrificed for each other. They became a family.

I, Tonya reminds us, from the very beginning, that this is a story told by a collection of unreliable narrators. Everyone is telling the story they want us to believe. And we often have no way of knowing who’s right or wrong. Even better, the characters – and the film’s writers – know this. They know the best card an emotionally burnt person can play is the one where the truth can be bent.

The movie doesn’t hide some key facts, though, particularly the reality of Tonya Harding’s upbringing. We see the familial discord she grew up in. The hardscrabble economic life. The mother who truly believed she skated better when she was made to feel like shit. The husband who continued a cycle of abuse that neither could pull themselves up from out of.

Each individual character closely echoes the emotional lives of each member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, at least until they found each other: a place that’s never quite emotionally secure or supportive. A place where promises mean little and boundaries are temporary lines meant to be pissed upon.

When “The Chain” comes on late in I, Tonya, a violent splinter has formed. Tonya Harding – as presented in the film – has finally pushed away every awful influence in her life. She has been failed and wronged too many times. She’s had it. It is time for everyone to go. There is no going back. Every relationship we have seen up to that point – with her mother, her husband, even her coach – is severed. She is officially, for better or worse, on her own.

The chain has been broken.

They don’t love her now, and they’ll never love her again. At least never the same way.

GOTG Vol. 2, on the other hand, employs “The Chain” twice. First, when they go to see Ego, Peter Quill’s long-lost father. It’s a moment of discovery meant to suggest a bond about to be made. Quill’s always wondered where and who his father is. A truth is about to be laid over a crack in his heart.

Except his father doesn’t turn out to be quite the father Quill expects him to be. The bond he hoped to form is violently broken in a most heartbreaking way. And yet, just as the chain breaks between him and Ego, it grows stronger around him as the rest of the gang – his true, new family – comes back to help him fight the good fight in the film’s major action climax.

The way these two movies use Fleetwood Mac’s classic tune – with wildly different intentions and outcomes – shows just how malleable the song is. It also shows just how easy it is to walk upon that fine edge, of commitment and rejection, and how badly we need someone in our lives who truly believe in us and stand by us on our best, worst, and in-between moments.

2017 has been a long, tough one. As a country, we’ve had to grapple with a lot of hard, painful truths. Personally, I’ve learned my own lessons. But one thing we should all agree on is that it’s been a pretty great year of movies.

Deeply personal messages snuck their way through studio systems. New and fresh voices rushed to the forefront. Ideas became as valuable and incendiary as an onscreen explosion. We learned to dream again just as much as we learned to reframe our own reality.

I decided to stick with a Top 10. And then decided to add some individual awards for those that didn’t make the cut. But here’s the thing: there are 12 individual awards outside of my Top 10.

See? I told you it was a good year at the movies.

Here we go:

Ballsiest Sequel (Non-The Last Jedi Division): John Wick: Chapter 2

Sequels tend to function as storytelling placeholders. They give us more of the same while doing very little of consequence. John Wick: Chapter 2 puts a loud, unavoidable bullet into that bullshit.

The first John Wick gave us some tantalizing mythology in The Continental, the secret hotel for assassins in which business cannot be conducted on the premises. The sequel sees Wick forced to go overseas. They expand the mythology. They show how a secret money system works. How there’s a group watching over everything they’re doing.

And then they threw it all away. All of it.

I couldn’t believe it. I have no idea where they’ll go for John Wick 3, but they’ve set themselves up for a unique challenge. And in giving the actions of their hero true consequences, they’ve pushed their ongoing story into some potentially very interesting places.

Best Movie I’ll Need to Watch Again with Subtitles: Dunkirk

When I first heard how director Christopher Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar, Spectre) filmed Dunkirk with predominately IMAX and 65mm cameras, along with their commitment to authentic locations and thousands of extras, I knew I had to see it in theaters. If they were going to go all-out to create an epic sense of scale, then I felt it my duty to meet them halfway, in the theaters where they intended it to be seen.

So then I began looking into which format would I see it in: IMAX, IMAX 70mm, 70mm, or even standard 35mm? Vox did a fantastic rundown of the different formats and how they might impact a viewer’s experience.

Complicating matters is the fact many of these special screenings did not have captioning available. It’s the hidden cost in these special formats. But I found an opening in the fact nearly every article I read on the movie mentioned how little dialogue the movie had, very nearly calling it something of a silent film scored by Hans Zimmer. So, I thought: “I can’t be missing too much. It’s going to be a purely visual film.”

Yes and no.

While the visuals, framing, and sense of scale and geography are astounding – Nolan is truly working at the top of his game here – there was still far more dialogue than I expected. And while I’m sure some will say it’s arbitrary, it still feels like I’m missing a part of the entire movie’s puzzle.

So I admire this movie. I’m blown away at what they accomplished. I could never truly tell what was real and CGI, even if I knew something had to be CGI. The three timelines that converge may not have been a necessary device, but it certainly adds some thematic oomph to what is already a pretty harrowing tale. Nolan has truly taken some risks here, and the budget and assortment of great actors he was able to pull together for this particular film just shows how much his vision is trusted.

I imagine once I catch this with subtitles, it’ll move up my list of the Year of 2017. In the meantime, I’ll be eagerly awaiting Mr. Nolan’s next cinematic gamble.

Most Delightfully Stressful Movie Experience: mother!

There are two movies that gave me my favorite moviegoing experiences of the year: mother! and The Disaster Artist. They provided stark reminders of why going to a theater with a packed, willing audience is always going to a special experience that no streaming service can replicate.

Darren Aronofsky’s mother! is a stressful movie to watch. But it is also the work of a man with something to say. The extended allegory that begins the movie eventually gives way to an exploration of themes about global conversation and the relationship between creator and muse. Aronofsky understands as well as anybody how to make an audience squirm, and there are several sequences later in the film where the discomfort in the audience was palpable.

This movie may have been marketed as something different. It is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. But discomfort doesn’t a bad movie make. This is something special. It is not subtle, but damn if it does not make its point.

Many have seemed to focus on this movie as being about taking care of our planet – which it definitely is concerned with – but, for me, the final scenes show something far darker and thought-provoking. My guess is that it potentially reveals a part of Aronofsky himself he’s deeply uncomfortable with. It may not make him more likable, but it shows him to be as brave an artist as we have today.

Most Delightfully Surprising Movie Experience: The Disaster Artist

I’ve always liked James Franco, but this is my favorite performance of his. His Tommy Wiseau clearly comes from a place of respect and admiration, and it clearly is a performance built from the inside out. Franco understands this guy, at least as much as you can with such an unknowable character like Wiseau. He has no intention of being mean-spirited or making Wiseau the butt of the joke.

Having said that, I loved watching this with an opening weekend audience. They spent the first 15-20 min laughing at Franco’s Wiseau, his crazy lines and mannerisms dramatized so efficiently and hilariously. But after that? The audience started to get there was something bigger at play. This wasn’t going to be a movie making fun of anyone. This was going to be about friendship and having a dream. About not giving up despite the fact you’re way, way out of your league.

And you know what? I think the audience bought into it. It was something special.

Best Last Ride: Logan

I have loved the idea of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine far more than I’ve enjoyed the actual movies he’s been in. The guy clear puts in the work, pumping heavy iron and making all us onlookers feel gross and overweight. He clearly relishes the character. It’s just the movies rarely met him at his level.

Until now.

It’s a little sad that they made such a good Wolverine movie in Jackman’s last film with the character (or so he says; money talks), but it exists. Clearly emboldened by the success of Deadpool, Fox let these guys finally make the R-rated, mature Wolverine movie they’ve clearly been dying to make. And while it is bloody and intestines are shown, it is the characters and the journey they take that will be remembered. This is a Western, spare and unforgiving, of a mutant wrestling with his own legacy and mortality. I’m sad to see Jackman go, but I’m grateful his last ride proved as robust and memorable as this.

Best Use of Adam Driver: Logan Lucky

While Driver’s work in The Last Jedi is pretty fantastic, his turn here as a Southern boy, brother to Channing Tatum, is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking. He’s given a lot to work with, and he really hits every note so unpredictably and beautifully. He clearly ramps up Tatum’s game when they’re together, and keeps Daniel Craig’s crazy Joe Bang from running off with the movie.

Most Unexpected Metaphor: Colossal

I love movies that take chances, and this one clearly did. I would never have thought to connect taking responsibility of our narrative with giant monsters and robots in Seoul, but that’s why we’re lucky to have a guy like Nacho Vigalondo making movies.

Best Philosophy Tucked in a Forgettable Film: Alien: Covenant

 I’m not entirely sure what the point of this movie – which has a plot dangerously close to Prometheus, it’s predecessor – is beyond a chance for Ridley Scott to be a sneaky modern-day philosopher. The man is 80. He’s still churning movies out on a yearly basis. I half-expect that Steven Spielberg (71) and Martin Scorsese (75) are taking notes on how to absolutely kill it as an octogenarian.

My guess is that Ridley didn’t want to write a book. So he decided to sneak in his philosophical questions inside his big-budget movies, hoping we wouldn’t notice his existential panic until he’s no longer around to answer for it.

The only thing better than a charged Michael Fassbender performance is a second charged Michael Fassbender performance in the same scene. Watching these two androids, an older David and a younger Walter, have their conversations about the nature of creation and mortality together is fascinating. It barely has any real connection with the rest of the movie – which is overrun with weightless CGI monsters and good actors doing their best to breathe compelling life into archetypes – but it kept my brain running where the rest of the movie couldn’t.

So, Ridley? We see what you’re doing. It’s clever. We’re onto you, mate.

Best Glimpse Into Life-Changing Magic: The Work

I sure hope this documentary gets more attention in the years to come. I’ll certainly be selling people on it.

The premise is alluring: civilian men join counselors and inmates in the vaunted Folsom State Prison for 4 days of group therapy. The expectation is that we’re going to see these inmates get pretty deep inside their emotions. The surprise, ultimately, is just how much we see from the civilians.

By showing the emotional breakthroughs of the civilian men – the teacher assistants, the cashiers, the regular dads – alongside the breakthroughs of the inmates, the film subtly shows us just how equal we really are. When money, jobs, and life outcomes are stripped away, we are all the same: children running around in a big, complex world we still struggle to understand. Some of us figure it out a little better than others. Some of us have more supports than others. But we’re all made of the same beautiful thing.

2^nd Best CGI Ape Movie: Kong: Skull Island

The only thing I love better than monkeys are well-rendered CGI monkeys.

War for the Planet of the Apes is the thoughtful, earnest version of this.

Kong: Skull Island, on the other hand, is the version where someone gives a five year old some expensive tools and says, “YOLO.” I love how big Jordan Vogt-Roberts makes this ape, and how much character he actually imbues in him. The big guy feels real. It feels like he’s been around a while. And we’re always, always rooting for him to kick some ass and take some names.

The film manages to make about as fun a movie as it can out of such a limited concept – how many times do we need to see this King Kong island story after all? – and do it with some welcome doses of style and humor.

It’s not going to win any Oscars (other than the ones its actors already carry around), but it sure is a blast.

Best Surprise: Coco

I had no idea what to expect from this movie. All I knew was from the trailers – a young boy who wants to play music, some connection to the Day of the Dead – and, even then, it looked pretty light. Minor Pixar with fancier graphics, perhaps.

I could not have been more blown away.

I have no problem ranking this as one of Pixar’s very, very best films. Somehow this movie embraced the cultural authenticity fully, came up with alluring characters, went deeeep with its ideas and themes (I definitely got teary-eyed), and never forgot to be entertaining.

It’s magical.

Best Beauty and the Beast Movie of 2017: The Shape of Water

It says a lot about the year we’ve had in movies that an Oscar hopeful movie from one of my favorite filmmakers is this far down the list. Make no mistake, this is a magical movie. It is hopeful. It is lovely. And while I wish it was just a little bit weirder and less predictable, there are still whole sequences in this movie that won’t be leaving my brain anytime soon.

This is a year that Disney gave us a $160 million dollar Beauty and the Beast so laden with CGI that it felt weightless and, at times, lifeless. The best scene in the movie is the one that doesn’t have any CGI in it. The Shape of Water, on the other hand, makes do with a $19 million dollar budget and an odd creature far more believable.

Del Toro has made his Beauty and the Beast and Creature from the Black Lagoon movie all at once, spinning a yarn with his own creative threads. This is 100% Del Toro. His humor. His optimism. His love of all things macabre. More than anything, this is his heart laid bare.

AND NOW, MY TOP 10:

10. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

This is a movie bursting at the seams with confidence. It’s like James Gunn saw the positive response to the first GOTG and said, “Okay, now I can really do my thing.” The music is just as good – I never thought I’d see an action climax scored to Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” – the characters are as fun as ever, and it never forgets to dole out the laughs and the pathos in equal measure. Kurt Russell’s character and the revealing of his grand design is one of the purer cinematic pleasures I had this year, revealing that Gunn understands how to imbue his movies with deep, resonant themes just as much as he knows how to pepper in a nipple sensitivity joke.

9. Blade Runner 2049

I love to refer to masterful cinematographer Roger Deakins as “my boy”, even though he’s more than twice my age and I’ve never met him in my life. But time and time again, this guy has blown me away with the images he brings to the big screen. It’s one thing to make a movie look gorgeous – it’s another to make every shot mean and communicate something. I can’t pick a favorite Deakins-shot film; they’re all so incredible in their own way.

So when you combine the director of Arrival and Sicario – two of the best films I’ve seen in the last two years – with my boy Roger and some smart screenwriters? It’s bound to be something special. I couldn’t wait.

This movie completely overwhelmed me in the best way. I went home chewing it over in my brain for days after. It’s very rare to see something this big of a budget and yet this cerebral, and even more rare that it’s pulled off as well as it is here. Sure, there’s some things that don’t work – characters that don’t make sense, plot threads that are presented and dropped – but it’s easily overwhelmed by the absolute phantasmagoria of ideas flowing throughout it. Everyone is bringing their A-game, and it results in something that hopefully will resonate more in the future, when people take the time to give it a chance.

8. A Ghost Story

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie befuddle my mother so much. She kept asking if I had hit pause again (“No, mom, it’s just one long shot”) or if the characters speak at all to each other (spoiler alert: they eventually do) or what was up with that last shot (I’m still processing it myself).

Writer/director David Lowery (Pete’s Dragon) has done something pretty special. He’s made a deceptively small movie, centered around an Oscar-winning actor completely covered in a white bed sheet, that challenges not only our own film language, but the way we perceive our mortality.

It’s an exceptionally quiet and patient film. It never hurries. It never holds your hand, yet always plays fair. The music is the sound of ache.

Lowery himself admitted he wrote this during a period of true existential crisis. And for the first two weeks of filming, he was so sure he had made a mistake in trying this movie that he tried multiple times to shut it down. It’s an exceedingly brave risk he took, but I’m so, so very glad he did. He has crafted something as timeless as it is gutting.

7. Get OutMany have said how stunning Jordan Peele’s debut film is. As if they never knew he had it in him. But they’re forgetting the five seasons of Key & Peele that came before. I always suspected that Keegan Michael Key was more of the performer (especially since he booked so many movie roles throughout the show’s run) and Jordan more of the writer.

One of my favorite trends this year is seeing how people forget mastery doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes from people who are observant, patiently and fervently soaking up all their opportunities and not missing their one shot. Get Out is technically Peele’s debut film, but that requires forgetting Key & Peele, a show that – while always hilarious – definitely went to some dark, subversive places that even I didn’t know they had in them.

The problem with a lot of sketch comedy these days (SNL, I’m looking at you) is that they sometimes stop at the premise. There is no exploration, no extending the idea or joke. It is what it is. Key & Peele, however, reached iconic status from having sketches that always had at least one extra layer to it – if not three, four, or five. They often used the premise simply as a starting point. Then they went in every direction they could, in writing, direction, and performance.

Having said that, when I first heard Jordan Peele was making his debut film with a production company known for cheaply made horror films? I had no idea what to expect. But once the movie starts, it’s clear Jordan Peele is doing exactly what he wants to do. He knows exactly what he wants to say and exactly how he wants to execute it. There is not one false step or bit of fat in this movie. It is lean, incisive, and somehow incredibly entertaining. And while it is a movie that we’ll always tie to our political climate of 2017, I have no doubt it will be seen as a classic for many years to come.

Even more: I’m so excited to have Jordan Peele doing his thing. Keep supporting this dude.

6. Baby Driver

The collapse of Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man project meant we had to go a little longer between his films than we’d be comfortable with. But Baby Driver shows it was well worth the wait.

He’s created a colorful cast of characters surrounded by well-orchestrated car action, all scored to a delicately selected and ear-pleasing soundtrack. You can tell Wright is having just as much fun as the audience is. Writing about this movie ended up being one of the true pleasures of 2017 for me – a moment in time I’ll never forget – so mad props to Wright for being so patient with his vision and bringing something so alive and electric to the big screen.

5. The Big Sick

The first time I saw this movie, I had all the feels. I left thinking this is one of the most gentle, forgiving movies I’d seen in a long time. It’s all exemplified by an exchange when Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani) tells his comatose ex-girlfriend’s mother, Beth (Holly Hunter) that they both feel good about the upcoming surgery because the doctors know what they’re doing.

“No, they don’t,” she says. “They’re just winging like everyone else.”

Every character in this movie is struggling with something – their legacy, their career, their culture, their family, their own marriage and relationship – and they’re all doing the best they can.

But “best” looks different to everyone, and this is a movie that shows us that we can want the best for the people we love and still cause them immense pain. Nanjiani and his wife Emily Gordon have done a masterful job at taking their own true story and translating it to the big screen. They don’t leave out the thornier elements, knowing it’s only going to make the whiffs of roses a bit sweeter.

Bonus: this is probably the funniest movie I’ve seen all year.

4. The Last Jedi

This is my favorite Star Wars film yet. I’ve always enjoyed Star Wars since a couple elementary school friends taught me how to build a Star Destroyer with LEGO bricks, but it’s never been a deep passion of mine. I’d read about it and occasionally engage in delightfully nerdy conversations with other fans. But George Lucas did not ruin my childhood (guys, let’s give this dude a break, okay?), and I don’t think the world is in desperate need to have the original trilogy versions on Blu-Ray.

With that, I worried when Disney bought Lucasfilm and announced their plans for a movie every year that they would dilute the story and the brand irreparably. I enjoyed A Force Awakens and Rogue One enough, but their difficult productions could be felt in how many cool moments they could pull off, yet how much they struggled to completely string their storylines together. They also felt, for all their intergalactic endeavors, dispiritingly claustrophobic.

Enter writer/director Rian Johnson (Brick, Brothers Bloom, Looper).

Johnson wrote this script just like he writes his other movies – complete with callbacks, themes, style, and a touch of weirdness. In being allowed to pursue what interests him, we’ve been gifted what is, to me, the fullest, heartiest Star Wars yet.

I still have multiple lines (“Let the past die”) and whole scenes (the epic Throne Room battle, Holdo’s hyperspace rip-through) stuck in my head nearly 3 weeks later. It’s the first Star Wars movie I can remember immediately wanting to revisit. And the best thing about this movie is that while it embraced the power of failure, it also removed the Hero’s Journey that had begun to burden the franchise and put it back in the hands of everyone. Anyone can step up. Anything is possible. It’s an exciting time.

3. War for the Planet of the Apes

Before Mad Men and Breaking Bad, the AMC network meant one thing to me: the home of all those old Planet of the Apes movies. I would flip through the channels as a kid, only to become entranced by an installment in the series, the makeup stiff but somehow artful. More than anything, the movies played with ideas. It was a series designed to challenge our preconceived notions of what it means to be human and our place in the universe.

The new Apes trilogy has continued the tradition. I thought Dawn of the Planet of the Apes would be the high point of the series. This one-ups it in every way possible – story, ideas, effects, scope, everything – and tells a story that is as epic in its locations as it is in the depth of the emotions it explores. It’s rare to see a movie this large lean so hard into its quiet moments, and it makes the short bursts of violence and aggression all the more painful. They stuck the landing.

2. Band Aid

 

The rise of streaming giants in our culture means we’re constantly grappling with the paradox of choice. We have so many options that it’s hard to stick with something. And in being overwhelmed, it all starts to bleed together. So sometimes you need something to snap you out of it. Sometimes you need something to show you what a movie can do to you.

Band Aid was such a movie for me.

All the sudden, the possibilities of film seemed a bit more exciting and electric. They could be deeply emotional, while still being silly and charming. Writer/director Zoe Lister-Jones hired an all-female crew, something that not only set an example for others, but also pushed everyone involved to make the best film possible. They certainly succeeded.

 This movie is hilarious. It’s also incredibly, sometimes brutally honest. No punches are pulled. No emotions left unexplored. Lister-Jones masterfully balances her tears with her laughs, and the songs are as catchy and fresh as the film itself.

1. Lady Bird

The beauty of Lady Bird is in its accumulation. Every moment in this movie is so honest and, at first glance, doesn’t seem entirely significant. It’s only as the movie starts rolling towards its conclusion, punctuated by as perfect a final moment and line as I’ve seen in a movie all year, that its power is felt. And goddamn is it powerful.

Writer/director Greta Gerwig’s debut film truly takes us on a journey, with a capital J. We see all the hallmarks of your typical high school senior movie – school plays, sex, college admissions – but never as authentic and real as this. I laughed out loud nearly as much as I held my breath, astonished at the emotional weight of which Gerwig swings with. I can’t wait to revisit this film.

When I first saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in theaters, I was so taken by the quietness of it. The first twenty minutes allowed us to see a new ape civilization in its true home, deep in the woods, communicating solely through their own sign language. Whenever an action scene seemed to be coming, the film always resisted the temptation and kept its focus on the main characters: the apes themselves.

After the success of Dawn, the sequel’s title was soon announced: War for the Planet of the Apes. Seeing the title and ‘war’ in it, I expected it to be the big action epic the series seemed to hint at. I worried they would trade the stillness of Dawn for the heavy metal of action set pieces so common in big-budget films today. But I forgot that an oft-said maxim of war is that it is long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.

I should never have worried for War is long stretches of beauty punctuated by moments of terror.

Whenever sequels are made, they often feel like noisier versions of what came before. As if the team behind them simply dialed everything up to eleven. Here, though, it feels like director Matt Reeves and his own team sat down, took the opposite approach and said, “How many beautiful, soul-stirring moments can we fit into this thing?”

Because there are many. And they are all goddamn beautiful.

Lodged deep in my brain are the moments of seeing the interactions between the young girl Nova (Amiah Miller) and Maurice, the unflappable orangutan. Of seeing Nova place a small flower on the head of a fallen gorilla. Of the seamless eye communication between apes in the midst of inhumane treatment at the hands of human beings. Of Caesar watching in horror at what has happened to his kind. Of Caesar realizing how he is not so different from The Colonel, the one man he has come to kill.

I could go on and on. This movie found all of its soul and laid it bare. And it somehow wrapped a pretty cool prison break mission and some seriously explosive explosions around it without it ever feeling jarring. It also doesn’t forget to inject the story with small doses of terror, giving our ape characters very real threats that are as terrifying as they are thematically driven.

The control director Reeves and his screenwriting team have over this story is no more apparent than in two key additions: in Bad Ape (Steve Zahn) and in the simian virus that has mutated. The series has done such a great job of showing us the various types of apes – both in demeanor and in personal history – and Bad Ape, a chimp who has escaped from the zoo, further deepens those themes. He is comic relief that leavens the heavy dramatic load, but he is also another bright color in this story’s crayon box. When Caesar and his crew first arrive at The Colonel’s stronghold, they witness some humans who are struggling to speak. It turns out the simian virus that had originally wiped out humans at large has mutated into something that takes away the one thing that makes them more human than the chimps: their speech. It’s such an expected, small story development that beautifully illustrates how well the Apes team understands their own tale.

By the final moments of War for the Planet of the Apes, a flurry of goosebumps ran from my arms all the way up my spine. Days later, I’m still getting them as I write this. It is absolutely astounding to me the storytelling journey this new Apes trilogy has taken us the last six years. I hope and strongly believe that Caesar, a character bolstered by the never-less-than-incredible work of Andy Serkis, will go down as one of the greatest technical and artistic accomplishments in modern film history.

Serkis has played this character all the way from his first days as a baby chimp to his last days a leader for the new planet of the apes. In each of Caesar’s moments throughout these three movies, his eyes are impossible to miss. They draw you in. They make you feel the weight of every decision. They make you feel the conflict within his soul, as violence slowly begins to rob him of his dream. It is a travesty that Serkis will probably never get the credit he deserves for his work. Many rightfully freaked out and applauded Serkis’ work with Lord of the Rings’ Gollum. But this? This is next level. This is going to be hard to top.

This Apes trilogy is the rare bird that has not only told a whole complete story – both within and across each of the three films – but has improved each time out. I thought Dawn for the Planet of the Apes would be the high mark. I only had to wait until the next film for it to be topped. War for the Planet of the Apes somehow feels more epic and more personal all at once. I never thought I would want to see these incredibly-well-rendered apes traverse across the snow, but good God, is it a beautiful fit. The Pacific Northwest vistas are breathtaking and yet powerfully communicate the forces the apes will always be up against.

But it all comes down to the ending, a landing that War not only sticks, but does so without even a hint of stumbling. Three movies worth of story lead up to this moment. The goosebumps are undeniable. Everyone involved with this Apes trilogy has accomplished the impossible: they have used CGI monkeys (along with brave, incredible actors) to tell an incredibly human story about freedom, loss, grief, and redemption. They have proven you can build a soul within the machine, and you can lay it bare in a fashion both entertaining and heartbreaking.

When I first read the synopsis for Zoe Lister-Jones’ hilarious and achingly real directorial debut, Band Aid – “a struggling married couple turns their fights into songs and start a band” – I wondered how this musical journey would present itself. I expected something slightly awkward, a therapist tossing it out there it as a random, whimsical suggestion that somehow stuck. But I got something different, and far more honest.

Ben (Adam Pally) and Ann (Lister-Jones) have gone from an argument at home to couples therapy to a birthday party full of kids. They sneak off together only to have another argument. So they come back to the party. They pick up the nearby toy instruments. They start jamming while the toddlers crawl around them. Their made-up song is melodic and pretty, even if it’s about their fighting. It’s a silly moment, a release they so desperately need that leads to a realization they later stumble into: they had fun, and they should start a band and sing about more of these fights.

That something so random could come across so organically is a testament to Lister-Jones’ talents behind and in front of the camera, and to how incredible her and Adam Pally are at creating these very vibrant, relatable characters. They are given space throughout the film, to pause, to reflect, to despair, to do all the human things we can all relate to. They never once feel like anything less than totally real people.

Too often in relationship comedies we only get one side of the equation; we either get a couple that appears so great together that their problems feel rather lame and contrived, or they’re so miserable that we never understand why they’re together in the first place. A balance should be struck so that we, as an audience, have not just an interest in what happens to them, but so there’s also room for us to empathize with whatever decision they make. At that point, the only ending we can ask for is an honest one.

Along the way, Lister-Jones gives us several situations in which Anna and Ben are so close to making something beautiful, but they can’t quite get there. Something always goes awry. At one point the two of them go the beach and get high on mushrooms, thinking it will help their creative process. What results is Ben thinking of the most incredible song ever, which he desperately needs to get on paper before it disappears forever, only for Ann to provide him a sandwich to write his notes on. It’s agonizing to watch because they both look so happy (even if it’s drug-assisted), and yet they’re never quite able to carry that happiness over into a real life situation.

In between all of this, this movie is incredibly, bracingly funny. It never hurts to have Fred Armisen in your movie playing a weirdo, awkward character like he does so expertly, but Lister-Jones makes the comedy hit even harder with some sharp character-based laughs. I’ve always been a believer that a sharp tension between comedy and tragedy, between laughs and pathos, makes the flavors pop even more. Lister-Jones takes that dynamic and runs it throughout the entire film, making it as honest and enjoyable a movie as I’ve seen in a long time.

This is the first time I’ve posted about a movie in nearly 8 months. I’ve certainly seen many movies in that time. Some, like Mike Birbiglia’s Don’t Think Twice (an excellent double-feature with Band Aid), are still stuck in my brain, while many others have slowly slid out. It’s all become something of a blur. It all becomes visual noise in search of a signal. It’s like listening to a steadily-strummed, slightly drowsy acoustic guitar, and Band Aid is that moment when it’s suddenly plugged into an amp. It feels electric. It feels different. It feels alive.

At times I felt like characters were talking to me and pointing out my own flaws directly. Arguments sometimes sounded all too real. But it all felt honest, like Lister-Jones and her team were adamant about going past the interchangeable relationship details and diving deep into the why of how people like Anna and Ben could become so stuck. That it can do all this heavy lifting without breaking a sweat and being as funny as it is makes it something truly impressive. And the tunes. Man, the tunes are sweet.

When Ann and Ben create their songs together, you can feel the electricity, and it’s not just from their instruments. There’s something chemical and hard to replicate. They’re getting high off of each other and, as an audience, it’s hard not to get high off their improvised musical collaboration. It’s an electric feeling, the way it all combines into a greater whole, in which pain and frustration has a beautiful, cathartic release.

But then the moment’s over and it is so hard for them to replicate that feeling in the everyday life they live. They are constantly chasing moments, many of which only work when they happen organically. The few times Anna and Ben try to create a moment and force it into happening – like when they try to go ahead with their debut performance without a drummer to back them up, or when they do mushrooms to help their creative process – it comes completely undone and feels all the more crushing.

Towards the end of Band Aid, Ann and Ben have an absolutely brutal fight in which they both say things we’re not sure they’ll ever be able to move past. There is serious doubt of this relationship continuing, and it’s made all the more relatable by how carefully Lister-Jones paints their relationship and all its different shades. No punches are pulled. No emotional stones left unturned.

When we last see Ann and Ben, they’re motivated to move past about just singing about their arguments and want to think about writing a love song. But they’re both just so baffled at the idea of something so hard to wrap their arms around. They’re interrupted by the steady drip of a new leak in the house. At that point, the suggestion is clear: they’ll always have something to fix; but they’ve made a choice to do it together. It’s love. And for now, it’s all they need.