We are now halfway through the year and as has become an annual tradition here at The End, it’s time to look back at the best movies of the year so far. As I discussed in the 2013 halfway post, the consensus movie-dating system is nonsensical and posits New York as the center of the universe. Far more logical (and much easier to use) is a system reliant on imdb’s dating system, which locates a film in whatever year it first played for an audience. That’s what we use here for all Rankings & Awards as it’s the most fair to all eras and areas. (A dating system reliant on playing in a certain locality I think can be valuable for a publication that is geographically specific, like a local newspaper or website, which is what we use at Seattle Screen Scene. But here at The End, we have a global reach.)

A by-product of the system is that a number of films that first go into wide-release in any given year actually had their premiere in the year before. A number of the films on many critics’ halfway-point lists will include these films, films that find their proper home here on my 2016 list. And so here we have two lists: the Best Movies of 2017, following the strict imdb dating system, and the Best 2016 Movies of 2017, which includes those films from last year that you might find on a more chronologically-illogical list (and despite the title, also includes one film from 1985, which only premiered in New York this year). I also have a third list, Best Unreleased Movies of 2016, of last year’s films that have yet to see a New York release and therefore don’t (yet) exist by the standards of most critics. And a fourth list, a halfway version of my annual Best Older Movies list, counting the top movies I saw for the first time this year that are more than a few years old.

The Best Movies of 2017 (So Far)

1. Baahubali: The Conclusion (SS Rajamouli)

2. On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong Sangsoo)

3. Get Out (Jordan Peele)

4. Columbus (Kogonada)

5. Claire’s Camera (Hong Sangsoo)

6. Song to Song (Terrence Malick)

7. Chang-ok’s Letter (Shunji Iwai)

8. Landline (Gillian Robespierre)

9. Journey to the West: Demons Strike Back (Tsui Hark)

10. A Ghost Story (David Lowery)

11. The Day After (Hong Sangsoo)

12. This is Not What I Expected (Derek Hui)

13. Person to Person (Dustin Guy Defa)

14. Love Off the Cuff (Pang Ho-cheung)

15. Long Strange Trip (Amir Bar-Lev)

16. Mr. Long (Sabu)

17. The Little Hours (Jeff Baena)

The Best 2016 Movies of 2017 (So Far)

1. Dawson City: Frozen Time (Bill Morrison)

2. A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies)

3. Taipei Story (Edward Yang)

4. Your Name. (Makoto Shinkai)

5. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (Paul WS Anderson)

6. By the Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong)

7. Hermia & Helena (Matías Piñeiro)

8. The Lost City of Z (James Gray)

9. Split (M. Night Shyamalan)

10. After the Storm (Koreeda Hirokazu)

11. Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)

12. The Ornithologist (João Pedro Rodrigues)

13. My Journey through French Cinema (Bertrand Tavernier)

14. The Human Surge (Eduardo Williams)

The Best Unreleased Films of 2016 (So Far)

1. Yourself & Yours (Hong Sangsoo)

2. The Hedonists (Jia Zhangke)

3. Pop Song (Matthew Taylor Blais)

4. Yellowing (Chan Tze-woon)

5. HyperNormalization (Adam Curtis)

6. Rat Film (Theo Anthony)

7. Bad Black (Nabwana IGG)

8. A Bride for Rip Van Winkle (Shunji Iwai)

9. Let Your Heart Be Light (Sophy Romvari)

10. Trivisa (Jevons Au, Vicky Wong & Frank Hui)

11. Kékszakállú (Gastón Solnicki)

12. Never Eat Alone (Sofia Bohdanowicz)

13. Curses (Jodie Mack)

14. My Beloved Bodyguard (Sammo Hung)

15. Lifeline (Shiota Akihiko)

2017 Discoveries (So Far)

1. 5 Centimeters per Second (Makoto Shinkai, 2007)

2. Mambo Girl (Yi Wen, 1957)

3. A Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker, 1977)

4. At Long Last Love (Peter Bogdanovich, 1975)

5. The TAMI Show (Steve Binder, 1964)

6. The Goddess (Wu Yonggang, 1934)

7. Eight Taels of Gold (Mabel Cheung, 1989)

8. The Wild, Wild Rose (Wong Tin-lam, 1960)

9. Ace Attorney (Takashi Miike, 2012)

10. Let it Be (Michael Lindsay-Hogg, 1970)

11. A Fishy Story (Anthony Chan, 1989)

12. Touchez pas au grisbi (Jacques Becker, 1954)

13. Miracles: Mr. Canton & Lady Rose (Jackie Chan, 1989)

14. Love and Duty (Bu Wancang, 1931)

15. The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996)

16. The Garden of Words (Makoto Shinkai, 2013)

17. Chicken and Duck Talk (Clifton Ko, 1988)

18. Diau Charn (Li Han-hsiang, 1958)

19. Monterey Pop (DA Pennebaker, 1968)

20. All About Women (Tsui Hark, 2008)

21. Romance of the Western Chamber (Hou Yao, 1927)

22. A Bittersweet Life (Kim Jeewoon, 2005)

23. The Beguiled (Don Siegel, 1971)

24. Infernal Affairs II (Andrew Lau & Alan Mak, 2003)

25. Teppanyaki (Michael Hui, 1984)

26. Sunday in Peking (Chris Marker, 1956)