This image released by Magnolia Pictures shows Terry Notary, center, in a scene from “The Square.” Notary plays a man who for his performance art, acts like an ape. He’s been chosen as the entertainment for a group of well-heeled museum investors, but the interactive bit at a fancy dinner doesn’t go as planned as he intimidates and terrorizes the nervous guests. (Magnolia Pictures via AP)LOS ANGELES – From Tiffany Haddish and that grapefruit to Wonder Woman taking on No Man’s Land by herself, here are the 10 movie moments from 2017 that we can’t stop talking about.
Beware, mild spoilers lurk below.
-NO MAN’S LAND, “Wonder Woman” – Goosebumps. I still get goosebumps thinking about Gal Gadot emerging from that trench and walking confidently with a steely calm into that empty and unwinnable field, swatting bullets away with her golden bracelets and giving hope not only to those counting on her in the film but to every woman in the audience too.
-THE SUNKEN PLACE, “Get Out” – In Jordan Peele’s part horror, part social satire “Get Out,” “the sunken place” is a brainwashing technique employed by Catherine Keener’s Missy Armitage on her daughter’s black boyfriend Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya). She hypnotizes him stirring her tea methodically and suddenly he is trapped and falling in horrifying space. On a superficial level, it made an impact as a straight horror technique, but the sunken place went even deeper than a scare tactic: Peele later explained that it represents the marginalization and silencing of African-Americans.
-APE MAN BANQUET, “The Square” – Sometimes a single scene is so rich, it could be an entire film. That’s the case with stuntman Terry Notary in Ruben Ostlund’s “The Square.” Notary plays a man who for his performance art, acts like an ape. He’s been chosen as the entertainment for a group of well-heeled museum investors, but the interactive bit at a fancy dinner doesn’t go as planned as he intimidates and terrorizes the nervous guests.