'Mudbound' tops Mark Olsen's 10 best films of 2017

It's as if the movies answered our call. In a year that has seemed long and confusing, movies became an unexpected centering point, a beacon. As the era of "Peak TV" has toppled over on itself, cinema at least partly took back the reins of cultural conversation. Amid an ongoing onslaught of news and information, the idea of genuinely focusing on something else for a few hours often seemed the better thing to do.

Going back to January's Sundance Film Festival, which coincidentally overlapped with the presidential inauguration, the movie year has been locked in a strange push-pull with current events and the real world.

The world on-screen became a renewed source of reflection, both by