We are almost there, with the final few weeks of 2017 in sight,

Hang in there, because the lists will be coming thick and fast.

This time around it’s The Verge and their top 15 movies of the year, so you might want to jot a few down if they have somehow slipped you by.

Of course there are many whose names you will be familiar with – Get Out, Mother!, Wonder Woman and Baby Driver for example – but let’s pick three that are less well-known.

Off we go – and because I care deeply about you, you can click on the bolded movie name to head off and watch the trailer:

I, TONYA

Margot Robbie plays Harding as a lower-class striver whose poverty and lack of polish work against her from the start, in a field where she excels through raw talent and hard work, but still can’t get an even break. Steven Rogers’ script is witty and startling, full of fourth-wall-breaking gags and acknowledgements that this story comes from self-serving, contradictory interviews from figures like Harding’s mother (played with acerbic brilliance by Allison Janney) and abusive ex-husband (Sebastian Stan, looking weedy and dorky and miles off his work as Marvel’s Winter Soldier).

The story here may not entirely jibe with history, but it stands as an indictment against media-frenzy snap judgments of complicated stories, and it suggests that there’s a lot more to any tabloid tale than what the headlines suggest.

LADY BIRD

Greta Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical drama stars Saoirse Ronan as a Catholic schoolgirl trying to pin down her own identity in her senior year of high school, as her angry, hurting mother (Laurie Metcalf, in one of the year’s best performances) tries to push back against her decisions. It’s a scrapbook-like collection of thoughts and scenes — Ronan’s character, who renames herself Lady Bird, fumbles through a few romances, loses a friend and makes a new one, joins the school play, applies for college, and undergoes other little personal rites of passage. It’s a closely observed, quietly emotional film about a girl strong-willed enough to throw herself out of a car on the highway to escape an annoying conversation, but still sensitive enough to have her heart broken by boys, her mother, and her family’s poverty.

THE BREADWINNER

This grim story, set in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, also involves a young girl who’s in over her head…

Set in 2001, the film centers [sic] on 11-year-old Parvana, a girl who disguises herself as a boy when her father is arrested. Because the laws say she, her sister, and her mother can’t leave the house without a male escort, they’re left to starve without her father, so Parvana has to become the family breadwinner and escort.

In the process, she accesses an easy world of freedom where she isn’t constantly being judged and abused — until she tries to find out what’s happening to her father. This is a painful story about the human cost of oppressive religious regimes, and the horror of a system that allows bullies to mask sadism as piety. But it’s also a fiercely uplifting story about protest and resistance, and about fighting back at all cost. The fairy tale woven through the story, told by Parvana, is particularly gorgeous and heartbreaking.

Probably not ideal for that Tinder first date, but I don’t know what you’re into.

That’s three for you to consider, and you can find the other 12 HERE.

[source:theverge]