The Village Voice Film Poll

It’s hard to feel too down on a film year in which titles like Phantom Thread, Lady Bird, Get Out, and Call Me by Your Name are vying for major awards and accolades. Those are the movies that not unpredictably placed the highest in our 2017 survey; they’re also among this year’s Best Picture nominees for next month’s Oscars. Still, our poll did offer up one genuine surprise, as Paul Thomas Anderson’s delicate, poisonous mushroom of a romance bested its rivals and landed on top. So, there you have it: Phantom Thread, winner of the 2017 Village Voice Film Poll.

To be fair, the Voice poll does like PTA: The Master and There Will Be Blood came out on top in 2012 and 2007, respectively, and even his divisive Thomas Pynchon adaptation Inherent Vice had a respectable showing in 2014. (In fact, every film Anderson made since 1999 has placed in our Top Ten; view past results of the Village Voice Film Poll here.) But perhaps more significantly, Phantom Thread is the kind of work — patient, subtle, sexy, disturbing — that sinks into your brain and lingers there for a while. It was a pleasant surprise to see it do so well with Oscar nominations; maybe these added weeks of reflection will prod the Academy to throw it an actual statue or two.

Elsewhere in the Voice poll, there were plenty of the usual, albeit worthwhile, suspects winning their respective categories, but dig a little deeper and there are all sorts of interesting choices to be found. David Lynch, for example, had a fairly respectable showing in the Best Director category for a work that many people don’t even consider a film. (More on that later.) It’s nice also to see some love for Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama and Kogonada’s Columbus, as well as actors like Cynthia Nixon and Barry Keoghan.

Naturally, there’s more to come. Over the course of this week, we will be presenting a number of reflections on the year in film from different writers. We’ll also provide, on Friday, the full results, as well as individual ballots. So please feel free to check back often. —Bilge Ebiri

Best Film:

1. Phantom Thread (348 points)

2. Lady Bird (326 points)

3. Get Out (318 points)

4. Call Me by Your Name (305 points)

5. The Florida Project (289 points)

6. Dunkirk (202 points)

7. Personal Shopper (169 points)

8. Nocturama (165 points)

9. A Quiet Passion (161 points)

10. The Shape of Water (152 points)

Best Lead Performance:

1. Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird (121 points)

2. Timothée Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name (108 points)

3. Cynthia Nixon, A Quiet Passion (101 points)

4. Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread (86 points)

5. Kristen Stewart, Personal Shopper (85 points)

6. Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water (81 points)

7. Vicky Krieps, Phantom Thread (77 points)

8. Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (72 points)

9 (tie). Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out (52 points)

9 (tie). Robert Pattinson, Good Time (52 points)

Best Supporting Performance:

1. Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird (199 points)

2. Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project (147 points)

3. Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip (132 points)

4. Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread (101 points)

5. Michael Stuhlbarg, Call Me by Your Name (74 points)

6. Allison Janney, I, Tonya (56 points)

7. Barry Keoghan, The Killing of a Sacred Deer (52 points)

8. Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (49 points)

9 (tie). Mary J. Blige, Mudbound (43 points)

9 (tie). Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water (43 points)

Best Director:

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread (65 points)

2. Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird (52 points)

3. Jordan Peele, Get Out (51 points)

4. Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk (49 points)

5. Luca Guadagnino, Call Me by Your Name (42 points)

6. Sean Baker, The Florida Project (41 points)

7. Bertrand Bonello, Nocturama (37 points)

8. David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return (31 points)

9 (tie). Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water (22 points)

9 (tie). Dee Rees, Mudbound (22 points)

Best First Feature:

1. Jordan Peele, Get Out (42 points)

2. Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird (15 points)

3. Kogonada, Columbus (10 points)

4. Eduardo Williams, The Human Surge (6 points)

5. Julia Ducournau, Raw (5 points)

Best Documentary:

1. Agnès Varda and JR, Faces Places (20 points)

2. Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous, The Work (11 points)

3. Bill Morrison, Dawson City: Frozen Time (10 points)

4. Errol Morris, Wormwood (8 points)

5. Ceyda Torun, Kedi (7 points)

Best Screenplay:

1. Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird (22 points)

2. Jordan Peele, Get Out (17 points)

3. Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread (14 points)

4 (tie). Noah Baumbach, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (4 points)

4 (tie). Terence Davies, A Quiet Passion (4 points)

4 (tie). James Ivory, Call Me by Your Name (4 points)

4 (tie). Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (4 points)

4 (tie). Ruben Östlund, The Square (4 points)

Best Animated Film:

1. Lee Unkrich, Coco (21 points)

2. Nora Twomey, The Breadwinner (13 points)

3. Chris McKay, The LEGO Batman Movie (11 points)

4. Makoto Shinkai, Your Name (8 points)

5. Sunao Katabuchi, In This Corner of the World (6 points)

The Voters:

Simon Abrams, Sam Adams, Siddhant Adlakha, Florence Almozini, Mallory Andrews, David Ansen, Ali Arikan, Sean Axmaker, Jason Bailey, Miriam Bale, Abbey Bender, Sheila Benson, Christian Blauvelt, Danny Bowes, Charles Bramesco, Sean Burns, Monica Castillo, Daryl Chin, Jaime Christley, Jake Cole, Sherilyn Connelly, Adam Cook, Jordan Cronk, Mike D’Angelo, Freja Dam, Morgan Leigh Davies, Peter Debruge, A.A. Dowd, Diana Drumm, Alonso Duralde, Bilge Ebiri, David Ehrenstein, Eric Eisenberg, Kate Erbland, Steve Erickson, Chris Evangelista, Molly Faust, David Fear, Jon Frosch, Cynthia Fuchs, Noah Gittell, Tim Grierson, Karen Han, Jesse Hassenger, Eric Henderson, Odie Henderson, Aaron Hillis, Jordan Hoffman, Eric Hynes, Caryn James, Ren Jender, Don Kaye, Ben Kenigsberg, Jonathan Kiefer, Nellie Killian, Dan Kois, Michael Koresky, Peter Labuza, Tomris Laffly, Joanna Langfield, Josh Larsen, Richard Lawson, Manuela Lazic, Will Leitch, Diego Lerer, Craig D. Lindsey, Phillip Lopate, Willow Maclay, Calum Marsh, Ben Mercer, Sean Mulvihill, Angelo Muredda, Noel Murray, Vikram Murthi, Sophia Nguyen, Michael Nordine, John Oursler, Gerald Peary, Sasha Perl-Raver, Ray Pride, Matt Prigge, C.J. Prince, Kristy Puchko, Jeff Reichert, Katey Rich, Vadim Rizov, Joshua Rothkopf, Mike Rubin, Nick Schager, Alan Scherstuhl, Michael Sicinski, David Sims, Matt Singer, Josh Spiegel, Emma Stefansky, David Sterritt, Elizabeth Stoddard, Alice Stoehr, Anne Thompson, Luke Thompson, Scott Tobias, Kyle Turner, Kathleen Walsh, Chris Wells, Matthew Wilder, Alissa Wilkinson, Alison Willmore, Charles Wilson, Kristen Yoonsoo Kim, Lara Zarum, Alan Zilberman, Esther Zuckerman

Ground Rules:

Voting took place in eight categories. For four of those categories (Best Film, Best Lead Performance, Best Supporting Performance, and Best Director), voters were given the option to designate their ballots as “ranked” or “unranked.”

This year, we decided to make the acting categories gender-neutral but increased the number of people that voters may vote for in each from three to five.

On ranked ballots, voters were asked to list their selections in order of preference, with number one their strongest, number two their next strongest, and so forth. For example, in the Best Film category, where ten votes are possible, their number one choice was awarded ten points, their number two choice nine points, etc. If a voter only listed eight films, then his or her number one film was awarded eight points, the number two film seven points, etc.

On ballots designated as “unranked,” films were awarded five points each, performances three each, and directors two each. Ties of any kind (e.g., two films for one slot, one actor for two films, two actors for one film, etc.) were not permitted.

Eligibility:

A film was considered eligible if it was first distributed, streamed, or released in the United States in 2017. If piece of work met that criteria and a voter considered it a film, then he or she was instructed to feel free to vote for it.