Let’s begin with the obvious caveats. First, all such lists are nonsense, because no one can read or view even a fraction of all that is published, screened or aired in a year. Second, there is no such thing as an objective measure of art or rules for it, despite the efforts of the ridiculous branch of philosophy known as aesthetics. Taste is subjective and personal. What one regards as beauty another discards as trash, though wide experience may provide a broader or more informed perspective.

That said, here’s the things that I saw in 2017 that I liked enough to recommend. But one final caveat, books and TV programs arrive almost everywhere simultaneously, but some movies that the big city got in 2016 didn’t arrive in Podunk until 2017, and some from 2017 that have been nominated for awards won’t arrive here until later in 2018.

1 “The Founder,” especially for Michael Keaton’s turn as Ray Kroc, and for a success story filled with dubious behavior. The “Citizen Kane” of burgers.

2 “20th Century Women,” is a coming of age tale with a stellar cast including Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning and Billy Crudup.

3 Speaking of Greta Gerwig, her directorial debut, “Lady Bird,” is also a California touching coming of age story with Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf as a daughter and mother who are driving each other cuckoo and Tracy Letts as the hapless father.

4 “Get Out” is the first of three comedies by people who have amused us on TV. All provide laughs, but with a serious undercurrent. This one, directed by Jordan Peele, is a dark commentary on race masquerading as a comic horror movie.

5 “Fits and Starts” with Wyatt Cenac is a little indie farce about a woebegone creative writing professor who can’t seem to finish his novel while his former student and current girlfriend, Greta Lee, publishes one acclaimed bestseller after another.

5 “The Big Sick” is a darker twist on “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” A Muslim-American stand-up comic’s traditional parents keep trying to arrange his marriage, but he is smitten with a nice American girl. She dumps him when she realizes he is too wimpy to stand up to his family. Her sudden coma provides the deus ex machina that reveals the depth of his commitment to her and wins over her parents — Holly Hunter and Ray Romano — who hijack the film. A theme is developing. The supporting cast is the star in many of this year’s films

6 “Logan Lucky” is Steven Soderbergh’s first film after a self-imposed exile from Hollywood. It’s been called a redneck “Oceans 11,” but its pedigree also includes “The Killing,” “Topkapi,” and “The Lavender Hill Mob.” Channing Tatum’s unemployed blue collar guy from Appalachia needs a cash infusion to keep his ex-wife from winning sole custody of his daughter and relocating her to another state. His solution is an elaborate heist of a NASCAR racetrack. He recruits his brother Adam Driver, sister Riley Keogh, and Daniel Craig, hilarious with hillbilly accent, as Joe Bang, an explosives expert who is essential to the plot.

7 “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” concerns the mother of a young woman who was raped and murdered, which sounds like no joke. But here it is the pretext for a pitch black comedy starring Frances McDormand, implacably furious at the police for failing to catch the killer. Woody Harrelson is the chief she harasses and Sam Rockwell his bigoted deputy. A very fine film whose mash-up of tones and genres can give you whiplash, but whose actors delight.

8 “Blade Runner 2049” seemed unlikely to rival the iconic original, but it comes surprisingly close. The world has become more dystopian, but the score and art direction are just as elegant, and the musings on what it means to be human are timely in a world populated by heartless people and androids with soul. Harrison Ford reprises Deckard, thirty years older and a lot wiser. Ryan Gosling is a replicant who tracks down his own kind.

9 “Wind River” concerns a murder on a Wyoming Indian Reservation. Its plotting is a bit schematic and its villains predictable, fossil fuel racists. But it is redeemed by fine performances of Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen and Graham Greene who investigate the crime.

10 “Downsizing” is Alexander Payne doing his quirky thing to illuminate the way we live now. Matt Damon is a man who needs to be needed and the demanding Hong Chau is just the girl to put him to work

12 “The Shape of Water” is a pastiche of 1950s horror movies and swooning forbidden love stories — “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” meets ”Love is a Many Splendored Thing.” Gorgeous to look at and notable for Sally Hawkins who lights up the screen without speaking a word, and the always expert Richard Jenkins.

Honorable mentions to “All the Money in the World,” “It,” and “The Darkest Hour” for elevating a kidnap, horror and biopic above the usual cliches, and for the performances of Christopher Plummer as John Paul Getty in “Money” and Gary Oldman as Churchill in “Hour.”

The Best foreign films I saw in 2017 included two by the incandescent Isabelle Huppert

1 In “Things to Come” she plays a frazzled philosophy professor whose husband is cheating, her mother dying, her job at risk.

2 In “Elle,” she is something else entirely. A though as nails video game entrepreneur, she is raped by an intruder and reacts in very unexpected ways. Perhaps even she is surprised.

3 “After Love” is a story for our economic times. Berenice Bejo and Cedric Kahn are divorcing after 15 years and two children, but he has put effort into improving their home and largest asset that she inherited from her mother. Until an equitable settlement can be reached, they are still living together and rubbing each other’s nerves raw.

4 “Toni Erdmann” is a comic masterpiece. The title character is a clownish elder who dons fake teeth and does funny accents. His humorless careerist daughter is all business. Since she has no time for him, he appears at her work place in disguise and proceeds to mortify her. And perhaps enlarge her perspective.

5 “The Country Doctor” stars the endearing Francois Cluzet as the only physician in a country town. He is ill and needs an understudy, and possibly a replacement. He is sent a city woman who is young, up-to-date, but unfamiliar with such an environment. Both are forced to compromise to make it work. Old-fashioned film-making, but evergreen.

6 After years of being told that Yasujiro Ozu was one of cinema’s grand masters, I finally discovered it is all true by viewing “Late Spring” and “Tokyo Story,” both small stories about quiet family conflicts, slow moving and static by today’s standards, devoid of flashy camera work, but intent on the faces of the actors and deeply moving.

Finally, films that seemed to me disappointing, overhyped, underdone, old news or over-the-top. “Dunkirk,” “The Last Jedi,” “Mudbound,” “The Florida Project,” “Beatriz at Dinner,” “The Lovers,” “The Sense of an Ending.”

Next time, Television and Books.