This was such a stellar year for movies that narrowing down our annual list of the 50 best proved extraordinarily more difficult than in years past. (Just ask poor Georgie.) He meets his match in the Losers Club, a terrific collection of kids who bring surprising humor and emotional depth to the summer chiller that became the highest-grossing horror movie ever. There’s just no way around that.” And, apologies to Tim Curry, Bill Skarsgård’s take on It‘s demon clown elevates the scary to a whole new level with his twitchy-dancing, children-chomping, nightmare-inducing Pennywise. Last year, AFI selected seven of the eventual nine Oscar Best Picture nominees including eventual winner Moonlight (the AFI list also included Zootopia, not a Best Pic nominee but winner of Best Animated Feature).Stephen King said it best to us earlier this year: “Clowns are scary. However, all hope is not lost: Three of the AFI’s top 10 last year did not go on to a Best Picture nomination from the Academy, though usually the correlation is fairly close between the two groups.

This year’s AFI list is pretty much exactly what was expected from the group and further narrows the field of serious Oscar threats to the same titles we are starting to hear over and over. Netflix was snubbed on the film side again as there was no love for its big hope Mudbound (the streaming service did score three mentions on the TV list, so Ted Sarandos will still have an invite to the AFI luncheon January 5). Other films not making the cut include Molly’s Game, Phantom Thread, Wonder, Logan, War for the Planet of the Apes, The Disaster Artist, Coco, Blade Runner 2049 and I, Tonya, in addition to the top-grossing film of 2017, Beauty and the Beast. AFI Awards: 'The Good Place', 'Handmaid's Tale', 'This Is Us', 'Stranger Things' Among TV Honorees

Top best movies 2017