If it weren't for the presence and narration of Jessica Chastain, you might spend the first five minutes of Molly's Game – the frequently winning, sometimes frustrating true-life tale of high-stakes poker entrepreneur Molly Bloom – thinking you wandered into the wrong movie by mistake.

Among the movies of 2017, there have certainly been more objectively fun ones than Darkest Hour, director Joe Wright's Winston Churchill bio-pic that follows the British icon through his first weeks as prime minister, ending with his order for the historic World War II evacuation memorialized in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk. But I'm not sure that any film this year has found anyone having as much fun as Gary Oldman clearly is in his role as Churchill – and blessedly, it's a performance joy equal to the considerable joy we feel while watching him.

Over the decades, the Star Wars films have boasted so many unforgettable sounds – light sabers swooshing, R2-D2 beeping, Darth Vader breathing – that it's both unexpected and rather amazing to find the signature sound in Star Wars: The Last Jedi to be silence.

Martin McDonagh's latest genre hybrid, the comedy/tragedy/mystery/procedural Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is a mess. As messes go, though, it's one of 2017's most confident and entertaining, and might easily reward repeat viewings more than many other far-better movies.