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2017 IN REVIEW – My Favorite Films of the Year
Alright, so I had intended to get this done a while ago – weeks ago, in fact, but at least before the Oscars. Naturally, life, as it does, gets in the way of ambitions, and so I’m releasing it as soon as I could.
2017 was a terrible year, but it wasn’t all bad in terms of the films that came out. In fact, there were quite a few that I loved this year, and… well, here they are! Below are the films from 2017 that either I personally enjoyed the most or that resonated with me the most. As such, I do not call them “the best,” but I do consider them to be exemplary. Unlike my previous two lists, each film is categorized roughly into the genre I think it (mostly) fits into (there’s always going to be overlap), and then in the usual ascending order of quality within the genre.
Even with all these, I can’t say I’m not relieved this is all over, finally. I kinda want to go back to reviewing films now, and 2018 is already well underway now… Read more…
2017 IN REVIEW – The Worst Films of the Year
They can’t all be winners, and, as with any year, 2017 had some real stinkers. For the most part, I actually tried avoiding a lot of some of the apparent worst, but a few managed to either slip by me or, God help me, I sought them out just out of morbid curiosity.
The movies below are listed according to an admittedly somewhat arbitrary order based on gut instinct and memory, but while some of these may shift around a bit over time and even from day to day, you can bet these are all pretty terrible, with the top contenders being… well, some of the worst movies of 2017.
2017 IN REVIEW – The Films Between Two Extremes
Okay, so I’m very behind. I have decided on dropping the whole review of films I hadn’t seen yet thing with 2017. It took me way too long, and, with this year in particular, I just wasn’t feeling it. December and January were hard months for me – as was most of 2017 – but I also felt as though I’d seen most of the films I wanted to, even while reviewing the ones I had missed. And so, I break with a longstanding tradition and skip straight to talking about the films I have seen, starting with the films that I neither felt were awful nor were among my favorites.
Below you’ll find the 50 films(!) that fell within this category along with a brief-ish summary of how I felt about them – and how critics in general felt about them with the included Rotten Tomatoes score. These are not intended to be reviews, and I also warn you that in the interest of finishing this by Oscars night, I did not double check my writing, so I apologise for the roughness. But then again, nobody’s apologizing to me about the roughness that was 2017, so… screw it. Here we go!
REVIEW – Logan
Directed by: James Mangold
Produced by: Hutch Parker, Simon Kinberg, Lauren Shuler Donner
Screenplay by: Scott Frank, James Mangold, Michael Green
Story by: James Mangold
Edited by: Michael McCusker, Dirk Westervelt
Cinematography by: John Mathieson
Music by: Marco Beltrami
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Richard E. Grant, Eriq La Salle, Elise Neal, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Jayson Genao
Year: 2017
Released in 2000, about 3 years after the abomination known as Batman & Robin seemingly killed off the superhero film genre, the first X-Men, even more so than its 1998 predecessor Blade, proved that comic book superhero movies really could find new life in cinemas, provided that the filmmakers took their subjects seriously. While Fox’s X-Men films have had more than their fair share of stumbles, particularly last year’s massively disappointing X-Men: Apocalypse as well as more egregious works like X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Last Stand, they have also proven that the studio is willing to take some bold chances, too, rebooting and reorienting timelines with period films, or greenlighting a breakout R-rated comedy action film that proved that risks sometimes pay off with Deadpool. By far, however, the breakout element out of any of these films has been Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, who has been a constant presence throughout all these films from the very beginning, appearing in films even when his presence wasn’t necessarily needed because the studio knew he was just that good in the role. Hugh Jackman’s a talented guy, no doubt, but we’re all curious about whether or not it would have been as good as it has been had it not been for his casting in the first X-Men film – something that both nearly didn’t happen and was once a controversial decision at the time due to Jackman’s height betraying the comic character’s usually small stature. That was over 17 years ago, however, and now we’re facing the end of an era, with Jackman declaring Logan will be his final film as the iconic berserker. And thank God for that, as I think we’d all be disappointed if his cameo in Apocalypse was the end and not the phenomenal Logan – a film that may very well be the best superhero adaptation since The Dark Knight. Read more…