Ten Best Films Of 2017!!!

Here we are, the end of another moviegoing year. Well, actually, quite a bit past the end but better late than never. 2017 was a truly exceptional year for film and having to leave off films like It, Baby Driver, The Florida Project, Wind River, Get The Girl, The Big Sick, Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2, Brigsby Bear, Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle,  Good Time and The Disaster Artist truly hurt me. Still, I found ten films that are more than worthy of their place on this list. So without further ado, here are the ten best films of 2017, per my opinion.
(10) War On Everyone

A hysterical, witty, incredibly well acted action comedy, War On Everyone is a movie that slaps a big smile on your face that never quits and almost makes up for that other action comedy about cops that Michael Pena co-starred in last year.
(9) Crash Pad

Another movie that causes a smile that never quits, Crash Pad is moment for moment one of the funniest films I have seen in quite some time. It also is shockingly smart about the idea of marriage and the way couples act towards one another. This is not some dumb Seth Rogen knockoff....this is truly inventive stuff.

(8) My Friend Dahmer

This one isn't quite as funny but wow is it spectacular. Featuring a star making performance by Ross Lynch, My Friend Dahmer is a slick, stylish, thought provoking film that follows infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer through his high school years. The message it has about the effects of bullying make this not only a totally engaging film but a completely important one as well.

(7) Personal Shopper

Personal Shopper is a creepy, sad, wonderful little indie horror featuring an amazing performance by Kristen Stewart. It takes the audience to a place that has rarely ever been seen in film before and keeps its hooks in you until the final moments. Oh and it also makes texting super scary, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.

(6) The Killing Of A Sacred Deer 

Whether you take The Killing Of A Sacred Deer as a Stanley Kubrick-esque horror film or a really, really, really dark comedy, this is an inventive film with a wonderfully nasty edge to it. It also accomplishes the task of making the lack of humanity a positive rather than a flaw and features Barry Keoghan in a performance that is sure to have directors lining up to work with him.

(5) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Martin McDonagh knocks it out of the park again with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, a hilarious satire about how far one mother (Frances McDormand) will go to assure that there is justice in the case of her daughter being raped and murdered. It may not sound funny and it does have a dark side to it but by god is it also hysterical. 

(4) Get Out

Get Out is a lot like Pulp Fiction in that you can view it a hundred different times and pick up on new things each time as well as take away a new perspective of the film each time. This is an incredibly confident directorial debut by Jordan Peele (who also wrote the film,) a former TV sketch comedy guy who proves that he has a lot more in him than it may initially seem. 

(3) Last Flag Flying

Shocker---the Richard Linklater movie that takes place around Christmas time is high up on my list. There's also the fact that Last Flag Flying is a touching, funny and loving tribute to the brave men and women who fight for our country and that it features three top notch performances at its center as well as a powerful cameo by a certain legendary actress.

(2) Better Watch Out

To say anything about Better Watch Out would be to spoil the fun of going into it completely cold. What I will say is that this is a delightfully nasty little holiday film that keeps you guessing until the very end and that Levi Miller is a star in the making.

and the best film of 2017 is.....

(1) Lady Bird

To me, not relating to Lady Bird seems like an impossibility. This is a universally relatable story about growing up and discovering who you are. It is told with such heart, humor and sincerity that writing about how much I love it could never possibly do how amazing this film truly is justice. This is one of those rare movies like Planes Trains And Automobiles or Dazed And Confused that will surely become something I must get an emotional experience out of every year. The only way to see the beauty and the awesomeness of Lady Bird is to see it for yourself. 

Top 10 Worst Films Of 2017!!!

        Another year, another batch of horrible movies. For the most part, 2017 was an exceptional year for film, proving that there is still creativity and raw talent in Hollywood and making all of us hope that such talent are as nice as they seem. However, 2017 also provided a fair amount of absolute stinkers. Before I get into the worst of the worst, I would like to throw out a few dishonorable mentions. Among them are The Layover, Atomic Blonde, CHIPS, Daddy's Home 2,  Flatliners, Geostorm and Home Again. Also, before I get started, I would like to preface this list by saying that I do not usually like to combine films but there were two very concerning trends this year that made me feel the need to do so for this list. So without further ado, here are the films that made me feel like I was going to die while sitting in the theater.
(10) Landline

           Landline is a bunch of unlikable a-holes screaming at each other for two hours and doing terrible, unforgivable things to one another. If I were to be approached by someone resembling any of the characters in this film, I would run away as fast as possible. Jenny Slate gives one of the worst performances of the year which is especially disappointing since she showed true acting chops in the wonderful and sadly little seen drama Gifted in the same year. 

(9) Wilson 

                Incredible talent such as Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, Judy Greer, Brett Gelman, Margo Martindale and Cheryl Hines came together to make Wilson, a thoroughly unpleasant alleged comedy that I forgot about the second I left the theater. This film escapes the mind so quickly that it feels like even more of a waste of time than something that actually has the potential to get a viewer actively riled up. Roger Ebert once called the Michael Keaton comedy The Squeeze "chewing gum for the mind." If he were alive today, he would have had to pass that honor onto Wilson. 

(8) Mother/Suburbicon/Downsizing 

                 The first concerning trend this year is a trilogy of Paramount Pictures releases that tried to bring the arthouse to the mainstream. I think Universal did this better in 2017 with the reviled The Snowman (a film I happened to enjoy.) Here are three films that would be bad enough on their own if the marketing wasn't hiding what they really were. With the completely false marketing, however, they reach a new level of shameless. The worst part about these films all coming out within months of one another is that their low quality and even lower box office intake will make it even harder for directors with genuine talent to pitch their original film ideas to big studios. 

(7) Wonder Wheel

                    Let's put aside the accusations against Woody Allen for a few minutes and just embrace how unbelievably boring and unpleasant Wonder Wheel is. This film is the equivalent of someone coming out to you once the movie starts and chloroforming you. It is so incredibly boring and unpleasant that there were about 20 times that I almost got up and left and yet it's only number seven on my list. As if I have to tell you this---never, ever, ever watch this garbage.

(6) The Ottoman Lieutenant/Bitter Harvest/The Promise/Queen Of The Desert

                         The other awful trend in 2017 films---taking genuinely interesting pieces of history and turning them into dull love triangles. These four films are so bad and so mind numbingly stupid and so uninteresting that typing their titles out once again isn't even worth it. What's especially sad is that all four directors (Joseph Ruben, Terry George, George Mendeluk and Werner Herzog) have proven to be incredibly talented men behind the camera. How they wound up with such utter crap is beyond me.

(5) Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets

                         Okay, Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets did look kinda cool. However, when I want nothing more than to leave the theater and get away from two of the worst, most annoying characters in film history, something is seriously wrong with your film. 

(4) Rough Night 

                         I'm an easy critic when it comes to comedies. I'll laugh at just about anything. I find all five of the leads in Rough Night to be incredibly funny women. However, I let out one muddled laugh during the entire 105 minutes of this dreadful comedy and that was from a cashier who's in the film for two seconds who's not even in the main plot. Raunchy humor can be extremely funny if done well but it's not enough to have jokes about how one bachelorette brought along stuff shaped like the male anatomy if you're not going to do anything else with that.

(3) The Emoji Movie 

                             Low hanging fruit to be sure but The Emoji Movie is such an incredibly cynical cash grab that it has to be on this list. A film that hates children, adults, animals, trees and any other breathing organism, this is a cheap and lazy effort that proves there's plenty of room in Hollywood for absolute crap that no one (and I mean no one) could possibly enjoy.

(2) Life 

                            To be clear---I was bored out of my mind by Alien Covenant. However, at least that film managed to try something a little bit different. Life does nothing new with the space genre and is content being a painful and bland rehash of much better films. This is Alien if it were made by Uwe Boll. 

And the worst film of 2017 is....

(1) Justice League

                              This year, we had Wonder Woman, which I didn't like but at least that felt like a real film. Justice League has no personality, no conceivable plot, no real characters, nothing to make the audience want to sit and watch even a minute of it and I'm still not sure that it even exists. How could such a dreadful film be made? How could a villain that looks like a piece of CGI poop be created in the 20th century? Watching Justice League only serves as a reminder that there's way too many good movies in the world to give any attention to so called movies like this.