Best Movies of 2017

Once again, I did a bad job last year of watching new movies that weren't about super heroes punching each other. I don't go to the theater very often because it's so easy to watch movies at home, and most of the movies I watch at home tend to be a little older. I stand behind everything on this list, though. They're all really good movies I'd like to watch again.

Best of 2017

10. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2


Super hero movie as bonkers space opera. Volume 2 is not as fresh and exciting as the original was a few years ago, but James Gunn recognized that he had a good thing going and didn't mess with it too much. He just made another solid, hilarious, original space adventure movie with decent dramatic chops. Family is a pretty common theme in modern action movies that try to have a heart, and this one tackles the idea head-on. It has what you would want from a sequel. More of what was cool about the original, without feeling like a retread and adding new characters and twists. Add another good soundtrack and you're all set.

9. Blade Runner 2049

There's lots of doom and gloom going around about the state of the movie industry, but I love that things like this can still get made. 2049 is a very long, slowly paced, big budget, R-rated science fiction movie. Worldwide, it probably lost the studio money. But it exists, and nobody can stop it from existing. The original Blade Runner is still revered, and its best assets were its sense of style and mood. I think 2049 captures those aspects well, with gorgeous cinematography, a soundtrack that feels both familiar and new, and an extension of the concepts of life and identity that are pretty familiar at this point. I think the movie works best as an exploration of tone and texture more than story. It tells a decent sci-fi noir mystery, but the best moments are just taking in the lavish sights and sounds. Plus it's the most tolerable Jared Leto has been in years.

8. Spider-Man: Homecoming


Super hero movie as teen comedy. Spider-Man is my favorite comic character, and it's great to see him in a movie that actually explores the original idea of a high school student juggling his powers and hunger for action with his everyday worries. Tom Holland is already my favorite actor to take the role, and he and his supporting cast create a great, fun atmosphere that backdrops the action. It really is a comedy more than anything else, though Michael Keaton's Vulture is a surprisingly good villain, with a few scary moments and exciting action beats. The movie doesn't totally follow through on the idea of responsibility that are the character's core, which is why it's not higher on this list. Still, I had a great time watching it.

7. Logan


Super hero movie as violent neo-western. I liked The Wolverine more than I think a lot of people did, and Logan goes even further in exploring the character of James Howlett and giving a different perspective on the cinematic X-Men universe. The movie takes place in a dour future where most of the famous mutants are gone, and the ones we recognize are really getting old. Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart both give standout final performances as their iconic characters. It's very R-rated, with lots of curse words and graphic violence in the action scenes, which are infrequent but always land with an impact. It's sort of the end of an era, but it also opens the door for other possibilities with the franchise. The question is whether any of that gets explored or if it all gets absorbed into Disney after recent corporate dealings.

6. Thor: Ragnarok


Super hero movie as broad cosmic farce. I enjoyed the first two Thor movies, but this is the first time the character has felt truly vital and relevant. Chris Hemsworth drips charisma and has great comic ability, and the whole cast and crew lean into that as they produce a movie that is not only grander than previous entries in the series, but also far sillier and more entertaining. It's a wonderful ensemble, with Bruce Banner, Valkyrie, Korg, and Jeff Goldblum's very Goldblum-y Grandmaster all making strong attempts to steal the movie. And while once again the villain doesn't get as much time to develop into a full character as we might like, Cate Blanchett is clearly enjoying the hell out of the role. It's a solid movie from start to finish, the best in a very strong year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

5. Get Out


Not all racism is overt. It's not all slurs and hostility. Sometimes it's just a clear change in attitude in response to a person of another race being around, or saying what you think is a compliment but comes off as another stereotype. Or sometimes it's being victim to a system of violence because people simply care less when racial minorities are targeted. Get Out takes the familiar scenario of a black man meeting his white girlfriend's family and turns it into a horror story. They're all friendly enough, but what are they really thinking and hiding? Being a true horror movie, Get Out obviously goes a bit beyond reality with the events that follow, but the scariest part of the movie is how close to reality it stays in certain aspects. This is Jordan Peele's first time directing a film, but it sure doesn't feel like it. The movie is funny and scary when it wants to be, and his style is assured at all times. I already liked him as an actor, but I'm definitely interested in anything else he tries behind the camera.

4. John Wick: Chapter 2


I enjoyed John Wick, but I did not love it to the extent that a lot of action movie fans did. It felt like another Taken with only a couple of new ideas to differentiate it. John Wick 2 though? John Wick 2 is extremely my shit. It's a combination of things, I think. The action choreography felt further developed from where it was the last time. Close up head shots are cool, but close up head shots while performing complicated martial arts takedowns are cooler. We also see a bigger variety of weapons and situations, including a fantastic succession of scenes between Wick and someone who's actually close to his equal in skill. The story had more depth to it than the functional but simple revenge tale of the first. This ties into another thing I liked, the expansion on the strange alternate universe the series takes place in, where things seem normal on the surface but there's an underground society of high rolling hitmen and codes of honor and gold coins and hobo spy networks. The situation isn't as black and white for John, as he has to decide what he's willing to do to protect himself, and considers the cost of the actions he takes. I really liked the movie more than I expected and I would love to see a third.

3. Baby Driver


Edgar Wright's fifth film is his first that wasn't based on another work or co-written with Simon Pegg, so it's an interesting look at what his personal talents and interests are. If he has a weakness, it's probably creating women characters that stand on their own, but I enjoyed the hell out of most of this movie. It's an odd hybrid of action heist film and musical, where most of the chases and shootouts are timed to match the background music, which was chosen from an eclectic variety of periods and genres. The cast is pretty outstanding, and there are unexpected twists on the pretty familiar story of a criminal with a heart of gold who just wants to get away and live a simpler life. Almost every moment just works, and it has a sort of fairy tale tone that I liked. There's talk about a sequel, and I have no idea what that would be, but I'd definitely see it.

2. Dunkirk


Dunkirk is further proof that Christopher Nolan can take any type of story or setting and turn it into a taut, tense, non-chronological, clockwork puzzle box. The Dunkirk evacuation is one of the most famous events of World War II from the British side, and this movie examines it from the perspectives of soldiers waiting on the beach for rescue, civilians recruited to retrieve them across the English channel with their own boats, and fighter pilots protecting both groups from slaughter by the Germans. Each perspective is on a different time scale, and it can get complicated trying to keep track of events you see from multiple perspectives that can occur out of order based on that timeline. You kind of can't help but smile as Nolan pulls this off in what could have been a straightforward war movie. The film is greatly buoyed by Hans Zimmer's score, which uses a ticking clock as a constant motif and keeps the tension ratcheted at all times as Nolan cuts between scenes of various intensity but a nearly constantly sense of impending doom. It's a good thing the movie's under two hours, because if it was closer to standard war movie length it might become unbearable. As it is, it's one of my favorites of the genre, without relying on the intense violence and gore that's been so common since Saving Private Ryan.

1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi


After buying the franchise rights from George Lucas, Disney released Star Wars: The Force Awakens to get people to trust that they knew what they were doing. It's a pretty good movie that hits on familiar story beats, introduces a very likable new cast of characters in addition to some familiar faces, and really doesn't do anything to rock the boat. The Last Jedi is different. It's a movie that defies expectations, tears down false beliefs, and pushes in new directions. Very much unlike The Force Awakens, it provoked strong reactions on both sides. Personally, I loved it. Following in the footsteps of The Empire Strikes Back, the best Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi allows its characters to fail. But in failure, they learn things and find out more about who they really are. How does Poe handle discovering that his piloting skills aren't enough to truly lead the resistance to a meaningful victory? Can Finn find something bigger to believe in than just the safety of himself and the people he's close to? How does Rey handle realizing that there's more to the force than magic tricks and fighting skills, and that just because a bad person is conflicted, it doesn't mean that they're capable or worthy of being saved? I think there's honest quibbles you can make about many of the moments in the film, but the questions it was asking and how they were answered felt far more important to me. It rejects things I really didn't like about the prequels or The Force Awakens, and finds a new path forward for the series that I'm looking forward to seeing explored in future sequels. Mark Hamill gave probably his best ever performance as Luke Skywalker, and I thought the handling of that character fit perfectly with the themes and scope of the story. It also has some of the best action scenes and most astonishing imagery the series has ever had. I wasn't sure there would be another great Star Wars movie again, but I believe this one was.

Delayed Entry

This is the best movie that wasn't released in 2017 but I didn't see until then.

Arrival

Denis Villeneuve directed Blade Runner 2049, but his best science fiction movie is Arrival. It starts with first contact with aliens and explores the nature of language in interesting ways, and expands from there into broader examinations of the very basics of perspective, communication, and life itself. It plays with the nature of storytelling brilliantly, showing you how basic assumptions can be wrong, all of which ties into the basic plot itself. You add in Villeneuve's skilled direction and a terrific cast and you have a pretty amazing movie.

Movie Update 28

These are some pretty runty-ass movies! They weren't bad, though.

The Good German

I've only seen two films by Steven Soderbergh, which both happened to be very populist and not terribly original. But he's known as a very experimental filmmaker, at least by Hollywood standards, and even if you don't like The Good German very much, you have to admit it's ambitious. I ended up enjoying its modern day take on lots of old noir tropes, but more interesting than the film itself is the way it is dedicated to the style of the period. It's in black and white, and more than that the way it was filmed is very much the traditional old way, with old cutting and old blocking and everything. It doesn't really actually look like it was made in the 40s, because of the lighting, and because of the weird disconnect with the very modern standards of sex, violence, and language. I don't understand the point of going this far with replicating a look without replicating a tone as well. But you can't say the whole thing isn't interesting. And I think George Clooney and Cate Blanchett make a good pair on-screen, anyway.

The Red Badge of Courage


A war film by John Huston, based on a book about a soldier in the Civil War who fears death and yet yearns to earn his own war wounds and be looked well upon by others. It's an odd movie for a couple of reasons, most notably the incredibly on-the-nose narration, which not only directly quotes the original novel but also addresses the audience in a weird, hitting-you-over-the-head kind of way. It definitely wasn't surprising that this was added by the studio against Huston's wishes, and that they also cut the film down to its scant 70 minute running time, which is hardly enough time to develop themes, especially when so much of that time is just Huston's (admittedly well shot) war scenes. There's the potential for a great 50s war movie in here, but it was lost between filming and release.

Tetro


Francis Ford Coppola's post-70s career is frustrating, showing little evidence that a man who could create a film as perfect as The Godfather still knows what he is doing. Tetro is interesting though, a more personal project than most of his other work, about a couple of estranged brothers who reunite in Spain. It's shown in black and white except for flashbacks, and shows the devastating effect certain actions can have on family ties. It's not exactly the most entertaining movie ever, but there's definitely some stuff going on here that you don't really see in most other movies. It's also really nice to look at, with some stylistic experiments and just really good cinematography throughout. Definitely the best thing I've seen by him that was released in the last 30 years.

Thor: Tales of Asgard


That cover is misleading; it shows a grown up Thor, but the film takes place in his more formative years, before Loki was evil, and before Odin even allowed him to venture out of Asgard. At least they didn't extend the lie far enough to show him holding the hammer. Tales of Asgard isn't much different from the other Marvel movies, being competently animated and telling a pretty standard story, although being Thor, it's less a typical sci-fi action plot and more a typical fantasy one. Thor goes on a journey with Loki, hangs with the warriors three, gets help from Sif, and accidentally gets into some bad shit with the frost giants. As a supplement to the live action film... it's fine. There's nothing terribly exciting about it, but it doesn't really mess up anywhere either. It's a way to pass 70 minutes if you like comic books, I guess.

Thor

The truth is, Thor is kind of a silly premise for a movie, and it's a bit difficult to reconcile it with the rest of the Avengers project. Marvel characters in general, at least the most famous ones, all have fantastical origins, but at least they're based in some sort of scientific premise. Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four were all hit by some sort of radiation. The X-Men mutated. Iron Man uses amazingly advanced technology. But Thor is literally a god or god-like being from another dimension. He's part of the grander, weirder, more out-there side of the Marvel tapestry, a side that has gone mostly ignored in major films to this point. I liked the few Thor comics I've read and have high hopes for The Avengers next year, so I was hoping Kenneth Branagh and his cast could pull off some pretty difficult material reasonably well, and I was satisfied by the results. Thor isn't exactly great, but it's a lot of fun, and considering the degree of difficulty one of the most successful comic book super hero adaptations to date.

The key to Thor's success is that it's funny. With the figures of an ancient mythology transformed into extradimensional aliens who wear science fiction plate armor and ride rainbow bridge lightning bolts to other worlds, the whole thing could have failed just by being too silly. But there's a lot of humor intentionally injected into the story, which allows a lot of the goofier moments to slide on by and just be part of the fun. If the movie took itself too seriously, it could have been a disaster, but the tone is just right to get away with it. Most of the significant characters get a chance to tell a joke or two, and while a few moments still come off as funny without trying, they don't do much to harm the story.

The film jumps back and forth between two locations: Asgard, where Thor's allies try to unravel Loki's plot to overthrow him, and a small town in New Mexico where Thor meets a trio of scientists and tries to recover his lost powers. I enjoyed the New Mexico side of the movie more, because that's where most of the fun was, including a lot of solid fish-out-of-water humor and an exciting confrontation with the intimidating and well-executed Destroyer. Chris Hemsworth is surprisingly outstanding as Thor, pulling off his entitled arrogance without making himself unlikable, and gradually realizing what it takes to truly be noble. It's obvious he wasn't cast only because of his looks. The scientists are played by Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgård, and Kat Dennings, and the group dynamic between all four is pretty fun. The romance angle seems a bit forced because of the short time scale the story is operating on, but it works out okay because Portman and Hemsworth make a good team. Thor struggling to understand human society is probably the best part of the movie, and I could have sat through a lot more of that.

On Asgard, the movie is more like a slightly stranger version of The Lord of the Rings. There's a power struggle between Thor and Tom Hiddleston's Loki, as they both wish to prove to Odin, played with enthusiasm by Anthony Hopkins, that they are fit for rule once he steps down. Thor fights a bunch of frost giants with Sif and the Warriors Three, Idris Elba's Heimdall is a complete bad-ass, and the movie's version of Loki's plotting and realization of his past is fairly interesting. The two sides of the movie come together near the end as the action climaxes and Thor ends up back where he was, but of course with a tease that he'll return next year. There's a decent amount of legwork done to continue the set up for The Avengers, both as part of the central plot as SHIELD sets up camp around Thor's immovable hammer and in the requisite tease after the credits. Nick Fury and Hawkeye make cameos, and we learn what classic doohicky will prove important down the road. I thought the movie integrated the overarching stuff with its own plot better than say, Iron Man 2 did, and while the visual effects and action weren't amazing, they were adequate enough. The real strength here is the cast, and the film worked best when the focus was on the actors instead of the more fantastical stuff, which was okay but got in the way just a bit. And now we're only a couple months away from the next step in this crazy journey.

Thor: Latverian Prometheus

I actually know Kieron Gillen as a writer of video game journalism on the Internet, but apparently he writes comics as well. These few issues wrap up the most important plot points left behind by J. Michael Straczynski, mostly by having dudes fight each other a lot. Asgard takes on its fallen comrades twisted by Doom's experiments, and Thor takes on the Doctor himself. It's a pretty entertaining, well drawn book, if a bit lacking in the more interesting story parts of what came earlier. Loki manages to worm his way out of a real punishment for his scheme, but that's entirely to be expected in a comic book like this. This all leads into Siege, a big crossover story that ended last month and featured Thor heavily. I'm not really planning on digging much deeper into Thor, But it was a fun story while it lasted. This volume also includes a single issue story about Sif, but I didn't like it very much as it was about weird aliens. I mean... it's weird enough to deal with a universe where Norse gods live alongside visitors from another world, putting them together just isn't something I really want to see. Ah well. Comic books!

Thor, Volume 3

These four issues continue the story and represent the end of J. Michael Straczynski's contributions to the title, although they don't actually wrap much up, I was disappointed to learn. The quality of the book is right where it should be, I just figured he would have stayed on until he finished what he started. A couple important things get done, but he leaves the main conflict for the next writer to worry about. The next trade comes out next month and should take care of things because the Siege event takes up precedence after that, so it won't be too long before I see the end. There's more setup in this one, as Loki starts enacting his plan with Doctor Doom in earnest to exploit the powers of Asgardians and Thor reunites with a number of his more loyal friends. I find the subplot with Kelda and the cook from a diner a bit hard to believe, but it proves to be very important by the end of the volume, causing a chain of events that will lead straight to the conclusion. I don't plan on reading beyond that, but I've enjoyed reading the book for a little while, and that along with the tease at the end of Iron Man 2's credits has my excited for the movie.

Thor, Volume 2

This volume continues pretty directly from the last, with art by Olivier Coipel and Marko Djurdjevic (whose work I think actually fits the tone of Thor a bit better) and still written by J. Michael Straczynski. The first couple issues delve into the history between Thor and his father Odin, and show a really interesting side of Asgard. The rest of the book is devoted to Loki's grand plan to usurp Thor and eventually take over the throne; conniving with Doctor Doom, sowing distrust, and even jumping through time to make sure certain events happen. It sort of makes his origins into a giant predestination paradox, but the way he flippantly ignores any problems with that is pretty funny. By the 600th issue, his plan is in full motion, as Thor is forced into battle against his grandfather who's been magically trapped for years. It's sort of silly sounding I know, but I really enjoyed this volume a lot. Interesting story, good characters, and nice comic book art.

Thor, Volume 1

Nearly all of the Marvel comics I've talked about on this blog were borrowed from a friend who loves the universe, and I mostly stuck to events and crossovers. I started letting him pick though, and this time he loaned me something a little different - just some regular comics. Specifically, Warren Ellis' run on Thunderbolts and J. Michael Straczynski's stint at the beginning of the current, third volume of Thor (not to be confused with this trade paperback being the first volume to collect his work). It's basically a reboot of the story and characters after Ragnarok finally happened and the series took a break for a few years, except one that doesn't forget what already happened. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and I still don't understand everything about how this works coming into the book pretty much blind, but I liked it.

These issues are mostly just dedicated to reestablishing Thor and the other Asgardians, as well as setting up plot threads for later. Not a ton really happens, though there are some interesting encounters, especially a scrape against Iron Man (who frankly deserves all the crap he gets for the Civil War fiasco) in the middle of a destroyed New Orleans. I'm not too clear on how the existence of Norse mythological figures and events fits with the overall Marvel universe but basically Thor's human alter ego (they are two distinct people who normally coexist in one place and basically trade off on who gets to do stuff) helps him wake up from some sort of eternal sleep/death. After that he recreates Asgard and starts waking up his friends who are stuck inside the minds of other mortals. There's some pretty funny stuff where the various gods are interacting with normal folks, and it's not long before it's clear Loki's up to his old tricks again (though I guess really they're pretty new tricks), so there's enough stuff going on in these six issues to keep it interesting despite not a lot of action. Sometimes Olivier Coipel's faces are a bit weird but he's still a solid artist and fits the book's tone, and Straczynski definitely knows how to spin a yarn. There are two more volumes to this story arc, and having already read one of them, I can hardly wait to finish.