2017 Movies

This Decade | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |

All Decades | 1900 | 1910 | 1920 | 1930 | 1940 | 1950 | 1960 | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2010 |

The Year in Review

Of all things, I wasn't expecting Wonder Woman to top this years movies. There were a lot of good contenders, with IT and Thor being particularly noteworthy. Thor was my original choice but on retrospective, it seemed too much like a Guardians of the Galaxy wannabe (and the year was quite crowded with them; Thor Ragnarok, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Valerian). I also considered IT for sheer atmosphere but then how hard is it to make a remake?

Wonder Woman was different. It was the first proper Female superhero movie and it projected a very good image for Women in a year where so much came out about the oppression of women in cinema (#HarveyWeinstein). It also became the highest grossing movie with a female director, something else to aspire to. Most of all though, it carved out its own niche in an already overcrowded superheroes market and demonstrated both the value of historical superhero movies (a nod to Captain America there) and the way to do a DC movie properly. Something that the Justice League movie that followed it (with higher paid male directors) failed to do.

... and, If nothing else, 2018 is the year that Disney completely dropped the ball on Star Wars. I liked the Prequels but I don't like the Last Jedi. So while I was worried about Star Wars taking out top spot, I needn't have worried. It didn't even earn a spot in my top picks of the year.

My Top Picks

  1. Wonder Woman: A Whole lot better than I was expecting. The best of the DC movies so far. This one had a lot of heart and

  2. Thor: Ragnarok: I wasn't even planning to see this movie but the trailers kept getting better and better. In the end, I went to see it and the best bits were the bits that weren't in the trailer. The Kiwi rock monster was incredible.

  3. IT Part 1: A remake but a very good remake.

  4. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: An intensely colourful and interesting movie. It's a very welcome return to Sci-Fi for Luc Besson

  5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: This was fun. Bright, colourful and fun.

  6. Passengers: Unexpectedly good. I almost didn't go to see this because of the bad reviews.

  7. GeoStorm: Yeah, it was a screensaver and it had its share of WTF moments, particularly script-wise but it was still fun.

  8. Spider-man Homecoming: The best Spider-man film in a long, long time. Possibly the best ever.

Notable Mentions ("Surprise" Films)

  • Passengers: The reviews were terrible but the movie was actually pretty good.

  • CHiPs: I wasn't looking forward to this at all. CHiPs, the TV series was okay at the time, perhaps even good but a movie.... nah.... Except it was. It was really funny.

  • Kong: Skull Island: Better than Peter Jackson's Kong. Shorter, faster paced and not quite so silly.

  • Great Wall: Unexpectedly good, especially in 3D.

  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales: If I wasn't trapped on a 24 hour plane flight, there's no way I would have watched this. I bombed out halfway through the (far too long) second instalment. I approached this with great trepidation as I usually won't watch a film out of sequence. It was pretty good though and I didn't feel like I'd missed anything much by not watching 2-4.

  • Coco: I was all set to hate this movie for being a rip off of "The Book of Life" but it was so good that it was hard to dislike it.

  • Wonder: A great feel-good movie.

  • Downsizing: Something different for a change. Better than expected.

  • Dog's Purpose, A: A Great film for people who love dogs.

  • Spider-man Homecoming: I really had Spider-man fatigue and I wasn't planning to watch this at all except that the kids said it was good and it was available in 3D. Impressed. I might yet watch another spidey film.

The Biggest Disappointments

  • Rings: Even if they'd just remade the first it would have been better than this. No story, no rules, just drivel.

  • Lego Batman Movie: Loved the original Lego movie. Love Batman, especially love 60's batman. Love the Lego Batman games, loved all the lego batman trailers. Hated the movie. Wow.

  • Life: I thought Alien Covenant was a letdown. I couldn't even get through life.

  • Mummy, The: Not as good as Brendan Fraser's mummy, not as good as Christopher Lee's and certainly not as good as the Boris Karloff originals.

  • Resident Evil: The Final Chapter: Ending with a whimper rather than a bang. I got the feeling that after her friend was so badly injured on set, Milla's heart just wasn't in it anymore.

  • Blade Runner 2049: It's not that Blade Runner was a terrible movie, it's just that I was already tired when I went to the cinema and I didn't expect a three hour epic. There was no way the film needed to be three hours long. It would have been better to have a shorter and more action packed cinema film with an excitingly different Blu-Ray release. It makes it worth buying the film then. There was a great concept and story trying to get out... it was just trapped inside some poor editing. I know I'll love this on DVD/Blu-Ray but I didn't like it at the cinema.

  • Alien Covenant: They had a reasonably good set-up at the end of Prometheus but they killed it. I think this film pretty much confirms that Ridley's original entry into the Alien franchise was a fluke. The worst of the Alien movies. Possibly even worse than AVP 2.

  • Beauty and the Beast: This was simply awful. The singing was bad and it just . wouldn't . stop. arrgh. The cartoon version was so much better.

  • Annabelle 2: Annabelle Creation: The Annabelle and Conjuring series was such a great series with so many hits that it was bound to have a miss eventually. Funnily enough, there was a flashback scene in the middle of the movie which showed us what the movie should have been about.

  • Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi: After the reasonably good "compilation of the best bits of Star Wars" that was "The Force Awakens", it became clear with the Last Jedi that the writing team was struggling with the material. Instead of doing something different and well-written, like the Thrawn trilogy, they opted to blaze their own trail with a sub-par story in which the main aim was to kill off all the old trilogy characters. There were pop culture references, which don't belong in a Star Wars film and then there was that Princess Leia scene which looked like it belonged in a Marvel film.

All the films I've seen at the Cinemas in 2017

  1. Passengers

  2. Rings

  3. Logan

  4. Alien: Covenant

  5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

  6. John Wick 2

  7. Alien Covenant

  8. Wonder Woman

  9. IT Part 1

  10. Blade Runner 2049

  11. GeoStorm

  12. Thor: Ragnarok

  13. Justice League

  14. Wonder

  15. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

  16. Jumanji

Films from 2017 that I saw on the "small screen"

  1. Annabelle 2: Annabelle Creation

  2. Baywatch

  3. Beauty and the Beast

  4. Book of Henry, The

  5. Boss Baby, The

  6. Cars 3

  7. CHiPs

  8. Coco

  9. Commuter

  10. Cure for Wellness, A

  11. Dark Tower

  12. Darkest Hour

  13. Despicable Me 3

  14. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul

  15. Dog's Purpose, A

  16. Downsizing

  17. Emoji Movie, The

  18. Flatliners

  19. Get Out

  20. Ghost in the Shell

  21. Great Wall, The

  22. Jigsaw

  23. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

  24. Kingsman: The Golden Circle

  25. Kong: Skull Island

  26. Lego Batman Movie, The

  27. Lego Ninjago Movie, The

  28. Life

  29. Mummy, The

  30. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

  31. Red Sparrow

  32. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

  33. Spider-Man: Homecoming

  34. Split

  35. Underworld: Blood Wars

  36. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

  37. XXX: Return of Xander Cage

  38. Zookeeper's Wife, The

What's Left to See from 2017

The boldfaced titles are the ones I'm most interested in;

* Denotes titles I've acquired but haven't gotten around to watching yet.

  1. All Eyez on Me

  2. All I See Is You

  3. American Made

  4. Amityville: The Awakening *

  5. Animal Crackers

  6. Baby Driver

  7. Bastards

  8. Beguiled, The

  9. Belko Experiment, The

  10. Blazing Samurai

  11. Born in China

  12. Bye Bye Man, The

  13. Captain Underpants

  14. Circle, The

  15. Coldest City, The

  16. Collide *

  17. Disney Descendants 2

  18. Dunkirk *

  19. Everything, Everything

  20. Fate of the Furious, The

  21. Ferdinand *

  22. Fifty Shades Darker

  23. Fist Fight

  24. Friday the 13th

  25. Gifted

  26. Girl Trip

  27. Going in Style

  28. Granite Mountain

  29. Greatest Showman, The

  30. Hitman's Bodyguard, The

  31. House, The

  32. Kidnap

  33. Let It Snow

  34. Logan Lucky

  35. Lost City of Z, The

  36. Lowriders

  37. Murder on the Orient Express

  38. My Cousin Rachel

  39. My Little Pony: The Movie

  40. Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, The

  41. Paddington 2 *

  42. Patient Zero

  43. Pitch Perfect 3

  44. Power Rangers

  45. Rock That Body

  46. Same Kind of Different as Me

  47. Sense of an Ending, The

  48. Shack, The*

  49. Sleepless

  50. Smurfs: The Lost Village

  51. Snatched

  52. Snowman, The

  53. Solutrean, The

  54. Space Between Us, The

  55. Star, The

  56. T2: Trainspotting

  57. Table 19

  58. Transformers: The Last Knight

  59. Tulip Fever

  60. Unforgettable

  61. United Kingdom, A

  62. Victoria and Abdul

  63. Villa Capri

  64. Wilson

  65. Youth in Oregon