Best Films of 2017? Opinions wanted.

3 Billboards
Killing of a Sacred Deer
Ladybird
The Devils Candy
Dunkirk
Logan
Good Time
I, Tonya
Split
The Handmaiden
Brawl in Cell Block 99
A Dark Song
The Disaster Artist [Francos best all around work]
The Shape of Water

Above is a list of a trusted friend of mine who likes the same kind of movies I do. I’d be interested in your opinions of what he came up with and what you liked. For the record, I’ve only seen “Dunkirk” (which I liked) and “Logan” (which I still haven’t finished).

I think I might watch “Brawl” tonight on Amazon Prime.

 

1. Personal Shopper
2. mother!
3. Get Out
4. Baby Driver
5. Phantom Thread

 

Just saw these

3 Billboards - Francis McDormand best actress. Woody Harleson was good, too. But the film was sort of plodding. I wasn't excited.
Ladybird - I admit it, as a 50-something male, female coming-of-age stories aren't my cuppa (Juno was fun, though!)
Dunkirk - Ehh.
I, Tonya - Fun. A little cheesy, but fun.
Darkest Hour - Kinda predictable, Warm and fuzzy I swear I just saw a movie like this. Oh, The Crown.
Split - I liked this movie, but it's not Oscar bait, although the actor should get a nod.
The Disaster Artist [Francos best all around work] Hysterically funny movie. Franco's best as you say. I enjoyed this more than any recent movie.
The Shape of Water -- Ehh.


Looking back, there's nothing I'm excited about as far as Oscar Best Picture material.

 

My personal ratings for all the movies I saw that were released in 2017.....

The Last Jedi: A+
The Man Who Invented Christmas: A
The Post: A-
The Shape of Water: A-
Marshall: A-
Battle of the Sexes: A-
Dunkirk: A-
Murder on the Orient Express: A-
Wind River: A-
Goodbye Christopher Robin: A-
Wonder Woman: A-
IT: A-
Coco: A-
Beauty and the Beast: A-
Only the Brave: B+
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women: B+
Their Finest: B+
Detroit: B+
My Cousin Rachel: B+
Wonder: B+
Victoria and Abdul: B+
The Greatest Showman: B+
Loving Vincent: B+
Bladerunner 2049: B+
Lady Bird: B+
Novitiate: B+
Wonderstruck: B+
Thor Ragnarok: B+
Annabelle Creation: B+
The Big Sick: B
All the Money in the World: B
Darkest Hour: B
Happy Death Day: B
The Lost City of Z: B
Spiderman Homecoming: B
Stronger: B
Rebel in the Rye: B
Mark Felt, The Man Who Brought Down the White House: B
All I See Is You: B-
Roman J. Israel, Esq.: B-
War for the Planet of the Apes: B-
Baby Driver: C+
Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri: C+
The Mountain Between Us: C
Alien Covenant: C-
Justice League: C-
Mother!: C-

 

Here's a review from a Missouri newspaper that seems on point....

"Three Billboards Portrays a Missouri That's Stupider and More Violent Than the Real Thing
By Robert Hunt
You can search every inch of the map looking for Ebbing, Missouri, but you'd be wasting your time. Martin McDonagh's new film isn't really about the Midwest in general or Missouri in particular (and from the smorgasbord of accents on display, it's unlikely that he's ever even been in the state). The setting is instead a purely imaginary small town, a cozy American heartland of bumbling deputies and eccentric townsfolk on which McDonagh can hang his Coen Brothers-in-Mayberry conceit...

Writer-director McDonagh specializes in fast, foul-mouthed dialogue and sudden, irrational moments of mayhem, and he piles them on rapidly with no concern for how they add up. Every line has been fine-tuned for maximum provocation, usually hammered in with sitcom repetition. There are broad strokes of character here — the sheriff has pancreatic cancer, Dixon is a half-witted mama's boy — but they're really just set-ups for recurring punchlines. When Peter Dinklage shows up briefly, McDonagh seems to think his very presence is a joke; nearly every line in his four scenes contains crass allusions to his size. Even the worst and broadest attributes are dismissed with a smirk: We're told that Dixon is a racist with a history of torturing prisoners, a detail repeated so often that eventually it's regarded as little more than an eccentricity.....

As a crime film, it teases a coherent plot but quickly withdraws from it. As a character study, it's almost deliberately superficial, half-heartedly tossing in a few cliches about redemption but dropping them just as carelessly.

Mostly, Three Billboards is just casually, absurdly violent. It's like a Three Stooges film, one in which after every eye-gouge or head-pounding you see bruises on Larry's face or blood oozing from Curly's head. People are beaten and thrown through windows. Mildred kicks a young girl in the crotch. When one character nearly burns to death, the film treats it with ridicule, like nearly everything else, yet when Mildred's billboards suffer a similar fate, it's one of the few scenes given anything close to sympathy. It's as if McDonagh has turned Mel Brooks' famous maxim — "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die" — into his sole principle.

OK, Three Billboards is just another stupid, brutal film that generates nervous laughter by depicting debased and savage behavior. What's the big deal? Just as it's hard to look at the news these days without thinking that civilization is going through a rough patch, a quick overview of recent films suggests that gleeful callousness and unthinking cruelty are the two faces of our post-Tarantino cinematic zeitgeist. In the last few months, we've seen violence of every kind treated with rock-star swagger in Baby Driver, with icy, comic-book stylization in Atomic Blonde and with hipster irony in Good Time. In that company, Three Billboards isn't even the worst offender; it merely eliminates real emotions such as grief or empathy and replaces them with knee-jerk sarcasm."

Three Billboards Portrays a Missouri That's Stupider and More Violent Than the Real Thing

 

King Arthur
Baywatch
Brawl On Cell Block 99
John Wick 2
The Accountant
The Fate Of The Furious
Point Break 2

Didn't like:
Logan
It

 

'Brawl In Cell Block 99' I knew nothing about. Bit long, some violence of the wince inducing type. Don't get me wrong, I like a good smack down but some of that made me wince. Not sure if they were going for some 70's style thing with the obvious fake heads. 6/10.

 

Wind River
Ladybird
Split
Three Billboards
Molly's Game

These were the standouts for me.

 

Brad's Status

 

No one has mentioned Blade Runner 2049 yet? That's my favorite.

 

Check

Your top 10 movies of 2017

Re your friend's list - Killing Of A Sacred Deer has got a very mixed reaction, so maybe the others are best to check out first. Ladybird seems to be overhyped but is still good (haven't seen these two myself).

My list:

Split
Get Out
Guardians 2 (great film which is very underated)
Logan
Wonder Woman
Thor
Spider-Man Homecoming
Blade Runner 2049
The Last Jedi
Baby Driver
Okja
Free Fire
Dunkirk

If I had to recommended 3 you spend money on it would be 1st - Blade Runner 2049 2. Logan 3. Split, but they are all good.

As it's expensive I tend to see the big spectacle films at the cinema and catch the smaller movies later at home.

 

Loved:
Guardians Of The Galaxy 2
Thor Ragnarok

Hated:
Spiderman Homecoming
Baby Driver.

Undecided about:
Justice League.

I don't get out much.......

 

The director said he was going for more of a ‘Grindhouse’ feel with “Brawl”.

It was a strange film and strange to see Vince Vaughn in it. S. Craig Zahler, the director, also did “Bone Tomahawk” which was a weird western deal. Zahler is a weird dude himself; into black metal, a musician himself, and whatever else. His next film has Vaughn and Mel Gibson in it and looks to be as violent and strange as his first two.

 

It’s kind of funny that the much hailed “masterpiece” “Dunkirk” hardly seems in the running. However I do think there are a couple of classic Oscar cliché nominations, of the little “Nobody ever heard of it so it has to be good” variety. The chatty mother daughter high school piece “lady bird” I could barely get through. Way too familiar.

 

Blade Runner and Split were both great.

 

My favourites (2017 releases in UK) -

Chi-Raq
Endless Poetry
Toni Erdmann
Tower
20th Century Women
Moonlight
The Fits
Frantz
The Red Turtle
The Other Side of Hope
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki
Kedi
Land of Mine
Insyriated
In Between
The Florida Project
I am not a Witch

 

Lots of good mentions, so I'll just add this:
Call Me By Your Name
The word luminous doesn't apply all that often to films these days, but this one takes the story of a love affair between a research assistant and the son of the man he works for, wraps it up in a glowing upper class intellectual world with Northern Italy as a stunning backdrop and sends it spinning into the sky. The performances by Arnie Hammer, Timothee Chalamet and Michael Stuhlbarg (whose late in the film speech to his son is breathtaking) are all award worthy.

 

If Red Turtle doesn't get the animated Oscar, I will be very bummed.

 

It was quite strange. Vaughan was very unlike I've seen him before. Seemed to reign in his usual mannerisms. 'Bone Tomahawk' was great.

 

Agreed. Vaughn went with more of the stoic, bad ass that Bruce Willis usually does. It worked though the fight scenes were often awkward.

I loved “Bone Tomahawk” too. It has one of the most disturbing scenes in it that I’ve seen in a long time.

 

Thanks to every one that has replied so far !

 

It was nominated last year and lost to Zootopia.

 

oh, I just assumed it had a 2017 US release, but he was listing UK releases.

 

Loved 'Blade Runner 2049' and 'Call Me By Your Name.'

Hated 'Three Billboards.'

 

I liked pretty much all the obvious choices that I saw (Dunkirk, The Shape of Water, Blade Runner 2049, Get Out), as well as the "fun movies" I saw (The Last Jedi, Thor Ragnarok, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2). Baby Driver, The Disaster Artist, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, I Tonya, Darkest Hour, and Ladybird seem to be the big ones I missed, so I can't comment on those. The one that really surprised me, though, was Logan. I've never been much of an X-Men fan, but I loved Logan, and might have to go with that as my number one pick.