The blockbuster season (which started in about April) was without doubt the worst i have ever known – littered with remakes, sequels and reboots that proved there is a total lack of any new ideas flowing through Hollywood at the moment. Time and again it seemed that millions of dollars had been simply thrown away on the likes of utter rubbish such The Dark Tower, Valerian, King Arthur and that awful Transformers sequel, with nary a single passing thought to investing in creating proper stories, decent scripts or even a hint at actual risk taking. Instead, for the most part we got nothing more than good looking dross aimed at the 12A moron crowd who wouldn’t know a proper film if it came up and bit them on the arse.
What is painfully obvious is that the film industry as a whole needs to completely take stock, cease trying to create the next expanded universe or indulging talentless idiots like Roland Emmerich, Michael Bay and (whisper it) Luc Besson and start delivering edgy, daring material that at least has a go at being original, thought provoking and dare i say it – not solely aimed at the average 12 year old boy, then maybe we would have a chance of far more satisfying years at the cinema than this one turned out to be.
I will concede that it wasn’t all bad as there were a few shining lights. Logan proved to be the best X-Men film since X2, Dunkirk solidified Christopher Nolan as one of the greatest directors working in Hollywood today, Thor Ragnarok was utterly insane and turned out to be the funniest and most enjoyable standalone film of the MCU universe, Fast 8 was great fun and Star Wars The Last Jedi was fantastic, in addition some smaller more independent films also managed to impress – the likes of Wind River, Manchester By The Sea, Molly’s Game, Lion and A Monster Calls were all top notch. Plus there were some great performances – Chris Evans, Andy Serkis, Adam Driver, Jessica Chastain, Mark Rylance and many others all did very well in challenging and memorable roles that impressed critics and audiences alike.
However, despite this i still have to say that over all this year was sadly a massive let down and one can only hope that 2018 is a significant improvement……we live in hope.
So without further ado please see below my personal list of the good, bad and in many cases very ugly films of 2017.
Top Ten Best
- Dunkirk
- Thor Ragnarok
- Star Wars The Last Jedi
- A Monster Calls
- Manchester By The Sea
- Lion
- Spiderman Homecoming
- Blade Runner 2049
- Logan
- War For The Planet of The Apes
Top Ten Honorary Mentions
- Wind River
- Molly’s Game
- Gifted
- Wheelman (catch it on Netflix – its great)
- Fast 8
- Hacksaw Ridge
- John Wick Chapter 2
- Wonder Woman
- Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2
- The Hitman’s Bodyguard
Top Fifteen Worst:
- Transformers:The Last Knight (the cinematic equivalent of being disemboweled with a blunt spoon then slowly and choked to death with ones own entrails – I HATED this film)
- Underworld 5 (god-awful rubbish)
- XXX3: The Return of Xander Cage (at least 15 years out of date, bereft of entertainment value and utterly juvenile to boot)
- Kingsman: The Golden Circle (horribly crass, overlong and an insult to the brilliant original)
- The Discovery (torpor inducing nonsense)
- The Snowman (considering the talent in front and behind the camera it beggared belief as to how rotten this film was)
- Ghost In The Shell (boring and bland in the extreme)
- Free Fire (crap)
- Unlocked (mega crap)
- King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword (a misfire and a complete mess of gargantuan proportions)
- Silence (Scorsese’s $40 million dollar vanity project that was, without a shadow of a doubt THE most boring cinematic experience I have ever had in my entire life)
- The Bye Bye Man (just bad bad bad)
- The Dark Tower (a catastrophic waste of time and money – how this version of Stephen King’s classic novels managed to get the green light from the studio I will never know)
- Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (Johnny was good value as always but this moribund franchise needs to end with immediate effect)
- Assassins Creed (good looking film but could have been so much better)
Top Fifteen Favorite Performances:
- Chris Evans – Gifted
- Mckenna Grace – Gifted
- Hugh Jackman – Logan
- Mark Rylance – Dunkirk
- Ryan Reynolds – The Hitman’s Bodyguard
- Frank Grillo – Wheelman
- Jessica Chastain – Molly’s Game
- Adam Driver – Star Wars The Last Jedi
- Mark Hamill – Star Wars The Last Jedi
- Chris Hemsworth – Thor Ragnarok
- Jeff Goldblum – Thor Ragnarok
- Dwayne Johnson – Fast 8
- Chris Pine – Wonder Woman
- Andy Serkis – War For The Planet Of The Apes
- Tom Holland – Spiderman Homecoming
Top Ten Best Action Scenes:
1.Star Wars The Last Jedi: The final battle – Chewie and Rey arrive in the Falcon in the nick of time
2.Thor Ragnarok – That god almighty scrap on the Bifrost Bridge – all brilliantly played out to Led Zepellin’s classic Immigrant Song
3.Star Wars The Last Jedi – The Throne Room Lightsabre duel
4.Dunkirk: Tom Hardy’s RAF spitfire pilot desperately tries to bring down a German Bomber before it kills scores of soldiers who are stranded the water plus pleasure boat captain Mr Dawson (Mark Rylance) and his son Peter -total edge of the seat, nail biting stuff – all together now “Come on Farrier!”
5. Fast 8 – Jason Statham (plus very cute baby) vs an entire plane load of baddies
6. Fast 8 – Dwayne Johnson vs speeding torpedo
7. Wonder Woman – The No Man’s Land dash
8. Spiderman Homecoming – The Washington Monument rescue sequence
9. Justice League – The League’s first proper battle with Steppenwolf and the Para Demons
10. Thor Ragnarok – Thor vs The Hulk
Best One liners:
- “Im gonna shove your teeth so far down your throat that your gonna have to shove a toothbrush up your ass to clean ’em!” – Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) – Fast 8
- “Im gonna beat you like a Cherokee drum!” Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson – again) – Fast 8
- “By the beard of Odin you will not cut my hair!” Thor (Chris Hemsworth) – Thor Ragnarok
- “Please kind sir do not cut my hair!” – Thor (Chris Hemsworth) – Thor Ragnarok
- “I have legendarily huge turds” – Drax (Dave Bautista) – Guardians of The Galaxy Vol 2
- “What the F….!!!!!” Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) Spiderman: Homecoming
Right, there we have it – my work here is done for another year – as ever i would like to thank my dear friend Phil Hobden for letting me contribute to this fantastic website (despite the fact that he is still remains to be utterly wrong about Paul WS Anderson and The Hobbit Trilogy!) and finally my heartfelt thanks go out to all our loyal readers (whoever the hell you are)
I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a prosperous new year.
My name is Will Strong and i’ve been Grosse Pointe Geek.
