Ed's Top 25 Films of 2017

mother!, a film which will definitely not be appearing on this list

Now that 2017 is over and done with, it's time to take stock, and figure out what kind of year it has been. As is often the case, I thought it was a pretty great year for cinema, and I found something to love in lots of films I saw this year, from huge blockbusters that found time to ruminate on the nature of mythmaking, to heartfelt coming of age stories that also managed to be utterly horrifying. It was a good year, and while there are still some blindspots here and there - for example: I have yet to see Call Me By Your Name, which definitely seems like a movie I would like - I'm very happy with this list of the 25 films that stuck with me over the last year.

The Best (Older) Films I Watched in 2017

I'll be putting together my top films of 2017 list over the next day, so it's as good a time as any to look back at the older (i.e. pre-2010) movies I watched for the first time this year. I didn't watch as many movies this year as I would have liked, but I saw plenty of great ones, and here are the twenty that really stuck with me, presented alphabetically.

Movie Journal: November

Awards season is in full swing, so I've spent most of this month frantically trying to catch up on films I missed earlier in the year, or ones that are only now starting to make the rounds. It's one of my favourite times of the year, as well as one of the most exhausting, since the conversation about what are the best movies of the year hasn't been winnowed down to four or five names yet. There has been a little winnowing, admittedly, but besides from Get Out, Lady Bird and Call Be By Your Name, there aren't that many movies that are completely dominating the conversation or feel like locks for Oscar nominations.

Before we get to the best movies I saw in November, let's dispense with Craig Gillespie's I, Tonya, easily the worst movie I watched this month and one of the worst movies I've seen all year. I went in hoping for it to be good, since the story of Tonya Harding could make for a great character study, and its mix of ambition and class is so quintessentially American. Plus, Margot Robbie is a bona fide movie star and it felt like a great vehicle for her (her performance is admittedly very good). At its best, the film recalls the blistering faux-hagiographies of Goodfellas or Chopper, but for the most part it displays the kind of purposeless kineticism that has characterized some of David O. Russell's more recent work; a lot of fidgety energy, constant voiceover and beyond blunt musical choices that add up to nothing of any real value. Good Allison Janney performance, though.

Film Review: Wonder Woman (2017)

Even though she made her first appearance in 1941, thereby being part of the comics canon almost as long as fellow Justice League members Superman and Batman (who debuted in 1938 and 1939, respectively), Diana, Princess of Themyscira, Daughter of Hippolyta, a.k.a. Diana Prince, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, had never graced the silver screen until last year, when Gal Gadot briefly enlivened the slurry shipped to theatres as Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Sure, the character had appeared in various iterations of the D.C. animated universe, and she was brought to life on television by Lynda Carter in the iconic series from the 1970s, but film eluded her, even as Hollywood burned through six big-screen Batmen (including the late Adam West), three Supermen, two generations of X-Men (and three Kitty Prydes) and an ever-lengthening roll call of minor or cult characters who now find themselves household names.

Film Review: John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

One of the riskier unforced errors a film can make lies in referencing a better movie, since it runs the risk of making the audience think about what they could be watching instead. Chad Stahelski's John Wick: Chapter 2 makes it twice in its first ten minutes.

First, it features a brief glimpse of Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. (specifically the thrilling scene of Keaton nearly being hit by a train while riding a motorcycle) projected against the side of a building during a car chase through the streets of New York in which Wick (Keanu Reeves) pursues a henchmen working for Abram Tarasov (Peter Stormare), the brother of the antagonist from the first movie. Stahelski certainly gets points for boldness, since not only does the scene serve as an introduction to the action, but he also has the sound of the chase sync up with Keaton's film. It's a clever distillation of the remixing and recontextualising of cinematic references that marks both John Wick movies, an ethos which extended to the film's brilliant poster, and it's hard not to admire the chutzpah.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 167 - 2017 Preview

There's a brand new year stretching out ahead of us, which means 12 months of films good and bad to sift through. To help sort the wheat from the chaff (except in the instances where the chaff sounds weirdly fascinating), I'm joined by John Hunter to discuss the films and TV shows that we're most intrigued by between now and when awards season kicks off in September.