2017 in Film: Favourites, Letdowns and Reflections

It's the end of the year, and the film snobs of the world are reflecting on their years in pop culture. As one of the gang - now with my very own bogus DMCA notice! - I figured I would jump on in. Of course, there are lots of caveats to that. I live in Australia, where several of the last quarter films with award potential have their wide release withheld til the next year. I don't go to previews, with the exception of the occasional rubbish horror movie, and I am not drawn to a lot of wide release movies. Dunkirk? More like...um...done-urgh. A lot of it is to do with my exhaustion with male narratives and a lot of the industry's treatment of women and anything non white or heterosexual, both real and in fiction. I love the art form, but it's been a tough year for trying to avoid content that would make me extremely angry in a very real way.

As mentioned previously, I haven't seen any new releases - it's been the busiest time of the year in my sector - so you won't be finding Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri; Call Me By Your Name; Shape of Water; The Disaster Artist; Molly's Game; The Florida Project. I'm not into superhero films or sci-fi in general, and not even the pull of one of my favourite working directors has reeled me in to see Thor: Ragnarok. I might not have seen or formed an opinion on the most recent Star Wars movie, but you won't find many people who've seen more terrible horror movies than myself. My actual reviews for the following movies might not reflect how much I love them: I remember initially giving Sing Street an 8/10, before the sheer heart of it warmed me with every rewatch. In fact, if I were making this a list of movies I watched in 2017, Sing Street might still be atop the list. I'm limiting myself to movies with a 2017 wide release, and listing with pure subjectivity. These are the movies I saw this year that made me want to talk and talk and talk.

That's what a good movie is, to me. A movie I can't shut up about. I'll link to my original reviews (WHERE POSSIBLE), but I'm sure I'll find new things to go on about.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer - Let's start with a movie I'd love to link you to a review of, but can't because it has been illegitimately stricken for copyright reasons. Having a review taken down was really one of the only things that soured my experience of Yorgos Lanthimos' followup to 2016's The Lobster, because The Killing of a Sacred Deer was the kind of divisive movie that sat right at home with me. It was unsubtle with its use of metaphor and did not tiptoe around a desire to manipulate and unsettle its audience. Nicole Kidman was the highlight of the whole movie and I think this deserved the kind of press that mother! got, because it shared a similar wankiness without making anyone I saw it with want to tear out their eyes. 

Raw - One of the quietest coming of age movies I saw in 2017 was also a visceral tour of cannibalism! And my god, it was beautiful. Julia Ducournau's mixture of stark sterility with the messiness of bloodshed and femininity was unforgiving but also breathtaking. There were several scenes that had me recalling them afterwards and thinking about the rarity of their ilk in western cinema. Cannibalism is there as a vehicle to explore the protagonist's sexual awakening, exploration of adulthood and experience of sisterhood, but the movie still does not shy from its affiliations with the genre it finds itself in. Assure you're ready for the blood and guts, but ready yourself for more than that.

Colossal - The annual "movie Sara won't shut up about", along with 2016's Sing Street, was this surprise that missed out on the media hype, written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo of Timecrimes fame. I knew nothing about this movie and that was the best way to go in, because to expect a monster-movie-rom-com-mashup with Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudekis would not be giving it enough credit. Far more than that, Colossal is a powerful tale of addiction and abuse and it hit me to my core on a deeply personal level. I could feel my stomach churn as I watched it, but there was just the right balance with levity and honest writing. It's not a monster movie - it just so happens to have a giant monster in it. 

Get Out - Here's one you'll see on a lot of lists because even non-horror fans can agree that Jordan Peele's feature length debut was impeccably crafted. Rarely do horror films actually succeed at their desired social commentary, but Peele uses incisive humour to pierce performative allyship and the pervasive racism of the horror industry. I was smitten.If all of today's movies looked like this, the world would be a better place. Horror is all too often relegated to the category of "lesser than", but Jordan Peele showed the big leagues that you can tell a very real and important story if you give any genre proper care.

There were lots of movies I watched this year that I loved, but that weren't released at the right time or were just not quite favourite movie material. XX was a concept I want more of all the time, because women in horror are everything to me, but I can't sign off on putting an anthology in here when one of the included shorts missed the mark for me. The visual impact of Atomic Blonde is impossible to minimise, but I felt incredibly conflicted over the movie as a whole. I really enjoyed Their Finest when I didn't want to run a fine toothed comb through the script to tidy up the plot. Most of my good movies this year were very explicitly non-male stories.

Overall, 2017 was a year of more let downs than successes on a personal viewing level. Even the popcorn fare was underwhelming. I'm one of the late entry Saw apologists, but Jigsaw was too scared to plunge into the silliness or sadism of the series. Fate of the Furious was downright weak when compared to the last few entries in the canon, and really only got by on Dwayne The Rock Johnson's sheer charisma. I couldn't stop talking about how much I despised Darren Aronofsky's wankiest, most self-indulgent piece yet for about two weeks after I saw mother!, which will probably be on a lot of Best Movie lists. Trashbag  horror, one of my favourite genres, hit a new low with The Bye Bye Man. I also managed to watch a movie about nazis and a truly terrible one where the last fifteen minutes were so wild that I nearly choked. 

I think that the current callout culture is facilitating a better environment for honesty in storytelling, where women can be the centre of stories and overwhelming whiteness is far less easy to allow to stand. When someone gets accused of sexual abuse and then a movie can be reshot because the last thing overpowered men in hollywood need is another avenue for people to use to excuse their shittiness, that's a preferential state to me. I might have suffered through some crappy movies, but that doesn't matter if I can talk about something more important about those movies: how they are tools in a far bigger societal scheme. 

I had a decent 2017, and I've really enjoyed keeping an active record of my pop cultural experiences. There are a bunch of movies still in the drafts, and a few things that have yet to get transferred over. I have watched so many bad Christmas movies over the past few days, guys, and no one cares about those now. I hope your 2018 is a year of great movies and more great television and finding your personal bliss.