A little late, it’s time to re-pile stuff in front of the Christmas decorations, resume speculation about summer holidays before realising way too late that the prices have risen, and to reflect on the previous year in film. As always, there was far more I wanted to see than I was able to due to time and money constraints, with my total of 2017 releases (in the UK) coming to a grand total of 51. Even working from such a small sample, however, 2017 was a brilliant movie year, in terms of the sheer range in quality that helped me appreciate afresh just how much is out there. From Oscar upsets to Marvelous blockbusters, long-mooted sequels to alluring animation, 2017 offered much and delivered more than it disappointed. Of the 51 releases I saw, these are my top twelve, in musical form:
On the twelfth day of Christmas
The movies gave to me
Twelve Ragnaroks
Eleven Hidden Figures
Ten runs with Logan
Nine men in Moonlight
Eight Blade Runners
Seven pregnant mothers!
Manchester By The Six
Five Red Turtles
Four Wonder Women
Three Handmaidens
Two Detroit riots
And escape from the beach at Dunkirk.
And now, with review tweets and full access to my archive, here are Vincent’s Views of 2017 in full.
Top Twelve
A ruthlessly efficient, relentlessly tense, mercilessly immersive triptych on trauma, time and terror.
A harrowing, immersive, unflinching portrait of prejudice, brutality, societal tension and being the wrong colour in the wrong place at the wrong time.
An exquisite, sumptuous, erotic portrayal of an intriguing, labyrinthine tale.
A dynamic, inventive, witty and diverse superhero adventure of duty, will, evil and love.
A beautiful, haunting folk tale of survival, solitude and transcendence.
A beautifully composed, exquisitely painful, warm, witty and moving portrait of family, grief and community.
An exquisitely unhinged, utterly delirious, relentlessly deranged, headlong charge into unmitigated chaos.
A spellbinding, suffusive, mind expanding exploration of identity, humanity and mediation.
A haunting, soulful, beautiful, exquisitely balanced exploration of identity, sexuality and belonging.
A brutal, melancholic and intimately violent portrayal of running from and living with your past.
An enlightening, compelling and inspiring story of mathematics, race, technology and history.
A colourful, eclectic, highly Antipodean adventure of friendship, memory and powers old and new.
Honorable Mentions
A crisp, clockwork lattice of motives, suspects, histories and ethics, engineered into a probing investigation of morality and balance.
A whipsmart high school action comedy of superpowered growing pains.
A beautifully composed, exquisitely restrained portrait of devastating disruption.
A wonderfully wacky and dizzily dazzling space opera of wit, warmth, adventure, family and reconciliation.
A subtle, enveloping, achingly sad tale of grief, isolation and the experience of time.
An overlong but still thrilling multi-stranded space chase of divination, intuition, legends, legacies and lightsabres.
A thrilling ride through the wild side that reminds us of our place in nature.
A ripe, sumptuous Gothic romance of obsession, ambiguity and multiple planes.
An atmospheric and genuinely scary tale of fear(s), friendship, nostalgia and growing pains.
A gleefully absurd, riotously funny, thrillingly immersive action adventure of nostalgia, identity, growing pains and working together.
A ripe, grisly period murder mystery of roles both social and theatrical.
A overly portentous but visceral and at times orgiastically violent film of faith and courage under fire.
A vibrant, colourful medley of nostalgia and dreams both lost and won.
Solid Offerings
A coldly beautiful, brilliantly realised and unrelentingly grim epic of grief, revenge, cruelty and compassion.
An atmospheric, muscular and very cold thriller of borderlands both geographical and societal.
A gripping, twisting and enthralling journey through corridors of power and landscapes of laws, ethics and conscience.
An achingly 80s, super slick and stylistically bravura period spy thriller of crunchy action, double-crossing and neon.
A compelling if inconsistent collation of coherence and chaos within community.
A somewhat unbalanced yet stylish, witty and punchy super smackdown of power, fear, courage and the strength of unity.
A gripping, thrilling and disturbing horror of racial attitudes and oppression.
A visceral, enthralling exploration of mind, body and the cinematic space.
A slick, funky heist thriller with musical flow albeit an imbalance of grit and sentiment.
A gorgeous, moving drama of family and class, and the most compelling film you may ever see about golf.
A twisting, gripping and gritty espionage thriller that just avoids collapsing under its own contrivance.
A cine-literate, thrilling and suitably grisly space body horror.
A grand, visceral and sometimes witty monster movie with plenty of bang if lacking in awe.
A beautifully transnational, intense yet never melodramatic portrayal of youth, sexuality and awakenings.
A baggy, overly referential and yet surprisingly funny buddy comedy of sun, sand and silliness.
A sometimes moving but ultimately uneven Holocaust drama of compassion and cruelty towards our own and other species.
A handsomely mounted if somewhat repetitive home front political drama.
Disappointments
A sometimes sweeping if rather disjointed musical fantasy romance.
A somewhat stage-bound domestic drama of family and racial tensions, elevated by powerhouse performances.
A visually arresting if narratively cumbersome sci-fi thriller of memory, identity and technology.
Turkeys
An over-determined, clumsily directed and ultimately anemic cosmopolitan drama of loss.
A handsome but hollow period gangster film.
A gory, sumptuous but overly panicked sci-fi horror of ambition and hubris.
An underwhelming, painfully obvious franchise set-up that suffers from being literally too dark.
A limp, lifeless, messy squandering of great potential.
- The Snowman
A ham-fisted and mechanically clichéd thriller that is more creaky than creepy.
