JUST WHAT WE NEEDED, ANOTHER BEST OF 2017 LIST: THE FILMS

Because you can’t possibly have enough “Best Of The Year” lists on the Internet.

And I should mention right off the bat that I managed to see exactly twelve (12) new films this year, and two of them don’t count because they were released in 2016, so this is less of a Top 10 and more of a Literally Every New Film I Saw in 2017 + Two From 2016.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: If yr favorite movie of 2017 isn’t here, it’s likely because (1) I didn’t get a chance to see it, (2) it hasn’t been released in Hong Kong yet, or (3) I did see it but didn’t like it as much as you did. Also, if some of these seem kind of old, it’s because their release date was 2016 for yr country, but 2017 for Hong Kong. See?

TOP TEN DEF FILMS OF 2017

1. Silence
Martin Scorsese’s epic film about two 17th century Jesuit priests in the who travel to very non-Christian-friendly Japan to find their missing mentor. Some may find it slow, but I found it very engrossing as the priests are increasingly forced to question their faith as they encounter the suffering of persecuted Christians and are persecuted themselves. The film asks hard questions about the balance between true faith and moral pragmatism and provides no easy answers – which is wise, because no film is going to settle centuries-old theological quagmires in a few hours. It’s thought-provoking and exhausting and totally worth it.

2. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
You can read my longer review here, but long-story short: This is the best Disney-era Star Wars movie to date (and the other two are really good, mind), and possibly the third-best Star Wars film ever made. It’s got all the action and humor you want in a Star Wars film, plus extra points for having the guts to mess with the formula enough to (hopefully) take the series in new directions without being held back by the baggage of the earlier films.

3. Arrival
Based on a Ted Chiang short story, this film starts in familiar territory – mysterious aliens arrive in ships that hover over the earth – and then eschews blockbuster action for a thoughtful story in which linguist Louise Banks is brought in by the US military to try and communicate with the aliens. The sequences of decoding alien language are fascinating, and the movie explores a couple of distinct themes: the risks of miscommunication and the consequences of knowing the future, and the impact this may or may not have on our decisions. My kind of sci-fi.

4. Blade Runner 2049
I don’t know that we needed a sequel to Blade Runner 35 years after the original came out, but if we had to have one, this is pretty much what you’d want – a very good-looking film that takes the same world and creates a story that doesn’t ape the first film and doesn’t depend on you having seen the first one to be understood. Here, replicants are integrated into society as a servant class – one replicant, K, works as a blade runner and by chance discovers the 30-year-old remains of a replicant that appears to have given birth, which has serious implications all round. Like the first film, BR2049 explores themes of identity, memory and sentience, but in a more expanded form – and thankfully it doesn’t take the most predictable path storywise.

5. Hidden Figures
The (mostly) true story of Katherine Goble, Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan – three black women who played key roles in the early days of the NASA space program. As with most Hollywood biopics, the movie simplifies a complex story and setting with fictional composite characters, and isn't above swapping historical accuracy for drama – but it does a good job of getting the basic story across in terms of what Goble, Jackson and Vaughan accomplished and the racial challenges they faced in doing so. Also, I likes me a good NASA drama – and the three main actresses (Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe) are very, very good. It feels a bit TV-movie-of-the-week, but it tells a good story that (hopefully) will encourage people to look up the real history of Goble, Jackson and Vaughan.

6. Hell or High Water
Crime thriller which the Howard Brothers rob branches of the same bank that is threatening to foreclose on their family ranch, while a Texas Ranger close to retirement tries to figure out who they are and where they’ll hit next. The characters are rather cliché (one brother is the handsome reluctant bank robber, the other is the unpredictable loose cannon, and the Texas Ranger is the Crusty Cynical But Smart Lawman), but it’s reasonably well written for this kind of genre, and good performances all around, particularly Jeff Bridges as the Ranger.

7. War for the Planet Of The Apes
The third installment of the reboot series, in which Caesar is forced to hunt down a renegade US Army Colonel whose men attacked Caesar’s home and killed some of his family. The film introduces some more tropes that will eventually lead to the ‘Planet Of The Apes’ scenario of the original film, but also focuses on Caesar’s struggle to not let the war turn him into Koba, the human-hating ape that rebelled against Caesar in the previous film. I thought the Colonel character was a little too influenced by Colonel Kurtz, but Woody Harrelson is generally good to watch. Overall, it’s pretty good, and marks a rare example of a trilogy where the third film is better than the first (though I think the second one is arguably the best of the three, but it’s an admittedly close call).

8. Alien: Covenant
Ridley Scott’s follow-up to Prometheus, in which a ship on its way to colonize a planet is damaged en route, and while the crew assesses the situation, they pick up a radio signal from a different planet. Unwisely, they go check it out, and that’s where we eventually find out what happened to the survivors of the previous film. Sound familiar? One reviewer described this film as an Alien Greatest Hits comp, and I can’t add much to that – it’s another compendium of body horror, suspicious androids, humans making bad decisions, etc, and it really doesn't add much new to the series. And yet Scott still manages to make it riveting viewing. It’s alright as Alien films go, but it’s getting hard to see the point of doing these if they’re not going to take it in a new direction as Prometheus seemed to promise.

9. Wonder Woman
Diana, Warrior Princess! Wonder Woman finally gets her own movie, in which her life on the hidden Amazon island of Themiscyra is disrupted when pilot Steve Trevor accidentally brings WW1 to the island. Believing WW1 to be the work of Ares, the god who is prophesied to return from exile and get humans to destroy each other, Diana sets off with Trevor to find Ares and stop him. Overall I think they did the character justice, and Gal Gadot is great, but I think they spent way too long on the exposition/origin part, and as superhero stories go, it doesn’t offer any real surprises. That said, it’s still well above average for the genre.

10. Going In Style
A remake of the 1979 film in which three senior citizens decide to stage a bank robbery after the company they work for is bought out and liquidates their pensions as part of the merger. The film gets by mainly on the strength of its cast – Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin, who are funny and likeable. Apart from that, the film suffers in comparison to the original film, which was darker but had a lot to say about growing old in America. On the other hand, if you prefer a version of that story that’s a light-hearted caper film with happy endings for everyone, maybe you’ll like this one better.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years
I missed this when it came out in theatres, but in 2017 I watched it on a long-haul flight – three times. I’ve always known the Beatles cut their teeth doing lots of live gigs before they started recording, and I’ve seen a few clips like the Ed Sullivan appearances and the screaming teenage girls, etc, but this documentary really showcases just how great and exciting a live band they were, and tells the story well about their various live tours, and why they eventually stopped doing concerts altogether.

Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World
Another 2016 documentary, this one by Werner Herzog, which takes a look at the coming “connected world”, in which everything will be connected to the internet and our lives will increasingly revolve around digital services – likely to the point of dependency in some form or other. This being Herzog, it’s not a chronicle of how these technologies evolved and how they work, but rather a meditation on the potential impact they have for humanity – both the positive and the negative. Herzog treats the subject like a museum tour, marveling at the possibilities of such technologies yet wondering about the dark side of ti all – from online gaming addiction, doxxing, and social media abuse (such as one family whose daughter died in a car crash, only for the gruesome crash photos to go viral, after which trolls emailed them to the family for kicks) to the notion that as the internet becomes the critical infrastructure on which society is based, it will take one inevitable solar flare of sufficient size to send us back to the 21st century equivalent of the Stone Age. It’s by no means comprehensive or conclusive, but it’s a unique approach to a topic I happen to cover as part of my day job.

THE FILM I DIDN’T LIKE THAT EVERYONE ELSE DID

Nocturnal Animals
A lot of people raved about how good this was, but I tried watching it on a long-haul flight and I got through about 15 minutes worth before I got bored and turned it off.

THE FILM I REALLY WANTED TO SEE BUT DIDN’T GET A CHANCE TO

The Girl With All The Gifts
A zombie movie with a difference – well, potentially. I read the novel by MR (Mike) Carey and loved it – and Carey wrote the novel in parallel with the screenplay version, so my assumption is the film sticks close to the basic post-apocalyptic story of a young girl being studied by military scientists because – unlike other people who have been turned into zombies – she can still think and learn. Somehow I missed it. Oh well, I'll see it one day.

The balcony is closed,

This is dF