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Ruk Ranks Every Movie he Saw in 2017- Top 10 Incoming!

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67. Dunkirk

 

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Think I more or less summed up my thoughts in the Dunkirk Review Thread. Honestly my opinion hasn't really changed since. I still think it was a movie that played poorly on Nolan's strengths, exposed a lot of his weaknesses and that it wouldn't be nearly as praised as it was if it didn't have Nolan's name on it and the reputation of a 'serious' blockbuster. 

 

That said, it was still better than Interstellar.

 

(Also, I wrote the review below in July and still managed to call it topping BOT's Top 25 list. You so predictable, BOT.)

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Pleasantly surprised to see I'm not the only one who felt fairly 'eh' on this movie. Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike it and it certainly wasn't the self-indulgent snoozefest that was Interstellar, but a lot of Nolan's weaknesses as a director are still rather on display here, possibly even more so than Interstellar or TDKR. And the relative lack of dialogue only serves to highlight them further.

 

See the thing is, I think Nolan's style was kinda wrong for what this movie was trying to achieve. The movie is attempting to be a constantly tense survival thriller, akin to Gravity or Train to Busan, with constant danger after constant danger piling on and on as the protagonists desperately try to struggle past it all to get home to safety. The problem is that this doesn't really suit Nolan because his style of building tension is waaaaaaay too meandering to work for such a movie. Nolan's directing works best when he's able to milk a tense moment for all that it's worth, like the shuttle docking in Interstellar (one of the few scenes I unambiguously liked in that movie). However, Dunkirk is almost nothing but tense moment after tense moment, all of which Nolan ends up drawing out, until eventually it feels less tense and more just boring. Especially when the gimmicky framing device means some stuff ends up getting repeated. (Did we really need to see the same minesweeper boat get sunk three times from vaguely different angles?). The land portion in particular got the worst of it (since the air portions were relatively short and the boat portions had some actual characters to give a damn about).

 

Speaking of, considering the all-star cast he had available, Nolan really needed to rely on his actors a lot lot more here, because they felt very underutilized and certainly not to the film's benefit. Don't get me wrong, I get what he was trying to do here, tell a story through mainly through visuals and directing rather than dialogue. And I've seen that work really well in a lot of movies and comics. But it really is not a good fit for Nolan, who's kind of a 'one tone director' (that is to say all of his movies more-or-less have the same consistent tone throughout.) Of course, being a 'one tone director' isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I'd place a large amount of Nolan's success on his ability to (usually) pick his projects sensibly to best play off that tone. However, it also makes him a poor fit for the sort of visual storytelling I think he was trying to achieve here. It's impressive when you can go from a happy tone to a sad tone through visuals only (see the opening of Up). It's less impressive when you go from Nolan's usual tone to... Nolan's usual tone. And without much in the way of character established neither through visuals nor dialogue, we're left wondering why we should really be all that invested. Again, it's the land portion which gets the worst of this. Shame too because when the characters are allowed to actually talk to each other, the movie gets a lot more interesting.

 

There's a lot of other stuff I could say about this movie, both positive and negative, and again I don't think it's necessarily bad, despite how much I've complained about it. Some of the tense moments do work, most of the actors are great when given a chance to be and I liked a fair amount of the stuff on the boats and in the air. But there are still a lot of glaring problems with it, some of which are down to problems with Nolan as a director. Hopefully he can reign himself in and pick a more suiting project next time.

 

 

 

(Also, I've already prepared myself for this to inevitably top BOF's Best Films of 2017 list.)

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66. Geostorm

 

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Hooo boy… How exactly do I describe this movie? Well first, go back to that time back in the 90’s when disaster movies were all the range. You know the sorts, Twister, Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, so on and so forth. Now imagine one of those movies, on the way to the cinema, accidentally drove into some sort of temporal anomaly and was frozen untouched in time for nearly 20 years, where it was released in its present form. Oh, and also said movie was really really dumb. 

 

Yeah, that’s basically Geostorm in a nutshell.

 

Seriously, it is amazing to me that this movie got released in 2017. It almost personifies every single ridiculous cliche and trope of 90’s disaster movies down to the smallest detail. And while something like that could be fun if approached and executed with a sort of post-modern eye riffing on the sillier aspects, this movie doesn’t do that in the slightest. It takes itself entirely seriously despite being eminently ridiculous. And… honestly… I kinda enjoy it for that?

 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a good movie by any measure and if you go in without the right attitude, you’ll probably end up hating it. But if you have a fond spot for the overly-destructive goofiness of 90’s disaster movies, like I do, there’s a strange charm to its ‘out-of-timeiness’. 

 

The movie itself follow genius scientist Gerard Butler (*snik* …Sorry, couldn’t get that out there with a straight face), the disgraced inventor of a revolutionary system of satellites named ‘Dutch Boy’ that allow humanity to control the weather through the power of really bad 90’s science. Seriously, I’m not one to be a stickler for 100% scientific accuracy in my silly disaster movies, in fact I actively welcome creative embellishments here and there, but the science in this movie is really dumb. Trust me when I say that if you know anything about climate or weather or space or computers or basic common sense, then this movie will more than raise a few eyebrows. Still, perhaps to some degree that’s part of the movie’s charm? Its po-faced seriousness in the face of a truly idiotic premise can’t help but endear you somewhat to it.

 

Now where was I? Oh yes, Gerard Butler. Anyway, Gerard Butler’s character has the same uninteresting family drama that almost every single 90’s disaster movie protagonist has and that almost every viewer wants to skip over in favour of getting to the tidal waves destroying shit. I suppose I should give the movie credit that at least his daughter doesn’t end up getting in cheesy overblown peril in the final third, but… eh.

 

Anyway, what follows is a mix of silly political thriller, silly space adventure and some pretty decent city-destroying disasters. I’m not going to pretend the disasters in Geostorm are any real standout for the genre, but as far as enjoyable wanton destruction goes, it's fairly decent.

 

Honestly though, silly science aside, where the movie mainly fails is the same thing that always failed me about a lot of 90’s disaster movies. It clearly thinks its emotional issues are far more interesting than they actually are and insists on spending a lot of time with them instead of, you know, the massive disasters. Which is the stuff people actually want to see. While I certainly don’t necessarily hate the ‘family brought together through adversity’ story idea and there is a definite importance to actually establishing some sort of character to your... characters, there’s no denying it’s been overdone to death in these sorts of disaster movies and, to be blunt, this does not bring anything new to the table. Which, to be honest, you could say about the whole movie.

 

Honestly, a small part of me thinks that Geostorm was a bit of a missed opportunity. A chance to look back with a post-modern eye at the silly, cheesy yet endearing aspects of disaster movies while simultaneously trying to top them all. But no, it instead rather bafflingly insists on playing everything straight without realising that its audience has kinda moved on from the time when these sorts of disaster movies were popular. 

 

Still, I’m not going to say it’s entirely without merit. It’s still a fascinating time capsule of a movie if you’re at all fond of disaster movies. And if you go into this movie seeking that sort of enjoyment, you’ll probably get at least some level of entertainment out of all of this. Which is a lot better than I can say about most bad movies.

 

 

 

 

(Also, it's petty of me, but I take a perverse level of spite in this ranking one spot above Dunkirk.)

Edited by rukaio101
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65. The Great Wall

 

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This movie is more or less the definition of a 'meh' blockbuster. There’s some neat stuff about it, like the world-building and (kinda sorta) the premise, but overall it’s super forgettable and more or less falls apart in the third act.

 

Ah well, at least Pedro Pascal is still getting work.

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Going to leave it there for now. I'll hopefully pick this back up tomorrow if I get time. If I don't, I'll continue on Friday (since I'm going into London for the day on Thursday). In the meantime, you're welcome to guess as to the next 4 movies (since I accidentally already posted the 5th because I can't count). If you want a hint, here are some clues, in the form of the opening lines of my reviews.

 

 

64. "Hoo boy. Needless to say, I have a bit of a history with this franchise."

 

63. "Not for nothing, but I honestly forgot this came out this year. Which is kinda weird considering how big it was and how big its predecessors were."

 

62. "Okay, I’m assuming most people probably don’t know what this movie is. Hell, I'd be amazed if anyone's actually heard of it." (Extra clue: It's a Chinese Martial Arts(ish) Thriller)

 

61. "Another movie I saw at the London Film Festival, [film title] is an adaptation of a 31 volume manga series. And trust me when I say it shows." 

 

 

 

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Disagree with Wolf Warrior 2, I've found those films to be the best that mainland China has produced for the mainstream so far (Monster Hunt was weird AF). 

 

Fairy Tail on the other hand, I agree entirely. Felt like it was missing a lot of context when jumping from scene to scene, and where did that Cat girl stuff come from?! 

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Jumping in quickly with a few entries now, since I'm going bowling with some friends later this evening. Also kudos to Tower for a) being the only person to bother guessing and b ) getting both of his guesses right.

 

64. Justice League

 

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Hoo boy. Needless to say, I have a bit of a history with this franchise. I’ve not made it a secret to anyone who knows me that, Wonder Woman aside, I have not been at all impressed with DC Extended Universe. In fact, I actively consider Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad to all three be among some of the worst superhero movies I’ve ever seen. (Yes, even MoS, which I feel people have been unjustly vindicating over time by virtue of it not being quite so structurally and thematically inept as BvS). So Justice League was not exactly high on my expectations platter. Especially since it's rare that excessive and obvious executive meddling actually improves a movie. But, since I make it habit to watch every superhero movie that comes out, good or bad, I felt I had to at least give this a chance.

 

And I'll give it this. It's a big step up from the rest of the DCEU (again, Wonder Woman excepted). Unfortunately though, just because I didn’t outright despise it doesn't mean I think it was a very good movie. It has good moments, no doubt about that, and there wasn't anything that outright pissed me off like those other movies. But ultimately, I just found it kinda meh. Not terrible, not all that good, just meh.

 

Now, I'll start off by saying where I felt this movie improved the most over the likes of BvS and MoS. Because it's an easy answer. The characterisation. Specifically because Justice League actually has some. One of the biggest reasons I think Marvel has succeeded and DC has crashed is because Marvel understands the importance of creating likeable and well-defined main characters. I mentioned this up when I was talking about the Mummy, but we like to see Iron Man and Captain America and Thor share the screen because Marvel put effort into making certain we like Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, etc. DC, or more specifically Zack Snyder, never seemed to get that though and put more effort into the 'themes' and 'symbolism' and brooding crap than actually doing the basics of establishing character. Which is where Joss Whedon comes in.

 

And yes, before any asks, I am almost entirely putting the vastly improved characterisation in this film down to Joss Whedon. Because almost every good character moment in this movie feels unmistakably like a Whedon moment. (It's also why I laugh so much when people act as if a fully Zack Snyder cut would've been in any way better.) And, indeed, there are a lot of really great little character moments between the cast scattered throughout the film, which I have to give a lot of kudos for. Even little relationships that I really didn't expect to enjoy, like Cyborg and Wonder Woman, end up being genuinely interesting in their dynamics.

 

So... why doesn't it ultimately feel like it comes together? Well, I initially thought it came down to three big narrative issues (y'know, ignoring the obvious stuff like Moustachegate and Steppenwolf). But, the more I've thought about it, the more I realised that those three issues are all just different aspects of the same big issue that I think was ultimately responsible for its failure. As far as the three issues go, first of all, while I did mention there are a lot of great little character moments in the movie, 'little' is kind of the key word there. Most of these great character moments barely extend beyond a single scene and, despite clear set-ups for a character arc in many of them, none of them really follow through and go the distance. Honestly, I can't think of a single character beat that lasts throughout the movie instead of a couple of scenes at best. Which is disappointing because, as mentioned, some of them are really damn good.

 

The second issue, and this may require a bit of an explanation, is that... it kinda felt like the team came together a bit easily? Yeah, there were a couple of teething difficulties at the start, but once everyone is properly joined up, they're more or less on the same page for the rest of the movie (minus mild disagreements over a couple of actions and the obligatory 'we're not a team' moment). And, to be honest, that's kinda dull. Good drama needs good conflict, after all, and God knows Steppenwolf ain't going to provide any of that. I hate to make the dreaded Marvel comparison here (and god knows I'm going to do it more when I get to that one big issue), but part of what made The Avengers so great was that after the initial gathering of the team, the Avengers didn't really get on. They fought and squabbled and while some of that was exacerbated by Loki, it was also a large part due to their personalities and aims naturally clashing. Hence why it's all the more affecting when they put aside their differences and team-up for real in the climax. The Justice League never really has that and, as a result, their big team-up moment isn't nearly as powerful. 

 

Which brings me to the third and most obvious issue. This movie really needed to wait until the solo movies had come out. Seriously, they spend so much time setting up the origins of Aquaman/Cyborg/Flash and then recruiting them onto the team that, while they manage to spare enough time to create a solidly grounded character for each of them (except maybe Momoa who gets kinda neglected and has a truly awful exposition-packed scene with Amber Heard), they don't get enough time to dedicate to the actual team dynamics. Aka, the most fun stuff of a team-up movie. GOTG worked as a single-movie team-up because it managed to use its team dynamics to help establish and develop characters by the way they bounced off one another (in part thanks to the conflict between them). But this movie doesn't try to be GOTG, it tries to be Avengers. And you can't be Avengers while trying to fit in three separate origins. You just can't.

 

Now, all three of these are perfectly valid and damming complaints on their own. But I think they're all symptoms of that one bigger flaw I brought up earlier, that I think is ultimately responsible for why this movie feels disposable and forgettable. And it's this.

 

Regardless of its flaws and strengths elsewhere, Justice League is not a very good team-up movie.

 

Think about the Avengers for a moment. Regardless of whether you like the movie or not, that film is basically all about the team-up. Loki and the Tessaract and the Chitauri are all factors in the story, yes, but the real main underlying plot is all about getting the Avengers together and, more importantly, getting them to work as a team. And almost every major character conflict throughout is related to that. Tony and Cap don't like each other, Tony doesn't trust Fury and SHIELD, Thor has different views on what he wants done with Loki than the rest of the team, Banner doesn't trust anyone and so on and so forth. Plus it's no coincidence that Whedon picked Loki, a trickster villain, than any muscleheaded brute like Steppenwolf. But my point is, by making the conflict among the team such an important underlying narrative, the movie makes it all the more meaningful when the characters finally overcome said issues and truly become a team in what is easily the defining shot of the movie. You all know the one.

 

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Justice League, on the other hand... doesn't really have that same sort of moment. It has a few token squabbles here and there, but ultimately it equates 'gathering the JL members' and 'making the Justice League' as kind of the same thing. It never has that one circle shot like the Avengers does, not because there are no shots with every JL member present, but because it is never able to build that underlying subtext that makes the forming of the Avengers ultimately so meaningful. Hence why none of the character arcs ever seem to go anywhere and the team seemed to come together a bit easily and why the solo movies were obviously missed.

 

To sum up, like I said before, this movie is not terrible. There are things to enjoy and compared to its non-Amazonian counterparts in the DCEU, it’s practically a work of art. But, despite all of that, I can't really call it a good movie either. It tries, but story-wise it feels like an unfinished jigsaw, the CG needed another year or so of work and, ultimately, it never really lives up the hype and scale that the first ever Justice League deserves.

 

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63. Fate of the Furious

 

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Not for nothing, but I honestly forgot this came out this year. Which is kinda weird considering how big it was and how big its predecessors were. This one, on the other hand, just kinda went straight through me. No really lasting impact to think of. 

 

That said, the movie itself was fine. Really, it was fine. Theron was a decent villain, the story was decent, Statham and the Rock teaming up was cool, it admittedly got kinda boring towards the end, but that’s true of a lot of blockbusters these days.

 

So yeah. It was fine. Just fine. Fine. Nothing special, but fine. Really. Just fine.

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62. Wrath of Silence

 

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Okay, I’m assuming most people probably don’t know what this movie is. Hell, I'd be amazed if anyone's actually heard of it. Which is perfectly legitimate because I only saw this at the London Film Festival and that was mainly because I needed something to fill the gap between the other movies I was watching. Still, the premise, in which a mute martial artist returns to his hometown in search of his missing son, intrigued me and I was willing to give a shot.

 

My thoughts? It was fine. Just fine. Fine.

 

Really, it ended up being much more of a slow burn than I was expecting and I’m not entirely certain it was better of for that? Some of the action scenes were decent, as were a few emotional moments and plot beats/twists. And the director had a really weird fetish with people eating messily that was kinda funny whenever it popped up. (Imagine Denethor in that one scene in Return of King but significantly less subtle.) But overall it was just fine. Not anything great or attention worthy, not anything awful either. I’m not exactly going to tell people not to see it, but there are plenty of other obscure movies on this list that are far more worthy of attention than this.

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61. Blade of the Immortal

 

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Another movie I saw at the London Film Festival, Blade of the Immortal is an adaptation of a 31 volume manga series. And trust me when I say it shows. Seriously, I know people tend to complain in adaptations when people cut or change certain aspects of the original source material, but this is an excellent case study as to why that is kinda necessary sometimes.

 

The thing is, the movie skips from battle to battle, plot point to plot point, emotional beat to emotional beat, in a way that clearly would’ve worked in a more spread-out 31 volume manga series but in a 140 minute movie just makes everything feel absurdly rushed. None of the emotional moments are given time to breath, none of the sometimes genuinely interesting-seeming characters are given enough time to shine or grow attachment to, it’s just a mess. One particular example that stood out to me was when one of the henchmen (and one of the ones with the more unique designs at that) is revealed to have a psycho-crush on the heroine, has been sending her love letters for a period of time and is planning on killing her. This is all introduced and exposited in about 2 minutes in a scene at the end of which said character immediately dies. His plot thread comes out of nowhere, lasts barely a second and then ends unsatisfyingly. Which kinda sums up a lot of the plot threads in this movie.

 

Oh, and also the main heroine is awful. Really. She's the daughter of a murdered samurai dojo teacher and the movie makes a big deal in early scenes about her being tomboyish and learning to fight with a sword and wanting to avenge her parents, but she ends alternating between being a damsel in distress or being utterly useless for the entire movie. I don't think she even manages to beat one single person, not even in the massive sword fight near the end with hundreds of people. And while I don't necessarily think all female characters need to kick ass to be good, she doesn't really do anything else except whine. Really, she was just the worst.

 

That said, while I've been complaining a lot about the movie thus far, I will give it some kudos. The action is pretty damn neat, the character designs and costuming is cool and it manages to translate at least some of what I assume was quality material in the original manga. So I can’t say I completely hated it, but for Takashii Miike’s 100th film? …He’s made better.

Edited by rukaio101
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23 minutes ago, rukaio101 said:

And yes, before any asks, I am almost entirely putting the vastly improved characterisation in this film down to Joss Whedon. Because almost every good character moment in this movie feels unmistakably like a Whedon moment. (It's also why I laugh so much when people act as if a fully Zack Snyder cut would've been in any way better.)

 

I think the people saying this are people like myself who really liked BVS, and think it's much better than Justice League. Obviously, if you hated BVS, this wouldn't apply.

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I'm back. Yay. London was fun. Got to see Plan 9 from Outer Space and Samurai Cop in a theatre with the MST3K guys live-riffing over it, so that was awesome. Pretty sure I fucked up some muscle in my arm somewhere carrying around a bunch of crap I bought, but thems the breaks. Anyway, on with the list!

 

60. The Limehouse Golem

 

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This is one of those movies that I suspect I would’ve enjoyed a lot more if it hadn’t been for the trailer. Not because it gave too much away, mind, but more because it completely missold me as to what the movie was about, much like ‘It Comes at Night’ (which, before anyone asks, no I haven’t seen). From the trailer, I was under the assumption that this was going to be a dark horror/mystery with Detective Bill Nighy trying to hunt down the mysterious serial killer roaming Victorian London’s streets. In actuality, what I got was more a study of the life of Olivia Cook’s character, an ex-music hall star with a troubled past, all wrapped around the framing device of a serial killer mystery. Which was not really what I’d been expecting and thus obviously kinda disappointing. Especially since I worked out the big twist about 20 minutes, killing a lot of that tension.

 

That said, the more time I’ve had to think on this movie, however, the more I do actually kind of appreciate it. It’s really solidly written and paced, with good acting from Olivia Cook and especially Douglas Booth as real-life music-hall star Dan Leno. Probably one of my favourite under-appreciated performances of the year from the latter. Bill Nighy’s part is a bit underwritten, more of an observer and listener than an actual developed character. Plus it got a bit frustrating towards the end when it was ridiculously clear who the murderer was and he just refused to see. That said, Nighy is charismatic enough and did a decent enough job with the performance that it's not a major distraction.

 

Ultimately, this is one of those movies that I kinda recommend, even if I don't think it's great? There is definitely a lot to like about it and it is one of the more structurally sound pieces I’ve seen this year. I don’t know whether it’ll be anyone’s massive favourite, but there’s plenty to like. Just… y’know, don’t pay attention to the trailers.

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59. Beauty and the Beast

 

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Uuuuuuuurgh, this movie. This is a movie I simultaneously want to put both higher and lower on this list. Higher because the original animated Beauty and the Beast is really really good and I think this movie managed to capture at least some of the original magic from it... but I also want to put this movie much lower because of its blatant and uninspired copy & paste of the original material, with barely any attempts to try anything new or worthwhile for itself.

 

Honestly, a good comparison to this for me is the Snyder Watchman movie, which was so slavishly devoted to the original comic than it spent much of its running time just reenacting half the frames from the comic book, while simultaneously missing much of the context and meaning behind it. But, I honestly think that's unfair on Watchmen. Watchmen was at least adapting the story across mediums, which is difficult to do while remaining loyal to the source altogether and had to fill in the gaps itself (to questioning degrees of success). This movie has no such excuse. Plus, it's still clear that Zack Snyder obviously loves the original comic (even if I don't think he fully understands it) and was passionate about getting it right. This just felt like a lazy uninspired cash grab, both outside the screen and behind it.

 

I mean, okay, sure the movie makes tiny changes here and there, but either said changes are barely substantial or, in some cases, actively hurt the point of the movie. In particular, I was pretty damn annoyed at the way they turned the Beast from an impulsive, uneducated, uncivilised ‘beast’ who learns from Belle and grows as a result, to a condescending know-it-all prick who just thinks Belle’s taste sucks. It sapped a large amount of what made the Beast so sympathetic in the original as well stripped Belle of a lot of what made her interesting in the relationship as well. And while I might've accepted it if it was actually a case of them going off in a different direction and deconstructing that sort of real-life behaviour, it's not the case at all. They just stick to the original redemption arc from the movie, except instead of Belle teaching the Beast how to read, she just makes him appreciate the poetry he already knew and had read by... I don't know, being pretty or something. Plus, all that makeup was a waste of a perfectly good Dan Stevens. Half of that guy's acting charm comes from his face and you want to cover it all up with make-up and crap?

 

Still, the fact remains that, like the Watchmen movie, by so slavishly copying the original source material, the movie does still manage to capture a fair amount of the strength of said source material, so I can’t really say I didn’t enjoy it and I entirely get why others like it a lot more and why it made a ton of money. But while it’s a movie I can’t say I didn’t enjoy, it’s also a movie I really can’t respect either. So that’s why it’s all the way down here.

 

Also, jesus, that autotune on Emma Watson. Just... no.

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58. Lu Over the Wall

 

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Okay, unless you’ve been keeping a close eye on the Best Animated Feature race, chances are you’ve probably not seen or heard of this recent animated film from Japan. If you want me to sum it up... basically, it’s Ponyo on acid. Which, yeah, is pretty damn awesome.

 

This movie is kind of the opposite for me of Beauty and the Beast (2017) in many ways, in that it definitely has a lot of problems and is kind of flawed up to the wazoo. The main story is ostensibly a coming-of-age film about an emo teen befriending a cheerful mergirl, but the main male character is such a whiny, annoying shit, the main plot is such a drag, most of the human characters aren't that great and the story doesn't really do a very good job of handling or even really explaining the male protagonist's emotional issues. But, where BatB directed quality material in a dreary, half-assed way, this makes up for most of its problems when it gets really going, by being so utterly insane and colourful and imaginative and just plain fun!

 

Director Masaaki Yuasa is someone I've only fairly recently been introduced to in regards to animated films, but he has a such a distinct and crazy style that it's almost impossible not to fall in love. The animation in this movie is energetic, weird, bright, colourful and off-model in the most delightful ways and every time to movie decides to get crazy, it's just tons of fun to watch. Okay, sure the movie fails to reach the levels of dull competence that Beauty and the Beast (2017) had but, like I said, when it gets going it's so imaginative and fun that it blows that movie out of the water. If only the main plot/male lead wasn't so crap, this would be much much higher up on the list. 

 

Also, Business Shark Dad for Best Character of 2017. Seriously, just look at this guy. He's amazing.

 

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57. Molly's Game

 

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You know, once upon a time, when I was doing my Screenwriting Undergraduate, I wrote a sci-fi script that I honestly thought was pretty damn good. However, when I handed it in to be marked, I ended up getting back pretty middling marks for it. When I naturally asked why, my teachers pointed out to me that far too much of the script was made up of dialogue and not nearly enough of everything else. And while that's certainly something that reads well in a script on its own, film is a visual medium and thus overly-dialogue heavy screenplays don't translate nearly as well as you might think.

 

That's... kinda this movie in a nutshell.

 

Aaron Sorkin is probably one of the best known scriptwriters working today and the fact that he's so well known, plus that this is his debut as a director, almost entirely explains why this movie has the flaws it does. Which is that the entire movie is almost all dialogue. All of it. If it's not characters trading Sorkin-esque dialogue, it's Jessica Chastain Sorkin-esquely narrating over everything. And while the dialogue isn't necessarily bad, after all Sorkin is a pretty good writer, there's just so much of it, with not nearly enough visual flair and it all starts to get so samey and tiring after a while and thus it just begins to get boring, for me at least.

 

I will give credit to the actors for doing their utmost to give life to the material, but what this movie really needed was someone to tell Aaron Sorkin to lay off a little and also someone to give him much more of a pointer in regards to interesting visual narration and narrative, because it's clear he doesn't have a clue. The scene with Chastain in the ice-skating rink, while ostensibly supposed to be a big emotional moment for her is so amateurishly directed that it comes off as laughable.

 

Overall though, I don't think I'd necessarily call it a bad film, just a very overindulgent one. It's an interesting story and, as mentioned, the actors are trying their best, but it really needed someone other than Sorkin behind the wheel to give it more of a visual panache. As it is, it's just okay. Not awful, but not transcendent either.

 

 

 

Anyway, the reactions to this next entry should be interesting...

 

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