Best of 2017 (So Far)

Ah, so where was I? Ah, yes - Day two tackling Michael Bay's Transformers series.....

Wait....It's August?!

The Summer Movie Season is just about wrapped up and we're heading into Award season???

What do you mean a woman single-handily saved DC's interconnected universe???

Nolan made a war film how short???

Who the fuck is Tom Holland???

Transformers 5 was a box office disappointment in North America??? Fuck yes!

And Sony really made a cartoon which featured the shit emoji???

What's next: the President of the United States defends white supremacists live, in front of the press?

So, as you can see, I hit my annual writer's block, this time last over most of the summer (including most of 2017), which means I am extremely behind to the point I'm up to my damn neck in stuff I want to talk about. Good thing September is just around the corner and there's not too much to go out and seek in that time frame, but that doens't mean I haven't been watching movies, so let's get back into the groove and highlight some of the year's best and worst thusfar, starting with the cream of the crop, in no formal order.

Logan - In 2008, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight set the standard for the superhero genre by taking Batman and his nemesis Joker and placing them into a modern-day examination of terrorism and the sacrifices a society is willing to accept to fight a tactic. In 2017, director James Mangold's take on the Wolverine character post X-Men: Days of Future Past raises bar on the genre by doing something extraordinary - by making a superhero film in name-only. In reality, it's a mashup of Western motifs, dystopian sci-fi, neo-noir and a road movie - all which just happens to have comic book characters Wolverine and Professor Charles Xavier at its center. In their final performances as their respective characters, Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart give career-best, Oscar-worthy performances as two rusted, weary stalwarts of an age that has completely passed them by; while a star is born in Dafne Keen as Laura, a young mutant born into a world where mutants are on the verge of extinction, who just so happens to be like Logan - adamantium claws and healing regenerative abilities. looking for a safe haven from a shady black-ops team that wants her back or dead. It's easily the most brutal, visceral X-Men film since last year's Deadpool, but it's also the most emotionally satisfying entry yet.

John Wick: Chapter 2 - In the past 15+ years, I've seen a handful of action films I consider great: Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol.1, Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers, Gareth Evan's The Raid, and NWR's Drive, to name a few. Chad Staheliski's sequel to 2014's John Wick, about a retired hitman going on a rampage against thugs who killed his dog, joins the list as one of the very finest in the genre. This sequel has Mr. Wick (Keanu Reeves) forced back into the criminal underground by a crime lord who has come to collect on a debt, only to screw him over once the job is done. The sequences, from shootouts in Rome's catacombs, to a spectacular fight sequence in New York's house of mirrors which pays homage to Orson Well's The Lady from Shanghai, Chapter 2 delves deeper into the criminal underworld and a code of honor among scumbags; as well as double-down on blistering, hardcore, in-your-face action set pieces that would make John Woo, Michael Mann & John McTierran proud.

Get Out - The last time I spoke highly of a horror film, it was writer/director David Robert Mitchell's truly terrifying It Follows in 2014. And right out of the bat, first-time writer-director Jordan Peele - yes, that Jordan Peele from Comedy Central's Key and Peele - etches his name into horror movie history with this disturbing and darkly humorous flick about an interracial couple, played by Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams, who visit the latter's parents house, only to be confronted with a family that kidnaps black men and robs them of their livelihood to benefit their disturbed relatives. What resonates with me is the cultural subtext - the moment Chris asks "why black people?", only to hear that because blacks are a fad, Peele's satire rings through - that even white liberals, with good intentions, can fall prey to racism.

Dunkirk - From the auteur who's stamp has been making grandiose pictures while juggling weighty themes, yet never failing to craft a satisfying, entertaining blockbuster, it is ironic that writer/director Christopher Nolan's World War II thriller is his shortest film to date at 107 minutes, but also his most ambitious and his best to date. From the word go, we are thrust into the direness of the situation at hand, told from three perspectives: On land, British and Canadian soldiers have their backs to the sea (literally) as they await to be evacuated. At sea, the Royal Navy are commandeering private ships to aid in the rescue effort, with an old man (Mark Rylance) and his son (Tom Glynn-Carney) taking their boat out into war themselves. In the air, three RAF pilots, lead by Farrier (Tom Hardy), are providing air support for the evacuation, but have limited fuel to help aid the troops stuck at the harbor and the boats sailing to their rescue. There's little dialogue throughout the film, but this film isn't meant to explain things through talking. It's as if Nolan himself is reminding us that film was called 'moving pictures' for a reason, and through this, dialogue isn't fully necessary when the actions of his characters can speak just as loudly and clearly. The message takes: this is an intense, chilling and harrowing look into the harsh realities of war, and what the experience does to men who only have their nerves and a fight-or-flight mentality to survive from moment to moment.

Wonder Woman - Patty Jenkins and her star, Gal Gadot's title character, not only resuscitate the DCEU with their take on one of the most iconic superheros in the genre and break damn-near ever box office record in its path, but Jenkins has made a movie that spells out the obvious: that yes, a female-lead superhero movie (or any movie featuring a woman as its lead) can be just as much of a draw as Iron Man, Captain America and the rest of the Marvel stable, and be just as well-made by a woman at the helm as a Zack Snyder or a James Gunn. It's also just really damn good overall: Gadot was born to play Diana of Themyscira - she nails every nuance of her character, with plenty of charisma to spare. Whereas Batman v Superman comes across as a dreary, self-serious slog and Suicide Squad was DC uncertain of what kind of film they wanted to show off as the finished product, Jenkins, in contrast, has a confidence in what story she wanted to tell that, with any luck, this interconnected universe might just feed off on.

Baby Driver - In a summer that gives us some of it's strongest offerings in years, leave it to writer/director (are you sensing a theme with some of the films on this list?) Edgar Wright to show up everyone at the party to make not only the summer's best of 2017, but the film to beat this year, period. The premise sounds like a half-baked idea that NWR had for Drive, but scrapped it early on: a talented getaway driver named Baby (Ansel Egort, in a star-making performance) is coerced into working for a crime boss (Kevin Spacey, having a ball playing a ruthless kingpin) and his crew of thieves and killers - psychopath Bats (Jamie Foxx) and a couple, Buddy (a terrific John Hamm) & Darling (Eiza Gonzalez) who would give Joker and Harley Quinn a run for their money on being completely insane and insanely in love. He tries to escape the life and run away with Deborah (Lily James), but he's pulled into one last job, which turns to shit. What happens from here features some of the most inspired pairings of action scenes and music I've ever witnessed on screen (a botched robbery set to Hocus Pocus's "Focus" is one for the time capsule), along with Wright taking beats from crime dramas, musicals and car chase flicks and creating something I haven't seen since Tarantino shook us all up with Pulp Fiction back in 1994: the shot of adrenaline that movies have needed for sometime, and the discover of seeing something this exhilarating that it gets you drunk on movies again.