Hindsight: A 2017 Cinematic Retrospective

Here we go again...

10 Films of 2017 That I Didn't See

The Lego Batman Movie

I haven't seen the Lego Movie, so, perhaps absurdly, I felt like I shouldn't watch this until after I'd seen that. Update: I've seen it now. While not as funny as the Lego Movie from which it spun off, the voice performances are great, particularly from Will Arnett, Zach Galifinakis and Michael Cera, and the character-driven story makes a surprisingly pithy observation about loners who claim to feel nothing and need nobody. It's not really a Batman film, just a comedy about characters based on the Batman characters, but even so it's still the best film to feature him since The Dark Knight.

Logan

Given that I actually liked X-Men: Days of Future Past I should probably watch this as well.

Beauty and the Beast

No one appears in a film like 1991 animated Gaston. Couldn't be bothered with a live action do-over, despite, like many lads who grew up in the early 2000s, having a soft spot for Emma Watson.

Kong: Skull Island

More like Kong: Skullf*ck Island, amirite?

Baby Driver

Edgar Wright hasn't done anything good since Hot Fuzz.

Alien: Covenant

After Prometheus? Good god, no.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales

Despite being slightly tempted by the prospect of seeing Paul McCartney completely fail to act, and somewhat enjoying On Stranger Tides, I was totally put off by a) Johnny Depp these days, and b) the title being too similar to that of the second film, which is just lazy.

It

I haven't read the book (or indeed any Stephen King) so I feel like seeing the film would just be like seeing what it is, a film adaptation of a very long and complex novel. Why bother?

I, Tonya

I should probably see this, if only so I can compare it to Weird Al's music video for "Headline News".

The Shape of Water

I should probably see this too.

13 Films of 2017 I Have Seen:

Get Out

It was good. Is that a trite opinion now? The uncomfortable atmosphere and ludicrous, but satirically effective, sci-fi premise make it striking and memorable. Daniel Kaluuya's performance is pretty spot-on; personally I found it all rather gripping, but I think retroactively it was oversold to people, affecting its impact. The hypnotic abyss he's sent to is vividly realised, and the auction scene is absolutely haunting. Furthermore, it's nice to see him get his revenge on all these lunatics as the film continues. Besides, it's got that song Redbone in it that everyone loves, so surely it's all good.

The Blackcoat's Daughter aka February

Another horror film, this one was also tense, atmospheric and chilling. Its representation of the alienation and disaffection of young people represented through what could either be mental illness or genuine devil-worship is rather grisly and morbidly fascinating to watch. It's memorably lit and coloured as well in harsh whites, greys and blacks, adding to the sense of isolation and unease. Perhaps its only weakness is the narrative conceit concerning Kat and "Joan", because Kiernan Shipka and Emma Roberts just don't look that alike. Like a film I similarly appreciated with comparable elements, The Witch, it leaves plenty to the imagination: was she genuinely in contact with a malevolent intelligence, or was she just insane? This is the kind of thing that makes for good horror in my view.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

This is a pretty strong sequel to the first film, functioning well as a character study for virtually all of the main cast, including some new ones. Mantis is a welcome addition to the team and it handles the stories of Star-Lord, Gamora, Rocket, Nebula and Yandu deftly, which speaks a lot to James Gunn's talent as a writer as well as a director. Drax, my personal favourite of the Guardians, is in more of a support role here, but his friendship with Mantis makes it worthwhile. The villain, Kurt Russell's Ego (no pun intended), has a reasonable if slightly rushed motivation. I only have two criticisms of this film. The first is that I think it slightly lacks the same spirit of adventure as the first film. The other is that the final battle in Ego's core is an over-long, weightless CGI nothing-fest, the kind of thing that bores me to tears rather than exciting me. Other than that, it's a solid space opera outing. If it wasn't for the excess of CGI, these films would actually have a chance of being worthy modern equivalents of Star Wars in some respects.

Wonder Woman

The best film in DC's current franchise by a staggering margin, Wonder Woman proves what's been eluding Warner Bros. all along: that if you actually let creative people with an interest and an appropriate vision (so not Zach Snyder) do their jobs and don't constantly interfere with them you might actually get something good. Gal Gadot, despite a shaky start in Batman v Superman, brings a great deal of strength and heart to the role of Diana, while Chris Pine provides admirable support as Steve Trevor. The First World War setting is interesting and well-utilised, positioning itself right at the end of the conflict to give the film an appropriately apocalyptic feeling. I do have a few issues with the film. I think it's slightly too long; I think it's weird that they represent the real-life Ludendorff as a supervillain when, despite being a co-military-dictator, he was really just a little fat man with a moustache; David Thewlis doesn't make for a terribly effective villain either; the female villain, Dr Poison, is surprisingly forgettable in an otherwise strongly woman-led film; and the final battle between Diana and Ares is another meaningless CGI dust-up with no weight to it. Otherwise, I liked it and it's frustrating the other DC films can't emulate it. Give the director's chair to Patty Jenkins for the next Justice League or whatever.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

I struggled to get into this one. Tom Holland is good as Spider-Man, and he feels like the best onscreen version of the character of the post-2000 adaptations, but the film itself felt off to me. I realise that they didn't just want to do the same old shit as Sam Raimi's films and those godawful Amazing Spider-Man ones with the Manhattan setting, crazy supervillain with some over-the-top plan and/or obession with Spider-Man, and so on, but sometimes it just didn't feel that much like Spider-Man to me. Then again, what do I know about Spider-Man? As with all Marvel Cinematic Universe stuff these days there was too much Tony Stark as Iron Man, I found the whole sequence in Washington DC weirdly out of place, and the bit where Spider-Man's trapped in the underground warehouse or whatever was just tedious. On the other hand, I liked Michael Keaton as the Vulture, his character development, and the fact that he had a pretty down-to-earth motivation. That twist in which he turns out to be Liz's father got me as well. An okay film, but I just feel like it's missing something. I wouldn't mind rewatching it.

A Ghost Story

I only just watched this, but it's a very touching thing. A representation of how we become attached to places and people, often without really knowing why, it manages to be bittersweet, poignant and successful at capturing a sense of the mysteriousness of life and reality while the main character is a silent man in a bedsheet with two eyeholes cut in it. It has an excellent soundtrack and long, lingering shots which ask us to contemplate and meditate, filling the space with our own moods and thoughts, reflecting on ourselves. I'm pretty sure the guy at the party with the beard is not expressing the film's own argument, but rather something we're meant to see as wrong; it doesn't matter if entropy and decay doom our works to eventual nothingness. What value can we have beyond that which we produce in our relationships with the people around us, and for a little while after us? It's fundamentally a triumph of existentialism over nihilism, a differentiation so easily misunderstood in the modern day. Plus it has five minutes of Rooney Mara eating a really gross-looking chocolate pie. I absurdly saw this at the shop today in the horror section. I assume whoever was stocking the shelves hasn't watched it.

Dunkirk

Christopher Nolan's much-lauded tension-fest, this atmospheric Second World War film is suspenseful almost to a fault, to the point at which I suspect an element of realism may have been lost, although realism was probably never the point. The practical effects used to represent the air combat, however, are hugely welcome, and if the film at times is predictable, and it loses something in featuring too many of Nolan's regulars, it's still of the same high standard as any Nolan film I've seen (apart from The Dark Knight Rises, that sucked). That's the thing about Nolan, though: he's like a "premium package" kind of director, who makes extremely, exceedingly well-crafted films, but doesn't necessarily make films of great artistic genius with any consistency, if at all. Maybe that's not what he's after.

Annabelle: Creation

It's crap. Read my full review here.

Darkest Hour

Gary Oldman's Oscar-winning performance as Winston Churchill is definitely engaging, as is the film as a whole, but despite its efforts to make Churchill a rounded character the film almost inevitably comes across as hagiographic, depicting Churchill as fundamentally a good man with a few minor character flaws. In reality, as the cliché goes, people are much more complicated. Churchill may well have been the only man in the party with the conviction to stand up to Hitler, but the film tries to present him as being, or developing into, a loveable man of the people when in reality he was a racist snob for whom the war was ultimately not about saving democracy but rather leveraging Britain's ongoing geopolitical influence in Europe. I'm not saying Churchill wasn't a great man of conviction and purpose for standing up to Germany when everyone around him was succumbing to defeatism, but couldn't the portrait be a little more balanced? Regardless, purely as a piece of cinema, it's well-made and entertaining, with only the Tube scene really standing out as something schmaltzy and reeking of wishful thinking.

Blade Runner 2049

A nice-looking and largely thought-provoking science fiction film in its own right, its greatest weakness ultimately derives from presenting itself as a sequel to the timeless, inimitable original. The first half or two thirds of the film is actually a good deal more engrossing than anything that happens after Harrison Ford shows up and the film becomes obsessed with the absent Rachel. You can read or, if you prefer, listen to my full review here.

Thor: Ragnarok

In my view, this is absolutely the best Marvel superhero film in years, probably since the first Guardians of the Galaxy. Its greatest success is in not taking itself particularly seriously, with a great deal of humour, an energetic soundtrack courtesy of Mark Mothersbaugh, and lavish visuals. Like all of these superhero films it does inevitably suffer from excess of CGI, but the humour and storytelling in my view largely make up for it. Unfortunately, the film grinds to a halt every time it cuts back to Asgard and Cate Blanchett hamming it up as Hela, which lacks the humour and visual style of the rest of the film; seeing Thor's friends get massacred, for instance, is almost too bleak compared to what happens elsewhere. Nonetheless, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Mark Ruffalo and Tessa Thompson are all on fine form, especially considering how many of these Hemsworth and Hiddleston have done. I actually enjoyed the idea that Asgard is a people, rather than a place (it's more set up in the film than you might think), Odin gets a nice sendoff, and the method of defeating Hela by exploiting Surtur to destroy the planet was a nice twist, I thought. Jeff Goldblum's good too. Can you tell I like this film?

Justice League

It sucked, everyone knew it was going to suck, it was always going to suck, it sucked. I actually kind of liked it because it was so stupid, but the villain is incredibly boring, Ben Affleck has already given up on being Batman after the last debacle, Wonder Woman doesn't have enough to do despite being in such a successful precursor, and Aquaman feels as pointless as the stereotype portrays him as being. The only vaguely successful new(ish) character is the Flash; Cyborg is totally forgettable. No one really seems to care about how ghoulish and Frankensteinian the resurrection of Superman is either. I honestly feel sorry for everyone involved in this, but if you want mindless superhero camp it kind of does its job.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

As I've said a thousand times, it's an unbelievably frustratingly flawed film with some incredibly good, very strong elements. Rey, Luke and Kylo equals interesting. Poe, Finn and Rose equals clumsy and distracting. As much as I think the film's biggest and loudest detractors come across as either frothing pop-culture obsessives or sinister political culture warriors, I can't help but feel that Rian Johnson should have just made more of a crowd pleaser, although it's the media's fault for making idiots think that Snoke's identity and Rey's parents were important. Read my full review here, my article on why Snoke doesn't matter here, my article on why Rey was right to not join Kylo here, my article on Luke's characterisation here and my article on the film's theme of nonviolence here.

Best Film of 2017?

Probably A Ghost Story which I reviewed above, in terms of pure cinema, by which I mean doing something with film in a way that couldn't work in another medium. That being said, I really did like Thor: Ragnarok, the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Maybe I'll split it, giving Thor: Ragnarok my "best piece of Hollywood trash of 2017" award and A Ghost Story my "best actual film of 2017" award.

Blade Runner 2049

Hot new feature! Instead of exerting the energy required to read the review, why not listen to me read it to you with limited enthusiasm instead?

He should have found a turtle.

A slow, pointless rehash of the slow, overanalysed original, in Blade Runner 2049 Ryan Gosling gets shot, stabbed, punched by Harrison Ford, blown up and forced to recite poetry, he makes out with a hologram, burns an innocent man's house down, drowns a woman in the back of a waterlogged car, wades through urban sprawl, junkyards, wastelands and two and a half hours of droning Hans Zimmer bombast, and eventually dies of sheer boredom and the odour of Harrison Ford's sweaty t-shirt.

Right, now that I've got the facetious version out of the way, let's get to the real review.

It's not a real sequel 'cause none
of these got squeezed out.

I have to admit that, despite natural cynicism, aspects of Blade Runner 2049's marketing campaign worked on me, particularly the teaser. Seeing our new protagonist, Ryan Gosling's Officer K, in an orange-tinted wasteland led me to imagine that we were going somewhere new in this far-removed sequel, perhaps to see something different. The full trailer impressed me less, as it seemed to be going down a dramatic route which didn't seem particularly unusual, but I was willing enough to see the film.

What if there's a big crowd on the bridge?

Probably the best compliment I can give to Blade Runner 2049 is that it feels like a strong sequel to a slightly different film. I rewatched Blade Runner a few days before seeing this, specifically the Final Cut, and having not watched the film in its entirety for probably ten years I was reminded most strongly of how abstract and dreamlike its tone is. The score by Vangelis is a major contributor to this, of course, but the cinematography, including long, lingering shots, and the performances, intentionally or otherwise, also create a haziness and distance which focus the viewer primarily on the ideas the film is contemplating, rather than a strong narrative, which the original notoriously lacks. As a result, I found myself feeling increasingly convinced that making an authentic-feeling sequel to Blade Runner was impossible, that the characters and setting did not and could not exist outside the boundaries of the text; the film accomplishes what it sets out to do, and is complete. That's not to say that the film is perfect; it is probably slower than necessary at points and arguably suffers from a seemingly-uninterested performance by Harrison Ford and a lack of onscreen chemistry between him and Sean Young, which makes the relationship between Deckard and Rachael less interesting than it might otherwise be. Nonetheless the excellent visuals and score and the performances of the replicant characters, particularly Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty, are very compelling.

Probably paid over $5,000,000
per minute he was in the film.

A good sequel preferably expands upon or investigates new possibilities suggested by the original, rather than simply rehashing what happened before, and it's to Blade Runner 2049's limited credit that Ryan Gosling's K is not simply hunting down a fresh batch of rogue replicants, perhaps with the assistance of Harrison Ford's Deckard. Rather, he is investigating a possibility of replicants becoming capable of natural reproduction, a situation which would threaten the humans' dominance over them while simultaneously resolving their new manufacturer's supply problems. Despite the fact that this is, ultimately, heavily related to Deckard and Rachel's story from the original, it is certainly a different direction. The extent to which we ought to give the film credit for avoiding this fairly obvious pitfall is, however, worth bearing in mind.

I heard that to prepare for the role he bred
a family of artificial humans and killed them all.

To the same extent, that direction itself is arguably less compelling than that of the original, in that while the 1982 film's topic of interest is fundamentally existential, Blade Runner 2049 is to a greater extent political, and while there is of course no bad time to warn of the potential technological advancement has to enslave us, or to create new slaves, I can't help but feel that this new film's concerns are ultimately more mundane than the first. This perhaps is appropriate given how much more grounded the sequel feels compared to the original, but also suffers in terms of the relative lack of attention it receives, as the idea of the abuse and suffering of the expendable replicants is only touched upon lightly until the concept of an underground replicant resistance is, in my view, clumsily inserted into the film in the final act. This left me, at least, thinking about the political ruminations of the film despite the fact that so much is devoted rather to the growing inner life of the protagonist, Officer K.

Not Emma Stone?

Ryan Gosling generally has a solid reputation and I feel like he was an appropriate casting choice for this role. K's story is certainly interesting, although I can't help but wonder how much it retreads that of both Rachael and Roy Batty in the original, particularly in his search for truth and meaning in his life. As such, probably the most engaging part I found to be the relationship between K, who is a replicant, and his hologram companion, Joi, to the extent that I started to think as I watched that a film about a relationship between two artificial life forms would make for a better film than a story about replicants being able to have babies. That being said, anti-replicant prejudice must be pretty bad if, in this world, even Ryan Gosling would need to purchase an electronic girlfriend.

At least banning plastic bags helped a bit.

K's character development is effective, as he transitions from a law enforcement killing machine to a man in fear for his life to one who is disappointed when his subconscious desire to be "special" is thwarted, to finally making a choice and acting to help others, although I'm not entirely convinced of how striking the resolution is. It's the steps in between which are arguably more memorable and perhaps not followed through to the extent that they could be. Are we really that surprised when K, a man of the law, decides to save Deckard from off-world torture so that he can be reunited with his lost daughter? For me, at least, it lacks the impact of Roy Batty's decision to save Deckard's life at the end of the original. Given that we only see K retire one replicant in the course of the entire film, the narrative appears to be drawn in morally simpler terms than the original, which ties back to the political angle of the plot. Despite the strength of Gosling's performance in particular, this made the film to me feel equal parts redundant and simplistic in light of the original. Perhaps I would perceive this differently if this was not a sequel, but it is. It's worth noting that K's serial number and his nickname, Joe, both evoke the protagonist of Kafka's The Trial, which arguably has more in common with the tone and atmosphere of the original Blade Runner than this sequel.

If this reminds you primarily of Fallout: New Vegas,
you need to read and watch more stuff.

The strengths of the film, beyond the performances, are primarily visual. Part of my homework for this film, besides watching the original, was watching two of Denis Villeneuve's recent works of apparent relevance: the 2016 sci-fi film Arrival, and the 2013 psychological thriller Enemy. This film is consistent with Villeneueve's strengths at creating atmosphere, suspense and a feeling of unease, although as I've said I think the atmosphere of the original is more fascinating. While I believe the film has been criticised for being too slow, I personally found it to be paced quite well, the lingering camerawork matching K's confusion and blunted emotional state. The film also takes us beyond the rain-swept LA to a protein farm, junkyard San Diego, snowbound Southern California, and atomic wasteland Vegas. In all honesty I feel as if these settings, particularly the Vegas one, deserved more use, and that the film ultimately spent too much time retreading the streets of LA and the Tyrell building in particular. I still don't believe they gel with the atmosphere of the original, but they're interesting enough on their own. The most dubious visual is probably the elaborate means used to depict Rachael in the film with the appearance of 1982 Sean Young. One could make the excuse that she's meant to look fake, but that doesn't really change the fact that she doesn't look like the real deal, and in the wake of this, Rogue One and the increasing number of films which try to reuse the likenesses of older or even dead actors I suspect we have a glut of trips down memory lane ahead of us.

"Who are we again? Am I a replicant?"

The film's soundtrack is adequate, but apart from a few moments in Vegas, for instance, I don't think Hans Zimmer brought too much to the plate. His trademark, now cliché, droning fits this film to a degree and is used with more flair than in other features, but it can't compare to the original's Vangelis compositions. It's noteworthy that the most musically memorable moment in the film is during the scene at the end featuring K lying down on the steps, during which Vangelis' 'Tears in Rain' track from the original plays, linking K with Roy Batty. This somewhat emphasises to me, however, the extent to which K simultaneously has to fulfil the roles from the original of Deckard, Rachael and Roy, exemplifying the dearth of well-developed original characters in the film.

"Two. Two. Four. And noodles."

As I've said, the performances are all strong, but new faces including Luv, Joshi and Mariette don't have much to do as characters despite each having a number of scenes. If anything I think Luv is overused, underwritten or both. Jared Leto's Wallace is effective in the two scenes in which he appears, but in my opinion was too openly evil as a character compared to the polite hollowness of Tyrell from the original. Dave Bautista gives a very different performance to how I'm used to seeing him, as Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy, and I could have seen more of him, and the character of Ana Steline was similarly well-realised as someone who appears to be a detective-story side character who takes on greater importance later. Edward James Olmos has a nice cameo as Gaff which perhaps reminds too much of the strength of the original film. Harrison Ford was, in my opinion, better in this than in another recent reprisal, The Force Awakens, but despite the greater range I felt he conveyed, nonetheless I didn't see him as Deckard, as he lacks the languor of the character as originally portrayed. Of course he might change over thirty years, but it'd be nice to see something of the original character still in there. It might be argued that his original performance was lacking, but as it suits the tone of the original, I missed it in this.

Part time.

Blade Runner has been criticised for its limited narrative, but I would argue that Blade Runner 2049 does too much to avert this. As I've said, the story seems to offer less room for meditation upon loftier subject matters, and given the strength of the visuals and some set pieces I'll discuss in a moment, it almost becomes a distraction. Certainly, by the time K found Deckard, and perhaps earlier, I felt that the iris of the narrative started to narrow more and more, taking the film in a direction which I thought risked becoming too formal and too structured in contrast to the best parts of the film when the stoic K stalks through the collapsing world around him.

I think she's in the film more than Ryan Gosling.

In this regard, another of the film's strengths are a number of visually or dramatically pleasing moments which stand out amid their surroundings. These include a scene in which Joi uses Mariette as a physical presence to allow her to be more intimate with K, and sequences in which K is obliged to take a baseline test to confirm his emotional detachment from his mission. It's noteworthy that while these serve K's characterisation, they seem like distant memories by the time the film leaves Las Vegas, at which it becomes a routine sequence of secret societies, interrogations, a climactic battle and an emotional departure. The final punch-up and drowning of Luv in Wallace's car is strikingly shot, but again pales somewhat compared to the confrontation between Deckard and Roy in the original, and it significantly shows how little characterisation Luv is afforded despite appearing in the film so much.

You wouldn't know he was a wrestler
if it wasn't for his tiny head.

It's probably worth pointing out as well that when the film focuses too greatly on its own plot, that plot shows limits. For instance, Joshi takes K completely at his word that he has eliminated the child, presumably simply because replicants are believed to not be able to lie. The question of why the child's records were doubled was not resolved as far as I could tell, although I may have missed something. It's not clear why Wallace needs to have Deckard sent to an off-world facility for further interrogation when he seems to be able to act with impunity on Earth. Furthermore, K simply states that Deckard will appear to have died in the car crash at the end even though there is no body. I was somewhat amused by the lines from Wallace which touch upon the "Deckard is a replicant" idea, implying that he was intended to couple with Rachael by nature or design, although it reminded me substantially of Alex Garland's 2015 film Ex Machina in which a character was manipulated in a highly similar manner. As I've said, the appearance of a replicant resistance movement also seemed trite and clumsily-included to me, an element out of place in the disaffected world of Blade Runner. Oh, and I guessed that the remains discovered at the beginning would be Rachael's bones almost as soon as they appeared. At least K turned out, in the end, to not be the child, which would have been much too neat and convenient. I appreciated that.

Rather than 'Joe', she should have started
calling him 'Special K'.

Perhaps my impression of Blade Runner 2049 has been excessively coloured by the original, but I think that comparisons are only fair when a film utilises not only cast and creative minds but even archive audio and footage from the earlier text. The fact is, Blade Runner 2049 is a very solid, nice-looking, well-performed, reasonably engaging science-fiction film, but I think it was always doomed in trying to be a sequel to the original. If anything it reminded me of how much I like the original, despite how flawed it is, and how much I'd appreciate a return to that kind of filmmaking. This shouldn't take away from the new film's strengths, and it probably merits a rewatch, but I can't help but feel like this piece, given its reheated elements and box office performance, is most strongly embodied by the duplicate Rachael who gets rejected and shot.