2017 rundown of movies so far for me:
Kong: Skull Island - This appears to be the first 2017 I watched which surprises me but ok. I didn't have a huge interest in seeing this since I had actually recently rewatched most of Peter Jackson's King Kong a year or two ago. However, the trailer was visually interesting enough that I was willing to check it out at some point. Then a friend asked if I wanted to go with him since his wife wasn't interested in seeing it so I figured why not and went. I must say, I went away quite impressed. While the skull crusher monsters were kind of generic and a sort of boring villain, I did like that the movie did appreciate that it gave Kong something to battle and do in order to change the human motivation from capture or kill to protect and aid. The "beauty and the beast" usual romance was also done more low key. John C. Reilly's character shouldn't work. It's like he's wandered in from a different movie but he ends up stealing the show and was one of the best things about this film. The choice to go retro to a 70's timeframe also works and that opening "Vietnam"/Kong helicopter battle is a great set-piece. Was disappointed about some of the actors whose characters who didn't make it and exited to soon. It's quite a good cast and I'd love to see them have been able to play off each other more. In the end, I think this might actually be the best King Kong movie that's been made so far and I'm definitely on board with this new Godzilla themed cinematic universe. Bring on the other monsters! Highly recommend and would absolutely watch again. 9/10.
Your Name - Watching this movie, I couldn't help but think to myself of how it could represent an alternate future where Disney successfully pursued 2D animation to create visual works of art like this film instead of Pixar leading the 3D animation path we see dominate the animation scene now. Like some other Studio Ghibli works, this film gave me a feeling of travelling to Japan and experiencing its culture. However, unlike Studio Ghibli films, I didn't find it emotionally resonate much with me coming off more as am intellectual exercise engaging my brain more than my heart. Part of that might have to do with the plot and its fantasy/sci-fi as it throws some twists at you and the mystery behind it all. While it is the only animated movie I've seen this year, from the clips and bits I've seen of other animated movies released so far, I'd think it would have to be the frontrunner for Best Animated Film of 2017 in any awards handed out. Another movie I'd definitely recommend even if it is just to take in the beautifully detailed animation but fortunately it has a pretty engaging story to go with it. Would also watch again. 8/10
The Lost City of Z - I hadn't heard anything or seen anything about this movie until I was one the AV Club one day and they were recommending it with an A grade and had a headline along the lines of "sometimes they do make them like they used to". Being a classic film fan and buff, that alone got me highly interested in this movie so I checked it out. This most likely isn't for everyone. It's a slow, ponderous kind of movie based on the real life story of a British explorer with a quest to prove evidence that an ancient civilization existed in the Amazon rainforest many centuries ago. The movie did an excellent job of putting you in the explorer's headspace. That despite how incredibly inhospitable and life-threatening the jungle can be there is still an allure to it and how the feeling of being so tantalizing close of discovering some great and marvelous can play on the mind. There's not much action in the movie but it is very atmospheric and the mood and mindset it put me in lingered with me for a few days after watching it. Wasn't quite what I expected going in but I'm glad I checked it out. I could see myself watching it again some day but it's not something I'd be willing to just jump into at any time like the first two movies I listed since I know the mood of the film and the sort of heaviness that it leaves you with. 7.5/10
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - I briefly reviewed this before earlier in the thread. I do like this cast of characters so I was disappointed that they split them up early into the film. I felt the movie had a couple tonal issues in it. Sometimes it wants to play things up as cartoonish action and sometimes it brings up elements which are uncomfortable. Yondu willing transported a bunch of kids to Ego even when he knew Ego was killing them? It's hard to not associate that with Yondu when I think of him now or see him in the first film. Like many a sequel, it imitates what came before but with lesser success. In the first film, the opening credits of Quill alone in a cave dancing to his music while on the path to a treasure was wonderful. This time, we have Baby Groot dancing away pointlessly while the rest of the team fights in a monster in a blurry background behind Groot. I'd have frankly rather seen the team fight the monster than watch Baby Groot dance. In fact, Baby Groot did not work for me and I missed the adult Groot of the first film. That said, one of the ending credit scenes showing a teenage Groot has the potential, just from this brief clip alone, to course correct Groot and make for some great comedy in the next film and makes me wish we could have seen that Groot in this movie instead. It's weird but somehow Drax ended up being the most reliable comedy in the film I thought. And we did get Trash Panda (It's so much worse) so it has its moments which keep me from judging it too harshly despite there being a lot of other elements I could complain about. I gave it 3 stars in my review but that would translate to about a six out of ten and I don't think it quite deserves to be that low on reflection but I certainly wasn't really recommending it to people like the first one and I actually forgot I had seen this until I was going through a list of movies released this year and that's not a good sign. 7/10.
Wonder Woman - I'm in agreement with most here. Overall, I enjoyed the movie. A bit of a so-so ending with the CGI-fest battle and an ultimate villain whom we don't really see engage in the story much until he shows up at the end to try and sway Diana to his way of thinking. However, up to about the point of the village gassing, I'd say it is a really solid movie. Having read the New 52 Wonder Woman epic by Brian Azzarello, the incarnation of Ares in this film was further disappointing from how he and other Greek gods were portrayed in that story. Would have liked to see more Dr. Poison. Think she had more potential then we saw. Ultimately, Trevor's friends didn't really add much to the movie or overall plot so that also seemed like wasted time / missed opportunity. Steve Trevor, though, was a great ally/foil for Diana at the expense of being the only other character really worth caring about. The one question that popped up in my mind, particularly at the end with the defeat of Ares, is what do the writers or people in the world of Wonder Woman attribute as the force behind World War 2? If Ares is the last god and he was behind WW1 and stopped then how do they explain the other World War to follow?
Has Wonder Woman made me excited about Justice League? A bit but I still think that is going to be a Snyder vehicle. Despite other comments on the forums, I don't think Whedon is going to change much about it as he is coming in quite late to the process. I think he'll keep it close to Snydor's vision but may be given more influence on the DC movie universe going forward. What Wonder Woman does make me excited for, though, is other DC movies made by people who aren't Snydor. I enjoyed the different flavor and visual style of this movie compared to the current entries of Marvel films coming out. Ultimately, the plot is full of very similar story beats and momentum as all these other kinds of Superhero movies coming out but it was able to keep things fresh enough to not be an issue. Would I watch again? Sure but there are some parts I'd skip because I feel they'd drag on watching them again. 7.5/10
Baby Driver - Another mixed bag. There are great things and dumb things to it. Some of the bits I loved and some annoyed me. Ultimately, I never warmed up much to the titular Baby. Even though Kevin Spacey was playing a part and personality he can probably do in his sleep at this point, it still worked for me and I loved all his scenes. Likewise, Jon Hamm and his love interest were more compelling to me than Baby and Debra. Jamie Foxx's character just annoyed me. He just seemed to exist to make everyone's life more difficult. I think the constant barrage of music also got a bit tiring. Maybe it would help if it was more my taste of music but it might have worked better to have something orchestral / original movie score in there instead. Not that Guardians of the Galaxy 1 is the pinnacle of filmmaking despite the fact that I feel I reference it a lot but that movie took a lot of songs I don't care to normally listen to on their own yet somehow made them work with the visuals and how they were weaved into the story and sort of elevated them where I appreciated the music. That didn't happen with Baby Driver. While he doesn't have an extensive filmography, I'd say Scott Pilgrim vs The World is Edgar Wright's best work so far. I appreciate that this movie is willing to be different from most other movies like it with its own style and sensibilities but it just didn't work as a cohesive whole for me with just different bits and pieces working here and there. 6/10.
Spider-Man: Homecoming - Just saw this on Tuesday. I seem to be more down on it than others here. Yeah, it's a slick, fast-moving film and doesn't really stumble much with the property (either the actor or the portrayal of Flash Thompson was the only thing that felt off to me but something about the character just constantly struck me as off). Compared to the Amazing Spiderman series, it's definitely an improvement but I've mostly liked the Raimi trilogy with Spiderman 2 still being one of my all-time favorite superhero movies. Maybe this movie is better or tops it but my problem with the movie is my problem with the current Marvel universe as a whole. Having seen nearly all of the Marvel films released so far (The Incredible Hulk and Dr. Strange are the only ones missed at the moment), this movie seems very similar to many of the other Marvel superhero films I've seen so far. I suppose I could start breaking down how I see the formula at this point but I've got to think that other people who have seen a lot of these movies can recognize it too. And with DC starting to imitate it as well, as seen in Wonder Woman, it's starting to kill the enjoyment I've had of these kinds of movies. It's creating a blandness in the Marvel universe that if you see one movie then you've seen them all. A formula for a movie isn't necessarily a bad thing. Bond movies have a formula and it's allowed the series to stay successful through 5 decades even if there are many similarities in each film. But maybe the difference is that there isn't a Bond movie every 3 - 4 months. Having seen GotG2 and Wonder Woman already this year, it just made Spiderman come across as a bit stale in the whole learning-to-be-a-superhero arc it played out.
Likewise, for all the faults of the previous Spiderman efforts, at least they had some strong emotional beats. When I saw The Amazing Spiderman for the first time, I don't know why but my eyes started to well up a bit when the crane operators work to help Spidey near the end. I even thought to myself, why am I falling for this? It came across as an obvious emotion manipulator but it somehow worked in that moment and I couldn't help feeling moved by the support for Spiderman. Sort of like the end of It's a Wonderful Life when George Bailey is so happy to be reunited with his family and sees the respect he's garnered in the community by all the people who come by to help him. Or the end of A Beautiful Mind when John Nash suddenly realizes the respect he's garnered from his contemporaries at the end of that film in the teacher's lounge and at the Nobel ceremony. I'm a sucker for those mad respect moments, I guess. However, Homecoming had no real emotional tug that I noted further creating a more passive viewing experience when watching it. However, to it's credit, we got a Spiderman movie where Peter Parker isn't attending a funeral at the end. And the villain lived. Both villains lived! Way to break the Marvel formula on that one! 7/10
There's one other movie I've seen (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets) that I'll get to tomorrow but it's late and it took a couple hours to make this post and get my thoughts together for these various reviews. This review business ain't easy, ya know!
Topic: Rate the last movie you've seen (Read 1722858 times)
