Top 40 Favorite Movies of 2017

As it's been a tradition with me for many years now. During the very last days of December, I always share what I consider my most favorite movies of that Year. Some years it's just a top 10, some years I go for 25 entrees. This year, I'm going for a Top 40.

Keep in mind that there are still some movies that I was not able to see before this list was compiled, but I'll add an edit if necessary. Included with the listed movie, there are hyperlinks to my non-spoilers written reviews from the #isawthatmovie blog, and another link to go with the spoilers discussion about the movie from the #SpoilersPleeze podcast. 

So out of the 152 movies that I've seen that were officially released in 2017, here are my picks for what I consider my Top 40 Favorite movies of the year... 

  1. The Big Sick  (sp 125)  

  2. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri  

  3. Star Wars: the Last Jedi  (sp 142)  

  4. Colossal  (sp 109)  

  5. Logan  (sp 102)  

  6. It  (sp 128)  

  7. Spider-Man: Homecoming  (sp 120)  

  8. Lady Bird  (sp 140)  

  9. Get Out  (sp 101)  

  10. Guardians Of The Galaxy vol 2  (sp 111)  

  11. Coco  (sp 139)  

  12. The Lego Batman Movie  (sp 99)  

  13. The Shape Of Water

  14. Wonder Woman  (sp 115)  

  15. Thor: Ragnarok  (sp 136)  

  16. Last Flag Flying

  17. The Breadwinner

  18. Okja  (sp 119)  

  19. Wind River

  20. Wonder

  21. Molly's Game

  22. Blade Runner 2049  (sp 132)  

  23. Brigsby Bear

  24. A Ghost Story

  25. Raw

  26. Kong: Skull Island  (sp 103)  

  27. A Taxi Driver

  28. Beauty & The Beast 2017  (sp 104)  

  29. Baby Driver  (sp 118)  

  30. Band Aid

  31. How To Be A Latin Lover

  32. Blade Of The Immortal

  33. Patti Cake$

  34. The Florida Project

  35. I, Tonya  

  36. The Post

  37. John Wick : Chapter 2  

  38. A Dog’s Purpose

  39. Cars 3

  40. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets

For fun, I've also included the bottom 10 movies that I consider my least favorites from the year, with No. 1 being the worst. Have at it. 

  1. Transformers : The Last Knight
  2. The Snowman
  3. Suburbicon
  4. I Do… Until I Don’t
  5. The Only Living Boy In New York
  6. Girlfriend’s Day
  7. Rings
  8. Beatriz At Dinner
  9. The Circle
  10. Rough Night

2017 was the year of...

I was suppose to be giving myself a little vacation from "Who What Where's Why" for the eve and day of Christmas, and yet here I am writing this on the night of Dec 25th. The reason for this impromptu entree was because when I was watching some YouTube videos, I came across some videos for the movie "The Greatest Showman." If you've read my review, you know that while I had mixed reactions for the actual movie itself, I thought the songs were simply fantastic. So I came across this particular video of one of the particular songs, and it somehow made me think about what the year of 2017 was. 

During the last week of this year, you will hear mine and Jiaming's recap of what transpired in 2017 on an episode of the Stuff & Junk show. Of course when thinking of what happened during a completed year, the thought that comes to your head might be "what was 2017 the year of?" Putting a label to describe a year is a little silly, but it's definitely a thought.

Some would say that it's the year of Trump as US President. Some would say that it's the year when Women stood their ground. Some would say that it's the year where discourse reigned even more than before. All those options seemed viable. Then when I watched the video for "This Is Me" (embedded below), it occurred to me that an argument could be made that proclaiming who you are is the real description of what this year was about. 

Me. 
"I'm the President of the USA, what I say goes. If you don't like it, too bad, that's who I am." 
"I'm a woman who was sexually harassed and assaulted." 
"I'm a woman and I can finally see a super-heroine in the lead of a comic book movie." 
"I'm Mexican, and I'm glad that a Disney Pixar movie is representing my culture." 
"I'm Asian, and we want more representation in our culture." 
"I'm a white American, and minorities are taking my country away from me." 
"I'm a huge Star Wars fan, and I loved "The Last Jedi." 
"I'm a huge Star Wars fan, and I hated "The Last Jedi." 
This is me. 

A lot of people this year seems to be proud to proclaim their identity in society and in the world. Whether it's for good or bad things, the point is that a lot of people are owning up to who they are. They are essentially saying "Damn you if you don't like what you see." Of course I personally rather not have racists and elitists be proud of being horrible people, but hey that's who they are... I guess? 

I've always said that in order for every one to get along with each other, they need to know who they are first. Once they can identify who they are, they can start seeing the strengths and faults. If they can't see it themselves, others will, and vice-versa. When everybody is able to understand who they are as a person, maybe we can finally open up a dialog in how we all can get along together, to build a better future for everyone. 

Oscar Bait

"Oscar bait" is a term used in the film community for movies that appear to have been produced for the sole purpose of earning nominations for Academy Awards or "Oscars", as they are commonly known.  

That's the definition I found on Wikipedia, and it honestly disappoints me. While there is truth to the fact that there are films created in the idea that they could win an Academy Award, it still doesn't change the fact that the "winners" do tend to actually be good movies for the most part. Shouldn't that be the ideal goal when creating a film? To make it really good and worth watching? That's not how a lot of people see "Oscar bait" films however, and lean more towards the idea that they shouldn't be supported because of the ulterior reasoning in their creation. 

Some people also think that Oscar bait movies are also generally manipulatively pretentious. Drama for the sake of drama. Preachy for their important social topics. Boring for being educational and informational. Come on, let's not dismiss films that try to reach beyond just being disposable entertainment. Some of those "awards season" films can admittedly crash and burn from the weight of their own lofty ambitions to receive a prize, and I myself have called out some of them. Of course I also greatly recognize that a lot of them also do succeed spectacularly.

Also imagine this fact... those Oscar bait movies as people call them, can actually be entertaining AND good for you. If you are just watching movies for superficial reasons; for those loud noises and pretty visuals, then feel free to stay clear of these "prestigious" films. Those of us who just want to watch a solidly good film however, will give Oscar bait movies a chance. 

For the 90th Academy Awards, here are some likely contenders; those Oscar Bait movies, that are likely hoping for at least a nomination. If you notice, a lot of these are released during the last few months of the year; also known as "Oscar season." Check some of them out if you get a chance... 

Those are more out there, especially the ones that are just hoping for an acting nod, foreign film category, or some technical awards. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments. 

The $0.66 Movie Ticket

For those unaware, for several years now, I've been a subscriber to "Moviepass;" which is essentially the "Netflix of movie theaters." All those years that I've been a subscriber to that service, it's always had it's caveats. The cost it chargers per Month, and the rule sets to how and when I can watch movies with it. I pretty much accepted the conditions it set up, because it still felt worthwhile to my movie going habits.

Most recently though; as discussed in episode 145 of The Stuff & Junk Show, the Moviepass service changed for the better. For just one low monthly fee of $9.95, I get to watch one movie a day, for as long as I have a subscription. I don't know how long the company can sustain that, but that's an unbelievable deal!!! You know what that means right? The more movies I watch; while taking advantage of Moviepass, means that the price of admission to see one single film has become ridiculously affordable. 

September 2017 was the first Month I got to take the "new" Moviepass service for a spin. I ended up seeing 15 movies that month. 13 of those movies were seen via the Moviepass service. 2 of them were seen via the points that I easily accumulated with the combination of the AMC Stubs loyalty card and with Moviepass. This means that instead of paying a total of $170.58, I only spent $9.95 to watch those 15 movies, which essentially means that each movie only cost me $0.66 a ticket. 

Let me repeat.... It's not $5 a ticket. It's not $2 a ticket. It's not even $1 a ticket. 
THAT'S 66 CENTS PER MOVIE TICKET!!! 
Who doesn't need to rely on going to budget theaters, or taking advantage of movie ticket discounts, or weekend or matinee pricing specials? THIS GUY! 
Talk about a low barrier of entry to go see a movie. Thank you Moviepass! Please try and stay in business. 

The list below are the movies I saw in September, how much each ticket actually cost without a Moviepass subscription, whether it was purchased using a loyalty card, and where I saw it. 

  1. Gook. $13.59 AMC. 
  2. Patti Cake$. $10.80. Regal. 
  3. A Taxi Driver. $10.45. Regal. 
  4. It. $14.19. AMC. 
  5. Marjorie Prime. $10.00. Laemmle. 
  6. The Trip To Spain. $8.00. Regency. 
  7. I Do Until I Don't. $10.55. Regal. 
  8. Mother! $13.05. Regal. 
  9. American Assassin. $12.49. AMC. 
  10. Kingsman: The Golden Circle. $13.99. AMC Stubs card. 
  11. The Tiger Hunter. $6.29. AMC Stubs card. 
  12. Friend Request. $11.09. AMC. 
  13. Stronger. $12.49. AMC. 
  14. Brad's Status. $10.55. Regal. 
  15. American Made. $13.05. Regal. 

Final Update - Summer Movie Draft 2017

Alright, it's Labor Day here in the States, and it's time to finalize the 2017 Summer Movie Draft for whowhatwhereswhy. It seemed like right from the beginning, the winner of this friendly contest was already predetermined. Sure enough, it was! Congrats to Jiaming for winning it all primarily because he had a winning draft pick that included Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and Wonder Woman. So now, how did the rest of them do? 

Edward 
1) Snatched : $60,498,103  
2) Baywatch : $177,703,947  
3) Transformers: The Last Knight : $604,051,265  
4) Despicable Me 3 : $994,943,180  
5) Atomic Blonde : $90,007,945  
6) Annabelle Creation : $255,380,598

Louis 
1) King Arthur: Legend of the Sword : $146,175,066  
2) Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul : $39,945,832  
3) Captain Underpants : $102,904,291  
4) Spider-Man: Homecoming : $747,216,546  
5) The Emoji Movie : $160,426,714  
6) The Hitman's Bodyguard : $58,069,214

Jiaming 
1) Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 : $863,101,971  
2) Alien: Covenant : $233,056,304  
3) Wonder Woman : $813,199,021  
4) War for the Planet of the Apes : $366,688,829   
5) Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets : $172,842,890   
6) The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature : $29,599,173

Albert 
1) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales : $792,033,026  
2) The Mummy (2017) : $407,778,013  
3) All Eyez on Me : $44,922,302  
4) Cars 3 : $343,884,869  
5) Dunkirk : $460,254,545  
6) The Dark Tower : $101,406,894

Final rankings... 

  1. Jiaming : $2,478,488,188  

  2. Edward : $2,182,585,038  
  3. Albert : $2,150,279,649  
  4. Louis : $1,254,737,663 

Well look at that! Edward managed to move right pass Albert for 2nd place, by only $32,305,389. It was due to the strength on the legs of Despicable Me 3, as well as the popularity of The Conjuring cinematic universe with Annabelle: Creation's excellent first month in release. Albert made good strides with Dunkirk's impressive performance at the box office, but with The Dark Tower not doing that great (but better than we all expected), his draft picks wasn't enough to prevent Edward from taking his place on the rankings at the finish line. Besides Louis being the distant underdog in the race, he at least did hit the 1 Billion mark, thanks to Spiderman: Homecoming, and oddly enough The Emoji Movie. 

Just from this list, no movie passed $1 Billion in the World Wide Box Office. The closest to that was Despicable Me 3, which was only about $5 Million short of that goal. Who knows, it might meet that goal by Sept 5. 

Along with Despicable Me 3, only five other movies made it past the $500 Million mark. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2, Wonder Woman, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Spiderman: Homecoming, and Transformers: The Last Knight; in that order. 

There were at least twelve other movies; besides the previously mentioned six, that made it past the $100 Million mark. Probably to some people's surprise, that includes... The Mummy, Alien: Covenant, Baywatch, Valerian & The City Of A Thousand Planets, King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword, The Emoji Movie, Captain Underpants, and The Dark Tower. Besides Captain Underpants and Alien: Covenant, all those other movies mentioned had a rotten tomatometer score at RottenTomatoes.com  

Well there you go folks. Until next year, when we do the Summer Movie Draft for 2018! 

still reacting to Charlottesville

Consider this an expansion to the Charlottesville episode on The Stuff & Junk Show. 
https://whowhatwhereswhy.com/stuffjunk/2017/8/14/charlottesville 

...Most people just want Trump to completely denounce the KKK, the neo-nazi, and the white supremacists. That’s what people are waiting for. It’s that simple. Seems pretty easy to me to denounce groups that are openly racist. Why won’t he do it? It only makes him look like he is afraid to offend those racist groups because he doesn’t want to alienate a voting party. Just another political tactic, made by a man who originally claimed he wasn’t going to be a politician. 

On the 8/14 presser, Trump denounced racism and violence, which is something we all can agree on. He should have stopped talking there. We would all have been happy. However, like I pointed out on the podcast, by saying the word “including…,” he was clever enough to protect himself from completely denouncing the KKK, neo-nazi, and white supremacists (proven on Tuesday). So he was apparently just denouncing the racist and violent ones? Yeah, so were we all. The KKK, neo-nazi, and the white-supremacists represents racism already, so isn’t that enough to denounce them? They were on their way to rot in the fringes. They should have continued to be ridiculed straight into the history books. Suddenly though, here they are on the rise again, all because they took Trump’s saying MAGA as meaning that he is going to Make America WHITE Again. They were inadvertently given legitimacy by the leader of a nation.

If Trump doesn’t denounce those racist groups, it only encourages them to do more of these rallies. It’s true that they can legally get permits to do so; heck Satan worshippers can get permits for rallies if they wanted to, but the Unite-The-Right movement shouldn’t go into their rallies chanting Nazi slogans like “Jews will not replace us” or “Blood and Soil” and have a small armed militia to watch over them. Are they there to protect a statue, or to show Nazi pride? Freedom of speech and all sure, but that’s like yelling FIRE in a movie theater. They want to make a stand for what they believe in, but they also want to intimidate and antagonize the opposite side. They want to be martyrs for their cause. They welcome and expect violence.

On that note, the AntiFascists are getting out of control as well, as I said on the podcast. They have decided that the peace and diplomacy that MLK has preached is not really working, as racism and prejudice is still disappointingly prevalent, and are only being passed on to a younger generation. They were also probably egged on by an older generation of people who criticized Millennials for not being proactive and are too comfortable in life to get their hands dirty. I guess they are showing us now aren’t they? “Sticks and Stones can break our bones, but words will never hurt us.” That should be updated, as words can really hurt. To be fair, although the current batch of AntiFa looks like they are mostly Millennials, the group has been around since the 1920s.

So basically the white supremacists are tired that they are being told that racism is wrong, and the AntiFascists are tired that those racists are still around and no one seems to be able to stop them from spreading. The way the narrative is playing out, it’s almost like World War II. There were two sides on the European front, the side that had Nazi fascism, and the side that was fighting against them.

As for the confederacy statues. They are not being targeted specifically just because of slavery. It’s not that simple. You can read about why here...
https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/whoseheritage_splc.pdf 
So no, the monuments of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Mount Rushmore don’t have much to worry about.

Just denounce everybody Trump! The AntiFa. The BLM. The KKK. The neo-Nazi. The White Supremacists. Just denounce them all, and not just the violence ones! That’s the easiest thing for him to do. How's that for not taking sides? 

BTW, “The Alt-Left” movement is not a real thing. It was made up by the Alt-Right Movement to try and discredit their opposition. Just because there’s an Alt-Right, doesn’t mean there’s an Alt-Left. What’s the opposite of the Alt-Right ideology of white nationalism? Those who don’t believe in white nationalism? If that’s the case, then the so called Alt-Left is basically everybody else in the USA.

Another thing too. The term “Mainstream Media.” Why is that being used like a derogatory term? All popular news outlet, whether it be on TV, on a newspaper, or on the internet, are the mainstream media. That includes all news media that are biased towards their respective side of the political spectrum. Why the term mainstream media is only associated with one political party has boggled me ever since that phrase was first uttered in the campaigns. 
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com 

Also noticed that on this blog post, I don’t really use the terms Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, the Left, or the Right. We need to stop using those terms as a form of name-calling. Too many times those words are being used as a way of dividing all of us Americans. Call out specific names or organizations if needed, but lumping everybody into a broad label doesn’t do anybody any favors. After all, both sides have had their fair share of blame since the beginning of the USA (I just remembered the movie “Lincoln” by Spielberg).
We are Americans.
We are humans.

To reiterate what I said on the podcast, I’m definitely not siding with racists.