2017 in films - according to Film Excess

The 10 Best Films:

1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi/Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi - Rian Johnson

2. Dunkirk - Christopher Nolan

3. The Square - Ruben Östlund

4. War for the Planet of the Apes - Matt Reeves

5. It - Andy Muschietti

6. Wonder Woman - Patty Jenkins

7. Thor: Ragnarok - Taika Waititi

8. Beach Rats - Eliza Hittman

9. Kong: Skull Island - Jordan Vogt-Roberts

10. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - James Gunn

Other good, recommendable movies of the year (in alphabetical order):

The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear/Den Utrolige Historie om den Kæmpestore Pære - Amalie Næsby Fick, Jørgen Lerdam, Philip Einstein Lipski

The Killing of a Sacred Deer - Yorgos Lanthimos

mother! - Darren Aronofsky

Murder on the Orient Express - Kenneth Branagh

The Year's Worst:

1. It Comes at Night - Trey Edward Shults

Other failed, mediocre or poor films (in alphabetical order):

Annabelle: Creation - David F. Sandberg
Baby Driver - Edgar Wright
Blade Runner 2049 - Denis Villeneuve
Logan Lucky - Steven Soderbergh

[19 titles in total]


Notes:

With just 19 2017-released titles reviewed yet, the first appraisal of the year in movies (no 2017 TV-series, documentaries or shorts reviewed yet) is admittedly slight, overlooking most worthwhile - as well as awful - titles of the year. But these will follow in the coming updates to the 2017 lists, the first one arriving in about a year.
2017 did already deliver 4 masterpieces that were all phenomenal cinema experiences as well: Rian Johnson's off-the-charts amazing, emotionally riveting, best Star Wars movie to date, Star Wars: The Last Jedi; Christopher Nolan's best movie to date, the truly intense, impressionistic WWII thriller Dunkirk; Swede Ruben Östlund's incisive societal critique and satirical drama The Square, and finally Matt Reeves' superbly created, affecting, adventurous War for the Planet of the Apes.
These are followed by Andy Muschietti's seriously eerie Stephen King-adaptation It; Patty Jenkins' great franchise-starter Wonder Woman, - the first great female superhero movie, perhaps ever? The list is rounded off with some of the year's good pics: Taika Waititi's disarming, stylish Thor: Ragnarok, Eliza Hittman's engrossing youth sex drama Beach Rats, Jordan Vogt-Roberts' gleeful Kaiju FX-actioner Kong: Skull Island and finally James Gunn's light-hearted, colorful escapade sequel, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2.
As is obvious, the big Hollywood studios showered us with some welcome, satisfying escapism this year.
Trey Edward Shults' ponderous, frustratingly directionless It Comes at Night takes the cake for now as the year's worst, (and only downright bad 2017 film seen so far.)
Among the greats who served something under my expectations this year are master filmmaker Steven Soderbergh with his 'retirement'-breaker heist dramedy Logan Lucky, Canadian master filmmaker Denis Villeneuve with his huge-budgeted, impressive but ultimately cluttered Blade Runner 2049 and British great filmmaker Edgar Wright with his teen-focused, perfunctory Ansel Elgort love-letter Baby Driver.

Previous annual lists:
  
2016 in films - according to Film Excess
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess  
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2014 in films - according to Film Excess
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
2013 in films - according to Film Excess    
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess  
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

What do you think of the 2017 lists?
What are your favorite and least favorite 2017 titles?

Kong: Skull Island (2017) - Kong reigns supreme in Vogt-Roberts' flawed but entertaining monster spectacle

♥♥♥♥



+ Best Kaiju Movie of the Year

One of the awesome, deliciously colored posters for Jordan Vogt-Roberts' Kong: Skull Island

Kong: Skull Island is the reboot of legendary cinema monster King Kong, who first came to life in Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack's King Kong (1933) and was most recently seen in master director Peter Jackson's overloaded, bad King Kong (2005), which was a remake of the original. Kong: Skull Island tells us a new story of Kong:

During the last stages of the American Vietnam War, two scientists are able to get a US senator to back a plan to investigate an uncharted island in the South Pacific, where something extremely large and unknown waits for modern man to discover it.

Kong: Skull Island is written by Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler (2014)), Max Borenstein (Godzilla (2014)) and Derek Connolly (Jurassic World (2015)), with John Gatins (Flight (2012)) contributing story elements, and directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts (The Kings of Summer (2013)).
It begins with an effective pre-credit sequence with handsome Japanese actor Miyavi (Unbroken (2014)). It then turns to its setting in America and South-East Asia in 1973, using the Vietnam War as basically a playground for some colorful exoticism. I couldn't help but wonder what a Vietnam veteran or an aging Vietnamese person might make of this. In any case, the Vietnam War is obviously so far in the past now that this type of escapade is, according to the unwritten rules of the creative industry, allowed. 
Still, especially during the first act of the film, it is striking how unscarred the supposedly veteran soldiers we get as our team are; how 21st century the entire vibe of the expedition is, and how shallow, in consequence, the impression made feels. This also registers due to the sleek visual style and fast editing which also made previous commercial and music video director Vogt-Roberts' debut, The Kings of Summer, a hollow experience. It is apparent that the filmmakers have gone to great pains to conjure up a kind of dirty 1970s look to the color schemes in the film, which is also quite gory and brutal, but the digitally enhanced look works the opposite way, making for an extremely clean and artificial visual side.
The film sports a big cast, and its need for monster action and urge to prettify and remain upbeat disables most of the characters in really establishing themselves. Leads Tom Hiddleston (Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)) and Brie Larson (Room (2015)) are both too well made up and pretty (which grates with the viciously hostile jungle setting as well) to ground their characters with me here. Larson is new in this type of mega-movie job and attempts acting against the invisible post production monsters with some intense crazy-eyes, which don't help her to connect. (See still documentation below.)
Samuel L. Jackson (Old Boy (2013)) is the cast's strongest card, and I think the writers might have created a stronger film, if they'd focused more on him. He plays another villain, and the performance is sure to go down as a classic in Jackson's already stuffed list of memorable credits. - He gets to spew some golden lines in Kong: Skull Island, - easily the film's best.
In the rest of the cast, we find: Richard Jenkins (Olive Kitteridge (2014), miniseries) as the senator who is persuaded; John Goodman (Trumbo (2015)) has lost a lot of weight and stars as the senior scientist; Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton (2015)) is the junior scientist, a role that is a mismatch for Hawkins, who is also starring as Kiefer Sutherland's tough guy replacement on the new version of the 24 TV-series at the moment, - a better match for him. Hawkins' Straight Outta Compton co-star Jason Mitchell (Keanu (2016)) also stars in Kong: Skull Island; he is a soldier with an unpleasantly vulgarly scribed helmet, and that's about all the detail ascribed to his character. Shea Whigham (The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)) lends his powerful presence to one of the film's best death scenes but also looks as if he has to strain himself in a scene in which all the soldiers hug in a way that just doesn't seem period-appropriate. Thomas Mann (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)) plays the aggravating Slivko, and Toby Kebbell (The East (2013)) is shamelessly handsome as Chapman and Kong, who is apparently shaped on the young Brit. Finally, the cast has John C. Reilly (The Lobster (2015)) in a role that is very much drawn from Dennis Hopper's part in Apocalypse Now (1979), - a film which several parts of Kong: Skull Island riffs humorously off, - and Reilly has some fun with it. I certainly couldn't but break out laughing every time he mentioned his old fallen friend 'Gunpei', which I'm pretty sure was intended by the filmmakers.
Kong: Skull Island rushes to get its many thinly sketched characters established and on to the island of horrors, and once there they immediately act with horrendous stupidity. This alienates to begin with but later becomes a part of the film's mythical wrestling of man and nature, together and against each other, which culminates after countless attacks and exciting monster creatures in an epic monster battle that is exhilarating. Kong, who is, of course, the biggest star of the film, and the rest of the island's monsters are tremendously designed and animated; - an achievement that deserves to be remembered come Best Visual Effects Oscar time in almost a year.
Despite its flaws, stretches and physical ridiculousness, Kong: Skull Island is tall, fine and very entertaining monster fun, which gets its job done. It is miles better than Jackson's 2005 remake if not at level with recent, comparable mega-monster hits Godzilla (2014) and Jurassic World (2015). Kong: Skull Island is actually more like a very expensive version of corny monster favorite Congo (1995)) and, because of the vast technical evolution since then, not really fit to compare to the original King Kong.

Related reviews:

Apocalypse Now (1979) Redux version - The horror of war
Jordan Vogt-Roberts: 2017 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2017 in films - according to Film Excess
The Kings of Summer/Toy's House (2013) - Vogt-Roberts' charming but empty coming-of-age venture

Both here and in the still above, Brie Larson sports the crazy-eyes she has set to 'on' for pretty much all of Jordan Vogt-Roberts' Kong: Skull Island, - maybe following the lead of veteran Samuel L. Jackson. The problem is as unfair as it is inexplicable: His crazy-eyes in the film work. Hers don't

Tom Hiddleston visits Jimmy Kimmel in a gorilla suit to promote the film here

Cost: 185 mil. $
Box office: 260.7 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[Kong: Skull Island premiered 28 February (London) and runs 118 minutes. The film is the second in Warner Bros./Legendary's planned 'MonsterVerse' franchise, which kicked off with Godzilla (2014). It is planned to spawn another Godzilla (Godzilla: King of the Monsters) movie in 2019 and then the culminating Godzilla vs. Kong movie in 2020. Filming took place in Hawaii, Vietnam and Australia from October 2015 - March 2016. Kong: Skull Island opened over studio projections but under Godzilla's 2014 93 mil. $ domestic opening weekend: It took in 61 mil. $ at #1 in North America, where it has grossed 109.1 mil. $ to date, decimated already in its second week by the release of Beauty and the Beast. It was reportedly sent up with a colossal 136 mil. $ marketing budget. It made the biggest opening ever in Vietnam (2.5 mil. $), where much of it was shot; a huge Kong model caught fire there at the film's premiere, implicitly indicating the film's heat in the country. It opens in key markets China and Japan March 24th and 25th. Kong: Skull Island is certified fresh at 79 % with a 6.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Kong: Skull Island?

The Kings of Summer/Toy's House (2013) - Vogt-Roberts' charming but empty coming-of-age venture

♥♥♥

The three handsome young stars of Jordan Vogt-Roberts' The Kings of Summer hang midair on its poster

QUICK REVIEW:

Three friends, who are tired of their smothering parents, go off in their high school summer break and build a tree house in the forest, - but will they be able to survive there, and what about girls?

Kings is a promising film that very fast turns out to have no serious core whatsoever; - everything in it is a joke, and, what is worse, often not a very good one. Debuting writer Chris Galletta (The Final Girls (2015), special thanks) is responsible for the shallow script.
Theatrical feature debuting director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Single Dads (2009-11)) seems to have been most concerned with getting the 'right' visual gimmicks into the film, like flares, slow motion shots and CGI. - And cutting to these in the middle of nearly every scene in the film, so that these consequently don't attain their own life or importance. - A shame, because there's nothing wrong with the premise.
The young actors Nick Robinson (Jurassic World (2015)), Gabriel Basso (Super 8 (2011)) and Moises Arias (The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)) are charming, and Nick Offerman (Me and Greg and the Dying Girl (2015)) and Megan Mullally (Parks and Recreation (2009-15)) score some laughs, but Kings of Summer is an empty movie, unfortunately.

Watch the trailer for the movie here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: In excess of 1.5 mil. $
= Uncertainty
[Kings, an independent production, was shot in the summer of 2012 in Ohio, and it premiered at Sundance, whereupon CBS Films attained the distribution right. It grossed only 1.3 mil. $ in North America, where it never crossed 100 screens, and, even worse, just under 0.2 mil. $ abroad, with Poland as the biggest market with 93k $. (At least according the information I have been able to find.) The bottom line is that the film was most likely a huge flop. Vogt-Roberts has, amazingly, been hired subsequently for the enormous Kong: Skull Island (2017), and rumored also to head the Metal Gear Solid movie. The Kings of Summer is certified fresh at 75 % with a 6.9 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Kings of Summer?