Top 5 Best Movies
5. Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2
I really think there's something to be said about a movie knowing not only what it is but what it really should be. Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 not only accomplishes just that, but also shows just how good a movie can actually be when a studio steps back and lets a director go nuts with what he's given. With a vibrant color scheme, energetic characters playing off each other, creative action sequences and a compelling villain for the first time in the MCU, Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 manages to easily outdo it's predecessor and take the stand as one of the MCU's best films thus far.
4. Logan
Logan is one of those movies that comes out once every five or so years that can really only happen once. A movie like Logan can only exist as a product of a nearly 20 year long franchise, a collection of films ranging from lighthearted and fun family action romps, to Logan, a serious and harrowing drama that happens to feature superheroes. And despite the Old Man Logan comic book being more recent than the first X-Men movie, there's a lot about this movie that feels not only planned, but forwardly inevitable. As if this series was always building up to a conclusion like this without even knowing it, and that regardless of the previous events it was always going to end up here. So even if the next X-Men movie has to come in and stamp out everything this movie accomplishes, it's still worthwhile as a near-perfect conclusion to a series many grew up with and love.
For a long-time DC fan, Wonder Woman was a breath of fresh air. Many have called it the best of the DCEU so-far, and if I'm being honest I'd take it a step further, this is probably my favorite DC movie ever made, period. Something that I feel like a lot of films under the DC belt, including everything from the DCEU has tried really hard to be something it's not, and Wonder Woman was really the first time - for a long time at least - that I watched a DC movie and really felt that the film was not only made by someone with a deep appreciation and love for the source material, but more importantly had a clear understanding of the elements that made the stories memorable and made people fall in love with these characters for years on end. And personally, I really hope DC and WB follows in suit with what this movie started.
2. Get Out
For the next two I'm going to be honest, they're really interchangeable for me. These two both really impressed me as entertaining and engaging stories but also as artistic experiences, and those movies are always the ones that usually make my yearend list so of course they're here, and the first one is Jordan Peeles Get Out. Get Out crafts for itself not only a frightening and suspenseful horror story but even more impressively manages to use that genre as a buffer for a biting social commentary and even a scathing satire. Most modern satire either falls into the trap of Poes Law or just seems to forget entirely that satire is about punching up not down, but not only does Get Out demonstrate an educated understanding of satire but also a knowledge of what it's criticizing and the best way to go about that, in a film that weaves together an intelligent satire, a well written comedy, and some good old fashioned horror.
Cannibalism movies are on a seeming continuous loop of trial and error. Most films take the gore and horror aspects too far to be taken as serious pieces and are only enjoyable as Saw style tortureporn, and then some like Neon Demon or the TV show Hannibal get too lost in the metaphors they're trying to serve that the actual story feels like a device to service a metaphor (and while I like Neon Demon and 1/3 of Hannibal, I can see why many are put off to it). However, I feel like Julia Docournau has really hit the nail on the head on what a horror movie like this should strive to be. Disgusting and brutal in it's imagery yet never exploitative or gratuitous, and always serves a purpose. While the imagery depicted in Raw is hard to watch to say the least, it's never over the top about it, and in fact it's how understated and realistically handled the films use of gore is that makes it all the more stomach turning. And it all serves the purpose of a unique and enthralling narrative about what is essentially this characters descent into madness, the slow but creeping arc of violent insanity the protagonist goes through is satisfying to watch even with its horrifying subject matter. And while I loved Wonder Woman and Get Out, I have to give my #1 to Raw for delivering a patient and surprisingly complex drama that never went too far with its subject matter and got right what so many horror directors have completely failed.
Top 5 Worst Movies
5. Fist Fight
One thing I've never been particularly great at is "worst of" lists, and it's usually because typically if I can avoid it I try not to see movies I feel like I won't enjoy. What this leaves me with is that usually my worst of lists are always a few films short of being enough to warrant a list, and I always need a few films I don't actually hate to fill the quota. So sorry Fist Fight, you were just mediocre enough to fit for my #5. This is the only one of these I didn't really dislike, it was just generally not always very funny and lacking in originality. It's not an unforgivable problem but it's certainly enough to make the film messy in its execution and forgettable immediately after seeing it. However, unlike Fist Fight, these next four are movies I actually take issue with, and unfortunately for me and my capacity for comments sections, most of them have mostly positive responses.
4. The Discovery
This was the most unfortunate one for me because this was my most anticipated film from Sundance earlier this year. I mean, a film about a society existing after definitive proof that an afterlife exists? This could be a perfect set-up, there's so many opportunities to start conversations about religion, life & death, why people believe in an afterlife, why the troublings of the real world would make someone want to go to the afterlife, and even to represent an artists interpretation of what an afterlife would look like. The problem with The Discovery is that instead of picking one of the many possibilities for an interesting story from its unique premise, it tries to pack in as many metaphors and ideas into a 90 minute movie as it possibly can. Every theme I just listed is something that this movie touches on but half of them are introduced in the first half and never expanded on or are introduced in the second half without any fluidity to them coming up. It's a definitively meandering movie, and again it's really a shame because with that set-up The Discovery could have been the most artistically well-crafted movie of the year, but instead it's a 90 minute movie that has no idea what to do with that running time.
3. A Cure for Wellness
What do you get when you have a visual marvel of a director take on a story and use it to show off stunning cinematography and angling and camera work unlike anything I've seen all year, but spend so much time on all that that you forget a movie also needs a working story to go with the visuals. A Cure for Wellness is a pretty glaring example of Style over Substance gone wrong, and it's a shame because the set-up is actually sort of intriguing and the accompanying visuals are enough to get lost in, really it's when this film hits the last 20 minutes and has to explain all the mysteries its set up that it falls apart in a matter of seconds with a plot twist that can really only be described as poorly thought out and kind of forced. However, since it effects the rest of the movie as well the twists terrible handling makes for a movie rife with poor decision making.
2. My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea
In the indie/underground scene, a term that gets thrown around a lot is "different for the sake of being different", and unfortunately I think such is the case with this movie. Much like most of the films on my worst of list I was really looking forward to this one, it seemed to have a unique visual art style for its animation and my hope was it would have clever absurdist humor to compliment its absurdist art. However, much like A Cure for Wellness, this film clearly spent so much time trying to make itself unique that it forgot to write an accompanying story that was equally enjoyable. It's fleeting attempts at absurdism come off more as intentionally goofy and random, and for a movie that seems to rely on its uniqueness it's rife with cliche and stereotype, which could be awesome if it was smart enough to subvert them and use the film as a medium for satire, but if that was what the creators had in mind then Poes Law definitely applies here.
1. Alien: Covenant
With the exception of Fist Fight, most of the movies on my Worst Of list were movies I was really looking forward to, but they seem to all suffer from the same problems, with my #1 here being the prime example. Alien: Covenant sets itself up as a visually alluring and intellectually challenging piece that also serves as a science fiction horror, a set-up to the Alien franchise, and a continuation of the story that Prometheus started. However, none of these parts of this jumbled disaster feel like there's any focus to them, so going into the movie hoping for any one of these leads to disappointment. Even with its striking cinematography, Covenant can't escape its sloppy writing, predictable and lazy horror scenes, or (and I hate using this term but I feel like here it's appropriate) pretentiousness. Fans of Prometheus don't get any answers Prometheus set up and in fact are left with more questions, and fans of Alien have to watch as the title monster and the thing they paid $15 for is sequestered into the final fifteen minutes of the movie. As neither a Prometheus sequel nor an Alien movie, yet heavily leaning too far to both of these for it to really be its own standalone feature, Covenant is a film that truly has no idea what it wants to be and left me annoyed, bored, and impatient to get home so I could watch the latest Samurai Jack episode, or really basically anything that wasn't this movie.
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