The wait is over.
We’ve been counting down the 10 best movies of 2017, and we’re finally here, at the top spot.
Before we get to the big reveal, here are some other movie lists you might be interested in reading once you’re done with this one:
- The 12 best movies of 2017 you probably missed at the cinema
- The 18 Worst Movies of 2017
- The 18 movies we’re DYING to see in 2018
Okay, that is enough of that. On with the countdown, starting with…
The #10 spot goes to… SPLIT
Irish Release Date: 27 January
Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson.
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Budget: $9 million
Worldwide Box Office: $278 million
Prior to this movie, all love and hope for Shyamalan had been completely lost. After the one-two punch of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, things went across some rockier ground, before the streak of Lady In The Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender, After Earth and The Visit, which should have ended his career permanently.
So heading into this psychological thriller with zero optimism and a real sense of confusion as to how he managed to rope a decent actor like James McAvoy into proceedings, we can’t properly describe the level of pure entertainment we got out of this edge-of-the-seat kidnap/horror hybrid.
Clip via Movieclips Trailers
McAvoy is clearly having an absolute ball playing nearly two dozen different characters (although, to be fair, we don’t exactly get to meet them all), and he ranges from crazily menacing to creepily innocent with aplomb.
Meanwhile, his supporting cast, including up-and-comer Anna Taylor-Joy as one of his kidnapping victims, and Betty Buckley as the therapist who unfortunately may be too good at her job for her own good, all bounce off him fantastically.
Shyamalan himself learned the mistake that he isn’t too good at dealing with large scale stuff, and manages to set most of this movie in a small number of rooms in the basement of a creepy building, constantly cranking up the tension and not afraid to get nasty and violent when the plot calls for it.
Even better – and maybe skip the rest of this paragraph if you haven’t watched the movie yet – is that Universal clearly knew they were back on to a winner, and immediately green-lit the sequel we didn’t even know it was a part of.
Yup, Glass is coming in 2019, as it turns out this movie is taking place in the same universe as Unbreakable did, and McAvoy’s The Beast will be sharing the screen with Sam Jackson’s Mr. Glass and Bruce Willis’s indestructible hero.
We can’t wait!
The #09 spot goes to… WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES
Irish Release Date: 11 July
Cast: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Judy Greer.
Director: Matt Reeves
Budget: $150 million
Worldwide Box Office: $491 million
It doesn’t surprise JOE that WFTPOTA didn’t do as well as Dawn did (which banked $710 million at the box office), and just barely made more than the good-but-not-great Rise ($482 million).
War is not an easy watch. It is a movie that forces the viewer to place humans as the villains, and support the apes into surviving a conflict which will result in one of the battling species being killed off forever.
On top of that, the disease that had initially spread in Rise has continued to mutate throughout the trilogy, and in War it has manifested into a kind of sickening brain fever that kills its victims in quite a harsh way.
All in all, War For The Planet Of The Apes isn’t exactly what you’d call an “entertaining” watch. But, oh boy, does it set your mind alight as it plays out.
Clip via 20th Century Fox
Andy Serkis’ performance in this trilogy is nothing short of phenomenal, matched by the so-good-you-forget-they’re-there special effects, that will have you fully emotionally invested in the sign language conversation between two apes as they plan to break their brothers-in-chains out of a snowy Ape-katraz.
Woody Harrelson also deserves props for his all-too-understandable human “villain”, a man who is simply trying to keep his race alive, and willing to do literally anything to make that happen, which in this case includes losing access to his own basic humanity.
Far less of a brainless popcorn flick like Rise was, and with less of the fun action beats that Dawn possessed, War instead kicks off with a nail-biting, heart-breaking cloak-and-dagger assassination attempt, and Serkis’ Caesar going on a road of revenge that will lead him down the same inhumane path that he hates the human leaders for.
Director Matt Reeves, who turned the franchise into a new, better direction with Dawn, continues down that road for War, not afraid to get artistic and beautifully cinematic in place of just another series of explosions, and he gives the new Planet Of The Apes trilogy the proper send-off it deserves.
The #08 spot goes to… WONDER WOMAN
Irish Release Date: 1 June
Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen, Danny Huston, David Thewlis.
Director: Patty Jenkins
Budget: $149 million
Worldwide Box Office: $822 million
People didn’t really love Man Of Steel.
People really didn’t love Batman V Superman.
And there was no love lost over Suicide Squad.
It seemed as if Warner Brothers and DC just weren’t going to catch a break. So, instead they broke all the “rules” and went with the first female-centric superhero movie (Elektra and Catwoman don’t count, don’t @ me), and put a female in the director’s chair.
Oh, and they ditched the “dark and edgy” vibe that was douring out the rest of the DC slate, and we ended up with a fantastically optimistic, thoroughly enjoyable action movie with a brilliantly charismatic lead that only really tripped ever so slightly when it tried to fit back into the mould of other superhero movies.
Clip via Warner Bros. Pictures
After Gal Gadot stole the show in BVS, all fears were put to rest that the relatively untested actress (we loved her in Fast Five, but she wasn’t exactly a superstar previous to WW), and she rose to the challenge of fronting this movie all by herself.
Thankfully, director Patty Jenkins (who was supposed to direct Thor 2 for Marvel before “creative differences” got in the way) paired Gadot with Chris Pine, and the pair had the best chemistry out of pretty much any pairing in any of the recent superhero movies.
The early action scenes were slick and well choreographed, the fish-out-of-water comedy was played perfectly, and aside from the dud of a villain, Wonder Woman put up a great fight for the best superhero movie of 2017, easily beating Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 and Justice League.
There was some stiff competition from Thor: Ragnarok – which just barely missed out on our Top 10 of the year – and there was only one other superhero movie that managed to beat Wonder Woman, but more on that later…
The #07 spot goes to… LA LA LAND
Irish Release Date: 12 January
Cast: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, Rosemarie Dewitt, J.K. Simmons.
Director: Damien Chazelle
Budget: $30 million
Worldwide Box Office: $446 million
Very few movies have the balls La La Land possesses. Sure, there were some issues with famously Caucasian Ryan Gosling single-handedly saving jazz music from the doldrums of obscurity, but that was hardly the focus of the movie.
Instead, it centred on two attractive people – Gosling and Stone – who found each other attractive, and attempting to move forward together in a relationship, while also attempting to move forward individually as people.
But can those two life progressions peacefully co-exist, or do you inevitably have to choose between being happy with what you do or being happy with you you’re with?
Clip via Lionsgate Movies
Additionally, in an age when original musicals in cinema are basically non-existent – the popular ones like Chicago or Les Misérables have been around for a minute – it comes as a bit of a surprise that the writer/director who brought them back into fashion (for exactly two hours and five minutes) was the same guy who directed the nail-biting thriller-drama Whiplash, and wrote the screenplay for alien invasion-er 10 Cloverfield Lane.
La La Land represented a moment of perfect timing, an externally feel-good romantic musical that actually came with a kick-you-in-the-balls ending that came out of nowhere and left viewers feeling cheated, but somehow… in a good way?
It helps that Gosling and Stone sell the hyper-reality so well (and thank God they replaced original casting choices Miles Teller and Emma Watson), and after their obvious chemistry in Crazy Stupid Love and Gangster Squad, the third time proved a charm for them as Gosling got a Best Actor nom and Stone went on to win Best Actress.
It did, and then didn’t, win Best Picture, which was such a perfect reflection of the movie’s own happy-oh-no-wait-it-isn’t-happy ending.
But don’t let that kerfuffle overshadow the memory of the movie itself, one of two people with dreams of big love and a big future, and an even bigger dream where they can hopefully have both.
The #06 spot goes to… SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING
Irish Release Date: 5 July
Cast: Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Robert Downey Jnr., Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Zendaya.
Director: Jon Watts
Budget: $175 million
Worldwide Box Office: $880 million
Sony and Disney put aside their differences to work out an arrangement for the future of Spider-Man.
He would show up in Captain America: Civil War (and we know from the trailer that he’ll also be appearing in Avengers: Infinity War), and in exchange, for the 1,000,000th reboot of the character, we’d get to see him interact with Iron Man and some of the other members of the MCU.
Andrew Garfield gave good Spider-Man but in bad Spider-Man movies, while Tobey Maguire suffered from a bit of a “No, seriously, how old are you??” problem for a teenager, but he did get to be a part of Spider-Man 2, still one of the best superhero movies to date.
With Homecoming, we got a mix of all the previous pros with none of the cons, and a few added extras to boot, including Michael Keaton’s all-too-real villain, a ground-level perspective of the Avengers’ world, and some great comedy work from Jon Favreau as the constantly put-upon Happy Hogan.
Clip via Marvel Entertainment
Added to that were some fantastic action sequences, including the standout ferry scene as Spider-Man attempts to stop an entire ship from sinking all by himself, and the nail-biting finale as Spidey dukes it out with Keaton’s Vulture on a crashing plane filled with weapons.
The narrowing of the scope allowed for the deepening of our personal investment in the character, as the John Hughes vibe of the out-of-costume scenes were just as interesting as the explosions and web-slinging.
Plus it features one of the best “Gotcha!” moments of the year, made all the more effective because we had no idea it was coming.
And can we just say it? Marisa Tomei is the best version of Aunt May we’ve ever seen, and we really hope she gets more to do in the sequel.
The #05 spot goes to… THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER
Irish Release Date: 3 November
Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Alicia Silverstone.
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Budget: N/A
Worldwide Box Office: $4.1 million
Colin Farrell is a bit of a weirdo.
Actually, let us rephrase that.
Colin Farrell is at his best when he is a bit of a weirdo.
After Hollywood tried to box him into “Blockbuster Hunk” a few years back – think of S.W.A.T., The Recruit, that shoddy Total Recall remake, Miami Vice – he finally found his calling playing someone who was, well, a bit of a weirdo.
In Bruges, Horrible Bosses, Fright Night and Seven Psychopaths were all Farrell at his very best, and this golden run culminated with his unique performance in The Lobster.
Giving what many believed the best work of his career to date, he reunited with that film’s writer/director, and unfortunately for us, …Sacred Deer made about four times less than The Lobster did at the box office.
Which is real shame, because Sacred Deer is about 10 times better than that movie, while also being so divisive it could just as easily end up on as many people’s Worst Of 2017 movie lists.
The problem, and the outstanding highlight, of The Killing Of A Sacred Deer is that there is no correct reaction to watching it.
Your emotions will burst out of you, unchecked, as you laugh at the most horrid situations, and cover your mouth with your hand in horror when the film is actually trying to be funny…
Farrell plays the tortured husband (to Nicole Kidman) and father (to two brilliant up-and-comers), who finds himself at the tail-end of Barry Keoghan’s psychological warfare on himself and his family.
Quite why Keoghan is taking aim is barely the plot of the movie; instead we’re focused on Farrell’s reaction to the plights against him and his family, and the photo-finish between his selflessness to keep his wife and kids alive, and the selfishness of being blamed for any of it.
It is a horror film in every way, except it is also the darkest of dark comedies you have EVER seen.
Farrell, Kidman and Keoghan deliver a trio of blindingly brilliant performances, all ever-so-slightly not reacting to the world the way normal people do, acting out on a level of reality that is like ours, but not quite ours, causing us to be constantly on the back-foot when it comes to trying to guess where they will take the plot next.
If you’re looking for something completely fucked up and out of your comfort zone… well, there will be another entry even more uncomfortably fucked up than this on the list to come… but this is a good place to start.
We go into more detail as to why the movie is such a tough watch right here.
The #04 spot goes to… DUNKIRK
Irish Release Date: 21 July
Cast: Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh, Barry Keoghan, Harry Styles, Fionn Whitehead
Director: Christopher Nolan
Budget: $100 million
Worldwide Box Office: $526 million
Having proved himself with big budget, bigger-idea blockbusters, smart and exciting movies like Inception, Interstellar and The Dark Knight trilogy that all managed to make some serious bank, people were questioning why writer/director Christopher Nolan would take what initially appeared to be a creative step backwards with a straight-ahead war story, based on a part of World War II that we’ve all pretty much know inside and out.
Even the set-up didn’t lend itself well to cinematic tension, as we all already knew how it ended, and what was movie-worthy about watching thousands of soldiers avoid a fight?
It turned out, of course, that we should never have questioned our faith in Nolan’s abilities, as what initially seemed simple became incredibly complex, what seemed obvious became murky, and what seemed un-cinematic became the most cinematic movie of the year.
Clip via Warner Bros. Pictures
Splitting his incredible cast of well-known legends and up-and-coming talents across three battlefields – by land, by sea, by air – and then splitting those across three time-frames – one hour, one day, one week – and then watching how each of these storylines split and then converge in on each other, Nolan explores the effects of how the actions in one can snowball into a reaction in another.
It is the big screen playground we’ve seen him tackle so well in his blockbusters, but tied in with the tricksy storytelling we’ve seen him bring to the likes of The Prestige and Memento.
With a minimum amount of dialogue, the director relentlessly cranks up the tension thanks to the fantastic performances he gets from his actors, the brilliantly gritty cinematography, as well as the always amazing soundtrack work by Hans Zimmer.
It is still the movie we recommend more than any other this year (except, maybe, Blade Runner 2049) that you watch on the biggest screen with the loudest sound system you can find.
The #03 spot goes to… LOGAN
Irish Release Date: 1 March
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Boyd Holbrook, Dafne Keen, Stephen Merchant, Richard E. Grant.
Director: James Mangold
Budget: $97 million
Worldwide Box Office: $617 million
Director James Mangold was the same guy who brought us the incredibly “meh” The Wolverine a few years earlier, so him getting back in the director’s chair didn’t exactly spur on much confidence.
However, 20th Century Fox had a series of misfires – the Fantastic Four reboot, X-Men: Apocalypse – and so they decided to go down a different route.
Following the critical and commercial smash of Deadpool, they allowed Mangold to reinvent the character of Wolverine for a more adult audience (something we went into great detail for right here) and out the other end came Logan, and finally comic book audiences got the Wolverine movie they’d wanted and deserved since Hugh Jackman first showed up in adamantium claws back in 2000.
Clip via 20th Century Fox
Jackman turns in one of his best performances to date, finally able to give his Logan more emotional layers than just “I forget stuff, and some of that stuff I forget might be me doing bad stuff”.
He is tied in with Patrick Stewart’s heartbreaking but at times hilarious Charles Xavier, a man losing control of his own mind due to age, but unfortunately that mind is one of the most powerful weapons on the planet, and he too may have forgotten some horrific things that he has done in the past.
As the plot kicks in, the pair are forced on a road trip with a new mutant (played by the hugely impressive newbie Dafne Keen), one with more than few similar attributes to Logan himself.
The on-the-road narrative, mixed in with a bit of The Terminator as they are relentlessly pursued, gives the characters time to reflect on their lives, their mistakes, their lost loves, their friendship for each other, and what their place will be in the future.
So we end up with a fantastically emotional, but still very much action-packed, finale to a 17-year-long epic, telling us the highs and lows of Logan’s life, all anchored by Jackman.
And anyone who doesn’t shed a tear while watching this is clearly a pod person.
The #02 spot goes to… MOTHER!
Irish Release Date: 15 September
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ed Harris, Kirsten Wiig, Domhnall Gleeson.
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Budget: $30 million
Worldwide Box Office: $44 million
If you’ve been reading JOE at all in the last few months, then you already know how infatuated we became with mother! in the days and weeks following the film’s release.
We tried to warn viewers that there was a 50/50 chance that they would equally love or hate it, and we also tried to break down what the plot of the movie actually meant, as the debate still rages on as to what the entire thing is supposed to stand for.
We’re not going to go through all of that again, because to repeat those points about mother! would simply be a waste of time.
Instead, we’re going to try to psychologically prepare those who haven’t seen the movie yet, and to maybe give an explanation of why we loved it to those who hated it.
Clip via Paramount Pictures
In order for mother! to work for you, you have to give yourself over to it entirely.
You can’t sit back and ask why Jennifer Lawrence’s character isn’t just forcing Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer out of her home the second they become rude houseguests.
She isn’t doing that because mother! isn’t abiding by normal rules of human decency. This is a horror film in the most psychologically daring of ways – it follows nightmare logic.
People do terrible things, the worst things imaginable, and the protagonists can’t and/or are not reacting appropriately, because they are trapped in a version of reality that doesn’t allow for proper reactions.
Instead, we forced to watch are characters are repeatedly forced into nightmare-ish situations, and every inch of our bodies wants them to get up and RUN out of the house, because that is exactly what we want to do – mother! has made you feel so psychologically attacked and uncomfortable that you will want to get up and run out of the screen, or run for the remote to turn it off.
The only reason mother! isn’t the #01 movie of 2017 is because we can’t ever think of a time when we’ll say to ourselves “You know what I’d really enjoy watching right now? mother!, because I really feel like traumatising myself for the next two hours.”
The #01 spot goes to… GET OUT
Irish Release Date: 17 March
Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones.
Director: Jordan Peele
Budget: $4 million
Worldwide Box Office: $254 million
As we said back when the movie came out, watching the trailer for Get Out is a perfect parallel to knowing how it got made.
Things start off innocently enough, with a young couple played by Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams heading off on a weekend away so she can introduce her new boyfriend to her parents.
On the drive up, an animal shoots out in front of the car, causing them to break down, and so far this is nothing we haven’t seen in a million other horror movies.
Similarly, producer Jason Blum announced a horror movie titled Get Out due for release in early 2017, and nobody really blinked.
The guy behind Insidious, Sinister and The Purge was involved in making another horror movie with nobody really famous headlining, and so far this is nothing we haven’t seen in a million other horror movies.
Clip via Movieclips Trailers
And then things start to get interesting.
The policeman asks to see the boyfriend’s licence, even though he wasn’t driving. They get to the parents house, and the maid and groundskeeper are both black, and both are acting… a little off. Okay, you’ve got our attention now.
Similarly, behind the scenes, things start to get very interesting.
Written and directed by Jordan Peele – one half of cult comedy duo Key & Peele – and with Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford in supporting roles, this has a very interesting pedigree involved. Okay, you’ve got our attention now.
From there, it’s clear what is really going on here: race is at the heart of the horror. Although how it all ties in to the oddly perfect suburb which seems to exist solely of rich white people and their silent black staff won’t be made clear to us until the end.
Peele stated that his primary influences were Night Of The Living Dead and The Stepford Wives, with the former having an African-American male lead dealing with serious social and racial issues inside the frameworks of a horror movie, and the latter coming to mind during the 2008 Democratic primary when America had to choose between a black man and a white woman.
Any project dealing with a topic like racism is going to get drawn into a conversation with Trump’s America, but instead of alluding to it, Get Out goes all in, using racism full on as the horror that it actually is in America right now.
There have been a few fantastic horror movies in the last few years, but the problem is that next to nobody went to see any of them – The Babadook ($10m at worldwide box office), It Follows ($14m), Under The Shadow (less than $1m), The Witch ($40m), I Saw The Devil ($12m).
Compare those figures to, say, The Conjuring, which scared up $318m at the box office, and you see the divide between a film with full publicity and promotional money behind it, and those that don’t.
Thankfully, between Peele’s well-known status in the US, Blum being one of the best horror producers in the game right now, and the full might of Universal Pictures behind it, this could actually wind up being not just a great horror movie, but a very important movie in general.
That a lot more people will go to see a racially-charged micro-budgeted horror with non-famous actors in the lead role is fantastic, and will hopefully lead to a lot more intelligently designed horror movies in the not-too-distant future.
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