The Best and Worst Movies of 2017: Rosy the Reviewer's Top 10

I certainly can't say that I have seen every movie that was released in 2017 and there are sure to be some that would be on my best list had I seen them and are already on some Best Lists now - "The Post," "The Shape of Water" or "Call Me By Your Name," but haven't seen them yet so can't comment. 

So my list is really my best and worst movie experiences this last year rather than a comprehensive list of the best movies of 2017, but hopefully I can point you to some movies you will enjoy and steer you away from some that gave me heartburn.


In no particular order, here are my favorite movie experiences of 2017:
(click on the movie title for my complete review)





1.  The Big Sick

Why it's one of the best: A romantic comedy that is actually romantic and a comedy, as in funny, which is what we expect from a comedy right? - a funny comedy is actually something that is not easy to find these days.  It's also original and smart and Ray Romano is a revelation. He can actually act. The best comedy to come along in a very long while.





2. Dunkirk

Why it's one of the best: This will stand as one of the greatest war movies with its personal stories of heroism, especially the British civilians who tried to help.  Mark Rylance put in another brilliant performance.  Even if you think you don't like war movies, I promise you will love this one. 






3. Lady Bird

Why it's one of the best: A fresh and unexpected take on the coming of age  story that even old folks will be able to relate to written and directed by the talented Greta Gerwig and with stunning performances especially by Laurie Metcalf (remember her on "Rosanne?").







4. Wonder Woman

Why it's one of the best: Because Wonder Woman is a wonder!  This is no ordinary super hero movie. There is excitement, there is drama, there is violence (but nothing really scary), there is romance, there is humor -- and there is Girl Power!  This Wonder Woman is a wonderful role model for women and girls and the story is compelling.  And then there is Chris Pine...I'm just sayin'... 






5. Wind River

Why it's one of the best: The investigation of the murder of a young Native American woman also sheds light on the plight of Native Americans in the U.S. especially Native American women.  The screenplay was tight and original and the performances were so good I even like Jeremy Renner now. 






6. Victoria and Abdul

Why it's one of the best: A beautifully presented little known story about Queen Victoria brought to life by an extraordinary performance by Judy Dench.






7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Why it's one of the best: With stellar performances from Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell (as you have never seen him), and, yes, even Woody Harrelson and a very original screenplay, I predict this film will clean up at the Oscars.







8. Baby Driver

Why it's one of the best: Baby is hired to drive the car for a heist in this new kind of musical, where Baby is a new kind of hero.  He doesn't say much as he listens to his mixed tapes and goes about his business of driving.  The film is choreographed to his soundtrack with gun shots, villains walking off to commit robberies and even text messaging, all cued to the beat of the music playing inside Baby's head. Fast, original and exciting.





9. Get Out

Why it's one of the best: This is a very smart social commentary on racism and white privilege dressed up as a horror film but don't be scared. It's also funny and pays homage to horror films of the past, while at the same time commenting on where the true horror lies in the everyday lives of African Americans. 





10. L.A. 92

Why it's one of the best: A documentary on the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict with shocking never-before-seen archival footage skillfully edited into a fine, important film about an event that happened over 25 years ago but still resonates today. 

And now for something completely different:

My worst movie experiences of 2017

1. A Bad Mom's Christmas

Why it's one of the worst:  What do you get when you take a really funny and cute idea about overworked moms who decide to not try to be perfect moms anymore, and because it made a lot of money, rush a sequel into production?  You get this really bad and unfunny movie.





2. Ghost in the Shell

Why it's one of the worst: This movie was so bad it made me question whether or not Scarlett Johansson can actually act.  I mean, how hard is it to play a Cyborg?






3. Rough Night

Why it's one of the worst: This one also starred Scarlett Johansson.  Do you see a pattern here?  Another really unfunny "comedy" that came out at the same time as "Girl's Trip."  Unfortunate because "Girl's Trip" was actually funny.  See that one.






4. mother!

Why it's one of the worst:  I give director Darren Aronofsky credit for trying to do something different and make a movie with a message but it was a confusing mess.  How bad was it? Let's just say that star Jennifer Lawrence and Aronofsky were an item when they made this movie together and now they aren't together anymore.  Enough said.






5. Table 19

Why it's one of the worst: A disparate group of people are put together at the "loser's table" at a wedding.  When one of the characters asked "What am I doing here?" watching this film I had to ask myself the same thing.  I am not a fan of Anna Kendrick and I am not a fan of old people jokes, both of which star in this snooze fest.







6. Unforgettable

Why it's one of the worst:  This is one of those "if I can't have him, you can't have him either" woman-stalking-woman movies that the Lifetime Movie Channel does so well, and let me tell you, this movie employs every single cliché from that genre but doesn't do it as well.  Unforgettable?  I have already forgotten it.






7. The Book of Henry

Why it's one of the worst: Now let me get this straight.  You are just an ordinary single Mom, but when your young son dies and leaves you a book where he outlines step-by-step how you must kill the guy next door because he is abusing his daughter -- you decide to do it!  I think that speaks for itself here.






8. T2 Trainspotting

Why it's one of the worst: Another sequel that we could have lived without. Twenty years ago we cared about these guys.  Now we don't. 





9. Murder on the Orient Express

Why it's one of the worst:  An old-fashioned who-done-it that doesn't hold up well today.  By the time this movie was over, it was a who-cares-who-done it.  And you know a movie is bad when the best thing about it is a moustache.  Kenneth Branagh's Poirot sports a mustache that is so big it should have its own Twitter account and, oh geez, he is talking about doing a sequel.  Noooooo...






10.  The Circle

Why it's one of the worst: An expose of the horrors of working for Amazon and Google, er, I mean, The Circle, and the evils of technology, except the film took too long to get to the point.  By the time the movie ended, I was ordering something on my phone from Amazon.

There you have it -

 

My best and worst movie experiences of 2017. 

Wishing you more good than bad movie experiences in 2018
(and if you want to avoid the bad experiences, be sure to check in at Rosy the Reviewer every Friday). 

See you at the movies!

Thanks for reading!

 

See you next Friday 

 

for my review of

"All The Money in the World"

 and

  

The Week in Reviews

(What to See or Read and What to Avoid)

 and the latest on

"My 1001 Movies I Must See Before 

 I Die Project." 

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to copy and paste or click on the share buttons to share it on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn, email it to your friends and LIKE me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/rosythereviewer

 

Next time you are wondering whether or not to watch a particular film, check out my reviews on IMDB (The International Movie Database). 

Go to IMDB.com, find the movie you are interested in.  Scroll down below the synopsis and the listings for the director, writer and main stars to where it says "Reviews" and click on "Critics" - If I have reviewed that film, you will find Rosy the Reviewer alphabetically on the list.

My Mother's Diary (and a Meaningful New Year's Resolution for You to Consider)

When my sister and I were clearing out my mother's house after her death in 1999 at the age of 91, I came across my mother's diary and brought it back home with me, and though I dabbled in reading it back then, it's only been lately that I decided to actually read it all.

Mark Twain said:

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

When we are young, we don't seem to give much thought to what is going on with our parents, who they are or whether or not they are happy.  We tend to take them for granted. Perhaps that is why we end up knowing so little about our parents. 

I actually don't think I gave my mother any credit for "learning" anything until I was in my 50's.  Oh, yes, I tried to talk to her from time to time and find out how she felt about things, but we were not only from very different generations but we were on a different wave length.

You see my mother was born in 1908 and she was 40 when I was born.  That puts me at 21 in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War and the sexual, social and political revolution that was taking place around the world.  My mother had absolutely no idea what was going on with me and pretty much wanted me to stay her sweet little 1950's goody-two-shoes.  That wasn't going to happen.

But it wasn't all my fault.  I remember when I was in middle school, sitting on the edge of my parents' bed with my Dad and asking him why I didn't know him as well as my best friend.  Even then I was trying to make a connection between him as a Dad and him as a person. He said something about parents not wanting to worry their children, which looking back now, was an interesting comment.

I read something recently that said our children will never love us as much as we love them, and now that I have had children of my own, I understand that, and it actually gives me some strange comfort.  It's like it's not ME my children have rejected by not hanging on my every word or asking me if I am happy or not; it's the nature of things. Children just don't wonder if their parents are happy.  They are too busy wondering when they are going to be happy.  When we're young we take our parents for granted and don't really give them much thought unless they are getting in our way.  I literally know nothing about what really made my mother tick other than what she didn't like about ME.

Now as I near 70 I would give anything to have her here to ask her questions about her life and marriage.

But I have her diary.

The diary documents my mother's life from 1930 through 1933, age 22 to 25, which was also the time that my mother and dad were "courting (they married when they both were 26).

My mother's entries in her diary consist of mostly pretty mundane stuff.  Each entry was only a few lines per day, but I was able to glean some things I didn't know:

• When I was growing up, my Dad was a musician and played trumpet in various bands right up until he died.  But I didn't realize how much he did that as a young man.  My mother is always mentioning in her diary that my Dad, Frederic, was playing this evening or that evening but it added up to quite a few evenings per week.  And he was also in college during that time.

• My mother also talks about her friend, Rosella.  She is the person I am named after, and I didn't know anything about her because by the time I came along, she had moved away. Likewise, it was fun reading about my mother's other friends whom I only knew as old ladies.  I thought it was wonderful that my mother still had all of those friends all of her life.

• I didn't realize how close my mother was to her own mother.  My mother's mother died when I was around five, so I don't remember her very well, but my mother talks lovingly of her in her diary.  I knew that her mother had gone back to Sweden to visit her family but had not realized it was for three months.  My mother writes in her diary, "Mother has been gone for a week and it seems like a year."  I think that was partly because my mother's older sister was married and no longer lived at home but her five brothers did, so looking after her Dad and her brothers probably fell to her.  I found it interesting that my mother had told me about an unsettling incident that had happened to her during that time her mother was away but no mention of it in her diary.

• Reading my mother's diary, I was happy to see that my Dad was just as thoughtful a boyfriend as he was a Dad.  He was always writing her letters and giving her gifts and she called him "My darling" and "My Sweetheart" throughout the diary. That made me happy and sad at the same time.  It made me happy because they clearly loved each other when they were courting, but sad because it was clear to me growing up, that by the time I came along, my Mother and Dad were not that happy together.  Though their marriage lasted until my Dad's death - almost 60 years - something had gone wrong somewhere but I never found out what it was.

• My Mother's diary had all kinds of little keepsakes in it and clippings from the newspaper: announcements about programs at the YWCA or the Women's Club that she was a part of but also pictures of things she liked and things she wanted to remember such as cards and notes.

• Ironically, though reading someone's diary should be like reading their thoughts, just as she was in life, my mother's diary didn't reveal very much about her inner thoughts.  Her diary is mostly a few lines each day about what she did - she came home and took a nap, her friend came for dinner and she would describe what they ate, she went to a concert, she received a letter from my Dad-to-be or she didn't.  Nothing very revealing and very little about what she actually felt about her life.

And that is not surprising since my mother was never one to talk about her feelings and she didn't deem it an appropriate topic of conversation either.  I remember as a teenager saying to her, "Mom, I am feeling depressed," and her response was "What do you have to be depressed about!"  It wasn't a question.  It was a statement.  She probably added "Count your blessings," and that was the end of that conversation.  Isn't it funny and ironic that I was a teenager who actually wanted to talk to her mother, but, also ironically, unlike most mothers of teenaged girls who wanted their daughters to share with them, I had a mother who didn't want me to.  So that was that.

She was also very practical.  When I was having problems in my marriage, I remember calling my mother and saying, "Mom, he has been cheating on me and is in love with someone else," and she replied, "Well, you can't fight that."  And she was right.  I couldn't.  So that was that.

So my mother's diary very much reflects her reluctance to share feelings and her practicality.  Except for mentioning the occasional spat with her husband-to-be, my Dad, my mother's diary reveals little of her thoughts, no soul-searching, no sad stories, no doubts about herself, so if I was expecting revelations about her life, they are not there.

But I am comforted by the details of her life as a young woman, a young twenty-something who would one day marry her sweetheart, my Dad, and give birth to me. I enjoyed reading about her daily life: she was an active young woman who was the secretary to the president of the local bank; she read books and went to concerts and plays; she was active at the YWCA, and at her church and belonged to a young women's business club; loved her mother and her family and she was always on the go.  She didn't appear to have a bad word to say about anyone. In fact, she spoke lovingly of her nieces (her older sister had already married and had children) and friends. She would mention my Dad's parents or her brothers and sisters but never revealed how she felt about any of them which is odd, because later in life, she had plenty to say!  But in her twenties, she seemed happy and hopeful, with her whole life ahead of her.

I am glad I have my mother's diary and can spend some time with her as the young woman she was.  I just wish I had spent more time with her older self, when she was still alive, so that I could have found out more about her.  I wish I had let her little criticisms of me go over my head and not cloud our relationship.  I let those criticisms bother me and because I was busy living my life far away and raising my own children, I didn't make the effort to visit her much or talk with her on the phone more than once a week. 

But I loved my mother and I know she loved me.  When I finally did get a divorce and asked her to come and help me, at 74, she dropped everything and traveled by herself to California from Michigan to help me with my two-year-old son and to help me get back on my feet, and it was comforting to know she was always there for me - and she was.

Now that I have grown children too, and am in a position similar to my mother's, I have time to reflect and feel regret that I never had talks with her about her true feelings (though I can remember trying upon occasion), what drove her to do some of the things she did, how she felt about her 50+ year marriage at the end and if she had any regrets in life.  Though I am glad to have her diary and glad that she did share some important things with me over the years, I still have so many questions.  I wish my mother was still here to answer them.

But now it's too late.

Since my parents are both dead, it's too late for me to ask them questions that I have, but it's not too late for those of you whose parents are still alive.  I urge you to try to find out about them.  I'm not talking about their accomplishments or the family tree, I am talking about finding out why they raised you the way they did, why they married who they married, how they feel about getting old, what they have learned about life, what they regret.  All of those things that make them who they are.  You will learn about them but it also might shed some light on who you are too.

So here's an idea for a meaningful New Year's Resolution.

Make a resolution that in the coming year you will have some meaningful conversations with each of your parents to find out about who they really are and how they feel about their lives.

It's too late for me but it might not be too late for you.

Don't wait.  Do it now. 

Do it before all you have left is a diary.

Thanks for reading!

See you Friday 

for

"The Best and the Worst Movies of 2017:
 
Rosy the Reviewer's Top 10" 

 

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to copy and paste or click on the share buttons to share it on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn, email it to your friends and LIKE me on Facebook athttps://www.facebook.com/rosythereviewer 

Rosy the Reviewer's One Liners: One Line Reviews for Busy Folks Who Just Want to Netflix and Chill!

It's that time of year: the middle of the Holiday Season where there is too much to do and too little time to do it in. 

And Rosy the Reviewer is also busy, busy, busy, so I am making it easy on all of us by giving you some movie reviews that are short and sweet.  Short?  One line.  Sweet?  Not all of them.  

The shows are all streaming on Netflix so you can just Netflix and chill and enjoy the rest of the holiday season!

And I mean actually sit and watch Netflix and chill...not that other thing.


Enjoy...and you can thank me later.

Streaming on Netflix

Jerry Before Seinfeld (2017)

Rosy the Reviewer says...if you are a Jerry fan or really loved the TV show "Seinfeld," then you will enjoy this very funny yet poignant documentary where Jerry returns to the Comic Strip Club where he got his start; he does some stand up interspersed with reminiscences about his childhood and who he was before he was "Seinfeld."







Blue Jay (2016)

Rosy the Reviewer says...two high school sweethearts meet up 20 years later in this black and white (why?) very talkie two-hander romantic story (think a less successful "Before Sunrise" but still worth seeing) starring Sarah Paulson, who is an amazingly real actress and proves she can play someone other than a tough Marcia Clark ("American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson") or a weird character in "American Horror Story" and writer/actor Mark Duplass, who I really liked in "The One I Love," but not so much in this.








The Watcher (2016)

Rosy the Reviewer says...this is one of those horror films about an unsuspecting couple who buy their dream home only to discover that some bad stuff happened in that house, and some bad stuff is going to happen to them too, but it's only Lifetime Movie kind of bad, and really over-the-top and campy bad, and actually so over-the-top and campy bad that it's on my list of possible camp classics which translates to lots of fun.







The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)

Rosy the Reviewer says...a fascinating documentary using never-before-seen footage and interviews that investigates the mysterious death of Marsha P. Johnson, a transgender activist and veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City, which was one of the most important events leading to the Gay Liberation Movement.




Big Family Cooking Showdown (2017)

Rosy the Reviewer says...if you loved "The Great British Baking Show" on PBS or, as it's known in the U.K, "The Great British Bake Off," you will love this new series that features sixteen British family teams who fight for the title Best Family of Cooks in this series presented by Zoe Ball and Nadiya Hussain (Hussain won "The Great British Bake-Off" in 2015).




And don't forget, "The Crown" which is now back for it's second season!

Thanks for Reading!

I hope you had a lovely holiday and continue to enjoy the holiday season. 

I wish you all a Happy New Year,

and I hope I will see you next year!

NOTE:

There will be a special
New Year's edition of
Rosy the Reviewer this coming Tuesday

"My Mother's Diary
(and a Meaningful New Year's Resolution for you to consider)"

 

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to copy and paste or click on the share buttons to share it on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn, email it to your friends and LIKE me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/rosythereviewer

 

Next time you are wondering whether or not to watch a particular film, check out my reviews on IMDB (The International Movie Database).