Movies Watched, 2017

Still from “Phantom Thread”

At the beginning of each month I recap the movies I watched the previous month. You can find December’s log further down this post (with some comments on P.T. Anderson’s “Phantom Thread”) but before we get to that here is a wrap-up of everything I watched in 2017. According to my Letterboxd diary that came to a grand total of 191 movies. That beats my 2016 total by five and averages out to just under sixteen a month, a pace I credit to my continued adherence to a largely television-free diet. I’m going into my third year doing this now and I don’t miss TV much at all, especially as eschewing it has afforded me the time to watch and re-watch so many great or obscure or fondly remembered movies that I’d never be able to otherwise. Television is a waste of time, people.

I tried to make a list of the top ten movies of 2017 but when I did so I realized that I didn’t really see ten films that I would consider truly great, just a lot of pretty good ones. That said, there are some notable awards contenders, including “I, Tonya,” “Ladybird,” and “Call Me By Your Name” that I haven’t been able to log yet, and it’s reasonable to say that at least one or two of those would’ve made the list. Nevertheless here are the top six best films from 2017 that I saw.

  1. Blade Runner 2049
  2. Dunkirk
  3. Phantom Thread
  4. Get Out
  5. Molly’s Game
  6. Coco

You can see the running inventory of every 2017 movie that I saw and how I ranked them in this Letterboxd list. For more insight into how I spent my movie time in 2017, have a look at this “annual report” of my movie watching activity. It includes this grid of posters from all 191 movies.

Thumbnails of All the Movies I Watched in 2017

I also saw twenty films in December, making it out to theaters four times. The highlight was “Phantom Thread,” the latest by P.T. Anderson and, reportedly, the last screen appearance that Daniel Day-Lewis will ever make. Anderson’s films tend to be about the courts that men of power convene around themselves and this is one of his best explorations of that milieu. It’s hilarious and chilling and rapturous and deeply, deeply messed up all at once. Don’t read anything about it; just go see it.

For the record, here’s the full list of everything I watched, including December’s twenty movies.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

  • Logan Lucky
  • Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” Demonstrates that the logical outcome of fan service is a descent into bureaucracy.
  • Colossal” A blithely ridiculous premise that almost works.
  • Silence” Grueling but, as with everything Scorsese does, still worthwhile.
  • Kill Bill: Vol. 1” Still amazing. Not as rich as volume 2, but stunning in its own vibrancy.
  • Hot Fuzz” Okay I get it now. I didn’t before, but I see the appeal.
  • She’s Gotta Have It” A document of pure directorial ambition.
  • Tango & Cash” They really made this movie.
  • Raging Bull” Unbelievably beautiful.
  • Smithereens” A fantasy of rotten New York.
  • Kill Bill: Vol. 2” A masterpiece.
  • Free Fire” Not a masterpiece.
  • Moana” Hey, this movie is really, really good, people.
  • A Face in the Crowd” An amazing, sadly prescient story of a megalomaniacal TV personality who comes to abuse his outsized influence on the American public.
  • Star Wars” Fun.
  • American Graffiti” Actually, this would’ve been the perfect movie to see at a drive-in.
  • Chi-Raq” There’s not a frame that here that’s anything less than riveting—it’s hearbreaking, shocking, hilarious, and ridiculous all at once.

October

November

December

If you’re interested, you can peruse the 186 movies that I watched in 2016 in this blog post. You can also follow along with my film diary over at letterboxd.com. Here’s wishing you a happy new year of movie watching!

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