Top 6 films of 2017!

Top five favourite films of 2017 

1. Get out - just as Scream is a horror movie a lot of us wish we could have witnessed in the theatre, Get Out that for this generation and then some. 
2. Good time - Real grit. Real adrenaline. Truly perfect. 
3. Lady bird - With a complementary score by Jon Brion, Lady Bird gets pitch perfectly the tone of 2002 and of mother daughter relationships, and Greta Gerwig is just the person to display it. 
4. Creep 2 - truly creep and therefore fun and intriguing.
5. Lady Macbeth - A dark replay of Lady Macbeth with no flinches of it’s reality. One of the darkest movies of 2017 
6. Detroit - With realism to the point of importance. Detroit deliberately spotlights the extreme criminal acts of it’s cops for no other reason than that’s what really happened. 

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Colin Farrell and Yorgos Lanthimos are back together again after the politely affecting film - The Lobster, with a purposeful stray from comedy with a sociological horror film – The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is about a doctor played by Colin Farrell, who accidently makes an unfortunate mistake and kills a father during surgery. The father’s son Martin, played terrifyingly focused by Barry Keoghan, is guiltily guided by the doctor as a favor for the surgical accident. When the doctor decides to cut ties with Martin, the troubled boy decides to threaten the doctor with a threat of an unknown disease that will plague his whole family if he doesn’t kill one of the members.

Following The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is very much about the existent and the extremes of cultural tradition within mainstream societies beliefs; as in The Lobster dealing with the extreme feelings towards marriage, love and the naturally cultural trajectory of democracy towards cultism, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer is therefore about the extremes of the nuclear family, patriarchy, job hierarchy, classism and the powerful ease of boyhood compared to girlhood that most of society is at the mercy of, e.g. – Martin. Every family member, doctor, male and female do exactly what you’d think they’d do within the confines of stereotypical behaviour when push comes to shove. As such the doctor’s wife played by Nicole Kidman having to sell away her dignity to save her kids, and Colin Farrell’s doctor character seeming calm and control but selling himself into brutal masculine tactics to get his way. Yet Martin is a blank slant saying things threateningly in a calm way, being exactly what he is, an enigma, untouchable and unaffected as a teenage white male who will eventually become a white grown man in charge, as Colin Farrell’s character precedes him. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is absolutely about the banality of male hierarchy, class hierarchy and the banal submissiveness expected of women. Though it’s said this film is based on Greek folklore, it is much more effective as a modern message of what our so called progressive society still perpetuates with gender politics. Further more the film also expresses underlining thoughts about the North American healthcare system, and it’s robotic disconnected, indifferent quality towards the very people it’s created for.

Barry Keoghan portrays a hypnotic creepy performance that oddly goes hand in hand with Yorgos Lanthimos short cut and sometimes comedic directing style, and that metaphorically and accurately portrays the relentless blankly removed/sinister intentions of a trouble teenage male out for revenge in Martin. Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell give thoughtfully quick cut while naturalistic performances, making some of their best acting in the past few years. All this cut together with a suspicious, darkly ominous Kubrick -esq score and steadied shots, and it’s wonderfully intriguing how Yorgos Lanthimos style can switch to funny then horrific.

-          Maurice Jones

Lady Bird (2017)

Lady Bird is the debut film from awkward performing independent actor Greta Gerwig, writing and directing a realistically well-meaning dramedy about a girl who calls herself Lady Bird played by Saoirse Ronan, attending her last year of High School before she goes off to college.

Greta Gerwig who started her film writing career with Frances Ha, does a great job at portraying the scattered desperation of a seventeen-year-old eager live a life other than her own, by using cut away scenes to display the harshness of reality and lingering shots to display the precious realizations of western society. These are coupled with the always whimsical and always emotionally effective musical score of Jon Brion. Whose music immediately elevates Lady Bird from being a typically independent film about a depressed white teenage, by breathing humanity into the films characters and locations yet all the while underlining the unfortunate results of a regrettable decision. Lady Bird is also elevated by a poignant script highlighting the tension of homophobia, racism, sexism, classism and war of the early 2000s that even more so existed back then. Saoirse Ronan effortless sells the desperate belonging and stubborn unawareness of Lady Bird and easily displays her pain with a quiet removed quality. Laurie Metcalf does an equally fantastic job as Lady Bird’s mother, just as stubborn and unaware, both actors brilliantly portraying the functioning of a dysfunctional passive aggressive mother/daughter relationship with a true to life script.

Lady Bird is an important watch and an enjoyable one as well, though slighted by it’s undetailed portrayal of it’s time period of the early 2000s, and of it’s characters personal interests hovering through the film, Lady Bird still accurately portrays the oppression of a female American teen, the working class and the culturally ignored yet manages to be funny, heart warming and unapologetically to it’s protagonist all the same. Greta Gerwig clearly used her life story as the inspiration for Lady Bird, and it shows for the better.

-          Maurice Jones

Creep 2 (2017)

Mark Duplass is back in the most awkward yet commendable horror franchise yet – Creep 2. A movie that is creepier, weirder, more alienating and outlandish than the original though strangely more heartfelt.

Mark Duplass’ serial killer character is at it again, but this time naming himself Aaron, taking the name of Aaron from the first Creep. Aaron is bored after killing 39 people and wants some sort of appreciation for it, so he decides to lure in a YouTube hopeful named Sara to document the life and times of a prolific serial killer.

Creep 2 is very aware of the social complications involving a male serial killer and a female victim in such a realistically intimate movie premise, that it immediately deals with it head on without flinching, but without going to gratuitous lengths to show how “creepy” Aaron could be in this situation. Creep 2 instead does a great job at rekindling the suspense and tension in the first Creep, by downplaying what was scaring and creepy then. It’s protagonist Sara has a calmer disposition than Aaron in the first one, that allows her interaction with Mark Duplass come off more real and cerebral. You can feel what Sara is thinking in terms of her character inside a situation where a serial killer reveals himself, but most of all Creep 2 goes back and forth with it’s premise, that like in reality Sara isn’t completely sure if Aaron is a serial killer or just really really creepy.

Creep 2 is one of the few movies that gets the feeling of online encounters right, creating a realistic scare for your Halloween night while being also pitch perfect for a Valentine’s Day night in.

See Creep 2…if you dare…

- Maurice Jones

Lemon (2017)

From the minds of married couple Brett Gelmann and Janicza Bravo, comes Lemon, a dark romantic comedy about a self obsessed actor who under goes an immediate self progression, after his indifferent wife suddenly leaves him. 

Based on comedian Brett Gelmann's most recent work, Dinner with Friends with Brett Gelmann and Dinner in America with Brett Gelmann, as well as knowing his marriage to film director Janicza Bravo who happens to be an African American woman, the topic of racial injustice toward African Americans is very much on Brett Gelmann's mind. So much so to write and star in a feature length film about the subtilizes of racism of Lemon. 

Lemon is a brilliantly and deliberately avant-garde made film that is much about a white actor who gets dumped by his girlfriend than it is about the world of acting. What Lemon actually focuses on is the way supposed white liberals and art types, treat and respond to African Americans. That though the idea is that they understand and recognize the struggle of the African American experience, it doesn't mean they want to be personally integrated with Africans Americans themselves. Lemon uses adoptive parenting, vandalism, art critiquing and media as constant physical means of a white person's ignorance of racism in the 21 century. In the movies opening scene, a television program featuring a black woman describing slave era events of her ancestors is on the TV, as our protagonist is sat up sleeping in front the television with a urine stain on the front his pants. Later through the movie the protagonists sister has an adoptive black child and in a later scene our protagonist bonds the most with a wheelchair bound elderly black woman at an Black populated get together, pointing out the deep down aloofness of Jewish white people only being okay with being in the accompaniment of black children and elderly black people and not young black adults to avoid black culture. 

Lemon also comments about the male Ignorance of misogyny and male dominated spaces, having a female characters lines and scenes cut mid way of speaking to display the indifference towards from the male characters point of view because she's female.

Lemon is the few of it's kind that actually dares to show the absence of blackness and black people in mumblecore films and what happens when they become part of the films focus. Exposing its white plight and without blatancy making for an awkwardly interesting film, that gets under your skin the more you think about it.  

- Maurice Jones