Dear Readers,
Dear Readers,
After publishing over 1,000 articles, I trust that Dear Cast and Crew is more than the sum of our lists. We try to appreciate the craft and characters behind-the-scenes that make movies magic. But at the end of the year, people still want to know what raised the bar for cinema writ large, and what failed to clear the baseline of quality control. So here we go.
BUT FIRST.
This year I’m including my full diet as a film critic. Not a list of the films themselves (could do that later, should I?), but a statistical overview of my cinematic caloric intake. Some personal metrics to help you gauge what kind of pool I’m fishing from. Because there may be an ocean of options out there, but let’s be honest: we’re all fishing from a certain pool.
And as always, this list represents my personal highlights from the past year and does not reflect an editorial consensus from the other writers on the site. You’ll also notice we don’t have a review for my #1 film on the website, but my essay will be available shortly.
Total films: 160
Venue:
Theatre: 58 (37%)
Netflix: 33 (20%)
TV: 64 (40%)
Advance screeners: 5 (3%)
Release Dates :
New: 137 (86%)
Recent: 4 (2%)
Classic: 19 (12%)
*New releases mean widely available in past 18 months, Classic films mean 10-years-old or more.
New vs. Old
First-time viewing: 151 (94%)
Repeat Viewing: 9 (6%)
Specialty Genres :
Canadian: 14 (9%)
Documentary: 11 (7%)
Foreign: 8 (5%)
Animation: 3 (2%)
TOP 10 Films of 2017
- Get Out
- The Lost City of Z
- Raw
- The Square
- Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Contractually Obligated mention of Tony Clifton
- Dunkirk
- Mudbound
- Battle of the Sexes
- The Florida Project
- Les Affamé
Better Than They Needed to Be
Spider-Man: Homecoming g
Patriot’s Day
Wonder Woman
Inexplicably Underseen
Mother!
Wind River
Colossal
Overrated Everywhere Else
Lady Bird
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Logan Lucky
Unapologetically Awesome
The Last Jedi
Atomic Blonde
Blade Runner 2049
Didn’t Disappoint
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri
War for the Planet of the Apes
The Trip to Spain
Extra Special Indies
Personal Shopper
Sleeping Giant
Hello Destroyer
Fantastic Foreign Fare
First They Killed My Father
Toni Erdmann
Train to Busan
Wasted Potential
Alien: Covenant
Detroit
Live By Night
Avoid At All Costs
Baywatch
Bad Batch
The Little Hours
Geostorm
This Year I Finally Saw (and Loved)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
The African Queen (1951)
Postcards from the Edge (1990)
Road House (1989)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Point Break (1991)
Sincerely,
Christopher