2017 in Review: Best and Worst Movies

Another year of going to the movies is now behind us! The past twelve months of filmmaking has for better or worse been a little unpredictable. At the start of 2017,  I didn't expect then that the year ahead would be filled with so many polarizing films; ones that seemed to be universally loved or hated, where movie-goers were quick to write-off movies before they came out or have such visceral reactions to them afterwards. No two Best and Worst Movie lists are going to be the same, but it feels like that's true even more now. Below are my picks for personal favorites and least favorite movies from 2017. The next year already seems like it's going to have a lot of surprises in store. What were your favorites? What movie surprised or disappointed you? Let me know your favorite movies of 2017 in the comments!

10 Best Performances by Andrew Lincoln on The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead started with a sheriff waking up from a coma into the zombie apocalypse. After locating his family Rick Grimes became the leader among fellow survivors trying to live within the walking dead. and other survivors try to live among the walking dead.

What would AMC's hit television show be like without Andrew Lincoln? Since the beginning he's given the the fiercely protective papa bear, killer, and mercenary a questionable morality and enduring sympathy unlike any other that could've played him. When the storylines are intense, Lincoln goes all in guns blazing. When the storm calms down, Lincoln can be inspiring or heartbreaking, just as we expect Grimes to be. No matter the changes thrown towards his character, Lincoln manages his biggest struggles: to be an effective leader, to keep Team Family alive while watching some of them die, to relinquish living in a world of death, and determine what it means to be a human.

Sure, he can grow one hell of beard, and still look hot when he's covered in literal grime and guts, but it's been an awesome journey to see Rick adjust his ideas of law and order in order to protect his family. Despite the great, and sometimes plotholed-fill direction of the show, Lincoln delivers a great performance year after year. To celebrate this hero and anti-hero, here is a list of my favorite performances. (This post includes major spoilers of all the seasons so far!) What episodes do you consider to be the Best of Rick Grimes? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

5 Favorite "Guilty Pleasure" Romantic Comedies

I don't believe in guilty pleasures. We all have books, movies, or tv shows that we love, but in other people's eyes, we're supposed to feel bad about liking. Why? 'Cause they're not masterpieces or universally praised? We're supposed to "hate ourselves" for liking something other people don't? I don't get it. Since it's the month of love, and romantic comedies are supposed to be the bane of "serious" filmmaking, I thought it'd be fun to share some movies I should probably feel guilty about but don't. Here are 5 Favorite "Guilty Pleasure" Romantic Comedies. What are you some of your favorite rom-com movies other people hate? Feel free to share in the comments!

Top Nomination Picks for The 90th Academy Awards

It's the biggest time of the year for the film industry: the Academy Awards are just around the corner! Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are closing in on naming the chosen ones for best actors and productions over the past year. What are the odds this year's nominees will win? After aggregating the nominations from award shows so far and figuring out who might actually walk away with gold this year, I thought it'd be fun to share my top picks of everything from Best Music to Best Picture. Who do you hope will win at the 90th Academy Awards? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Get Out (2017) Defines What The Horror Genre is All About

Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

Horror movies are a great opportunity for people to confront their fears, either imagined or real. Putting bigotry at the center of his stunning debut, director and writer Jordan Peele churns out a smart, scary, and relevant thriller with Get Out.

Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is about to meet his girlfriend’s family for the first time in their secluded home far from the city. There's a slight catch: Rose Armitrage (Allison Williams) is white, and didn’t tell her parents that Chris is black. Though she tries to reassure him that everything will be fine, Chris discovers a disturbing family secret that shows their true colors.

Ignorance and prejudice permeates all the time on the news, social media, and everyday life. The system has us so conditioned to treat people as if they’re invisible for simply trying to live their life like anyone else, except for what they’re stigmatized against: their gender, sexuality, religious preferences, and more specifically here, the color of Chris’s skin. To racists, in this case the Armitrage family, it’s the definitive feature. Chris becomes a featured attraction at the family get-together; he's on display for the whole world (us) to see, but also invisible to this family who views him as commodity, to be taken advantaged of. 

Brilliantly, Peele uses social and racial fears, being the outsider, to trap us inside the house with Chris as his girlfriend’s family downright don’t know how to treat him as a human being other than for his skin color. They try to be colorblind but can’t see beyond a person’s skin. They think people are special tokens of wokeness, inserting culture to prove they're 'down' with others who are different than them. They think to insert points of the other person’s supposed culture is to be seen as inclusive; everything they try to do to not seem racist is actually racist. While there are a few good jump-scares throughout, its Peele's acknowledgement of systematic racism, white girl womanhood (I'm a white woman and trying not to be fake-woke here), appropriation, slavery, police brutality, and interracial relationships that offers the real suspense and horror. He weaves imagery and metaphors throughout that movie that are never too obvious to be obnoxiously on the nose or too subtle to be overlooked to create a terrifying atmosphere.

For everything Peele packs into the movie, it has a definitive balance of not drawing the lines between audiences, to not inundate people of color with experiences they've already had or alienate white audiences. Its ambition is empathy, like any other movie, to put you into a character's shoes, identifying with being 'the other' and how that plays into the collective whole. With a fairly unrecognizable cast at the helm, Peele churns out amazing performances with his actors. Commenting too much on the stars might give too much away, so Daniel and Allison are sublime, carrying the movie with a supporting cast that offers the right amount of hostility and creepiness.

Mixing Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with Hitchcockian suspense, the writing and direction of Get Out is downright brilliant. Easily, the movie feels claustrophobic because it subtly drops us into Chris’s shoes, letting the story mirror society. It divulges horror to re-affirm the terrors Peele and people of color experience, allowing satire and symbolism to call out the absurd real world. Stunningly building suspense, the story feels like it’s going in one direction, only to turn the tables around and venture elsewhere, making you feel like there is no escape. Peele's honest work here exposes that how too many people never do.

Rating: ★★★

Have you seen Get Out? What did you think?

Battle of The Sexes (2017) Proves Equality Is Still Worth Fighting For

Photo Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Like athletes on the field laying it all on the line, sports movies have to have a certain finesse. They strive to capture the underdog versus the champions-that-can’t-be-beat, setting audiences on the sidelines to witness the push-and-pull of who deserves to win. Uplifting and compelling, directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton’s Battle of the Sexes is one of timeliest movies to come along, showcasing one of the biggest matches in tennis history and exploring the importance of perserverance.

In 1973, Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) began a revolution for pay equality when she discovered herself and her fellow teammates weren’t getting paid as much as their male counterparts. Starting their own women’s tournament sparks an exhibition for Wimbledon Champion turned hustler Bobby Riggs (Steve Carrell) to make women's lib a laughingstock. Along the way, King discovers more than the power of her voice and talent on the court, but also an attraction towards a hairstylist Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough) despite being married. King's defiance against playing by men's rules and Rigg's display of misogynistic showmanship kicks off a match for the ages.

In life, every day, we see how society splits up opportunities between genders, sexuality, religion, and race. There’s a hierarchy of respect that trickles down from those born with privilege or power and those without. Similar to A League of Their Own which reinforced female baseball players keeping America’s past-time alive during World War II, and Hidden Figures shining a light on women of color helping to send astronauts into space, Battle of the Sexes spotlights the making to one of tennis's biggest matches. Ignorance can be life and cinema's greatest villains, creating the tension here between Riggs's chauvinist exhibition and King feeling pressured to keep her attraction a secret and be a leader to women's rights. Their feud grows as we see them off the court, juggling drama to keep the story engaging and serving inspiration as a real game-changer now and in the future.

At the center of the movie is its leading cast. Having watched Emma Stone evolve between being a comedienne to dramatic star on the big screen, her performance here as King is one of her best so far. Beautifully mirroring her Oscars speech when she won Best Actress in La La Land, she hasn’t stopped growing as a performer and stepping out of her comfort zone, and that’s evident in how much she loses herself in this role. King is as vulnerable as she is strong-willed, allowing her to be scared of the second-hand homophobia and realizing her attraction to women, as well as being confident but doubtful of her ability to beat Riggs; to earn a victory for women at the time. Stone's main counterpart, Steve Carell as Riggs, is likable and funny, except for what he believes in. He's able to play a bigger-than-life personality to draw support in their match, but also ground down his personal issues like a floundering marriage and gambling addiction. He's not too over-the-top that his promotional escapades cashes in on the gender issues at the time. As much as King and Riggs are pitted against each other, the scripts engages in showing both of their strengths and weaknesses.

Considering the current climate of inequality, especially Hollywood right now, it’s bewildering that one of cinema’s better takes about a gay woman fighting to be respected has been widely ignored so far. A definite case can be made that the movie overlooks pivotal aspects of King's sexuality, but that longtime analysis of fact versus fiction is the same issue most biopics can't escape, and this one doesn't fare too badly. Some say the movie was too lighthearted and also contained too much plot, but for a two hour movie, it's the right length to see the main players' problems and saving most of the action for the big showdown. There's no missing the beats about who, what, when, why, and how the match between King and Riggs is set, and that's sometimes all a movie needs instead of stacking the deck so full it's hard to follow or heavy-handed.

Battle of the Sexes starts with King's stand for equal pay, and in the end her perseverance becomes about earning respect for herself and other female players; being treated as an equal is as important as being paid the same as our counterparts. As the years wore on, she became the first female athlete to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom Honor, and continued to fight for gay rights and Title XI. Meanwhile, Riggs accepted his participation in the second-wave women's movement becoming good friends with King for the rest of his life. That said, as inspiring as King's resolve is, it's difficult for Battle of the Sexes to not feel a little dated because the fight for equality is ongoing. Sometimes in this age we want to keep history in the past because it shows us how little the needle has moved, but it's necessary to be reminded of how some defied the norm. That's how small stances ultimately turn into great achievements. And we need everyone to make it happen.

Rating: ★★★

Have you seen Battle of the Sexes?

What did you think?

mother! (2017) sinks under its own ambition

Photo Credit: mother! / Paramount Pictures

It's difficult to have survived 2017 without hearing of mother!, a movie drawing critical acclaim as a masterpiece to Worst Movie of the Century. Often layered with symbolism and metaphors, director Darren Aronofsky doesn't err on the side of caution. Completely untamed, here he strives to weave a story about humanity, God, and mother nature (my interpretation at least) that's less worthy of the title's exclamation point and more of a question mark that fails makes waves.

mother (Jennifer Lawrence) is rebuilding a beautiful house as her poet husband Him (Javier Bardem) struggles to find his next big inspiration. As she strives to make a paradise for him and satiate his zapped creative energy, nothing seems to be good enough - her devotion, attention, love, and care. When strangers visit in the middle of the night inviting war, barbarism, and a cultlike devotion, Him and their unwanted guests bring with them the end of the world as she knows it.

Dubbed as a psychological thriller, even a horror film, Aronofsky threads a foreboding sense of genuine suspense in the beginning. Utilizing a script he wrote in five days, Aronofsky impressively packs in a lot of detail in a short amount of time. When the story strictly centered on mother's dynamics with the house, Him and his consuming attention he feeds off of their visitors, the story looms with confusion and anxiety: Who are these people? Why is Him so attracted to them so easily? What makes mother so apprehensive to their presence? But as the story moves further into the second and last act, Aronofsky adaptating the characters into bigger ideas (Him as God, mother as mother nature, the first two strangers as Adam and Eve) escalates to the point where you stop wondering what point he's trying to make and start questioning what the heck you're watching at all.

Blurring the line between interesting easter eggs, and plastering biblical references at every turn, Aronofsky succeeds better when he isn't trying so hard. mother, anthropomorphized by Jennifer Lawrence, dresses in fine, earthy clothes, and flints between being confused, horrified, or physically abused to the point of no return all in the name of her selflessness to provide for others. Him is obsessed with creation and validation by the masses, of which both will eventually become greedy and consumed by their own egos. In trying to mix the characters in with the setting, mother's house, aka Earth, polluted on, flooded, has blood spilt on it (to say the least), there isn't a specific focus with any one of the messages he's trying to tell: the muse and the arrogant artist, our unrealized fears about the environment and how we treat it before there's no going back, or the pain people inflict upon each other in the name of something higher. There's so little intrigue infused into the story at the halfway mark but so much going on on the surface, Aronofsky's ideas are actually rather thin.

mother! isn't meant to be a horror film in the sense of typical crime dramas or the supernatural haunting the living. The film is meant for us to consider climate change and how we treat mother nature as if she was a person. But Aronofsky throws so much at the wall, his real message doesn't necessarily stick, unless one wants to sink down into the allegorical rabbit hole. Throughout all of the chaos and heavy-handed symbolism, there's no real thrilling or lasting aspect to Aronofsky's or Him's madness. Which leaves the film with an unapologetic graphic violence without a consistent tone or message, so much so that its shock value loses any deeper meaning he started out with.

To helm his absolute rollercoaster, Lawrence's commitment to her director's vision is palpable, and it might be the best performance of her career since Winter's Bone, but even then, it's bothersome that her contrasting perspective and judgement of mother seeps into the role at times and loses the essential connection one needs to have because the film is from her point-of-view. Her supporting cast doesn't fare much better: Javier Bardem feels out of place as the other lead, while Michelle Pfieffer, Ed Harris, and the Gleeson brothers are in the most intriguing part of the movie, they are also unmemorable.

Technically, there are things about this that are a marvel. Its sound design by Jóhann Jóhannsson is brilliant, having no instrumental or lyrical soundtrack to set the pace. The camerawork focuses on its lead Jennifer Lawrence for a good 66 minutes of 121 minutes, of which the cinematography had to be in sync with the actress. It's also stunning how they staged the action inside the house with everything from raves and dinner parties to hostage situations, cults, and warzones.

Sometimes one movie is the culmination of everything a director has been building for their entire career. Usually, I'd feel excited about this kind of boldness, to take motifs, common plots, and techniques over the years to deliver something that beats out their previous work. Instead mother! feels wildly forgettable, perhaps something Aronofsky needed to get off of his shoulders, and only a select few are going to stand by what he wanted to say. His latest obsession is a mishmash of what makes him known as a controversial auteur, only this time if he wanted to go for shock value, he should've gone back to the drawing board too.

Rating: ☆☆☆

Have you seen mother! What did you think?

The Walking Dead 08x08 How It's Gotta Be

Photo Credit: AMC / Gene Page

Rick tries to make an alliance with Jadis and her trashheap crew, while the rest of Alexandria wants to take Negan out immediately after believing crucial members of The Kingdom have been killed. Tara and Daryl enact a plan of their own against the Saviors which backfires, leaving the communities to deal with a surprising ambush by Negan.

Below includes spoilers of the series' eight seasons so far. You've been warned but hope you enjoy!

WWE Smackdown Live In Orlando

Except for the occasional tweet, my fangirling life as a WWE fan isn't that well-known. I became a fan when I was twelve years old, finding one of their televised programs Smackdown on a whim and becoming obsessed with everything wrestling.

Since to 2002, World Wrestling Entertainment has been in and out of my sphere. There was a good five years where we went through a rough patch, and I honestly didn't think I'd be going back to a wrestling event anytime soon. I was super surprised to find myself at Smackdown Live to kick off 2018 with one major goal in mind: seeing Shane McMahon in person.

2018 New Years Film + Life Goals

Well, we made it through the Upside Down folks. I hope everyone still has their wits about them 'cause 2017 was an onslaught of impossibly-impossible nightmares (and dreams) coming true. It's nice to roll over the date to 2018 and try to make the next year as best as possible.

Looking at my list of goals from last year, I'm pretty proud of the ones that I accomplished: kept up with Walking Dead recaps and Wonder Women series, posting on Instagram, cosplayed as Belle at Disney, and followed a blog calendar.

Some of my favorite moments included attending MegaCon with a press membership, celebrating what Harry Potter means to me and my favorite memories, saying goodbye to The Great Movie Ride at Disney, making it to Platform 9 3/4 nineteen years later, and had some writing collaborations (my first guest blogger and some sponsored posts).

2018 Film + Life Goals

If there's one character I learned the most from in 2017, it would definitely be Wonder Woman. If you've been around the block on my blog recently, you might be familiar with how much she has inspired me. Her confidence and determination gave me ideas about myself that I didn't know about before.

Cause you see: I have anxiety and it sucks. It's an endless, crappy headgame dealing with change, self-doubt, and perfectionism, where you never feel like a winner no matter what. While it took me several years to reach a 'We'll See' moment in life to accept life's twists, I struggle with following other people's ideas of what's best for me instead of taking my own good advice. With scene's like No Man's Land, it's actually settling into my noggin that what I do is not up to others or that asshat called Anxiety telling me I can't or shouldn't do something.

As nervous and apprehensive I feel about the future, hope and optimism is still stirring somewhere. I don't know where life's gonna take me if I don't try, so these are a few things I know I'd like to do:

Geekiness

+ So many books, I'm going to learn to make time. My goodreads goals is 20+books. I've already started with The Happiness Project and the next installment of Velcro The Ninja Kat, so that's a pretty good start.

+ Movies. Every year I hit about 50 movies, mostly tracking them on Letterboxd. This year I'm plugging a lot more reviews in. A few movies I'm looking forward to Proud Mary, Fifty Shades Freed, Annihilation, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Ocean's 8.

+ TV Shows. I plan on writing more season or series reviews like Outlander and Game of Thrones, and a ton of others I haven't quite started or caught up with.

+ Find a candle that smells Ryan Gosling. I already have Chris Evans / Captain America covered, so I gotta one find for Canadian Sugarcube. RIGHT?!

+ DIYs. I have so many ideas for crafts - collages, drawings, pom poms, bookmarks, diys of fandoms like Star Wars and Harry Potter. 2018 is going to artsy.

+ Blog series. I want to continue Wonder Women series, Trailer Reactions, and a variety of lists posts. The Walking Dead recaps past season eight is to be determined. I'm also going to introduce a new fandom series called Fandom Throwback to talk about various fandoms I've loved in the past.

+ Blog Calendars really helped me realize how much I like and need to track projects. Having a place for ideas and upcoming events helped me trail posts I wanted to make, even if I strayed sometimes. I bought a planner before the new years started and it's already helping me.

Social Media

+ Grow My Instagram. I love blogging my adventures and be inspired by other users' feeds. I started a Harry Potter instagram which has been a lot of fun sharing my muggleness and meeting other Potterheads. I'd like to see how far I can take both of them.

+ Be a Conscious Instagrammer. As much as I love Instagram, it's very easy to slip into the mindset of playing catch-up with trends, especially with new books coming out all the time or some of the beautiful feeds out there in different communities. Sometimes I think about the impact on the environment with what people are constantly buying and where does it go - which is their choices to make (not judging). But I want to be conscious about what I buy for props or if it's just for Instagram, if I'm actually reading the books I post, and making sure that if my style grows, it's still me.

+ Cosplay. It all started with Matt the Radar Technician, and then Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I'll be heading to A Celebration of Harry Potter cosplaying as Harry Potter (Sorcerer's Stone style). For Halloween, I'm thinking about Dana S. Pumpkins, the long-lost cousin of David S. Pumpkins.

General

+ I hope to move out of Florida this summer...Ironically, before I leave I want to go to Madame Tussaud's (and meet Ryan Gosling), the Titanic Museum, and Kennedy Space Center.

+ 5000 Sales. It took me a long time to hit 3100 sales on my Etsy store. This year I'm expanding to bookmarks and instant downloads with a lot of fun geeky ideas up my sleeve. I'd like to hit 5000.

+ Continue #28Lessons. When I turned twenty-seven in 2016, I started #27Lessons, which I filled with thoughts and quotes. After having semi-quarter-life-crises once I turned 28 last December, I want to keep it going as #28Lessons.

+ Figure Out Something with the 1940s. I don't know what this means yet, but I'd love to find a space for my interest in Classic Hollywood and the 1940s.

What do you have planned for 2018? Movies, books, or events you're looking forward to?

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.” ― Carrie Fisher

2017 Year In Review: Television Shows

Another year has come and gone, and so has plenty of great tv shows. While I plan on catching up on so many that debuted this year in 2018, this is a Best and Worst List of TV in 2017. Some of my picks were newly released this year, and some are just new-to-me. From celebrating a fictional character's death to favorite ships, you'll find a lot of different categories below that I hope you enjoy.

I don't believe this post is particularly spoilerish, but I'll give a warning for the following shows just in case: The X-Files, Once Upon A Time, Big Little Lies, The Walking Dead, Bates Motel, Daredevil, This Is Us, Luke Cage, Feud, The Punisher. Thanks for tuning in! Here's to another round of fangirling next year!

How to Treat 2018 like No Man's Land and Kick Butt In the New Year

One of the biggest, empowering moments in superhero films for 2017 comes from Wonder Woman and its depiction of No Man's Land.

If you haven't seen the movie, here's a little non-spoilerific refresher: During World War I, Amazonian princess Diana Prince heads to the frontlines looking for the God of War Ares, but starts witnessing the unflinching violence humankind is capable of. As the Allied forces stands off against German troops, neither having gained new ground for a year, local villages suffer from their occupation. Prince wants to help everyone she can, but companion Steve Trevor tells her that it's not possible to cross the forbidden terrain known as No Man's Land. Shielding everything the enemy can throw at her, she's able to move their soldiers ahead. Along the way Diana transforms into the Wonder Woman as we know of her: powerful, courageous, wise, a leader and team player.

No Man's Land became one of the most significantly inspiring scenes not only for the year but for moviegoers and Wonder Woman fans everywhere. By following her gut instincts and leading the pack, we were reminded that barriers can be crossed with compassion and determination. Here's some tips on how to treat the new year like No Man's Land - believe in yourself, try new things, don't let anyone limit your potential, and kick some butt in 2018. Hope you enjoy!