2017 had so many good films that just one list or even two were not enough. This list is all about fun. Movies that are fun to watch and have something to offer that may not be the top top best of the year but damn close. These are films you want to watch with friends, even one for the kids. Watch these at home in PJs or with a drink (hot cocoa is the drink of choice for one of those films of course).
Author Archives: Emilie Black
Emilie Black’s Top 10 Indie/Foreign Films of 2017
2017 is was a crazy year for films with so many good titles that picking only 10 was difficult and took much too long. That being said, here are my top 10 independent and foreign films which was gathered with much thinking and trying to figure out which films to keep, which not too. The list could easily have been a top 25 and it has been evolving everything it’s being worked on. The order is constantly changing, the titles that keep coming back are the ones found below.
Emilie Black’s Top 5 Theatrical Releases of 2017
Having seen mostly independent films and foreign releases, making a top 10 of mainstream, theatrically released films is practically impossible. However, some of these films deserve to be recognized and seen. Here are my 5 favorites of the mainstream American films I’ve seen this year.
Surge of Power: Revenge of the Sequel (2016)
In his return to the screen, super hero Surge leaves Big City for a visit to Las Vegas where he’ll find adventure, love, and celinedionium. While trying to save the city and possibly the world, he also attempts to help a friend and figure out more about life.
Fast Convoy (Le Convoi) (2016)
A convoy carrying drug to Spain hits a few issues on the road and must make due with what they can.
Written by Yann Brion and Frédéric Schoendoerffer and directed by the latter, Fast Convoy is a road movie and a drug movie while it also kinda feels like a heist movie in that these guys, in multiple cars, are basically trying to make it to a destination with illicit merchandize. The film is rather character-based with each character traveling with a co-pilot and taking orders from an unseen man. The story builds around them as they drive. While the title is a bit misleading, the film does have a few car-chase-ish scenes which have occasional nods to different car films and may or may not be influenced by the Luc Besson way of shooting cars on the road (low to the ground, front car pov). The car stuff is really one of the main appeals to this film and the scenes are well done and shot.
Inoperable (2017)
As a hurricane approaches, a woman wakes up in an evacuated hospital. As she tries to figure out what is going on, she discovers that she must escape to survive.
Kill Order (aka Meza) (2017) [Blood In The Snow 2017]
A teenager with strange abilities discovers why he has these and has to decide what he wants to make with them and himself.
Written and directed by James Mark, the film is a nice long string of fight sequences with other scenes and sequences in-between to build the story that unfortunately come off as forgettable, especially next to those fight scenes. The fighting in Kill Order is where it’s at. It’s rousing, exciting, and fun to watch. Which makes the in-between stuff this much sadder being that they are some much fun and the rest of the film feels a bit forgettable. The story is interesting but it’s not developed in a way that keeps the attention. The only reason this reviewer kept watching was all the awesome fighting. Fans of stuff like Ong Bak and B13 will love the action, but will probably check out during the rest of the film. Also not helping this are scenes that have subtitles that are white on white, thus extremely hard to read.