Episode 43; 2017: VARIOUS

Yep, another year when i can't quite decide which is my favourite film of the year (although, i do actually get there in the end!), but there are some absolute cracking flicks this year to discuss!

As mentioned on the episodes, i'm planning on doing a wrap-up Q&A episode as we get near to the final instalments (*sob*), so please feel free to send me any questions in advance!

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

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Hello everyone, welcome back once again to Milestone Movies, the podcast where I celebrate turning fifty by talking about each of my first fifty years and my favourite films from each of them years in order. So we are now on episode 43, which puts us smack dab in the middle of 2017-2017. Um now this is one of those odd years that I haven't necessarily got one single favourite film. There's a lot of films that I really, really like. There's a great big list of really notable releases, uh, and a lot of those I really, really love. So I'm gonna talk about them all, probably in a similar sort of vein to what I did in I think it was 2013 episode, um, and just discuss these various films. But at the end I'll come up with what I think is my favourite. When I think of all these films, which one it is that I absolutely love beyond all the others. So bear with me and we will get to that. But um a little bit of a confession first off. Uh the first film I want to talk about is we'll do the top five in a minute, but um technically not released in 2017, it was a 2016 release that I absolutely criminally missed off of last week's episode. Um, I think it was probably because when I was compiling the list, I was maybe only looking at British films and American films, and I somehow missed out Hunt for the Wilder People, which is an absolutely amazing film, a Taika Waititi film. Uh it's from New Zealand. Uh, Sam Neal is in it, amazing. He introduced this kid called Julian Denison, who went on to be in like um Deadpool 2 and um Christmas Chronicles 2, and has done some great stuff, absolutely brilliant child actor, um, and this just the heart and the sense of humour, very taikawai t, very bizarre sense of humour, but absolutely brilliant. Um, and it's basically about a kid who gets sent to a foster family uh in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand and basically goes on the run, uh, him and his uh foster father, who's played by Sam Neil, um, and the sort of adventures they get into and the cops who are chasing them down as well. Um, and it's absolutely brilliant, and it yeah, I feel bad because I probably would have talked about it as one of my very, very favourite films of 2016. Um I was gonna try and rationalise it and say perhaps I, you know, only saw it in 2017 on DVD, but that's not the case. So um, yeah, Hunt for the Wilder people. Um putting it out there as uh somewhere between episodes uh 42 and 43. If you've not seen it, check it out. It is absolutely brilliant. Um, and it does lead fairly neatly into one of my all-time favourite films from 2017, which we will get to. Um, but yeah, in terms of the top five, so the most successful films of 2017, the biggest one was The Last Jedi, so that is uh another Star Wars uh sequel. So following on from a couple of years ago with Force Awakens, uh so this is the the JJ Abrams sort of universe of films, uh carrying on the characters he created in that one. Um and yeah, very good. They do kind of blend in together a little bit those sort of three sequels uh that came out. Um so you had Force Awakens, then Last Jedi, then uh the Rise of Skywalker. Um and because they came out very close together and they've got the same cast and all that sort of thing, I've the job to pick out too many sort of bits from each one. Uh obviously there's fairly major character dies in this one. Uh we also lost in real life, we lost Carrie Fisher during the um release of this one, um, which was you know sad times for Star Wars fans. Um they did manage to use some footage and get her back into the final one to sort of finish off the trilogy and finish her story off, which was good. Um but yeah, that was the biggest film of the year. Uh Beauty and the Beast, the live action version. So Disney, Beauty and the Beast surprised me that was as successfully as it was. Um, you know, I think discussed previously that you know Disney are now m remaking everything, you know, even a couple of years out from when the initial ones come out, uh Moana this year. Um but Beauty and the Beast with uh Emma Watson, who obviously was off Harry Potter. Um not seen it, if we're being honest. Um I've seen the animated original, but not the live-action remake. Um the third biggest one was the eighth Fast and Furious film, so known in certain countries as the Fate of the Furious, uh, in other places F8, in others Fast and Furious 8. Um but yeah, more of the same, obviously they're coming out thick and fast now. This is the first one after losing Paul Walker, um, but it introduces uh Charlie's Thuron's character as a kind of a villain. Um you've got a lot more involvement in Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson. They would follow this film up by their sort of team-up film, The Hobson Shaw. Um, but there's an absolute brilliant sequence on this one with um Jason Statham on a plane with a baby. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. Um this is also the one with the sort of submarine, where they're basically cars versus submarines at the uh Arctic, Antarctic, whichever. And yeah, there's some there's some crazy stuff in it, uh, as these movies tend to have uh as further they go on, but it's a good, good fun film, Fate of Furious, very much very much so. Um Fourth Worms Despicable Me 3. So again, these ones were coming thick and fast, Minions were massive, uh Despicable Me was huge, and the fifth biggest film was a sequel to a film quite a long time coming, which was Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle. So this is basically it's very much in the universe of the original Jumanji. Um it's faithful to it, but it's brought it into a new generation, I suppose, in a way. So rather than being based around a ball game, the ball game actually gets absorbed into a video game. So the people who happen upon the game this time around are sort of transported into the game like it's you know, like they're playable characters in the game. Uh so kids basically get transported into the bodies of these heroic characters, so you um Dwayne Johnson and um Karen Gillen, so from Doctor Who to Guardians of the Galaxy into Jumanji, um, and this is sparked off a new trilogy, basically. So um this was followed by the next level a couple years later, and there's a new one coming out this year, which has seen a lot of sort of um paparazzi sort of behind-the-scenes shots. A lot of people who've been on uh the Universal Studio Tour have seen them sort of filming bits and bobs around there. Um so it's all the same cast, Jack Black, um Kevin Hart as well. Um struggling to remember the name of it, uh, but yeah, the the the third one of this trilogy, but obviously the fourth Jumanji film overall. Um but yeah, it's a lot of fun. You know, the the the sort of fish out of water, you know, body swap sort of side of it is very, very funny, and it's obviously got that same sort of Jumanji um style and sort of feeling to it. So yeah, it's a good, a worthy sort of sequel uh to the original Robin Williams classic. Um what else we got? So Lego Batman, we talked about uh the Lego movie just a few episodes ago. Uh you had Lego Batman and Lego Ninjago movie, both come out this year. Um, all um done by uh Phil Lord Chris Miller uh and their sort of team that they had set up for these ones. Very, very good. Probably prefer these two films over the Lego movie in the Lego movie two, uh, but the sense of humour is absolutely brilliant in it. The animation's amazing, and particularly the Lego Batman one. There's so many sort of DC comics deep cuts in there. They refer to so many things and have all these sort of background characters and um jokes about how loony some of these uh Batman villains were. Um yeah, brilliant, brilliant. Um, yeah, voices are absolutely spot on. Obviously, a lot of them have ported over from uh the Lego movie as well. But yeah, really, really good fun. And the Ninjago movie, it was around this sort of time that my kids were getting into um Lego Ninjago, which you don't know, is like a theme in Lego, which was um based around sort of you know mystical um Japanese subculture and uh Ninjago. Lego do these little themes that they're only supposed to sort of run for a couple of years and they have this stuff on the shelf and then they come up with something new, but Ninjago just struck such a core with kids that it's still going. I think it's celebrating its 15th year now. There's like so many s I mean I'm sat here in a room with tons of built and half-built Lego Ninjago um mechs and sets and minifigures just absolutely coming out of every every shelf and box around the place. Um, yeah, so it's it's very big in our house, definitely. But Ninjago, the the movie is very good fun. Um it's got a little bit of live action in there, same as the um Lego movie does, uh, with uh Jackie Chan and stuff, which is very cool. We had uh the second John Wick, so John Wick chapter two, Keanu Reese carrying on his uh hellacious uh kicking of asses. Uh talking of which you've got Logan as well, which was brilliant, absolutely real departure from the other X-Men Wolverine sort of spin-offs that we'd had. So you had uh The Wolverine, and you'd had um X-Men Origins Wolverine, and obviously they're all Hugh Jackman, they all sort of tied into the other X-Men films, but not in a brilliant, consistent way, and a bit up and down, really, in terms of the quality of those ones. But Logan is basically done by James Mangold, who's a great director, um, and it's based on the old man Logan uh comic strip, which is you know, in the far future, uh Logan Wolverine has is grown old and he's kind of almost trying to settle down and forget about his ways as a superhero and all this sort of stuff. Um and it's brilliant, you know, does it as it's such a great way. Patrick Stewart is still in there as a very, very old Charles Xavier who's gone mad with all the you know the the thoughts he hears in his head and everybody's voices in his head, driven him around the bend. Um and Logan is basically looking after him, trying to keep him safe, um, and you know, provide a bit of a better life for him. It also brings in X23, which Daphne Keane, um, as a young kid who's gone on to um being a lot of other stuff actually. Um TV, um, she's done a lot of movies herself now. So great thing about this was it was kind of the end of Wolverine. Um, you know, it puts his character, lays him to rest, literally at the end, sorry for the spoiler. Um and you know, same with Xavier. It kind of it's you watch it, and it certainly at the time when it came out, there was every reason to think that this was the last X-Men film, you know, this was the last of that run of films with those actors as those characters. Um, and it does it so well, really, really good. It's very brutal, it's very, very adult, but it did a fantastic job. And really the idea of sort of going back to those characters after that, and certainly, you know, um Hugh Jackman was like, Yeah, that's it, definitely, you know, hung up Wolverine's Claws for Good, never coming back again. Um, until several years later, when they released that tiny teaser trailer for um what would be Deadpool 3, essentially, um, with Ryan Reynolds, if you've not seen it, definitely, you know, get on YouTube and have a look. And it was basically the uh Deadpool and Wolverine announcement. Uh, and it's Ryan Reynolds just sat in a on a couch saying about how they've been looking for a story for the third Deadpool, bear in mind that obviously now the whole Fox Disney merge has gone through, um, which really opened up the world for him, and they're talking about he's saying, you know, all the these things that they just were coming up with all these stories and all these ideas, and it had to be brilliant, and we have nothing. Um, although we did have one idea, and then literally in the background, Hugh Jackman walks past, and Ryan Reynolds is like, Hey Hugh, you fancy playing Wolverine one more time? And he's like, Yeah, sure. And then that was the announcement that it was going to be Deadpool and Wolverine, and yeah, as we know, I mean when we get there, I'm pretty sure that's gonna be my film of the year for that year, because it's brilliant. And even though it kind of overwrites Logan, but not really because you know Logan is set in the far future and Deadpool and Wolverine's now, you know, but there's so much in that one and joking about how there's sort of I mean, literally the first scene desecrates the end of uh the end of Logan, but uh it's done in such a loving and funny and worthwhile way. There's you you kind of forgive it. Um how can you not? But yeah, Logan taken on its own, taken in context of what it was when it came out, you know, just a brilliant, brilliant end to that series of films. Absolutely fantastic. Uh so the Monsterverse that we talked about recently uh is still continuing. So the Godzilla, uh, this was Kong Skull Island, which was the second one in the series. Uh and it's Monsterverse is basically them uh trying to relaunch the King Kong uh versus Godzilla, that whole universe. So it's spun off into several films already. We've had Godzilla Kong, Godzilla Kong, New Empire, there's a TV series on Apple, Monarch, Legacy of Monsters, um, and they are doing a pretty good job of this uh sort of shared universe thing. Um, one that was less successful is that Universal tried to launch what they were gonna call the dark universe, um, and that was gonna be basically what we know as the Universal Monsters, so Wolfman, Invisible Man, the Mummy, um, all of these sort of characters, and they were gonna have them all in a you know an MCU kind of shared universe. They bought this one out, so this is the mummy, which is um stars Tom Cruise, uh, not as the mummy, Sophia Botello plays the mummy in it, um, who was very good in Star Trek Beyond the previous year. Um, and so he's kind of the monster hunter, and there's obviously indications that it's part of a bigger universe, and there's all these other monsters and mystical things out there. Um, when this movie came out, they actually announced all the upcoming films and all the cast, and they did they released this picture with Johnny Depp and Russell Crowe and uh Javier Bardem, all with Tom Cruise, and they were gonna be, you know, the cast that would lead in these next god knows how many years, goddamn as many films it was gonna come out. Um, and then the mummy underperformed massively. Uh, wasn't a critical hit either, and uh kind of put the kibosh on the whole thing. It was literally a case of Universal trying to get in on the MCU bandwagon, I guess. This this sort of you know, they'd seen how lucrative this could be, and they genuinely put the you know, cart before the horse, announced it all too early, and you know, it just fizzled out on the uh died on the vine sort of thing. So, yeah, unfortunate, but um we could have had some great films out of it, we could have had some stinkers, who knows? But yeah, the mummy didn't do what they wanted it to do, certainly. That's certainly true. Um what else we got? So Chips, which was a remake of the 80s TV series about the motorcycle cops. I actually really love it, even though I was a fan, I was a kind of a casual fan of the original series, I guess. It was sort of on sporadically growing up in that sort of Saturday afternoon action sort of slots that we watched the A Team and Fall Guy and Night Rider and all those in. Um so very aware of it, but not you know s lavishly sort of into it. Uh enough that I didn't consider this a sacrilege, and actually Dax Shepherd, who um writes and directs it as well, um, is very, very funny in it. And uh Michael Paina, who's just come out of uh Ant Man as well, um, and very sardonic, very good sense of humour. Um, and yeah, certainly one of the more successful of those uh 80s TV remakes, worth checking out, absolutely. Uh we had some big kids' films this year, Boss Baby, uh it was a DreamWorks one about uh the secret life of babies, where actually they're you know pretending to be these helpless little uh lumps, but actually there's uh this whole sort of underworld of big business going on, and you know they're they're infiltrating these families to take over the business world, I think it is, something like that. So, yeah, a couple films and a couple of um spin-off TV series that my kids were very into around this sort of time and just after, uh, which was great. Um so Marvel, um, Cinematic Universe, we talked on there, a fantastic year for them. There's some three really, really good films. You had the follow-up to Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, uh, which, yeah, again, all the same characters, all the same actors, but also brings in um Russell, uh not Russell, quite Kurt Russell, as um Peter Quill's father, uh, who turns out to be not as not as nice a reunion as you might expect. Um, but yeah, all the other sort of characters are back, and it's a really, really fun thing. They introduce um Mantis Plum Klementov, I think her name is in real life. Um very good addition to it as well. So yeah, this was James Gunn's film just before he got fired by Marvel and then later was reinstated to finish off the trilogy. Um but also this year you had Spider-Man Homecoming, which was uh the first full film for uh Tom Holland's Spider-Man after being debuted in uh Civil War uh the year before. Um and that's brilliant, and again referred to one of my previous episodes for the full Spider-Man rundown, if you would. Um and notably and actually probably is the one I was gonna shout out as my film of the year, is Thor Ragnarok, which is the third Thor film, th the third Thor film, um starting Chris Hemsworth, obviously. Uh, but this one is brilliant, and the aforementioned Tiger Waititi, who did Hunt for the Wilder People, a crazy choice to do a Marvel film anyway, because you know, everything you'd done before would have been quite small, you know, what we do with the shadows, all that sort of stuff, um involvement in you know, Flight of the Concords and things, but you know, nothing on this scale, and it is a huge scale film as well. We've obviously you've got you know the Thor side of it, which is you know um all the Norse gods and all that sort of thing, and they bring in um Hella, which is Thor's sister, played by Kate Blanchett, who's absolutely amazing, one of the best villains in the whole MCU. Um, really good, you know. He kills off tons of the you know important characters in there. Um he brings in other threads from the MCU, so you've got Doctor Strange in there, you've notably got Hulk in there as well, um, and everything. I mean, the sense of humour in that is just you know, I keep banging on about all these films having a sense of humour. So it was a funny year for films to be honest, because it's just hilarious, and it's great, and it does a lot of heavy lifting in terms of you know moving the plot forward and you know getting to the next Avengers and all this sort of stuff as well. Uh it's just ideal, it's a really, really good film, like funny as. It's just it's probably the funniest of the the Marvel film so far. Uh, absolute genius, and I love it. And I think, yeah, looking at my film, I think that is my film of the year. Really do. It's fantastic. Um, but you also had lots of other great stuff as well. So DC were still attempting it, and I think this is probably my favourite of the DC films, uh, certainly that came out in this sort of period where they're trying to ape the um Marvel success. Uh, and basically down to the casting. So this is Wonder Woman, um, and Gal Godot was cast as that, and she is absolutely perfect. I mean, obviously, other people have played Wonder Woman, um, certainly on TV and stuff like that. There's been other pilots that were sort of cast, and you think, yeah, and there was always suggestions of who could play her, but um Gal Godot, I guess because she's got that kind of exotic look to her as well, um, which you know you can believe she was sort of an Amazonian princess. Um, but she can act as well, do you know what I mean? And she's absolutely brilliant, isn't it? Um and it's directed by Patty Jenkins, so it's one of the uh most successful female directed uh films of all time, I think. Um and it just doesn't put a foot wrong. It's uh mostly set in World War One, um, because that's the sort of time that World War I, World War II? World War One of the World Wars, I think it's World War I. Um and it brings in Chris Pine, uh Steve Trevor as well, which again goes along with the comics and stuff. It's very uh you know, it fits in with the DC lore as it is, and it just seems to be one of the more faithful to the comics films that they attempted with all this DC stuff, you know. They were going off on all these tangents with Superman and Batman and Justice League and all that sort of thing. So um obviously Wonder Woman had been introduced in uh Batman vs. Superman the previous year, so again it was still given this idea that it was going to build up this consistent sort of universe, it eventually led to Justice League, um, which she was in as well, and then I think she cameoed the last we saw of her, she cameoed in the last Shazam film, I think. Um, but it was very much, you know, it was a phoned in performance, probably filmed on a different day to everything else, and just sort of composited in. It didn't really stick other than them just sort of trying to crowbar it in. Um, but that whole universe of film seems to have been sort of abandoned now, so um you do hear occasionally reports that they're gonna sort of recast. lot of these characters and stuff, but they would be extremely, extremely hard pressed to get a better Wonder Woman than Galgado. It's a very, very good film and she's excellent in it. And yeah, Justice League was actually later this year as well, um, which controversially was uh sort the taking over the directing duties by Joss Whedon after Zack Snyder had done the original one and then eventually a few years later they released like what they called the Snyder Cut which was a longer version. Put a load of stuff back in but didn't make it any better of a movie if we'll be honest. What else we got? So Ridley Scott had another go at an alien film, Alien Covenant. So it made slightly more sense than uh Prometheus uh but you know and put a lot more Alien in there which had been sort of sadly missing from that one. But again not quite up to the heights of the original couple of first couple of films. What else we oh well I mentioned Chips as being a very good TV remake. We also had the Baywatch film with Dwayne Johnson and Alexandra Di Dario which very little of uh note of that one. It's not a great film. It completely misses the the mark of what made the original series a sort of well a kitsch classic I suppose you could call it you know it's uh we all have our memories of that growing up and they don't really manage to sort of hit any of those nostalgia notes on it and they don't really do anything new or exciting with it either. Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson are there as cameos but don't add anything to it. It's just not a great film really. Best avoided I think um what else did we have? Another uh Cars film, Cars 3 which was a pretty big improvement I think on the second one. The second one sort of lost its way a little bit by going too big and too global and bringing in a sort of spy thriller sort of aspect to it as well. This one's actually quite emotionally you know um impactful uh in that uh Lightning McQueen the uh anthropomorphic car has a bad car accident and has to basically recover and get back to so it's a bit kind of like a Rocky film or something like that, you know, where he has to sort of train his way back up and get his confidence back and all that. And it's good. I really like it. I really like one a lot. We have Baby Driver which was a um Edgar Wright film so uh fully fully an American film now so um obviously he's moved on from the um uh Cornetto trilogy he's gone through like Scott Pilgrim and stuff like that as well uh but Baby Drive's brilliant in that it's basically it's almost like an orchestrated film in that the soundtrack is you know probably the biggest star of the film and each sequence in the film particular driving sequences the action sequences are really choreographed to the beats of the music and the lyrics and all that sort of stuff and yeah you want to you well if you can't see it on the big screen you want to watch it on the biggest telly you can with the best sound system you can because it's really all about the music but it is also a really good sort of action thriller as well so well worth watching um yeah the wrap up of the current sort of Planet of the Apes trilogy which started with Rise of the Planet of the Apes and then Dawn of the Planet of the Apes this is War for the Planet of the Apes uh which is very different from those previous ones and it's almost entirely sort of CGI apes in this one there's a bit of involvement from humans but they're very much the villains and you're you're you know rooting for Caesar and uh and the apes in this one very much so uh it did say wrapped up a kind of a trilogy which they did then have started another trilogy which is you know very much a legacy and and carries on from that in uh Kingdom of the Planet the Apes a couple of years ago and waiting to see where they're going with those uh what else Atomic Blonde which was again Charlie's Thrawn this is um from the makers of John Wick so it's very almost like a female John Wick um in that it's directed by is it David Leitch who's started off with uh John Wick and was an action choreographer on stuff like um Matrix and that I believe as well um yeah not it wasn't a massive hit but it's you know if you like that sort of kick ass John Wick style thing uh it's it's that basically very very good um what else we've got oh another misfire really which was supposed to spark off a new um series which was The Dark Tower based on the Stephen King books uh which was released as a sort of these m mini novels and a sort of series of them that were coming out almost like episodes when it came out um and I've got a big following the books but the movie just was a bit meh it was Matthew McConaughey, Idris Elba it just it didn't didn't really work on many levels so that was the end of that little series. So yeah everybody's trying to have these sort of big series of films and um you know launching stuff that's going to go on for years and unfortunately they're kind of uh a lot of them falling by the wayside in this sense uh Suburbicom which was a great uh George Clooney directed film um set in the 50s in the suburbs uh with Matt Damon um and basically trying to cover up a murder and keep this idyllic sort of neighbourhood um as they want it um murder on the Orient Express so obviously this is an old old story Agatha Christie's story uh Hercule Paro uh this was picked up and run with by um Kenneth Branner who was playing Prairo himself very differently to the the way it was portrayed on telly for years with David Suchet um very much makes a character his own and has done three of these to date so uh I really really like this one uh Murder on the Express you've then got uh Death on the Nile and uh Haunting in Venice they've done so far I certainly hope there'll be more um yeah it's if you like those the big cars so this one's got sort of Johnny Deppin and um uh Daisy Ridley and stuff you know it's got a lot of really really good actors in it um and yeah well worth checking out uh as a sort of a a Sunday afternoon or a bank holiday kind of movie which is um yeah well worth it well worth it even if you know the story they do it in a very very good way and very you know they're not updating it for the sake of it it's still a period piece but yeah done with modern filmmaking techniques I suppose is probably the best way to say it um very good um Spielberg did the post which was the um story of the Watergate scandal and how that broke um through the Washington Post so you've got um uh Tom Hanks obviously in that one Mel Streep as well doing great things in there for Spielberg who uh rarely puts a foot wrong now a quite a notable one actually not in terms of the film itself because it was maybe a little bit of a misfire but it was one of the highest profile uh Netflix premiers at this point so no this is 2017 I mean I first got Netflix I guess 2016 they'd gone from being a sort of mail order DVD rental to uh something you could watch on the internet which obviously then became what we know as streaming obviously Netflix have always been the the um pioneer of that but at this point they were making their own TV series but I think Bright was one of the first well certainly the biggest profile film that they'd done so Will Smith who you know is still a massive star at this point um you know and it's initially I think we kind of were thinking of it as being a sort of straight to video sort of style film. It's like you know why is an actor like this going you know straight to streaming sort of thing but actually you know it was a humongous budget you know it was hundreds of millions of dollars budget um big stars in there massive effects you know it was it could have shown us in fact I think they do quite often show these um Netflix films at the cinemas just so that they can qualify for sort of awards and stuff like that. But yeah it's very notable for being you know the first big streaming sort of you know made for streaming film I think certainly the first I remember and you know it's shaken a lot of things up it was quite controversial at the time you know people were trying to keep the cinema alive and you know stars are going straight to to streaming what you know what's that going to do to it but you know as we know now people can chop and change you know from one to the other and it's not really sort of frowned upon or anything anymore. You know there's big big stars that do TV and do you know Netflix films and Disney Plus films and prime video films and all that sort of stuff. And it's just become how we watch stuff now just you know very very short period of time really I mean you're talking less than ten years ago that this happened and we just kind of accept it as the norm now you know when you a big film's coming out it could quite often you know be going straight to Netflix or could be made for Disney Plus or something. So yeah but certainly that was very notable in 2017 um yeah so a couple I want to just speak about first off really first off last off I should say to wrap up which uh yeah I think Thor Ragnarok's probably going to be my all time favourite 2017 film um just because it just works on so many levels but there's a couple of films I want to and and an honourable mention as well which is probably an unexpected one um so my kids at this point 2017 so I had a three-year-old and a five year old and as the young girls often are at that age who were very into my little pony they're not anymore um but the the TV series it was on at the time which was obviously an updated version so not the old 80s one that we used to know I think the overall title of it is like Friendship is magic and it just had a very very cool attitude so it was about ponies and princesses and castles and stuff like that but very sarcastic and very um you know taking a mick out of each other and you know that it worked on a lot of levels like the best cartoons do really so you know when the girls watching that I was quite enjoying it it was decent um and then they bought other movies so My Little Pony movie uh which yeah came out in 2017 took the kids to the cinema not expecting to really enjoy it thought I had a nice opportunity for a snooze but actually and don't judge me on this I really really like it it's just one of those films that I'm happy for them to put it on and like I said they're not really into ponies anymore they certainly wouldn't want me saying that they're into my little pony anymore but occasionally we will put that on you know if we go to bed to watch a movie or something like that we'll stick that one on to fall asleep to and I really enjoy it there's some great songs in there some very funny comedy in there's lots of characters that were just introduced for that one as well as the ones from the series and it's a lot of fun so you know judge me if you wish but I'm a bit of a closet brony it's got to be said so yeah they've rebooted it all again now and it's all different and it's not the same but yeah that little period of cartoons in that movie brilliant really really enjoy them sorry um but yeah so two probably more uh uh adult films uh not in that sense is so one called Colossal which not a lot of people know about I've lent the DVD out to people I haven't had it back actually from one of my friends um this is a film with uh it you don't want to say too much about it because of the spoiler sort of side of it but Anne Hathaway is basically a woman who's you know she's she's got her own problems she's got issues going on um but she starts experiencing this weird thing weird dreams and weird sort of connections and stuff like this and in a roundabout way without giving too much away sh what she does is being mirrored by at the same time there's this sort of I guess you call it a kaiju like a big monster that is like trampling downtown Tokyo and just appearing on the other side of the country for no apparent reason and just you know appearing from nowhere trampling the place about and then disappearing again and it's like no one can work it out why what's going on and she starts to make this connection that when she's doing stuff it's kind of being mirrored almost like a voodoo sort of thing by this monster in the other side of the world and working out the connection and what's going on and is it real is it not but it's just it came out of nowhere that film it was just like it sounded interesting so bought the DVD and watched it and absolutely blew me away and everyone I know that has seen it loves it. So it's really really good film colossal but yeah I can't talk about it for too long because I don't want to give it all away but watch it and enjoy it it's brilliant it's colossal um and the other one is very very notable and came along at a time when I without going too you know teary about it and stuff going through a bit of crap in real life and it's just one of those real life affirming films that you want and that's called Gifted and it's Chris Evans obviously he was riding high on uh Captain America at the time uh plays a guy whose sister has died and so he's raising her daughter and her daughter's a sort of child prodigy um you know absolute genius uh at school and it turns out that um Chris Evans's character was as well back in his day uh but the uh child's uh grandmother is trying to take custody of her uh and sort of raise her the way she wants to uh and not give the kid any sort of you know childhood essentially you know wants her to become a maths genius and all this sort of stuff and it's just it's a very very sweet story um it's directed by Mark Webb who did the Spider-Man films and stuff like that with um Andrew Garfield so it's Chris Evans playing very much against type but really shining through you know as an actor really really good The Little Kid is actually played by McKenna Grace who would go on to do stuff like Young Sheldon and then she was in the new Ghostbusters films which we'll get to and now she's you know a much bigger star she's in the latest Scream film she's in uh film called Regretting You which is really big this year as well um and yeah this was you know she's very very young she's probably you know eight or nine at the time of this one but you know obviously going to be a really good actor you could tell even from then um and yeah all of the characters in that it's all really affecting so obviously Chris Evans has really dedicated his life to raising his niece at the detriment of his own life so he's you know just holding down a crappy job when he could be doing a lot more he's sort of you know pushing relationships out to the bat because he's done he's not interested in sort of anything that takes him away from raising his uh sister's kid and stuff and it's yeah it's just a lovely lovely film um and yeah you know maybe it's from where I was at the time you know the position I was in or whatever and you know it just really connected on all sorts of levels with me really so I'm almost getting choked up talking about it now just thinking about it but yeah if you've not seen Gifted check it out I mean a couple of episodes back I talked about um a John Cusack film called Martian Child and it's along those sort of lines as well you know very much they'd be a good sort of double bill if you you know wanted to get a box of hankies out and uh you know make yourself feel better by uh weeping it out but yeah it's very very good um I really really recommend it and yeah gifted colossal and Thor Ragnarok are my joint films of 2017 so there we go not quite as sort of consistent as some of the episodes where I just um I'll pick one out at uh the against everything else but yeah certainly very very good film so good year for films definitely uh 2017 so there we are as usual I've rambled on for far too long I know people like the short episodes but I do try and rattle through it some people say I'd speak too quickly but imagine how long these episodes would take if I didn't you know but uh I'm always appreciative of people joining me and listening to this um you know I I do it as a project just for my own amusement and I love that people sort of caught on to that as well and uh and get a little bit of enjoyment out of it themselves so please please feel free to uh join me next week uh when we will be talking about 2018. I'm probably gonna record that episode in the next couple days and maybe um hold it back for next week because I've got a busy weekend coming up. But yeah look forward to talking to you for episode 44. Thanks ever so much for listening. Please feel free to get in touch with comments, questions uh do still need to do that uh questions and answer episodes actually soon so we're running out of episodes we've got to do it soon but thanks ever so much for listening. I will speak to you again soon and bye bye