I saw 92 movies—in theatres—during 2017 and while most aren’t worth the time and money the few that are worth both make up for them. To me a ‘good’ movie is one that I enjoyed while an excellent one is a film that I would want to see again. Some films move me and that is easy to do, some have excellent performances and the ones that do both are the ones that I will see again.

I believe movies should be seen for the first time on a theatre screen for which they are made for, not on a television screen whether it be on network or cable stations or streaming or from a DVD. There is a big difference between a 30 to 80-foot wide screen and a 70-inch television set!

For those who are movie fans like I am I suggest you look into moviepass.com as for the next 11 months (I hope they last that long) I will be seeing 1-2 movies a week every week completely free.

Here, in no particular order, are the films that I rated good and/or excellent in 2017:

Big Sick

3 Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

The Shape of Water

Coco

Elle

A United Kingdom

Paris Can Wait

BPM

Maudie

Detroit

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

Only the Brave

Wonder

The Greatest Show

The Mountain Between Us

Wonderstruck

Best performances—again in no order—of 2017:

Jacob Tremblay & Julia Roberts  in Wonder

Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde

Sam Elliot in The Hero

Harry Dean Stanton in Lucky

Michael Stuhlbarg in “Call Me By Your Name”

Sally Hawkins in both Maudie and The Shape of Water

Michael Shannon & Richard Jenkins in The Shape of Water

Francis McDormand, Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell in 3 Billboards outside  Ebbing, Missouri

Holly Hunter in The Big Sick

Laurie Metcalf in LadyBird

Melissa Leo in Novitiate

Michelle Pfeiffer in Mother!

Hong Chau in Downsizing

Tiffany Haddish in Girls Trip

Worse—ranging from UGH! to boring to awful to bad to blah. If I was capable (that’s another post) of walking out of a movie before the end I would have walked out of these.  Once again in no particular order:

Toni Erdmann—Their Finest—Matilda—A Very Sordid Wedding—My Cousin Rachael—The Beguiled—The Little Hours—From The Land of the Moon—Wind River—Logan Lucky—Good Time—Mother!—Beach Rats—The Florida Project—The Disaster Artist--Wonderstruck