Music and Movies of the Year 2017
I always enjoy compiling end-of-year lists. For the past few years I’ve added all the new music I like to a Spotify playlist, then selected my favourite songs from that year’s list to make a top 10, or 20. It’s normally been quite tough to narrow it down, but this year there was an entirely different problem: I could barely find 10 songs I really liked. For me, it’s been a dreadful year for new music. There’s nothing which would have made my top 5 in 2016, 2015, or 2014. Still – for what it’s worth – here are the 65 songs I put on the list. Good, but not great.
Movies of the Year
However, the opposite applied when it came to movies. 2017 was the best year for ages. I think that even the winners in 2016, 2015 and 2014 barely compete with the best of this year’s releases.
I saw 61 new movies at the cinema in 2017. This was a new record for me, just passing my target of 60. Thanks to The Light Cinema in Cambridge for making it such a good experience. There were only three films which I’d class as duds (It Was 50 Years Ago Today, Baywatch and Table 19) and one I simply disliked (The Florida Project). That’s a pretty good ratio, so I think I’ll set myself the same target for 2018. Any more and I suspect the dud-count might run unacceptably high. Here then are my Top Ten Movies of 2017…
10. Colossal
9. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
8. Hidden Figures
7. Paddington 2
6. Toni Erdmann
5. Baby Driver
4. The Death of Stalin
3. Dunkirk
2. La La Land
1. Blade Runner 2049
You can see my full list, ranked, at Letterboxd.