The Best Films of 2017 so far - according to Ali Plumb

Yes, I went there. The biggest, dumbest, most nonsensical of all the Fast & Furious movies has snuck into my top ten because of its sheer blockbustery bravado. This is the film where The Rock gets out of a moving truck – driving on the ice, mind – to hang off the door and push a skidding torpedo (from a nearby submarine) into another car. Elsewhere, Vin Diesel reverses a 1950s-era car over a finish line, backwards, while it’s ON FIRE. The film is utterly preposterous and amazingly good fun. Switch off your brain, as they say, and have a BLAST. *Cue explosions*

Suffering terribly from the weight of all the Oscar hype heaped upon it, La La Land was billed as the second coming of musicals: a feel-good, toe-tapping love story featuring two handsome leads (Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling) that would leave you smiling and dancing and wishing all the best for all the world as you pirouetted out of the cinema. But it’s not that. It’s… about art and acting and disappointment and love not always winning and the sheer luck involved in life. It’s basically a little indie from the director of Whiplash that got too big for its dancing shoes. Watch it – somehow – without all the marketing looming over it and there’s loads of beautiful stuff here, a real treat for old school musical fans, and for fans of jazz. You remember jazz, right?

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The awards success of the controversial Best Picture Oscar winner was, for many, not that controversial at all. After all, this is a well-acted, well-directed, well-written drama that just so happened to be involved in an envelope snafu with La La Land. It truly is such a shame that this awkward clerical error overshadowed the actual film’s worth – truly, truly, truly. Films like Moonlight are so rare – it’s the only movie with an all-black cast, and the first LGBT film, to win The Academy’s highest honour – and you wish they weren’t. Fingers crossed it will inspire many more to pick up a camera, start writing that script, take up acting and produce something even half as good as this heartbreaking coming-of-age masterpiece.

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Colossal was mis-sold. Trailers pitched it as a knockabout Saturday Night Live-like high concept comedy where a thirty-something drop-out (Anne Hathaway) finds out that in certain, bizarre circumstances she controls a massive Godzilla-like monster in South Korea. Yes, I know it’s weird, but bear with me. In reality, the film is a treatise on alcoholism and anger issues told *using* massive Godzilla-like monsters in South Korea – with a few jokes here and there – and trust me, it’s worth your time. If you like weird indie films, that is. You know the ones I mean.

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Getting a superhero sequel right is no easy task. The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 2 and a couple of other have managed it, but for every one of them, there are many more like Iron Man 2, Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance or Blade Trinity. Guardians 2, however, nailed it, managing to sneak in a lot more quality time with the characters, while expanding the universe and delivering even bigger action set-pieces. Plus: no clear villain and a plot that actually had some surprises. Who knew that was still possible?

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Almost as tear-worthy as Manchester By The Sea, A Monster Calls is a dark fantasy drama from J.A. Bayona (The Impossible, The Orphanage, the upcoming Jurassic World sequel) that deals with such big topics as death, grief, mourning and cancer with the help of a giant sentient tree played by Liam Neeson. Yes, you read that correctly. Also starring Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones and Toby Kebbell – with Jones and Weaver standing out in particular – this is a well-acted, nuanced, delicate dissection of a child (Lewis MacDougall) dealing with an appalling tragedy.

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Despicably, appallingly, manically fun. How did this bizarre spin-off – from The Lego Movie, let’s not forget – turn out so well? Essentially a machine-gun volley of oddball references, stupid jokes and multi-coloured brick explosions, The Lego Movie blew all comers away. Worth a watch if only for the moment when Lego Batman ‘grumps’ his way up a flight of stairs saying the word “No” over and over and over. Oh, and the bit where you meet ‘The Scuttler’. You’ll see what I mean.

Far better than it had any right to be, this R-rated, violent, adult-themed superhero movie is set to be Hugh Jackman’s final Wolverine film, and if it is, what a film to go out on. Brave, bloody and surprisingly moving, this is a grown-up treatise on what happens to the warrior once the war is over, and how age comes to us all. Patrick Stewart’s nonagenarian Professor X delivers a fantastic performance as the once-great Charles Xavier, now wrestling with a mind that has become a weapon of mass destruction, while newcomer Dafke Keen very nearly steals the show as an 11-year-old mutant with similar powers to Wolverine, and, arguably, a worse temper. Again: this is not a film for kids. No, sir.

If you’re looking for a cry – and hey, you might be – this heart-wrenching drama starring Casey Affleck (delivering an Oscar-winning performance), Michelle Williams and Lucas Hedges is a proper there’s-something-in-my-eye weepie. The plot hinges on Affleck’s lonely, angry janitor coming back to his Massachusetts hometown after his brother dies and he discovers that he’s his nephew’s legal guardian. To say any more would ruin the heart of the story, but there’s a very good reason why the writer/director Kenneth Lonergan won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar this year.

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A film so good I frogmarched two friends to a cinema, bought them a pair of tickets and practically shoved them in their seats – in a nice way, honest. Get Out is a clever, critically-adored horror that somehow manages to be scary, funny and socially relevant at the same time. It’s also one of those movies that if you learn too much about it, it’ll lessen its impact, so let me say this: its star, Skins veteran Daniel Kaluuya, is brilliant in it, and the film itself is very, very, very good. Best-film-of-2017-so-far good, no less.