Hello and welcome to the eighth (!!) annual Paultacular
Bruene awards, coming to you live on the west coast (tape-delayed in Hawaii,
Alaska, Guam, and American Samoa) from a one-bedroom apartment in North
Seattle.
This year is going to be a little shorter (a little shorter) than in years
past, in large part because this is the fewest movies I’ve seen before writing
this since the first year, only 46 movies released in 2017. That’s a full 20
less than last year, though in my defense I spent the bulk of the past 12
months either studying for the bar exam or as a practicing attorney, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
whatryagonnado. Though there are a few movies I didn’t get to that I wanted to
(like All The Money In The World, The Greatest Showman and literally anything in a foreign language or any documentary), I think I did a pretty good job
all things considered.
Anyways, here’s the format, almost entirely unchanged from
the last few years. I’m going to run through a bunch of categories and give my
top five for the year (which I’ve termed “contenders”) and then give a winner.
Many of the categories are copied from standard awards categories, plus a few
of my own creation (and minus a few I don’t like or didn’t see enough to judge,
like, as noted above, anything involving foreign language films). This is all
strictly subjective, which, though obvious, I feel like I should mention
because my personal taste in movies is further from consensus for 2017 than
usual—a lot of the popular (and I mean that both in a critical and commercial
sense) 2017 movies I liked but didn’t love. No shots intended at anything or
anyone omitted here.
