Top 10 Films of 2007 (that I’ve seen)

Another year has flown by, far too fast I might add. So in the great tra­di­tion of the new year, I too will toss my hat in and break the year down to a list. What fol­lows is a list that I thought very lit­tle about before writ­ing. They are in some sort of order, but in truth, it makes no dif­fer­ent. By read­ing my lengthy blurbs, you’ll notice that direc­tion and impact make up a huge per­cent­age of my grad­ing cri­te­ria. 2007 is one of the best years in the his­tory of the movie busi­ness, and the audi­ences get to ben­e­fit from that cash­flow. That means there’s more money for bet­ter films to come along, but also more demand for fran­chise crap. When you look at my list, you’ll see some of those fran­chise bits can be amaz­ing. Enough pre­am­ble, enjoy and leave com­ments with your thoughts. Happy New Year.

Maidstone — Norman Mailer’s 1970 some­what scripted documentary-style film has pushed and shoved it’s way into a spe­cial place in this critic’s heart. While I am well aware that it was made well before 2007, it tops this list as New York City opted to do jus­tice to the film canon of this pro­lific author this year. Sadly, the resur­gence of his films play­ing around the city this year would have to be a part­ing gift for the man’s mon­u­men­tal life, though those liv­ing out­side of this locale will have to wait for the DVD if it ever sur­faces. In the film, shot on 16mm by (among oth­ers) direct cin­ema leg­ends D.A. Pennebaker and Richard Leacock, Mailer por­trays an inflated ver­sion of him­self, Norman T. Kingsley, a self-proclaimed better-than-Fellini inde­pen­dent film­maker who may be run­ning for President, which sets the stage for a pos­si­ble assas­si­na­tion by “the man”. I guess you could describe it like this: What do you get when you gather a few bus­loads of peo­ple, take them out to a Long Island estate, and sub­ject them to Mailer’s great­est fears and desires for a week. Mailer only made 4 films in his life­time, and while this one may be inac­ces­si­ble to the masses in 2007 (we used to be smarter, what can I say?), it shows how much of a crime it is that he didn’t put his pen down long enough to make more.

No Country for Old Men — I try to stand out from the rest of the crix pix this hol­i­day sea­son, but you sim­ply can’t talk about 2007 with­out men­tion­ing No Country for Old Men. It is a vir­tu­oso study in cin­ema by those game-changingCoen Brothers. I’ve said this many times, but we know they will go down in his­tory for advanc­ing cin­ema tech­nol­ogy, specif­i­cally in the realm of color. What’s so fas­ci­nat­ing about this film though, is that it used the best of Modern tech­nol­ogy to cre­ate a clas­si­cal­hol­ly­wood film. It’s an incred­i­ble lit­tle pic, with the same excite­ment and energy of the rough-and-tumble early 1990s, back when peo­ple with a dream and a cam­era could make boffo films. Remember 1994, when we felt the shift in cin­ema? That hap­pened again with this pic­ture, pos­si­bly the finest in the­Coen Brothers’ cat­a­logue. For film geeks by film geeks, it has topped everyone’s list because they took the time and care to actu­ally make going to the movies worth­while again. For those who wait top see this one on DVD, I pity you. I doubt I’ll be able to watch it on a tele­vi­sion, for it looks and sounds (boy oh boy does it sound) so won­der­ful on the big screen.

Ocean’s Thirteen — Steven Soderbergh, the mas­ter of the one-for-me-one-for-them sched­ule of inde­pen­dent film­mak­ing, again went out of his way to prove his worth as one of America’s most gifted film­mak­ers. The Ocean’s series has always been a his­tory les­son in genre, from top to bot­tom. From the dia­logue to the cin­e­matog­ra­phy to the music to the cos­tumes and every­thing in between. It stands out as a reminder that even the 21st cen­tury can be an inter­est­ing time if you let it be. I know there are many out there who give lit­tle cre­dence to Soderbergh’s “Hollywood shit”, but maybe you should recon­sider his “indie shit” and think maybe THIS is the film­maker he deserves to be. The direc­tor also hap­pens to be the biggest pro­po­nent for top-to-bottom dig­i­tal film­mak­ing (that means acqui­si­tion, edit­ing, and pro­jec­tion) in the world, but he is very smart about what should be film and what should be video, and the film in Ocean’s Thirteen is so col­or­ful, so organic, so lovely, you just want to wrap your­self up in it and remem­ber those sim­pler times when there weren’t so many options and peo­ple just made movies. Ya hear that you Panny-toting hip­sters: video is video and film is film, Soderbergh agrees!

Superbad — If you’re going to make me choose only one Apatow pro­duc­tion this year, then I choose the raunchy teen com­edy over the raunchy roman­tic com­edy. Perhaps because our buddy Judd chose to do what he does best and inspire from the side­lines, which (don’t lynch me for this), has almost always pro­duced bet­ter results then when he’s hold­ing the reins. (The excep­tion to this rule being the 2000 episode of “Freaks and Geeks” titled “Dead Dogs and gym Teachers”, one of the finer hours in tele­vi­sion, seri­ously) Where the films he helms are a per­fect fit for DVD sales (part of his suc­cess), this one, directed by sec­ond winder Greg Mottola, stands out for it’s cin­e­matic charm. As is becom­ing amaz­ingly true of all mem­bers of the Apatow cabal, every­one involved here is on the brink of an incred­i­ble film career. Star Michael Cera has made no wrong deci­sions in roles yet and stands out as a fresh young come­dian, while his coun­ter­part, Jonah Hill, has an incred­i­ble mind for what auds want. And of course, the ugly Vancouverite-cum-scripter, Seth Rogen, is scorch­ing his way through Hollywood as writer and star of this year’s two biggest comdies (both Apatow of course). What makes Superbad one of the best of 2007? Besides the boy­ish incredulity and wide swath of hilar­ity it offers in its 2 hours, it made a boat­load of money and stuck atop the box office for a few weeks, which is tough for R-rated films these days. Auds are dying to see films that speak to them, regard­less of rat­ings. So many teen come­dies, and even more action films, pussy out to come in at PG-13 and get the most out of all demo­graph­ics. The proof is in the pud­ding, you can have a 1 com­edy with an R-rating, give us more!

Ratatouille — While he may not be a Tex Avery or Chuck Jones (nor has he tried to be), Brad Bird has stood out as an activist for ani­ma­tion through­out his career. Whatever you do, don’t say car­toons are for kids, or else he’ll give you an ear­ful of ani­mated his­tory. Some say he has led us into another golden age of ani­ma­tion. While I’d say that that’s a bit of overblown ker­fluffery, I will con­cede he is lead­ing an incred­i­ble move­ment that is open­ing up many more doors to ani­mated films. Ratatouille proves again the amount to which he has become fed up with con­ven­tions of the medium and wants to break free of such restric­tions. The result are cam­era that feel as though they are oper­ated by humans, if humans were the size of rats and could tum­ble, fly and con­tort to all kinds of silly sit­u­a­tions. But at it’s heart, it is a great story tak­ing place in a won­der­fully car­toon­ish real­ity. Paris is per­fect for such things, since it is a city that tends to exist in a roman­tic sub-concious moreso than it’s bleak poverty, strike, and riot stricken real­ity. This is why we go to the movies, no? To get away from it all. Well, there’s so much more I can’t even begin to get into it. Also part of the rev­o­lu­tion: remem­ber when ani­mated films used to have a hand­ful of writ­ers and direc­tors, like a few years ago? Well bird has added to the mys­tique the “Writtern & Directed” credit at the end. Perhaps peo­ple will begin real­iz­ing that ani­mated films are real films, finally. (I’m talk­ing to you AMPAS! Repeal the Best Animated Feature award so one ani­mated film can with Best Picture like it deserves.)

Michael Clayton — This is the film that sealed the deal on Clooney for me. This first fea­ture from writer Tony Gilroy is, put sim­ply, phe­nom­e­nal. Some direc­tors pull phe­nom­e­nal per­for­mances out of their actors, and some actors sim­ply go into over­drive for great mate­r­ial. The lat­ter is true here. Watching the film, one can see a beau­ti­ful sym­bio­sis of pre, prod, and post all com­ing together to make a tight and impres­sive film. It had ter­ri­ble mar­ket­ing, so no one knows that it’s a great thriller. Hell, look at the poster and you may think it’s another anti-war polemics les­son. You could, of course, read it like that, but where the film suc­ceeds is in its abil­ity to dodge an agenda. So many writ­ers these days want to get on a soap box and tell you what to think, but Mr. Gilroy got on his box and tried to make a movie. He suc­ceeded with fly­ing col­ors. Of course, his cir­cle of friends on this pro­duc­tion was a rather amaz­ing set: actors George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, cin­e­matog­ra­pher Robert Elswit, and com­poser James Newtoon Howard, among many oth­ers. They all brought their A game in an effort to make a great film, and the mid­dle aged Gilroy is off to a phe­nom­e­nal direct­ing career. There are so many hyphen­ates who I rec­om­mend should pick one, to be a writer or a direc­tor. In my eyes, this combo in Gilroy’s hands is really his great­est strength. Bravo.

The Boss of it All — You can call Lars Von Trier many things, but this year we’re going to have to call him a prankster. Since 2000, with the release of Dancer in the Dark, he has spent most of his time cri­tiquing America’s present and past. His eng­lish work is a rather depress­ing and often inac­ces­si­ble set. There is a heavy dose of vit­riol in these films, which makes for an easy sell over­seas and an even bet­ter one here. No one likes America. Finally he returns home to make a com­edy in his native Denmark. The story is very funny, about a boss who pre­tends there is a higher boss than him at a fail­ing IT com­pany in hopes of avoid­ing con­fronta­tion with his cowork­ers. In an effort to per­pet­u­ate this, he hires an actor to stand in for the pur­chase of the com­pany. This would be funny enough, but Mr. Von Trier chooses to add his own cin­e­matic prank to the mix, a sys­tem he calls Automavision. According to the direc­tor, they shot each scene from a sin­gle angle, a wide shot, and then pumped the footage into this com­puter which would then, ran­domly, edit the film. Sometimes it would crop to a closeup, other times it would add a pan to a scene. He claims he wanted to break free from the con­fines of cam­era place­ment and sim­ply wanted to con­nect with his actors and the scene. The result is a romp. It’s one of those things where dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy can actu­ally offer up some great results. He even shot the thing on film, which is starkly beau­ti­ful, and let the com­puter take over. In any event, it’s great to leave the the­ater and not want to kill your­self after a Von Trier film.

Grindhouse: Death Proof — If you can avoid Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, please do. Now of course, you can buy these films sep­a­rately on DVD. Not so when I watched them in the­aters ear­lier this year. Auds ate up Planet’s accu­rate yet fool­ish take on “grind­house” cin­ema, but were eter­nally bored by Tarantino’s chatty Death Proof. Finally, audi­ences dis­liked a Tarantino film! This can only mean one thing: it’s his best work. To be fair, like Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, odds are Tarantino peaked early on; he may never top Reservoir Dogs. I digress, after spend­ing much of his career as a misog­y­nist, Quentin has given us 8, count ‘em 8, of the strongest, most inter­est­ing female char­ac­ters on screen in some time. Well, not all of them are that inter­est­ing, but still. It’s also his first attempt at shoot­ing his own film, and the result is won­der­ful. The col­ors are muted, the cam­era wan­ders around the won­der­ful dia­logue, and it all leads up to one of the more fun chase and anti-chase scenes of recent mem­ory. Most impres­sive was his abil­ity to pull a per­for­mance out of non-actor Zoe Bell, stunt­woman extror­danaire. She is a woman with an incred­i­ble spirit and beauty to her, and he makes sure you know it. This is the first time she appeared on screen and spoke, play­ing a scripted ver­sion of her­self, and the result is very nice. We see a por­trait of a strong, inde­pen­dent spirit with a fem­i­nine side that will not be destroyed by her testosto-riffic desires. The film also marks, pos­si­bly, the first time Quentin has ever attempted a lin­ear story, though that’s debat­able. just when I was get­ting tired of his one-trick act (a very good trick, by the way) he gives us this gor­geous lit­tle film. Filled also with gore like only he can provide.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End — Gore Verbinski’s short list of films have one majot thing in com­mon: the preva­lence of avant-garde imagery and exper­i­men­tal tech­nique. While he may not be any good at mak­ing orig­i­nal avant-garde work, the fact that he has been able to push these stylings into the main­stream says a lot for his abil­i­ties. I highly rec­om­mend check­ing out 1997’s Mousehunt, the poorly mar­keted children’s film he did that proved to be a starkly beau­ti­ful com­edy for adults (who like chil­drens’ movies). Fast for­ward to the homi­ci­dal video tape in The Ring, and you start to see this fas­ci­na­tion he has with mak­ing the inac­ces­si­ble acces­si­ble. So now, as an estab­lished fran­chise direc­tor since the suc­cess of 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, he raised the bar for what can actu­ally be in a cross-demo block­buster. Of course, I’m talk­ing about the largely dis­cussed, highly crit­i­cised and cel­e­brated dream sequence that begins with Johnny Depp’s nose and ends with sand-crabs pulling a giant ship across sand. Sure, he’s chan­nel­ing the sim­plest bits of Bunuel, but when’s the last time you saw that in a Bruckheimer film? Please don’t write it off, it;‘s one of the films that made 2007 one for the record books. That peo­ple will go in droves to see a movie with such for­mal pro­fi­ciency is no small thing.

Beowulf — This is mak­ing the cut only because of it’s impact on a con­fused indus­try. While audi­ences con­tinue to pour into the cine­plexes, the­atri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion, the most expen­sive part of the biz, finds its rev­enues grossly over­shad­owed by that of DVD sales. So some­thing needs to keep the asses in the seats, and it seems the best offer­ing so far has been Digital 3D. Though the tech­nique is still a bit half-baked, the boffo Beowulf is prov­ing that peo­ple are jazzed to see where this tech­nol­ogy is going. As a result, 100 new IMAX the­aters will be up and run­ning state­side by 2011, and hun­dreds more Digital 3D equipped houses will be open by the time James Cameron’s game-changing Avatar hits screens in 2009 (May 22, got your tix yet?) Hopefully, this will also bring about a mod­ern answer to Hitchcock’s 3D thriller Dial M for Murder. Such tech­nolo­gies needen’t be lim­ited to the block­buster as has hap­pened in the past. In fact, the most suc­cess­ful 3D moments in Beowulf come not from the eye pop­ping swords or run-for-cover arrows, but from the sim­pler things occur­ring in the fore­ground: a sin­hou­et­ted char­ac­ter stum­bling about or the rafters of the great hall from an aer­ial view. As Hitchcock taught us before, it is this play­ful­ness with the Z axis that makes the form so entic­ing. As for Beowulf itself, it holds up rather nicely, and hope­fully a few young nerds may find them­selves redis­cov­er­ing a Middle English classic.

Runners Up:
Hot Fuzz — for allow­ing edit­ing to be comedy’s great­est weapon
Paris Je T’aime — for show­cas­ing the sim­pler side of some of the world’s biggest tal­ent, and mak­ing love to a city
Mr. Bean’s Holiday — for not giv­ing in to American audi­ences, and for Willem Defoe’s great cameo
Spiderman 3 — for a cou­ple of scenes I liked
The Simpsons Movie — for rein­vent­ing America’s favorite fam­ily, and for allow­ing cin­ema to be cin­ema and TV to be TV
Across the Universe — for keep­ing the Beatles fresh and rel­e­vant, which I didn’t know needed to be done
Enchanted — for remind­ing us of Manhattan’s magic, for break­ing down Disney arche­types, and for Amy Adams, oh we love Amy Adams
Knocked Up — for show­ing a dilated vag

Films I Didn’t See But Would Be on the List:
There Will Be Blood — because Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis have to cre­ate won­ders
Margot At The Wedding — because we all want to be Noah Baumbach
Charlie Wilson’s War — because could a Nichols/Sorkin duo actu­ally be bad?
Juno — because Michael Cera can do no wrong

My Least Favorite of 2007:
The Darjeeling Limited — fuck you Wes Anderson, I’m tired of your fas­ci­na­tion with stuff
Year of the Dog — Molly Shannon, you’re funny, roll with it; don’t put me to sleep again
Deathproof: Planet Terror — Rodriguez, you don’t need to try to make a shitty film as a gim­ick, just show up to work as usual
Transformers — go eat some poi­son, Michael Bay, no one cares about you as a direc­tor, just keep mak­ing money