Best Films of 2007

One of the reasons that I decided to do Best of 2007 lists in the first place this year, is because I saw some idiot bloggers talking about what a weak year 2007 had been for films. Are you freaking kidding me?! I had more five star films this year then maybe ever before. 2007 was a FANTASTIC year for film, and here’s why…

Spoiler Alerts, read with caution.

10. Sunshine

Some people really disliked this movie, and of the people I know who liked it, they didn’t love it. I apparently stand a bit alone on this, because I loved it. It was a film that really stayed with me (you can read a more detailed review here). The more I thought about this film afterwards, the more I found redeeming in it. It was not a perfect film, and there were some definite problems, most especially the fact that it devolves into a bit of a horror/monster movie towards the end and I did not feel that was the best choice considering what had been set up throughout, but Danny Boyle and Alex Garland like to go in unusual directions (28 Days Later anyone?) and far be it from me to second guess them. There was enough here sans the ending to keep me happy and interested. This is a brilliant script and wonderful layered performances, despite a fairly large cast.

Best of all, my favorite elements were all lined up, man v. man, man v. nature, man v. himself, and for it to also be so stunningly shot and with all the beautiful and horrible juxtapositions of the closeness of a space ship v. the vastness of space, and the intolerable heat of the sun v. the intolerable coldness of space…just brilliant.

09. King Of Kong: Fistful Of Quarters

I should watch more documentaries. I always love them, and yet I have only one on my top 10 list, why is that you ask? Why, dear readers it’s because I only saw two 2007 documentaries! Shame on me. I’m going to make a serious effort to see more. If even half of them are as entertaining, engaging, and wonderful as King Of Kong then I will have done myself a huge favor. This was just a great underdog story, Steve Weibe is incredibly likable, so much so that even his opponent’s “disciples” end up having only good things to say about him.

You would think a movie about watching supernerds (yes, I said it) playing video games would be incredibly dull, but Seth Gordon crafted an incredibly engaging and often intense film out of such technically dull material. Kong would have ranked even higher I think if I hadn’t read about some controversy about the film and some chatter about the accuracy. With a documentary you always hope you are getting as much truth and as little filter and “tricky editing” as possible, and it sounds like maybe that is a bit debatable here, but I suspect it’s still mostly accurate. Steve Weibe is a real life good guy, and you all know how much I love good guys.

08. Away From Her

I cried like a baby in this movie. IN THE THEATER. I think the last time I cried at a movie in the theater was roughly ten years ago. Now, that may say more about me and things I have been going through then anything specific about the movie, but it shook me to my core. Sarah Polley pulled off an amazing feat in her directorial debut, and not only directing, but she also wrote the beautiful script that is adapted from the short story The Bear Came Over The Mountain by Alice Munroe (a genius in her own right). This is heartbreaking subject material, I mean dealing with Alzheimers is kind of like dealing with concentration camps, it’s just not too hard to make it pull at your heart strings. However, there is pulling at your heart strings in a hallmark hall of fame-lifetime movie of the week way, in which all the cliches are accounted for and you roll your eyes as the over the top drama unfolds in ridiculous ways, and then there is Away From Her, which is beautiful and slow and so very real and honest and hurtful all at the same time that you cannot help but be moved, for me, to tears.

To my mind Polley has perfectly captured what it must be like to have lived a life with someone you love, not a perfect life, because no life is perfect, but to have survived that life together, to have made it to the finish line, arm in arm, only to be forced to watch it crumble at your feet. It’s just too horrible, to be either Fiona (Julie Christie) or Grant (Gordon Pinsent), but you end up wishing to be Fiona because although what she is going through is terrible, at some point she no longer really knows what she has lost. There are moments when you can see that she maybe knows and it is almost as if she chooses to keep forgetting, because remembering would just be too much pain. But to be Grant , to watch everything you had fall away from you, and to remember it all, but to be left with only memories as she moves away from you, onto her fresh clean slate of life, with you left with only the shadow…oh it’s just horribly painful. A brilliant film.

I have my eye on Polley. How someone so young knew how to do this I’ll never know. I hope she’s got more in there. In some ways it is unfortunate that Away From Her was released this year, as it should have been up for more awards in a more normal, less mind blowingly fantastic year.

07. The Savages

Let’s start with – Best Movie Poster Of All Time!!!! Go Chris Ware. Cartoonists are slowly taking over the world and it is AWESOME. I loved this film. Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman are easily two of the best actors working in Hollywood today, and when handed a brilliant subtle script that perfectly fleshes out brother Joe Savage and sister Wendy Savage so beautifully in so few words, it’s just wonderful. This was certainly not an uplifting movie (interestingly enough few on my list this year are) and it turned out to be more about the sad strained relationship between Wendy and Joe and less about their estranged relationship with their father Lenny (Philip Bosco), but really all the characters (and actors) are given equal opportunity to reveal themselves, like peeling a piece of fruit, bit by bit you came to understand what they were, and how they became that way. In the simple action of father Lenny turning down his hearing aid so he doesn’t have to hear his children bickering about his future; Wendy Savage blithely lying to Joe about a winning a coveted grant; and Joe’s inability to commit to his long time girlfriend in order for her to stay in the country once her visa’s expired, all these little motions in The Savage family speak volumes about what has gone wrong (and right) with them. It’s wonderful and sad.

The Savages is only Tamara Jenkins second full length feature film (she has a few shorts out there which I have not seen). I was not a big fan of The Slums of Beverly Hills, her 1998 film, though I remember liking the concept and thinking there were some good ideas there. It is clear to me in watching The Savages that she has honed her skills and her focus. This movie is far superior and signals a potentially amazing career ahead of her as a writer and director. The Savages feels to me like it could have been Noah Baumbach’s follow up to The Squid And The Whale, one of my favorite films of all time. Margot At The Wedding, Baumbach’s actual follow up this year was good, and it was close, but The Savages feels more real, more like what I was looking for from him…interesting.

06. Michael Clayton

Ah George Clooney, how you captivate me. I saw this movie pretty much based on George Clooney power alone. I wasn’t really sure what the film was about with those clever but unclear posters, and while I’d heard good things, nothing was too specific. A great supporting cast (Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack) doesn’t hurt, but I won’t kid you, I was there for Clooney. I’m a fan. He really nailed this one too, although I shouldn’t be surprised, with the exception of the Ocean’s 11 stuff – which is not bad – just not great – his last couple performances have been nothing short of amazing – Syriana? Good Night & Good Luck? – awesome.

Tony Gilroy’s excellent, sparse, tight script, and realistic subtle direction really worked for me. So many times when we’re dealing with subject matter this intense and unreal (people being killed quietly in the night, cars blown up, millions of dollars changing hands) the script, direction, etc. all goes over the top as well until the whole thing is so unbelievable that I’m bored. Not so here, Gilroy keeps us quite fixed in the very real world that we all live in, where unbelievable and horrible things can and do happen, and are even more horrible for being so out of context with going to the store to get milk, or answering the front door. Keeping Clooney’s Michael so very grounded was a great way to keep us as the viewer grounded as well, as everything surged and changed around him. There are some truly beautiful scenes – the scene with Michael and the horses in the early morning mist – before his car blows up – stands out as a particularly haunting and powerful moment, but mostly the cinematography is willing to take a backseat to the complicated and riveting drama that unfolds on the screen.

05. Zodiac

Man did I LOVE this film. The attention to detail in crafting a period piece from the 1970’s was just out of control, it’s so subtle so that it doesn’t draw your focus, but the accuracy is just dead on. David Fincher is such a master when it comes to the details, second only for me maybe to Wes Anderson. Here he has crafted such an engaging drama, and considering the fact that the ending to this movie is horribly unsatisfying for the masses, e.g. it’s based on a true crime story, and the crime has never been solved, thus the film cannot solve it for movie goers, but he still manages to make it imminently satisfying, if only because of the richness of the characters and performances and spot on script. Fincher doesn’t always hit for me, I found Panic Room lacking (although still superior to a lot of thrillers), but when he hits, like with Fight Club, Se7en, Zodiac, and even The Game he hits it out of the park.

I feel this film really got lost in a year of amazing films, maybe just because of it’s early release date in 2007, which is unfortunate because it really is among the top films of the year, complete with some of my favorite performances by Jake Gyllenhall, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr., as the standouts among an incredible supporting cast including Chloe Sevigny, Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, Donal Logue, Dermot Mulroney, Clea Duvall, James LeGros, and Elias Koteas. Gyllenhall’s Robert Graysmith has become one of my all time favorite good guys, I just love the innocent boyscout nature that Gyllenhall brings to the role.

04. The Wind That Shakes The Barley

Another crying movie for me (fortunately not in the theater this time). You’d have to be made of stone I think to not be moved by this tale of Ireland in the early twentieth century. Cillian Murphy steals the film as Damian, the quiet intelligent brother of guerilla ringleader Teddy (Padriac Delaney). Damian does not want to get involved with the war between Ireland and Britain, and is literally on his way to London to continue his medical career when he is dragged back into the war with the unjust brutalities of the Black & Tan’s – a hired British army – that behaves as I suspect many hired armies do – as bullies given guns and power – and no supervision. Damian returns to his family and to the guerilla fighting beside his brother Teddy, united in their efforts to free Ireland from Britain’s evil grasp. Ken Loach moves this film so fluidly from the first scene of boys at play to boys at war, that you are absolutely swept up into the same tide they find themselves in.

For Damian and Teddy fighting for the guerilla resistance is particularly gruesome, because when Ireland and Britain finally sign a treaty, it divides Ireland even further, between those who wanted peace and think the treaty is a good start and those that feel it is giving up on all that they have been fighting and dying for, and that any treaty that requires them to swear allegiance to an out of country king is no good. Loach presents an honest and faithful look at both sides, and as a viewer you are as torn as these brothers are. As a viewer, I found myself siding more with Damian and his brother in arms Dan, more than Teddy, as Damian and Dan were both powerful logical rational speakers, who really believed in what they were saying and were unwilling to accept the conditions of the treaty, while Teddy comes off as slightly less intelligent and more wild, and more corrupted – however slightly. But perhaps since Cillian is the star and Damian the main character it was designed that I should feel that way regardless of their characters, but my siding for Damian in no way made the showdown between sides, and more importantly between brothers any easier to bear. The ending is nothing if not absolutely heartbreaking, as any war between brothers is bound to be.

03. There Will Be Blood

Je-Zus. This movie was freaking incredible. Let’s first start out with what a rip-off it is that Johnny Greenwood’s score is being denied Oscar contention due to yet more of Oscar’s piddling little rules and regulations. I cannot EVER remember being more moved by a score than I was by the score in There Will Be Blood. The score was absolutely one of the characters of the film – one of the best characters in fact, and it deserves the recognition. The cinematography in Blood is absolutely stunning, it captures these vast epic landscapes perfectly. The script by Paul Thomas Anderson, loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s Oil!, is wonderfully understated, allowing all the characters – from actors, to scenery, to brilliant scores, to claim their place on the screen – coming together as a beautiful symphony. Paul Thomas Anderson is the maestro of maestros here, allowing the elements that he has assembled to blend together perfectly into an absolutely brilliant film. The best thing about this film (closely followed by the score, and cinematography, and direction, okay and everything) is the singular performance of Daniel Day Lewis. Lewis absolutely chews up all the scenery and everything around him and spits it out only when he is good and ready. This is one of the most iconic, layered characters ever put on film, and Lewis is pitch perfect in exposing us to his Daniel Plainview – it is maybe the most perfect and riveting performance I have ever seen. So with all this raving, why is this film not #1…or even #2? Two reasons.

#1. Because Lewis is SO wonderful, some of the other performances, though excellent, take a backseat. Nobody can hold the screen with Lewis, and though I think highly of Paul Dano’s Eli Sunday, I think he was a bit of a miscast. He’s good, but he cannot hold the screen with Lewis (maybe nobody could have?) and as such a certain element is lost. I never believe there is a chance Daniel will lose to Eli, because Dano cannot create a strong enough opponent.

#2. The Poster. It’s a great poster, but I didn’t read it until after I saw the film, and I don’t feel it reflects what I saw in the film. The poster (one of them – there are two) says, “When Ambition Meets Faith” and while that is an element in the film, it was not the supreme element in the film to me, not by miles. And if it was supposed to be, then Faith loses by miles, as Daniel Plainview chewed it up and spit it out with all the rest, so I feel conflicted about the poster in relation to the film, and viewed after the fact it really threw me about the film and about Anderson’s intentions.
02. No Country For Old Men

I ask you, how did Josh Brolin get screwed out of an Oscar nomination this year? I have been waiting since his lovely crush inducing performance in a little film called Goonies (you may have heard of it – circa 1985?) for the rest of the world to recognize Josh Brolin as the super talent he is. Now here we are, in a brilliant film like No Country For Old Men, with an equally brilliant performance and he’s still getting screwed! He’s had a few good performances over the years (Flirting With Disaster, Nightwatch, and Melinda & Melinda) but has been mostly stuck in stuff not worthy of him (Hollow Man, Into The Blue – ick!), but here he is in all his brilliance, and still he is denied! Don’t get me wrong, Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigur is a worthy nominee, but just because he got to play the “crazy villain” with the “crazy hair” and the “crazy killing method” doesn’t make Brolin any less worthy. Brolin carried this brilliant movie in my opinion. I suppose Tommy Lee Jones, also wonderful here as Ed Tom Bell, was supposed to be the rock in Country, but for my money it was Brolin’s Llewelyn that carried us through. He got the best line of the year (yes, even over Blood’s milkshake line in my opinion) “What’s this guy supposed to be the ultimate badass?” and the best mustache (ever), and he was the smartest quietest best dumb schmuck that got lucky in years. He was a wonder to watch.

This is also the Coen’s best work in years, maybe their best work ever, I’m going to have to let Country sit for a year or two to see if it can actually beat The Big Lebowski, but it’s definitely in the running. It is certainly their most beautiful and important work in the last nine years and I can’t wait to see what they’re going to do next. This film barely edges out There Will Be Blood, it’s practically a photo finish here, but in the end I gave the edge to Country, maybe because it seemed just a little smarter, like I’d find a million new things each time I watched it, instead of just finding new things in the landscape and Lewis’ performance in Blood.

01. 4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile… (4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days…)

I think this film beats out There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men for me simply because I’m a woman. There are precious few women in either Blood or Country, actually are there any significant women in Blood…not really, and while Kelly MacDonald’s Carla Jean Moss is wonderful in Country, she’s only a minor supporting character, and she and her mother are the WOMEN who are stupid enough to get my beloved Llewelyn ‘caught’, so those two films, brilliant as they are, don’t really speak volumes to me as a woman, but I can’t think of a recent film that spoke more honestly to me as a woman than 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days…I cannot think of one single flaw in this film.

The script, cinematography, direction, and performances are all absolutely brutally honest. Set in 1987 Romania, the story follows Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) as she attempts to help her friend Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) obtain an illegal abortion with the “help” of Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). The title is derived from the idea that after a certain point in a pregnancy an abortion becomes a murder charge, and Gabita’s pregancy length is very much in question. I thought about this film for days after seeing it, and I realized when I was thinking about it that I was thinking about so many things. I was thinking about the questions it raised for me and the emotions that engulfed me, I was thinking about how expertly handled the scenes were, so that I was just in it with Otilia, we were stuck there together in 1987 Romania and it was truly horrifying. A scene in which Otilia is walking around in the dark, avoiding the police, and looking for a place to hide the remains, was so intense that I had to contain myself not to cry out in the theater. Cristian Mungiu is the director and I am not familiar with any of his other work, but I will definitely be seeking it out, as a film like this cannot be just a fluke of talent. There’s gold there.

This film (like my beloved Josh Brolin) was obscenely ignored for the Oscars, for apparently no good reason (no obscure rules or regulations), and until I (or Adam of course) am nominated for an Oscar I think I’m just not going to pay attention to them anymore. It appears to be one big popularity contest, just like everything else in the world. *SIGH* Okay, bitterness aside, I recommend this film to anyone that likes to be challenged, to anyone that likes to see beautiful intense moving films, to anyone that wants to be forever changed, and to any woman that thinks she can handle it.

Honorable Mentions: Margot At The Wedding, Knocked Up, The Darjeeling Limited, and Killer Of Sheep

Should’a seen, could’a been a contenders: Eastern Promises and I’m Not There.

Worst Film of 2007: I do a pretty good job these days of not seeing bad films in theaters, since I’m not paid to see (or write) about them. But I’m going to go, based on other reviews, and my hatred of Lindsay Lohan, with I Know Who Killed Me, although technically, Bratz has got to be even worse, right?