Top 10 of 2007

After speaking with Fuller’s resident film expert (and good friend) Eugene Suen about the best movies of the year and reading his list, I figured to compile my own list. Let me begin by saying, last year was a great year for movies. Of course, I have not been so exposed to such a wide selection of cinema from around the world as I have been in 2007, so that perception may be a little jaded. Additionally, I missed a bunch of movies I wanted to see, but to see them all, I’d probably need to become a film critic, which would likely make me into even more of a recluse. One thing I can say about 2007 is that many of our best filmmakers focused on very dark, even nihilistic, themes. I suppose that says a lot about the state of our world right now.

10. King of Kong

As I was browsing a list of 2007 films to refresh my memory, I came across this title and suddenly a rush of good tymes came rushing back to me. Perhaps the most unintentionally funny movie of all time, featuring a battle royale between a regular schmo who decides to challenge some pompous Donkey Kong champion a**hole for his title. The amazing thing is: you watch this thinking “who cares about a bunch of lame middle-aged white guys playing an 80s arcade game,” and by the end you find yourself strangely touched.

9. Sweeney Todd

I am not a huge musical fan. I think the Sound of Music is great, I enjoyed Hairspray, Chicago and West Side Story, but I can’t think of many others that really resonated with me. Then there was Sweeney Todd. Only Tim Burton could pull this one off: a grim, bloody and passionate musical adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim play. If you want to see impeccable staging, hear some memorable music and leave a musical more unsettled than you’ve ever been before, check this one out.

8. Once

My sister first told me about this little movie, and I later caught it on DVD. A remarkably simple DV feature that proves creativity, authentic characters and boldness make a great movie, not extravagant sums of money, effects and celebrities (for exorbitant, polished garbage like this, look no further than the latest Pirates of the Caribbean). Plus, the tunes in Once will probably be stuck in your head for days, and that’s a good thing.

7. Juno/Superbad

I lumped these two together because they share many commonalities, despite some obvious differences. Aside from being quite funny, they both wind up being surprisingly “adult” movies and genuinely moving, especially Juno. While most high school flicks I’ve seen paint a picture almost totally incongruent with my own experience, Superbad played like a page out of my history book. Director Judd Apatow and screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg give us an accurate and de-mythologized version of adolescence, with all its awkwardness, insecurity and unintentional hilarity. Juno accomplishes much the same feat with less obscenity. Juno unflinchingly presents its characters as awkward and insecure, and makes no apologies or concessions, which I liked.

6. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

With a title that reminds me of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and a style reminiscent of Terrence Malick, I may like this movie more by this mental association with two favorite directors than its own merits. A visually lush, mesmerizing and psychological/psychospiritual/spiritual Western that defies conventions and delves extensively with the nature of distinctively American folklore and the hero myths that characterize much of our narrative history.

5. There Will Be Blood

After I watched this, the latest effort by director Paul Thomas Anderson, I left asking myself, “What on earth have I just seen?” In retrospect, I believe it to be a parable about American capitalism and a tragedy in the same vein as Citizen Kane, a similarity that numerous critics and viewers have drawn. Daniel Day-Lewis gives birth to one of the most complex, rich and involving performances of the year that should garner him an Oscar, that is, if there is any justice left in the world. It’s a movie that keeps unraveling long after you’ve seen it. If it’s any indication what kind of movie this is, it’s bounced all over the place on this list in the course of a couple short days.

4. Ratatouille

Unfortunately, I did not see this one in theaters, which was a mistake. Director Brad Bird has yet to offer audiences other than a superb movie. If somehow you missed The Incredibles, watch it immediately, for you shall love it. Then, after you have become enamored, go rent The Iron Giant. Ratatouille displays the same visual dynamism as the other two, the same warmth, the same deep characters and the same sense of total satisfaction when all is said and done.

3. Into the Wild

Directed by Sean Penn, Into the Wild may be the most sweeping epic of the year, without the accoutrements of a bigger, more expensive studio production. Based on the true story of Christopher McCandless who abandoned civilized life in order to wander the earth on a quest for a more authentic kind of life. I could really resonate with his impulse to drop everything and head for the wilderness, though I have never acted on that impulse with anywhere near the tenacity of this guy. A sweeping road trip film, the movie takes place in dozens of locations, and everything was filmed on location. As a result, Into the Wild feels very real, almost like a documentary. Fresh, invigorating, introspective, strange and passionate.

2. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

I probably don’t need to say much about this one since I just finished writing a blog about it. Suffice to say, it is one daring effort by director Julian Schnabel who crafts a movie about an artist struggling to create. The visual style crafted by Janusz Kaminski will surely spawn its copycats, and surely with less efficacy. A pioneering, emotionally involving, devastatingly beautiful and uplifting movie.

1. No Country for Old Men

The Coen brothers have crafted an intense, penetrating and sobering film that left me haunted for days after I first saw it, and left me affected as much the second time. No Country conjures analogies to the Coens’ 1996 film Fargo (which I consider a masterpiece, too), an ironic, occasionally hilarious and deeply disturbing movie. No Country paints a bleak picture without the humor. I labeled it a lament, or to be more specific, a lament for the vicious cycles into which humanity keeps falling. The film leaves me pondering what my country will look like when I am old, and strikes me with the determination interrupt the destructive circle before our children inherit a bleaker, more difficult and violent culture than the one we now know. Add to this a spectacular, unflinching performance by Javier Bardem that makes him one of cinema’s greatest villains of all time, and you’ve got one memorable movie.

Honorable Mentions - Here’s a few titles I either couldn’t figure how to place or failed to recognize their greatness.

• Silent Light (Stellet licht) – Carlos Reygadas

A slow-burning, meditative, earthy picture of Mennonite life. Not for the impatient filmgoer, however.

• Flight of the Red Balloon (Le voyage du ballon rouge) – Hsiao-hsien Hou

Juliette Binoche is great (as always) in this film that lingers on the ordinary and urges us to perceive the transcendent. Again, if you think a movie like Letters from Iwo Jima is too slow with too many subtitles, then Red Balloon probably isn’t for you… but you should see it anyways, just for that reason.

• Eastern Promises – David Cronenberg
  

Once again, Cronenberg subverts our expectations and plays violence like it should be: grotesque, unsettling and downright frightening.

• Zodiac – David Fincher
  

On of the least violent, most cerebral serial killer movies you will ever see.