The Screengrab : 2007 in review

Top 10 of 2007: Final Tally

Paul Clark — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Now that you've seen everyone's individual list, here's The Screengrab's list of the top 10 films of 2007:

1. No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen)
2. Zodiac (David Fincher)
3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
4. I'm Not There (Todd Haynes)
5. Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck)
6. Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
7. The Host (Bong Joon-ho)
8. Knocked Up (Judd Apatow)
9. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sidney Lumet)
10. The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnarsmarck)

Links to individual lists:

Paul Clark

Phil Nugent

Leonard Pierce

Scott Von Doviak

Bryan Whitefield

Top Ten of 2007: Phil Nugent

Phil Nugent — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

1. There Will Be Blood, directed and written by Paul Thomas Anderson

A triumph of personal filmmaking, epic scale division, and an excellent argument that anyone who nominates anyone whose initials aren't D.D.-L. for the title of greatest living movie actor is a fool.

2. Killer of Sheep, directed and written by Charles Burnett

A triumph of personal filmmaking, garage-inventor division, and worth the thirty years' wait.

3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, directed by Julian Schnabel, written by Ronald Harwood, from the book by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Set almost entirely behind the eyes of a paralyzed stroke victim, it is in just about every way the most adventurous movie in recent memory, Schnabel’s visual imagination, which is kinetic yet lyrical and charged with feeling, has somehow enabled him to make a movie that is a celebration of the pleasures (and a lament for the lost possibilities) of a life cut short that never feels bathetic.

4. The Host, directed by Bong Joon-ho, written by Baek Chul-hyun and Bong Joon-ho

Big rubber monsters and real blood. In his previous film, the police procedural Memories of Murder, Bong demonstrated a special talent for treating genre conventions with satirical irony in a way that only heightened the story’s emotional impact. With its rude shocks, horse laughs, family of unlikely heroes and absolute lack of faith in the official protectors of society, his twist on the rampaging-mutant horror movie may be more fun than anything else seen this year.

5. Once, directed and written by John Carney

This small love story — Before Sunrise as a Dublin-set pop musical — is also the suspense film of the year: the first time you watch it, a part of you is on the edge of your seat, waiting for the inevitable wrong step that never comes. As perfect and buoyant as a soap bubble glistening in the sunlight.

6. Away from Her, directed and written by Sarah Polley, from a story by Alice Munro

As an actress, Polley has had the hint of something wise-beyond-her-time going on behind those heavy lids since before she was ten. Her directoral debut, about a marriage of some forty years’ duration that’s finally torn asunder by the wife’s struggle with Alzheimer’s, is an uncommonly mature romantic drama, and in many ways an uncommonly hard, clear-eyed one. Julie Christie’s mere presence as the unreadable, coquettish old woman lends the movie some star power, but Gordon Pinsent and Olympia Dukakis give risk-taking performances that keep the film raw and alive.

7. Ratatouille, directed by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava, written by Brad Bird.

An exhilarating triumph of sheer craft from the director of The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, and a major return to form for Pixar after the sugared gas tank of Cars.

8. Control, directed by Anton Corbijn, written by Matt Greenhalgh and Deborah Curtis

An uncommonly solid, beautiful-looking rock-star biopic, with relative newcomer Sam Riley giving a bracingly unsentimental yet thoroughly winning performance as Ian Curtis of Joy Division. (In one of his few previous movie roles, Riley turned up briefly in 24 Hour Party People, playing Mark E. Smith of the Fall.) With its black and white cinematography (by Martin Ruhe and John Watson), its confident grasp of the period and its milieu, and its surprising bursts of humor, this is one of the rare films that threaten to give music video directors-turned-moviemakers a good name.

9. Knocked Up, directed and written by Judd Apatow

There are nits you could pick, but here’s what makes them all seem ridiculous: more quotable, genuinely funny lines and inspired, perfectly shaped jokes per square inch than in any movie since the last time somebody produced a script by — hell, I don’t know, John Guare, maybe? Alan Bennett? Ben Hecht!?

10. Year of the Dog, directed and written by Mike White

This is the first time that White has directed one of his own screenplays, and the results are confident and exciting enough in their strangeness to make one suspect that some of the earlier movies he wrote seemed shifty and half-baked because the directors weren’t as eager to turn convention on its head as White meant for them to. Molly Shannon is amazing as the frustrated, lonely spinster-in-the-making whose attempt to change her life is dotted with missteps and false starts but ends in triumph — triumph for her, at least, whether her friends (or the audience) can see it that way or not.

Top Ten of 2007: Paul Clark

Paul Clark — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Note: Like Leonard, I don’t live in one of what Hollywood would consider a major cinematic market, so I have yet to see some of the year’s best-reviewed films, such as There Will Be Blood and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But I think it’s better to post this now rather than waiting until I’ve seen all the major movies, which for all I know won’t happen for months.

10. The Hunting Party

It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again- 2007 was a damn fine year to be a movie lover. Because of this, there were probably a dozen films competing for the final spot on this list, but in the end I had to go with a sentimental favorite, one that deserves much more love than it’s gotten so far. Richard Shepard's darkly comic tale of three journalists (Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Jesse Eisenberg) searching for a Bosnian warlord succeeds not so much because of its story as for its salty, unironic portrait of male friendship. As in Shepard’s last film The Matador, The Hunting Party is a story about men drawn to violence who booze and bond in outposts far off the beaten path. At a time when Brokeback Mountain is still a punchline, it takes real chutzpah to write a scene in which one man tells another, “that’s why I love you,” without going for a laugh.

9. Time

Korea’s prolific and controversial director Kim Ki-duk has become something of a whipping boy for the cinematic cognoscenti, but there’s no denying that the guy’s got skills. Time, his best film to date, appears on the surface to be a response to Korea’s plastic-surgery craze, but at its heart it’s a story of amour fou, like Seconds played for tragedy rather than thrills. In Kim’s hands, plastic surgery becomes a metaphor for how self-conscious we’ve become, so insecure in our skin that we’re no longer able to simply give ourselves over to others, not even those we love. Also, Kim’s gift for astonishing imagery is as keen as ever, especially in his use of a seaside sculpture park.

8. I’m Not There

The premise- six actors playing six different versions of Bob Dylan- sounds like an academic exercise only a semiotics major could love. But each onscreen Dylan is only a pawn in the game of director Todd Haynes, a piece of the puzzle that has become the Dylan mythos. With his ingenious structure, Haynes highlights the contradictions, tall tales, and outright fabrications of Dylan’s legend, revealing him to be less a self-conscious chameleon reinventing his image for the public as a lifelong searcher who cared little whether we wanted to follow. The wonder is that I'm Not There is so much fun- sometimes electrifying, sometimes goofy, but always fascinating.

7. Offside

The idea that Iranian women aren’t allowed to attend soccer games would seem to be the setup for a dour polemic, but director Jafar Panahi has other plans for their story. In Panahi’s eyes, the law isn’t so much an injustice as a colossal pain for all involved, and by highlighting the absurdity of the situation, Offside becomes the stuff of high comedy. And a rousing crowd-pleaser to boot- Panahi shot much of the film in the bowels of the stadium during an actual World Cup qualifying match, and even at a distance from the field, the energy is palpable. In the end, football is a uniter, not a divider, and once the detained women escape their captors to mingle with their celebrating countrymen, they’re able to share in the victory that their laws had tried to deny them.

6. Joshua

In a year that saw Rob Zombie’s Michael-heavy remake of Halloween, one might be excused for wondering what an evil-kid thriller was doing on my list. But George Ratliff’s Joshua is another breed altogether- a genre movie in the abstract, but a particularly chilly and thematically-rich one. Moreover, Joshua is very much an of-the-moment bad seed, not some pint-sized supernatural boogeyman but the product of ineffectual and indulgent parenting. Jacob Kogan is creepy in the title role, but the real revelation is Sam Rockwell, giving the performance of the year as his father, a man whose parenting skills are limited at best, and who is ill-equipped to deal with a son whose behavior goes so sharply against his own. When he finally realizes what he’s up against it’s too late to stop it, and thanks to Ratliff and Rockwell, this realization hits with the power of a gut punch.

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

In Assassination, director Andrew Dominik plays a tricky game- to make a Western that doesn’t so much de-mythologize the genre as re-mythologize it by making explicit the undercurrent of mythmaking that was always a part of the West. It could have been a disaster, but somehow it works beautifully, thanks not only to the beauty of the filmmaker but also the performances. Brad Pitt is fine as a Jesse James who is all too mindful of the larger-than-life figure he cut in the West, but the film belongs to Casey Affleck as Ford, the youngster whose boyish hero worship festered into violent obsession. Ford was foolish enough to believe that he could create his own legend, but all he did was to be swallowed up by Jesse’s, and because of Affleck’s performance this reviled figure becomes downright tragic.

4. The Host

The best giant monster to attack theatres this past year didn’t stomp Tokyo, but Seoul, in the superior Korean creature feature The Host. With a flair for showmanship and populist storytelling that nearly equal those of Spielberg in his Jaws days, director Bong Joon-ho has made a monster movie to stand alongside the greats in the genre. Part of the credit should go to the effects wizard who created the disgusting yet somehow lovable monster, but I dare say the movie wouldn’t work so well if not for the endearingly flawed family at the movie’s center. Even on a list this full of darkness and despair, there’s always a place for pure, unadulterated entertainment, and The Host gave me more sheer moviegoing pleasure than any film of 2007.

3. Gone Baby Gone

Most of the praise for Gone Baby Gone has centered on the film’s performances- especially the much-feted Amy Ryan- and the surprising amount of thematic resonance to be found in the film. But I think director Ben Affleck deserves a great deal more credit for how powerful this film is than he’s been getting. Most obviously, Affleck has a real feel for his setting- a working-class South Boston neighborhood- and the people who inhabit it. But while this location seems at first like backdrop to a mystery involving a kidnapped child, it eventually takes center stage in the story, which turns into an breathlessly compelling study in the consequences of tribalism. “Guys take pride in where they’re from, like it was something they did,” states protagonist Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck- again!) in the film’s opening voiceover. The tragedy is that Kenzie- thinks himself above it all- buys into this idea as much as anybody.

2. No Country for Old Men

For most of its running time, No Country for Old Men works primarily as an uncommonly exciting chase thriller, in which the overmatched Lewellyn Moss struggles to stay ahead of stone-cold killer Chigurh (Javier Bardem). But while first two acts of the film are enough to mark it as the Coen brothers’ best work in years, it’s the final act, which avoids the expected confrontation between Chigurh and Lewellyn in favor of something more philosophical, that the film to another level of greatness altogether. An observer for most of the story, Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) suddenly comes face to face with the idea that even if you run from the evil that you fear may be hiding behind one door, there’s no guarantee that it won’t be waiting for you behind another. “You can’t stop what’s coming,” indeed.

1. Zodiac

From the beginning, David Fincher’s evocation of the still-unsolved case of the Zodiac killer has been something of an anomaly. It’s a serial-killer movie that practically never goes for cheap thrills, and a three-hour fact-based period piece that’s almost bereft of epic sweep. In short, it’s tough to put my finger on what exactly makes Zodiac such a masterpiece. For me, the most awe-inspiring aspect of the film is its near-obsessive attention to detail, one that’s downright fanatical even by the standards of the true-crime genre. But using the thousands of tiny clues and incidental pieces of business that surrounded the Zodiac case, Fincher immerses us fully in the world of the case, one in which the crime-solving technology and interdepartmental procedures of the day were always several steps behind the schemes of the killer.

Also worth mentioning: Everything Will Be OK (sorry, no trailer)

When I was making this list, I decided to restrict myself to feature-length films. However, taking into account all new movies I saw this past year, none hit me quite as hard as Don Hertzfeldt’s thrilling new animated short, Everything Will Be OK. In little more than fifteen minutes, Hertzfeldt tells the story of a man who is doomed to die. His doctors give up on him, his mother moves in to help, and the man himself goes off the deep end. And then, without warning, he suddenly gets better, much to everyone's annoyance. Everything Will Be OK has the feel of an especially good Raymond Carver story, both in its sense of irony and its reliance on small but significant detail, but the twisted sense of humor and unique animation style is all Hertzfeldt. Call it number zero in my top 10.

Non-Stories Of The Year

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:30:00 GMT

With every entertainment section, film magazine, and industry website racing to fill up their top tens and year-in-review articles, Variety takes a somewhat different and altogether refreshing tack: Timothy Gray and a number of staffers combine resources and give us an equally informative recap of what didn't happen in 2007. Among the more important non-stories of the year: familiar movie franchises that were expected to bomb over the summer didn't; the Writer's Guild of America defied industry expectations that they would wait until after the holidays to strike; a number of predicted mergers and acquisitions (including GE divesting its entertainment division, Time Warner spinning off America OnLine, and the proposed sale of Yahoo!) didn't take place; and the high-definition DVD war never reached a satisfactory conclusion and looks to drag on for at least another year. One Variety non-story -- the delay in releasing Grand Theft Auto IV -- seems like a bit of a stretch; while the game was expected to drop this year, delays were always possible, and other huge sellers like Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and Rock Band more than compensated for the lost holiday revenue the latest GTA iteration was supposed to produce, and all in all, 2007 was the most profitable year for the video game industry in history, with over $10 billion in profits (outperforming movie industry growth by a staggering 44%). Which, we suppose, makes it a non-non-story.

Top 10 of 2007: Scott Von Doviak

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:30:00 GMT

People say I’m a weenie for thinking this, but I feel these year-end top ten lists should be handled like the Hall of Fame: there should be a five-year waiting period in order to avoid any embarrassing blunders. Believe me, I have a record of top tens dating back to 1999 preserved forever on the Internet, and never fail to experience twinges of regret, shivers of shame and head-scratching moments of pure bewilderment when I look back at them. I’d feel much better right now if I were compiling my favorites of 2002, but rules are rules, so here are 10 movies I hope I won’t feel terrible about praising when 2012 rolls around:

10. Zodiac

For about three-quarters of its running time, David Fincher’s serial killer procedural is about as engrossing, stylish and smartly assembled as mainstream cinema gets, expertly evoking the 1970s (Mark Ruffalo, in particular, transforms himself into a broody ’70s actor in the De Niro/Pacino mode) and humanizing a story that could have been run-of-the-mill exploitation. It’s penalized a few notches here for running out of gas in the final reels: those scenes between the obsessed investigator and his long-suffering wife were already old and tired in the ’70s.

9. Juno

The first five minutes of Juno are so overloaded with quirkiness, it’s as if director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody are desperate enough to make an immediate impression that they’ll settle for making a bad one. That the movie is able to not only recover but go on to become an affecting (and very funny) story about real people making difficult choices is a tribute to their talent, and especially that of Ellen Page in a star-making performance as the titular pregnant teen.

8. Knocked Up

Why settle for one unplanned pregnancy comedy when 2007 was fertile enough to produce twins? You could quibble about gender politics, but then you’d miss out on some of the year’s biggest laughs courtesy of the ever-expanding Apatow Comedy Empire. (Honorable mention: Superbad. Not so much: Walk Hard.)

7. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Speaking of movies that recover from the opening five minutes, here’s one that treats you to the sight of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s heaving, flabby buttocks obscuring some delightful Marisa Tomei nudity (don’t worry, though – there’s plenty of that later). In what is not so much a comeback as a rejuvenation, octogenarian Sidney Lumet has crafted a twisty tale of familial betrayal enlived by a Hoffman performance so vivid, you can smell the desperation.

6. Breach

Billy Ray makes his own special brand of what one friend of the Screengrab refers to as “guys in suits” movies. Like Ray’s debut Shattered Glass, Breach is a low-key yet subtly gripping thriller about a man whose life of lies crumbles within the institution that has defined him. In this case, that man is contradictory CIA agent Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper, never better), a deeply religious, sexually kinky traitor to his country. No 007-style glamour and action here; the suspense emerges from the mundane but meticulously detailed life of a Cold War spy trying to stay one step ahead of his colleagues.

5. Deep Water

Sure, having too much money and free time sounds like fun, but that way of life is not without its pitfalls. This fascinating, disquieting documentary details a 1968 solo sailboat race around the world, and the amateur sailor, Donald Crowhurst, who pinned his family’s future on the whim of winning it. Pieced together from newsreels, Crowhurst’s original 16mm film and contemporary interviews, what begins as a bracing tale of men against the sea becomes a full-blown descent into madness.

4. Killer of Sheep

I am assured by publicists that Charles Burnett’s 1977 thesis film counts as a 2007 release, so there’s no reason not to include it here. This stark slice of inner city life finds drama in the smallest moments; even the routine purchase of a used motor becomes an exercise in heartbreaking futility. Never stooping to heavy-handed message-making, Sheep packs an emotional wallop in the end.

3. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Don’t wait for the inevitable scripted remake of this simple tale of two men vying for the world’s record high score in Donkey Kong. It won’t begin to capture the wit, drama and humanity of Seth Gordon’s outrageously entertaining documentary. Pitting an ’80s relic coasting on past glories against a regular guy with a history of failures in life, overseen by an indelible gallery of game-geeks and marked with unexpected developments and reversals of fate, it’s the most purely joyful movie experience of the year.

2. No Country for Old Men

For much of the decade Joel and Ethan Coen looked like they were heading down the long road of diminishing returns, but they came all the way back with this transcendent thriller set on the Texas border. The most faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel imaginable, it still couldn’t be anything other than a Coen Brothers movie. The brilliant suspense sequences and Javier Bardem’s chilling turn as a malevolent killer are the obvious attractions, but it’s the final lyrical moments that linger when the lights come up.

1. I’m Not There

Less perfect in every way than No Country, this fractured Bob Dylan biopic is nonetheless my pick for movie of the year. Scrambling the singer-songwriter’s legend and bouncing it off a series of funhouse mirrors, director Todd Haynes delights in the ever-more distorted reflections that result. Six different actors embody various aspects of the Bard, none more memorably than Cate Blanchett, who virtually channels Dylan’s hipster-dandy incarnation. It’s a dazzling mind-fuck for hardcore Dylan fans and perhaps a complete trainwreck for anyone else, but as a biography of an artistic sensibility – warts and all – it can’t be topped.

Top Ten of 2007: Leonard Pierce

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Unlike many of my fellow bloggers here at the Screengrab, who live in urbane, sophisticated metropoli, I make my home in San Antonio, Texas. We have a ratio of approximately one movie theatre for every million people here, and "art house" is just what the locals call a museum. I hear if we play our cards right, we might be getting a one-week screening next year of that movie The Graduate all the cool kids are talking about, but until then, it's pretty much Transformers on nineteen of the twenty-four screens down at Huebner Oaks. So you'll forgive me if my list leans pretty heavily on stuff that's already available on Netflix; at least half the movies on my list were ones that I had to drive an hour up to Austin to even have a chance of seeing before their DVD release, and there's more than a few movies that likely would have a chance of appearing here (I think specifically of There Will Be Blood and Syndromes and a Century) that there was simply no way for me to see before the year was up. Still, I'll be happy to go along with the prevailing wisdom that 2007 was an especially rich year for film; there was plenty to see, even if you had to go out of your way to see it.

#10: THE LIVES OF OTHERS (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, dir.)

Although it was released in 2006, this masterful film from Germany didn't receive an American audience outside of the Telluride Film Festival until February. It was well worth the wait. Far too many movies that pick up Best Foreign Film Oscars are the international doppelgangers of Best Picture winners -- overblown, overpraised, middlebrow 'prestige' pictures lacking in resonance, depth and any particular qualities that will result in their being remembered far down the line. But The Lives of Others -- best thought of as a brilliant reworking of The Conversation against the dreadful backdrop of Soviet East Germany -- deserved every bit of praise heaped on it by critics both here and abroad. It's a stunning, terrifying film, brilliantly illustrating Hannah Arendt's 'banality of evil' in the person of the astonishing Ulrich Mühe.

#9: SWEENEY TODD, THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (Tim Burton, dir.)

One of the few of a year-end spate of high-profile films that I actually got a chance to see, Sweeney Todd is Tim Burton's adaptation of the notoriously blood-soaked and difficult Stephen Sondheim musical. I've never been especially fond of Tim Burton as a director, but the qualities of his filmmaking that usually work against him -- the broad emotional strokes, the barely-held-together plots, the characters as caricatures, and the meticulous set design at the expense of believability -- are turned into such strengths that it's hard to believe no one ever had the idea of having him do a musical before this. The result is certainly the best film he's ever done and likely the best film he'll ever do, an absolutely gorgeous thing to look at, and with some surprisingly fine performances. One of the best musicals I've ever seen.

#8: EASTERN PROMISES (David Cronenberg, dir.)

Conversely, I've long been a staunch defender of David Cronenberg's, even with films like Crash and Spider, which met with widespread revulsion from a lot of my fellow critics. Unfortunately, I found his most celebrated film -- 2005's A History of Violence -- sadly lacking, a formulaic and uninspiring drama that bore so little of his unique imprint as a filmmaker that it could have been directed by almost anyone. If the Russian mob drama Eastern Promises isn't strong enough to stand alongside his greatest works, though, it's at least a return to form and a revisiting of some of the themes -- muddled self-identity, the grace and brutality of violence, and a simultaneous revulsion at and fascination with the human body -- that have made him one of the signature talents of the day. Plus, naked Viggo Mortensen, ladies!

#7: BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD (Sidney Lumet, dir.)

If you'd have told me last year -- hell, if you'd told me twenty years ago -- that one of the best film of 2007 would be by ancient journeyman Sidney Lumet, I'd likely have scoffed. But damned if the old trooper doesn't turn in a remarkably swift and sure-handed job behind the helm here, presenting a neo-noir thriller about a simple caper gone disastrously wrong that wouldn't be entirely out of place in the early 1960s and yet never loses a fresh sense of modernity. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead isn't a groundbreaking piece of cinema art; it's simply an assured, highly professional piece of moviemaking of the sort we rarely see anymore, and which Lumet is eminently qualified to give us. It's further bolstered by a dynamite performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has simply owned 2007 on screen.

#6: LUST, CAUTION (Ang Lee, dir.)

Ang Lee continues to be the most versatile moviemaker in the business with his best work since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; if he is absolute master of no genre, he at least never ceases to amaze with his ability to dive confidently into all genres. Bouyed by astonishing performances so tightly controlled and confidently directed that they seem drawn from lost Wong Kar-Wei footage, Lust, Caution maintains a killing pace throughout and doesn't fail to deliver on its near-constant sense of tension and frustration. The much-discussed sex scenes are indeed intense and scarily erotic, but they also accomplish something that's so rarely done that it's become an industry joke: they're not arbitrary, but essential, not only to the plot, but also to the slow but inexorable revelation of the nature of the characters.

#5: THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (Julian Schnabel, dir.)

I was never fond of Julian Schnabel, the visual artist, and while I thought that his debut film, Basquiat, showed promise, I tended to agree with the New York art critic Robert Hughes, who called it a movie about the worst painter of the 1980s made by the second worst. I'm not sure what Hughes has to say about The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but I think it's an amazing film by a director who's finally come into full posession of the tools of his craft. Schnabel has said that he still considers himself an artist first and a director second, but this visually rewarding, complex and beautiful movie is better than anything he ever put to canvas, and even without the tremendous lead performance by Mathieu Amalric, it would be a film worth watching for its mastery of internal landscapes far richer than Schabel's art ever suggested.

#4: MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES (Jennifer Baichwal, dir.)

In what is widely regarded as a banner year for documentaries, the finest one I saw had nothing to do with the war in Iraq, the peccadilloes of the president, or the politics of personality. Instead, it was a little-seen film about a little-known photographer named Edward Burtynsky. His photographs -- and the like-minded film by Jennifer Baichwal -- document the vastness and power of man-made constructs, and convey the awe and the terror one feels at observing objects, from China's Three Gorges Dam to American junkyards, that are made by the hand of humans but can dwarf or even overwhelm the natural surroundings in which they appear. A slow-paced, deliberate, and provocative film made as a collaboration between two artists who understand each other in an perfectly asynchronous way.

#3: ZODIAC (David Fincher, dir.)

Much has been made of the fact that David Fincher, best known for his visual pyrotechnics, allegedly made his most successful film without them. That's not entirely true; among other scenes, the opening drive-by tracking shot, the first murders, and the construction montage of the San Francisco skyline can stand next to some of the most stylish set-pieces in his other films. But it's undeniable that his best film to date, and one of the best films of the year, is at its best when he simply stands back and lets the audience become spellbound with the absorbing interplay of his characters. A fascinating treatment of the nature of obsession and a subtle treatise on the way we become ensnared in the grotesque and the perverse, Zodiac is revelatory in the way it defies expectations of what a serial-killer drama should be.

#2: BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! (Guy Maddin, dir.)

Guy Maddin has been quietly establishing himself as one of the finest, most idiosyncratic directors in the world for several years now, and Brand Upon the Brain! is both his most autobiographical film to date (the lead character in the film is, well, Guy Maddin, ably and amusingly played by young Sullivan Brown) and his best. There was some fear amongst critics who had a chance to see it in its 'touring edition' -- a live extravaganza featuring on-site music, celebrity voice-overs and sound effects composed right there in the theater -- that the film wouldn't hold up without all the show-stopping theatrical gimmicks, but they needn't have worried: this is the purest distilliation of Maddin's unique sensibilities as a filmmaker: sexual obsession, throwback surrealism, fantastic dreamscapes, and madness as part of the everyday.

#1: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Joel & Ethan Coen, dirs.)

There are plenty of filmmakers who would trade their favorite limb for a track record like Joel and Ethan Coen -- from 1984 to 2001, they didn't make a bad film, and the 9 features they put in the can over those 17 years add up to the most robust corpus by any living American filmmaker you can name. Things started to go awry with Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers; many placed the blame on the fact that, for the first time, the Coens were filming material they didn't write. That's not a problem with No Country for Old Men, a triumphant masterpiece of genre filmmaking based on a minor Cormac McCarthy novel that once again places the brothers (credited, for the first time ever, as co-directors) where they belong: at the very pinnacle of American moviemaking. An astonishing comeback that will be discussed for decades.

The Voice Has Spoken

Phil Nugent — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:30:00 GMT

In what may be, and indeed, had damn well better be, one of the very last outbreaks of opinion regarding the movies of 2007, the seventh annual Village Voice Film Poll (now joined at the hip to the L.A. Weekly) has arrived in port. Topping the list, which is based on the views of 102 voting critics: "Paul Thomas Anderson's wildly ambitious meditation on God, oil, and family values," There Will Be Blood. (The description is from Voice critic and living institution J. Hoberman, whose own person top ten list begins with I'm Not There, to which he devoted umpteen memorable words last November.) Other to picks: Blood star Daniel Day-Lewis, I'm Not There's Cate Blanchett and No Country for Old Men's Javier Bardem for Best Supporting Actress and Actor, Charles Ferguson's documentary No End in Sight, and Sarah Polley's Away from Her for Best Forst Film. The Best Actress nod went to the highly deserving Anamaria Marinca of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a movie which landed in fourth place in the Best Film rankings--not bad at all considering that the movie wasn't actually shown here in 2007 except on the festival circuit. Considering that it opens theatrically here soon--we just saw a trailer for it today, in fact--we're not sure why so many critics agreed that they just couldn't wait until next year to vote for it, but hey.

2007 Wraps

Phil Nugent — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:38:00 GMT

We know that by the time you see this, you'll probably feel that you've just spent a year reading year's-end wrap-up pieces, but we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that one of our favorites has been posted at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. Eighteen essays by writers you should have heard of even I hadn't, ranging from engaging to provocative, laid out in a design that, one commenter at GreenCine Daily notes, "Makes me feel like my site is created with two rocks and a stick." A special shout-out to Adam Balz, who had the taste and decency to single out two performers who had a little screen time in big, highly praised pictures, and whose amazing work threatened to get lost in all acclaim that those movies' stars (deservedly) received: John Carroll Lynch, a veteran character actor extending his range in surprising and scary ways as a front-running serial killer candidate in Zodiac, and Kristen Thomson, a fresh new face as a perfect caregiver in Away from Her, who unexpectedly takes a moment to remind the people onscreen (and the people in the audience) that she does have her own feelings about some of the bullshit she has to listen to from grieving, self-pitying spouses, and then politely resumes giving solace--leaving ripples in the picture that will continue to resonate after we've seen the last of her. I probably would have missed the "Not Coming" feature entirely if GreenCine hadn't linked to it, which may be a sign of how thoroughly I have my head wedged under a rock, but with any luck is really proof of two things, both of which have come to feel more and more true to me over the course of the past year: there are untold riches to be unearthed on the Internet, and GreenCine is the on-line film lover's best friend. Happy New Year, all.

The Movie Moment(s): Notable Moments of 2007, Part 2

Paul Clark — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Seth's secret shame, Superbad

2007 was a great year for dark and despairing cinema, but less so for really good comedy. But if nothing else, it can lay claim to at least one comedy sequence for the ages, even while it's so raunchy it would've made Curly Howard blush. In the scene, Seth (Jonah Hill) confesses to his best friend Evan (Michael Cera) his longstanding compulsion to draw penises. Of course, Evan has a hard time believing it (2007's funniest line in a walk: "Dicks? Like a man dick?") but the wonder of the scene is that Hill plays it completely straight. Seth is clearly ashamed of himself, angered by the trouble it's brought him, and annoyed that no one seems to understand his plight. In addition, screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (note the first names) make the details in the scene so specific that I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't drawn from real life. Which, of course, only makes it that much funnier.

Chase in the rain, We Own the Night

A lot of people would claim that the chase sequence at the end of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof is the year's best action scene, but I'd go to the mat instead for James Gray's We Own the Night. Tarantino's was well-choreographed and nicely sustained to be sure, but it couldn't match the pure visceral impact of Gray's. For one thing, there's real urgency in the scene- Joaquin Phoenix's Bobby has just learned that his former Russian mob associates have not only figured out where he's hiding but are planning to kill his police chief dad, and he's racing through the rain to stop this from happening. In addition, the direction is almost unbearably tense, as Gray shoots the scene entirely from inside Phoenix's car, with brutal violence glimpsed through his windshield as the wiper blades whoosh back and forth. Gray has never been known as an action director, but he shows a gift for it here, which makes me all the more grateful that he's refused to sell his talents short by making a string of mediocre thrillers. Instead, he's done his own thing so far, and although his three films haven't won him a mass audience like Tarantino, he's remained an interesting filmmaker in his own right, and We Own the Night is his best film to date.

Little Anton Ego, Ratatouille

By now most of us expect greatness from Pixar, especially when Brad Bird is directing, but like any truly great filmmaker, Bird is still capable of surprising us with his talent. Nowhere in Ratatouille is this more true than a scene near the end of the film where the dreaded food critic Anton Ego (the inimitable Peter O'Toole) drops in at Gusteau's to review the food prepared by its celebrated new chef, Remy, a rat voiced by Patton Oswalt. Counter to popular logic, Remy serves him the relatively low-class dish ratatouille, the quality of which blindsides Ego so much that he briefly flashes back to the meals of his childhood. The beauty of the moment owes largely to its brevity, as Bird executes the flashback so suddenly and in so few brush strokes that it blindsided me with its simple perfection. Rather than coming off like a cheap Freudian reading of Ego's character, this scene speaks to something more universal, and it's Ratatouille's most vivid illustration of the idea that great food truly belongs to us all.

Trailer Roundup End of Year Special- Best Trailer of 2007

Paul Clark — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 17:00:00 GMT

There Will Be Blood

Given how exacting his direction has become, one could forgive Paul Thomas Anderson for handing responsibilities for cutting his trailers off to someone else. But ever since Magnolia Anderson has opted to assemble his own trailers, and I'm grateful that he has. Magnolia's initial teaser was a marvel of summing up the film perfectly while saying nothing, and Punch Drunk Love's trailer perfectly captured the screw-loose sense of un-pretty comedy at play in the film. Every trailer for There Will Be Blood has been a must-see, but the final version is the true classic of the bunch, emphasizing the film's macabre style and violent emotions. In addition, Anderson wisely recognizes his trump card, the great Daniel Day-Lewis, and he plays him early and often. 2007 has had its share of memorable trailers, but none will quickens the pulse like this one.

The Movie Moment(s): Notable Moments of 2007, Part 1

Paul Clark — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Keeping with the year-end theme of looking back, I've decided to post some brief thoughts on some of my favorite movie moments from 2007. These aren't necessarily my five favorites, nor are they from my five favorite movies of the year. However, they're all treasured cinematic memories from this past year, each for its own reason. I'll be posting two today and three more tomorrow, and I encourage all of you to give a shout out to some of your favorites in the comments section.

"If You Want Me", Once

Once was one of the year's best surprises, a movie that had few of the trappings of the big-budget musical but many of that genres pleasures, plus more than a few of its own. Most critics singled out the getting-to-know-you number "Falling Slowly" as the film's best, but for me the one that really captures the charms of Once was "If You Want Me." The scene is simplicity itself- the film's female lead (played by Marketa Irglova) walking back from the corner store in her pajamas and slippers, while she tries out her freshly-penned lyrics to a backing track given her by male lead Glen Hansard. It'd be a gross oversimplification to say that Once's triumph is due primarily to what it lacks- no elaborate production numbers, no fancy orchestration, and definitely no polished direction or gorgeous cinematography. But I think it's important to remember that director Glen Hansard is the bandmate of Hansard in The Frames, and because of this he was more inclined to trust the music to bear much of the movie's emotional weight, which a more experienced director might not have done. More than any scene in recent memory, this scene boils a musical number down to a character and the song she carries inside her.

Giant tadpole gone berserk, The Host

The creature feature has fallen on hard times lately, with most multiplex audiences preferring their villains in humanoid form. Who could have predicted that the best monster movie to hit American screens in 2007 (sorry, fans of The Mist) would bypass the big chains and take up residence in the arthouse? But The Host is no genteel latte-swilling night at the movies. Director Bong Joon-ho has made a full-blooded throwback to the genre movies of yore, easily the best movie of this kind since Jaws. Few films of 2007 delivered more pure thrills than The Host, beginning in an early showstopper of a scene. With a flair for crowd-pleasing suspense equalling that of a young Spielberg, Bong masterfully shows us a day by the river gone very, very wrong. As more people realize there's something in the water, they begin to gather by the river bank. And then the creature appears in the distance, charging at the people, and all hell breaks loose. The scene is tense as all hell, and a big reason why it works so well is the way Bong shows the creature approaching. The creature itself is a marvel, less a graceful killing machine than a gigantic amphibious St. Bernard. It's an inspired creation- detailed enough to be frightening, but so lovingly rendered to be just as endearing as the classic movie monsters.

Trailer Roundup End of Year Special- Worst Trailer, 2007

Paul Clark — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Alvin and the Chipmunks

There's a special place in Hell reserved for the makers of crappy kids' movies. Just because kids will watch just about anything doesn't give Hollywood license to sell them shoddy goods. It seems nearly impossible to find a big-budget non-Pixar kids' movie these days that doesn't contain self-aware pop-culture jokes and the unholy triumvirate of "family-friendly" gags- poop, flatulence, and "ow, my balls!" But while contenders for the dubious honor of 2007's worst trailer were plentiful, ranging from Cuba Gooding Jr. and the fat white guy who suffers most of the painful gags in Daddy Day Camp to the farting seals of Arctic Tale, the worst of all was almost certainly Alvin and the Chipmunks, a mix of CGI and live-action from the visionary who brought you Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties. What exactly puts this over the top? Is it the oh-so-hip musical stylings of a trio of singing rodents crooning that cutting-edge hit "Funky Town?" The sight of Jason Lee managing, by simply appearing onscreen, to outdo the indignity he suffered making Underdog? The presence of a clearly slumming David Cross? The spectacle of Alvin farting in Lee's face? Actually, I'd say it's none of these things. Instead, I'd argue that what makes this an odious phenomenon is the idea that, now that the studios have pillaged the pop culture touchstones of our youth in the name of nostalgia, they've even more cynically begun adapting material that wasn't even very good to begin with, repackaging it for a new generation of undiscerning kids. It's times like these that make me glad I don't have kids.

Trailer Roundup End of Year Special- Best Fake Trailer

Paul Clark — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

Don't

While it's nice to have the extended cuts of Death Proof and (to a lesser extent) Planet Terror out on DVD, for me the movies don't feel quite right without the trailers that played with them. Every Grindhouse had his favorite of the four trailers, but while Robert Rodriguez's memorably trashy Machete and Eli Roth's sick joke Thanksgiving were both worthy, for me the best of the lot was Edgar Wright's Don't. Not only is it hilarious (love the way he sets up that wonderfully awful last line) but it's probably the only one of the four I could imagine playing at a real grind house. Unlike his fellow Grindhouse trailer directors, Wright plays it almost completely straight, mimicking the atmospheric shots, frenzied editing, and borderline incoherence of 70s advertising campaigns for Eurotrash thrillers like Torso. I somehow doubt that a real-life version of Don't would have been very good, but this trailer would have guaranteed my presence at the theatre opening weekend.

Trailer Roundup End of Year Special- Best Comedy Trailer, 2007

Paul Clark — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Be Kind Rewind

For a time, I was toying with the idea of simply calling this "Funniest Trailer" and giving the award to Superbad, but I've rewatched the Be Kind Rewind trailer so many times that I couldn't bear with the thought of not recognizing it here. The trailer has a distinct 80s-style wacky buddy comedy feel to it, with Jack Black and Mos Def teaming up to shoot low-budget remakes of some of their favorite movies. But I don't think the familiarity of the genre is necessarily a bad thing here, and it could provide a certain amount of grounding for the Michel Gondry flights of fancy, which was sorely lacking in last year's The Science of Sleep. But mostly, this just looks like a lot of fun. Also, ever since the trailer first emerged I've taken advantage of every chance I've gotten to quote Jack Black's priceless line, "I will shoot you, and I know robot karate." So that's something, right?

Trailer Roundup End of Year Special- Coolest Trailer, 2007

Paul Clark — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 20:00:00 GMT

From now through the end of the week, I'll be posting some of the most memorable trailers from 2007.

Iron Man

2008 looks to be a banner year for movies geared toward fans of fantasy and comic books. But while I'm excited for movies like Hellboy 2 and The Dark Knight, no trailer of 2007 had me geeking out more than the spot for next summer's Iron Man. A lot of it has to do with Robert Downey Jr.'s presence in the lead role. It pleases me to no end that he's finally cleaned up his image in Hollywood's eyes, to the point where he can headline a summer blockbuster. But if the trailer is any indication, he's still Downey through and through, which if anything is even more exciting. So yeah, this trailer won me over even before he donned the iron suit. Everything after this was a pure geek delight, with the trailer blaring Black Sabbath right on time to accompany Iron Man doing what he does best. It takes a very special- and very cool- trailer to get me as pumped to see a big-budget action movie as I used to get when I was a kid, but the Iron Man trailer does just that.