THE YEAR IN REVIEW

There are good years for movies, and then there was 2007. Although technically 2006 releases, the turning of the year saw Children of Men, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Lives of Others, and Pan's Labyrinth creeping into theaters partitioning for Academy attention that would was heretofore reserved for the likes of Dreamgirls. Hipness prevailed and the year began with The Departed winning the Academy Award for Best Picture and one for Mr. Martin Scorsese as Best Director; all the aforementioned holdovers from the previous year would be recognized in some form or another, and are unlikely to be obscured in filmic lexicon for some time at least.

The year truly began with the long-anticipated release of David Fincher's Zodiac, a truncated version that managed to retain its power; no amount of studio interference could butcher Fincher's obsessive brilliance, although a stunning weekend box office defeat to the likes of Wild Hogs butchered its chances for financial reciprocity. Likewise, we finally saw Bong Joon-ho's The Host, a thrilling masterwork of Spielberg-ian precision and control, one of the most entertaining and schizophrenic monster movies of our time, as it bounds from convention to convention with satisfying off-kilter ADD. These were enough to hold over through the most profitable and derisive Spring in ages: 300, Blades of Glory, Ghost Rider, Norbit, TMNT, Wild Hogs...who gives a shit?

And who gave a shit this summer? There were three movies to enter wide-release of franchise proportions: Knocked Up, Ratatouille, and Superbad. And they were great! This lineup a few years ago would see me going broke just to check out The Silver Surfer on the big screen. This year? I couldn't bring myself to care about this year's offerings; at some point I will catch up with Live Free or Die Hard, but aside from the nervy 28 Weeks Later and The Bourne Ultimatum (both very good films), I missed the latest entries in the Pirates, Ocean's, Shrek, Fantastic Four, Rush Hour, "Almighty", and Harry Potter "sagas" and have no desire for reunion. I watched Spider-Man and Transformers and felt emotionally distanced enough.

Then came the fall of the Iraq films, the harsh critique of America's involvement that was not to be. As of yet, Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War has not yet been released so it is unknown if it will follow suit with its self-righteous brethren and release to audience indifference. I have seen Charlie Wilson's War, and at best it is entertaining for most of its duration; as a whole, it is incomplete and vacuous, with alarmingly little to say more by nature of studio timidity. The less said about Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah, Gavin Hood's Rendition, and Robert Redford's Lions for Lambs, the better; meanwhile, Brian DePalma's Redacted will not be playing at a studio near you.

There are several films that unforgivably fell through the cracks and will not make my list right now, although they will make their presence known eventually. Films like Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, Adam Shankman's Hairspray, Paul Verhoeven's Black Book, Francis Coppola's Youth Without Youth, Adrienne Shelley's Waitress, Joe Wright's Atonement, Brian DePalma's Redacted, Michael Moore's Sicko, Gregg Araki's [Smiley Face], and Oliver Dahan's La Vie en Rose. All of which will be seen and appreciated some time soon. And I cannot wait for Persepolis.

Also it must be said that I am not going to include Charles Burnett's 1979 landmark Killer of Sheep on my list. Those who do so are right to laud the film as not simply a masterpiece but essential American movie viewing, sadly languishing for so long in distribution limbo. It can now be seen as the beautiful work of urban humanism that it is, one of the long lost links to the dawn of modern American independent cinema and simply a film of beautiful knowing power.

THE BEST FILMS of 2007

1.                    The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik)

I've been editing and re-editing my thoughts on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford not unlike the makers of the film itself for over a year. After two theatrical viewings of this unruly masterpiece of visual and aural power, I'm still not sure the movie's greatness isn't incidental, product of expert chopping; and yet, does that make it any less a feat of tender yearning? Reflection is the key, and Andrew Dominik (and Roger Deakins' cinematography and Nick Cave & Warren Ellis' score) re-imagines Robert Ford as harbinger for the coming century, a modern reflection of distanced media, celebrity worship, and quaking desire; and in Jesse James' autumn, Brad Pitt creates an unknowing reflection of Ford as a legend long since past his prime still clutching onto something that that doesn't exist and maybe never did to begin with. It's the actor's finest hour, and in Casey Affleck the performance of the year as Bob Ford, a wayward soul stuck between the panels of tabloid fiction, his life is as sadly predestined as voice-over narration. It's an unruly prophecy of a film and possibly accidental, but all the more rare.

 

2.                    There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

The best movies of the year (or rather the best American movies) operated on a level of formal major and ideological minor. No where was this more on display as in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, a gloriously sprawling canvas of image, music, performance, and daring, at the heart of which lies the simple conceit that capitalism and greed will dwarf the efforts of the meager and god-fearing. The root of this is underdeveloped; between brothers Paul and Eli Sunday (both played by Paul Dano), there is little attention paid to the metaphorical schism, which rendered the dual performance more stunt and stunted, and the root of Eli's evangelism and thusly the rivalry between Eli and Daniel Plainview afterthought. Paul Thomas Anderson is notable more for balls that brains, and even the title threatens comeuppance. However, for its daring, for its sprawl, for Robert Elswitt's amazing cinematography, and Paul Thomas Anderson's handling of two hours and forty minutes of Americana into the feel of one smooth movement and one crazed epilogue, There Will Be Blood is the kind of filmic nourishment seen very little on these shores.

 

3.                    I'm Not There (dir. Todd Haynes)

To dismiss I'm Not There as "mere" essay is misleading if only because of the joy and fun present in almost every frame, the work of a director fascinated with cinema of "parts" (what are Safe, Velvet Goldmine, and Far From Heaven if not works of dissection) free to jam out with the six different lives of Bob Dylan? The rhetorical answer Todd Haynes provides to I'm Not There is that a man can only resist the labels pressed upon him for so long until he just becomes a question himself. I'm. Not. There. The film itself speeds along from one to another, none more joyous than in Cate Blanchett's segment as Jude, where drunk on black and white cinematography and Fellini-isms, Haynes finds the party of the year; and for Blanchett, this is the performance of a lifetime, channeling Dylan's jester spirit, all-too feminine to begin with, and finds the heart of exhaustion too cool to show the breaks.

 

4.                    No Country for Old Men (dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)

A movie to be wrestled with as one would mortality and faith, but as No Country for Old Men ages in memory and the initial shock of the final's subversive final act seems more permanent and less a product of fleeting observation, I've found an elliptical brilliance in the Coen Brothers' screenplay even though I still find it far too on-the-nose for its own good, at least one scene and story too many. In their direction, No Country for Old Men is a film of mayhem, darkness, and visceral captivation like no movie this year. As a work of literate ellipses, the film begins with a story by Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones' one-man Greek choir) and a narrow escape by Anton Chigurgh (Javier Bardem). The ungainly pull of No Country for Old Men is whether or not, for me at least, it succeeds too much as throttle or contemplation as one threatens to destroy the other, much as Chigurgh relentlessly pursues Llewellyn Moss (underrated Josh Brolin). As a veteran of war and life, it is not the simple theft that condemns the man but the act of charity, and his desperate bid for escape from a psychopath (far too visibly programmed to have not been created), the Coens choose to not show the deaths along the way even more than they do. For what is annihilation if not the off-screen?

 

5.                    Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn)

Simply put, a movie of irrational pleasures that I can neither shake nor repress; this is a movie I loved, like listening to an album of youthful freedoms one longs to do more than just listen to. Although there is no denying that Christopher McCambless' myopic quest is ill-thought out, smug, and careless, watching Into the Wild is a different story. Sean Penn channels so much of his own predilections, petitions that while you may not like what Alexander Supertramp has chosen for himself, it must be respected that he made a choice far too many only talk about, and fashions an unruly narrative, pulling us back and forth from Alaska to the journey, all of the destinations moving and enjoyable from the merest diversions to the learning of lessons. The marriage of image, song, and juxtaposition is the gloriously retro Beatnik film of our time.

 

6.                    Zodiac (dir. David Fincher)

The Zodiac Killer was never found. There were clues and leads but red tape and a decade of paranoia and speculation covered up too many tracks; and just as David Fincher pioneered MTV-style filmmaking with Se7en and Fight Club, he matures as a filmmaker, drunk on new technology (groundbreaking cinematography and the most innovative visual effects you didn't see) with a sleek style of refined classicism. With a cast more than adept at procedural verbiage, the lure of obsessive and voyeur is alive and delicious in Zodiac. The cuts in the theatrical version are all too evident, and I cannot wait for the director's DVD which promises some eight minutes of excised footage.

 

7.                    The Lives of Others (dir. Florian Henckle von Donnersmarck)

Perhaps the screenplay of the year, in which but one contrivance: the reformation of a Ulriche Muhe's wire-tapper watchmen by the power of art, forgiven in a heartbeat by the tragically late actor's beautiful performance, the best acting of Kevin Spacey's career. I included this cautionary tale of fascist entanglement (thrilling simply through character proximity!) in my filmmonthly.com review last year, and I will put it here again as it really took root in 2007 after its surprise Oscar win over Pan's Labyrinth to the dismay of Oscar voters around the country, shouting "What the hell is The Lives of Others?" The answer? A better movie.

 

8.                    The Host (dir. Bong Joon-ho)

The first film I've seen by the new Hong Kong superstar Bong Joon-ho has the flair and fun of early Spielberg taking the car out for a drive, be it Jaws, Duel, or The Sugarland Express. Bong has genre ADD and jumps from one pastiche to another as he charts a family's quest to save their little daughter from the belly of a genetic disaster of a monster that emerges from the bay to cause mayhem and promptly disappear. The monster itself, a giant, bounding tadpole, is a marvel of effects that does not get old by the film's end, and the dysfunctional family's oddball journey is more moving, funny, and heartfelt than anything in Little Miss Sunshine. The year's best work of popcorn entertainment by a longshot.

 

9.                    Offside (dir. Jafar Panahi)

The rare movie that could change the world in its universal humanism. A young Iranian girl wants to watch the World Cup in her home country and disguises herself as a boy to get in; she is sequestered with other possible subversives outside the stadium by guards who want nothing more than an afternoon free of distraction they couldn't spent watching the game around the corner. Watching Offside, there is an sense of identification that Panahi effortlessly conveys without pretense at all, a nationality and love for sports transcending sex, gender, occupation, and rationale; and in the film's great final sequence of the on-the-fly and the happenstance, a city erupts into jubilation before your very eyes.

 

10.               Superbad (dir. Greg Mottola)

Several joys equal or better elude my final slot: Ratatouille from PIXAR, a glorious sight to behold, funny and visual; Sarah Polley's devastating chamber piece Away from Her, a ballet of performance between Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie; Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton, a jazz riff on George Clooney's iconic cool; or Tamara Jenkins' first film in almost a decade, The Savages, a funny reunion of brother and sister and father. Instead, I'll laud a stronger comedy of andocentric manners than the sweetly myopic Knocked Up, funnier with a stronger narrative, that groovy miasma of torrential profanity and unconscious homoeroticism that is Superbad. Other films offered tastefulness, gravity, and history; this one, pictures of dicks aplenty, and we're all the better for it.

 

My runners up would be without hesitation Away from Her, Knocked Up, Michael Clayton, Ratatouille, and The Savages, with The Band's Visit, The Bourne Ultimatum, Dan in Real Life, Gone Baby Gone, Juno, and 28 Weeks Later... (with the greatest opening sequence of the year) not far behind. The year gave us great filmmakers in films that missed the mark but a little or a lot, with parts stronger than the whole. So I extol the virtues of the scenes aboard the train in Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited; of Nicole Kidman's micced breakdown and impromptu recollection of a retarded Mexican in Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding; of the rays of light bounding off of a bedside Cillian Murphy and Rose Byrne in Danny Boyle's Sunshine; of the attempted assassination of naked Viggo Mortenson in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises; of an all-time great rain-soaked car chase in James Gray's We Own the Night; of Christian Bale and Steve Zahn's foray from unforgiving imprisonment into that of nature in Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn; of the stunning games of mahjongg in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution; of Isabella Rossellini's hilarious narration in Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain!; of Philip Seymour Hoffman's entrance in Charlie Wilson's War; of the reload car crash in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof; and of whomever directed the trailer to Ridley Scott's American Gangster.

I didn't see as many bad movies as I could've been I didn't see as many good movies. I kept myself otherwise occupied this summer, spring, and fall and miss out on many perceived atrocities. I will say that the worst movies of the year came threefold. Paul Haggis is an undeniably talented writer of the stark white and starker black, but his In the Valley of Elah is compromised simple procedural offering platitudes not red state, not blue state, but purple, which is too little too late. The film almost quakes beneath Tommy Lee Jones' beautiful performance, as it barely aspires to his level of honesty and fortitude, instead settling for something more Costner-esque. The biggest film of the year, Spider-Man 3, is a laborious contract negotiation of a film, fulfilling all outstanding plotlines as promised to nobody's satisfaction, not the least a de facto audience lauding it as the year's "Biggest" movie. And Curtis Hanson's poker-faced Lucky You verbally extolled the virtues of every play with the grace of a telemarketer, or a much less adept filmmaker than that of L.A Confidential and Wonder Boys.