MNPP's Best Of 2007

.

First off, let me just get this out of the way: there are loads of movies of purported "awards caliber" that I haven't gotten around to seeing. Why should you listen to the opinions of a man with his head halfway under the sand then? Why indeed. But if we were going to be waiting for me to see everything before I chose my favorites then we'd be waiting until well into 2008 when everything's on DVD and even then there's a really good chance it'd take handcuffs and a near-fatal dose of rophynol to get me to watch, say, American Gangster or Charlie Wilson's War.

Here are the movies I can think of, off the top of my head, that I have not gotten around to seeing yet that I will eventually see at some point and have been getting year-end accolades for this or that from somebody somewhere: I'm Not There, Control, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Persepolis, Starting Out in the Evening, The Savages, Margot at the Wedding, Enchanted, Gone Baby Gone, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead... er, that's all I can think of. I'm sure there are plenty of others. But see, I see what I most want to see, and since nobody's paying me to offer my opinions on movies I don't especially have a fire in my belly to see, I don't see 'em. Simple. I spend that time scouring Netflix and playing catch-up with 100 years of cinema history instead. And... occasionally having a life. Very, very occasionally.

Anyway, with that caveat outta the way, let us begin our look at the things I did see and enjoy in 2007! Party time! First off, some random awards for things that I feel deserve special notice.

*** The Award for "I'm fairly certain this movie counts as 2006, but I only saw it this past year and its central performance was one of the best things I saw all year, plus he died and I loved him so very much" goes to: Ulrich Mühe, The Lives of Others

*** The Award for "My new best friend(s)" goes to: Margo Martindale, Paris, je t'aime (see here); Michael Cera, Juno (see here); Anna Faris, Smiley Face (see here)

*** The Award for "Wow, that scene just made my balls retract all the way up into my body" goes to: Zoe the Cat rides the hood of a Dodge Challenger, Death Proof

*** The Award for "My new favorite older films that I saw this year, mostly via that blessed shrine of Netflix" goes to: it's a tie between Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist (see here) and David Lynch's The Elephant Man.


Runner's Up: Coppola's The Conversation, Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, Richard Donner's cut of Superman II, Fellini's La Strada, Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, Nick Park's Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and Pasolini's Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom.

*** The Award for "Most overblown and totally undeserved positive critical response" goes to: The Host - read my thoughts on it here. (Although it'd better watch out; The Orphanage is coming in for the kill)

*** The Top 4 Instances of Male Cinematic Gratuitousness (Why only 4? Because Jake Gyllenhaal's underwear scene in Rendition has yet to hit the internet - sigh - so there's an empty space in its honor):

4- Jason Behr in Skinwalkers
(more here)

3- Chris Evans in Fantastic Four 2
(more here and here)

2 - CG'd Ray Winstone in Beowulf
(more here)

1 - The entire cast of 300,
with special props to Gerard Butler of course
(more here and here and here)

*** The Award for "First-time director who's debut was so wonderful and I so look forward to what she'll do next that I could maybe even consider forgiving her home country of Canada for Celine Dion... maybe" goes to: Sarah Polley, Away From Her

*** The Award for "Hey, you got this scene really right! Does that mean maybe, with less studio interference, and even though the movie as a whole kinda flopped, we can get the other two movies anyway? Cuz dude, this scene really was one of the best of the year" goes to: The polar bear fight in The Golden Compass

*** The Award for "Y'all aren't gonna win any awards, but you're aces in my book" goes to:

Kristen Thomson as Kristy, Away From Her

Nathan Baesel as Leslie Vernon,
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Hugh Dancy as Buddy, Evening

Emily Mortimer & Paul Schneider
as Karin & Gus Lindstrom, Lars and the Real Girl

Ben Foster, 3:10 to Yuma and 30 Days of Night

*** The Award for "This movie really will probably slip itself into my Top 10 once I get around to seeing it a second time, but I have not seen it a second time yet, and you need to stop glaring at me about it, but my brain was really thrown for a loop by it the first time I watched it and I really have no idea what I thought of it except it was not what I was expecting and sometimes having pre-viewing expectations for a movie can be dangerous, like here" goes to: No Country For Old Men

---------------------------

Okay. Since somehow no straight-up horror films made it into my actual Top 10 this year - without skipping ahead to reveal anything, yes my actual #4 choice should probably be considered horror, but let's not confuse things, okay? Unfortunately there was nothing like The Descent to blow me away in '07 - I'm going to give my Top 5 Horror Films of '07, since horror's my bag and all. All of these films would have made it into my Top 20 if I were going to be that thorough... some just missing by the skin of their gnashing teeth. Alas.

MNPP's Top 5 Horror Films of 2007

5 - The Mist
4 - Severance
3 - Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
2 - 28 Weeks Later
1 - Bug

-----------

And without further ado (or is that adieu?),
MNPP's Top 10 of 2007 are...

#10 - A tie! Yes, I'm cheating already!

Michael Clayton (dir. Tony Gilroy) - Bolstered by great performances across the board - Clooney's never been better, Tom Wilkinson gives another fine turn, and Tilda... well, I just told y'all what I thought of Tilda - Michael Clayton is far smarter than it needed to be, and far more engrossing than I ever expected from it.

Sweeney Todd (dir. Tim Burton) - I know I've already gotten all sorts of flack for expressing my disdain for the music o' Sondheim, but this film easily would've placed higher if everybody had been speaking instead of singing. Would it have had a reason to be made if it were non-musical? That's not up to me to decide. Obviously. But Burton and Depp will surely cry themselves to sleep tonight knowing they lost traction in my countdown because of it.

#9 - Black Book (dir. Paul Verhoeven) - That's one sexy Holocaust you have there in your pocket, Mr. Verhoeven. I love that this movie even exists. I love that Verhoeven threw all the hackneyed cinematic tropes that had attached themselves to every movie made about the Holocaust anymore and did something different. And I love Carice van Houten, who gives a wowser of a star-making performance. She sings! She dances! She writhes around topless under a waterfall of shit!

#8 - Ratatouille (dir. Brad Bird) - At this point I think we all need to check our records, because I think we must've all signed a deal to hand over to Brad Bird all of our first-borns.

#7 - I'm A Cyborg But That's OK (dir. Chan-Wook) - read my original thoughts here - This was my #1 film at the half-year point, but it's not that my love for it has dwindled... just my love for a few of the others that were out at that point in the year took time to really flourish, and are momentarily feeling more love. But Cyborg, Chan-Wook's 360-degree turn from his violent morality-play Vengeance trilogy, still effervesces with hyper-realistic glee in my mind, and is my second favorite romance of the year. And what a beautifully bizarre love story it is! Yodeling, flying-socks, enormous ladybugs, and feeding-tubes all swirl together whimsically in a madhouse of love. A madhouse of love, dammit! But while its characters might seem to exist on some other plane of existence, Park Chan-Wook and his terrific two leads never lets you stop seeing the fragile, needy hearts beating inside them, and their final embrace of each others... uh, quirks... gives hope to all of us out here who feel bonkers most of the time, too.

#6 - Year of the Dog (dir. Mike White) - read my original thoughts here - I've seen Year of the Dog three times now and it only grows more funny and more sad with each viewing. I think the genius of this movie lay in that it's entirely possible to read it in entirely opposite ways: is Mike White criticizing Peggy's, um, let's say lifestyle choices? Sure. Does he still empathize with her choices? Most certainly. Is he ridiculing his characters? Sure. Does he love his characters at the same time? Definitely. I've heard people call the open ending both "inspiring" and "depressing" and, while I'm definitely in the camp that found Peggy's final decision wrong-headed and despairing, I think White frames it so the opposite can be read as well. And all of his actors are hysterically on target - be it Molly Shannon's awesome lead performance or the wonderful supporting cast - Regina King, Laura Dern, Peter Sarsgaard and Josh Pais as Peggy's dead-eyed boss. And a special shout-out to Pencil, the Dog Wonder! Perhaps the film I'll end up watching more than any other in the future from this year.

#5 - Zodiac (dir. David Fincher) - read my original thoughts here - Fincher's film casts a long shadow, and I'm happy yet surprised to see it getting more mention in critic's top ten lists than I thought it would get. This film (along with my #3 and my #1 choices) is one of the most challenging films to "love" (in the way one immediately falls in love with Ratatouille, for example) on this list but, like the obsession central to the entire film, it claws its way ever deeper into your brain the further you get away from it.

#4 - Grindhouse (dir. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez) - Honestly, Tarantino's brilliant Death Proof could take this spot all on its own - suck it, haters! - but it would be cheating to undervalue the most thrilling theater-going experience I had all year by voiding the charms of Rodriguez's Planet Terror, and the trailers, and the whole damned shebang. It certainly was a goddamned shame that I remember looking around this same theater and wondering where the heck the rest of the audience was. Your loss!

#3 - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik) - The most gorgeous - and gorgeously languorous - film of the year, I could've spent another hour and a half sitting in the theater taking in the beauty of Roger Deakins' photography. Add to that an eulogistic sadness that permeates every performance and I was spellbound. Brad Pitt proved once again he's much more than a pretty face - and bless his heart for having it written into his contract that the excellent title not be changed - but it was Casey Affleck's film, and Affleck gave a career-defining performance. I never knew the guy had it in him.


#2 - Once (dir. John Carney) - read my original thoughts here - Consider me as surprised as any of you to see this here, and so high. I went into this film with no... wait, make that negative expectations, and I walked out a true believer. I've been listening to the soundtrack almost as much as I've been listening to Radiohead's In Rainbows these past couple of weeks which, if you know me at all, ought to speak volumes on its own. But it's more than just the wonderful music that made me fall in love with this film; it's the film's total commitment to it's characters, and in making them real and honest and decent. It carves out this wonderful space within first and second and tenth impressions where we're watching two people get to know each other who are too smart and too scared and too hung up on the past to do anything about it except when they make this music together. They've both been hurt terribly when the film begins, and we watch them as they open up the other to the possibilities of love once again. That the right person for each of them turns out not to be the other but rather the person who hurt them in the first place only makes the film all the more poignant. There's usually one romance that I fall head over heels each year, and in 2008 none spoke to me as deeply, as honestly, as this one.


#1 - There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) - Paul Thomas Anderson could stop making movies right now, after five, and he'd already have his spot in the pantheon of the greatest directors of all time. But let's hope he doesn't, since from my point of view he's just getting better with each film (although my personal favorite, for warm and fuzzies, will probably always be Punch-Drunk Love). The second time I saw TWBB it was with a completely different type of audience than the first (there's a world of difference between seeing movies on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and Times Square) and I was shocked at how enthralled the Times Square audience seemed to be with the film. I think the film's brilliant 15-minute opening sequence without any dialogue sets the tone right off the bat and tells the audience to STFU, and it's so successful in pulling you right into the world that from there on out it was only audible gasps and laughter instead of the shuffling boredom I feared might overtake the audience. They were rapt, as was I. It only gets better with each successive viewing; the buried depths of horror and emotion revealing themselves slowly; only in knowing the final destination do certain things reveal their true weight (take, for example, Daniel Day Lewis' little jig at the start of the final scene, just as Paul Dano's character appears to him - why he is dancing only makes itself known, and horrifyingly so, once you see where things end). I have to include this quote from Lisa Schwartzbaum's review in EW because it's one of the best things that I've read about Jonny Greenwood's tremendous score for the film:

"What we hear, though, is the keen, whine, rattle, and tonal blur of musical modernity as the components of epic storytelling are lofted decisively into the 21st century. The aural juxtaposition, sweetened by additional music from Johannes Brahms and the 20th-century Estonian ''mystical minimalist'' composer Arvo Pärt, is more than thrilling — it's neurologically revolutionary, as if we're seeing with our ears and hearing with our eyes in a whole new way."

I think the relationship between the music and the visuals is of terrific importance in understanding this film... but not just this film; it's something that Anderson's been building towards with his entire filmography. Think of the sing-a-long moment in Magnolia or Jon Brion's underwater circus-music score to Punch-Drunk Love that bobs above a swirl of colors. The score here isn't just integral to the story - it is the story, or at least a character therein, and speaks as much as to PTA's point as does Daniel Day-Lewis's ferocious lead performance. And what is PTA's point? I think he strikes at something deep and terrible inside the hearts of men, something that to put words to... is difficult, without sounding trite, so thankfully he lets the music, and Day-Lewis' searing eyes, do the talking.

Bonus Points for the best insult of the year: "You're nothing but afterbirth that slithered out with your mother's filth. You should have been put in a jar."

--------------

Well that's it, kids. The past is behind us! Time to get moving on to 2008, I'd say. Except all those movies I missed. And the ones I'll watch again and again until the end of time. Except that. Cheers!
.