Once again we're in a year where everyone knows what #1 is going to be and nobody's gonna be happy about it, so let's start from there and work our way down. In spite of what the critical community might be waxing, '07 wasn't the best year for movies ever ('03 and '99 still kick its ass by a landslide), nor was it the worst ('04 was pretty thin, so was '01). Comfortably of the middle ground, '07 featured a lot of variety, some real standouts, a wealth of solid base hits, and the best worst movie I've seen in a very long time.
In most cases there aren't reviews to speak of, cuz that thing where I was gonna stop reviewing movies kinda almost sorta worked out. But I've linked out to whatever I've got on the blog (or blogTO) that can provide a little context.
#1: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
The word "masterpiece" gets tossed around so much these days. I'm not even going to attempt to use it here, because at no time have I tried to deny that this thing's got flaws so fucking huge that my fondness for it is genuinely embarrassing. But then, so is my fondness for most things that I am fond of, so fuck it and fuck you (with hugs and kisses!). Really, the reason I just can't stop going on about this thing is onefold: I have seen exactly four movies in my life that have made me feel this unabashedly, ludicrously happy. And while this one may not replace one of the others at the top of the list of my favourite films for too much longer, it's been sort of enjoyable to seat it there for the time being.
I blame the wedding among fish people.
Hey, while we're here, let's hand out another award: best score of the year. Remember when I used to be a Hans Zimmer hater? Well that's over and done with. Zimmer flips the theme structure of the first two movies right on its back here, and writes a musical counter-argument to the original material that does precisely what I love most about the film itself: says "this is film three, and we are in a new place." I have burned a hole in this CD (metaphorically) this year. "Up is Down" might actually be my favourite score track of the past ten years.
#2: XXY
Hey, why not stab out with an arthouse Argentinian flick about gender identity that nobody will ever see as my second film, to redeem the sector of the audience that took off two sentences into the #1 entry above. Right, welcome to the polar opposites of my filmic inclinations. If the world was made up of nothing but overgigantic movies featuring ship-to-ship gun battles in the midst of swirling maelstroms, and tiny little character pieces about 15-year-old he-she's dealing with whether or not they want to be un-hermaphrodited (surgically), I'd be happy as a pig in fucking slop. And though it's probably declassé to say, the teen girlguy-on-guy defloration scene in XXY is definitely one of the hottest sex scenes I've ever seen. But that goes to my predilections in rather a straight line, so let's leave it off right there.
#3: Juno
The sentimental fave that got a bit too oversentimentalized in the time between seeing at TIFF and its actual release into the world, Juno is still a big walking smiley face much more kindly than Gregg Araki's actually-titled Smiley Face, and it's about teen pregnancy without being tragic about it, and it's got pretty much every actor in the world who was ever a genius in it, plus the one who's now potentially going to define the next ten years of "female star." Soooooo... good movie. Actually, let's just leave it with the title of Roger Ebert's review: "No wrong scenes, no extra scenes, and characters you want to hug." There ya go. So far "I want to make sweet sloppy love to this movie" is leading "this movie is really good" 2 to 1.
#4: There Will Be Blood
Trying to place this in the list is like trying to find a seat for a sociopath at Christmas dinner. Who cares where he sits, as long as he isn't near the knives? Actually I'm sort of nervous leaving Blood sitting next to Juno. That's an odd pairing. Technically, Blood is probably better than Juno, but it's also hard to sort out how I feel about it, given that I only saw it last night and when I was done watching it, I mostly just felt like Paul Thomas Anderson had pulled apart the lobes of my brain like he was splitting open a grapefruit, and then proceeded to take a shit in the crevasse he'd made. A good shit, mind you, and satisfying, but was anyone having fun? Hey. What?
#5: Zodiac
Zodiac's a tough little son of a bitch, too. It's perfectly made, of course; if there's a sure-thing filmmaker working in Hollywood today who's more reliable than Fincher for sheer command of craft, I don't know who it is. Unlike most of the rest of his flicks, though, Zodiac ain't enjoyable, and is dedicatedly trying to frustrate your every narrative need throughout, so the film can leave you in a decidedly muddled state when its final frames unfold in a Canadian airport. Still, for geek fetishism of both the actual 1970s and the look of 1970s American filmmaking, it's second to none, and it almost makes Mark Ruffalo not an asshole. So that's something.
#6: 3:10 to Yuma
Masterful existentialist Western. Actually, this raises a good point: 2007 was full of these things - simple genre pieces, easy base hits, that in many cases the director elevated nicely to a honed point by applying some common sense and taking the material seriously. Economical expression, classical dramatic composition, and a kickass cast make 3:10 one of the most engagingly flawless cinematic experiences of the year. I suppose the only really sad thing about any of these is that they've become so fucking rare in the last ten years that now, they're standing out as genuine masterpieces when really, they should just be one among the crowd. This flick had a lot going on under the hood, too, but let's not get too pretentious about Batman vs. Maximus, cuz that's really the whole point.
#7: Une Vieille Maîtresse
What can I say, I'm a sucker for a movie that can make sex work, and make it awesome. The ultimate flick (and whoa, so accurate) about what it's like to fall jealously, obsessively, and above all inextricably, in love with absolutely the wrong girl, Maîtresse owns balls like nothing else I saw this year, made Asia Argento appear to actually know how to act, and put a flush on me right down to my 12-year-old soul. Jeez, I'm blushing just thinking about it right now. Does anyone want to lick fresh blood off my throat?
#8: Death Proof
Sure, it's a genre exercise, but fuck howdy, it's a hell of a genre exercise. The least of Quentin Tarantino's work is still a gleefully exuberant smack out of the park compared with the best of his contemporaries (sadly including, for the purposes of this double-feature, Robert Rodriguez), and Death Proof is just so fucking fun it makes you want to get really drunk on Jack and drive around in the desert with a girl on the hood of your car. Wait, that can't be the intention, can it? Well, whatever. I want that car.
#9: Across the Universe
Well, now the "movies to hug" have tied "movies that are actually good" 4 to 4 (Maîtresse counts toward the former, by the way, for its naughty-feelings-causing-ness). So before the ratio slips too far down towards some kind of critical respectability, let's toss Across the Universe in there with a whole lot of tongue. In many ways too long and too ingratiating, this flick's every note is obvious, literally and figuratively. But it's got that demure glow about it that makes the coyness of its sixties mythologization fade away under the simple premise: this music is part of every single one of us, and apparently, we needed reminding of what that means. Yeah, it's a love-it-or-hate-it, and unsurprisingly, big cheeseball me loved it. And besides, I've just seen a face.
#10: Forever
This is kind of an odd choice for me - a documentary about a cemetery which, at various parts I admit I had difficulty determining whether it was staged or real. And it doesn't so much end as fade out. But it's still often sublime, occasionally profound, and otherwise always otherworldly and beautiful. Also the first movie that ever actually made me want to go to Paris. Take that, Bertolucci!
Honourable Mention: Naissance des pieuvres
I think I've spent every day since I saw this flick at TIFF apologizing for not liking it more at the time. It got by my radar that day, and then proceeded to ferment in my subconscious for the following five or six weeks until it popped out as one of the most important films I saw all year. Naissance is clean, simple queer cinema, but that's actually the source of its charm: seeming artlessness meets precocious emotional nakedness and leaves the soul haunted. We'll look for more work from Céline Sciamma in the future.
The Worst Movie Of The Year: Spider-Man 3
It has been a long, long time since I've enjoyed a worst-of-the-year this much, and this is also easily the most I've ever enjoyed one of Sam Raimi's Spider-flicks. I know that makes me an odd hairy freak, but there it is. This movie is just so coherent. Not in terms of plot or dialogue or performance or anything like that, but just in the bricklayer-like reliability with which, with an almost Kubrickian dedication to construction, each successive scene is in fact worse than the one that came before it, building mistake on top of mistake with such outrageous blindness to any kind of aesthetic decency that by the third act, the film has become a towering pyramid of awfulness that reaches a zenith on top of a skyscraper with a dead Harry Osborn, an almost illiterate Dumbfuck MJ, and, of course, a Spider-Man who just can't stop crying like a little girl with a skinned knee. Honestly: this was one of the best movie-watching experiences I had all year, and I recommend it (and the rum) to anyone. Bravo.
Yesteryear Award: The Prestige
It's only a year old, but the fact that I somehow left Prestige off last year's top ten list is pretty much inexcusable. This is one of those movies that, at the end of the decade (which is now precariously close), I will look back on as one of the great achievements in the medium over these mercurial ten years. My fondness for the flick has only grown in the three viewings (!) that followed the time I saw it in theatres. I just keep going back, and my esteem only grows. What a joyful little clockwork, this.
And that's yer year. And officially....
...2008's gonna make me smile.
