The 10 Best Films of 2007

Being an amateur critic is hard, thankless work. You don’t get paid, your efforts go largely unnoticed and your staff rarely respects your authority (they should view me as infallible, right?). Still, if I had to choose the most frustrating element of my job, the lack of access to advanced screeners of films would easily beat out all the aforementioned drawbacks. This dilemma makes January a particularly frustrating time since it effectively results in the end of the year protocol being pushed back a month or so, blurring the line between one year and the other.

I say this partly to wallow in self-pity, but mostly to explain the delay in COMACC’s yearly top ten list which I probably shouldn’t call the official COMACC top ten since none of the other staff members had their hand in deciding this (fuck them anyway, since — believe it or not — I’m still running the show here). I tried to keep this article as timely as possible while still giving myself enough time to catch all the end-of-the-year films that don’t premier outside of New York and L.A. until well into the following year. Well, I can’t delay this list anymore. So, as incomplete as it might be, it’s time to unveil this year’s Top 10 Films.

I feel like this is mentioned by at least one critic every year (sometimes as an excuse for shoddy listmaking), but this year I feel I’m justified in saying it was a bad year for movies. That’s not to say that the truly praiseworthy films weren’t individually impressive, but that those gems were scarce enough that, when taken as a whole, made 2007 appear somewhat lackluster. I will concede that my motivation for seeing films took a slight dip in 2007, so perhaps that further explains the skeletal nature of the list. In other words, if you feel a deserving film is conspicuously missing, don’t assume it’s a result of film school haughtiness on my part in tossing the trendier selections to the wayside. It may just be that I never got a chance to see it. For your reference, it took a last minute splurge in film viewing to knock Live Free or Die Hard from the 10 spot, so that should give you some indication as to how patched together this turned out. Next year I promise to do better.

10. Grindhouse
Directors: Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez

The excitement over this horror film collaboration between these two highly regarded filmmakers plunged almost immediately following its release. The 3-hour runtime certainly aided in scaring off potential viewers and the lackluster critical reception didn’t help its chances. I for one believe that with this film Tarantino and Rodriguez achieved exactly what they set out to accomplish, and the final product was damn entertaining to watch. Sure, Tarantino’s portion gets mildly lofty at parts and suffers from a certain amount of narcissistic direction, but the two filmmakers’ unrelenting commitment to their theme of 70s grindhouse horror aesthetics make for a truly enthralling viewing experience. The decision to separate the two films upon the DVD release was detrimental to the concept since the experience really demands that they’re taken together. There’s no real substitute for seeing these in the theater and those who passed on the opportunity really missed out.

09. Superbad
Director: Greg Mottola

Superbad is one of those movies that masks its brilliance behind a supposedly impenetrable wall of crassness and gross-out comedy. Granted, it never takes either of these too far, ensuring that the plot doesn’t wander into tastelessness, but for those willing to acknowledge the far more clever attributes obscured by the jokes, the film is something of a revelation for a sub-genre that was running itself into the ground, namely the “teen” comedy. Superbad marks a refreshingly mature departure from the cinema’s typically over-simplified perspective on high school while still maintaining a curious blend of film styles as divergent as those found in Revenge of the Nerds or Martin Scorcese’s unjustly overlooked After Hours.

08. Eastern Promises
Director: David Cronnenberg

Finally, a David Cronnenberg film that I can appreciate. I’ve been a stubborn holdout in terms of respecting the work of both David Lynch and David Cronnenberg (the Daves). While Lynch won me over with Mulholland Dr., Cronnenberg has finally broken through with Eastern Promises. For the record, last year’s A History of Violence didn’t impress me as much as it did other critics. I thought it meandered from its focus just enough to deflate whatever message it might have been trying to convey. Granted, it was still an impressive step forward for the director known for such confounding curiousities as Videodrome and Existenz, but not quite enough to reach me. With Eastern Promises, that all changes. This film is tightly-focused and finely shot. And although a twist near the end tarnishes its otherwise polished luster somewhat, it didn’t ruin the concept. The fight in the bathhouse near the end of the film is a strong indication of Cronnenberg’s mastery, and let’s not overlook Mortensen’s intensely superb performance as the conflicted Russian mobster, as it ranks among the best of the year.

07. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Director: Seth Gordon

With a hint of Errol Morris running throughout, The King of Kong is probably the most insightful movie about videogames I’ve ever seen. To be fair, that claim doesn’t sound as glowing when you stop to consider what else appears on that list (ahem, The Wizard), but don’t let that discredit the praise since the King of Kong works in ways I would have never expected. Kong is an often hilarious, sometimes somber dissection of obsession, narcissism and hero worship. I’d even go as far as citing some poignant and topical political undertones to its story. It really is unbelievable that filmmaker Seth Gordon squeezes so much depth and insight from a movie based around two men battling for the highest possible score in Donkey Kong.

06. The Host
Director: Joon-ho Bong

It’s a shame how much exposure a film like Cloverfield received while a far better monster movie like The Host only enjoyed a limited release in arthouse theaters. Rumors of a potential American remake only add insult to injury, as any other version of this story is certain to miss the human element. The Host tries to be many things at once — a political satire, a horror film, a family drama, a comedy — and in its own peculiar way it succeeds in pretty much every facet. This isn’t exactly typical for a film in which the central threat focuses on a genetically mutated monster, but The Host has a knack for defying expectations. The Host is a welcome departure within the genre of monster movies and, coupled with the release of Old Boy a few years back, an indication of the immense filmmaking talent emerging from South Korea.

05. Juno
Director: Jason Reitman

Jason Reitman’s Juno is nothing like his previous film Thank You For Smoking and everything that last years’ attention-whore Little Miss Sunshine wanted to be. It perfectly encapsulates what a mature comedy should be. It delivered on the jokes, never got terribly sappy with the drama and wasn’t afraid to explore the darker side of its plot. I think a good portion of the negative responses the film has received have more to do with confused expectations over what it was supposed to embody rather than any fundamental flaw in the film itself. It shares certain traits with a film like Superbad, which was wildly popular with audiences, mainly due to its uproarious comic sense. But Juno is more complex than that and less of a laugh-out-loud affair, and I feel this may have alienated some audience members expecting the same comic returns they received from Superbad (especially since Micheal Cera appears in both). Most promising, however, is Juno’s surprising success at the box office. It announces that maybe Americans are fed up with routine comedies. Let’s hope studios take heed and rethink the projects they greenlight in the future.

04. No End in Sight
Director: Charles Ferguson

Many documentaries and dramas have emerged in the wake of not only 9/11, but the ensuing war in Iraq, but none have been as depressingly revealing or as No End in Sight. This film hones in on everything wrong with the current nation-building going on overseas with deadly precision. Although the film itself doesn’t provide any new information for those who have been keeping tabs on all the transgressions of the war, it methodically sifts through everything that happens with such a pointed message that it’s hard to overlook the effectiveness with which its told. It’s somber and depressing, but required viewing in the same way that last year’s An Inconvenient Truth was. There’s something truly wrong with the current state of U.S. foreign policy, and the muckraking documentary style of Charles Ferguson makes a compelling case for change.

03. Persepolis
Directors: Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi

An odd blend of humor punctuated by moments of extreme tragedy, Persepolis tells the story of Iran’s political turmoil through the eyes of one girl. The film is based on the autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, who grew up in Iran during the fall of the Shah and was forced to emigrate and leave her family behind in the wake of the political and religious strife that followed the revolt. Filtering this complex history through the eyes of Satrapi’s personal experience gives the conflict in Iran — the myriad details of which many Americans, myself included, are somewhat unaware of — a human side that makes a necessity for reform all the more immediate. Members of the Bush administration should be locked in a room and forced to watch this film, it would certainly cause them to reconsider the potential war they seem so desperate to start. If it weren’t for one unfortunate and incongruent “Eye of the Tiger” sequence, this might very well be the best film of the year.

02. There Will Be Blood

Say what you will about the now-famous milkshake line, Daniel Day-Lewis delivers it with such ferocity and scorn that it easily stands as the most enrapturing movie moment of the year. The film draws some clear parallels to Citizen Kane in terms of its story, but the visuals found here framed by the film’s utterly jaw-dropping cinematography make There Will Be Blood most reminiscent of Days of Heaven. Paul Thomas Anderson has a tendency to allow his narratives to get out of hand, sometimes overburdening his plots with symbolism and stretching stories out well beyond their welcome. This isn’t the case with There Will Be Blood, which felt far shorter than its 2 hour 45-minute runtime indicates. The story is so engaging and the emotion — in all its bitter and spiteful glory — so unrelenting that there’s simply no room for boredom.

01. No Country for Old Men
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Critics of the No Country for Old Men often point toward the last twenty minutes of the film in a futile attempt to cite some sort of flaw in its overarching structure. Personally, I don’t see it. This one’s solid from beginning to end, and the shift in focus from the Josh Brolin character to the one played by Tommy Lee Jones works so well that what might have been a tedious plot twist late in the film becomes so fiendishly effective that it’s downright shocking. Bardem’s chilling performance as the film’s cold-blooded antagonist will stand among the greatest of screen villains. But the true triumph lies in the direction. Excluding the solid, but ultimately uneven The Big Lebowski, the Coen brothers have been on auto-pilot since Fargo, making movies that were aesthetically pleasing, but lacking in substance. Consider this a long-overdue revival. The film is absolutely beautiful in its own dark and unsettling way (if you can fathom such a clashing duality). Couple that with a superbly told story and what results is a bona fide masterpiece. If No Country wins Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards, this will mark a dramatic leap forward in the legitimacy of that event.