2007 - The Year in Movies

I'm the first to admit to being perhaps a bit OCD. Fortunately, one of my more obsessive traits is a compulsion to make lists. For the third year running, I have kept a list of every NEW movie I watched from January through December - no credits for TV shows like Veronica Mars or Doctor Who that I devoured disk by disk, and none for repeat viewings. I'm kind of frightened by what the list would look like with those added in. Anyway . . .

Total count? 112.

Breakdown by country of origin? As usual, the USA was the big winner here. I think I watched far fewer foreign films this year than in years past. 71 American films, not counting hybrids like the US/India The Namesake or US/UK Children of Men. The UK was the runner-up, with 8. Ouch - that's a pretty big gap. I didn't find myself as interested in films from Asia this year as I have in years past - perhaps I'm a bit burnt out. Two Korean films, a couple of Chinese (Hong Kong actioners, really), and just one or two Japanese films. In the past, these have been pretty big numbers. It's interesting to see how much I'm trending towards America and Europe these days. Of course, since so many films are produced by multiple countries - Japan, France and the US for Marie Antoinette for example - it's getting more difficult to categorize according to national origin.

So, let's move on to favorites and hatreds . . .

I watched some awesome, terrific movies this year. Really, it was hard to keep my favorites list short. So I didn't. Here are some of favorites watched in 2007, in alphabetical order -

The Aura
Bad Education
Beauty and the Beast
Children of Men
Fear and Trembling
The Gleaners and I
The Host
Hot Fuzz
Inland Empire
Juno
Kiss Me Deadly
Los Angeles Plays Itself
No Country for Old Men
Pan's Labyrinth
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
The Wind that Shakes the Barley

And probably at the top of the list - the trilogy of If . . ./Britannia Hospital/O Lucky Man!

What about least favorites? What did I hate? I'm going to excuse really dumb things like Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland, because that's too easy. I really disliked Funny Ha Ha and thought that the hype about it was absolutely unwarranted. I also didn't like The Departed, though I figure I'm alone in that. The Wicker Man was fucking AWFUL, probably the worst film I saw this year, but it was so damn funny, I have to give it points for unintentional hilarity. How about Smokin' Aces? That movie has absolutely no redeeming qualities, not even Jason Bateman in a bra. All the Pretty Horses and Black Dahlia made me extremely unhappy, but . . . yeah, I think I'm going to have to give it to Smokin' Aces.

Surprises? The Prestige was much better than I'd thought it would be, especially after the disappointing The Illusionist. I finally saw all of Ginger Snaps which was a lot of fun, though the ending was a bit disappointing. Same with I Am Legend. Idiocracy is no Office Space, but I find myself referencing it pretty often.

Disappointments? Lots of these. Both of the third installments of the Spider-Man and Pirates franchises let me down. I was also hoping for really good things from Bender's Big Score, since I'm a Futurama nut. It was funny, but didn't maximize its potential. Lost in America had some great sequences, but wasn't nearly as great as I'd heard. And yes, I was disappointed by a zombie sheep movie. Black Sheep fell pretty flat. Zodiac was by no means a bad movie, but I just didn't think that much of it in the end. But none of these films can touch Southland Tales for sheer squandered potential.

What else? What did you love and hate this year? And what would you like to see filmsnack do in 2008? More reviews of new movies? Hard-to-find and weird stuff? More seasonal previews and opinions on things like awards season? Let me know. And thanks for reading.

I Am Legend (2007, USA)

I saw I Am Legend a few days ago, and must confess that images from the first 2/3 of the film have been haunting me. The production design is amazing, and the bulk of the movie is a wonderful character sketch. I know that it's pretty much unheard-of to nominate an actor from an action film come awards season, but based on what I've actually seen already this year, I would absolutely nominate Will Smith for a Golden Globe over Viggo Mortensen and probably James McAvoy as well. As much as movies like The Pursuit of Happyness turn me off, I can't deny that Smith is an extremely talented actor, but I think it's been since Six Degrees of Separation that I've seen him turn in a performance this good.

Unfortunately, the movie itself can't be saved by the awesome shots of a ruined New York City and Smith's great work. The final third of I Am Legend is a total mess - even if I didn't know how differently the book ends, I would still feel cheated by the cheapness and contrivance of the movie's ending. After keeping himself alive for three years in a post-apocalyptic wilderness by following a rigorous schedule and being almost inhumanly pragmatic, Smith ends up learning that it was really about faith all this time. What? It's a shame - I Am Legend could have been so much more interesting and complex than this, though I doubt it would have brought in such huge box office returns. Perhaps that's the real question here - Will Smith was brave to take on a role as difficult as this, but is he brave enough to sacrifice some of his idol status in order to make a really challenging film? I'm not really blaming Smith here - there were certainly plenty of other culprits in this case, as the film's been planned for production for over a decade - but he continues to make choices that ensure his place in moviegoers' hearts, not their heads.

Juno (2007, USA)

I absolutely get why there's something of a Juno backlash right now - it's awfully cute. Some critics have labeled it "overrated," but I think that reaction depends on the expectations you have in the first place. Juno is quirky, funny, and very sweet, but it's not much more than that, nor do I think it was meant to be. I found the language to be a bit disruptive at first - it's kind of like Brick-lite as far as teenage slang goes - but it was smoothed out a bit as the film got going. Ellen Page is outstanding, and J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney are hilarious as her dumbstruck parents. (Janney's character is kind of like a less trailer-trash version of her awesome Loretta from Drop Dead Gorgeous. I think I proclaimed my love of that movie just last week. And more people should let Simmons do comedy, so that he can put that whole neo-Nazi rapist thing in the past.) I even found myself not really hating Jennifer Garner. I wish there had been a bit more for Michael Cera to do than just react to people, but he's still a welcome presence in pretty much anything, as is Jason Bateman, who dials down the snark quite a bit after his first scene. After Juno and Thank You for Smoking, I'm certainly impressed by Jason Reitman. He picks interesting material, casts well, and gets good performances out of his actors. He also has fun taste in music - I've been trying to get Juno's theme song out of my head since last night, without success.

Golden Globe Nominations

Some immediate (and I do mean immediate) reactions . . .

SEVEN nominees for best dramatic film? Really? Apparently, the Hollywood Foreign Press had quite some difficulty winnowing the field. Was it just not a stellar year for films, meaning that there are a lot of mediocre offerings here? Or was it such a good year that seven films really deserve a nomination? I'm not necessarily leaning towards the latter. My pick? I'll let you know after I see There Will Be Blood. As much as I love Cronenberg, Eastern Promises should not have been nominated. I think Atonement will probably take it.

I really have no opinion on Best Musical/Comedy, though I would really like to see both Juno and Sweeney Todd. As expected, I have absolutely no interest in a film that stars BOTH Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

The usual suspects for Best Actor, plus James McAvoy. Good on you, James McAvoy. But you don't have a prayer. My guess is that this is Day-Lewis's game to lose.

The usual suspects for Best Actress. Yawn.

Even more of the usual suspects for Best Actor (Comedy/Musical), though the Best Actress field is a bit more interesting! A foreign broad! A couple of youngsters! Amy Adams! (I must confess that I have loved Amy Adams ever since Drop Dead Gorgeous.) This I find to be the most interesting category of the major acting awards. It could go all over the place.

Best Actor, Supporting Role - I'm backing Bardem all the way. And I would love to see him beat the shit out of Travolta while both are in character. That would be rad. I was forced to endure Hairspray on an airplane a month or so ago, and I am still very angry. Speaking of, why no James Marsden here?

Supporting Actress - Saoirse Ronan did a very good job with a very difficult part. Plus, she's gorgeous, and Atonement will likely go far this year. Yay Cate as Dylan, and yay Tilda Swinton, no matter what she does. Shut up, Julia Roberts.

Wow, Schnabel got a directing nod! Who would have thunk it back in the 1980's? I've heard very good things about Diving Bell, and I've really enjoyed his other films (Basquiat is a favorite). But I vote Coen, all the way.

Dammit, why did they have to go and give Aaron Sorkin a stupid Golden Globe nomination? Like that's going to help his ego.

Ah-ha - Diving Bell shows up under foreign films. Interesting. As did The Kite Runner (which seems to have flopped all around here) and Lust, Caution (ditto). However, I've heard nothing but amazing things about 4 Months.

My prediction is that Atonement is the horse to beat this year. Not that I necessarily agree that it should be held so highly, but it's a very good technical movie, and awards usually . . . award that. No Country is really dark and a lot of audiences hated it. And There Will Be Blood disappears on the list after Day-Lewis's nomination. There's Charlie Wilson's War, of course, which no one has actually seen yet. And Sweeney Todd - it's going to be interesting to see how well that does at the box office. I have the feeling that it's going to be a very hard sell, but I could be wrong.

Atonement (2007, UK/French)

I really need to stop reading books before I see the movie versions. My latest streak (perhaps with the exception of No Country for Old Men) has been awfully disappointing. In the case of Atonement, the filmmakers haven't made a bad film, just a greatly simplified one, with most of the subtlety of Ian McEwan's novel removed.

The bones of the story are still there, of course, and they make for quite a moving melodrama - the romantic scenes between Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie (James McAvoy) are particularly good - but it lacks the rich interiority of the book, and can't quite push the deeper themes forward. The end is particularly troubling, as a grown-up Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) basically looks straight at the camera and tells everyone exactly what the whole story was about.

Visually, Atonement is gorgeous. The cinematography, the costumes, the cast, everything is lovely and glowing. Even the horrors of World War II are filmed exquisitely. And that's where I felt another problem. Perhaps it's all too pretty - the story is so much about the grotesque in human behavior, and this is never addressed visually. Even the battlefield and war hospital scenes move quickly past the broken bodies, and one of the most important images in the book - a severed child's leg that Robbie finds in a tree during the English retreat across France - is replaced by a much more palatable (I can't believe I'm saying this) field of dead schoolgirls, laid in perfect lines. I think perhaps that Atonement works best on the surface of things, as a beautiful, tragic love story. The deeper themes never quite gel.

Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End (2007, USA)

So, is that it for Elizabeth Swann? Her father dies, her lover dies, and at the end of things, she's left alone on an island, forced to wait another ten years for one day with Will? Sorry, but if Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End impressed anything upon me, it was that the filmmakers are terrified of women. Actually, I think it all started with the Kraken in Dead Man's Chest, which provoked giggles when I first saw it because of the horribly obvious vagina dentata imagery. In the third installment of the franchise, Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) is dressed up in pirate drag, sexually assaulted, elected king of the pirates, and finally given her comeuppance in the form of a self-imposed island marooning. It's like once they worked through the original "sprightly lass goes pirate" script in Curse of the Black Pearl, they couldn't figure out what the hell to do with her. I've already stated how disagreeably shrill her character becomes in the second movie, but things get so much worse in World's End - would it really have hurt so bad had they decided to give Elizabeth her own ship and let her sail the seas alongside the menfolk while waiting for Will's return?

Then there's the case of Calypso/Tia Dalma. In the second film, Tia Dalma is a repository of weird female power. Fairly early on in the third, we learn that she's the goddess Calypso bound in human form. Apparently, the pirates bound Calypso because she made seafaring so difficult and risky. Okay, a woman with too much power. But it gets better! She was also bound because her lover, Davy Jones, betrayed her after she happened to be a bit more interested in being a goddess than in waiting around on an island for him for the rest of eternity (Elizabeth, take note!). There's a lot of blather about releasing Calypso, which she seems rather in favor of, and the sequence where this is finally accomplished shows Tia Dalma growing enormous, an entire ship of men trying to keep her bound with ropes as she swells to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman size. There's a general sense of "what the hell have we done?" before Calypso turns elemental and ends up using her enormous powers just to get back at the man who betrayed her love. Then she apparently disappears.

So, at the end of the trilogy we've been presented with at least three symbols of female power - Elizabeth, Calypso/Tia Dalma, and the Kraken (there's also Annamaria, but they lose her entirely somewhere between the first and the second movies) - all three of which have been disposed of somehow (Davy Jones kills the Kraken on Beckett's orders). It's pretty depressing, to be frank. I love the Pirate franchise, no matter how crazy and overblown the last two films became. They don't make a lick of sense, but who cares? Pirates! Very pretty pirates, too, as the cinematography of World's End is just as lovely as in the other two. But I think I'll not be buying my own copy of the finale. The others are fun to trot out on a sick day or any other time I'm feeling somewhat in need of a shiny entertainment. But the third leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.