Spoiler Free 2007 Movie Year in Review
A number of my friends have made recent posts about the Oscar season. I might get there too, but thus far I've seen of this year's nominees than in any other year since I became a hard core movie attendee. Granted, if I see just two more films (Michael Clayton and There Will Be Blood) I vault back up to my normal lofty percentage, but why am I not there yet? Maybe this is just bad luck, or finances, or maybe it is an indication that I'm doing a poor judge of Oscar bait. How about if I give you my 2007 summary and you can judge my taste for yourself?
There were a few big movie events that I attended in 2007. The first two were the perennial favorites of the 32nd Annual SciFi Marathon and the 31st Cleveland International Film Festival. I only made it to a few movies at each of these. The third event was the Werner Herzog retrospective that ran January & February at the Cleveland Cinematheque. I saw 7 films during that. It probably doesn't qualify as an event but I also saw my first movie at the Cleveland Museum of Art; previously I had only scene their movies when they ran on the CWRU Film Society's turf.
This is my fifth movie year in review, and I still haven't come up with a reliable format to ensure reading hilarity. So I'll throw out some categories and see what happens. Let's start with an easy one:
Best Mainstream Comic Book and/or Action Spectaculars
I'd probably watch Live Free or Die Hard or The Bourne Ultimatum again. The others I'd prefer not to watch ever again. Spiderman3 I wish I'd never watched in the first place. Maybe I'm developing an allergy to mainstream action movies, or maybe I'm just developing taste. Who knows? 300 was particularly disappointing because they made it so pretty, and then forgot that it has to be more than just pretty, and preferably not a polemic.
Assorted Oscar Bait That Nobody Should Have Bit On
All three of these movies featured top notch actors/actresses and/or a famous director. None of them were particularly good. They all had moments. The Painted Veil features some gorgeous cinematography, Letters From Iwo Jima has some good combat scenes, and Little Children's Jackie Earle Haley deserved his Oscar nod. On the whole, though, none of them had the kind of consistent quality that would get Oscars in an ideal world.
Animated
Ratatouille needs no introduction and I felt it was a more than worthy entry in the Pixar canon. It couldn't touch Paprika though, which is arguably Satoshi Kon's finest movie thus far. That's saying something, because his previous three movies were all excellent. Miyazak should watch his back, or Kon will pass him as Japan's premiere animator. Blood Tea & Red String is was a really bizarre stop motion film which confused us enough to justify a drink or two after we saw it at the Cinematheque.
Directorial Debuts You Should See
It's worth saying again: these movies are excellent and you should check them out.
Romantic Comedies
Does Waitress count as a romantic comedy? Maybe not in the classic sense, but I enjoyed it. The Valet was better though. An industrialist is caught having on film having an affair with a supermodel. To plausibly deny it, he tracks down the valet who was in the background of the photo and convinces him to pretend to date the model. The industrialist's wife isn't buying it, but the valet's love interest is. Wacky hijinks ensue. Of the mainstream releases, Music & Lyrics is far superior to Catch & Release, mostly because the real chemistry between Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore trumps the sidekick antics of Kevin Smith.
Science Fiction and Fantasy
No real losers here. Day Watch had an annoying twist ending that ruined the movie for me, but it was otherwise a credible sequel to Night Watch. I Am Legend was one of the best movies of the year until it hit the 3/4 mark, and then it fell apart. It rallied, and is worth seeing, but it didn't quite hit it out of the park. Pan's Labyrinth was wonderfully creepy and I liked it a lot. Children of Men was the big winner in this category. Clive Owen and company's dystopian future was one of the more interesting science fiction worlds we've seen on screen in the past decade.
Zombies!
Aw hell, who are we kidding? I love all zombie movies, even the terrible ones, and none of these were terrible. Check out Fido if you want a humorous take on the topic, and 28 Weeks Later for your dose of action. Grindhouse's "Planet Terror" segment carried the movie; if you don't like Tarantino just watch the zombies and skip "Death Proof".
Foreign Stuff You Never Heard Of That is Worth Seeing
War & Peace was an eight hour epic in two parts. The full eight hour version is not on DVD (shorter cuts are on video, I think), but if you ever get the chance to see it in a theater you should seriously consider it. It was awesome. Both Daisy and The Aura are much more accessible films. Daisy shadows a Korean hit man and his cop counterpart as they romance the same woman. In the Aura, an epileptic man plans heists in his head for fun. Then he accidentally kills a gangster, steps into his shoes and ends up running a casino robbery. Too bad he has seizures at inconvenient times. Infernal Affairs was the Hong Kong movie that got Hollywoodized into The Departed. The ending is spectacularly different and in my mind better. La Vie En Rose is a biopic of Edith Piaf, with a brilliant soundtrack. This is England follows a young boy in 1980s London who falls in with a group of fascist skinheads. They become his surrogate family, with predictable results. Zebraman... Zebraman is weird. A dorky Japanese school teacher pretends to be a superhero... and then he is fighting off an alien invasion. It is totally odd and quite enjoyable.
Documentaries
In the Shadow Of the Moon made me want to be an astronaut again. F*ck was worth just to see a bunch of talking heads soberly dissecting a profanity. Lessons of Darkness is an hour of nearly wordless footage of the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire in 1991. Sicko was entertaining, and Fired! featured Fred Willard in a hot tub, which was worth the price of admission right there. Err...
The Full List - all 77 of them.
January - 10 + 4
February - 14
March - 6 + 3
April - 5
May - 4
June - 2
July - 6
August - 5
September - 5
October - 6
November - 2
December - 5
Children of Men - WL, 1/05
Dreamgirls - WL, 1/06
Little Children - CL, 1/08
Spike & Mike's 2006-2007 Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation - C, 1/12
The Painted Veil - WL, 1/13
F*ck - C, 1/14
32nd CWRUFilm SciFi Marathon - 1/19-1/21 - 4 total
The Mummy (partial)
Quartermass & the Pit
X2: X-Men United
Pi
Pan's Labyrinth - SS, 1/22
Infernal Affairs - C, 1/25
Catch & Release - WL, 1/26
Vertigo - C, 1/28
Come Early Morning - CMA, 2/01
The Wild Blue Yonder - C, 2/02
Letters From Iwo Jima - CL, 2/05
Lessons of Darkness - C, 2/08
Wheel of Time - C, 2/08
Aguirre, The Wrath of God - C, 2/09
The Holy Mountain - C, 2/11
El Topo - C, 2/11
Fitzcarraldo - C, 2/15
Music & Lyrics - WL, 2/17
The Aura - C, 2/18
Nosferatu the Vampyre - C, 2/22
Cobra Verde - C, 2/25
Bridge to Terabithia - SS, 2/26
Taxi Driver - CL, 3/03
Zodiac - TC, 3/05
300 - WL, 3/09
Fired! - C, 3/10
Army of Shadows - C, 3/16
31st Cleveland International Film Festival - Tower City Cinemas - 3 total
Forgiving Dr. Mengele - Su 3/18
Thicker Than Water - Su 3/18
Daisy - T 3/20
The Prestige - CF, 3/30
The Host - CL, 4/09
Grindhouse - WL, 4/10
Blood Tea & Red String - C, 4/13
The Living Sea - GLSC, 4/20
Hot Fuzz - SS, 4/27
Spiderman 3 - WL, 5/13
28 Weeks Later - WL, 5/23
Waitress - WL, 5/27
The TV Set - SS, 5/28
The Valet - CL, 6/11
Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer - GFK10, 6/22
Paprika - CL, 7/02
Sicko - Skokie AMC Loews, 7/05
Day Watch - CL, 7/09
Killer of Sheep - C, 7/15
Once - CL, 7/16
Ratatouille - WL, 7/28
Transformers - WL, 8/09
Laurel & Hardy Shorts v.1 - C 8/12
The Battle of the Century, Their First Mistake, Helpmates, Big Business
The Bourne Ultimatum - VV, 8/19
La Vie En Rose - CL, 8/20
Balls of Fury - WL, 8/30
Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix - VV, 9/03
The Seventh Seal - C, 9/09
Fido - C, 9/20
Eastern Promises - WL, 9/23
3:10 to Yuma - VV, 9/24
Live Free or Die Hard - CF, 10/05
Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn - CL, 10/06
In the Shadow of the Moon - CL, 10/08
Gone Baby Gone - WL, 10/19
The Darjeeling Limited - Su, 10/28
The Bride of Frankenstein - C, 10/29
This is England - C, 11/08
War & Peace Parts 1 & 2 - C, 11/30
War & Peace Parts 3 & 4 - C, 12/02
Enchanted - WL, 12/07
No Country For Old Men - CL, 12/10
Zebraman - C, 12/13
I Am Legend - WL, 12/14
What You Should Rent In No Particular Order
There were a few big movie events that I attended in 2007. The first two were the perennial favorites of the 32nd Annual SciFi Marathon and the 31st Cleveland International Film Festival. I only made it to a few movies at each of these. The third event was the Werner Herzog retrospective that ran January & February at the Cleveland Cinematheque. I saw 7 films during that. It probably doesn't qualify as an event but I also saw my first movie at the Cleveland Museum of Art; previously I had only scene their movies when they ran on the CWRU Film Society's turf.
This is my fifth movie year in review, and I still haven't come up with a reliable format to ensure reading hilarity. So I'll throw out some categories and see what happens. Let's start with an easy one:
Best Mainstream Comic Book and/or Action Spectaculars
- The Bourne Ultimatum
- Live Free or Die Hard
- Transformers
- Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer
- 300
- Spiderman 3
I'd probably watch Live Free or Die Hard or The Bourne Ultimatum again. The others I'd prefer not to watch ever again. Spiderman3 I wish I'd never watched in the first place. Maybe I'm developing an allergy to mainstream action movies, or maybe I'm just developing taste. Who knows? 300 was particularly disappointing because they made it so pretty, and then forgot that it has to be more than just pretty, and preferably not a polemic.
Assorted Oscar Bait That Nobody Should Have Bit On
- Little Children
- The Painted Veil
- Letters From Iwo Jima
All three of these movies featured top notch actors/actresses and/or a famous director. None of them were particularly good. They all had moments. The Painted Veil features some gorgeous cinematography, Letters From Iwo Jima has some good combat scenes, and Little Children's Jackie Earle Haley deserved his Oscar nod. On the whole, though, none of them had the kind of consistent quality that would get Oscars in an ideal world.
Animated
- Paprika
- Ratatouille
- Blood Tea & Red String
Ratatouille needs no introduction and I felt it was a more than worthy entry in the Pixar canon. It couldn't touch Paprika though, which is arguably Satoshi Kon's finest movie thus far. That's saying something, because his previous three movies were all excellent. Miyazak should watch his back, or Kon will pass him as Japan's premiere animator. Blood Tea & Red String is was a really bizarre stop motion film which confused us enough to justify a drink or two after we saw it at the Cinematheque.
Directorial Debuts You Should See
- Come Early Morning - Joey Lauren Adams
- Gone Baby Gone - Ben Affleck
It's worth saying again: these movies are excellent and you should check them out.
Romantic Comedies
- The Valet
- Music & Lyrics
- Waitress
- Catch & Release
Does Waitress count as a romantic comedy? Maybe not in the classic sense, but I enjoyed it. The Valet was better though. An industrialist is caught having on film having an affair with a supermodel. To plausibly deny it, he tracks down the valet who was in the background of the photo and convinces him to pretend to date the model. The industrialist's wife isn't buying it, but the valet's love interest is. Wacky hijinks ensue. Of the mainstream releases, Music & Lyrics is far superior to Catch & Release, mostly because the real chemistry between Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore trumps the sidekick antics of Kevin Smith.
Science Fiction and Fantasy
- Children of Men
- Pan's Labyrinth
- I Am Legend
- Daywatch
No real losers here. Day Watch had an annoying twist ending that ruined the movie for me, but it was otherwise a credible sequel to Night Watch. I Am Legend was one of the best movies of the year until it hit the 3/4 mark, and then it fell apart. It rallied, and is worth seeing, but it didn't quite hit it out of the park. Pan's Labyrinth was wonderfully creepy and I liked it a lot. Children of Men was the big winner in this category. Clive Owen and company's dystopian future was one of the more interesting science fiction worlds we've seen on screen in the past decade.
Zombies!
- 28 Weeks Later
- Fido
- Grindhouse
- Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn
Aw hell, who are we kidding? I love all zombie movies, even the terrible ones, and none of these were terrible. Check out Fido if you want a humorous take on the topic, and 28 Weeks Later for your dose of action. Grindhouse's "Planet Terror" segment carried the movie; if you don't like Tarantino just watch the zombies and skip "Death Proof".
Foreign Stuff You Never Heard Of That is Worth Seeing
- War & Peace
- Daisy
- The Aura
- The Valet
- Infernal Affairs
- La Vie En Rose
- This is England
- Zebraman
War & Peace was an eight hour epic in two parts. The full eight hour version is not on DVD (shorter cuts are on video, I think), but if you ever get the chance to see it in a theater you should seriously consider it. It was awesome. Both Daisy and The Aura are much more accessible films. Daisy shadows a Korean hit man and his cop counterpart as they romance the same woman. In the Aura, an epileptic man plans heists in his head for fun. Then he accidentally kills a gangster, steps into his shoes and ends up running a casino robbery. Too bad he has seizures at inconvenient times. Infernal Affairs was the Hong Kong movie that got Hollywoodized into The Departed. The ending is spectacularly different and in my mind better. La Vie En Rose is a biopic of Edith Piaf, with a brilliant soundtrack. This is England follows a young boy in 1980s London who falls in with a group of fascist skinheads. They become his surrogate family, with predictable results. Zebraman... Zebraman is weird. A dorky Japanese school teacher pretends to be a superhero... and then he is fighting off an alien invasion. It is totally odd and quite enjoyable.
Documentaries
- In the Shadow of the Moon
- F*ck
- Lessons of Darkness
- Sicko
- Fired!
In the Shadow Of the Moon made me want to be an astronaut again. F*ck was worth just to see a bunch of talking heads soberly dissecting a profanity. Lessons of Darkness is an hour of nearly wordless footage of the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire in 1991. Sicko was entertaining, and Fired! featured Fred Willard in a hot tub, which was worth the price of admission right there. Err...
The Full List - all 77 of them.
January - 10 + 4
February - 14
March - 6 + 3
April - 5
May - 4
June - 2
July - 6
August - 5
September - 5
October - 6
November - 2
December - 5
Children of Men - WL, 1/05
Dreamgirls - WL, 1/06
Little Children - CL, 1/08
Spike & Mike's 2006-2007 Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation - C, 1/12
The Painted Veil - WL, 1/13
F*ck - C, 1/14
32nd CWRUFilm SciFi Marathon - 1/19-1/21 - 4 total
The Mummy (partial)
Quartermass & the Pit
X2: X-Men United
Pi
Pan's Labyrinth - SS, 1/22
Infernal Affairs - C, 1/25
Catch & Release - WL, 1/26
Vertigo - C, 1/28
Come Early Morning - CMA, 2/01
The Wild Blue Yonder - C, 2/02
Letters From Iwo Jima - CL, 2/05
Lessons of Darkness - C, 2/08
Wheel of Time - C, 2/08
Aguirre, The Wrath of God - C, 2/09
The Holy Mountain - C, 2/11
El Topo - C, 2/11
Fitzcarraldo - C, 2/15
Music & Lyrics - WL, 2/17
The Aura - C, 2/18
Nosferatu the Vampyre - C, 2/22
Cobra Verde - C, 2/25
Bridge to Terabithia - SS, 2/26
Taxi Driver - CL, 3/03
Zodiac - TC, 3/05
300 - WL, 3/09
Fired! - C, 3/10
Army of Shadows - C, 3/16
31st Cleveland International Film Festival - Tower City Cinemas - 3 total
Forgiving Dr. Mengele - Su 3/18
Thicker Than Water - Su 3/18
Daisy - T 3/20
The Prestige - CF, 3/30
The Host - CL, 4/09
Grindhouse - WL, 4/10
Blood Tea & Red String - C, 4/13
The Living Sea - GLSC, 4/20
Hot Fuzz - SS, 4/27
Spiderman 3 - WL, 5/13
28 Weeks Later - WL, 5/23
Waitress - WL, 5/27
The TV Set - SS, 5/28
The Valet - CL, 6/11
Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer - GFK10, 6/22
Paprika - CL, 7/02
Sicko - Skokie AMC Loews, 7/05
Day Watch - CL, 7/09
Killer of Sheep - C, 7/15
Once - CL, 7/16
Ratatouille - WL, 7/28
Transformers - WL, 8/09
Laurel & Hardy Shorts v.1 - C 8/12
The Battle of the Century, Their First Mistake, Helpmates, Big Business
The Bourne Ultimatum - VV, 8/19
La Vie En Rose - CL, 8/20
Balls of Fury - WL, 8/30
Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix - VV, 9/03
The Seventh Seal - C, 9/09
Fido - C, 9/20
Eastern Promises - WL, 9/23
3:10 to Yuma - VV, 9/24
Live Free or Die Hard - CF, 10/05
Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn - CL, 10/06
In the Shadow of the Moon - CL, 10/08
Gone Baby Gone - WL, 10/19
The Darjeeling Limited - Su, 10/28
The Bride of Frankenstein - C, 10/29
This is England - C, 11/08
War & Peace Parts 1 & 2 - C, 11/30
War & Peace Parts 3 & 4 - C, 12/02
Enchanted - WL, 12/07
No Country For Old Men - CL, 12/10
Zebraman - C, 12/13
I Am Legend - WL, 12/14
What You Should Rent In No Particular Order
- Once - My favorite movie of the year. If you like singer-songwriters, great lyrics and palpable attraction between your lead actors, you need to see this.
- Eastern Promises - deserves its Oscar nods.
- No Country For Old Men - It took me a while, but I've finally seen a Coen Brothers film. I hope the rest can live up to this one.
- In the Shadow of the Moon - For a little while, I had a ten-year-old's sense of wonder.
- Paprika
- Fitzcarraldo - The best Werner Herzog film is about a man obsessed with opera and the lengths he'll go to to have one appear in his town in the middle of the Amazon.
- Aguirre, The Wrath of God - More Herzog. Another river in the Amazon. Another obsessed man Totally different movie. Almost as good.
- Pan's Labyrinth
- The Prestige
- Taxi Driver - Are you talking to me?
- Come Early Morning
- Enchanted - It made me happy.
- Daisy
- Children of Men
- Fido