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Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman are absolutely at the top of their game. And thank the Lord for Marissa Tomei. Physically she is hot and sultry, but in the dramatic scenes she is subtle and nuanced. She ought to be working more.
Veteran director Sidney Lumet sets this amazing piece in a world where What Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong. And Lumet, God bless him, makes sure that when things do wrong they go wrong in the most soul-crushing, emotionally gut-wrenching ways.
8. Margot At The Wedding
Noah Baumbach's follow up to The Squid and The Whale is funny. Really funny. Super funny. It is Three Stooges funny. Just replace the Stooges' eye-gouges and head bonks and swift kicks to the buttocks with psychological torture and emotional blackmail and self-centered intellectual attacks on loved ones and you've got Margot At The Wedding.
The movie is successful because it never apologizes or justifies the actions of its characters. In fact, whenever Baumbach can, he will have one of the characters in the film expose another character's motivations in the most cynical, insulting, and intellectually searing way imaginable.
Simply put, it is an exceedingly confident movie about people with very little confidence in themselves.
9. Hot Fuzz
Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg just got everything right in Hot Fuzz. They set out to lampoon the action genre and ended up making a better action picture than the ones they are making fun of. It's brilliant and clever and fun. The duo's previous effort, Shaun Of The Dead, showcased their ability to be cinematic and comedic at the same time. In fact, cinematic techniques like whip pans, extreme close-ups and quick-cut edits are mined as an additional source of comedy. Without trying to be, Hot Fuzz ends up being the best buddy-cop action-comedy ever made.
10. Superbad
The greatest thing about Superbad is that it feels real. That is, it is a sincere film. There is an emotional truth that permeates every frame of this movie. It is, obviously, a comedy. But it could have been a drama. And this is the genius of the Apatow touch. Nearly all the filmed works Apatow has been involved with are defined by this blending of drama and humor. It is evident in his television work on Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared. It's in Anchorman and The 40-Year Old Virgin and Talladega Nights and Knocked Up. All of these pictures are characterized by their commitment to emotional hardship.
It is hard enough to make a picture that is effective as just drama or comedy. Superbad excels as both.
Knock-knees are back in! Thanks, Superbad!
11. Rescue Dawn Would be up there but there's only room for 10 in the Top 10.
12. The Darjeeling Limited Would be up there but Wes Anderson is turning into the comedy version of Tim Burton - every film looks exactly the same.
13. Knocked Up Would be up there but Superbad already is and Superbad is more fun.
14. The Host Would be up there but it's down here.
15. Eastern Promises Would be up there but something had to be number 15.
Honorable mentions:
No Country For Old Men
Yeah, sure, it's good, but the fact is that if it wasn't the Coen Brothers, nobody would care. And the Coen Brothers can do, and have done, much better than this.
Dan In Real Life
This movie is just so watchable. It's clean and efficient and moves and is funny. Just great classical filmmaking going on here.
Comments (7)
Good picks!
I am glad you included "Zodiac" "Before the Devil Knows Youre Dead" and "Hot Fuzz"
Dont you think Robert Downey Jr. deserved an Oscar or Golden Globe nod for "Zodiac"? I thought he was great!
I would give "No Country" more than a Honorable Mention.....I loved it....and honestly I forgot it was a Cohen Bros movie. I just thought it was pretty darn good!
I cant wait to see "There Will be Blood"
I'm gonna have to check that out ASAP
1 of 7 | Posted by Anonymous | Posted on February 4, 2008 5:26 PM
it's anniedawg25 by the way.....not sure why my comment above posted anonymous!
:)
2 of 7 | Posted by anniedawg25 | Posted on February 4, 2008 5:36 PM
I don't know about any of the other movies listed, since I haven't seen them, but Spiderman 3 in a "best of 2007" list? Really?
I can't imagine liking a Spiderman movie with dance numbers!
It failed on SO many levels, not the least of which were an excess of villains, an unnecessary and forgettable love triangle, horribly miss-cast comedic actors as the main villains and a transparently predictable ending.
The visuals were amazing, as usual for these films, but the rest of the film was just painful to watch.
Spiderman 3 was Marvel's Superman Returns.
Raimi should have stuck to his guns and never let the studio talk him into a Venom story. It seemed obvious that his heart just wasn't in this at all.
Where you saw the inner Sam Raimi, I saw him phoning it in.
3 of 7 | Posted by greybishop | Posted on February 4, 2008 5:37 PM
Glad to have you with us Damien. You seem to have a little bit different taste in movies than Sutter.... this makes for a better collective critique.... does that make sense? That said.....
I disagree on two of your choices.
Spiderman 3 was a total diappointment to me and I'm a comicbook fan. I agree with Greybishop. Too many villians to deal with in one movie. the action and storyline were all over the place. But I agree that the guy from "Wings" kicking ass was kinda cool, but I found it hard to believe that he was the killer of Uncle Ben.
My other disagreement was with "SuperBad." I got alot of flak for critisizing this movie but I found it just plain stupid. It was totally predictable and stereotypical. The nerds and the hot girls has been done to death.
Hope to here more from you in the future.... maybe you could delve into the classics and not just the new releases.
4 of 7 | Posted by chooch850 | Posted on February 4, 2008 7:43 PM
Hi All.
Well, this is fun. You know, in an earlier draft of this list I prefaced the Spiderman 3 entry by saying, "Okay, I'm probably going to lose a lot of you on this one...", but I felt it was too presumptuous to assume a readership with my first submission. Apparently not.
I'll just point to greybishop's comment about not imagining liking a Spiderman movie with a dance number. Well, it is precisely this sort of joyful whimsy that elevated this film for me. It was actually precisely at that moment when I said to myself, "Raimi is one of the bravest filmmakers working today because no other director in his right mind would try this."
I think time will see the dancing "emo" Spidey as the most memorable. It already provokes the strongest response...
5 of 7 | Posted by damienbelliveau | Posted on February 5, 2008 12:58 PM
Damien-
Hey, to each his own.
And boy, you can have the dancing emo Peter Parker.
It's rare that I wince when watching a movie. I winced and cringed a lot during this one.
Watching the dance number made me wonder if Raimi put such an awful scene in the movie as a protest against having to do the Venom story he swore he'd never do.
Perhaps movie fans in general might find the film-making aspects appealing, but for this comic book fan it was simply the brutal gutting of a once great franchise.
I only react out of surprise that anyone actually enjoyed it. Otherwise a totally forgettable film that I don't ever intend to suffer though again.
6 of 7 | Posted by greybishop | Posted on February 5, 2008 1:37 PM
Welcome aboard, Damien!
7 of 7 | Posted by sutterkane | Posted on February 6, 2008 12:11 PM