Critics' Top 10s 2007

[Johnny Guitar]

Rosenbaum's list for the Reader.

I've just been able to download the page (the Chicago Reader gives my browser problems), and don't think anyone put this up yet.

"For me, the two dozen movies most worth celebrating include a dozen masterpieces that finally showed in Chicago in 2007 even though they were made earlier, one as long ago as 1959. These movies are disparate on many levels, but at least half share one significant trait: they abolish most of the distinctions commonly made between fiction and nonfiction. This is a characteristic central to my idea of cutting-edge cinema, and there’s not much new studio fare that has it."

1. Casa de lava ('94) / Where Lies Your Hidden Smile? ('01) / Colossal Youth ('06) - Pedro Costa

2. India Matri Bhumi ('59) - Roberto Rossellini

3. Out 1 ('71) and Out 1: Spectre ('72) - Jacques Rivette

4. Bamako ('06) - Abderrahmane Sissako

5. The Silence Before Bach ('07) - Pere Portabella

6. tie among the best of the new commercial releases
a. Black Book
b. Ratatouille (damn cartoon)
c. Honeydripper
d. Blade Runner: The Final Cut
e. I'm Not There
f. In the Valley of Elah
g. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
h. The Dead Girl
i. Inland Empire
j. Letters from Iwo Jima
k. Margot at the Wedding
l. Starting Out in the Evening

7. Away from Her ('06) - Sarah Polley, "the year's best first feature and its sweetest love story"

8. My Brother's Wedding ('83) - Charles Burnett

9. Private Fears in Public Places ('06) - Alain Resnais

10. Offside ('06) - Jafar Panahi

[Steph2]

That's naughty. Are you trying to get banned?

[Akash]

on the PTA film simply by virtue of the fact that I thought it was merely "very good" instead of a g-d masterpiece.

So you're in between Nick Schager and Ed Gonzalez. How appropriate.

[Eric]

IN CASE YOU were wondering, yes, I saw the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men. This year it makes up my entire category of Movies Other People Liked and I Didn’t.

Along with, apparently, There Will Be Blood. (Though, coming off my first viewing, I would probably have to join that club myself on the PTA film simply by virtue of the fact that I thought it was merely "very good" instead of a g-d masterpiece.)

[Big Magilla]

If I hadn't seen the byline I would have thought this was Ebert's list.

[Akash]

So without any further ado, here are my choices for the best English-language films in 2007:

2. Joe Wright’s Atonement

10. Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up

IN CASE YOU were wondering, yes, I saw the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men. This year it makes up my entire category of Movies Other People Liked and I Didn’t. It is simply too nihilistically evil-worshipping for my taste

MY TEN-BEST actresses of the year were as follows:

3. Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, I’m Not There

9. Jodie Foster, The Brave One

MY TEN-BEST actors of the year were:

8. Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Savages, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

He's that thing that I'm not allowed to call people anymore. A big fat one.

[Damien]

Andrew Sarris in the NY Observer:

Juno, Juno, Juno! A Movie That Delivered
Director Jason Reitman wooed me away from weighty fare with his teen-pregnancy charmer. And all the other bests of the year.

by Andrew Sarris January 1, 2008

strongly suspect that in the year 2007, there were more interesting pictures and, almost certainly, more interesting acting performances than I had time to see. After all, there were more than 500 films released in the New York area this year, not unlike most recent years. Hence, I apologize in advance to all the talented people I may have overlooked in my year-end rumination. Nonetheless, with all the wonders of contemporary technology, it is becoming easier to catch up, as it were, with any neglected masterpieces we may have missed during the year.

So without any further ado, here are my choices for the best English-language films in 2007:

1. Jason Reitman’s Juno

2. Joe Wright’s Atonement

3. Andrew Wagner’s Starting Out in the Evening

4. John Carney’s Once

5. Sarah Polley’s Away From Her

6. Steve Buscemi’s Interview

7. Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace

8. Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages

9. Denzel Washington’s The Great Debaters

10. (Three-Way Tie) Robert Benton’s Feast of Love, Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up and John Dahl’s You Kill Me.



IN CASE YOU were wondering, yes, I saw the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men. This year it makes up my entire category of Movies Other People Liked and I Didn’t. It is simply too nihilistically evil-worshipping for my taste, though I can’t fault the sterling performances of Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones and Woody Harrelson.



MY CHOICES FOR the best foreign-language films in 2007:

1. Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

2. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others

3. Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution

4. Stefan Krohmer’s Summer ’04

5. Denis Dercourt’s The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de Pages)

6. Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding

7. Pascale Ferran’s Lady Chatterley

8. Patrice Leconte’s My Best Friend

9. Joachim Lafosse’s Private Property

10. (Three-Way Tie) Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en rose, Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book and Claude Chabrol’s The Comedy of Power



MY TEN-BEST actresses of the year were as follows:

1. Julie Christie, Away From Her

2. Ellen Page, Juno

3. Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, I’m Not There

4. Isabelle Huppert, The Comedy of Power, Private Property

5. Laura Linney, The Savages, Breach

6. Martine Gedeck, Summer ’04, The Lives of Others

7. Markéta Irglová, Once

8. Marion Cotillard, La Vie en rose

9. Jodie Foster, The Brave One

10. Anamaria Marinca, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days



MY TEN-BEST actors of the year were:

1. George Clooney, Michael Clayton

2. Russell Crowe, American Gangster, 3:10 to Yuma

3. Gordon Pinsent, Away From Her

4. Mathieu Amalric, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

5. Ulrich Mühe, The Lives of Others

6. Glen Hansard, Once

7. Steve Buscemi, Interview, Delirious

8. Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Savages, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

9. Ben Kingsley, You Kill Me

10. Daniel Auteuil, My Best Friend, The Valet

[Eric]

That said, I really don't think White is willing to accept what Altman was all about.

http://www.nypress.com/21/1/news&columns/feature3.cfm

A podcast of the New York Times’ two lead film critics discussing the movie year betrayed the duo chortling, “It was a good year to be evil Americans.” This attitude, so redolent of liberal media bias (the Borat scorn one hoped had played out) showed the prominence of the anti-Bush/anti-American depression that even Altman had expressed to the media yet never tarnished the rich understanding and broad compassion of his movies. The real villain in A Prairie Home Companion wasn’t corporate capitalism but Death.



Edited By Eric on 1199419236

[Eric]

Not as out there as he's been in the past. I could see the following being true/acceptable:

The Darjeeling Limited > better than Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (this is the only one where I've seen both and know it's true)
Private Fears in Public Places > better than Southland Tales
Hot Fuzz > better than Superbad
The Bubble > better than Juno
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry > better than Knocked Up
Amazing Grace > better than Atonement

Lose/lose, probably:

Lions for Lambs >better than Charlie Wilson’s War
The Brave One > better than Eastern Promises
Rescue Dawn > better than In the Valley of Elah
Romance & Cigarettes > better than I’m Not There

[Sonic Youth]

Word is, he's heavily into Armond (China) White. He's been full of it his whole life.

[Akash]

The Brave One > better than Eastern Promises

Is he on drugs?? The Brave One is one of the most ludicrous films I've ever seen, easily one of the WORST of the year.

[Penelope]

Armond White's list is a "X is better than Y" list (I love how he gets the title wrong for one of his favorite films of the year; that pretty much tells me all I need to know):

The Darjeeling Limited > better than Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Private Fears in Public Places > better than Southland Tales

Hot Fuzz > better than Superbad

The Bubble > better than Juno

Lions for Lambs >better than Charlie Wilson’s War

Diggers > better than Gone Baby Gone

I Now Introduce You to Chuck and Larry > better than Knocked Up

The Brave One > better than Eastern Promises

War > better than The Bourne Ultimatum

Rescue Dawn > better than In the Valley of Elah

No Country for Old Men > better than There Will Be Blood, Zodiac

Amazing Grace > better than Atonement

Romance & Cigarettes > better than I’m Not There

To see what he actually says about each one, click here.



Edited By Penelope on 1199416196

[Eric]

That too is easily taggable as an example of his fastidious, OCD impulse to catalog. As the film was released separately everywhere else in the world in an expanded edition, it officially counts as a separate film, even though this seems a case in which following the rules takes unwarranted precedence over aesthetic concerns. (I could just be saying that because no single piece of Grindhouse works better for me when separated from its collective whole.)

(That said, he actually ended up including Death Proof in the critics' polls, so I don't know what's up with that.)

[OscarGuy]

I'd call him an idiot just for pulling Death Proof out of Grindhouse and then citing Grindhouse.

[Eric]

as-of-late quiet contrarian Mike D'Angelo

Is that to say his contrarianism has been somewhat more quiet in '07? Because I was just going to say, his continued enthusiasm for Kim Ki-duk aside, his causes this year are predominately with the grain, even with himself: his untempered enthusiasm for My Kid Could Paint That is because he sees it as an anti-auteurist text.