The 2007 list.... these films may seem like they came about a few years ago- I mean, I can remember going to Enchanted in theaters, but many of them are still just as talked about as they were when they first came out... Enchanted, for instance. Some films have since become recognized as some of the best in their decade (There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Zodiac), while others have garnered something more akin to a cult following (Juno, Hot Fuzz). These may be old films, but they're name-dropped so frequently they may as well have been made yesterday- so check up on the more well-known ones and see how they ranked, and maybe look up some of the ones you haven't heard. You may like what you find... and, thanks for reading.
10. The Darjeeling Limited
Director: Wes Anderson
Starring: Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Angelica Huston
Release Date: October 26, 2007
Running Time: 91 minutes
Rating: 4/5
The Darjeeling Limited may just be the worst of Wes Anderson's films- but a film that is bad by Wes Anderson standards is still pretty good by the standards of most films, and Darjeeling is certainly a perfect illustration of that. While some of his other films lead more towards the genre of comedy, this film follows his more visually surreal earlier films like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou to provide a more stylistically muted drama, while still managing to provide some interesting visuals and entertaining comedy. The plot itself is something of a satire of many Western attitudes towards Eastern culture, as three inexperienced young brothers set out on a journey across India, expecting a life-changing spiritual experience. Their enthusiasm, of course, gets the best of them, resulting in many hilarious moments (I'm thinking of the lost snake, particularly), and a few sad ones (there's a beautiful funeral scene accompanied by "The Kinks"- and as per Wes Anderson's style, it adopts a pensive slow-motion to set the mood). My only fault with it is the relative lack of plot to some of Wes Anderson's other films... while this could set up perfect true drama, the characters instead tend to stagnate, and at the end of the film the audience is just as lost as they are. To list Darjeeling as your favorite Anderson film would be truly unconventional- I would imagine many people may rank it among their least favorites from his repertoire. Still, don't let that scare you away. It still manages to satisfy as a film that is amusing, thoughtful, and charmingly funny... just don't expect to be swept off your feet.
Director: Edgar Wright
Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent
Release Date: April 20, 2007
Running Time: 121 minutes
Rating: 4/5
I finished watching Hot Fuzz for the first time with a group of friends who were also seeing it for the first time. Needless to say, we were overwhelmed. At the moment, I felt that it exceeded Shaun of the Dead in overall quality, though looking back, I don't think that is the case. Hot Fuzz is certainly one of the funniest films of the decade, in regards to the hilarity of the individual jokes and how frequently those jokes show up- and it's certainly funnier than Shaun of the Dead. But Shaun of the Dead, despite being a comedy, managed to have some pretty solid emotional storytelling as well- what with Shaun's relationships with his parents, his girlfriend, and his best friend... okay, I've got to stop, I'm getting sad just thinking about it now. Compared to Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Hot Fuzz either puts less effort into the crafting of its characters' personal lives, or it puts the same amount of effort and achieves a far lesser amount of success. We don't feel for Nicholas Angel as much as we felt for Shaun or Scott. Still, the story of the workaholic policeman reassigned and shipped off to the quietest town in all of England sets things up perfectly for a beautiful parody of pretty much every action film ever made- following up every explosion and arrest with hours of tedious paperwork, edited with just as much dramatic camerawork as the actual action itself, as per Edgar Wright's flashy and vibrant style. Hot Fuzz, despite its high intensity, is a wonderful film that should hold up as a fun experience for just about anyone.
Director: J. A. Bayona
Starring: Belen Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Princep
Release Date: May 20, 2007
Running Time: 105 minutes
Rating: 4.5/5
J. A. Bayona's The Orphanage, produced by Spanish master of horror Guillermo del Toro, may just be the straight-up scariest movie I've ever seen. It does have some close contenders: Eraserhead was frightening, but that was only on the first viewing, when I didn't know what was coming; and that one scene from Eyes without a Face will most certainly make me cringe every time. But no film, classic or modern, has ever effectively achieved such a foreign kind of eeriness like this one has. The plot of The Orphanage is scarcely more than a simple haunted house story: a family moves into a new home, it's a little creepy, the kid can somehow communicate with the ghosts there, but the parents are oblivious and skeptic to his supernatural abilities- until it's too late, that is. And yet despite typical story conventions, it somehow manages to feel desperately original- maybe because of its distinctively Spanish setting, maybe because of its brilliant twist ending, or maybe because of the bizarre melancholy that persists beneath the terror. The Orphanage, in my opinion, is a perfect example of how horror should be done- not just story-wise, although it does succeed there as well, in making us more concerned about the mother's dramatic relationship with her son than we are about the supernatural forces present. But from a standpoint of solid direction, The Orphanage becomes a textbook of examples of how to create good horror through visual storytelling: things enter the frame in creepy ways, things leave the frame in creepy ways. Half of the screen is left empty in most shots- convenient space is left open for unknown horrors to pop into frame- and yet they rarely do. The point is not to shock the audience, but to spin a web of discomfort around them, so they're in endless anticipation of something horrid. And with the environment created within the film, it becomes so effortless to fall into that web. It functions beautifully as a film that so perfectly nests into its own genre, and yet I don't think it should fail to satisfy even those who are new to the genre, as its heavy amount of heart should melt just about anyone.
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro, Ricky Gervais
Release Date: August 10, 2007
Running Time: 122 minutes
Rating: 4.5/5
Stardust has got to be pretty much one of my favorite fantasy movies ever, if not my absolute favorite: that is, only considering that you restrict fantasy films to films which involve some degree of magic and take place in a slightly medieval-looking time period. Many films that take places in worlds where magic is possible don't use the magic to the fullest extent that it really can be used- I know some films with characters who are wizards, and yet at the most all the wizards will be used for are some bright lights and powerful blasts during combat... our expectations have become so typical that magic is no longer an interesting plot point. I adore Stardust because it takes full advantage of the fact that it takes place in a different world by pitting its characters against villains who both use their powers to an extent great enough that we can see how much they overpower the hero, and also to an extent small enough that we understand their limitations. And yet no matter how many memorable little details are introduced to us here and there (teleporting candles, lightning pirates, or protective flowers) the best and most stunning visual effects are saved for the finale. More remarkable is how the visual effects use such an amount of CGI that we find charm in its tongue-in-cheek visual imperfections and yet we don't feel overwhelmed by a lack of traditional special effects. In fact, charm could be described as the pervading presence throughout the entire film, along with wit, mind you. Perhaps Stardust's greatest flaw is that it doesn't know when to stop being entertaining: but if that's the case, then I hope to God that similarly flawed films will continue to be released. We're presented with one crazy character after another, from a cross-dressing Robert DeNiro to a family of murderous princes to a beautiful witch (played by a stunning Michelle Pfieffer). The film could well be called a lesser, modern-day successor to the The Princess Bride, in that effectively dances between its engaging storytelling and its non-stop humor (which, though liberal and forward-thinking, never turns up as being quite as self-righteous as most British sci-fi/fantasy comedies, e.g. Doctor Who) 's chock-full of adult humor, and yet I wish with all my heart that I had seen it as a child; the childhood me would have seen it a thousand times over.
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Starring: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones
Release Date: November 9, 2007
Running Time: 122 minutes
Rating: 4.5/5
No Country for Old Men is certainly not one of my favorite Coen Brothers films, but it is certainly one of their best, and remains one of their most talked about to this day. No Country for Old Men is the story of three different men and the various crossing of their paths... there's Llewellyn Moss, who stumbles upon a drug deal gone horribly wrong and absconds with the money. Then there's Anton Chigurh, a psychopathic agent of death and destruction that comes tearing down upon Llewellyn with the speed and terror of some kind of mythological force. And following the other two is the small-town sheriff who's just trying to make sense of it all- an old man who finds himself in a country that has grown too wicked and too cruel for his kind. (And of we can't forget the wonderful Woody Harrelson). No Country for Old Men boasts a magnificently well-structured suspense story, with an emptiness of soul to mirror its minimalistic and brutal "modern western" aesthetic. The cinematography is among the best I've ever seen from the Coen Brothers, and Chigurh's role in the story takes a large enough place in the film as to become synonymous like the film itself. Chigurh functions both as a villain within the fixtures of the plot and also as a grander metaphor for the force of evil itself- his presence contains echoes of an almost divine nature, his shadow an omen of not only doom but judgment. Hence like Ledger's Joker, Javier Bardem carries this role past the film itself and into our cultural conceptions of who stands in the pantheon of fictional psychopathic killers- and he certainly comes out as one of the most terrifying. No Country for Old Men is dark, silent, and gripping, despite its intentional anticlimax coming off as one of the more frustrating that these two have delivered with it- as far as a literary adaptation goes, it makes clear the central themes of its source material- but is it the best Coen brothers film? Most likely not.
Director: David Fincher
Starring: Jake Gyllenhall, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr.
Release Date: March 2, 2007
Running Time: 157 minutes
Rating: 4.5/5
Despite the wide audience following that auteur director David Fincher has amassed over the years, it seems that Zodiac is a film that has fared better among critics than audiences- and that's no large surprise, considering that despite its intense thrills, it remains outside the formula of the regular thriller, instead aiming to be something more of a historical drama. Roger Ebert called it the "All the President's Men" of crime films, and he wasn't wrong. Zodiac is much more serious than most of his other films, abandoning the stylish flourishes of drama that can be found in novel adaptations such as Fight Club, Gone Girl, or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for a more naturalistic approach, trying to capture the events surrounding the investigation of San Francisco's Zodiac killer as honestly as possible. It's one of the few modern crime films which I can say focuses more on the process of the police investigation and all of the red tape and bureaucracy that obstructs the policemen from finding the proper channels to direct them to the murderer- in the end, what it takes to solve the unsolved mystery are the investigations of journalist Robert Graysmith. But beyond that, there lie deeper themes within Zodiac of obsession: not only of the killer, but also of the journalist whose fascination with the killer drives him to extraordinary lengths. Zodiac could very well have been a boring film, but somehow the film manages to instill us with the same passion that its journalist hero holds- and the endless searching through files and offices seems just as exciting and heart-pounding as the bizarrely deadpan murder scenes. Fincher's hand guides the camera through one amazing shot after another, providing us with a foreboding omniscient perspective that dives down the golden gate bridge like a sweeping angel of death or hovers over a taxi cab which glides through the dark alley-ways of San Francisco. The film finds success through its unconventional nature- there are many ways to construct a biopic, but very few are as gripping or as menacing as this one, and few thrillers are as beautiful or as smart as this one.
Director: Brad Bird
Starring: Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Janeane Garofalo, Ian Holm, Peter O'Toole
Release Date: June 29, 2007
Running Time: 111 minutes
Rating: 4.5/5
Ratatouille is certainly not one of Pixar's most enduring masterpieces, but I have to say it certainly comes very close. With its main character being a rat (who, thankfully, can speak to the audience and not the human characters in the film), it's surprising that the film remains as fresh as the food on screen. And my word, is it sumptuous. I've seen many a film with food as a main plot element, and yet nothing has gotten my imagination and my taste buds going like Ratatouille- and when you can respond that way even with the knowledge that small sewer-dwelling rodent is the chef, then the film has done an impressive feat. Ratatouille opens on a television screen, featuring a cooking channel: immediately we know what the story is about, and the television itself regains significance when it is shown to be the central rat Remy's portal into the world of humans. We are then shown a rainy French countryside, where the camera pulls in to one small house in particular. A gunshot is heard, and our hero smashes through a glass window. Freeze frame. Narration: "This is me. I think it's apparent I need to rethink my life a bit." Regardless on your thoughts of the story itself, the way the film is structured and presented shows a particular deft handling that is evident from the beginning and carries throughout the rest of the film. I refer to not only the colorful presentation of the characters but also the beautiful Parisian scenery, and of course, the gorgeous Michael Giacchino soundtrack. Many films about talking animals seem to focus explicitly on the animals- but in Ratatouille, Linguini, Colette, and even the antagonist Anton Ego are just as interesting as any of the rats themselves, if not more so. Almost every development in the story manages to offer a pleasant surprise, and even when a scene hits a course par, it still does so in keeping with the cleverness and pathos of the rest of the film. As always, Pixar has given us a sumptuous treat that is sure to bring laughter and a few tears open each viewing.
Director: Kevin Lima
Starring: Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Susan Sarandon, Idina Menzel
Release Date: November 21, 2007
Running Time: 107 minutes
Rating: 5/5
With its simplistic story structures, blinding idealism, and two-dimensional characters, early Disney is awfully easy to parody- which is why it was so surprising that of all the people who could parody Disney, that Disney itself would be the one to do it- more surprising still that they should end up doing such a good job. Enchanted is a film that is a fairy tale, a comedy, a fantasy film, a romance, and a deconstruction of the characters and themes that we've all grown familiar with over the years. It takes the two-dimensional cut-out of the princess and the prince and manages to instill them with complex emotion. And who better to bring life to the naive princess and transform her into an engaging character but the ever-talented Amy Adams? Fantasy and reality merge here as the princess is thrown out of her fairy-tale kingdom through a magic portal that takes her to the world of humans "where there are no happily ever afters". The story, from the start, makes this remark humorously, but you have to admit that's remarkably cynical. The rest of the story serves to properly handle the cynicism, show how it's justified, and also show how we can move past it. Two stories are told simultaneously: the princess doesn't exist so that the single father can bump into her, nor does the single father exist so the princess can find him. And strangely enough, princess Giselle's fairy-tale problems, placed side-by-side with the issues present in the single father's life, somehow seem just as real as the "real-world" problems. And even if the film is working in parody, its musical sequences are some of the most beautiful, creative, funny, and joyous that I've seen in any movie, musical or not. The script even manages to enchant adult audiences as well as younger ones, slipping in a stealthy amount of edgy humor in between nearly every scene. Enchanted is an unconventional sort of comedy film that somehow holds on even as other live-action Disney films of its era fade into obscurity: altogether a successful delight of a family film.
Director: Jason Reitman
Starring: Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, J.K. Simmons
Release Date: December 5, 2007
Running Time: 96 minutes
Rating: 5/5
For a film about teen pregnancy, there were so many ways for Juno to go wrong. I was expecting the entire film to be a story of social isolation, about weathering against the crowd, about a debate between pro-life and pro-choice. And yet instead of the torture that film would have been, I encountered a tender and highly enjoyable romantic comedy, which knows how to keep the drama and the humor equally subtle so neither of the two elements ever really drowns out the other. The same, in fact, could be said for the film's political stance on abortion- Juno chooses to adopt, but the fact that she has a choice plays such a key role in the story- the fact that the pro-life vs. pro-choice thing is an issue is hardly ever brought up, and when it is, the film really seems to do fair justice to both sides in a way that I hardly ever thought possible: through moving the focus of the film to the characters and the comedy instead of letting social-cultural contexts become a distraction. But be warned: Juno is very, very indie. Which is a bit odd, considering that at the time of its release, it sought a pretty big audience and even gained distribution in a pretty conventional sense by a big studio. And yet the self-conscious acoustic ballad soundtrack and the weirdness of the characters- I may here mention the screenwriter's "made-up" dialogue ("geez bananas, shut your friggin' gob) or the characters' ever-present need to do all things excessively quirky (a hamburger phone, seriously?). What makes Juno work, more than anything else, is its emphasis on the characters: their personalities, their motivations. In the end, this becomes more important to the storytellers and the audience alike than the actual path that the story will take, as Juno, hurled into the adult world through her pregnancy, is forced to reconsider everything that she thought she knew about love and adult life. Juno is saturated in intentional kitsch and a certain precociousness common films of its irk- and yet it proves itself thoughtful, sweet and altogether effective at what it aims for, proving itself one of the most essential films of the decade.
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano
Release Date: December 26, 2007
Running Time: 158 minutes
Rating: 5/5
Best film of the 2000's? Probably not. Best Paul Thomas Anderson film? Hey, I don't know- I haven't seen all of his films. But the stunning power of There Will Be Blood is nothing I can deny, and I feel very inclined to say that it is something of a modern Citizen Kane: at least in terms of size, scope, and subject matter. It is a modern dramatic epic, for sure, but it also adopts the same ideas of the corruption of wealth and power that Citizen Kane moves forward. What's more is that it is arguably just as remarkably fine-tuned, as well as considerably darker. Paul Thomas Anderson shows us a kind of visual perfectionism akin to that of Wes Anderson, or even Kubrick, perhaps, and yet it never seems forced or unnatural. Every time a shot comes up that is perfectly symmetrical, the immediate thought is not on the genius of the framing, but on the content that the frame brings attention to. There is more of an eye for the beauty of the drama, and that drama here encompasses everything from the melancholy but powerful soundtrack to the convincing period production design to the passion that never seems absent for a moment. Also ever-present in this film is the compelling drama: despite the fact that the story concerns the growth of a businessman's oil empire and the construction of a pipeline taking oil from Central California to the sea, it's a very hard film to lose interest in. This is largely due to the incredible dynamic that is constructed between the film's two main characters. That is, the deviously opportunistic oil man and a charismatic preacher: both of whom are equally self-interested and opportunistic. And this chemistry wouldn't work without the landmark performances of Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, which seem to have found love and hate from audiences in equal portion- people hate the over-the-top nature of some of the film's more climactic scenes, and yet many find that there's something to be loved within the over-the-top drama. There's such an intensity in every fiber of the dialogue that is necessary to move an otherwise dull idea forward, an intensity that reveals to us something about the American dream, something about greed, and something about the human condition- things that might not be so evident in the hands of a less competent director, nor would things be quite as enjoyable to watch as they are in the hands of someone so stylistically focused as P.T. Anderson-- and no other film has whetted my appetite for more of his work quite like this one has.
-Julian Rhodes
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