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It says something about 2007's cinematic offerings that even I Know Who Killed Me, the movie that seems to leap to everybody's mind when the year's worst is mentioned, had exciting baggage waiting to be unpacked. The idea of Lindsay Lohan contemplating the road toward adulthood as a split between Mouseketeer and skank selves was pungent, tawdry-funny, and a reminder that American films, of which there were many superb samples this year, are at their most interesting when registering internal tension. It's ironic, then, that the weakest movies were dramas dealing with the war at home: The Iraq War was addressed explicitly in Rendition, In the Valley of Elah, Grace Is Gone and Lions for Lambs, flaccid films with none of the resonance encoded in 28 Weeks Later and The Hills Have Eyes 2. Another trend, another issue neutered -- I haven't yet seen Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, but, to judge from Waitress, Knocked Up and Juno, abortion is the new accessory of winsome comedies, an issue brought up only to be neatly patted down, lest viewers spill their popcorn. Speaking of unwanted children, 2007 also had its share of films maudits: Southland Tales, Revolver and Youth Without Youth were bathed in critical venom, but to these eyes they were far richer than all the "meaningful" dissolves in the grotesquely overpraised No Country for Old Men. A year of discovery, and rediscovery. Twilight artists presented crystalline works (Private Fears in Public Places, Magic Mirror, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead), fads were given cutesy titles ("threequel," "mumblecore," "bromance"). Many established auteurs (P.T. and Wes Anderson, Tarantino, Fincher) ventured into new ground, while others (Cronenberg, Haynes, James Gray) refined old obsessions. The Western, moribund since Unforgiven, was revisited, gassily in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and solidly (if stolidly) in 3:10 to Yuma. Disney limited its fairy-tales to Enchanted, which freed the animated screen for the marvels of Ratatouille, The Simpsons Movie, Paprika and Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters. The Bourne Ultimatum scotched its tale of a Frankenstein monster-spy with epileptic editing, but Shoot 'Em Up and Exiled gave actioners a good name. Adam Sandler's blithe queer charade was an antidote to 300's rancid homophobia, yet reviewers were too busy crowning Judd Apatow the King of Comedy to notice it. Beginnings and ends: Sarah Polley's Away From Her was among the year's most promising debuts, while the passing of many a titan (Bergman, Antonioni, Sembene, Yang) left holes in the cinematic landscape. And re-issues of Killer of Sheep and Blade Runner reminded us to not forget our past even as we look ahead to 2008. Favorites from 2007: 1. Death Proof & There Will Be Blood (tie): Wondrous works by the two greatest American directors of their generation. Quentin Tarantino's ode to the lure and danger of intoxication, emotion, and death and Paul Thomas Anderson's dark, excoriating dissection of American ambition made one happy to be alive and going to the movies. 2. Syndromes and a Century: An old monk recalls a reverie of vengeful chicken, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's two-way magic mirror becomes as densely interwoven as Pasolini's Arabian Nights. A picture of mysterious tracking shots and evocative cuts, it is both the year's most disarming romance and its most unnerving sci-fi. 3. Offside: A startling image: The sudden flash of grassy field in the Tehran soccer stadium, the green Eden locked away by gender apartheid. Jafar Panahi's luminous humanist comedy tempers the time-bomb dread of Crimson Gold with an atmosphere of airy defiance gradually sliding into hopeful celebration. 4. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: Tim Burton working at full blast, finding in Stephen Sondheim's brilliant musical not simply a sturdy commercial vessel for his own obsessions, but also a dark kindred spirit -- gothic romanticism no less lyrical for being dipped in copious blood. 5. Eastern Promises: The fairy-tale heroine is told to bury people's secrets with their bodies. Not in David Cronenberg's London. Another late-period masterpiece, grounded in the brilliant use of Viggo Mortensen's physical sturdiness and moral shadows. 6. Into Great Silence: I twice saw Philip Gröning's limpid account of a Carthusian monastery, and both times I felt God's "gentle whisper" translated into the basics of the medium: Light, space, faces, epiphanies. 7. Rescue Dawn: The survivalist action-movie according to Werner Herzog, locating the feverish passion of Aguirre in the protagonist's can-do American cockiness. The friendship between Christian Bale and Steve Zahn proved to be the year's most deeply felt love story between two men. 8. Paprika & Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (tie): How do you like your animated surrealism? Ethereal and ominous like Satoshi Kon's anime, or raunchy and pulverizing like Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis's Adult Swim cherry bomb? I could never choose. 9. Private Fears in Public Places: Alain Resnais's web of human interaction, abstracted into evanescence. There are no gaseous statements about the Human Condition, just the filmmaker's decades of life and art contemplating a group of marionettes, breathing into them pure emotional music. 10. Colossal Youth: Pedro Costa's metaphysical vision would be impenetrable if not for the piercingly fierce emotions that pull the viewer into it. As his dignified phantom wanders a shantytown netherworld, an intimidating aesthetic experiment becomes colossally affecting. Honorable Mention: Youth Without Youth, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Regular Lovers, The Golden Door, Black Book, Half Moon, The Simpsons Movie, The Host, Jimmy Carter Man from Plains, Bug, 28 Weeks Later, No End in Sight and The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
Blind Spots: Persepolis, Redacted, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Honeydripper, Silent Light, The Walker, The Boss of It All, Once, Control and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
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