Cinemascope

“I’m finished here”.

For several days I’ve been switching back and forth between There Will be Blood and Control in the number 1 spot on my Best-Of-2007 list. I can’t make up my mind which I love more. They were both astounding. I finally settled on Control for Best Movie of 2007, but I can’t help thinking how Ian Curtis’ life would look if directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. As far as I care, the two films are tied for Best of the Year.

1. Control (Anton Corbijn)

2. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. Zodiac (David Fincher)
4. Ratatouille (Brad Bird)
5. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
6. The Host (Bong Joon-ho)
7. The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass)
8. Eastern Promises (David Cronnenberg)
9. Knocked Up (Judd Apatow)
10. Away From Her (Sarah Poley)

Note: No Country for Old Men, Juno, Into the Wild and Sweeney Todd have not yet been seen on my side of the world. I hear they are good.

Best of their kind genre-movie-runner-ups:
11. 300 & Beowulf
(two mythical CGI epics, both wonderfully over-the-top. The first is campy and ironic; the second took itself way too seriously but provided the best film-going experience of the year when viewed on Imax 3D)

12. Hot Fuzz
(Hilarious and superbly made, and made you want to see Point Break all over again. The final act is a riot).

13. Superbad
(If David Mamet or Tom Stoppard were to write a teen comedy this is what it would sound like. This film has the best dialog lines heard this year).

14. Hairspray & Across the Universe
(Two musicals set in the Sixties. both naive and old-fashioned but sneakily engaging and lovable).

15. 28 Weeks Later
(This year’s best horror movie. The scenes in an infested and deserted London make I am Legend look like a rip-off).

Almost there:
Wristcutters: A Love Story
(The second movie this year to feature music from Joy Division. An adorable film).

Honorable mentions for documentaries:
Sicko, Crazy Love, The War and In The Shadow of the Moon.

Most moving movies I didn’t think I’ll care for:
The Diving Bell & the Butterfly and Away From Her. I hate hospital movies. But these two movies moved me tremendously. I think of them often.

Best DVD:
Blade Runner: The Final Cut
(As always with this movie - a rare example of a film misunderstood by its own director - Ridley Scott’s additions to the 2007 cut are completely useless, but the image and sound quality are breathtaking and make you fall in love with this movie all over again. The bonus documentary, Dangerous Days, is the best summary of the Big Blade Runner Battle and a riveting story in itself. But mainly: having the much-superior 1982 theatrical cut, for the first time on DVD, is worth buying the entire case. This is the true masterpiece, even if the brains behind it is more Budd Yorkin than Ridley Scott).

Highly over-rated:

Michael Clayton
(Except for one scene, where one character gets whacked out in one continuous take, this film is not as good as many think it is).

American Gangster
(In many ways Denzel Washington’s character in American Gangster and Daniel Day Lewis’s character in There Will Be Blood are quite similar. But American Gangster is like a stone skipping on lukewarm water, a chronology of events with no real gravitas. TWBB, however, displays how grandiose and magnificent a story like this can be, a mythology in the making, a metaphor played out to the extreme, and a real wild ride).

Rescue Dawn
(I prefer the documentary Herzog).

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 Days
(That horrendous fetus on the floor shot aborted this movie mid-term).

La Vie En Rose
(An Oscar for Best Make-up for sure. Not much more than that).

The Namesake
(How do you say “Soap Opera” in Sanskrit?)

Best Screenplay:
(tie) Ratatouille and Zodiac. Two different disciplines of screenwriting, each one fashionable in different eras in Hollywood, get a superb make-over this year. Brad Bird’s script for Ratatouille is astonishing, well structured, perfectly balanced, this is mainstream Hollywood at its most excellent. This is a screenplay Billy Wilder and Izzy Diamond would have loved to have written.
James Vanderbilt’s screenplay for Zodiac is the complete opposite: episodic, open ended, it takes you on a roller coaster ride with your identification. Who’s the real wacko in this movie? This could have been the best movie of 1971.

Way-way-way underrated:

Steven Soderbegh’s The Good German had its’ international premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2007 so I have it on my list this year. This film got overlooked, but it’s a brilliant piece of filmmaking with a very witty and acidic screenplay. Between The Good German and Ratatouille, this has been the year of the Billy Wilder wannabes.

Masterful art-house movies:
Tsai Ming Liang’s Wayward Cloud and I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone
Ploy (Pen-ek Ratanaruang)
Beaufort (Joseph Cedar)
Jellyfish (Etgar Keret and Shira Gefen)
Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi)