10 Best Films of 2007

10.) Hot Fuzz
The exemplary duo of Wright and Pegg manage to hit another fanboy pastiche out of the park. This action film parody remains firmly rooted in comic soil, yet delivers the "fuck yeahs" as rapidly and readily as any installment of the Die Hard franchise. A supposedly "surprise" ending will seem ironically believable to anyone whose grown up in upper/middle class suburban America. Meanwhile, the welcome inclusion of graphic violence is at times surprising, but always entertaining, which seems to be the bottom line for these two. Wright/Pegg have all the makings of Quentin Tarantino's logical evolutionary leap forward: a film-history obsessed duo eager to reflect our popular cinema in a decidedly more commercial way, without all the foot-fetishism and stray navel-gazing.

9.) Grindhouse
Its a bit embarrassing that this gutsy, synthetic B-movie hybrid was marketed with creased, weathered posters, and a digital patina of scratch and wear considering that, for the most part, these pictures stand up admirably on their own. Rodriguez's Planet Terror is the belle of this ball with a biohazard induced zombie outbreak that is liberally peppered with such charming genre touches as a prominently featured jar of severed testicles, and the lovely Rose McGowan outfitted with a high caliber pegleg. Tarantino's Deathproof is definitely the more "meta" of the two with its heavy hot-dose of hipster babble, and meandering auteurist approach to the grindhouse ethos. His first outing as Director of Photography is not to be trifled with however, as the fresh compositions and color treatments convey all the exuberance of the motormouthed director himself. The faux trailers, guest directed by some of genre cinema's best, are the icing on the corpse...er, cake.

8.) I'm Not There
This year Todd Haynes gave us a film as baroque and unkempt as the mop (more of a mistreated broom really) atop Dylan's head. Eight incarnations of the singer are stitched together in what thankfully results in a complex engagement with celebrity in lieu of cowardly hero worship. The more far-out Dylans, a black blues-playing youth, the poet Rimbaud, and an age-mellowed Billie the Kid, are nicely anchored by the familiar rockstar/actor, and Cate Blanchett's stringy-hiared artist under duress. Special note is deserved for Charlotte Gainsbourg who has the tremendous ability to switch between potently appealing feminine confidence, to haggard, defeated weakness, not just from scene to scene, but from shot to shot. Hers is the best performance of the film, and is sadly buried beneath the ensemble.

7.) Eastern Promises
In its simplest terms, David's Cronenberg's Russian Mafia flick is an auteurist stab at the gangster genre - a tantalizing prospect since the viscera-loving Canuck's later work is more marked by its stylization than categorization. While A History of Violence had its mob elements, these were presented more as dress-up and pastiche: a foil to coax out Viggo Mortensen's dark side. This time around, thanks to an orphaned-baby Macguffin, a (rather bland) Naomi Watts wades into a scuzzy world where the viewer is treated to secretly kept women, grotesque stiffs stowed away in freezers, and an epic, nude bathhouse battle. The latter scene, with a brazenly vulnerable Mortenesen locked in mortal combat with two gorillas definitely lives up to the critical hype. Let's see perennial big-boxoffice actioners Bruce Willis, or Jamie Foxx try and pull of a scene that raw. Here's looking forward to a Cronenberg western, or even a Cronenberg musical. One can hope after all.

6.) Persepolis
The most beautifully animated film this year springs forth from Marjane Satrapi's illuminating life story and her larger than life ego. From the heartbreaking hardships suffered under hardline regime and violent revolutions, to alienating languish in exile, Satrapi evokes sympathy for herself and her country generally free of maudlin theatrics. Simultaneously, her rebellion (innocent and unsophisticated though it may be) is illustrated in a most endearing and honest fashion. Through Iron Maiden cassettes and leather jackets, through booze-fueled underground parties with shed burqas, dancing, and makeup comes an earnest defiance, and meaningful rejection of authority. It may have a little of that Bon Jovi cheese-factor, but kicking out the jams proves to be an inspiring weapon against Sharia: Spuds MacKenzie meets Che Guevara.

5.) Margot at the Wedding
I'll admit a soft spot for that specific type of East Coast intellectual melodrama, ideally directed by a nebbish in hornrimmeds. Myopic or not, Noah Baumbach seems to have picked up those frames, and carries them admirably with Margot at the Wedding. Watching the Baby-Booming "me" generation flounder in coping with the mediocrity of an ordinary existence is delectable in its schadenfreude, yet also provides the kind of embarrassingly solipsistic release us regular Joes/Janes don't always have access to. Its a vicarious kind of pleasure, whose Bergmanesque grievances are always most appropriately played along the coast of Long Island's grey ocean. Baumbach revels in muddy character morality, and while I think the cruelty of Kidman's Margot is overly exaggerated, there's still a recognizability that goes all the way down to her stupid fuchsia hat. The biggest wart here is Jack Black, who I've yet to see fully succeed in a non-comedic role, as his overbearing quality tends to betray a subtle or nuanced performance. Finally, the film's expired-stock aesthetic is a surprisingly inspired choice. A dark, grainy existence is only fair for characters that can't, or chose not to, see the forrest for the trees.

4.) The Host
I'll happily raise my glass to fresh blood and vitality in the worn-out monster movie genre. And what a reinvigoration it is! Focusing on a central family that is hopelessly dysfunctional yet limitlessly endearing, director Bong doles out unctuous globs of comedy and pathos in equal measure to create a film with as much emotional verism as madcap fantasy. The multi-mandibled amphibioid biohazard springing from the Haan may not be rendered in the best CGI money can buy, but he Animators deserve kudos anyhow for their ballsiness in bringing this beastie's rampage against humanity in cold, clear daylight. As if the monster weren't a formidable enough foe, the real baddies come in the form of pasty-faced Orwellian americans in banana-yellow suits (several shades of Romero's The Crazies). How remarkable and telling that an American audience embraced a foreign film in which the U.S. plays the villain (veiled or otherwise). Novel and fresh use of cliched slo-mo, a cattle-driving score, and velvety tracking shots put the polish on a picture that appeals to the fragile, narcoleptic, fuck-up nodding off in all of us.

3.) There Will Be Blood
PT Anderson delivers his first mature film in the form a dry and dirty American epic culled from the muckraking of Upton Sinclaire and made flesh by the world's (arguably) most important actor. Daniel Day Lewis' Daniel Plainview is certainly a cad, but his twinkle-eyed charisma, moustache-wax and boot-polish slickness, and animal cunning speak to our collectively suppressed Nietzschean bully. And we love him for it. Robert Elswit's visceral cinematography is a soiled valentine to barren, inorganic climes - the photography of fingernails that stay dirty in defiance of soap and water. Paul Dano's characterization of a small-town preacher whose questionably trained sermons inherit a rich vein of backwoods gothic, is superb. While diminutive in size he's Plainview's peer in spirit and provides the perfect lightning rod for Lewis to crash against. Of course Plainview's relationship with his son is of interest, but babying audiences with a flashback shot after the final confrontation between father and son does the film no favors. Anderson always seemed to have talent in working with actors, and its encouraging that he's finally done something worthwhile with it.

2.) No Country For Old Men
The Coen Brothers' latest picture is a neo-noir Western existing in a nearly wordless vacuum with the inhospitality of the moon. Joel and Ethan again prove their mastery of stylistic, yet surprisingly unsensational violence in this cooly casual cinema of the local butcher hacking away at a side of beef, or the matter-of-fact presence of roadkill. This year Rob Zombie was supposedly directing Michael Myers, but it turned out to be "in name" only as the blank evil of Javier Bardem's bogeyman was easily the more terrifying portrait of singularly driven malevolence. The brothers Coen love a sordid morality play, and as Tommy Lee Jones' tired sherif rhapsodizes on the copious amount of blood spilled into dry earth it brings to mind Fargo's Frances McDormand's attempts to rationalize the seemingly inhuman brutality of Peter Stormare's character. No Country For Old Men is a return to that disillusioned melancholy, the realization of what horrors our fellow man is capable of, for such insignificant rewards.

1.) This is England
This Is England is an odd and lovely duck indeed, an arthouse picture indifferent to the visual poetics of a Terrance Malick or a Lynne Ramsay, and a period picture that uses its time frame in service of narrative as opposed to cinematic spectacle. This celebration of an admittedly photogenic subculture rarely devolves into fashion fetishization, and the ugly, perpetually snarling antagonist is presented as something beyond a one dimensional monster, a believably vulnerable human. The scene in which a shoe shopping trip ends with Shaun unable to get a pair of the archly coveted Dr. Martin's boots is a prickly bit of close-to-home nostalgia, bringing back memories of that developmental stage where you know (or at least think know) what's cool, though your body hasn't caught up to the fit.

Compiled by Brett A. Scieszka