1. No Country for Old Men : This is, by far my favorite movie of the year without a question. Some people hate the ending. Those people are wrong. The ending is what separates this movie from the countless action movies with similar premises. I had nightmares about Javiar Bardem's character the night after I saw this. It's a brutal movie full of despair. It rules.
2. Once : Talk about a completely different movie from No Country. James Griffin would hate this movie. Technically it's a musical, but not in the way you're thinking. This is just a really sweet, little movie. Everything you've read about it is true. It's simple and charming and a great take on romantic movies and musicals.
3. Zodiac : I thought David Fincher ruled when I was in high school. Fight Club was my favorite movie. Now I'm 25 and that is not the case. Fight Club is a movie made for high school-age boys with too much testosterone and a simplistic view of consumerism. The fans who misunderstood this movie made me hate it.
Anyways, Zodiac is great. It's a detailed account of a group of men who become obsessed with cracking the case of the Zodiac Killer. It's not a horror movie, it's a procedural. It's slow, well thought out, and interesting film about obsessive personalities and unsolvable mysteries.
4. Control : The bio-pic of Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division. This is a classy little film. It's a beautifully shot, warts-and-all portrait of a confused, mentally-ill, young man (he was 23!) who got married too young and had a mistress. He also happened to be the singer of a great band.
5. Rescue Dawn : Werner Herzog's most accessible movie. Here he retells the story from his documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" using actors and structuring it like a standard movie. Christian Bale, Steve Zahn, and Jeremy Davies do an amazing job.
6. Superbad : I was torn between this and "Knocked Up". Here's my rationale: "Knocked Up" is the more well-made movie but I liked "Superbad" better. It's uneven. The cops were a little too over the top, but this movie is hilarious, plain and simple.
7. The Savages : This movie couldn't have been made without the involvement of Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. They do an incredible job as two mid-level playwright siblings dealing with their estranged father's losing battle with dementia and ultimately death. It's pretty funny too.
8. Juno : You know about this movie. I don't need to tell you about it. I hated the first 15 minutes of it. I thought it was Napoleon Dynamite rip off. I couldn't stand it's "hip" dialogue, but then something happened: the characters became 3-dimensional. Yes, the dialogue is a little too precious for it's own good, but all the actors do such a good job and the script always goes in directions you don't expect to go and deals with the issues realistically and satisfactorily.
9. Hot Fuzz : These dudes rule. This movie is hilarious. I don't know what else to say. I like cop movies, I like comedies, I like satires. There you go.
10. Chasing Ghosts : You probably haven't had the opportunity to see this documentary because it hasn't been picked up for distribution because it deals with the same group of people that "King of Kong" deals with. It's about a group of video-game nerds who dominated the arcades in the 80's, achieved astronomical high scores, became sorta celebrities and then disappeared into obscurity along with the demise of the arcade scene. I haven't seen "King of Kong" so I can't really compare the to, but like "Zodiac" this is really a movie about obsessive personalities. These guys are great characters who are obsessed with learning as much as possible about whatever subject happens to interest them. They struggle with finding girlfriends, real jobs, maintaining friendships, and they are all similar in their meticulousness. It's a great character study full of awesome video game stuff.
Other movies that I liked but didn't make the list because they were either uneven, a little too long, or just didn't fit are: I'm Not There, There Will Be Blood, 3:10 to Yuma, Eastern Promises.
Later gators.
6 comments:
I disagree with There Will Be Blood. It should have rightfully made the list. But I don't know what I would have kicked off. Probably Chasing Ghosts since I didn't see that. I shouldn't argue with your opinion but, as you're aware, I've got a competition in me.
diving bell and the butterfly?
the orphanage?
i didn't know you enjoyed the savages that much.. or maybe i did.
I didn't see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Orphanage i didn't see until 2008. I don't think it was really released until January...I may be wrong about that though.
"The Orphanage"is Spain's official entry for Best Foreign Language film for the 80th Annual Academy Awards (that's this year's show).
I totally forgot Eastern Promises came out this year. probably my fave. I won't donk out on you here about "No Country for Gary Oldman" but I think that everything but the story was absolutely brilliant. Every second of watching it, I was thinking, "this could be the greatest movie ever," and the last 10 minutes or so just did not pan out. I want to read the book, because I feel like that's the real reason to appreciate the film - there's probably more nuances, etc to make you appreciate the subject matter. I have no idea. I didn't go to film school, as a probably 13 year-old girl made sure I was well-aware of in a hot tub at the Oakwoods, after Super Bowl XXXVIII. That sounds far more nefarious than it actually was. But the point is, I feel unqualified to judge these things when everyone around me whose opinions I trust tells me I'm wrong. Same way you felt about "There Will Be Blood." Anyway, the point is, that my list would probably look, in an un-ranked order:
1. Juno
2. Superbad
3. Eastern Promises
4. Diving Bell & the Butterfly
5. There Will Be Blood (for DDL alone. I would watch that man eat cereal for 7 hours, and enjoy every second of it. I wonder if he'll cobble some shoes for me)
6. Sicko
7. Joe Strummer: the Future is Unwritten
8. Into the Wild
9. Margot at the Wedding
10. Beowulf in 3-D
I'd still like to see Michael Clayton, Talk to Me, Persepolis, Charlie Wilson's War, & The Great Debaters, sort of. The Orphanage was the scariest movie I've ever seen. I was terrified, and had nightmares, and didn't like being in dark rooms alone for about 5 days after seeing it. but I dunno. "Sicko" was probably the only thing that floored me this year. How come I can't review anything without sounding like a douchebag? oh, yeah, Married... With Blogren (http://marriedwithblogren.blogspot.com) is returned/ing. what fun!
In regards to obsessive movies, Bug, was both excellently written and acted. If you haven't seen it, I'd reccommend it. It's adapted from the stage, but excellently so. Could be older than this year, but that holds no bearing on how much I enjoyed it.
*SPOILER ALERT* (don't read this if you want to see "Bug," for some reason)
I don't know who you are, "Tom," but I hated Bug with all of my heart and soul. I think it was a play that is entirely unadaptable to the screen. All of the suspension of disbelief that the medium of theatre allows for is thrown out the window when you introduce cameras, close-ups and special effects (or a noted lack thereof). The question of, "is that a bug I just picked off of you?" is answered for me ("nope") when I see no bug (or anything that I might identify as a bug) on screen. In a theatre, even from the front row, an actor pantomiming the same gesture is a lot more convincing, and a helicopter "descending" on stage is a lot more epic than some shaky camera work and bright lights. Anyway, I thought the movie was crap.
Post a Comment