Eric D. Snider,
Dec 31, 2007
Tales of murder and revenge; musicals; tales of murder and revenge that are also musicals -- 2007 was a strange year for movies. My picks for the 10 best include comedies, Broadway adaptations, violent thrillers, a documentary, and a cartoon. Here's hoping 2008 is just as eclectic and exciting.
1. No Country for Old Men: Sometimes I'm ambivalent about the order of my top four or five movies. Not this year. No Country for Old Men made the list as soon as I saw it, and it hit the #1 spot when I saw it a second time. It's the closest thing to a perfect movie that I saw all year, richly detailed, beautifully constructed -- and it doesn't forget to be entertaining, either.
2. Waitress: A film that's genuinely, lastingly uplifting to one's spirits is rare. Waitress blew me away with its tartly funny dialogue, its elegant solution to its story's thorny dilemma (what do you do when you the husband you hate gets you pregnant and you fall in love with your married gynecologist?), and its sunny -- but not naive or blindly optimistic -- outlook.
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3. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead: A crime thriller so straightforward, you can guess pretty early on who will live and who will die. The thrills come from two sources: suspense over how, exactly, things will shake out, and the fierce performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, and Albert Finney.
4. Ratatouille: An ingenious mix of old-fashioned cartoon humor, thoughtful ideas on art and talent, and breathtakingly beautiful animation. This is what digital projection was made for: an animated film where every frame is a work of art.
5. Knocked Up and Superbad: Separately, these films would be among the Honorable Mentions: great films, but slightly flawed, and surpassed in excellence by at least 10 others this year. But taken together -- and why not take them together, with their release dates bookending the summer, their similarly raunchy-but-sweet stories, and their overlapping producers, directors, and cast members? -- they comprise an unbelievably funny four hours of smart, modern comedy.
6. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: I make no apologies for admiring the intricate work of Stephen Sondheim, and for loving his macabre musical about a murderous barber. Director Tim Burton managed to make the source material even better. The tunes might not make you tap your toes, but the images will make you cover your eyes.
7. No End in Sight: With calm, rational facts and interviews with key players, political scientist Charles Ferguson examines what the United States did wrong in Iraq in those crucial first few months after the fall of Baghdad. The story is scathing, eye-opening, and infuriating -- and yet Ferguson's tone never becomes strident. This is a movie that doesn't have to raise its voice to make its points.
8. There Will Be Blood: The story of a vile oilman in early-20th-century California is vast in every way, with a performance by Daniel Day-Lewis that's one for the ages. You hate the character, but you sure love watching him scheme.
9. The Lives of Others: It already won the foreign-language award at the Oscars back in February, but let's not forget this German gem (which was released stateside in 2007), a marvelously touching look at an East German secret police agent's transformation from automaton to human being.
10. Hairspray: For as subversive as the basic story is -- it's based on a John Waters film, for crying out loud -- this is as sincere and honest a movie as you can imagine, and fabulously high-spirted to boot. It just plain makes you feel happy, with infectious tunes, energetic dance numbers, and a simple message that's impossible not to like: be yourself, love yourself, and don't try to stop the beat.
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Eric D. Snider (website) loves lists. They are one of his 10 favorite ways of organizing facts.
