My Favourite Movies of 2007

1. I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, USA): Unfolding like a surreal dream, Haynes’ Daliesque biopic of Bob Dylan paints a masterpiece that reveals only impressions of the man’s life. Beautiful and visionary, Haynes divides Dylan’s lives into six parts to which he assigns fictional (though obviously metaphorical) names: “Woody” (Marcus Carl Franklin), a black kid hitching a ride across the country with a machine that kills fascists, lying about his origins to the bums he meets; Jack Rollins (Christian Bale), the protest singer of the early sixties, who becomes disenchanted with “the cause”; Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw), who appears only in front of a sort of tribunal and echoes Dylan’s symbolist influences along with his notorious refusal to classify himself or answer a straight question; Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), the plugged-in Dylan of the mid-sixties, who we see touring England and hounded by Bruce Greenwood’s Mr. Jones; Robbie Clark (Heath Ledger), the unfaithful family man married to Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg); and Billy the Kid (Richard Gere), who lives a rural existence outside of Riddle, Missouri. The segments weave in and out of each other, though are roughly chronological, with a considerable number of flashbacks. The standout sequences are Blanchett’s, in black and white, echoing Pennebaker’s documentary Don’t Look Back, and those with a middle-aged Billy the Kid in rural Missouri, which evokes the characters and themes of both Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and The Basement Tapes (we meet Homer, Mrs. Henry, and other citizens of Dylan and the Band’s basement imaginations, from what Greil Marcus calls the “old, weird America”). Watch for the ostrich and the giraffe (of the non-flammable variety), not to mention the bandstand orchestra doing a “Going to Acapulco.”  The music is a mish-mash of Dylan himself and covers by Richie Havens, John Doe of X fame, Sonic Youth, Eddie Vedder, and a few others.  It was filmed in and around Montreal, with a number of Canadians in minor roles.

2. Juno (Jason Reitman, US/Canada): A charming slice of life comedy starring Nova Scotia's own Ellen Page that hides its Canadianess under the thinnest of veils, from the maple leafs falling in the animated credits to the fact that the film seems to be named after a Canadian awards ceremony. The characters are hardly predictable, and avoid the tired moralism that one would expect in a film about teen pregnancy. The secondary players are also pitch perfect: Michael Cera as Juno's part-time boyfriend, Jennifer Garner as an uptight suburban wife married to her less uptight husband Jason Bateman and J. K. Simmons as Juno's understanding father. There's no car chases or gun battles here, just a quirky series of character studies that carries a healthy scent of real life.

3. Waitress (Adrienne Shelly, USA): A sparkling slice-of-life comedy/drama centering on a diner where waitress Jenna (Keri Russell of Felicity fame) serves up slices of magical pie to her customers. Yet Jenna has made a bad marriage with an controlling, abusive husband, whose crudeness contrasts with the magic of her pie-making skills. Adrienne Shelly co-stars as Jenna’s bubbly fellow waitress Dawn, while Nathan Fillion (AKA Captain Mal Reynolds) puts in an appearance as the local doctor and Jenna’s romantic fling. The film has a tragic edge: Shelly was murdered by a handyman in her own home in NYC after it appeared, ending what could have been a very interesting directorial career.

4. Atonement (Joe Wright, England): A complex film which starts in the mid-1930s and ends in the almost-present that is part love story, part historical drama, in part a story about class differences and in part an homage to the power of writing. Director Wright delivers a more-or-less chronological story that from time to time jumps back a few weeks or months to show us a thread of events from another character's point of view. Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), a working-class boy who wins a scholarship to Cambridge and an upper-class education, falls in love with the somewhat snooty Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley), who lives on a nearby estate with her family. Due to a misunderstanding with a note and the fact that Robbie and and Cecilia consummate their passion in the wrong place at the wrong time - the same night that a houseguest rapes Lola, a visiting cousin - leads the imaginative and jealous young Briony Tallis to accuse Robbie of the foul deed, sending him to prison. Robbie gets out of prison a few years later to serve in the British Army at the start of World War II. We see him separated from his unit in France wandering through farmers' fields, eventually finding his way back to the main BEF force at Dunkirk. Meanwhile Cecilia rejects her family to work in London. To say any more would ruin the film's striking conclusion. The film is very karmic and not a little bleak in its view of life: it shows how a few misguided words or actions at one time can ruin people's lives. Somewhat languid and old fashioned, Wright's long tracking shot on the beaches of Dunkirk is worth the price of admission.

5. Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright, England): A brilliant parody of American cop movies (the two main cops reference Bad Boys II and Point Break several times) by the creators of Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz concerns the exploits of London super-cop Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) who is shuffled off to the seemingly sleepy village of Sandford by jealous superiors to join a rural police force of yokels and incompetents. But all is not as it seems in Sandford, as the “accidents” pile up and Angel becomes suspicious that there are dark forces at work behind the shrubberies. The finale of the movie is an extended gun battle that uses every hackneyed plot element and camera trick from the repertoire of the likes of Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay, et al., with not a little debt to Sam Peckinpah’s much more serious exploration of violence in a Constable-style village Straw Dogs (indeed, one village local brags to having been an extra in this film). Pegg’s slipping into an American accent as he dons his shades and loads his copious armaments is priceless, as is his blasting away with two pistols as he flies through the air in slow motion, parodying one of the most overused images from Hollywood action films. Timothy Dalton’s snide and sinister grocery store manager is also worth the price of a ticket. Beware the swan!
 

6. Control (Anton Corbijn, England): Filmed in gritty black and white, and reminiscent of the British kitchen dramas of the 1950s and 1960s, Control is the story of the life and death of Ian Curtis, lead singer for the late seventies Manchester post-punk band Joy Division. The film is highly metaphorical, showing us three senses in which Curtis was not in control: of his unhappy marriage and love life with Belgian reporter Annik Honoré, his musical career with Joy Division, and his own body, wracked by epilepsy. Director Corbijn melds the music of Joy Division quite well with events in the film, while the actors playing the other members of the band look startlingly like old photos of the actual band members. The mood of the film matches perfectly both the mood of Joy Division’s music and the bleak urban landscapes of industrial Northern England.

7. The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, USA): It goes without saying that Wes Anderson is a real auteur. This can be both a boon and a bane. This film lacks the consistent quirkiness of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, though it’s still there in spurts. It focuses on a road trip by three brothers (played by Anderson favourites Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman, along with Anderson newcomer Adrien Brody) that is simultaneously a spiritual journey and an attempt to heal the divisions in their fractured family after their father’s accidental death. One can criticize the film for a flat middle section where Brody’s deadpan acting drags things down, though this deadpan fades away later in the film as the brothers heal their rift. Anderson is certainly the master of marrying catchy but forgotten pop tunes to slow-motion scenes which aim to reveal the hidden feelings of his characters. His “prologue” of Schwarztman and Natalie Portman’s Parisian affair to remember is quite clever, as is Bill Murray’s cameo as the man who misses his train. But Anderson’s bravura moment is a jaw-dropping sequence no more than a minute long where he pans along what looks like a series of interiors of railway cars in which the minor characters are amusing themselves in a surreal connection of moments that ends with Blake’s tyger tyger burning bright. A Buddhist meditation on compassion and on letting things go.
 

8. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA): A slow-moving, lengthy historical drama about the rise to power turn-of-the-century California oil man Daniel Plainview, played to perfection by Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s based on an old Upton Sinclair novel. Anderson’s shift of pace picture uses plenty of languorous pans over the rocky barren landscapes of California oil country to establish the mood. The most intriguing element of the film is Plainview’s slow drift from tough irascibility to utter cruelty and paranoia, though we get a taste of his misanthropy half way through when he explains to his “brother” Henry that he hates all people. Paralleling Plainview’s determination to dig as much money out of the ground as he can is local evangelical preacher Eli Sunday’s increasing control over the local populace and attempt to humiliate the oil man by forcing him to join his church and confess his sins. Yet Anderson seems to be saying “a plague on both their houses”, not only on the greedy capitalist, but also on the hypocritical prophet.

9. Sicko (Michael Moore, USA): Moore’s latest takes on the target that one would have imagined him going after right after Roger and Me: the American medical system. Though he once again misconstrues Canada as a sort of paradise that contrasts with his American nightmare, Moore nevertheless shows us the greedy profit-taking strategies of US hospitals and HMOs, strategies that he shows have resulting in countless deaths. Moore’s presence in his latest doc is more restrained than usual, preferring to tell a story that is already fairly well known, especially to those who have had the less than joyful of dealing with the American medical system.

10. Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, USA): The story itself is fairly run of the mill: George Clooney’s Clayton, a “cleaner” and bag man for a powerful legal firm, gets mixed up in a chemical corporation’s attempt to cover up their misdeeds and avoid paying out a billion-dollar lawsuit. What makes the film so interesting is writer/director Gilroy’s whip smart, naturalistic dialogue – it sounds like real people speaking. It’s cool in a McLuhanesque sense since we have to pay close attention to what is being said and done to sort out the complicated chain of events. The film shines with good writing and steady performances, including Tom Wilkinson as a mildly schizophrenic lawyer in Clayton’s firm who changes his mind about backing the evil corporation, and Tilda Swinton as the corporation’s murderous legal defender. The ending is a bit of a zinger, though it makes sense in the context of the characters we’ve met and prior events.

Honourable Mentions

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Ridley Scott, USA): An honorary mention to Ridley Scott’s scifi masterpiece, which was re-released in a marginally re-edited form in December. The changes from Scott’s mid-90s director’s cut are marginal. I had forgotten how “cool” the atmosphere was in the big screen version of Phillip K. Dick’s story of a “blade runner” whose job it is to “retire” rogue replicants before they act out their desire to become more fully human. There is little humour, the mise en scene is dreary, dark and wet, with the end of the film leaving little hope for Deckard and Rachel’s doomed love. The film has many quiet moments to boot, and is a real meditation on what it means to be human and thus what it means to be a person. The hints of obsolete visions of future technology are overwhelmed by Scott and Douglas Trumbull’s vision of the dystopian future of Los Angeles where global warming has disrupted weather patterns, where globalization has become a nightmarish mish-mash of cultures and languages, where industry spews out hellish tongues of flame into an eternally nourish sky, and where signs illuminated with corporate brands have replaced the sun as the principal source of light in the big city. Really the best film of 2007, except for the fact that it was originally released in 1982!

In the Valley of Elah (Paul Haggis, USA): A coolly lit treatment of the “soldier coming home” theme, this time from the 2003 Iraq war. Haggis builds up the suspense very slowly here, interspersing video clips taken from a soldier’s cell phone of misdeeds in the Middle East with an involved narrative of Tommy Lee Jones looking for his son, an infantryman who at first appears to have gone AWOL, but is soon discovered murdered, his body carved up and burnt. Haggis doesn’t offer up a crudely-drawn anti-war screed. Instead, he presents the aftermath of the Iraq war from the point of view of Jones’ Vietnam vet, a tightly wound patriot who slowly changes his tune. Watch for Charlize Theron in another solid role as a local cop who reluctantly aids Jones despite her colleagues’ general contempt. Yet there are no black hats and white hats here: all the cats are grey, though in the final analysis we do see a reversal of Jones’ patriotism.

Note on Spider-Man 3: This film doesn’t make my list, though is interesting as a partial failure all the same. Sam Raimi’s main mistake wasn’t continuing Peter’s “internal struggle” motif from the earlier films as symbolized by Spidey’s conversion to the dark side thanks to the alien goo, but trying to jam in three villains (and thus three stories) alongside the story of Peter’s travails with Mary Jane. If I had edited the script, I would have cut the Sandman story entirely (as good as Thomas Hayden Church is in his brief appearances), and kept the Venom story as the driving force of the film, with Harry’s conversion to evil then good again as a back story. In addition, the Venom and Harry sagas are more easily linked. Think of how much more effective the first and second films were with single malevolent though conflicted villains. Yet we shouldn’t have expected so much, as third films in trilogies are usually crap: witness The Matrix Revolutions Jaws 3, and many others. Hollywood just doesn’t know when to stop when they think they have a good thing: like everywhere else in consumer society, money compels filmmakers to make bad aesthetic decisions and churn out commercial garbage.