Another year, another best of list and this one has proven a more difficult article to assemble than usual due to some previously discussed long-term health problems kicking in late August and plaguing me right through til the end of last year. As a result I missed a lot of Fall films during their release and since Christmas I've been catching up on as much as I can with the help of screeners.
First up I have to thank Kevin Bowen, Paul Fischer and Drew Turney for helping pick up the slack by filling in for me with their reviews of films since late Summer. I'm a control freak, and so giving up that control was a hard thing to do. The guys were great though, even when I disagreed with them on several occasions. I even had to deal with angry e-mails from people who didn't realize I had stopped reviewing (like 'BurmaShave' on Hollywood Elsewhere).
My reviews tend to be done in my few moments of spare time in the wee hours of the night. I'm glad they seem coherent, in spite of the frequent grammatical issues, uneven postings due to release date differences between the US and Australia, and the wacky use of British/Australian spelling and slang. I'm not a professional critic, nor do I want to become one. I try and avoid casting moral judgments wherever possible, and I'm writing for a web site - not The New Yorker. Thus I tend not to deliberately flourish my prose with thesaurus-enhanced wordplay, economic forecasting, repetition of a film's synopsis, or comparisons to obscure cinematic masterpieces even if I adore them.
The work is more stream of consciousness writing and the aim is to give you as objective and concise as possible an opinion about what I thought both worked and didn't. As I'm one of the few guys in this field not trying to break into the film industry I'm bluntly honest in my reviews, to the point that some filmmakers who have been friendly towards me have since give me the cold shoulder when I deliver mixed or negative reviews of their work.
Very occasionally my twisted sense of humor - and in the few cases where necessary my political/religious/social viewpoint - will creep in but only where its relevant. Gratefully almost all reaction I hear back tends to be positive - even if you've disagreed with me, you at least understood where i've come from and thanks to the many who've emailed over the years for that.
One of the more surprising years of film going, 2007 has ultimately proven an excellent but uneven year overall. The dividing line between mainstream studio efforts and art house gems seemed sharply defined this year - a stark contrast to last year's more compelling line-up of films that seemed to deftly embrace audiences from both sides of the aisle.
Most of the films being mentioned in Top Ten lists this year scored only small and short-lived releases in the year's final few months, and whilst the 'buzz' about films were rarely wrong, it was exaggerated on a few key titles. There have been some real gems though in terms of filmmaking craft, sheer entertainment and in a few cases both. Here are my picks for the best films of 2007:
28 Weeks Later, Away from Her, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Blades of Glory, Breach, Charlie Wilson's War, Control, Enchanted, Grindhouse, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Host, Hot Fuzz, The King of Kong, La Vie En Rose, Live Free or Die Hard, The Lookout, Lust Caution, A Mighty Heart, The Mist, The Orphanage, Persepolis, Ratatouille, Rescue Dawn, Rocket Science, The Savages, Severance, The Simpsons Movie, Starter for Ten, Transformers
Click Here For Lists Of My Favourite Films Of Every Year Since 1993
