Another year, another best of list and this one has proven a more difficult article to assemble than usual. Health problems which kicked in late August plagued me right through til early December (I had my first MRI the other week, that was an unnerving experience), so as a result I missed a lot of films - 95% of the good ones for the year in fact judging by the lists of other critics.
So I first off have to thank Kevin Bowen, Paul Fischer and Drew Turney for helping picking up the slack by filling in for me with their reviews of the films during that period. With the exception of Paul's interviews, every other scrap of writing and coding on DH for the past twelve years remains to this day an entirely one-man job done by me. 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 more than one occasion (eg. Kevin dissed 'No Country for Old Men' and praised 'I Am Legend', whereas I felt the complete opposite).
My reviews tend to be done in the wee hours of the morning when I have a spare half-hour or so. I'm glad they seem coherent, in spite of the frequent grammatical issues, uneven postings (damn Australian release schedule) and wacky use of British/Australian spelling and slang. I'm not a professional critic or a wannabe filmmaker, I try and avoid casting moral judgements wherever possible, and I'm writing for a website - not The New Yorker. Thus I tend not to flourish my prose with thesaurus-enhanced wordplay, economic forecasting, repetition of a film's synopsis, or comparisons to obscure cinematic masterpieces even if I personally adore them.
My aim with reviews is to give you as objective as possible an opinion about what I thought both worked and didn't work from the perspective of a regular moviegoer. Like the rest of the site's content, I try and keep things sharp and to the point without casting too many aspersions or letting my own quite twisted sense of humor come into play. I'm also a cynical bastard which means I have a generally tough and somewhat detached approach to things, but that's my outlook on life and I keep it restricted to the reviews where possible.
Gratefully almost all reaction I hear back tends to be positive - even if you've disagreed with me, you at least understand my viewpoint and thanks to the hundreds who've emailled in this year for that. Feedback on reviews, especially the constructive kind, is always the best kind of comments I get sent. Of course one can only learn from criticism - the best diss I got this year was a poster named 'soap-and-water' at Hollywood Elsewhere who said of my reviews "his language skills are shocking...it's like something from an 11-year-old...glad i'm not the only to hear fingernails on a chalkboard every time he types". Gotta love someone who is anonymously insulting me on another site and claims I'm the one that's juvenile.
Anyway enough about me. One of the more surprising years of filmgoing, 2007 has ultimately proven a rather mixed bag overall. The dividing line between mainstream studio efforts and arthouse gems was sharply defined this year - a stark contrast to last year's more compelling line-up of films that deftly embraced audiences from both sides of the aisle (eg. The Queen, Dreamgirls, Pan's Labyrinth, Casino Royale).
In the first two-thirds of the year, hardcore action like "300" and "Transformers" along with comedies like "Superbad," "Knocked Up," "Blades of Glory," and "Wild Hogs" proved big hits with audiences whilst less well-received sequels (or rather three-quels) pulled in huge dough despite all but one notable exception being either dismissed or outright panned by not just the critics but regular audiences as well.
Then came the Fall and a flood of arthouse films which the critics have fallen in love with but the audiences stayed away from in droves. Even the critics though only sank their teeth into a select two dozen or so, whilst countless political and Iraq-themed dramas from "Lions to Lambs" and "In the Valley of Elah" to "Rendition" for example all tanked not just financially but with reviewers as well.
Even expected favourites like "American Gangster" and "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" fell to the wayside in favour of quieter indie fare. Most of the films being mentioned in Top Ten lists for the year scored only small and short-lived releases and very little box-office, making next year's Oscars a quite open field and one that, much like the films of the year in general, it's hard to get excited about.
In any case here are my personal picks for the best films of 2007. Sadly those aforementioned health issues meant that a lot of awards fare I won't be able to see for a while yet (I'm not a member of a film critics society so I don't get screeners). I've tried catching up in the last 2-3 weeks where I could and so here's my list:
Todd Haynes' avante garde take on the life of Bob Dylan .
Other Recommendations: 28 Weeks Later, 1408, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Black Book, Blades of Glory, Breach, Enchanted, Fracture, Grindhouse, Hairspray, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Hoax, The Host, Hot Fuzz, Knocked Up, Live Free or Die Hard, The Lookout, Paris Je T'aime, Ratatouille, Severance, The Simpsons Movie, Superbad, Transformers
Films I Didn't Get To See In Time For This List:
2 Days In Paris, 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Across the Universe, After the Wedding, Beyond the Gates, The Devil Came On Horseback, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Exiled, Ghosts of Cite Soleil, God Grew Tired of Us, In the Shadow of the Moon, Juno, Lake of Fire, Lars and the Real Girl, The Lives of Others, The Namesake, No End in Sight, The Orphanage, Persepolis, Red Road, Rocket Science, The Savages, Starting Out in the Evening, Syndromes and a Century, Waitress, You Kill Me
Click Here For Lists Of My Favourite Films Of Every Year Since 1993
