Acorn

Issue date: 2/1/08 Section: Arts and Leisure

Media Credit: Victoria Webbe

The year 2007 was the kind of year critics and film buffs speak of in hushed, reverential tones over cups of black coffee, while commiserating with one another over the latest Dane Cook-starring cinematic travesty. In simpler terms, it's the new 1999. That year offered such masterpieces as "American Beauty," "Fight Club," "Being John Malkovich" and "Election"-prime examples of bold, fearless studio filmmaking at its finest. And 2007 was a veritable all-you-can-eat buffet for the discerning filmmaker, as out of the wreckage of the summer "three-quel" pileup-"Shrek the Third," "Spider Man 3" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"-one daring and indelible artistic statement after another emerged. It was, by all accounts, a remarkable year.

Perhaps the most defining trend in film last year was the all-consuming thematic darkness of many of the well-received pictures. For proof of this, one need only glance at this year's Academy Award nominees for Best Picture: "Juno" is the sole ray of cutesy-pop sunshine amidst such bleak companions as "Atonement" and "Michael Clayton." So why the long face? Your average multiplex moviegoer wants tidy resolutions and poetic justice, like Michael Cera and Ellen Page awkwardly warbling The Moldy Peaches, not ambiguity and inexplicable evil.

Interestingly enough, the films that explicitly dealt with the ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as "Lions for Lambs," "Rendition" and "Grace is Gone," were dead on arrival at the box office. The uncertainty pervading the war and global politics in general still found its way into many of 2007's most accomplished and, yes, entertaining films in one way or another. But enough hypothesizing-these are the top five films that made 2007 a movie year I'll always remember fondly.

5) "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"-Julian Schnabel's visually rapturous take on the life and death of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the French Elle Magazine editor who suffered a massive stroke that left him almost completely paralyzed, save for a single eyelid. Schnabel invites the audience into both the reality of Bauby's situation and the man's vivid imagination. "Diving Bell" tells a powerful true story though expressionistic imagery rather than Hollywood theatrics.

4) "Once"-John Carney's delicate and assured tale of two people connecting through a shared love of music is that rare film that

is exactly what it needs to be. Not one moment in the film feels forced or out of place, and yet the entire production has a loose, improvisational feel that makes Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's effortless chemistry seem as though it is happening for the first time right before our eyes.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools