By Alonso Duralde
Film critic
msnbc.com contributor
updated 3:03 p.m. ET Dec. 27, 2007
 | Alonso Duralde Film critic |
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In one of his famous stand-up bits, comedian George Carlin observed that every driver who goes faster than you is a maniac, while everyone going slower than you is an idiot. Similarly, film critics who put movies you like on their top 10 lists are geniuses, and the ones who don’t are morons. Nonetheless, we critics go on writing them anyway.
It says something for 2007 that this list was a challenge to make — not because, as in some years past, there weren’t enough movies to fill it, but rather an embarrassment of riches. The ongoing Writers Guild of America strike no doubt bodes poorly for years to come, but at least we can look back on this year as one where there was always at least one or two movies to recommend at any given time.
So with apologies to runners-up like “I’m Not There,” “Once” and “Sweeney Todd,” this genius/moron presents his 10 favorite films of the year:
10. “Knocked Up”
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Universal
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This sweet and smart comedy of ill manners revealed a truth that pop culture rarely acknowledges: nerds get laid too. Granted, it helps to be as witty and cuddly as Seth Rogen’s character, but how could Katherine Heigl’s fast-tracking entertainment journalist resist his charms? Writer-director Judd Apatow delivered a summertime one-two punch with this and “Superbad” (which he produced), but the swoony snarkiness of this pregnancy comedy edged it forward enough to be my favorite of the two.
9. “Grindhouse”
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Dimension Films
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Much of today’s big-budget cinema tries to dress up the all-sensation-all-the-time genre hits of the past as the A-list movies of the present. But by embracing the cheesiness and passionate thrill-seeking of old-school drive-in fare, directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino delivered the year’s most unquestionably joyous and adrenaline-soaked movie-watching experience. I’m now ready to take Tarantino seriously, because he’s finally made a movie that hasn’t asked me to.
8. “Paris, je t’aime”
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First Look Pictures
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Anthology films usually require you to hold your nose through the weak stretches in order to enjoy the good stuff, but this compilation of 18 shorts — each set in a different
arrondissement in the City of Lights — hardly ever drops the ball, segueing from romantic comedy to musical to poignant drama to horror. The highlight? Alexander Payne’s finale, a heartbreaking and exhilarating recounting of a trip to Paris by a lonely American tourist (the sublime Margo Martindale).
7. “Zodiac”
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Paramount Pictures
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How do you tell a murder mystery story when everyone knows the outcome? More difficultly, how do you do it when everyone knows the real-life crimes were never solved? If you’re director David Fincher, you focus on the investigation itself, and the toll it took on the men who became obsessed with it, including cop Mark Ruffalo and journalists Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey, Jr. No other recent movie has captured the real look of the early ’70s as accurately as this chilling, brilliantly acted procedural.
6. “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead”
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Thinkfilm
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One of the year’s most exciting debuts was that of screenwriter Kelly Masterson, who crafted a film that combines heist-gone-wrong and dysfunctional family drama with dizzying skill and structural confidence. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have your debut script directed by the great Sidney Lumet or brought to life by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Albert Finney, Marisa Tomei and Amy Ryan. (Even Ethan Hawke’s often-grating screen presence meshed perfectly with the mewling loser he plays here.)
5. (tie) “Persepolis”/“Meet the Robinsons”
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Walt Disney Pictures
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Two animated films moved and delighted me this year, and neither was the charming but overrated “Ratatouille.” The heroine of “Persepolis” has a loving family but is forced to endure Iran’s post-Shah political upheaval during her adolescence, while “Robinsons” tells the story of a young orphan who desperately wants a family who will love him despite his obsessive need to create new and startling inventions. Both movies took me on unpredictable quests and left me enraptured (and holding a damp handkerchief).
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4. “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”
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Warner Bros.
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In an era where celebrity worship and obsessive fandom seems worse than ever, it’s almost comforting to learn that neither phenomenon is anything new in this country. Casey Affleck gives an unforgettable performance as a third-rate gunsel whose reverence for aging outlaw Jesse James (a top-notch Brad Pitt) leads to tragedy. Every moment of the film’s 160 minutes offers a performance, a camera angle, a piece of music, a snapshot of time to be savored.
3. “There Will Be Blood”
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Paramount Vantages
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Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson finally cashes in the check of brashness that has carried the young filmmaker through his relatively brief career. A haunting and often brutal tale of greed and ambition — as filtered through the lives of an obsessive oil prospector (the extraordinary Daniel Day-Lewis) and a holy-rolling preacher (Paul Dano) — is a film destined to be misunderstood and adulated in equal measure, but what it has to say about capitalism and our basest impulses couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time.
2. “Away from Her”
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Lionsgate
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With movies constantly targeted at teenage boys, it’s a rare enough pleasure to see films that deal with the elderly. That this gut-wrenching drama about Alzheimer’s and marital love marks the assured directorial debut of 28-year-old actress Sarah Polley is nothing short of flabbergasting. Julie Christie deserves the raves she’s getting for her delicate turn as a married woman whose dementia-based memory loss sends her into a new relationship with a fellow patient, but Gordon Pinsent is her equal as the husband Christie’s character leaves behind.
1. “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days”
In a year full of cinematic revelations, this Romanian drama served as a potent reminder of what movies can do and the impact they can have on us. Annamaria Marinca gives a powerful performance as a college student trying to help her ditsy friend get an illegal abortion during the repressive Ceausescu regime. Over the course of one trying, exasperating, soul-shattering day, the two navigate the labyrinth of red tape, potential snitches, the black market, and the subtly terrifying abortionist himself, Mr. Bebe (the chilling Vlad Ivanov). It’s not “about” abortion — both sides of this ongoing political battle have claimed it for their own — but about the lengths that ordinary people are forced to go to in a totalitarian society. Writer-director Cristian Mungiu weaves a story so taut and Hitchcock-tense that you’ll catch yourself not breathing.
Duralde is the author of “101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men” (Advocate Books); find him at www.alonsoduralde.com
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