NOEL MURRAY
Top 10
1. No Country For Old Men
2. Offside
3. Ratatouille
4. Sweeney Todd
5. Once
6. The King Of Kong
7. Into The Wild
8. Gone Baby Gone
9. Zodiac
10. Atonement
The Next Five
This was the kind of year where the great movies were undeniable, which may make most critics' lists kind of uniform. So in the years to come, everyone's honorable-mention lists may be more revelatory than their Top 10s. For example: a fair number of indie filmmakers could make a low-key comedy-drama about sibling rivalry and elder-care, but few could make one as witty and multi-layered as Tamara Jenkins' The Savages, which turns a darkly funny slice-of-life into an experiment in drama theory. And in a year of varied and entertaining animated features, Ratatouille's closest rival is Persepolis, a lively and sensitive adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's comic book memoir about growing up secular in an increasingly religious Iran.
One of 2007's other great coming-of-age stories was This Is England, Shane Meadows' semi-autobiographical film about the early-'80s skinhead movement and the UK's graceless but necessary exit from the superpower stage. And finally, 2007 featured two thorny-but-brilliant movies about the artistic process: the documentary My Kid Could Paint That, which covers the up-and-down treatment of a 5-year-old abstract painter (and how it reflects our gut feelings about creativity and child-rearing), and Todd Haynes' bold essay-film I'm Not There, which expresses the filmmaker's varied appreciation of the music and career of Bob Dylan. That's just five movies, but this list could be 40 titles longer without running dry.
Performance
Glen Hansard
Once
It was a great year for musical impersonations, starting with Marion Cotillard's acclaimed (if overly broad) take on Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, and extending through Sam Riley's electrifying embodiment of Ian Curtis in Control and the sublime pop thrills provided by the casts of Hairspray, Sweeney Todd, and I'm Not There. But it would be a mistake to underrate what Glen Hansard did in Once, singing his own dramatic rock songs live, and then backing the strong musical performances up with subtle, likable acting. The movie is muted, but Hansard had a high bar to clear, and he did so with ease.
Overrated
Juno
Picking on a funny, moving little indie film that everyone loves isn't much fun, especially when the movie in question shows the flashes of wit and heart that Juno so often does. But the relentless quippiness and quirkiness of Diablo Cody's script only seems to be as smart about teen life and class differences as many have declared. Nearly every character in the movie—and especially the pregnant high-school heroine well-played by Ellen Page—is at least 20 degrees removed from any reality that a normal human being would be familiar with. Which would be fine for a broad farce. But Juno presents itself more as a sentimental satire, and as such, its commitment to comedy over truth is hollow at best, insulting at worst.
Underrated
Beowulf
Director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary gave detractors plenty of reason to gripe about their 3D version of a lit-class staple, between the still-controversial "motion capture" method of computer animation and Gaiman and Avary's narrative embellishments. But technology and infidelity aside, on its own terms, Beowulf is a crackerjack piece of cinematic storytelling, pinning its spectacular action sequences to a study of how legends get corrupted and how every hero discovers his weakness. This Beowulf is funny and kitschy—intentionally so, no matter what its critics think—but also surprisingly touching and intellectually engaging.
Most Pleasant Surprise
Hairspray
There was every reason to expect that this big-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway show (which itself adapted John Waters' perfectly fine movie musical) would be an embarrassment to all concerned, especially once it was announced that John Travolta would be playing the middle-aged Baltimore housewife role previously assayed by Divine and Harvey Fierstein. But while Travolta's turn is pretty weird, the movie as a whole retains a lot of Waters' subversive kick, and adds some big production numbers that much more invigorating than what Waters could do on his small budget. The remake shouldn't erase the original, but on its own merits, it's a lot of fun.
Guilty Pleasure
Mr. Brooks
There's no denying that much of Mr. Brooks is straight-up idiotic, starting with a scenario that has a serial-killin' family man (Kevin Costner!), his blackmailing apprentice (Dane Cook!), the voice in his head (William Hurt!), and a millionaire cop (Demi Moore!) all sharing screen space. And that isn't even taking into account one of the most ludicrous twist endings imaginable. But while writer-director Bruce Evans could've justifiably camped this movie up, or added some Brian De Palma-esque ironic heat, there's something admirable about how straight he plays it. Mr. Brooks is enormously entertaining, not really in a "so bad it's good" way but in a "hold on…what the hell?" way. All these impossible pulp characters co-exist in the same high-boil world, yet there's nothing especially "meta" going on. As ridiculous as they all are, the thriller they're enacting is actually well-made, and completely guileless.
Future Film That Time Forgot
Slipstream
Anthony Hopkins wrote, directed, and stars in this self-indulgent folly, playing an actor-writer who may be trapped inside one of his own screenplays, or may just be serving as our guide to the contents of Hopkins' head—wherein dwell vivid memories of Richard Nixon and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Because he appears in so many classy movies, Hopkins has a reputation as something of an intellectual, but Slipstream reveals him to be scatterbrained and hilariously literal. This is the kind of movie where a character mentions Russia, and Hopkins briefly superimposes some footage of Stalin. Ah, Russia! Now we get it.
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