The common wisdom seems to be that “best of” or “greatest ever” lists are stupid. I like lists though. I like thinking about what I would have put on or left off someone else's list, and lists quite often turn me on to things I otherwise might not have seen or heard or read or eaten or whatever. They're also fun to make. Down the road I will have no doubt rewatched these movies and maybe decided some “great” ones aren't so great or will realize the brilliance of a film not mentioned at all. This is simply how I felt now...

2007 - The Year That Was

Before we get going I'd like to waste a little time (and please feel free to skip ahead) by talking about the movies that didn't make the list. I don't know if I'd say '07 was one for the books – it was no 1988 - but by year's end it managed to amass a shitload of quality flics, making my job here a little harder than I'd anticipated.

Few movies this past year made me laugh as hard as Hot Fuzz, but the breakneck efficiency of the first two acts just served to make the unending action-extravaganzo third act feel uneven and tedious to me. I wanted Eastern Promises on this list bad, but at the end of the day, as a gritty and violent drama, No County, Jesse James and There Will Be Blood overshadowed it this year (it was a dark fuckin' year). And of course: Michael Clayton was a well-crafted intriguer, The Bourne Ultimatum actually was what most action movies claim to be – a nonstop thrill ride, Sunshine was the kind of 70's-style thinkie sci-fi I wish they made more of these days, Beowulf was just fun as hell and surprisingly good, and Paprika was an excellent trippy mindfreak.

And two of the biggest surprises for me personally this year where Into the Wild and Atonement. I was initially reluctant to see both. I'm an indoor kid. I love the crass splendor of pop-culture and the shiny iGizmos of our happenin' times. So with Wild I didn't really want to watch a movie glorifying some hippie douche's fatal spirit quest, abandoning all the things I shamelessly love. But Sean Penn's surprisingly assured hand really sucks you into the beautiful picture he's painting (though I felt the sister's stupid VO's undermined the emotional flow of the story and attempted to spell out “meaning” for the film). As for Atonement, I hate romance movies (not romance in movies, but romance movies). Atonement is much more though; it's dark, twisted and almost a thriller at times (not to mention it has the greatest type-writer based score since Brazil). Then we enter the war phase of the movie and it becomes disjointed. By the time we reach the “shocking” ending I wasn't involved enough to really be shocked.

Phew! Alright. Conscious clear. Onward! Now, I don't go in for lists of 10. Few things other than lists seem to come in tens. What's good enough for donuts is good enough for movies, so...

THE BEST

12) GRINDHOUSE
Most of my Top 12 was set in stone immediately, but as you can tell from the above paragraphs, I waffled on the last few remaining slots. Rather than making a totally random selection on whether I thought Eastern Promises deserved to be on here more than Into the Wild or Bourne Ultimatum I decided to go in a different direction.

Grindhouse deserves a special award. As a movie it is a mess: Planet Terror is a short film stretched out to a boring, emotionless feature, and Death Proof is an infuriating example of cinematic masturbation. If every scene in DP were as good as the scenes with Kurt Russell, it would have been my #1 movie of the year. But most of the movie is just Tarantino doing a bad impression of himself. DP is conclusive proof that Tarantino is a fucking genius and that he desperately needs someone to tell him fucking “No” from time to time. Much like Peter Jackson's King Kong, DP pains me with the movie it could have been.

Yet despite its flaws, when the movie is on, it's on: from Eli Roth's mind-blowingly dead-on "Thanksgiving," or my personal fav, Edgar Wright's "Don't," to the retro "Coming Attractions" clips - Grindhouse was a great and entertaining theater going experience. The fact that I'd only revisit it on DVD with a lot of chapter skipping originally kept it off this list, but the fact that I'm really annoyed they haven't released the full theatrical version onto DVD clearly indicates it made an impression. All in all I'm sad the movie bombed so badly. This is the sort of retarded vanity project I could imagine myself making if I could. So I put Grindhouse on here for effort.

11) ONCE
You know when you heard that The Blair Witch Project cost $150,000 and you thought, "Where'd all that money go?" Once is the exact opposite. Pound for pound, it was probably the best movie of the year (that's proportionally though). The unforced emotional tugging, the unique but not "quirky" characters, and that fucking song that just killed me every time they sang it - and it didn't hurt that star Glen Hansard was in my favorite movie about musicians ever, The Commitments. The fact that this was a movie made by nobodies for no money that no studio wanted to make, that's amazing. I didn't absolutely love this movie, but I kept thinking about it weeks after I saw it. It should be the benchmark for anyone wanting to make a no budget, no stars indie movie; it's a real achievement. The Blair Witch people should hopefully realize what little talent they had and, I don't know, cry or something.

10) JUNO
I normally hate movies like this - the "charming" indie underdog flavor of the year. [vomit] I hate twee indie comedies about functionally dysfunctional "quirky" characters, and I hate post-Tarantino uber-stylized dialogue. I hated Napoleon Dynamite and hated Garden State and hated Little Miss Sunshine. So needless to say Juno made me leery. But I liked Jason Reitman's previous film, Thank You For Smoking, and an interview with Diablo Cody made me like her, so I was ready to give Juno a chance. Man, was I surprised. I think the screenplay could have very easily turned into the kind of twee horseshit that I normally hate, but Reitman found the right balance of tone and the perfect cast to make it all work. The first 10 minutes were frankly painful - I thought I'd have to walk out if it continued - but after that it just kept getting better, slowly moving from too-knowingly cute to legitimately touching, while staying hilarious all the way. I don't think Cody deserved her Oscar, but in the long storied history of people not deserving their Oscars, she's definitely one of the least offensive.

9) THE KING OF KONG: A FIST FULL OF QUARTERS
I almost put No End In Sight on this list. It was great, and very informative. But it strikes me as slightly less of an achievement to make something important or exciting into an engaging documentary. Making a film about something as wholly retarded as a Donkey Kong competition into one of the most emotionally effecting and engrossing films of the year? That's an achievement.

Truth may be stranger than fiction, but it's rarely as classically structured as a Hollywood movie. Yet that's exactly what occurs in King of Kong! If I didn't know better I'd think this movie was fake, that's how realized the characters and story are. Our hero is so likable that the idea of him losing out to our villain, who is oh-so unlikable (complete with a traditional array of slimy suck-up sidekicks), started to get to me in a way a regular movie rarely can. The stakes are higher! These are real people, this shit really happened! If real life could always be this entertaining and heartwarming, I'd never bother with fiction again.

8) ZODIAC
This movie is an anomaly, a real don't-try-this-at-home case. On paper it's a fucking terrible idea for a movie: it's 160 minutes long, it's nonfiction, there's no central hero, no real villain, it's comprised almost entirely of characters standing around talking, its about a serial killer but there are no killings after the first 45 minutes... oh yeah, and there can't be a happy ending because the crime was never solved. Yet Zodiac manages to be edge-of-your-seat, nail biting electrifying. I can barely grasp how David Fincher pulled it off. Then again, that's why it's on my list. Cause it's friggin' awesome.

I can see some people not liking how long the movie is, but I'd argue the length is necessary. It helps us feel the full weight this mystery had on our heroes' lives, the strains and draining effects. Like Moby Dick, Zodiac is a somewhat tragic tale, our heroes all Ahab, slowly being consumed and destroyed by their obsession with an illusive prey. But the movie works. I've never been so satisfied with being left unsatisfied.

7) ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES
This movie made me very uncomfortable. Every scene seemed to be slowly tightening, ready to burst at the seams. It was like watching that part in Boogie Nights where they're trying to con Alfred Molina while his Asian boy-toy is throwing fireworks in the background, only spread out over an entire movie. This is a compliment.

This movie was a small surprise. I fully expected No Country to be great. It had the hype. Jesse James no one seemed to care about. It came and went, leaving only the slight residue of Casey Affleck's performance. Which was fantastic. I take back everything I ever said about Casey Affleck - which was nothing, since the only previous time he entered my mind was when I was thinking about how little he looked like Ben. He's in there now though. Brad Pitt is also excellent, his long phase of not knowing exactly what kind of actor he should be seemingly behind him. Plus any movie with music and a cameo by Nick Cave gets a solid from me.

6) THE HOST (released in US in ‘07)
I’m a sucker for monsters. I’ll see any piece of crap that has a monster in it. So you can imagine my drooling delight over a movie like The Host, which offers all the brainstem level, guilty pleasures of your standard creature feature (humungous thing crushing people), while also being a killer piece of filmmaking.

Unlike this year’s monstergeddon hit, Cloverfield, The Host has the conviction to be sincere. Where Cloverfield tried to be hip and slick, with its youtube generation Blair Witch-meets-Godzilla approach and “oo, what is it?” gimmicks, The Host chose to show us the monster, head-to-tail, almost immediately and in full daylight no less. The Host also gave us a clan of interesting and unique characters to follow and care about, as opposed to Cloverfields’ generic and pretty 20-somethings: scruffy sensitive guy, agro jock, black girl, alterna-bitch, and chubby idiot! As opposed to The Host: doofus man-child, little girl, alcoholic yuppie, archery champion, and weezy old man. Now, I actually enjoyed Cloverfield, cause, again, I like monsters and it was fun and well done. But it won’t be on my list for ’08, unless this year turns out unexpectedly lame.

5) NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Oh Coen Bros, you're back babies! And it's about damn time. After the one-two combination punch to the gut and junk that was Intolerable Cruelty and The Lady Killers, I was a little worried. No need it turns out. No Country is not a perfect movie. It looses its emotional drive when Brolin disappears unceremoniously, then limps along to its - admittedly killer - conclusion. But the Coens' have always loved making movies that don't go where we expect, and often go where we don't want. That aside, No Country - which kinda serves as a serious version of Fargo (sand replacing snow) - has some of the most delicious movie-for-movie's-sake artistry I've seen in years, the Coens' calculatingly fluid direction in top form here. And the acting...

At this point I feel like there's no need to ever compliment Tommy Lee Jones. It's like a report on the current color of the sky - yep, still blue. So moving on, I've loved Josh Brolin since The Goonies, but I didn't realize he could be this badass. And so much praise has already been thrust on Javier Bardem's performance, there's little left to say. Though I like this -- There hasn't been a villain "as vividly rendered and lingeringly unpleasant...since Henry Silva played the angel-dust-snorting hit man in Sharky's Machine." That was Alec Baldwin. Well played, sir. No offense to Mr. Silva, but he was the best part of a mediocre Burt Reynolds movie. Bardem is the best part of an awesome movie.

4) THE LIVES OF OTHERS (released in US this year)
I'd recommend this to anyone who thinks that foreign films are too arty to get into. If The Lives of Others had been in English and starring a few American A-Listers (and maybe an Australian), it would have been nominated for probably 9 or 10 Oscars instead of merely Best Foreign Language Film (last year). It's exciting, moving, deftly directed, shows you a world you know little about - it's a nearly flawless film really. And I went into the movie demanding a lot, since it nabbed that Foreign Oscar from my beloved Pan's Labyrinth. While Pan's affected me a little more (did I mention I'm a sucker for monsters), Lives is admittedly a better film. Lives serves as an interesting companion piece for me with Black Book, Paul Verhoeven's best film in a long while, which very nearly made this list too. Black Book also stars Sebastian Koch as the romantic lead; only this time he's the oppressor who develops a dangerous change of heart. I highly recommend both, though Black Book is more out-there. It is Paul Verhoeven after all.

3) RATATOUILLE
There's seems to be two kinds of adults: those who can't appreciate animation, and those who can. Fortunately for Pixar, every year the world gets a new batch of children, since animation fans past puberty are most certainly in the minority. And a good portion of that minority is only into darker toned Anime. For my money, though, Pixar has routinely been churning out the best examples of classic Hollywood storytelling in the past two decades. The fact that not a single one has ever been nominated for Best Picture frankly makes me sad and a little pissed.

I don't give a shit about rats or France or the ins-and-outs of gourmet cuisine, and yet I was completely absorbed by Ratatouille. Yeah, yeah, it looked amazing, sure. All Pixar movies do. But the movie's real achievement is its execution - it's perfect story structure, its pacing, its plot beats - an amazing example of giving the audience exactly what it wants, but not in the way they expected (an anti-No Country in a way). Like all Pixar movies the characters are rich and realized and it manages to be sweet and innocent, while somehow never pandering or being cutsey or going for easy jokes like most kiddie movies do. Which is why I somewhat resent a movie like Ratatouille being categorized as a kids movie. But I'm in the minority, I know. So I'll live with it.

2) THERE WILL BE BLOOD
To balance putting such light fluffy movies at #1, I'll lead in with what was most certainly the biggest artistic achievement of the year - not to mention a helluva film. There Will Be Blood was that crazy kind of viewing experience where you just know you're watching cinema history. "Instant classic" critics call that, which is sorta an oxymoron. Either way, that's what it is. I liked most of P.T. Anderson's previous films. Hell, I referenced one in this list already. But nothing he'd done before this prepared me for Blood. The topic was great, the approach perfect. It was weird when it should've been normal, funny when I was expecting something serious. I went into this movie expecting greatness and was still blow away.

Jonny Greenwood's score reminded me of something Tangerine Dream or Vangelis would have done, though using actual instruments instead of awful synths. His strange tones were the perfect accompaniment to such an off-kilter period piece; simultaneously old and new and all together alien, just like our "hero." I'm hard pressed to think of an equal example of a single actor so totally consuming and carrying a movie as with Daniel Day Lewis here, conveying a strange, trapped-between-two-worlds pioneer regality, chewing on every word of dialogue as though possessed by John Houston's ghost. I've heard a couple people say that TWBB isn't great because it was all just DDL's performance we're talking about. Come on. This isn't Peter O'Toole in Venus. This is an amazing performance in an amazing movie. This's how great movies happen people.

1) KNOCKED UP / SUPERBAD
Two films for #1. A copout? Sure. But these two films - both signature Judd Apatow, both starring Seth Rogen, both touching tales of male adolescence, both released within mere months of each other - are inextricably linked in my mind, likely forever. Best movies of the year, really, you might also say? Better than They Will Be Blood or No Country? Yes, cause they're two movies. But wasn't that just a copout? Shut up. Make your own list.

Maybe I'm bias, since I write comedy, but I don't see why a comedy's goals are any less important than that of a drama. Both genres want to make you feel something. A comedy can have cheap laughs, just like a drama can have cheap sentiment. K/S are about as good as a comedy can get, largely cause they also aim to make you feel something other than just gut-busting pains. Just as there used to be the Lubitsch Touch, I have to imagine people in the know will start referring to the Apatow Touch.

Apatow has a knack for doing totally regular jokes, but finding a way to take them to the next level by making them feel real. Superbad was a lame idea. Two teens on a quest to bone the girls they like? Never seen that movie before. But it works! It has the Apatow Touch. They found the truth in the concept, which is that the movie isn't actually about getting laid. It's a love story about two dudes, which is maybe why girls didn't seem to love it quite as much as guys. But guys know man-love, and the movie really hit our collective cores. Who knew you could make a romantic comedy about friendship?

And Knocked Up, though hitting theaters first, is almost a sequel to Superbad. It also deals with the perils of being a regular slobby dude, trying to balance hanging with your homies (having fun like you always did) while moving on to the next level of life (fatherhood replacing going off to college). Knocked Up dealt directly with a female relationship, which is likely why it seemed to have more resonance with a broader audience. Again, I can't choose which I think is better. Knocked Up had an air of greater depth, but that's just cause it was about having a damn baby. Superbad had more big laughs, but it also strayed from reality a lot more. We could be here all day. I already chose my copout and I'm stickin' with it. Suck on it.

THE WORST

And what's any BEST OF list without a follow up WORST OF list? Now, naturally there are far more crap movies every year than good ones. That makes a worst list even more subjective, for how do we define “worst?” If we were just talking about production value, script, acting, etc, a true worst list would be made up entirely of ultra low budget horror movies that went straight to DVD. If we were talking about movies that shame us as human beings because they made $, then the list would be all lowbrow comedies. But a crappy comedy turning out crappy isn't much of a crime. If you went to see Norbit, you got what you deserved. I take greater offense with blown potential.

This list is also inherently flawed due to the simple fact that, while I try and see every movie I think might be good, I try and AVOID movies I think will be terrible. I successfully avoided obvious stinkers like The Number 23, Invasion, Wild Hogs, Evan Almighty and Because I Said So. Yet try as I may, there were still plenty of doozies that snuck up on me. Let's keep this brief - say, a half-dozen...

6) ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
Oh man. The funny thing about this movie is…I enjoyed watching it. That's cause it is wall-to-wall Beatles music, and I was under the influence at the time. As a movie though... oh man. I saw this at a special screening where the director and screenwriters talked afterwards. To listen to them you'd think they'd made the definitive movie about the late 60's, which at this point is about as novel as deciding to make the definitive movie about slavery. From the laughably ludicrous opening montage onward this movie is about 30 years too late to be the way it is. The filmmakers even specifically talked about said montage, noting that it was very seriously thought out in order to establish the tone and message of the movie - which I must assume was tired and vapid clichés. I had to hold back laughter at various points, cause I felt bad that the filmmakers and cast were sitting within earshot.

Across The Universe's problem is that it is attempting to be "deep," but it's such a weak sauce, surface-level gloss on the counter-culture movement that it plays out like NBC's mini-series "The 60's", only with a less diverse soundtrack. (And don't tell me, "I didn't think the movie was attempting to be deep." The director made that very clear to our audience). The only reason to see this movie is the music, some of which is genuinely good, some just soulless show tune revamps. I'll say this - Universe is the only movie on my worst list that I'd recommend seeing. If you like The Beatles that is. If you don't, then god man, stay away. There's nothing for you here. Unless you've never seen a movie about the 60's... or from the 60's. Then it might be decent.

5) I THINK I HATE MY WIFE
Much like lame horror movies, I'm hesitant to put lame comedies on this list. Movies like I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry are aiming so low, how can you really complain? At least those movies know what they're going for. I Think I Hate My Wife is the worst kind of comedy; the kind that doesn't know what audience it wants and is barely even trying to be funny. The fact that it was written by Chris Rock and Louie CK, two of the greatest stand-ups of our times, just goes to show ya that even the best-of-the-best can create complete junk from time to time. The woes of the married man premise is tired and sitcomie, but coulda worked - after all SUPERBAD's premise was fairly tired. Also, I think Rock needs to accept that he's not a good actor. Maybe he should try making a film he doesn't star in. I don't know. Maybe he should just stick to stand up, period. Babe Ruth was a great baseball player. He probably wouldn't have been very good at other sports, being a fat drunk and all. He seemed to have done just fine sticking with baseball.

4) PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END
So many disappointing big movies this year - which to chose. Sure, Spiderman 3 was a catastrophe of consistency, almost an anthology movie of skits and action sequences, but the parts that worked really stayed with me. I'm sure Shrek 3 was horseshit, so I didn't see it. Ocean's 13 was ghastly, but 12 made it quite clear that they're all just fucking around at this point. And while I found Die Hard 4 a gross farce of its previous self, to be fair it was made by different people 20 years after the original, and it at least managed to be entertaining. Had it been Transporter 3, I probably would've loved it.

No, Pirates 3 will suffer my wrath. Why? Well, unlike Die Hard 4, Pirates 3 was made by the exact same people as the first two, and unlike Ocean's 12, Pirates 2 left me pumped for 3. While I'll give them points for trying something different, I can't look past the fact that the movie just wasn't good. In fact, I thought it ate shit. It was simultaneously too long and boring, while also being so jam-packed with plot and unnecessary characters that it wasn't long enough. Never a good combo. I couldn't have cared less about the Bloom and Knightley love story, and bringing back Geoffrey Rush's character was just a stupid idea all around. It weakened the importance of Captain Jack, not to mention pulling the sort of rewriting-the-earlier-films sequel nonsense I expect from a shitty horror franchise. And why the hell did the climax build up to an epic multi-ship ocean battle that never happened?!

If there was a way to get only the Johnny Depp in the underworld sequence on DVD, I would. That sequence gets an A from me. Rest of the movie: C-.

3) HALLOWEEN
It's easy to dismiss a remake's quality by saying that it's "pointless." (That comment is really only useful if you're in a position to stop the film from getting made. Once it hits theaters, I'll give a remake a chance). But Rob Zombie's Halloween really is pointless. I don't mean it was pointless to make, it is simply pointless dramatically as a piece of fiction. I blame this on three major changes Zombie made from the original that completely sank the remake.

1. He spent way, way too much time setting up Michael Myers as a child. I see where Zombie was going with the idea, but trying to give Myers a realistic background merely diminishes him as a monster later on.
2. In the original Myers was probably around 6'1, 6'2 tops. Part of what made him creepy was that he just seemed like some dude. In Zombie's film Myers is like 7 fucking feet tall! And huge! He really is a monster! So we've replaced shots of Myers eerily stalking and staring at our heroes, with a sasquatch smashing through walls like we're in a superhero movie.
3. The actress who plays Laurie Strode is goddamn awful. That mixed with the fact that we don't even meet her until like 30 minutes into the movie just makes you not give a shit about the character or what happens to her. I'm hesitant to call Zombie's film joyless, since that implies that the original was "joyful," but I certainly gleaned zero pleasure from sitting through this epic downer.

2) PRIMEVAL
Every year there are going to be abysmal little horror movies. It's almost pointless to single any out. Primeval, though, deserves mention purely for being just so fascinatingly shitty. The goofy marketing campaign that tried to pretend the film was about a serial killer instead of gigantic crocodile - which it is - was bizarre, but the film itself can hardly be blamed for that. Such an ill-advised idea no doubt sprang from panicked marketing men who had just screened the travesty of modern cinema that is Primeval. The terrible dialogue, directing, FX, and acting aside, Primeval's greatest sin is its betrayal and total disregard for its own dumbass concept. Remember, I love monster movies (I saw this heap didn't I?), but to be objective, a movie about investigative journalists fighting a giant crocodile is… well, retarded. So if you're gonna do it - do it!

Of all the deaths in Jaws, how many were dealt by the shark? Let's see here… hmm…oh yeah, all of them. I didn't keep an exact count, but of the numerous deaths in Primeval I'd say the giant crocodile was responsible for about 20%, and I'm generously counting a dude who technically blew himself up before the croc could devour him. An African warlord and his goons caused the other 80%. It was as if the filmmakers thought, "You know what Blood Diamond was missing? A giant crocodile!" I was giving Cloverfield shit lacking the conviction to be what it was; at least their giant monster wasn't merely a backdrop for a movie about the horrors of New York gang violence or some nonsense.

1) SOUTHLAND TALES
Sweet baby Jesus, what a fucking miserable disaster of a movie. Southland Tales earns my top spot for shear disappointment and for pissing me off. While Pirates 3 let me down and left me bored, I at least didn't walk out of the theater wanting to punch the filmmakers in the face.

Southland is the sort of pretentious glop I expect from a film student (the kind that doesn't make it in the industry and ends up moving back to Ohio). But no, this movie was made by Richard Kelly, who wrote/directed the superb Donnie Darko. None of the magic that film had is present here. Everything about this movie is wrong: the story is so nonsensical it's insulting (I'm not sure I believe Kelly could explain it to me), the pacing is all over the place, the FX are weirdly crappy, and the casting is some sort of meta joke I didn't get - why is half the cast sketch-comedy performers?

I know a lot of people who thought Darko was overrated. I've always defended it and Kelly. I'll holdout my final judgment until I see his next movie, but I'm certainly on the fence at the moment. God I hated this movie. I wish I could turn it into an actual dude just so I could kick him in the nuts.