Best film 2007

Forget the Oscars, ignore the BAFTAs and instead join Time Out‘s film critics for a look back at the cinematic highs and lows of 2007

Derek Adams
Films of the year
1 ‘The Lives of Others’
This Eastern Bloc thriller was the year’s best history lesson; intelligent, tense and deeply emotive, it illustrates very credibly the miserable, Orwellian, spied-upon lives of East Berliners shortly before the Wall came tumbling down.

2 ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’
Paul Greengrass’ exhilarating Robert Ludlum adaptation pushes all the right buttons with its fabulous set-pieces, competent performances, emotional depth and non-stop action.

3 ‘Earth’
A big-screen cut of the BBC’s ‘Planet Earth’ series, this captivating, eco-flavoured portfolio of the planet boasts astounding high-definition imagery.

Best film without distribution
‘The Canary Effect’
Add 15 minutes or so to its 60-minute running time and I’d be surprised if this stylish documentary – on the past and present plight of the North American Indian – wasn’t snapped up by a theatrical distributor.

Unintentional horror of the year
‘Daddy Day Camp’
On reflection, I would rather have had my ears boiled in vinegar than having had to endure this raucous mudbath of immature ineptitude.

DVD release of the year
‘The Open Road’
This charming, evocative, colour postcard of Britain as it was during the ingenuous era of 1924 is a blue-ribbon testament to the BFI’s ongoing (and vital) archive restoration process.

Geoff Andrew
Films of the year
1 ‘Don’t Touch the Axe ’
Veteran French new waver Jacques Rivette’s latest foray into Balzac territory is perhaps his finest film ever, a darkly ironic, understatedly brilliant two-hander (almost!) about a pair of ill-starr’d souls persuading themselves they love one another.

2 ‘A Prairie Home Companion’
Deceptively effortless parting-shot from the late, great Robert Altman, a ruefully funny, warm and joyous variation
on the ‘the show must go on…’ musical, with a beautifully resigned ‘until, inevitably, it ends…’ grace note.

'Climates'

3 ‘Climates’
Turkey’s finest young auteur reveals the real potential of the new digital technology, with unprecedentedly detailed visuals complementing
a likewise precise dissection of the male psyche, warts and all.

Best film without distribution
‘One Hundred Nails’
This (purportedly) final and very beautiful feature by Italy’s veteran Ermanno Olmi is a surprise in several respects, not least because its subtle stylistic mastery accompanies a narrative that seems to go haphazardly wherever it wants – save, of course, that it’s doing no such thing, as the end makes gloriously clear.

Unintentional horror of the year
Hard to choose between David Lynch’s ‘Inland Empire’ (‘adventurous’, maybe, but still tosh) and Wes Anderson’s ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ (smug, pretentious, offensive tosh).

The less said about Richard Kelly’s ‘Southland Tales’ (still more tosh, seen last year in its original cut, which I suspect hasn’t improved much in the new version), the better.

DVD release of the year
The Aki Kaurismäki Collection, Vol 2
The Finnish maestro at his very best, with the silent melo ‘Juha’ (never properly released here), the delicious ‘Drifting Clouds’, and ‘Take Care of your Scarf, Tatjana’, one of the greatest modern comedies, period.

Dave Calhoun
Films of the year
1 ‘Climates’
Young Turk Nuri Bilge Ceylan continues to impress with his latest close-to-home examination of the dislocated life of the modern Turkish man. Ceylan always draws from experience and usually casts family, but this time he and his wife, Ebru, playthe metropolitan couple on either side
of a break-up. The dryest of humour emerges from a portrait of a split that rings with painful truth.

'Bamako'

2. ‘Bamako’
Abderrahmane Sissako’s latest film imagined ‘Africa’ putting the world’s financial institutions on trial in the courtyard of a home in the Malian capital. The structure makes no apologies for direct and often devastating speechifying, while the accompanying story of a local singer and her unemployed and sick husband offered a moving, local counterpoint to the grand gestures of the court.

3. ‘Ratatouille’
Yes, it’s about a talking rat – but Pixar’s latest is also funny, unexpectedly poignant, wonderfully drawn and even offers a slither of Proust. And the character of the food critic is delicious.

Best film without distribution
A trip to FESPACO in Burkina Faso in February this year opened my eyes to a number of memorable films never to be seen again. And especially worthy of an audience is Newton Aduaka’s ‘Ezra’, a clever dramatic take on civil war and child soldiers in an unnamed state in late ’90s Africa.

Unintentional horror of the year
All the ‘B’ movies: ‘Babel’, ‘Bobby’, ‘Blood Diamond’. The first was hysterical and about nothing; the second offered a ridiculous view of history; and the third was so distasteful it expected us to cry while Leonardo DiCaprio – a diamond-dealer complicit in countless deaths – lay dying on a hillside.

DVD release of the year
‘The Ken Loach Collection, Volumes One and Two’
This two-volume collection of sixteen films by Ken Loach spans his entire career and includes lesser known titles such as ‘The Gamekeeper’ and ‘The Navigators’ as well as his three recent Scottish films and early favourites such as ‘Kes’ and ‘Poor Cow’.

Wally Hammond
Films of the year
1 ‘Syndromes and a Century’
This sublime and beautiful, dove-tailed romance from the ascendant Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul offers, among other filmic pleasures, cinema’s sweetest gift, a vision of happiness.

2 ‘The Family Friend’
I was swimming with pleasure watching this extraordinary portrait of a wizened moneylender buzzing, like a mosquito, around the malarial Pontine marshes outside Rome. Paolo Sorrentino’s cheeky, indie sensibility, his thorough absorption of film tradition and his evident Welles-ian delight at the box of tricks at his disposal, taken together, mark him out as the most exciting talent to come out of Italy since the 1970s.

'Control'

3 ‘Control’
It was a nice idea for the photographer of Joy Division, Anton Corbijn to film the life and death of that deracinated and home-stuck cult vocalist and Macclesfield poet, Ian Curtis. But the tone of Corbijn’s film is a surprise – quiet, thoughtful, observant and as sad and soulful as a black and-white ’70s Salford street. Modelling its divided subject, ‘Control’ touchingly elides the old-fashioned and the modern, the domestic and the transportive, presenting one of the most evocative portraits of England in years.

Best film without distribution
‘Belle Toujours’
Please, someone, let us see this mesmerising and sweetly-rebarbative rendezvous, forty years on, with the ‘pro’ and ‘con’ from Buñuel’s brothel-set ‘Belle de Jour’. Directed by the ever-youthful, old master Manoel de Oliviera (who turned 100 this month).

Unintentional horror of the year
‘Atonement’
No, pillory! I, for one, will never forgive director Joe Wright nor Working Title for the disastrous series of aesthetic misjudgements and the deadening ‘literary’ hand that help shackle the cinematic potential of Ian McEwan’s novel like a caged, flightless bird.

DVD release of the year
Fassbinder Collections/’Berlin Alexanderplatz’
Not only a chance to sample one of the neglected masterpieces of late twentieth-century cinema, but also to see Fassbinder’s deeply-expressive Alfred Doblin adaptation within the context of the great German filmmaker’s wider and unique contribution with a seventeen-title box set.

'Silent Light'

David Jenkins
Films of the year
1 ‘Silent Light’
He hinted at greatness with ‘Japón’ and even more so with ‘Battle in Heaven’, but with this third film, Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas delivers a truly transcendent, cinematic experience on the nature of love and death. The opening/closing shots are to die for.

2 ‘A Prairie Home Companion’
All eulogising aside, Robert Altman’s bittersweet swansong to American Radioland (and maybe his own life?) was this year’s quietest riot.

3. ‘Golden Door’
Though ‘Yella’, Zodiac’ and ‘Black Book’ were all terrific, this drama about the plight of Sicilian immigrants pips them to the post as 2007’s best pairing of director and cinematographer.

Best film without distribution
‘La Influencia’
Debut Spanish director Pedro Aguilera paints a harrowing portrait of ambivalent motherhood with a curt, almost Bressonian directness.
There’s no talk of distribution yet, but Aguilera’s distinct cinematic eye demonstrates that he’s a director who would do well to be nurtured.
Someone please pick this up!

Unintentional horror of the year
‘Death Proof’
Tongue-in-cheek salute to the grindhouse sub-genre? Or the pig-headed, last-ditch-attempt of a has-been director to enshrine himself as the world spokesperson for trash/kitsch culture? ‘Death Proof’ saw Tarantino drowning in the salty juices of his own navel.

DVD release of the year
‘Jan Svankmajer – The Complete Short Films’
This painstakingly packaged box is surely the final word on the Czech master. Honourable mention also goes to the excellent Quay Brothers collection.

'Knocked Up'

Ben Walters
Films of the year
1 ‘Knocked Up’/‘Superbad’
With the double-whammy of ‘Knocked Up’ and ‘Superbad’, the crew led by Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen emerged as the most reliable source of mainstream comedy today, mixing the foul and the sweet to hilarious, touching effect.

2 ‘Ten Canoes’
Quite unlike anything you’ve seen before, the wry ‘Ten Canoes’ was a bold, beautiful and successful attempt to satisfy both Western and Aboriginal Australian storytelling traditions.

3 ‘Funny Ha Ha’/‘Mutual Appreciation’
Micro-budget comedies of over-educated, post-adolescent manners, Andrew Bujalski’s ‘Funny Ha Ha’ and ‘Mutual Appreciation’ had a ’70s feel, but offered an up-to-date take on social and vocational anxieties. (Honourable mentions to ‘Black Book’ and ‘Zodiac’.)

Best film without distribution
‘Tuli’
Auraeus Solito is the Philippines’ most interesting director. His debut – ‘The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros’ – was a witty and touching story about a Manila lad in love with a cop. His intriguing and very different follow-up, ‘Tuli’, is about a country girl and her struggle for self-determination.

Unintentional horror of the year
The curse of the threequel struck again with ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’. A staggeringly overblown and self-indulgent mess that got caught in its own rigging, it felt like having money spat in your face for three hours.