The best (and worst) of 2007

THE BEST
Melissa Anderson, film editor
1. Southland Tales
A million times smarter than any other film about the miserable state of the world that came out this year, Richard Kelly’s sophomore effort is also one of 2007’s funniest and most heartbreaking.

2. I’m Not There
Todd Haynes blows up the biopic and makes a film that’s less about “Bob Dylan” and more an ecstatic celebration of pop culture—and of Cate Blanchett as one foxy dude.

3. Lady Chatterley
Flora, fauna and fornication abound in Pascale Ferran’s sexy, fiercely intelligent version of D.H. Lawrence’s novel, surely one of the best page-to-screen transfers ever.

4. Syndromes and a Century
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, among the most romantic filmmakers working today, imagines how his parents fell in love, times two.

5. There Will Be Blood
There will be awe, too—at Daniel Day-Lewis’s searing performance as an oilman gone crazy with greed, and at Paul Thomas Anderson’s magisterial vision.

6. Bug
In a year cluttered with emotionally fraudulent movies, William Friedkin’s terrific adaptation of Tracy Letts’s play about two horribly damaged people rings completely true.

7. Regular Lovers
Philippe Garrel’s first film to get a proper stateside release gorgeously renders May ’68 as not just the Night of the Barricades but several nights of heartache. Pulsing with sentiment, but never sentimentalized.

8. Away from Her
The feature directorial debut from actor Sarah Polley—fearlessly taking on compatriot Alice Munro’s text, no less—gracefully depicts the ravages that even the happiest of marriages must withstand.

9. Zodiac
David Fincher’s serial-killer thriller haunted my sleep for weeks—as only a richly convoluted epic about the impossibility of ever discovering the truth can. Bonus: Newsrooms haven’t crackled with this much excitement since All the President’s Men.

10. Persepolis
Cowriting and -directing this adaptation of her graphic novels, Marjane Satrapi gives us the year’s most memorable teenage heroine, one whose chador never veils her obstreperous sense of self.

David Fear, film writer
1. There Will Be Blood
Anderson drills deep into America’s frontier mythology and hits pay dirt with this dark, epic character study. Behold, an instant classic.

2. No Country for Old Men The Coen brothers turn Cormac McCarthy’s novel about a bag of loot and a bad-hair-day hit man into something truly profound: an elegy for the days when good triumphed over evil.

3. 12:08 East of Bucharest
Three men offer their separate (but equally unreliable) memories of Romania’s ’89 revolution on a TV show, and Corneliu Porumboiu’s deadpan comedy single-handedly justifies the reams of nationalistic new-wave hype.

4. I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone
Taiwanese cinema’s enfant terrible Tsai Ming-liang once again works his slow-and-low magic, as actor-muse Lee Kang-sheng negotiates a love triangle in Kuala Lumpur. Industrial wastelands have rarely seemed more erotic.

5. Zodiac
Fincher’s exhaustive examination of a serial-killer case brilliantly dissects information overload, investigative impotence and all-consuming obsessions. It also turns Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man” into the creepiest song ever written.

6. Manda Bala (Send a Bullet)
Former Errol Morris protégé Jason Kohn nearly one-ups his mentor with this documentary that connects the dots between Brazil’s kidnapping epidemic, frog-breeding farms, plastic surgery and political shenanigans.

7. Syndromes and a Century
Part family portrait and part loop-the-loop meditation on the animus of medical facilities, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s moving, oblique diptych enshrines memories of his parents from the corners of his mind.

8. Before the Devil Knows
You’re Dead
Never mind the genre trappings; Sidney Lumet’s tale of two brothers ripping off Mom and Pop’s jewelry store is really a devastating
O’Neill family drama disguised
as a heist flick.

9. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Outlaw idolatry and celebrity cannibalism get worked over in this counterrevolutionary look at the train robber’s symbiotic relationship with his killer. Both Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck hit career highs.

10. I’m Not There
Haynes’s ambitious take on Dylan refracts its subject through the prism of underground cinema and comes out with a full-color spectrum. Call it the Basement Tapes of biopics.

Joshua Rothkopf, film writer
1. Zodiac
In its procedural detail, this is a cousin to Fritz Lang’s M; in its obsessive ruination, it’s a post-9/11 Vertigo. For his persistence of vision, Fincher can’t be touched.

2. The Bourne Ultimatum
No one is cutting sequences as explosively as Paul Greengrass. Moreover, in telling the story of an American killing machine come home for answers, Bourne is the political film of the year.

3. Away from Her
Polley’s astonishing directorial debut reveals an old soul, sensitive to literary nuances and generous to two fearless actors losing each other in the fog of old age.

4. Lake of Fire
Tony Kaye emerges from 17 years of self-financed immersion in the subject of abortion with a documentary that confronts every position—and delivers a resounding call for sympathy.

5. I’m Not There
Haynes’s prism of Dylan results in an image of rare, kaleidoscopic richness, about the shifting American character as well as the pop frontier.

6. Syndromes and a Century
Built of two halves, this exquisite Thai film initially suggests a clash of rural intimacy versus urban clinicism. Dive deeper, and its true subject is the nature of love.

7. Black Book
Any year with a Paul Verhoeven film must count as a good one (quiet, Showgirls haters!). His latest, financed and shot in Europe, is a delicious return to pacing, production values and—yes—abundant tits.

8. Knocked Up
Though it derailed those who couldn’t get over “shma-shmortion,” here was Hollywood’s most sophisticated rom-com: as much an indictment of today’s regressive male as his triumphant maturation.

9. Offside
As Iranian female soccer fans sneak into the males-only arena, a young, liberated populace comes into view, chafing against tradition and linked by love of sport. Not the Iran we often hear about.

10. The Mist
Manna for true horror fans, this bleak sci-fi bug invasion is the real deal; the antimilitary politics and juicy B-movie laughs don’t hurt either. Where’d ya been hiding the hard-ass, Frank Darabont?

THE WORST
Melissa Anderson, film editor
The Bucket List
Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson shamelessly play the AARP card in a movie that’s about as fun as watching a colostomy bag explode.

David Fear, film writer
300
Zack Snyder’s flashy, trashy take
on Frank Miller’s here-come-the-Spartans graphic novel mixes homophobia, xenophobia, video-game aesthetics and a third-grader’s mentality. Are we not entertained? Eye-raped might be more accurate.

Joshua Rothkopf, film writer
The Invasion
Maybe choosing a remake is unfair. But to have the pod people descend on Bush’s Washington and still our lefty heroes come off as worse? That’s just cruel and unusual.

Report card:

With extraordinary new work by David Fincher, Todd Haynes, Paul Thomas Anderson and Richard Kelly—not to mention the fact that Charles Burnett’s 1977 masterpiece, Killer of Sheep, finally got a proper theatrical release—2007 stands as one of the strongest years ever in American film. Thanks to Sarah Polley and Pascale Ferran, even the musty literary adaptation returned more vibrant than ever. Our only complaint: the corruption of dialogue and characters by the most banal pop-psychology speak—a trend that’s infecting even films made overseas.

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