2007-12-18 01:03:26

DREAD-FILLED: TOP TEN FILMS OF 2007

Filed under: Film
Posted by: Craig

The recent news is not good. While still dropping a billion dollars a month on a misguided, manipulative war, our stock market wobbles with each rise in a gallon of gas. Civil wars in Africa, celebutante obsessions in America. Whether macro or micro, the signs of rot are everywhere. In No Country for Old Men, they call it, “The Dismal Tide.” Is it rising? These films remind us that amoral leaders and greedy titans are ancient problems. And sometimes, evil cannot be explained. It simply must be resisted.

1. No Country for Old Men—Minimalist masterpiece. Death knells amplified. But somewhere in a distant dream, our father builds a fire in the darkness…. For those with eyes to see.
2. There Will Be Blood—Power, possession, greed; how the west was won (and lost).
3. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead—Even the smallest of criminals are still fools.
4. The Bourne Ultimatum—How much evil have we done in defense of democracy?
5. 3:10 to Yuma—Slow and steady courage versus charismatic crookedness.
6. Zodiac—The high cost of obsessing over evil. A rabbithole with no light in sight.
7. American Gangster—A family man who destroys families. American nightmare.
8. Sweeney Todd—Buckets of blood sung with bitter, vengeful glee.
9. The Lookout—Film noir at its finest. Dark and daring.
10. Michael Clayton—Compromises even catch up to lawyers.

Dread-filled Docs:

No End in Sight—A clear explication of the neglect behind an Iraq war that our children will be paying off for the rest of their lives. What a lamentable legacy.

The Devil Came on Horseback—What can we do about the intractable genocide in Darfur?

Tomorrow: Hard-earned hope—The Wonder-Filled Top Ten of 2007

Comments (9)

9 Comments »

1. You don’t know how happy it makes me seeing “There Will Be Blood” at #1. Nice list. Aside from some minor positioning, I agree. Were you able to catch “The Assassination of Jesse James…”?

   Comment by Cameron Hassman — December 18, 2007 @ 6:50 pm

2. Love the list Craig and am especially looking forward to my belly urking while watching Daniel Day and Bardem creep me out to death.

   My greatest objection to the list in the form of a question: WHERE’S “I AM LEGEND”?! I can’t see how it’s not on there and am hoping it’s on the “Wonder-Filled Top Ten”, I guess I will find out soon…

   Comment by Todd — December 18, 2007 @ 11:11 pm

3. Thanks for the comments. Keep’em coming.
   Look at the list again…I just rewatched NO COUNTRY
   and had a slight change of heart. There is such hard
   won grace in the end of the film. But only if you squint
   real hard toward the distant horizon.

   Alas, I missed JESSE JAMES. But check out my partner’s rave
   over on PURPLE STATE OF JOHN. That may be the sleeper
   and keeper of the bunch….

   Comment by Craig — December 19, 2007 @ 3:21 am

4. Todd–Bring your crash helmets to the bloody masterpieces that top my list.

   I AM LEGEND–I am missing. Probably because I was too fond of the cheesy
   originals. By the time you’re seeing the third or fourth edition of the film, it
   is too tough to accept as original. So consider me a Charlton Heston/Omega Man instead of your legend–Will Smith. But I’ve interviewed director Francis Lawrence and he’s a genuinely nice chap.

   Comment by Craig — December 19, 2007 @ 3:24 am

5. Haha. Okay I smell what your steppin in there Craig, you are certainly correct that it’s not original. BUT, incredible filmmaking, the story is told so well, Lawrence is insanely good. And yes, I will be strapping on the crash helmets as well as watching them in a fully-sealed, air-tight, bullet-proof, nuke-proof life-preserving dome (like a snow-globe). Yeah, I’m that much of a “wuss”, sue me.

   Comment by Todd — December 21, 2007 @ 12:23 pm

6. Craig, I love the post and the blog, but I must protest. You should have excluded American Gangster and 3:10 to Yuma. Neither film is that good and both are problematic when it comes to story, structure, and character. Two films I would replace them with and I think you should replace with are Lust, Caution and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Both are fine films, with great story, character, and structure and both are completely original. Ang Lee and Andrew Dominik are true artists and their deep, impacting works speak for themselves. James Mangold on the other hand, is not. Ridley Scott is an artist is has fallen off the beaten path of late, but hopefully he can return with either Body of Lies, Nottingham, and/or Blood Meridian. Man, that was long, but I felt it had to be said. Anyways, I love the blog and the film, let me know when you’re showing it in LA again. Also, if you show it in Florida or Kentucky, let me know, I’d love for my family to see it. Hey, anytime you want to shoot the breeze in person, I’d love to hang. I know that your probably busy, but it would be amazing if we could get it to work. Keep up the good work.
   Matt Groves

   Comment by Matt Groves — December 23, 2007 @ 7:40 pm

7. Great list, Craig! (Should we call it Craig’s List? Okay, bad joke…) I especially appreciate your pithy and insightful comments on each film. A couple of things:

   - Like you, I too have seen Old Country twice, but I actually found the second viewing to be rather diminishing. It’s still a great film- thematically coherent, technically impeccable and acted to perfection by the entire cast. However, there is also an unmistakable heavy-handedness in the way the Coens use Jones’ sheriff character almost exclusively as a device to lament the sorry state of the world. Virtually EVERY SINGLE scene featuring him has his character (or a character speaking to him) say something or tell a story to the effect of, “Well, aren’t people just awful these days”, or “Man, the world really sucks”. This is obviously putting it rather crudely, but I feel like that’s what those scenes come down to, and there’s just too many of them that the entire film risks becoming obvious and moralistic after a while. The problem with those scenes and the general lament of Jones’ character, aside from what I believe to be a questionable sense of romanticism and nostalgia about the past (were human beings really that much better before? And are things these days (or in 1980) really as bad as Jones (the Coens) apparently thinks?) is that it also reveals a lack of originality in the film’s overarching vision/worldview: For example, Isn’t Jones’ sheriff really just Morgan Freedman’s character from David Fincher’s Seven? (Seriously, they may as well be interracial twins separated at birth) In fact, doesn’t the whole film just remind you of Seven, period? What insights about humanity and the state of the world does it offer that we haven’t already heard elsewhere? This is not to diminish the film’s many, many great achievements, but rather to say simply that I think it’s also been kind of overrated. (Don’t get me wrong, I still love it.)

   -Man, I just don’t know about American Gangster being on the list. I thought it was pretty pedestrian, the climatic shoot-out and drug-bust notwithstanding. (Btw, has Dazel ever starred in a film in which his character does not give some kind of indignant speech while striking his chest with his two fists?) I echo the last posted comment and urge you to check out Jesse James and Lust, Caution, the latter having been grossly underappreciated and misunderstood (in my opinion as a Chinese-American) by American critics.

   - There Will Be Blood…now that’s a film worth debating about. I need to see it again before forming a definitive opinion, but as a big Anderson fan who had been thoroughly prepared to embrace the film and sing of its praises, I was surprised to find myself feeling very alienated from the entire movie, to my great regret (and confusion, actually). Its lack of emotional resonance and general lifelessness are striking: Day-Lewis and Dano both give mesmerizing performances, but their characters remain strangely vague (dare say I thin) even till the very end. This has nothing to do with their likability as people (A silly point debated by many. Since when do movie characters have to be “likable” for a film to resonate? Some of the best and most powerful films in history have been about deeply unpleasant people.). Rather, it has to do with the fact that these characters seemed to have been given the superficial traits of archetypal beings without having been fully formed as flesh-and-blood people with discernible motivation and intentionality. This makes the drama of the story distant and, ultimately, so vague as to become impossible to get involved in. One is left to marvel at the increasingly bizzare spectacles without knowing why any of it is happening, and, more importantly, why one should care at all. I feel like Anderson is turning into Las Van Trier on his bad day and made a film that is analytical, meticulously thought-out, thoroughly impressive in its craftsmanship, but also cold and devoid of genuine human interests. It feels like a lesser Clockwork Orange (which by comparison is a truly brilliant and deeply involving film about unpleasant, monstrous people that also happens to use well-known classical music in similarly ironic fashion) that is ridden with cliches about greed and power (“they turn people into lonely psychopaths!”), religious fundamentalism (“preachers are phonies driven by greed and self-interest like everyone else!”), and the founding of this nation (“the American Dream is actually rooted in capitalist greed and Hobbesian struggle for survival!). These aren’t bad points but there’s simply nothing particularly fresh about them. Even the dramatic turning points in the film- the appearance of the “half-brother”, the arrival of Elli Sunday at the bowling-alley for the climatic showdown, etc- feel artificial and invented rather than organic and motivated. I find it baffling that this came from the man who made Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love- all of which are wonderfully humane and involving films that have a commanding grasp of their characters and an intuitive understanding of who they are. There Will Be Blood functions strictly at a theoretical and archetypal level without every coming down “incarnationally.”

   Did I miss something that everyone else saw but I didn’t? Very likely, given the overwhelming, astoudingly positive responses the film has received from some of our finest (and my favorite) film writers. So tell me I’m wrong. Seriously. I really, really want to love this film!

   Comment by Eugene S. — December 30, 2007 @ 5:19 am

8. Very Nice! Thanks!

   Comment by Lohness — February 19, 2008 @ 1:57 am

9. Nice Site! Thanks!

   Comment by Zerg — March 1, 2008 @ 3:34 pm

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