Sight and Sound Magazine's Best Films of 2007
Includes the list of at least two Filipino film critics--Alexis Tioseco and, heh, yours truly. My titles (in alphabetical order) below:
Death in the Land of Encantos (Lav Diaz)
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
Foster Child (Brillante Mendoza)
We Own the Night (James Gray)
Zodiac (David Fincher)
That's just the list, with articles I wrote on each film linked when available; to read the brief comments I'd written for Sight and Sound (plus the lists of better known critics) you'll need to download the largish PDF file.
Just a minor cavil about the lists; I'd been made aware that my list should consist only of films released in 2007. Now I know the UK sometimes exhibits certain films late, and I'd actually submitted some titles hoping I can sneak in some that I saw in the Jeonju Film Festival, but nope; strictly 2007 was the reply. So I made my list accordingly.
Now that I flip over that massive (47 pages long) PDF file, I learned that people had submitted films from 2006, even works by Mikio Naruse (I love Naruse, but no way no matter how great a filmmaker he is did he make a film in 2007). The whole brouhaha made me want to raise a brow and ask: "what's going on here?"
But I'm being ungrateful. It's an honor to have been asked to make a list, and I'm proud--tickled bright pink--to be in the company of Geoff Andrew, Derek Malcolm, Adrian Martin, Olaf Moller, Tony Rayns, Brad Stevens, Alexis Tioseco. Our lists are very different, showing a vast range of taste and orientation, and that's all to the good; we need the variety.
Anyway--if I had to make a list of films I'd seen in 2007 that had possibly been released or had yet not been released in the UK in the same year (this being the rule I presume Sight and Sound is following, and that anything released in 2006 possibly qualifes), this is what it would look like (in alphabetical order):
Amazing Life of the Fast Food Grifters (Mamoru Oshii)
Away From Her (Sarah Polley)
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sidney Lumet) - Who knew Lumet had so much juice in him? I liked Dog Day Afternoon, I enjoyed Deathtrap (I know, I know--bite me), but this is possibly one of his best works, showing more grace and expressiveness, I think, than the entire oeuvre of the Coen brothers combined.
Bug (William Friedkin)
Colossal Youth (Pedro Costas)
Death in the Land of Encantos (Lav Diaz)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
Exiled (Johnnie To)
The Go Master (Tian Zhuangzhuang)
Heremias Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess (Lav Diaz)
Indio Nacional (Raya Martin)
Inland Empire (David Lynch)
No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen) - Not bad, easily one of their most entertaining. Can't take it more seriously than that, thanks to Bardem's effective but outlandish demon assassin--but it's a fun time in the movies, if your tastes go that way (and mine do, somewhat, for better or worse).
The Other Half (Ying Liang)
Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)
A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman)
Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog)
Salty Air (Alessandro Angelini)
Sweeny Todd (Tim Burton) - a triumph of emotional and visual textures, a wonderful realization by Dante Ferretti of Victorian London by way of Eddie Campbell. Johnny Depp plays Todd like a berserk Edward Scissorhands, a Dark Knight with a taste for straight razors, an Ed Wood with a real talent for mayhem; his singing is more acting than belting, a way of burrowing into his character to find the massive malevolence within.
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Todo Todo Teros (John Torres)
We Own the Night (James Gray)
The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach)
Zodiac (David Fincher)
And that's all she said--unless I have a chance to see Brian de Palma's Redacted, to check out for myself what the fuss about them is all about.
Includes the list of at least two Filipino film critics--Alexis Tioseco and, heh, yours truly. My titles (in alphabetical order) below:
Death in the Land of Encantos (Lav Diaz)
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
Foster Child (Brillante Mendoza)
We Own the Night (James Gray)
Zodiac (David Fincher)
That's just the list, with articles I wrote on each film linked when available; to read the brief comments I'd written for Sight and Sound (plus the lists of better known critics) you'll need to download the largish PDF file.
Just a minor cavil about the lists; I'd been made aware that my list should consist only of films released in 2007. Now I know the UK sometimes exhibits certain films late, and I'd actually submitted some titles hoping I can sneak in some that I saw in the Jeonju Film Festival, but nope; strictly 2007 was the reply. So I made my list accordingly.
Now that I flip over that massive (47 pages long) PDF file, I learned that people had submitted films from 2006, even works by Mikio Naruse (I love Naruse, but no way no matter how great a filmmaker he is did he make a film in 2007). The whole brouhaha made me want to raise a brow and ask: "what's going on here?"
But I'm being ungrateful. It's an honor to have been asked to make a list, and I'm proud--tickled bright pink--to be in the company of Geoff Andrew, Derek Malcolm, Adrian Martin, Olaf Moller, Tony Rayns, Brad Stevens, Alexis Tioseco. Our lists are very different, showing a vast range of taste and orientation, and that's all to the good; we need the variety.
Anyway--if I had to make a list of films I'd seen in 2007 that had possibly been released or had yet not been released in the UK in the same year (this being the rule I presume Sight and Sound is following, and that anything released in 2006 possibly qualifes), this is what it would look like (in alphabetical order):
Amazing Life of the Fast Food Grifters (Mamoru Oshii)
Away From Her (Sarah Polley)
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (Sidney Lumet) - Who knew Lumet had so much juice in him? I liked Dog Day Afternoon, I enjoyed Deathtrap (I know, I know--bite me), but this is possibly one of his best works, showing more grace and expressiveness, I think, than the entire oeuvre of the Coen brothers combined.
Bug (William Friedkin)
Colossal Youth (Pedro Costas)
Death in the Land of Encantos (Lav Diaz)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
Exiled (Johnnie To)
The Go Master (Tian Zhuangzhuang)
Heremias Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess (Lav Diaz)
Indio Nacional (Raya Martin)
Inland Empire (David Lynch)
No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen) - Not bad, easily one of their most entertaining. Can't take it more seriously than that, thanks to Bardem's effective but outlandish demon assassin--but it's a fun time in the movies, if your tastes go that way (and mine do, somewhat, for better or worse).
The Other Half (Ying Liang)
Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)
A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman)
Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog)
Salty Air (Alessandro Angelini)
Sweeny Todd (Tim Burton) - a triumph of emotional and visual textures, a wonderful realization by Dante Ferretti of Victorian London by way of Eddie Campbell. Johnny Depp plays Todd like a berserk Edward Scissorhands, a Dark Knight with a taste for straight razors, an Ed Wood with a real talent for mayhem; his singing is more acting than belting, a way of burrowing into his character to find the massive malevolence within.
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Todo Todo Teros (John Torres)
We Own the Night (James Gray)
The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach)
Zodiac (David Fincher)
And that's all she said--unless I have a chance to see Brian de Palma's Redacted, to check out for myself what the fuss about them is all about.
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