Jayclops' top 10 2007 films -- Part 3

3. Once

Dir. by: John Carney

If I have to pick one love story that I wouldn’t be guilty of gushing over, it would have to be this one, the little Irish film that could, or rather did. If you watched the Oscar ceremonies this year, and you’re one of those who liked Once, I’m sure one, if not, your most favorite moment, is when Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, the films two lead stars, sang the film’s central song, which is also the Oscar-winner, Falling Slowly. Who thought that the wonders of independent filmmaking could make something like Once, labeled by one critic, as “perhaps the most important and best musical of this generation”. So understated yet captivating, Once captures that moment of falling in love, the moment of believing “this could be it”, with lesser words, devoid of theatrics. Great soundtrack too. You have to see this one, like really.

2. I’m Not There

Dir. by: Todd Haynes

Probably the most enigmatic yet one of the most important musicians of all time, Bob Dylan, continues to remain just that, an object of enigma and wonder. During a recent sale at a local NBS, I purchased a 99-peso hardcover Rolling Stones collection of Dylan interviews, yet I know that despite the films, the biographies, the interviews I will still know little of Dylan, his songs and his life. And Todd Haynes captures the transcendence --- Dylan is not there but everywhere, and in his ruminations I think we appreciate more of this musician; through its lyrical glimpses --- it’s almost like a poem, in verses. The most striking Dylan, actually all of them leaves a dent, is played by young Carl Thomas Franklin, the epitome of youthful exuberance and the unforgettable Cate Blanchett who fusses with frayed hair and endless smokes--like that scene of hers which is kind of like a throwback to Fellini’s 8 ½. Presented in different hues of blue, gray, black, it's elegiac, nostalgic, and beautiful.

1. Control

Dir. by: Anton Corbijn

Control, the debut feature of photographer and music video visionary Anton Corbijn is also that, elegiac, nostalgic and beautiful. Control works as a great biopic and a work of art with its beautifully composed black and white images so evocative you feel the ache, loss, confusion and unfounded melancholy that envelopes the life of Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis played quite fascinatingly by Sam Riley. With his twitches, long deep gazes and the groaning of his voice, Sam makes the hopelessness in Ian Curtis more alive, if such irony is acceptable. Samantha Morton is absorbing as his suffering wife. That scene where she wails after finding out what happened to Ian is hair-raising and painfully evocative. Like the posthumous video of the band’s Atmosphere, also directed by Corbijn, it almost pays like a tribute. It’s heartbreaking, poignant, eerily magical, and moving.

Jayclops' top 10 2007 films -- Part 2

6. No Country for Old Men
Dir. by Joel and Ethan Coen

Who wouldn’t have the Best Picture of 2008 on their list of top tens? A lot of people say that the Academy were able to get it right when No Country bagged the Oscar for Best Pic this year, and I guess it would be pretty anticlimactic if after all those critics awards another film was announced, though I think Blood came pretty close. What I love about No Country is that it seems to be playing its trick -- or tricks -- with you and once you got the hang of it, it can be fun, no matter how morbidly you look at it. The point is to not get it at all --- if you’re reaction after Tommy Lee Jones narrated his dream in that eerie last sequence was, “what the fuck was that”, I think it’s pretty acceptable. I watched it 4 times, the last one on the big screen a couple of months ago, and again I learned another thing which I didn’t notice the last time I saw it. Great perfs from Jones, Josh Brolin, Kelly McDonald, and Javier Bardem, in his award-winning turn as evil killer Anton Chigurh, the most terrifying character of 2008, I guess.

5. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (4 luni, 3 septamini, 2 zile)

Dir. by: Christian Mungiu

This little film from Romania captures the tension and uncertainty of the communist era in the country during the time of Ceausescu. 2008 was also a year of unwanted pregnancies in films, but the other prominent two were terrific comedies, Juno and Knocked Up. Brilliant camerawork and minimalist, this 2008 Cannes Palm D’Or winner, is also an unflinching look at abortion, about the consequences of our decisions and the unwanted things that go along with it. This film is so honest and unsettling a portrayal, that some scenes might make your insides curdle. Like No Country, the abrupt and absurd end to the last scene is a what-the moment, but then it will have already grip you with something unspeakable.

4. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Schapandre et le Papillon)
Dir. by Julian Schnabel

David Denby, film critic from The New Yorker, and one of my favorites, calls this film as “nothing but a rebirth of cinema”. So fresh, so vibrant, and so mesmerizing, a lot has already called the adaptation of French Vogue editor-in-chief Dominic Bauby’s memoir unfilmable, but like many things unbelievable, this one did happen. Matheiu Amalric, playing arch-nemesis to James Bond in the recent Quantum of Solace, is just wonderful. The film, just like the accomplishment of Bauby’s memoir, is something that’s almost ungraspable, but like Bauby’s persistence and unparalleled vision, something like a movie-miracle came out of it. Here, the camera is the eye, and literally at that, and Janusz Kaminski captures the mesmerizing beauty of the power to live.

Jayclops top 10 2007 films

10. Margot at the Wedding
Dir. by: Noah Baumbach

This wasn’t a biggie with the critics, and Baumbach’s third feature and follow-up to The Squid and the Whale, I agree, wasn’t superior to Squid, which was just brilliant, but hey, for all the neuroses and the banter and the seemingly endless exchange and self infliction of anger, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed Nicole, and Jennifer Jason Leigh was great in this one too. Jack Black, does good playing a loser-asshole, probably next to Tom Cruise, but a little father down the ladder of assholeness (remember Magnolia, and recently Tropic Thunder). What’s with weddings that Americans seem to find it a perfect venue to unearth familial monsters (read: Rachel Getting Married this year)?

9. There Will be Blood
Dir. by: Paul Thomas Anderson

If you really want to know why Blood is so critically-raved, you may well be reading the reviews over RottenTomatoes or MetaCritic now, but please if you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor. If I am asked why this is in my list, I wouldn’t say because this is a film which practically lands in almost every critic’s top tens last year, but because PTA is one of my favorite directors. Boogie Nights is one of my all time and I thought Magnolia was great as well and even though I haven’t seen Hard Eight and Punch-Drunk Love, I’m quite sure those two deserve their own praises. I never thought if such genre for PTA, or rather I never thought it would be that soon, but I think this is a pillar for his career.

8. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Dir. by: Andrew Dominik

This is probably the most underrated film of the year, grossly overlooked. Aside from Casey Affleck’s career-turning performance, the real standout for this film is the cinematography by the great Roger Deakins. I would also pick this as the most beautifully shot film of the year, and that I have to see it widescreen. One of my favorite scenes is when Jesse James, played quite effectively by Brad Pitt, is seen almost as a shadow with the light from the train they’re going to rob behind him, so iconic and such evocation. Almost every scene in this film is shot pitch-perfectly and Casey Affleck is just amazing in every one of them.

7. The Bourne Ultimatum
Dir. by: Paul Greengrass

If Jesse James is the most beautifully shot, the third and last installment to the Bourne franchise directed by United 93 visionary Paul Greengrass, is the most wonderfully edited film of the year. My favorite action film of the year is a toss-up between Casino Royale and this one. When I got hold of my cold drink while watching this inside the theatre, I wasn’t able to put it down till about 10 or so minutes. And the film has already spanned 5 cities all over the globe, that’s how fast-paced it is. When I was through, exhilarated and satisfied, I thought this has got to be one of the most well-edited films of the year, and I wasn’t wrong, it even went home to bag the Oscar for its editing. Terrific performances from Joan Allen reprising her role as Pamela Landy, David Strathairn, Julia Stiles and of course, Matt Damon as Jason Bourne.

Dark times

We are living in dark, menacing times. And we don’t need to rub it more in, but I agree we need to contemplate on it.

And Nolan is such a thinker, even referencing Caesar and Winston Churchill, great men of power and leadership; he wants us to get enmeshed in the convolution of power and justice – how it is also a contemplation of actions, of heroism and then some.

The caped crusader (Bale) this time finds himself in such a dilemma, a question of vigilantism versus putting things into order. And chaos – chaos is not just a matter of hooliganism, of petty crimes and robberies, hell even organized ones, but sometimes chaos also is an uncontrollable whim and its perpetration is much harder to fathom.

The agent of chaos (Ledger) is scary too. He prances creepily in a hospital gown, with globs of white make up and lipstick, sticky hair, a detonator in hand ready to blow up a hospital. Later, he introduces a “social experiment”: two ferries with one full of unknowing passengers and a bunch of criminals on the other. First one to blow the other to smithereens before time runs out.

“Either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” DA Dent (Aaron Eckhart), the unlikely modern-day hero on the other, says this nonchalantly to the caped crusader himself. He undergoes a tremendous dramatic arc, the statement reverberating throughout as if echoing impending death.

It’s operatic, it’s commanding. And the other tricks up Nolan’s sleeve make The Dark Knight an entertaining, well-thought summer blockbuster.

I’m also singling out Wall E, a surprisingly satisfying and relevant animated picture to have come in recent times. Well, not surprising on one hand when you think that Pixar has continually churned out successfully animated features to critical acclaim as well like The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

The wonder in seeing WALL E (short for Waste Allocator Load Lifter Earth-class), aside from the amusing robot’s Chaplinesque antics, is his silent and methodical ways of accomplishing his task at hand, which is the same everyday; his forays in the now-barren Earth unearths in us a semblance of bewilderment, a sense of loss and the joy of discovery. It’s never preachy despite the gargantuan message it wants to get across. Call it a reminder, an oft-repeated call of the times. But then we need to save us first, we need to get out of our own floating couches.

Frost/Nixon, Revolutionary Road

Frost/Nixon dir. by Ron Howard.

Some people over the net bitched about how fussy all the attention this film has been getting, about how a film that is centered on a one interview can ever be awards-bait and all. I think it has the elements though. Based on a true incident, the sensational interview between Martin Frost and Richard Nixon after the Watergate has the stuff people get excited to, the subject matter at least I think, does too. It has a powerful cast with the two leads: Frank Langhella, who last year everyone hoped would finally get his due for a fine performance in Starting Out in the Evening and Martin Sheen, who I absolutely liked as a searing Tony Blair in The Queen, and who I think was also robbed of a nomination then.

Revolutionary Road dir. by Sam Mendes.

This has got to be the most anticipated movie of the season, and I guess everybody knows why. Sam Mendes, directs his wife Kate and Kate’s erstwhile on-screen lover Leo in an adaptation of Richard Yates 1960 novel about a crumbling marriage. American families in distress have been fodder of recent years in some movies and it’s perhaps because of the equally increasing distress in American history for the past decades. Of course, there was Mendes’ American Beauty and of two year’s ago, Todd Field’s Little Children, which I thought was one of that year’s best. But they say that the subject matter is more relevant during those times which make this sort of a prelude to the previous films with the same subject. And that’s why I’m looking forward to this, and to reading the book, not just because of Leo and Kate, but perhaps because of them too.

Che, The Changeling

Che (The Argentine and Guerilla) dir. by Steven Soderbergh---

While Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries introduced us to the young revolutionary, Soderbergh details the life of the guerilla who inspired a generation. Che packs a whopping 4 hours, made up actually of two films. Argentine deals with the 1956-58 Cuban campaign while Guerilla chronicles Che’s attempt in Bolivia to launch an entire revolution in South America.

Reading an article in Film Comment which had Soderbergh narrating the directorial process of both films, I’m excited to see this one. Hope it comes out on bootleg soon, hahaha. Soderbergh, with his success with the Ocean franchise shows to us that he is one filmmaker to beat, ready to defy the conventions. Soderbergh made noise when he got 2 Oscar nominations for directing Traffic and Erin Brokovich. The twin-bill may make it hard on the noms though but here’s to hoping that he and Del Toro get a nod.

The Changeling dir. by Clint Eastwood. Changeling was a hit and crowd pleaser at Cannes and features a notable performance from Angelina Jolie, who plays a mother who is convinced that the lost son the LAPD found and returned to her is not hers. For one, it will be exciting to see if Jolie pulled it off and separate herself from her tabloid image. I think she was great in last year’s A Mighty Heart. The trailer commands us to listen; it’s emotionally packed, the familiar epic-sounding score. When she mentions her name, the seemingly reluctant desperation is haunting enough, hidden under that black umbrella. She just wants her son back, for Chrissakes.

Synecdoche, New York; Doubt

Synecdoche, New York dir. by Charlie Kaufman---

And it seems like the past two years have not been great for Philip Seymour Hoffman - that talented actor who always seem to land on supporting roles like in Almost Famous and Boogie Nights, until his sensational turn as the helium-voiced Truman Capote in Capote. And though I still reserved my nod for Heath during that time, you gotta pay your respects for this man. He seems unstoppable thereafter. Landing in The Savages opposite Laura Linney, opposite Ethan Hawke in the grossly underrated Sidney Lumet film Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and the single, most-recognizable performance as political spinner Gus Avrakotos in Charlie Wilson’s War. In Synecdoche, he plays Caden Cotard, a playwright who struggled for many years finishing the play of a lifetime while battling his own monsters and meeting the different women in his life. With a star-studded cast featuring talented actresses, I’m definitely looking forward to this one. One of my favorite trailers so far. That airplane balloon is so Kaufman-ish.

Doubt dir. by John Patrick Shanley---

Doubt is one of those films that you’d watch because there’s Mother Meryl and Mr. Hoffman, and I’ll watch it all the more coz Amy Adams is in it too, though I can see traces of Giselle in her voice (“how does she know…”). A traditional principal-nun who runs a strict Catholic school suspects a priest of a vile act to which she has no proof, hmmm… Doubt is based on Shanley’s original Pulitzer Prize-winning play which was equally a sensational hit. Banter: “I will fight you.” “You will lose.” Plain and simple.