It’s an year-end movie-loving extravaganza, and joining the party is my favorite contrarian, the scourge of the sacred cow, N. P. Thompson:
Casting a glance over the year in movies, I’m slightly amazed to find so many films I treasure. Now granted, most of these didn’t have gargantuan publicity machines revving them onwards and upwards. My favorites of ’07 typically played for a week at Cinema 21 or the Hollywood Theatre before vanishing in the haze: a few perhaps, if they were lucky, to be revived at Living Room Theatres. (One movie on my list, the superb Mexican war drama The Violin, was screened only during PIFF, but it’s too damn good to leave off.) The major exception to this—and the single instance of overlap between Aaron’s Top Ten and mine—is Todd Haynes’s majestic I’m Not There. I even loved the sequences of Richard Gere as an aging Billy the Kid. You would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by Billy’s too-late reunion with his dog, as the train Billy’s hopped on pulls them away again…forever. Likewise, the scene in Albert Lamorisse’s reissued 1953 short White Mane wherein the boy and wild horse ride into the ocean together utterly devastated me. (The fact that Cinema 21 had red balloons waiting for us in the lobby did abate my tears somewhat.)
Believe it or not, Aaron and I don’t always agree on movies. I happen to have enjoyed immensely the “deceptive healthcare screed” Sicko, especially the trip to Cuba. Conversely, I couldn’t stand either Margot at the Wedding or There Will Be Blood. Blood has shaped up to be the most overrated movie of our time, surpassing even the successful PR snowjobs on Once and Away From Her in trying to convince us that these mediocre movies are great. Some of the praise Julie Christie received for Away From Her and all that Marion Cotillard wrung out of her Edith Piaf lip-synching in the terrible La Vie en Rose should have been given to Susan Sarandon in Romance & Cigarettes—now that was the best performance by a leading lady this year. When Sarandon, ferocious and funny, lip-synchs “Piece of My Heart” in a cathedral, her lusty passion completely eclipses Cotillard’s over-emoting. Similarly, Ethan Hawke’s unfairly maligned The Hottest State was everything Once was cracked up to be, but wasn’t.
But enough about that. Seek these “little” movies out—they need YOU to do the legwork.
1. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
2. Killer of Sheep
3. Cave of the Yellow Dog
4. The Cats of Mirikitani
5. I’m Not There
6. Syndromes and a Century
7. The Red Balloon/White Mane
8. The Violin
9. Delirious
10. Goya’s Ghosts
Honorable mentions (in no special order): Tekkonkinkreet, Romance & Cigarettes, Protagonist, ‘Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris, The Kite Runner, Becoming Jane, Sicko, The Hottest State, Belle Toujours, Woman on the Beach.
