Favorite flicks of '07
By no means do I see every good movie out there, but when most American adults average something like five movies a year in theaters, clearly my 41 movies seen in 2007 puts me far above the norm.
So here's my top 10 list for '07. One or two of these were actually released around Christmas 2006, and are thus considered 2006 movies. But since probably 95 percent of their eventual audience saw them after Dec. 31 of '06, I'm calling them '07 movies. Look, it's my blog so I make the rules, not the members of the Academy.
In roughly descending order:
Children of Men, Juno, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Letters From Iwo Jima, The Darjeeling Limited, The Namesake, The Lives of Others, My Best Friend, In the Shadow of the Moon, No End in Sight.
Give me another 10 and you'd get Dan in Real Life, The Savages, After the Wedding, Charlie Wilson's War, 1408, Music and Lyrics, The Bourne Ultimatum, Once, Venus and Ratatouille.
The fake trailers and ads between features in Grindhouse would make my top 20 (the two features themselves, however, were awful, aside from the turbodriven chase sequence in Tarantino's segment) and if Blade Runner: The Final Cut counts as an '07 release, it would be No. 1.
I saw Blade Runner:The Final Cut in the new Laemmle's theater in the Claremont Village. It was a great experience.
In addition to that, the only other movies I saw this year in theaters were No Country for Old Men, The Bourne Ultimatum, Juno and the Darjeeling Limited -- all excellent.
[You have good taste. -- DA]
So besides Grindhouse, what films reside at the bottom of your list?...
[The biggest snoozefest was The 11th Hour. Nothing else I saw was wretched, but I was disappointed by popcorn fare like Ghost Rider, Spider-Man 3 and Fantastic Four 2 and also by high-minded stuff like Atonement and The Great Debaters. -- DA]
Norbit didn't make it?
[I avoid seeing bad movies. -- DA]
Okay, David, we've learned about your favorite movies (glad to see a "chick flick" on your list -- maybe you took the advice from my last e-mail:) and we know some of your least favorites. How about a guilty pleasure? Which silly, over-the-top or just plain bad movie tops your list? Don't worry, we won't tell anyone!
[From '07, "Music and Lyrics" (in my Top 20) was definitely a guilty pleasure. I mean, Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore? But the '80s music video parody sequence was worth the price of admission all by itself. From my all-time guilty pleasure list, I have an irrational love for the "Planet of the Apes" movies, every single one of them. And if you don't like them, get your stinkin' paws off my blog, you damn dirty apes! -- DA]