Film '07: A few words from SF360.org's contributors

By Susan Gerhard

The contributors to SF360.org were asked to ponder the best and worst movies of the past 365 days, to organize their thoughts about film moments into discrete categories, and/or offer prognostications for 2008. Compare/contrast our swoons and rants with your own, and please, let us know if we got it completely, unforgivably wrong. We offer these lists and notes for your year-end amusement.

Susan Gerhard

My far-and-away favorite film of 2007, “Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait,” didn’t receive wide enough distribution to be included on this list, but those close-up cleat shots, the recurring spit-on-turf motif, the Mogwai soundtrack, the climactic flash of red card, and the very few words, rationed for maximum impact, have been playing on in my mind all year long.

A Top 20
1. “Once”
2. “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
3. “Persepolis”
4. “Into the Wild”
5. “The Host”
6. “Sicko”
7. “The Bourne Ultimatum”
8. “The Golden Compass”
9. “I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone”
10. “I’m Not There”
11. “Killer of Sheep”
12. “Colma: The Musical”
13. “Czech Dream”
14. “Nanking”
15. “Romantico”
16. “Knocked Up”
17. “Syndromes and a Century”
18. “There Will Be Blood”
19. “Antonia”
20. “Juno”

An undistributed Top 10
1. “Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait” (Douglas Gordon, Philippe Parreno) (This just in: YBCA gives “Zidane” another round at its theater for February, 2008.)
2. “The Unforeseen” (Laura Dunn)
3. “7 Years” (Jean-Pascal Hattu)
4. “Hear and Now” (Irene Taylor Brodsky)
5. “About Water” (Udo Maurer)
6. “This World of Ours” (Nakajima Ryo)
7. “Bare-Assed Japan” (Ishii Yuya)
8. “Opera Jawa” (Garin Nugroho)
9. “Forbidden Lies” (Anna Broinowski)
10. “Four Sheets to the Wind” (Sterlin Harjo)

Dennis Harvey

Best
1. “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”
2. “Adam’s Apples”
3. “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
4. “Lars and the Real Girl”
5. “Ten Canoes”
6. “The Last Winter”
7. “Colma: The Musical”
8. “Michael Clayton”
9. “Margot at the Wedding”
10. “Gone Baby Gone”

Plus: “Grindhouse,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Family Law,” “No Country for Old Men,” “Brand Upon the Brain!,” “Persepolis,” “The Page Turner”

This year had such a wealth of good documentaries, and putting them on the same list with narrative features seems such an apples/oranges thing, that these (plus no doubt some I missed) deserve their own best list, in no particular order:

“My Kid Could Paint That,” “No End in Sight,” “King Corn,” “Protagonist,” “Romantico,” “Absolute Wilson,” “Zoo,” “Manufactured Landscapes,” “All This in Tea,” “The King of Kong,” “Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten.”

Worst
1. “Redacted”
2. “Because I Said So”
3. “Norbit”
4. “Halloween”
5. “Southland Tales”
6. “Invasion”
7. “Control”
8. “Revolver”
9. “Romance and Cigarettes”
10. “Valley of the Heart’s Delight”

Special Mention: “The Black Book” (because, unlike the above bores and boors, it was bad in a good, instant-camp-classic way).

Max Goldberg

On Beauty – “Paranoid Park” (Gus Van Sant, US/France) – “Silent Light” (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Netherlands/Germany) – “En la Ciudad de Sylvia” (José Luis Guer

topics: critics year end polls

12.28.2007