The Best Movies of 2007

Every year I sit at my computer and attempt to list the previous year’s 10 best films. It’s not an onerous task, it’s fun. It’s satisfying for critics to glance over their tidy list, complete with bullet points and numbers, and feel pride for the 10 works they happened to enjoy. My lists, however, are always destined to fail. I don’t get free tickets to every movie (I’m waiting, New York Times); I’m stuck paying $10 and a subway fare like everyone else. I saw 37 movies released in 2007. That’s a decent number, but it includes the popular fare (“Transformers”) and some underachievers posing as high art (“American Gangster”) alongside the laudable few delineated below. What I mean is, sometimes I have to see “Alien vs. Predator: Requiem” and I just never get around to “Michael Clayton.” So while I don’t pretend to hold the secret, undisputed list of the 10 best films of the year, I can tell you a few great ones I saw.

Stoic faces and parched landscapes were popular this year, and featured prominently in my two favorite films, “No Country For Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood.” The image of Texas in “No Country” belonging to the Coen Brothers and their long time cinematographer Roger Deakins, is bare and lonely, mirroring the psyche of its triumvirate of compelling characters, particularly the aging, world-weary sheriff played to subdued perfection by Tommy Lee Jones. The wide open spaces as well as the darkly lit, impersonal interiors of hotel rooms and store fronts, come alive with the breathtaking precision of the Coen Brothers’ filmmaking. Their tightly composed film speeds through its running time with grace and economy. In a world saturated by jump cuts and whirling cameras, the Coen Brothers prove that less is more in the hands of true masters. They need only an overturned cat bowl or a villain calmly inspecting his boots to tell their story.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” is similarly riveting. The film’s power is exemplified in its virtuosic opening minutes, wordless yet infinitely telling. Daniel Day-Lewis’s Daniel Plainview evolves before our eyes, beginning alone and inexperienced before succeeding due to hard work and fate. Anderson explodes the early 20th century dream of the American self made man, staining it and his characters in blood and oil. Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s haunting score uses all orchestral sounds but sounds modern thanks to a lot of ominous dissonance.

2007 was a great year for comedy thanks to the rise of Judd Apatow. He and his band of like-minded, foul-mouthed men added some heart, without preaching or piling on the sugar, to their already brilliant comedies. Apatow’s own “Knocked Up” is a charmer, doing its best to dispel the fears of marriage and childbirth in the young Google generation. It’s message is cute enough, but the film would be nowhere without sharp dialog and the pitch perfect timing of its cast, including Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann, and its amiable, unlikely leading man, the hilarious Seth Rogan.

What a pleasant surprise it was to see a younger, wilder version of the Apatow formula also succeed months later in “Superbad.” Greg Mottola’s film piles on the laughs, using the power of his stars -- Jonah Hill and Michael Cera -- to lure viewers in before blindsiding them with a surprisingly touching take on friendship and growing up. If you haven’t seen Michael Cera on “Arrested Development” or his internet comedy “Clark and Michael” yet, catch up. After hilarious and nuanced turns in “Superbad” and “Juno” Cera is poised for big things in the future.

My other favorite films were bleak. “Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” externalizes the darkness of the titular character, drowning London in a sea of filth and blackness. This musical-comedy revenge-tragedy offers Tim Burton the perfect setting for his by now familiar gothic nightmare vision; black smoke pours out of Todd’s chimney and the only color in Burton’s palette to cut the blackness is the bright red of all the blood spilt.

“Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” is devastating and proceeds to its conclusion with the inevitability of tragedy. It is a film populated entirely by small, bad people whose self- loathing and self-pity cannot save them from Hell. Its performances are uniformly brilliant, particularly Marisa Tomei in a challenging thankless role, and the always potent Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I also loved “Ratatouille” and “Hot Fuzz” in which Pixar and Simon Pegg respectively continue their streaks of excellence. “Once” is so small and fragile a thing that it’s easy to forget, but this simple, genuine film really pleases. “Atonement” gives the romantic historical epic a second wind in the assured hands of Joe Wright, while David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises” is quietly thrilling and contains possibly the most surprising scene in a movie this year.