2007 in Review
Oct 10, 2016 13:12:29 GMT -5
Douay-Rheims-Challoner, repulsionist, and 2 more like this
Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Oct 10, 2016 13:12:29 GMT -5
Note: More content will be added to this thread as I write it.
So, I started this project intending to review 23 movies. I ended up reviewing 99. Such is the power of 2007. It really is the best year in the history of film; I struggled to get everything I wanted even into the top twenty, and even with so many titles under my belt, whatever lists I have written below cannot be considered comprehensive.
2007, as I’ve mentioned before, was an important year for me personally. It’s the year I started keeping a journal (I’m now on volume 20), attained the rank of Eagle Scout, became a legal adult, and started getting to know all of you. It’s the year I started buying lots of books– as in, reading a new book every week, and not for school– and it’s the year I saw many of what would end up being my favorite films as an adult, and not just those that came out that year. It is, in essence, the year I became who I am, in a much bigger way than can be credited to any other year. So going back to revisit that time period was very gratifying.
But 2007 isn’t just my favorite movie year for my own experiences. Critics at the end of the year were often astounded by the wealth of great cinema that had come out– and of all different types. Some of these films, it must be said, haven’t aged well (Knocked Up, Juno, In the Valley of Elah, Spider-Man 3). And some may have aged well, but I simply disagreed strongly with critics (Once, Waitress, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). But there’s still plenty out there for everyone, so it’s worth discussing what may have caused this year to be so good.
1. Digital technology means more movies overall
In 2001, the number of movies that got stateside theatrical releases outside festivals was around 150, which was pretty normal. But with the advent of digital cameras, which saw a gradual increase in both quality and affordability, the number steadily increased over the decade until 2007, when the number of releases was comfortably over 100. Sixteen of the films I reviewed had budgets under $10 million (not including documentaries), six had budgets under $1 million, and I guarantee most of them would never have been made without inexpensive digital equipment. And the more movies there are overall, the more good movies there will be– though 2007 was still disproportionately good.
2. It’s been six years since 9/11, and it’s okay to start having fun again.
One of the benefits of being less discriminate with my movie choices is that it gave a good overview of the year as a whole. For the most part, these movies were all very different from each other– even the mediocrities and outright crap. But inasmuch as running themes can be found, the better films definitely shared a sense of playfulness that had been lacking in the years before. One thing I’ve noted in my series Aftermath: 2001 is that 9/11 killed the public’s taste for irony, and whatever send-ups and parodies came out through most of the decade were of the Seltzer-Friedberg not-giving-a-shit variety. Suddenly, Hot Fuzz and Grindhouse can celebrate what they mock. And that’s important, because...
3. “Brows” increasingly don’t matter.
Usually after writing my own review of a film, I would look up what other critics said about it, usually Bob Mondello, David Edelstein, or Kenneth Turan on NPR. And while all involved typically fell into certain cliché traps that film critics do, only Edelstein– the man who said Zodiac was too “populist” to be great– continued to toe the line that mass-audience cinema isn’t worthy of serious critical appraisal. We can also see this in the fact that the embarrassing Spider-Man 3 essentially got a pass while other genre pictures were given automatic demerits for not attempting to pander to Oscar voters. Today, we live mostly free of this kind of posturing, originally popularized by the likes of Pauline Kael, and this is where the cracks started to appear.
4. Filmmaking matters again.
2007 may have been a big year for film, but it was television that got all the glory. That medium, which had long been derided as cheap pablum in contrast to the “true art” of film (because it’s older and more expensive, but isn’t as good as theater, which is even older and even more expensive), had not only caught up to the technological and narrative capabilities of film (mostly because DVD made strict serialization possible), but it had developed its own auteur theory as a writer’s rather than director’s medium– just in time for the Writer’s Guild of America to go on strike. Film, by contrast, had become visually dull, and needed to step up its game. And it certainly did that year, with distinct visual style and iconography coming through even in comedy and horror.
So let's talk about the movies themselves.
Because my criteria for what to review were so malleable, I ended up writing a list of rules for what films to review for any future retrospective (yes, there will be more of these). So I want to talk about what those rules are, and what I missed:
Rule 1. I cannot review any film that received a festival release in the previous year.
Yeah, remember ten seconds ago when I said I reviewed 99 films? I actually reviewed 103. But Smokin’ Aces, The Astronaut Farmer, Black Snake Moan, and 300 actually got shown at Harry Knowles’ Butt-Numb-A-Thon in 2006. My bad.
Rule 2. I must review any movie that ranked among the top ten grossing films that year.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End was a weird one, since I actually saw it in theaters and forgot that I had done so. Otherwise, I would have included it, though I think that is a pretty good indicator of its quality. Also, I missed Shrek the Third and National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
Rule 3. I must review any feature film that was nominated for an Oscar in an above-the-line category for that year.
Above-the-line means any award for acting, writing, directing, or producing, including documentary, animation, and foreign language. I left out a shit-ton of movies with this rubric: 12, Away from Her, Beaufort, The Counterfeiters, Elizabeth: the Golden Age, Katyn, Mongol, No End in Sight, Operation Homecoming, Surf’s Up!, Taxi to the Dark Side, and War/Dance.
Rule 4. I will consult with top and bottom-ten lists with various critics to make sure I’m not missing anything big.
Early in my project, I made a passing reference to a movie called The Lookout, and basically made fun of it because I had never heard of it and because the main character is named Chris Pratt. I should’ve done my research, because The Lookout got a ton of great press, and by the way people talk about it, it would possibly have made my top twenty.
Rule 5. I will not chicken out.
I had Epic Movie in my hand when y’all convinced me not to watch it.
Other miscellaneous movies I should have reviewed: Breach, Ghost Rider, Redline, Offside, My Kid Could Paint That, Year of the Dog, The Orphanage, Perfect Stranger, Joshua, The Bourne Ultimatum.
So, I started this project intending to review 23 movies. I ended up reviewing 99. Such is the power of 2007. It really is the best year in the history of film; I struggled to get everything I wanted even into the top twenty, and even with so many titles under my belt, whatever lists I have written below cannot be considered comprehensive.
2007, as I’ve mentioned before, was an important year for me personally. It’s the year I started keeping a journal (I’m now on volume 20), attained the rank of Eagle Scout, became a legal adult, and started getting to know all of you. It’s the year I started buying lots of books– as in, reading a new book every week, and not for school– and it’s the year I saw many of what would end up being my favorite films as an adult, and not just those that came out that year. It is, in essence, the year I became who I am, in a much bigger way than can be credited to any other year. So going back to revisit that time period was very gratifying.
But 2007 isn’t just my favorite movie year for my own experiences. Critics at the end of the year were often astounded by the wealth of great cinema that had come out– and of all different types. Some of these films, it must be said, haven’t aged well (Knocked Up, Juno, In the Valley of Elah, Spider-Man 3). And some may have aged well, but I simply disagreed strongly with critics (Once, Waitress, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). But there’s still plenty out there for everyone, so it’s worth discussing what may have caused this year to be so good.
1. Digital technology means more movies overall
In 2001, the number of movies that got stateside theatrical releases outside festivals was around 150, which was pretty normal. But with the advent of digital cameras, which saw a gradual increase in both quality and affordability, the number steadily increased over the decade until 2007, when the number of releases was comfortably over 100. Sixteen of the films I reviewed had budgets under $10 million (not including documentaries), six had budgets under $1 million, and I guarantee most of them would never have been made without inexpensive digital equipment. And the more movies there are overall, the more good movies there will be– though 2007 was still disproportionately good.
2. It’s been six years since 9/11, and it’s okay to start having fun again.
One of the benefits of being less discriminate with my movie choices is that it gave a good overview of the year as a whole. For the most part, these movies were all very different from each other– even the mediocrities and outright crap. But inasmuch as running themes can be found, the better films definitely shared a sense of playfulness that had been lacking in the years before. One thing I’ve noted in my series Aftermath: 2001 is that 9/11 killed the public’s taste for irony, and whatever send-ups and parodies came out through most of the decade were of the Seltzer-Friedberg not-giving-a-shit variety. Suddenly, Hot Fuzz and Grindhouse can celebrate what they mock. And that’s important, because...
3. “Brows” increasingly don’t matter.
Usually after writing my own review of a film, I would look up what other critics said about it, usually Bob Mondello, David Edelstein, or Kenneth Turan on NPR. And while all involved typically fell into certain cliché traps that film critics do, only Edelstein– the man who said Zodiac was too “populist” to be great– continued to toe the line that mass-audience cinema isn’t worthy of serious critical appraisal. We can also see this in the fact that the embarrassing Spider-Man 3 essentially got a pass while other genre pictures were given automatic demerits for not attempting to pander to Oscar voters. Today, we live mostly free of this kind of posturing, originally popularized by the likes of Pauline Kael, and this is where the cracks started to appear.
4. Filmmaking matters again.
2007 may have been a big year for film, but it was television that got all the glory. That medium, which had long been derided as cheap pablum in contrast to the “true art” of film (because it’s older and more expensive, but isn’t as good as theater, which is even older and even more expensive), had not only caught up to the technological and narrative capabilities of film (mostly because DVD made strict serialization possible), but it had developed its own auteur theory as a writer’s rather than director’s medium– just in time for the Writer’s Guild of America to go on strike. Film, by contrast, had become visually dull, and needed to step up its game. And it certainly did that year, with distinct visual style and iconography coming through even in comedy and horror.
So let's talk about the movies themselves.
Because my criteria for what to review were so malleable, I ended up writing a list of rules for what films to review for any future retrospective (yes, there will be more of these). So I want to talk about what those rules are, and what I missed:
Rule 1. I cannot review any film that received a festival release in the previous year.
Yeah, remember ten seconds ago when I said I reviewed 99 films? I actually reviewed 103. But Smokin’ Aces, The Astronaut Farmer, Black Snake Moan, and 300 actually got shown at Harry Knowles’ Butt-Numb-A-Thon in 2006. My bad.
Rule 2. I must review any movie that ranked among the top ten grossing films that year.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End was a weird one, since I actually saw it in theaters and forgot that I had done so. Otherwise, I would have included it, though I think that is a pretty good indicator of its quality. Also, I missed Shrek the Third and National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
Rule 3. I must review any feature film that was nominated for an Oscar in an above-the-line category for that year.
Above-the-line means any award for acting, writing, directing, or producing, including documentary, animation, and foreign language. I left out a shit-ton of movies with this rubric: 12, Away from Her, Beaufort, The Counterfeiters, Elizabeth: the Golden Age, Katyn, Mongol, No End in Sight, Operation Homecoming, Surf’s Up!, Taxi to the Dark Side, and War/Dance.
Rule 4. I will consult with top and bottom-ten lists with various critics to make sure I’m not missing anything big.
Early in my project, I made a passing reference to a movie called The Lookout, and basically made fun of it because I had never heard of it and because the main character is named Chris Pratt. I should’ve done my research, because The Lookout got a ton of great press, and by the way people talk about it, it would possibly have made my top twenty.
Rule 5. I will not chicken out.
I had Epic Movie in my hand when y’all convinced me not to watch it.
Other miscellaneous movies I should have reviewed: Breach, Ghost Rider, Redline, Offside, My Kid Could Paint That, Year of the Dog, The Orphanage, Perfect Stranger, Joshua, The Bourne Ultimatum.