Ian T. McFarland

Guess what guys?  Here’s a list of movies I liked this year.  IN FACT, it’s a list of the ten movies I like the very most.  I liked them all, and would totally give a thumbs up to anyone who helped to make any of them (except Halle Berry)!

Well go ahead man, what are you waiting for!?

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Let’s just get right to business, my favorite films of the year – with the order sure to change a whole lot of times before I bite the bucket – are as follows:

10 – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

What makes this french film, based on the real life events of a paralyzed man who wrote a book by winking his eye, isn’t the strong story of the the likewise acting; but the unique voice of the movie’s director,  Julian Schnabel.  Beautiful, tragic and full of life without ever drawing attention to itself, it’s a joyous reminder that the greatest gift given to everyone is the imagination.  Look for it to become the most praised foreign film of the year.

9 – Things We Lost in the Fire

It really bugs me that I’m giving the annoying Halle Berry a spot in both my best and worst of the year lists; but I’d be lying to myself if I said that Things We Lost in the Fire weren’t a strong film that doesn’t have any trouble doing what it wants to do.  Mostly following the death of a father, husband and best friend (of a Benicio Del Toro character, who deserves an Oscar nom that the actor won’t get), the movie is about moving on and learning to take advantage of the good things in life.  Susanne Bier directs this clean cut of cinema clearly and gracefully, matching the beauty of the story in every technical aspect.  Read my review for more.

8 – 300

I don’t know if this movie is making too many year-end lists – and I don’t know that it wholly deserves to – but for a style-over-substance guy like me, it’s at home in its top ten spot.  I don’t have any complaints with the story; but everyone knows that this movie’s forte was its technical aspect.  Action films age pretty badly; but will enough time ever pass that one shot of 300 won’t make you pump your fist and scream “Fuck Yeah?”  Zack Snyder imagery, along with Larry Fong‘s pulpped, reddened photography were revolutionary for a studio picture, and one that will hopefully lead other films down less conventional visual paths.

7 – The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

This documentary on two men racing for the world record high score at the classic Donkey Kong arcade game is one that’s destined to have a massive cult following.  With archetypically good and bad characters like Steve Wiebe, an everyman father/teacher who’s always number two and Billy Mitchell, a selfish hot sauce salesman evil enough to be a bad guy played by Ben Stiller in a movie; King of Kong is too undeniably fun to dismiss.  Documentaries, for whatever reasons, tend to deal with serious stories out of life; but this one proves that there’s no reason you can’t document something hilarious and outlandish in one too.  You’ll never boo, hiss or applaud so much at a documentary.

6 – Death Proof

It’s long.  It’s talky.  But I can’t think of another movie to ever take so much advantage of its build-up in its last act.  If all I saw of the movie were the first ninety minutes, it wouldn’t be on my list; but Quentin Tarantino‘s organic and most thrilling car chase in god knows how long wins every speck of attention in your brain, plastering you to your seat and sending you into cheers for characters you didn’t even think you liked, just for saying something as simple as “Nuh-uh, Motherfucker!”  That, and Tarantino’s aesthetic tribute to exploitation cinema is unknockable – it’s a perfect homage that, at the same time, awesomely outdoes any movie or style it’s imitating.  With a movie this fresh after fifteen years of directing, Tarantino isn’t losing his edge – he’s just getting started.

5 – Alpha Dog

The most flawed movie on this list, Alpha Dog just might be the most emotionally powerful.  It’s preachy and melodramatic around the edges, but the inside is a 100% authentic, believable story about a bunch of not-a-boy, not-yet-a-man guys trying to act tough; but they don’t realize how stupidly they’re behaving when they kidnap the kid brother of a guy they have beef with.  It’s a furious but solid argument against the machismo so many guys at the beginning of adulthood feel like they have to project.  I don’t know that I needed two prologues, a home video montage or worst of all, Sharon Stone crying in a bad fat-suit; but everything else in the film will get you more worried and angry than anything else this year.  You can go back a long ways and read my first opinion of the film.

4 – The Mist

Did anyone expect a giddy, pulpy horror picture about monsters coming from another dimension to be so damn good?  I didn’t, but I have a hard time thinking of this movie as anything short of amazing now.  Director Frank Darabont takes this scary thriller the philosophical route – he’s more interested in the demons that reveal themselves in the frightened human than the ones that walk on eight towering, hairy legs.  Let’s give some marks to Marcia Gay Harden for her just-right over-the-top performance as a self-appointed prophet, along with everyone else in this strong ensemble cast.

3 – No Country For Old Men

The Coens’ return to their merciless, humorless but often hilarious style of filmmaking is probably the most heralded film of the year, and I’m not disagreeing on this one.  Javier Bardem is damn petrifying as the grim reaper, and the everything else about this clean, ironic film makes it the most Coenish to date.  Haunting and lingering, this movie about the lack of glory that inhibits our lives is one you won’t ever forget.

2 – There Will Be Blood

Every one of the five years spent waiting for Paul Thomas Anderson‘s follow-up to the dizzy but exquisite Punch-Drunk Love were painful – but at least now we know they weren’t in vain.  Anderson’s exploration of business, religion and ethics feels so easily collected, only a real pro could do it.  Of course this is just as much P.T.A.‘s show as it is Daniel Day-Lewis’, who slowly makes his oil baron character more and more disconnected from reality until he finally pops out and off of humanity.  I could go on, but I think I’ll stop since I just wrote a review for the film last week.

1 – Zodiac

I’m surprised to see it at number one, and to be fair it only beats out the number two film after hours of thought; but my favorite movie of the year is probably Zodiac.  Few people can take a two-and-a-half hour+ picture that takes place over a quarter century without a resolution this satisfying and tense; but you have to hand it to thrill-master David Fincher that he handles the job with flying colors.  The terror and mythology of a serial killer run rampant through the Bay area keep this massive picture on the tracks, headed for one conclusion and one conclusion alone.  The gorgeous digital picture handles the retrospect perfectly – it gives us the allure of the 70s while looking current and undated.  And, while I’m automatically going to love any movie with Robert Downey Jr. in it, he’s got some great company in Zodiac with the boyish Jake Gyllenhaal and the frustrated Mark Ruffalo, alongside countless thankless character actors that only pop up for one or two scenes.  I can’t say it’s my number one film by a mile, but it’s a movie I haven’t stopped thinking about since I saw it in March, and I don’t know that I ever will.

I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly; but if you think you can handle the shit that flowed this year in movies, pinch your nose, say your prayers and click below.

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2007 was a terrible year.  There were political assassinations, threats of an unnecessary war and, to top it all off, the following five movies.  While lawmakers decided to take the year off from taking global warming seriously, the studio heads were hard at work every day trying to find the next crappy film to flood theaters with – and in that respect, they were unbelievably successful.  Join me, won’t you, and let us celebrate just a few more reasons why life sucks.

But before we get started, because I’m an equal opportunity complainer, I’d like to mention some other crappolas that just missed the cut.  Can you imagine the bliss that would be life without the made-for-kids, and seemingly by-kids summer movie Daddy Day Camp?  What about Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, a franchise that for whatever reason, just decided to stop being even slightly cool?  And who could forget Aliens vs Predator – Requiem, a movie so dumb, it’s an insult to the intelligence of its audience?

5 – Shrek the Third: Hey, do you remember that movie Shrek that came out six years ago?  Remember how it was funny?  Just hold onto that memory and don’t let go, because if you try to relive the fun of that movie with its second sequel, your body might trigger blindness in your eyes to defend itself from this offensively dull family picture.  It’s like they don’t even try with these movies anymore, like the producers just gave a couple second-rate Sitcom writers a bag of skittles to pen thing, because they knew their wallets would get green stains no matter how much the movie sucked dolphin dick.  And boy, were they right.

4 – Blood and Chocolate: I named Underworld: Evolution the third worst movie of 2006, so it shouldn’t be much of surprise to find out that Blood and Chocolate, little more than cheap knock-off of that franchise, is just as stinky.  Actually, I’ll throw a couple more points towards this newer film for not being 70% crappy action scenes like that older one, but the void of action in Blood and Chocolate only means that we get a lot more bland dialogue, acting and other features of the film that make a root canal sound surprisingly relaxing in comparison.

3 – Perfect Stranger: I don’t have a problem with feminism, but what I do have a problem with is when a shallow girl-power message replaces the plot, logic and just about anything else a narrative requires in a movie.  Therefore, I have a problem with the Halle Berry movie Perfect Stranger, a supposed thriller that makes nice with every cliché in the genre and thinks of itself as a gritty, serous and dangerous film.  I already pretty much beat this picture to death in my review from April, so I’ll just let that do the talking here.

2 – I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry: Few traits are more annoying or immoral in a person than hypocrisy, and why should it be any less aggravating when that trait is in a movie?  I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is supposed to be a comedy that bashes gay-bashers and promotes tolerance.  But instead of fixing the problems of homophobia, the movie only advances it.  For every time Adam Sandler or Kevin James scream at a homophobe, there’s another scene full of gay stereotypes that must have been written by people without any idea that – get this – being gay doesn’t mean you have a lisp and make bad pop culture references.  The closest the writers have gotten to a gay person must have been a few episodes of Will & Grace.  To give you an idea of how bad it gets, there are two characters who literally have no other purpose in the movie other than to act hilariously gay.  Yeah.  I’m convinced that someday, people will look back on this supposedly tolerant film with the same attitude that we have for Gone With the Wind today.

1 – D-War (Dragon Wars):  Before I begin to trash this action movie, let me say that I seriously considered putting this movie on my best of the year list because, if nothing else, it was certainly the best movie-going experience of my life.  I walked into the theater actually expecting something cool – I knew it wasn’t going to be anything as awesome as The Host, but I figured that they import bring a South Korean movie unless had some cool actions scenes.

I’m going to go ahead and mark that moment as the most wrong I will ever, ever be; because only my love for mind-blowingly stupid cinema kept me from quitting school and moving to D.C. and lobbying for a war on the Asian nation seventy hours a week.  I had a hard time figuring out what the story was, what with the laughter that almost constantly filled the theater; but here’s what I think it’s about – there are these dragons that come to Earth every few centuries.  And this time, one of them is really pissed off.  And uh, he needs to eat this girl so he can become a Super Sayin dragon, or some shit like that.  Conceived and written like a bad short story a fifth grader would write for English class, the dialogue and plot are a veritable encyclopedia of movie clichés and general stupidity.  The plot holes are so massive, they’re the equivalent of cinematic black holes.  I think that someday, when I retire and have more time than I know what to do with, I’m going to take on the enormous task of naming everything that’s wrong with this film; but with what time I have today, I’ll just say that I doubt I’ll ever see this crappy of a film in theaters.