SANDY GARNETT ART BLOG

2007 Top Ten (Films I get to… I don’t get to see them all until I start getting paid for this)

 Best Films -

1. There Will Be Blood - Sweeping Epic Drama, completely unique character made by Daniel Day Lewis
   
2. Gone Baby Gone - Crime Drama, most underrated film of the year
   
3. No Country For Old Men - Coen Brothers (their own category)
   
4. Charlie Wilson’s War - A fun reminder of our government
   
5. Sweeney Todd - Best Musical - flip side of Moulin Rouge
   
6. Sicko - Best Documentary (the failure of the U.S. healthcare system)
7. The Waitress - Best feel good comedy
8. SuperBad - Best tasteless comedy
9. Diving Bell and the Butterfly
   
10. The Bourne Ultimatum - Best smart popcorn movie
    Other Notables - Atonement, Eastern Promises, La Vie En Rose, Michael Clayton, The Brave One, Mr. Brooks, Shooter, The Namesake, 300, Zodiac, Once, Elizabeth I, The Kite Runner
    
    Comedies - You Kill Me, Hot Fuzz, Juno
    

Vitus is a 2006 film about a young Swiss genius who is restless in his child’s skin and seeks normalization in poignant fashion after feeling an outcast his whole life.  His doting, loving parents seek more for his intelligence, supporting in aggressive ways perhaps, and his retreats to grandfather in the countryside are his respite, a place he feels trust and can let his mind relax and fly.  This is one of the best films on the creative mind that I have seen as it contains all the elements of humanity that give a film its resonant, beating heart.  Here is a film I can return to and wonder in.  The movie is primarily Swiss German and subtitled for lazy English speakers… worth every moment.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film is an immediate yet odd classic.  The film is grave and holds its tenor throughout.  The opening sequence pans into Daniel Day Lewis’s character mining solo for gold or oil.  The superior score (by Jonny Greenwood) and direction in the opening sequence recalls Kubrick’s Shining and Malick’s Days of Heaven; there is something revelatory the audience feels in this character’s existence, out here in the barren land, a lone figure with a dream and ambition where noone else might see it.  I was inspired immediately by the gripping opening sequence.

Anderson’s screenplay and direction from Upton Sinclaire’s novel “Oil” is a lifetime in its scope of remarkable drive that can make and break the same man.  The film reads like a western, and in these oil speculator towns business is pitted against the lofty language of spirituality.  There is little room for the Good Book in Mr. Lewis’ character Daniel, who is hard yet decent to start anyway.

 As with most films I have no problem with 2 hrs 38 minutes.  Matter of fact I could have watched more film, but the story plays its last hand in an ugly yet satisfying fashion.  The film prods at extremes in the end, one circling the other suspiciously, truce for now while it’s useful to both parties.  There is poignancy and cynicism in “There Will Be Blood” certainly, but the thought crosses my mind that I do not have to live in the extremes, and neither do most of the characters in this world Mr. Anderson very convincingly creates.

 This film haunts me and is likely the best of 2007.  A film’s excellence is directly correlative to it’s resonance, it’s memory in the audience mind.  Most films are immediately if not quickly forgotten.  This film like other great films has burned itself into my concience like a tattoo that I cannot laser off.

I’ve been on hiatus, watching but not writing.

 Sweeney T0dd is the dark answer to Moulin Rouge.  I am not a fan of musicals but I pair these films like I pair Goodfellas and The Departed, flip sides of a very similar coin.  This film is excellent yet leaves me pining like the recent Cohen Brothers picture… Hollywood ending ever cross the crossbow?

Eastern Promises is an excellent yet dreary film like The Lives Of Others.  There is a survival scene I shan’t forget which makes the film celluloid historical, although the heart is removed the WHOLE TIME.  This film reminds me that The Shawshank Redemption remains a pinnacle, American apple pie the better in this case.

In prototypical Jodie Foster fashion this important actress intensely gets after it in ‘The Brave One’.  The relationship with her fiance is awkwardly directed and not so natural but tragically does not last so long.  Ms. Foster takes on crime and all the emotions entail as she befriends a detective played by Terrence Howard of Hustle and Flow excellence.  Mr. Howard is a refreshing actor with a flair for casual solemnity mixed with the humors of life as he investigates a spate of vigilante murders and begins to unravel the mystery.

 People are divided by vigilantes, which mirror brutal government systems like our own for example.  If someone beat me to the brink of death and killed someone close to me I’d want that nasty perpetrator dead right back.  Saying this is different from being in these difficult shoes and Ms. Foster explores the inner turmoil of a decent human being handed this painful lot in life.  The film is not easy but resonates like many of Ms. Foster’s projects.  She rarely lets her fans down and this is why we see everything she does.