The Top 20 Movies of 2007-2008

My Blog, my rules, so I'm gonna have a top 20 list of movies. Screw top 10 - I saw too many movies this year. Many critics' response to this problem (see: Godfrey Cheshire) is to have a 30-film long "honorable mentions" list, but that's a copout. I'm putting together a list of 20 films, in order of awesomeness. I'm also enclosing the number of publications that, according to metacritic, ranked each of these films the best of the year, so you can use that to decide how much my taste sucks - I'll try to find a Top 10 Tracker instead, since that'd be more representative, but I haven't found one yet. Enjoy. Soon, I'll try to add pictures and descriptions! (Try not to laugh if you stumble across this list in the year 2347, as part of your Doctoral Disseration on Film Blawgs of the early 21st century, and you find it without pictures or my comments).

Update: I'm too lazy to get pictures, and I've decided you don't necessarily need to hear from me again on these films, so I'm providing quotes for each of them from reviews by The Only Film Critic Who Matters. If he didn't review it, that film just has to sit without a quote and curse Dargis and Holden.

1.Away from Her
“I can’t remember the last time the movies yielded up a love story so painful, so tender and so true.”
2.Knocked Up (1)
“Mr. Apatow’s critique of contemporary mores is easy to miss — it is obscured as much by geniality as by profanity — but it is nonetheless severe and directed at the young men who make up the core of this film’s likely audience.”
3.No Country for Old Men (20)
“No Country for Old Men” is purgatory for the squeamish and the easily spooked. For formalists — those moviegoers sent into raptures by tight editing, nimble camera work and faultless sound design — it’s pure heaven.
4.The Lives of Others (2)
Georg and Captain Wiesler, though they occasionally waver and worry, remain true to their essential natures, and thus embody the film’s deepest, most challenging paradox: people don’t change, and yet the world does.
5.Rescue Dawn
6.Michael Clayton (3)
7.There Will be Blood (13)
8.Futurama: Bender's Big Score
9.Superbad
10.The Bourne Ultimatum (1)
11.Waitress (1)
Part feminist fable, part romantic fairy tale, it is by turns tart and sweet, charming and tough, rather like its heroine and like Keri Russell, the plucky, pretty, nimble actress (still perhaps best known as Felicity, from the television coming-of-age melodrama of the same name) who plays her.
12.The Simpsons Movie
I have long been of the opinion that the entire history of American popular culture — maybe even of Western civilization — amounts to little more than a long prelude to “The Simpsons.”
13.Once (2)
But its low-key affect and decidedly human scale endow “Once” with an easy, lovable charm that a flashier production could never have achieved. The formula is simple: two people, a few instruments, 88 minutes and not a single false note.
14.Persepolis
“Persepolis,” austere as it may look, is full of warmth and surprise, alive with humor and a fierce independence of spirit. Its flat, stylized depiction of the world — the streets and buildings of Tehran and Vienna in particular — turns geography into poetry.
15.3:10 to Yuma
Mr. Bale is one of the few screen actors who can convincingly shed the trappings of modernity. Dan is much more than a movie star in costume: with his gaunt, haggard face and wide, awe-struck eyes, he seems to have stepped out of a daguerreotype or a murder ballad.
16.The Lookout
17.American Gangster
18.The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (9.5)
Their common subject, however, is freedom, the self-willed liberation of a difficult, defiant individual. But Mr. Schnabel is not content simply to state or to dramatize this idea. Rather, he demonstrates his own imaginative freedom in every frame and sequence, dispensing with narrative and expository conventions in favor of a wild, intuitive honesty.
19.Enchanted
20.The Host

Honorable Mentions: Hot Fuzz, because everyone seems to have forgotten about it, and it was awesome, although less awesome than both Shaun of the Dead and the preceding 20 movies. Otherwise, I don't think you need a list of other movies I saw that were good, but not as good as these.
Regrets: I didn't see (and wanted or at least felt obligated to see) Lars and the Real Girl, Great World of Sound, No End in Sight, The Savages, This is England, King of Kong, Election and Triad Election, Across the Universe, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Charlie Wilson's War, I'm Not There. I also didn't see 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, but I blame the film industry/Mr. Stone for that.

My Favorite Films of All Time

Since Blade Runner is coming to the triangle next week, and I'm super-psyched about seeing one of my favorite films of all time, I'm going to take this time to just ruminate on my favorite films of all time. It used to be, when I was asked what my favorite movie was, I was never able to give a single film but had a pretty stable list of 5 or more films that I would answer consistently. Here's Graham's top 6 or so films, circa 2003, let's say:
Blade Runner
Apocalypse Now
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Wings of Desire
Reservoir Dogs
Ran
Gladiator

Ok, so, that's pretty close. A quick analysis:
Epic: 5/7 (exceptions: Wings and Dogs)
Violent: 6/7 (exception: Wings)
Long: 6/7 (exception: Dogs)
Sausagefest: 5.5/7 (exceptions: Wings and kinda Blade Runner)

Here's what I'm getting at. Besides the fact that Wings of Desire stands out, I think we've learned that, roughly five years ago, my favorite films were generally long, epic, violent, and lacking in major roles for chicks. Also, as I've said, it was a pretty consistent and pretty short list.

I guess this is it what it means to grow old. Nowadays, my favorite films span more continents, have entered the 21st century (the old list barely made it to the 90s) and gone back to the beginning of the 20th, and, yes, occasionally involve women (seriously, occasionally only). How does one construct a top 5 or 10 or even 20 list when faced with this sort of breadth and depth? Should there be a 1 or 3 or 5-year waiting period before a film can make the list? Would a waiting period apply only to films made within that time (no Departed, for example) or also to films that I've just seen recently, even if they're older (8 1/2, Magnolia, etc)? In a limited way, it makes sense to list the 10 ten films of the preceding year even if they otherwise have nothing in common with each other, but does it make any sense make some sort of giant list and stick The Philadelphia Story next to Blade Runner next to The Seventh Seal? Finally, should I just say fuck it, elevate myself to the same level as the AFI, and make a hundred film list?

I've decided to provisionally answer these questions by making a list that will be the logical extension of the 2003 list, and I'll try to represent my film geek side on it - all the stuff i've rented, hunted down, and loved, from any time except the last couple of years, over the years, even if I've just seen it. The, my various top 10 lists from the past few years can become the staging areas for the bigger list, but none of these more recent films are allowed on it right away. Also, for now, I'll try to keep it under 30 films, and I'm not going to order it. Finally, at the end, just to see what's happened, we'll get the same analysis as we got on the other list. Also, if anyone actually read this far, I'm sorry.

Graham's Favorite Films of All Time, for Now
Blade Runner
Apocalypse Now
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Wings of Desire
Reservoir Dogs
Ran
Gladiator
Brazil
Tampopo
Nights of Cabiria
Magnolia
The Seventh Seal
Modern Times
The Philadelphia Story
The Lady Eve
Oldboy
The Wild Bunch
Meet John Doe
The Big Lebowski
The Matrix
Sleeper
The Big Sleep
The Royal Tenebaums
The Third Man
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Hero
Lone Star
Sunset Blvd
Breathless

Epic: 12/29
Long: 10/29
Violent: 11/29
Sausage Fest: 7.5/27

Hmm, well, that's what I thought. My tastes in film have, in the past 5 years or so, gotten much less epic, violent, long, and dudetacular (I still love Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, though). I might starting rating all films based on those 4 factors, as well. That'll be fun.