One of the year's very worst
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As holiday season rolls around, as is traditional amongst all reviewers, the writers at musicOMH have put their heads together to decide on a definitive guide to all that was best and worst in the cinemas of 2007. And we’re happy to report that the consensus is this was an excellent year, with a lot to enjoy from Hollywood, and, better yet, several independent, foreign-language and even British films giving us cause for celebration.
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But with the Christmas period upon us we should talk first about the turkeys. 2007 certainly saw enough rubbish to fill the sale-racks at your local rental store twice over, with the usual mixture of failed comedies (Codename: The Cleaner, Wedding Daze), vacant tween-films (Bratz: the Movie) and naff franchises (
Fantastic Four 2, Resident Evil 3), the movies that we really wish had come with a receipt are those which promised much and fell flat on every score. By which we mean the threquels.
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| Save the Worst Till Last |
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This year was the year Hollywood discovered it could generate revenue with nothing more than a poster, and all the studios began knocking out third parts to best-selling series regardless of the state of the scripts. The results were (lucrative) disasters. Audiences flocked to see the Shrek, Rush Hour and (most surprisingly of all) Spiderman series slip from their place on top of the tree and smash to pieces on the floor. Bloated, charmless and without a scrap of wit, these three are without doubt the unholy Trinity of Trinities: each one a collection of bad ideas badly executed by a careless and disinterested director, continuing in the tradition of The Matrix Revolutions by destroying an otherwise fine three-part box-set.
Other part threes were not much better. The much-anticipated final (?) Pirates film, At World’s End, only escaped true awfulness by virtue of a comedy monkey and the fact that its incomprehensible and pointless plot was still better than that of the dull-as-bilgewater second instalment. And the best of the lot, The Bourne Ultimatum, still laboured with poor dialogue and last-minute rewrites and kept its head above water thanks only to the brilliance of Paul Greengrass’ direction of tough and inventive action sequences.
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| The Bottom of the Pile |
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However, the honour of worst of the worst has to be reserved for excellent directors with talented casts who still manage to produce execrable movies. This year, the actors were George Clooney and Cate Blanchett, the director Steven Soderbergh (of Traffic, Solaris, Out of Sight, Ocean's Eleven…).
The film was The Good German. It aimed for Casablanca and came out Barbed Wire: for a full reminder of why it should have been cracker but it ended up a joke, see our scathing 1-star review. (Blanchett was its only redeeming feature, just as in the ill-conceived sequel to Elizabeth, which placed runner-up in this category).
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| Now, time for some Christmas cheer |
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But there was still plenty to enjoy. Hollywood gave us a sequel to worthy of its canon in Die Hard 4.0, which captured the gruff charm of the previous films while updating Willis’ tough-guy McLane to a very modern world: and delivering some explosive action along the way. In the comedy stakes, Knocked Up won everyone over, boys and girls alike, thanks to the unlikely pairing of affectionate comedy and a crude streak a mile wide.
Those preferring things thoughtful could chew over David Fincher’s long yet artfully-paced Zodiac, and Robert Redford’s theatrical talkie, Lions for Lambs. And for those who thoughtful simply isn’t hard enough ,David Lynch returned with INLAND EMPIRE; similar but weirder to his previous, more accessible oddity, Mulholland Drive.
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| Beyond America |
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Australia provided three glorious moments. Jindabyne is a complex and considered look at the inhabitants of an isolated town, with excellent performances by Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne. Kenny was possibly the funniest film of the year: a mockumentary following the up-and-downs of a portaloo installer, that could have been cringe-worthy but ended up something closer to sublime. And finally, something quite special: Ten Canoes, a film written, played and researched by Australian Aborgines, providing an vivid and witty insight into a way of life that has now virtually disappeared.
2007 saw a promising number of French releases in the UK, mostly thrillers following the success of last year’s Caché, and the best of these was Tell No One. From further east came The Counterfeiters
, a morally ambiguous true story set in a concentration camp and handled with care and compassion by director Stefan Ruzowitzky (who musicOMH met earlier this year); and also The Lives of Others
, a masterful piece of cinema about surveillance and the effect is has on its very human operators. Closer to home, the Irish low-budget folk-musical Once captured hearts everywhere with its fantastic soundtrack and touching performances.
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| A Little Home-Brew |
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2007 was an excellent year for British cinema, both at the Oscars and at the box-office, and all with remarkably little help from Judi Dench. The great Dame of UK film-making gave only one stand-out performance, in January’s Notes on a Scandal. Another literary adaptation, Atonement, won much praise and is likely to feature at the Academy next year. Less well-recognised was Peter O’Toole in Venus, a tough and witty little film, which suffered from being mis-advertised as a Full Monty-style sexy-comedy rather than something a whole lot wittier and more interesting.
Science-fiction thriller Sunshine impressed with its visuals if not quite so much with its lumbering script. Control, a biopic on the life of New Order frontman Ian Curtis, featured a stunning performance by Sam Riley as the troubled singer, as well as a rich black-and-white style. (Sadly, though, we can’t added Simon Pegg’s Hot Fuzz to the list; self-indulgent and smug, this wasn’t the fine follow-up to Shaun Of The Dead that had been anticipated, being more like a mediocre episode of the Vicar of Dibley).
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| A Few on the Fence |
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Finally, a few to ponder: was
Southland Tales a waste of everyone’s time, or a stroke of genius? (musicOMH came down in favour). Was The Fountain a beautiful epic, or a distasteful sanitisation of the sufferings of cancer? Did Ocean’s 13 round off the set, or should they have quit while they were ahead (as far back as the first one)?
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| Looking Ahead |
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So, farewell 2007, and bring on 2008. We’re looking forward to: seeing if George Lucas can redeem himself after the indecency of the Star Wars prequels when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull arrives in May; Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (out in January) and certain to be as marvellous as everything else the director has touched; discovering what effect the rushing of scripts for start of the writer’s strike will have on the power of Hollywood at the box office; JJ Abrams and Cloverfield. Oh, yes, and peace and goodwill to all men.
Thanks for reading, and see you in the New Year!
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