Top 10 Favorite Films of 2007

Hello Everybody,

I stopped writing movie reviews a few years ago when I redirected my attention to .  Since then I often get requests to start writing them again.  Apparently people still care what I think about movies.  So here's my Favorite Films list for the past year.  This year I'm actually ranking them in order of how much I loved them.  If you haven't seen these movies you can use this as a guide for renting films in 2008!  Enjoy the list!

Disclaimer:  I say this all the time but I just want to make sure everybody understands, this is my list of FAVORITE movies for the year.  It in no way represents what I believe were the best films released in 2007.  I do not have any expectation that Grindhouse will win the Oscar for Best Picture.  That would be crazy (cool, but crazy.)  


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Favorite Movie of 2007

Grindhouse was a movie that I was looking forward to for well over a year.  My anticipation for this movie was so high there was probably going to be no way that it would ever live up to the hype I had personally heaped upon it.  The idea of a Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez Midnight Movie Double Feature was, in my mind, the greatest idea ever put to film.  And I can now say that I was not the least bit disappointed.  It was so cool I couldn't believe it was real.  The whole thing was an event.  There were fake trailers before and between the films.  The negatives were scratched and flawed to give it that real old movie house "look".  Scenes were missing at the most hilarious times and the film would sometimes melt on the projection bulb.  At over 3 hours it was really The movie event of the year, and if you didn't see it in the theater, you missed a once in a lifetime happening.

Not too many people did see it in the theater.  The film was basically a box office bomb.  The short attention span of most people doomed it to failure.  (Personally, any movie that's under 3 hours is too short for me, but whatever.)  Then came the very disappointing DVDs.  To recoup some of their losses, they decided to release the films on DVD individually, in extended editions, and without any of the cool fake previews and stuff.  I'm hoping they eventually release the "Real" version of Grindhouse on DVD.  Quentin usually waits forever to release Special Editions so it might be a while.

All in all if I had to pick one, I liked the Rodriguez film Planet Terror more than the Tarantino Death Proof.  They were both great but I really like Zombie movies and I thought that film was more fun to watch.  


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     (Shouting)  THIS... IS... MY NUMBER ONE MOVIE OF THE YEAR!  When the preview for this movie was released I couldn't believe my eyes.  It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen and the movie completely lived up to the preview.  This movie (And the other Frank Miller masterpiece, Sin City) are the closest we have come to seeing a comic book (or "graphic novel" for the nerd snob elite) come to life on the screen.  

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    Shoot 'Em Up kind of came out of nowhere for me.  I don't remember if I ever even saw a preview.  I read that Clive Owen and Monica Bellucci were in a movie and that was all I really needed to know.  My second favorite action star and the woman I believe to be the hottest on the planet.  Now that's a movie!  Then I found out that it was just going to be a 86 minute gun fight.  And what I thought couldn't get any better became 1000 times cooler.  And what a gun battle it was.  Over the top?  Absolutely.  Story?  Enough for me.  Sexy?  Unimaginably.

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    I love all Wes Anderson movies.  I usually don't love them on first viewing but by the 3rd or 4th time they are on my all time favorites list.  Darjeeling was probably the first one I liked after only one viewing.  It's the most serious Anderson film to date and the fact that Owen Wilson plays a suicidal character, a couple weeks after he actually made a real-life suicide attempt, made it all the more powerful.  I'm sure that publicity was not planned (or maybe it was, who knows?) but it definately added to the mood of the film.  

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    The Shaun of the Dead guys take on the Jerry Bruckheimer action genre.  This film is hilarious.  I seriously recommend that you at least see Bad Boys 2 before you watch it though.  It's not a spoof of that film in particular but that's the one it mocks the most.

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    I have literally waited 1/2 my life for this movie.  I'm not speaking figuratively, I really mean it.  A little over 18 years ago, when I was about 18,  I became obsessed with The Simpsons.  I have watched every episode religiously for the last 18 years.  I have actually recorded every episode on VHS (and I still do).  The Simpsons is my favorite TV show of all time and the movie was great!  Using the writers from the show's Seasons 7-10 they were able to come up with a script and story that harkened back to the early 90's Golden Years of the show.

    Spider Pig, Spider Pig...Does whatever a Spider Pig Does...Can he swing, from a web?....No he can't he's a pig.....Look out!  He is a spider pig.
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    Bruce Willis is my all time favorite actor.  I know that's a horrible thing to admit, but it's true.  And Die Hard 4 was an awesome late addition to the Die Hard Series (the Greatest Action Movie Series of all time).  I loved this movie.  Since it came out on DVD a couple months ago I've already watched it about 3 times and listened to the commentary track.  It's just a great film and the story is really cool too.
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    My little brother was the Transformers fan when we were kids but I used to watch the cartoon with him so I was just as excited as everyone else to see this movie.  It was a special effects extravaganza.  The Transformer effects were so cool I could probably just have watched them transform from cars to robots and back to cars for 2 hours.  The story was good but not great, but I loved it none the less.  Who really expected a great story from a film that was based on a cartoon that was designed by advertisers to sell toys back in the 80's?

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    I was disappointed with Spiderman 3.  There... I said it.  It wasn't as good as Spiderman 2 and having 3 villains was just 2 too many.  I was excited about the film when I saw that Venom (The greatest Spiderman Villain of all time) was going to be in it.  But then the Venom story time got wasted by the boring story of The Sandman and the redundant Green Goblin Jr. retread.  I know they all somewhat follow the comic books but I really wish the whole film could have just been Spiderman Versus Venom.  

    In defense of my high score though, the Venom scenes were super-cool.  I loved Topher Grace as Eddie Brock and the "Bad Peter" sequences (except for the ridiculous dance number) were pretty funny.  
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    This movie, like all of Michael Moore's films should be required viewing.  It made me more embarrassed than ever to be an American and for a while put me soundly in the Hillary Clinton Socialized Medicine corner.  Since then I have moved to the Barack Obama Socialized Medicine / End to the War corner but however it comes and whoever is in charge is not important.  We must Socialize Medicine (and if I had my way, a lot more ) so that we can all have the standard of care that we as humans, deserve and are entitled to.

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    This film probably isn't a 5+1 star movie.  I've seen it 3 times now and I love it but I think my initial score for this movie reflected the fact that I was not expecting it to be so good.  I kind of knew what it was about going into it but 2 hours later I was just blown away.  It's so cool.  I really, really hope they continue to make a few more.  There are other books so it's just a matter of whether people are interested.  Go rent it or buy it.  That's the way they'll be able to green-light a sequel.