esrosedotblog

BEST FILMS

Just to remind the reader.

I am working my way through the NYTimes 1176 Best Film List.

There are two editions of the best list, 2000 and 2004. If you run the lists together you end up with 1176 films. Different critics.

I have made a lot of progress. I think that I have seen about 600 of them. I am in the S's and there are a lot of those as well as R's.

There is also a large backlist of non-DVD'd films which are slowly becoming available.

I have started in recent months to add in new films which are good enough to appeal to a list of this kind. It has been four years since the last list and there are many films that would be on it in another edition.

So the purity of my quest has been a bit diliuted but that is OK. I think that I have a lot of time to do the job.

Since I started this project, I have made a list every year of the Best of the Best.

Somehow, I let this new year get going before I remembered about this listing.

Better late than never, here is the list of the Ten Best of the Best for 2007.

You will notice that there are more than 10 films. What the hell?

They are listed in the order in which I saw them.

Little Miss Sunshine: This quirky indie surprise gets you from the side. There is a great cast. Alan Arkin rules.

The Producers: I have loved this film since the beginning and it will always be on my life best list. I got to see it again this year when we hit the P's. Incidentally, the film of the musical is so lifeless that I couldn't watch it although I wanted to.

The Player: This is the best and most memorable (to me) of the Altman films. Tim Robbins is great. And there is the first long shot which we all just go nuts watching.

A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints: which is a memoir film, a first film, and one of the better films with Shia LaBeouf in it. Shia is selling out but there are a couple of movies that show his spirit unstrained through bullshit scripts. Robert Downey Jr. is the adult who is remembering. Outstanding.

My Beautiful Launderette: Another lifer best.

High Fidelity: Lifer too.

Army of Shadows: Jean Pierre Melville. Another memoir of his underground experiences. Just released this year in restored form.

Blue, White, Red: Three films. Krzysztof Kieslowski's homage to France. Gotta see them together in that order.

Diva: No best list without Diva. A perennial favorite. Watchin' it once a year. They just restored it for theaters. He never topped it and actually made only a few films. Jean-Jacques Beineix.

Raising Arizona: The Coens. Holly Hunter and that poor lost man Nicolas Cage. Come back Nick!

The Beat That My Heart Skipped: Sublime

Zodiac: Finally getting some praise on the ten best lists around the country. Revived out here.

Wind That Shakes The Barley: The Browns and the Tans and the Brits have it out. Cillian Murphy.

Lives of Others: East Germany. Listening in. The aftermaths. Great.

Motorcycle Diaries: Oh boy. Che as a young man as Gael Garcia Bernal. Or is it the other way around?

Say Anything: Perennial favorite. See it once a year.

Singing in the Rain: We get lost in a memory loop on the famous title scene but forget what a super musical this is. Perfecto. Comden and Greene.

Ratatouille: Best animation in a long time. It led me to the 2006 Incredibles and I saw it in 2008. Both by Brad Bird who did the Iron Giant which we saw years ago. What a great pedigree.

The worst of the year? There were several. But we won't mention them. Just don't order Caligula any time soon. It is not even camp.