Thoughtful reviews, the Boulder film scene

Betty Blue

There can be beauty in tragedy, particularly when the key ingredient is the same in both —Marty Mapes (review...)

Betty arrives like a bolt from the Blue

" I know a guy married the same dame 3 times then turned around and married her aunt "
— William Demarest, The Lady Eve

MRQE Top Critic

Sponsored links

We asked our writers for their top ten lists for 2007. We weighted those lists by the number of stories submitted by each writer, the “currentness” of those stories, and by rankings within the lists of the individual writers.

Below are the raw data that went into making our Top Ten of 2007, followed by the individual contributions from our 6 writers.

Forty-six Nominees

Individual Lists

Marty Mapes

  1. Our Daily Bread
  2. Brand Upon the Brain!
  3. Darjeeling Limited, The
  4. Lives of Others, The
  5. In the Shadow of the Moon
  6. Ratatouille
  7. Grindhouse (Death Proof)
  8. Eastern Promises
  9. Lake of Fire
  10. Michael Clayton

Pablo Kjolseth

I can’t rate them by number, but I’ll put my hat in for:

  • THE LIVES OF OTHERS - The only film to really move me with a story that champions good old fashioned humanism.
  • NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN - A refreshing antidote to herky-jerky camera/editing trends and aural bombardments.
  • CLIMATES - Turkish film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan that takes a page from Antonioni.
  • EASTERN PROMISES - Not my favorite Cronenberg film by a long shot, but still better than most of the stuff out there.
  • THE BAND’S VISIT - Israeli film that reminds me of Jarmusch.
  • THE COUNTERFEITERS - Great German film loosely based on true story of Jewish counterfeiters exploited by Nazi’s.
  • MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES - Doc about photographer looks at the effect industry has on landscapes.
  • BRAND UPON THE BRAIN - Wonderfully inventive homage to silent films.
  • NO END IN SIGHT - This doc really spells out how things went wrong in Iraq.
  • TEN CANOES - Wonderful exteriors and big screen vistas with engaging stories involving aboriginal families and betrayal.
Alas, I did not see many films (yet) that I suspect would have also made the cut, such as:

ZODIAC, THERE WILL BE BLOOD, BLACK BOOK, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD, CONTROL, JOE STRUMMER: THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN, etc.

Andrea Birgers

This list is alphabetical because I don’t feel strongly enough about any one movie.

  • Atonement
  • Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
  • Eastern Promises
  • In the Shadow of the Moon
  • Into the Wild
  • Knocked Up
  • Manufactured Landscapes
  • Michael Clayton
  • Once
  • Ratatouille

Other stuff I liked

  • Across the Universe
  • Dan in Real Life
  • Devil Came On Horseback, The
  • Juno
  • Simpsons Movie, The
  • Stardust
  • Waitress

John Adams

top 10 DVDs that I reviewed in 2007

1 HITLER_A FILM
This is one of those films that you can use as a watershed... before I saw HITLER... after I saw HITLER

2 I AM CUBA
Never judge a book by it’s cover... but this one had a killer cover... also the best film making (sadly the story sucked).

3 KILLER OF SHEEP
Film-craft that was almost as good as CUBA. Easily the best student film I’ve ever seen. Too bad it took 40 years to get it out there.

4 LOVECRAFT
Best documentary of the year. Better than just a simple telling of the story of H.P. Lovecraft’s life, it got inside his head (perhaps not a place you’d want to go) in a most unusual manner.

5 FREE LISL
Best unnoticed documentary. If this story had happened in New York, everybody would still be talking about it.

6 A DEDICATED LIFE
It’s curious that Kazuo Hara could have made such an ordinary bio-doc but that’s not to say it is run of the mill.

7 THE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON/AMERICAN REVOLUTION 2
These were two separate DVDs but really should be on one disk. Half documentary and half Zapruder film and all round historical artifact.

8 RANCHO GRANDE
This one was just a lot of fun to watch... too bad it’s not known better in this country along with other singing cowboy films of the 1930’s.

9 FANTASTIC PLANET
It was weird then (1970’s) and it’s weird now, but not necessarily for the same reasons. Still weird credit is given where weird credit is due.

10 INTERKOSMOS
My nominee for Best Original Idea Seen Through To It’s Completion. Commie Camp has never been done better.... also Best Fake Doc of the Year.

Matt Anderson

There are several themes this year: movies with colons in the title, music, true stories, and French.

Matt’s 10 Most Notable Accomplishments in Film, 2007:

  1. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
  2. A Mighty Heart
  3. 3:10 to Yuma
  4. Persepolis
  5. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
  6. Once
  7. Ratatouille
  8. La Vie en Rose
  9. Michael Clayton (the one exception in this list; it’s “only” an engrossing corporate drama)
  10. Across the Universe

Anand Ramachandran

Caveat Emptor: In a year where myriad movies were released and seemingly few were worth remembering (or viewing), the following is a list of films that did not invoke amnesia or require memory repression. To put it another way, I recommend these films.

Happy Festivus, AR

  1. The Simpsons Movie
  2. 3:10 to Yuma
  3. Confessions of a Superhero
  4. Everything’s Gone Green
  5. Hairspray
  6. Superbad
  7. Knocked Up
  8. No Country for Old Men
  9. Bridge to Terabithia
  10. Live Free or Die Hard