Films of 2007

January

• The Illusionist – Slight, and slightly predictable. **
• Borat – I love you, Sacha. I want your babies. *****
• A Scanner Darkly – Glutinous eye-candy. Now do Ubik. ***
• Match Point – Jonathan Rhys Meyers is entirely unlikeable in everything, but he seems to despise Tom Cruise, so he can’t be all bad. **
• Little Miss Sunshine – Steve Carell saved this film from indie mawkishness. **
• Rambo: First Blood – This most recent viewing tainted the nostalgia. Never again. *
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – Not ‘not as clever as it thinks it is’, more ‘just about clever enough to get away with it.’ Although Robert Downey Jr was perfecto. ***
• Idiocracy – Irredeemably dumb. –***
• Pan’s Labyrinth – Ooh. This was a good’un. Scary, disturbing, impenetrably dark, not in the least bit what I was expecting, and great in every possible way. Yes. *****
• Underworld 2 – Quack-quack oops. *
• The Prestige – Thankfully, January was saved from ending on a sour lycanthropic note by this, which rocked. Although one of the [many] twists wasn’t nearly as unexpected as it seemed to think it was, the other was great. Also, Wolverine vs Batman! Hazah! ****

February

• V for Vendetta – So much better than I thought it was going to be. Casting John Hurt as the High Chancellor was inspired, and provided a grand visual link to 1984. Stephen Fry was great too – the first film I’ve seen him be good in. And while Natalie Portman’s accent wandered a bit, and never sounded entirely convincing, she acted her bonny little socks off. Vicked. ****
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Gonzo. **
• The Departed – The most astounding thing about this movie was how Marky Mark Wahlberg out-acted Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen and Matt Damon. I still can’t help wanting to punch Leo DiC in the face though. Great, great film. *****
• Children of Men – So, that’d be the grim meathook future then. It really doesn’t seem so far away, and the Daily Mail is leading the charge. Best skiffy film I’ve seen in, ooh, ages. *****
• Network – I’m slightly stunned that I haven’t seen this – I’d have thought it would have turned up on one of my film courses – I suppose that’s the price I paid for not doing a media studies degree. Heh. But Christ, what a film. *****
• Broken Flowers – Utterly mournful. I can imagine watching this film in 20-something years and weeping. And, it pairs strangely well with both Lost in Translation and The Life Aquatic. I bought this film today for £2 from Blockbuster, and the DVD started with a bastardly unskippable anti-piracy trailer. The lack of anti-piracy trailers being one of the best reasons for downloading films, imho. Pisswits. ****
• The Queen – This is an odd one. It felt like it was made with an American audience in mind, as most of the characterisations didn’t extend past anything that hadn’t been done better on British TV: and while Helen Mirren’s Queen is as great as everyone’s been saying, the rest of the film didn’t really live up to the hype. Although Cherie’s curtsey was hysterical. ***
• Severance – Ummm, this was compared to Shawn of the Dead by some guy… really? Apart from the knife up the bum and the heat-seeking RPG, this was dire. When anal daggers are a film’s saving grace, it’s time to bust out the minus stars. –**

The 2007 filmathon is likely to take a little break, or at least decelerate mahoosively, for the next little while, as I’ve just got the 2nd season of Veronica Mars, and also Okami, and in a little bit I’ll have my grubby little mitts on Final Fantasy XII. More as and when.