Rick's Top 25 Films of 2007 (As It Stands on January 1, 2008)

It was a year for old men and pregnant teens and rats that like fine cuisine. With the Demon Barber, there will be blood and Alexander Supertramp went into the wild on a flash flood. An Iranian girl dared to be a metal head, while brothers hoped they got away with murder before the devil knows their dead. There once was a guy and a girl who made beautiful music together and Edith Piaf sang through a life of stormy weather.

Making a definitive top ten or 25 list is a nearly impossible task. That's why I would never attempt a "best of all time" list. As the list stands, it's the top 25 films that were released in 2007, which I've seen so far. So the list works as a recommendation list. If there are five or 10 or 25 films from 2007 that I believe you need to see — these are those films in some kind of order.

However, it is subject to change as I see more films from a given year. And over time or repeated viewings my opinion can change. Because I work online in a changeable medium, I reserve the right to change my mind at any time. However, I will keep record of my original thoughts and any reasons for the changes.

For instance I still have not seen the following films from 2007— 12:08 TO BUCHAREST, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, AFTER THE WEDDING, ALPHA DOG, THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, THE ASTRONAUT FARMER, BLAME IT ON FIDEL, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!, BUG, CONTROL, DAN IN REAL LIFE, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, DELRIOUS, THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE, GONE BABY GONE, GRACE IS GONE, THE GREAT DEBATERS, I'M NOT THERE, IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON, IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH, THE JANE AUSTEN FAN CLUB, THE KING OF KONG, THE KITE RUNNER, LADY CHATTERLEY, LAKE OF FIRE, LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, LIONS FOR LAMBS, LUST, CAUTION, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING, MEMORIES OF TOMORROW, THE MIST, MY KID COULD PAINT THAT, THE NAMESAKE, OFFSIDE, THE ORPHANAGE, PARIS, JE T'AIME, PETE SEEGER: THE POWER OF SONG, PIERREPOINT, PRIVATE PROPERTY, ROCKET SCIENCE, REDACTED, RENDITION, ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES, THE SAVAGES, SHOOT 'EM UP, SOUTHLAND TALES, STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING, STEPHANIE DALEY, SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY, THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE, THIS IS ENGLAND, THE TV SET, VANAJA, WAITRESS and THE WATER HORSE.

All the above films have received positive word from one or more places. So it is possible that one or several of those above films could make an appearance on the top-25 list at some time. Who knows? But one thing is for sure — people love lists. So here's mine.

1) NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
There is no film this year that returns to my mind more than the Coen brothers' masterpiece. Working equally as taut crime thriller and a metaphor for the randomness of life and death, the makers of FARGO and BLOOD SIMPLE have crafted their best work to date. Tommy Lee Jones plays an aging cop who just can't understand the violence of the world anymore. Josh Brolin, as a laconic man, finds money that belongs to the ruthless killer Churgh, played in a brilliant stroke by Javier Bardem. By following both Jones and Brolin's characters, it's like getting two films in one. Joel and Ethan Coen take the story to a logical ending that finds ways to shock the audience and exceed expectations with powerful and unexpected twists that stay true to the film's central theme.

2) JUNO
Few crowd pleasers are this smart. Led by a fully dedicated performance from Ellen Page, Jason Reitman's teen pregnancy comedy is filled with witty dialogue that never overrides the honest development of the characters. Page's Juno is a cool back-talking young woman who learns that having a child is actually beyond her maturity level, and she isn't the only character that that statement applies to. The film has turned its screenwriter Diablo Cody into an instant Hollywood legend. The ensemble cast also includes great performances from Michael Cera, J.K. Simmons, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner, and Jason Bateman. This hip production is filled with such rapid-fire humor that it only holds more pleasure for future viewings.

3) RATATOUILLE
From June till NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN's release in November, the best film of year was a CG animated movie about a rat who dreams of becoming a great chef. Director Brad Bird and the whole Pixar team have made a family film that will probably entertain parents more than their kids. Remy's struggle between his refined tastes for Paris cuisine and his garbage eating family push and pull him over the course of the story, which builds to a joyous ending that never cheats from the world it has set up. The statement "Anyone Can Cook" is key to understanding the wonderful metaphor that literally has a creature from the gutter rising to the heights of an artiste. RATATOUILLE's lush world is filled with well-developed characters and a thoughtful theme, making it a mature step forward for American animation.

4) THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Bringing together a premiere director in Paul Thomas Andersen and the best actor living today in Daniel Day-Lewis makes THERE WILL BE BLOOD a grand experience. With haunting visuals and an eerie score, this historical drama, based on Upton Sinclair's novel OIL!, follows Daniel Plainview as he works hard to transform himself into a self-made millionaire with his adopted son H.W. by his side. But like a Shakespearian tragedy, it is hubris that brings this ambitious man down. Pitted against the equally ambitious young preacher Eli Sunday, played with smarminess by Paul Dano, Daniel only sees the bad in human nature and succumbs to it as well. Epic and strange this is a unique entry in the resume of a master of cinema.

5) SWEENEY TODD
When the perfect material falls into the hands of the right artist, magic can happen. This is the case with Stephen Sondheim’s classic dark musical and director Tim Burton. Driven by the perfect performance from Johnny Depp, the bloody tale of a wronged barber who returns to London to slash throats is the anti-musical musical. When Mrs. Lovett, played brilliantly by Helena Bonham Carter, suggests that corpses be turned into filling for meat pies, we are certain that this song and dance show will not end in a uplifting number. Crafted with pitch-black wit, gothic production design and operatic music, it's like a classic monster movie mashed up with a Broadway extravaganza. It's the best Broadway adaptation in decades.

6) PERSEPOLIS
Not since TOY STORY 2 and THE IRON GIANT arrived in 1999 has there been two animated films as good as RATATOUILLE and PERSEPOLIS in the same year. And for the future of animation for adults there has never been such a year. Based on Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel, the film chronicles her as a young girl growing up during the Islamic revolution, her study abroad as a stranger in a foreign land and her return to a homeland that she no longer knows. In contrasting universal issues of growing up against the brutal restrictions of an oppressive society, PERSEPOLIS stands as a powerful indictment of simplistic views of a whole country. When a teen in the U.S. listens to heavy metal to rebel it isn’t such a daring act. But when a young girl does so in a country where she could be imprisoned for it, she is truly brave.

7) INTO THE WILD
Like SWEENEY TODD where the right material is brought to life by the right filmmaker, Jon Krakauer’s bestselling non-fiction novel INTO THE WILD is a perfect fit for the style of director Sean Penn. Emile Hirsch gives his best performance as Christopher McCandless (aka Alexander Supertramp), a young man who gives up everything to head out on the road with a desire to live in the wilderness of Alaska. Along the way, he will be an assortment of new friends including a career crowning performance from Hal Holbrook, as well as standout work from Catherine Keener, Kristen Stewart, Vince Vaughn, William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden and Brian Dierker. Part epic road movie and part character study, this ultimately tragic tale says a lot about the desire to throw off the shackles of modern society and what really is important in life.

8) BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD
In a year of good crime dramas, 83-year-old Sidney Lumet has made the best. With a cast full of great performers like Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney and Marisa Tomei, this twisting tale shows two desperate brothers carrying out a "victimless" crime that goes awfully wrong. The consequences throw them into a moral quagmire that bubbles up old family resentments to the surface. Kelly Masterson's brilliant screenplay builds the action of the story around the nature of his characters. Taking its title from the Irish saying — May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead — this robbery caper story will have more than one character in the end who will wish that this to be true.

9) ONCE
This existential musical tells the simple love story of a guy and a girl with such heart and charm that you will be smiling with joy the whole way through. Infused by Glen Hansard’s soulful singer-songwriter tunes and the sweet humanity of Markéta Irglová, director/writer John Carney crafts a film that is virtually one song after another without a single forced moment. The great music not only entertains, but also allows us to peek into the inner feelings of its characters, who struggle to find the spark needed to move forward with their lives. Their love of music will help this happen, their growing love for each other with also help, and along the way all that love makes the viewer fall in love with this film.

10) LA VIE EN ROSE
In the past few years we've had great musical biopics like WALK THE LINE and RAY, and now we have LA VIE EN ROSE, the best of them all. Chronicling a remarkable life of famed French singer Edith Piaf, the film rides on the transformative performance of Marion Cotillard. Director Olivier Dahan shows us Piaf's meager childhood on in poverty and along the way gives us foreboding peeks at the frail 47-year-old Piaf who was crippled by disease brought on by a hard lived life. Dahan perfect direction allows us to not only see what Piaf accomplished, but what motivated her. Some secrets we hold to our grave say a lot about who we are.

11) AWAY FROM HER
Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent give powerful performances in actress Sarah Polley's brilliant directing debut about a couple dealing with the wife's Alzheimer’s.

12) ATONEMENT
Based on Ian McEwan’s novel, Keira Knightley and James McAvoy play lovers whose life is torn apart by the misunderstandings and lies of a young girl, who will be tormented for the rest of her life with regrets and the struggle for redemption.

13) THE LOOKOUT
Screenwriter Scott Frank’s directing debut features standout performances from star Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jeff Daniels in a crime thriller that also acts as a character study about a young man who only wants the reclaims the potential life he lost in a terrible accident.

14-tie) NO END IN SIGHT & SICKO
The two best documentaries of the year lift the veil off two of the most important topics of our day. In NO END IN SIGHT, Charles Ferguson systematically outlines how incompetence, greed and arrogance spiraled the Iraq war into a total disaster, and in SICKO, Michael Moore makes his most mature film chronicling incompetence, greed and arrogance has left the U.S. health care system in total disaster.

15) CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR
Mike Nichols' smart comedy stars Tom Hanks as Congressman Charlie Wilson as he teams with blunt CIA agent, played brilliantly by Philip Seymour Hoffman, to wage a secret war against the Soviets in Afghanistan that created unforeseen, but not unavoidable, consequences in the future.

16) THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY
Ken Loach's Cannes Film Festival winning drama, starring Cillian Murphy, tells an ironic history of the IRA's struggle to win freedom from the British.

17) AMERICAN GANGSTER
Starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, Ridley Scott's crime drama is based on the true story of Harlem drug kingpin who used sound business principles to take control the New York drug trade by going right to the supplier in Asia.

18) HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX
Continuing the historic family fantasy series, the most mature HARRY POTTER film to date chronicles Harry's struggle against bitterness and resentment and the common feeling that the adult world does not want to take a teenager seriously.

19) 300
This stylized sword and sandal epic is an over-the-top extravaganza chronicling the thrilling stand for freedom that an army of 300 Spartan warriors made against the 20,000 plus Persian army at Thermopylae.

20) ZODIAC
David Fincher's true crime tale shows the complex details that happened in the hunt for the infamous Zodiac killer with Jake Gyllenhaal playing the obsessed journalist Robert Greysmith, Robert Downey Jr. playing drunk and dogged reporter Paul Avery and Mark Ruffalo playing determined detective David Toschi.

21) MICHAEL CLAYTON
Writer Tony Gilroy makes his directing debut with this taut corporate thriller — brought to life by great performances from George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton and Sydney Pollack — about the plague of conscience on people who have ruined lives for corporate greed.

22) EASTERN PROMISES
David Cronenberg reteams with his A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE star Viggo Mortensen in this crime drama about the Russian mob in London where no one are as they seem.

23) BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA
This great coming of age tale delivers truth and fantasy in one emotionally devastating tale of the power of friendship.

24) BLACK BOOK
Paul Verhoeven returns to top form in this WWII set thriller where Carice van Houten gives a gripping performance as a Jewish woman who will go to great extent to survive the Nazi death machine.

25) TALK TO ME
Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor star in this true-life story of the original shock jock Petey Greene as he speaks the truth at all costs during the turbulent 1960s.

Honorable mentions go to:
1408
3:10 TO YUMA
BEOWULF
BLACK SNAKE MOAN
BREACH
GRINDHOUSE
HAIRSPRAY
THE HOAX
HOT FUZZ
I AM LEGEND
KNOCKED UP
A MIGHTY HEART
RESCUE DAWN
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
SUPERBAD
STARDUST

Amendment

1) No Country for Old Men
2) Juno
3) Ratatouille
4) There Will Be Blood
5) Sweeney Todd
6) Persepolis
7) Into the Wild
8) Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
9) Once
10) La Vie En Rose
11) Away from Her
12) Atonement
13) The Lookout
14-tie) No End In Sight
14-tie) Sicko
15) Charlie Wilson's War
16) The Wind that Shakes the Barley
17) American Gangster
18) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
19) 300
20-tie) Zodiac
20-tie) Gone Baby Gone (Added 1/1/09)
21) Michael Clayton
22) Eastern Promises
23) Lake of Fire (Added 1/1/09)
24) The Orphanage (Added 1/1/09)
25) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Added 1/1/09)