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Seen any good movies lately? TimeOut reviewers sure have - here are their picks for the best flicks of 2007
KEY POINTS:
1 THE LIVES OF OTHERS
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
The winner of Best Foreign Film Oscar, this debut feature of a writer-director barely out of his 20s was almost indecently brilliant, a political thriller of fierce intelligence and moral heft that was both knuckle-whiteningly exciting and desperately, purely sad. The two main characters never met, but in their relationship was played out the whole tragedy of the state set against its own citizens and the way that innocence, besieged long enough by suspicion, can morph into guilt. In telling the story of an East German playwright and the Stasi snoop assigned to spy on him (for the very good reason that he is not under suspicion for anything), von Donnersmarck was alive to the fact that good actions can be performed for bad reasons and vice versa, because no one is simply good or bad. The meticulously constructed plot was full of the agonising ironies created by mistaken intentions and the film's bleak, final truth was that, when human relationships are so perverted, even happy endings can be tragedies. (PC)
2 PAN'S LABYRINTH
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
This one also featured in the Academy Awards - winning best art direction, cinematography, which recognised the fantasy film's visual extravagances. But the true black magic of Pan's was its beautiful collision of two frightening realms - that of 1944 Fascist Spain and a fairytale underworld which reveals itself to 11-year-old Ofelia as an escape from her jackbooted stepfather. And in the fabulously hideous creature of the Pale Man we got a whole new halloween costume. (RB)
3 EAGLE VS SHARK
Director: Taika Waititi
Waititi's debut feature was a miniature marvel and the best local film of a busy year. A bittersweet back-to-front romantic comedy, it starred Flight of the Conchordian Jemaine Clement as Jarrod, a study in arrested development, but the film belonged to Loren Horsley's meek, monotone sad-eyed Lily. (RB)
4 ONCE
Director: John Carney
The film of the summer, this little gem of Irish blarney left us glowing for days. The two main characters - a heartsore busker and an indigent immigrant Czech woman - got utterly under the skin in an unpredictable love story leavened with charming tunes. (PC)
5 CONVERSATIONS WITH MY GARDENER
Director: Jean Becker
Two men - an artist and a gardener who were schoolmates - leapt the chasms of social class and talked, and the director was smart enough to let them. How very French. How very wonderful. (PC)
6 AWAY FROM HER
Director: Sarah Polley
The preternaturally mature 27-year-old director adapted an Alice Munro short story about a woman's descent into dementia and made a heartbreaking love story which reminded us of how damn good Julie Christie is. (PC)
7 CONTROL
Director: Anton Corbijn
Famed photographer Anton Corbijn's assured debut feature about the short life of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis based on wife Deborah Curtis' memoirs Touching from a Distance transcended being another rock biopic and with its riveting performance by Sam Riley as the singer became something electrifying and deeply moving. (RB)
8 THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
Director: Paul Greengrass
The capper in the trilogy about the amnesiac CIA assassin was the action movie of many a year both for its sheer physical grunt and its rampant paranoia as Matt Damon and director Greengrass deftly managed to drag Robert Ludlum's original spy saga from the Cold War to the War on Terror. (RB)
9 HALF NELSON
Director: Ryan Fleck
An inspirational teacher story for those who hate such things, this indie miracle was maybe 10 minutes too long but Ryan Gosling's performance as a crack addict idealist was one of the year's best. (PC)
10 ATONEMENT
Director: Joe Wright
Ian McEwan's multi-layered masterpiece might have seemed beyond easy transition to film but the period story not only survived, but thrived with its narrative sleight of hand intact. Director Wright extracted career-best performances from his young stars James McAvoy and Keira Knightley and he deserves the year's unofficial award for both best tracking shot (the scene on the beaches of Dunkirk) and most effective use of a four-letter word. (RB)
11 HEARTBREAK HOTEL
Director: Colin Nutley
The Stockholm-based English film-maker directed his wife in the main role in a thinking-woman's chick flick which never shied away from the tough stuff and was, at times, as funny as a fight. (PC)
12 THIS IS ENGLAND
Director: Shane Meadows
The film-maker laureate of working-class middle England captured the end of innocence in a film about the hijack of the skinhead movement by racist thugs that was grim, but also quick-witted and often funny. (PC)
13 RATATOUILLE
Director: Brad Bird
By not just relying on cute cuddly animals (which by the way it has plenty of) Ratatouille broke the barrier between traditional live action and computer generated animation by presenting a film with the full package; a well rounded story, considered script, interesting characters and beautiful cartooning. Not bad for an unsavoury story about a rat who works in a restaurant kitchen. (FR)
14 THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
Director: Andrew Dominik
This revisionist take on the old West's most famous slaying was utterly captivating, despite its generous running time, for its dreamy sepia-toned lyricism, evocative cinematography and the riveting performances of Brad Pitt as James and Casey Affleck as Ford which turned this from just another shoot-out story into a psychological saga. (RB)
15 STEPHANIE DALEY
Director: Hilary Brougher
A coolly plotted, wonderfully acted film about a teenager who may have killed her baby was hampered by an abrupt ending but announced an exciting new indie talent. (PC)
16 EASTERN PROMISES
Director: David Cronenberg
Cronenberg's moody, brutal and sophisticated mobster flick spoils us with intriguing storylines, wonderfully tense and restrained performances, stylish visuals and what must be one of the most memorable scenes of the year featuring a naked Viggo Mortensen in unarmed combat with a couple of Chechen thugs in a London bathhouse. (FR)
17 THE HISTORY BOYS
Director: Nicholas Hytner
The screen version of Alan Bennett's acclaimed play exulted in its theatricality and was equal parts drama, mystery, comedy, satire and spoof. (PC)
18 VENUS
Director: Roger Michell
In an age of extreme sensitivity to the danger of sexual predation, this was a risky film but it was a triumph for Peter O'Toole as an ageing actor looking for love in an unlikely place. (PC)
19 SNOWCAKE
Director: Marc Evans
Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman were at the top of their game in this whimsical, touching film about the relationship between an autistic woman and a man crippled by his past. (PC)20 LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
20 LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
Director: Clint Eastwood
The flip side to last year's Flags of Our Fathers was that rare thing, a film that told a war story from the perspective of the vanquished - and it was an intimate and heartbreakingly poignant interrogation of the notion of enemy. (PC)
