Movie Talks Archives

Posted by: Monotreme at February 2, 2008, 11:46 am

Topic: 2007 in review Forum: JoBlo

The following are my thoughts regarding certain trends in the cinematic releases of 2007, in various fields. So we’ll just jump right in to it: The return of the Western Perhaps one of the most noticeable aspects of this year’s releases was the abundance of films in the Western genre. Two of them are straight-up traditional Westerns with a modern mindset of course, 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; while the other two are more like anti-Westerns, one being set in the same time period but lacking the whole outlaw aspect, and the other being a modern-day Western. They also happen to be two of the finest films of the year: There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men respectively. Since the death of the genre there have been various resurgences over the years, from Terrence Malick’s Days in Heaven to George Lucas’ space Western, Star Wars, to Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves to Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven to, most recently, Open Range, also by Costner. But such an abundant concentration of Westerns has not been seen in a while. I wonder if it will make a lasting impression. The fall of the political film Indeed, aside from Charlie Wilson’s War pretty much every politically themed film released this year failed both with the critics and at the box office. Hopes were high with great casts and crews for titles like Rendition and Lions for Lambs, all of which ended up disappointing and failing to one extent or another. As already mentioned, Charlie Wilson’s War is the sole standout, and it’s not even a contemporary political film but rather set in the decline of the Cold War in the 1980’s. This comes even more as a surprise considering that I would identify the very recent 2005 as the year of the political film, with many of the year's greatest and most successful films being politically-oriented, from Syriana to The Constant Gardener to Crash. It's as if two years later, the audience just isn't interested in the hot topics anymore, instead returning to more classical genres. Or maybe the films just weren't that good to begin with. Musicals galore! From straight-up Broadway adaptations like Hairspray to Sweeney Todd, to non-musical films containing musical numbers like Enchanted, to unique variations of the genre like Across the Universe or Once, this year was abundant in films with characters breaking out in song (and, in some but not all cases, dance). Most were good, some better than others, and ultimately it was a good year for this genre as well. A great year for comedies Between Hot Fuzz, the Summer’s animated features Ratatouille and The Simpsons Movie, Judd Apatow’s money machines Superbad and Knocked Up, and the more art house indie works like Waitress and Juno, this was a great year to laugh in. Such a high abundance of truly, genuinely funny films is rare, and I hope that many of these will become timeless comedic classics that can be watched over and over again. No science fiction There was only one proper, straight-up science fiction movie released this year and that was the heavily flawed Sunshine. After the wondrous abundance of excellent films in the genre released last year, it is a shame to see my favourite genre limited to just one not-that-good film. Hopefully next year will have more to offer in this field. The failure of the three-quel Alright, we all knew that Shrek 3 was going to suck, but we saw the trailers and preliminary hype surrounding Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Spider-Man 3 and our hopes were high. After the entertaining but problematically messy and jumbled Dead Man’s Chest, clearly a step down from the first film in the series, At World’s End seemed, at least from the trailers, to deliver the usual striking visuals and imaginative ideas via a substantially more focused and epic plot line. What we got was a 3-hour-long debacle that took the mess in Dead Man’s Chest and simply messed it up some more. Jumbled, confusing, all-over-the-place, the film more than disappointed. And Spider-Man 3 I actually got the feeling from the trailers that this would be a jumbled mess with too many plot lines and characters, but it seemed like they were handling the subjects well, especially Venom. Of course the end product ended up absolutely terrible; more plots than in the first two films combined; the characters who were well-rounded in the first two films lost all their depth and became annoying, simplified clichés, disappointing villains and a Harry Osborn plotline so bad it puts daytime soap operas to shame. And that finale, with Harry and Peter literally holding hands and fighting the bad guys just awful. Luckily the three-quel sort of got its reputation back with Ocean’s Thirteen, and completely got it back with The Bourne Ultimatum, so all is well in the end. Warner Brothers and Universal deliver an important lesson for the future for Disney and Sony: money-grubbing is not enough; in the end, you’re expected to deliver a product worthy of the audience that would go see it anyway. The return of the Sundance Kids I just read this great book by James Mottram called “The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood”, summing up the films and careers of a bunch of filmmakers who got their first breaks in the Sundance film festival and have since evolved to be some of the greatest directors working in Hollywood today. If last year’s best films could have easily been attributed to a foreign, namely Mexican, influence (what with Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu and Guillermo Del Toro’s opuses), this is the year of the American auteur through and through. Sure, Steven Soderbergh is a bad example since he’s pretty steady at releasing at least one film per year, but this year saw the return of many great filmmakers who haven’t released a major motion picture in some time. Since their last features, it has been three years for Quentin Tarantino, The Coen Brothers and Wes Anderson; and it has been FIVE years for Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, and Todd Haynes. This year has been a perfect example of Mottram’s thesis of these independent filmmakers delivering the best works imaginable by working within the studio system. There, that’s it. If anybody has anything to add, please feel free to.

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