Movie Grades – 4Q 2007
I watched fewer movies than normal last quarter, but still saw some pretty good ones:
A
American Gangster – 2 hours 40 minutes, and not one second of it was boring.
A-
Michael Clayton – Awesome movie, but Clooney should get a lot of credit. Swap out him for some b-list actor, and this might have been entirely mediocre.
Into the Wild – This didn’t grip me emotionally as much as I was hoping it might, but still a fantastic film. Emilie Hirsch deserves an Oscar.
Gone Baby Gone – This could have had more depth. I found myself more interested in the next cheap plot twist than I did the characters’ dilemmas.
Flags of Our Fathers – Maybe the most honest war movie I’ve ever seen.
B+
Zodiac – A little dense and lengthy, but worth the viewing.
Hollywoodland – Didn’t insist on resolving itself, which made it intriguing. Could have been shorter, though.
Breach – Kinda boring, but that can be partially forgiven by the fact that this is based on a true story.
B
Lars and the Real Girl - Ryan Gosling is clearly a great actor, but this was a little dull. It reminded me of Napoleon Dynamite, just without all the funny.
No Country for Old Men – I’m bothered by movies that leave you with tons of “what do you think happened?” type of questions. In a work of fiction, if the story doesn’t tell you what happened, than nothing happened!
Bobby – The all-star cast was distracting but I think this movie accomplished what it (probably) set out to: paying tribute to one of our country’s most hopeful politicians who was taken away much too soon and much too needlessly.
B-
Owning Mahowny – Not only was this set in the 80s, but it was filmed to appear as if it was made in the 80s as well (it was made in 2003). I thought that was a neat piece of moviemaking, but the film itself was pretty mediocre.
Bugsy – Long and often boring, but at least it was a gangster movie.
C-
Deja Vu – I’m okay with having to take a small leap of faith with regard to a movie’s premise, but this was asking for an Olympic-caliber triple jump.
F
Saw IV – Movies, especially mainstream blockbusters, shouldn’t require thirty minutes of reading IMDB message boards to figure out wtf happened.
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Top 10 Movies I Saw in 2007:
1. 3:10 To Yuma
2. In The Shadow of the Moon
3. Sunshine
4. American Gangster
5. Into the Wild
6. Once
7. Michael Clayton
8. The Prestige
9. Alpha Dog
10. Babel
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