Originally Posted 5/10/17
2007 was a pretty good year for movies. Hell, judging by the upcoming schedule, it was a better year than this one'll be. We got a Decepticon movie, the best throwback gangster film since Casino, the first great Western in over a decade, a realistic vampire flick, the last decent Jason Bourne movie we'll probably ever see, a human Terminator and the return of John McClane after a 12-year hiatus. Not bad at all.
16. Sunshine
Beowulf is close to what the Thor movies should've been. Thor himself almost is Beowulf -- an arrogant, Scandinavian warrior son of another great warrior.
The movie is the absolute best adaptation of the Old English epic poem of the same name about a guy hiring himself out as a monster-hunter in order to make a name for himself.
We covered Beowulf back in school and lemme tell you...the most impressive thing about the movie is that it's an actual story that makes sense. The poem's not so much a story as just series of a bunch of sh#t that happens. It's sorta like: This happens...then this happens...and then 30 years later this happens.
The film version changes a couple things and straight up makes up at least one key aspect of the story. But it seems like those things were done in order to tie everything together. This is also (probably) Angelina Jolie's best movie.
13. 28 Weeks Later
28 Weeks Later is not the least bit uplifting. It's probably the bleakest film of 2007. And that was a year that included a movie about the last man on Earth (I Am Legend); a film about 299 warriors who never return from a suicide mission (300); and a film in which no one is safe from a hired killer, including a Vietnam veteran, a sheriff's deputy, a seasoned bounty hunter and other sicarios (No Country for Old Men). You may wanna watch a Pixar feature afterwards just to restore your sense of hope.
28 Days Later ended on an optimistic note and accordingly, the ensuing seven months have yielded a return of a measure of order to Great Britain. And then the trouble starts...
12. Shooter
Swagger gets caught up in a government conspiracy in which he's framed for a presidential assassination attempt and not even FBI agents are safe.
It's probably the second-best movie about snipers -- second to Enemy at the Gates.
11. I Am Legend
Will Smith is a huge step up from Charlton Heston (Charlton starred in the 1971 version, The Omega Man) in this 3rd movie adaptation of the 1954 book of the same name. Army scientist Will/Robert Neville, the last man alive, spends his nights trying not to be noticed by the packs of nocturnal mutants that prowl the streets after dark. He spends his days attempting to develop a cure for the virus that spawned these creatures who used to be human.
10. No Country for Old Men
No Country for Old Men is basically The Terminator without the science-fiction. It's a real world nightmare. There are plenty of comedies about guys finding drug money and calling "Finders, keepers!" (like Meet the Blacks). But if you tried that in real life the aftermath might not be so funny.
9. 3:10 to Yuma
3:10 to Yuma is an unassailable argument for the value of remakes. If you've ever wondered how things would turn out if a classic shoot-em-up was re-done in color, this is the answer -- provided you fill the roles with great actors and crank the action up a few notches. But not so far that the violence is mindless. It also wouldn't hurt if you pumped up the realism.
Yuma is Russell Crowe's second chance at cowboy greatness and he nailed it (It's also his best turn as a villain -- You're better off skipping Virtuosity). Apparently, The Quick and the Dead, Crowe's first American movie, was just a rehearsal. Like his co-stars, Gene Hackman and Leonardo DiCaprio, his Western do-over is Hall of Fame-ready.
Like High Noon, timing is everything. But instead of awaiting a dangerous outlaw's imminent arrival on a train, the point in Yuma is to ensure that a dangerous outlaw departs on a train. The black hat is Ben Wade, the murderous leader of a gang of stagecoach robbers. Wade gets himself captured by the law in the Arizona town of Bisbee (23 miles southeast of Tombstone), but the locals don't have the resources to stop the killer's gang from liberating him. So, the idea is to get him on the afternoon train and off to the Yuma Territorial Prison in none other than the town of Yuma (duh). No stranger to Westerns, the prison is also referenced in The Wild Bunch, Hombre and The Comancheros. An outlaw is even put on a train to the facility in Once Upon a Time in the West. Anyway, Civil War veteran-turned-rancher (he fought for the Union) Dan Evans is deputized and hired for $200 to escort Wade to the locomotive. He needs the money because his landlord is threatening to evict him and his family from his land. But he also wants to teach his son that doing the right thing is worth any risk.
8. The Bourne Ultimatum
The Bourne Ultimatum's title is derived from a novel of the same name written by Bourne creator Robert Ludlum. It's the last book about the assassin written by the author, and fittingly, the film is the last to star the man who personifies him onscreen -- Matt Damon. At least, that was the original plan and had been the case for nine years -- until 2016's Jason Bourne. Like The Bourne Supremacy before it, Ultimatum bears no resemblance to the novel for which it's named, and contrary to the old maxim, is better than the book.
Ultimatum fills in the gap between the final two moments of Supremacy: Bourne's apology to Irena Neski (he murdered her parents) and his conversation with CIA Deputy Director Pamela Landy in New York. We finally get to see how he actually made it out of Russia -- battered, but alive. For the first time in the series he leaves the foreign locales behind and brings his skills to bear on New York City -- amidst the post-9/11 heightened security.
The final scene of the film mirrors the very beginning of the series, the opening scene of The Bourne Identity, in which Bourne lies motionless and face-down in a body of water.
7. American Gangster
I'm just gonna come out and say it: I don't like movies set in the 1970s. I hate the style. The muscle cars and the music was pretty good but I hate the fashion, the home decor and the anorexic look. But American Gangster is so good I went to see it twice -- 70s clothes and all.
American Gangster is something you hardly ever see -- a big Hollywood biopic about an African-American crime boss. The boss is Frank Lucas, a North Carolina native who moved to Harlem and became one of NYC's biggest heroin kingpins.
The movie looks great but the bonus is that the score's so good you could close your eyes for the whole 2 1/2 hours and you'd still love it.
Ridley Scott's directed some pretty wack movies lately (like Exodus and Prometheus) but once upon a time he called the shots (literally) on classics such as Alien, Gladiator and this movie.
6. 300
300 was popular as hell from Day One and, not insignificantly, received a standing ovation at it's premiere. The popular opinion is that it's director Zack Snyder's best film. As everyone who's read the graphic novel from which it's adapted (or learned about the Battle of Thermopylae in History class) is aware, 300 is a story of martyrdom and self-sacrifice as all but one of the story's heroes are killed by the end.
5. There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood was robbed stuck-up at gunpoint and pistol-whipped at the 80th Academy Awards when it lost the Best Picture Oscar to No Country for Old Men.
Beginning in 1898 and spanning a little over a quarter of a century, There Will Be Blood is a poetically titled character study set against the backdrop of California during the oil boom. The story centers around Daniel Plainview, a silver miner with unlimited ambition and an equally boundless distrust of other people to match. When Daniel switches his sights from silver to oil his cynicism and hatred grows almost as quickly as his fortune. His affection it seems is reserved exclusively for his adopted son and his half-brother, with whom he is soon reunited. For awhile anyway. Plainview goes on to match wits with a young preacher, other oil tycoons and the earth itself in his relentless pursuit of more power and wealth. He allows nothing and no one to stand in his way and he forgives nothing and no one who defies him. The eerie score is the perfect compliment to the increasingly more sinister main character.
4. 30 Days of Night
There's nothing romantic about these vampires and no teenage girl on the planet would fall in love with them. They don't turn into bats, run from crucifixes or sleep in coffins. All they do is kill. This movie, more than any other, shows why they're in the monster category. Imagine being stuck in a small Alaskan town full of vampires where the sun doesn't shine for a whole month. It's like a local version of The Walking Dead - including the fact that a sheriff is the hero. It's also Josh Hartnett's second-best movie.
3. Eastern Promises
The same way that zombies scooped vampires as the most popular Hollywood monsters, Russians replaced the Italian mob as the go-to movie criminals (Like in The Equalizer, Training Day, The 25th Hour, The Drop and John Wick). Eastern Promises isn't even the only 2007 movie to feature what's called the Russian Bratva. We Own the Night was the other one. The difference between Eastern Promises and all of those other movies is that it goes past the tattoos and accents and explains the culture a little bit. Also, it takes place in London instead of the U.S.
2. The Transformers
Back in the day, Transformers movies weren't just big-budget pieces of sh#t. The first, and best, was 1986's animated Transformers: The Movie. 21 years later, the first, and best, live-action Transformers movie hit theaters and shocked the hell outta me with how good it was. It never occurred to me that Michael Bay, of all people, could be up to the challenge of respecting the source material and making giant robots disguised as cars look legit next to real people. Megatron, Optimus Prime, Starscream, Bumblebee -- they were all there. And they were all impressive.
Since 2007, Bay has taken the franchise from sugar to sh@t. But this first in the series achieved greatness. They really don't make 'em like they used to.
1. Live Free or Die Hard
You might think Die Hard would be played out by the 4th movie but you'd be wrong (the only one that sucks is #5 - A Good Day to Die Hard). Nineteen years after the original, John McClain was still killing it. McClain had to merc a bunch of terrorists to save his wife in the first two movies. This time his daughter Lucy's life is on the line.
The Most Overrated Movies of 2007
7. Hot Fuzz
6. Freedom Writers
5. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
4. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
3. Are We Done Yet?
2. Planet Terror
1. Spider-Man 3
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