Film Comment-s

I sent a list of the 20 best films of 2007 to Film Comment magazine, mostly because I could win Criterion Collection DVDs. I Am Curious (Yellow), you are mine! The list is in alphabetical order, and as a "bonus" I've included a little rant I sent to FC with my list. "Grr!--there go, my heart's abhorrence!"

The Bourne Ultimatum
Bug
Charlie Wilson's War
Eastern Promises
God Grew Tired of Us
Gwoemul/The Host
Hot Fuzz
I Am Legend
Juno
The Kite Runner
Lonely Hearts
No Country for Old Men
Ratatouille
Reign Over Me
Rescue Dawn
The Simpsons Movie
Smokin' Aces
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
This Is England
Zodiac

Best direct-to-video release: Futurama: Bender's Big Score

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The Rant:

As far as the FC critics' poll goes: So there's room for Grindhouse but not I Am Legend? Will Smith perfectly suspends himself somewhere between Tom Hanks' Cast Away hysteric and Tim Robbin's jaw-clenched paranoiac in War of the Worlds, and the movie itself knows when to shut up and let the suspense build on its own, no muss, no fuss. I'd much rather encourage Smith than Tarantino, whose video-clerk enthusiasms seem at last to have imploded, leaving us with the hey-ma-lookit-me version of the ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail--or, as Plato describes it, a creature from which "nothing went from him or came into him: for there was nothing beside him, ... his own waste providing his own food." Except Tarantino keeps making us watch him eat.