DOUBLE O SEVEN: The annual tradition here at The Perpetual Three-Dot Column is to end each year by listing the top 10 movies of one decade ago, two decades ago, three decades ago, and so on. Indeed, that's pretty much the only tradition here at The Perpetual Three-Dot Column; the site spends the rest of the year in suspended animation, reemerging each Christmas season like a ghost from the Blogspot era.

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 2007, it gave its Best Picture award to the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men. And my Best Picture award? Well...

1. No Country for Old Men
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Written by the Coens, from a novel by Cormac McCarthy

Once in a blue moon, the Academy gets it right.

2. My Winnipeg
Directed by Guy Maddin
Written by Maddin and George Toles

"At some point, when you miss a place enough, the backgrounds in photos become more important than the people in them."

3. Imaginationland
Written and directed by Trey Parker

"Whether Jesus is real or not, he's had a bigger impact on the world than any of us have. And the same can be said for Bugs Bunny."

4. The Savages
Written and directed by Tamara Jenkins

This is much funnier than most movies that are this depressing.

5. I'm Not There
Directed by Todd Haynes
Written by Haynes and Oren Moverman, from a story by Haynes

The pop-music biopic is probably the single most cliché-ridden film genre being produced today, but Haynes managed to make a movie about Bob Dylan that sidestepped every one of those clichés.

6. The Simpsons Movie
Directed by David Silverman
Written by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Mike Scully, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder, and Jon Vitti

One final gasp of greatness from The Simpsons.

7. A Girl Cut in Two
Directed by Claude Chabrol
Written by Chabrol and Cecile Maistre

This was the second to last of Chabrol's Hitchockian thrillers, and by this point he wasn't going to make any false steps.

8. Eastern Promises
Directed by David Cronenberg
Written by Steve Knight

"For poetic reasons, I suggest you take his blood."

9. Michael Clayton
Written and directed by Tony Gilroy

I avoided this at first, thinking a story about a ruthless legal fixer working for a corrupt corporate client was bound to be either a paint-by-numbers Grisham flick or a heavy-handed message movie. I was wrong.

10. Vogue/300
Directed by Luminosity

By reediting fragments of Zack Snyder's dreadful 300 to Madonna's "Vogue," Luminosity found the homoerotic dance party lurking inside that ponderous epic, just dreaming of getting out.

Honorable mentions:

11. Off the Grid (Jeremy Stulberg, Randy Stulberg)
12. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik)
13. Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog)
14. One Night in One City (Jan Balej)
15. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
16. Confessions of a Superhero (Matthew Ogens)
17. 3:10 to Yuma (James Mangold)
18. In My Language (A.M. Baggs)
19. What Will Come (William Kentridge)
20. The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass)

Of the films of 2007 that I haven't seen, I'm most interested in REC and Into the Wild.

posted by Jesse 3:56 PM

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