Chris Curtis

Films of the year

top films of 2007

The final days of the year provide the space to reflect back on the films that I've seen in the past 365 days. It's been good....

January got off to a great start with APOCALYPTO, despite having to see it at Cineworld Bedford - is that the grubbiest cinema in the country or what? Still thankful I wasn't born in Mayan culture, it was on to GHOSTS, Nick Broomfield's utterly brilliant film about the fate of the Morecombe Bay cockle pickers. The real power of this film is that it depicts a story whose victims we are all connected with our buying power at the local supermarket. Ouch. Watch it and you'll never look at spring onions in the same way again. January also included the fantastic VENUS but sadly also involved enduring ROCKY BALBOA. Somebody tell him it's time to stop.

February was a thin month. Some of us made the mistake of watching SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS on the basis that it starred Billy Bob Thornton - and believe me, it was a mistake. CLIMATES was the film of the month, capturing perfectly the slow detachment in a relationship about to split. Brilliant.

March meant Sean Bean was busy killing off anyone offensive in the vigilante film OUTLAW whilst Nicolas Cage was doing much the same on behalf of the devil in GHOSTRIDER. Both were...well, rubbish. Highlight of the month was seeing SUNSHINE at the NFT followed by an interview with Danny Boyle. Fab.

April's highlight was THE FAMILY FRIEND, a delicious black comedy that jostled with THE LIVES OF OTHERS as one of the best foreign language films of the year. Adam Sandler also made up for a great deal of crass rubbish with REIGN OVER ME.

May and June were notable only for the woeful experience of SPIDERMAN 3, easily my worst film of the year...yes, that's right, worse than TRANSFORMERS. That's quite an achievement. 28 WEEKS LATER was an adrenalin shot in the arm, especially those opening minutes. Loved it, though it's a pity Spiderman wasn't infected with the Rage. The documentary WAR ON DEMOCRACY is also worth a mention.

July was a month of extremes. Seeing EVAN ALMIGHTY and TAXIDERMIA in the same evening counts as one of the strangest experiences of my life. Check out the trailers to see what I mean. HARRY POTTER was the best yet, although that's hardly a notable achievement. DIE HARD 4.0 was too silly to enjoy, which left THE GOLDEN DOOR as the movie of the month.

August saw one of the comedy highlights in WAITRESS and one of the few big budget movies worth seeing THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM. But even that was topped by ATONEMENT, one of the very very best of the year.

September arrived and I stumbled into TWO DAYS IN PARIS knowing nothing about it but finding it to be a fantastic comedy... you see, it doesn't have to be all gloom and doom. Oh yeah, it was about a relationship failing, so may it does.

October mean a visit to the USA and seven films in as many days. best of th bunch was THE DARJEELING LIMITED. Weirdest was 30 DAYS OF NIGHT but that was only because a couple in front of us had brought their two young kids with them.

November was a lean month, with no time to waste at the cinema. of the 5 movies I saw, the best was SICKO although INTO THE WILD has to be mentioned too.

That leaves December. I finally got around to seeing EASTERN PROMISES and wasn't disappointed. Which is not what you could say about HITMAN. And the year ended with BEE MOVIE, kind of fun I guess.

All in all, it's been a good year and some great films. 102 in all. I must be slacking.

Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas)

A film that takes the first 6 minutes to watch the sun come up at dawn is going to have a very specialist audience. Throw in the fact that this it's in the German language and set in a Mennonite community in Mexico, where almost nothing happens for the 144 minutes of the film, and you're going to put a lot of people off.

Despite that, the cinema where I saw 'Silent Light' was getting on for full, so either there are more 'arty' cinephiles in the world than previously thought, or this film is something special. It turns out it's the latter. Winner of the Jury prize at this year's Cannes, 'Silent Light' is the study of a Mennonite farmer's infidelity and the impact it has on his family. It's a slow carefully observed film: the long pauses being a visual representation of the Mennonite approach to life. Without action sequences and all the usual Hollywood garb, the film envelops you slowly and you gradually find yourself compelled by the lives of this unusual world. Part of the impact is the juxtaposition of adultery with such a religious world - think 'Witness' and the Amish. For anyone wanting to immerse themselves in something different to the norm, this looks like being it for the month of December.

New British Film Making

I came across the BBC Film network this evening - the whole BBC site is so large you could spend a lifetime wandering round getting lost. It showcases emerging British talent in film making. I especially like 'The Making of Parts', a 16 minute film about loneliness and desire. It's a dark picture of a man's life and is beautifully shot.

Smoking in the Movies

Having caught 'Thank You For Smoking' on SKY over the weekend, this slideshow on Hollywood and smoking caught my eye over at Slate. Can you believe cigarette companies paid to have cigars used in 'The Muppet Movie'?!! It concludes "the terrible truth is this: Smoking looks cool. And for decades, nobody has made smoking look cooler than movie stars."

What Would Jesus Buy (Rob VanAlkemade)

"Part horror movie, part agitprop theater, "What Would Jesus Buy?" is a documentary on a mission. Loud, proud and cheeky, the film runs roughshod over corporate behemoths Disney, Starbucks and Wal-Mart as it preaches a sermon of simplicity and consumer awareness." writes Kevin Crust from the LA Times. There's no UK release date set, but this looks like being one of the more interesting films of 2008. It follows Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on a cross-country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse (the end of humankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt.). Now that's not a bad aim. You can get the trailer here.

I've got a brand new Golden Compass

Wow, I've got this strange new watch-like contraption called an altheiometer. I can ask it anything and it will tell me the truth. OK, here's the question. "Is the new film The Golden Compass any good?" Wait, it's moving and pointing to some symbols. There's a small figure yawning and another man sitting bloated from eating what looks like too much CGI. What can this mean?

Children of Men

This Friday we have an RE day with 84 sixth formers on 'Children of Men', the generally admired adaption of PD James novel that explores the current moral malaise through a dystopian future. It'll be an interesting follow on to a day we ran last November (2006) based around Norman Stone's film 'Man Dancin'. Both days are/will be an attempt to use film to explore serious spiritual and moral issues with young people.

RE theme days are increasingly used by 6th forms as a way of meeting legal requirements to provide a certain number of hours of RE, without interfering with the business of studying for A levels. For me there's both positives and negatives. Taking a day gives a chance to explore issues in ways that a lesson would never allow, however it also removes the 'slow build' effect of looking at a topic over a period of weeks, giving time for reflection outside of a lesson.

Anyway, whatever the reasons for doing it, we're leading this day with a bunch of students and, like last year, we've hired a local arts centre to take them out of their normal environment and allow the film screening - which starts the day - to take place in a more suitable context.

'Children of Men' won over a couple of other films we were considering, including the brilliant 'Tsotsi', partly because of the complex Christian themes that it explores, although it's fair to say that many of them aren't as explicit as in the book. Instead the film concentrates on the xenophobic response to immigration that has resulted from a breakdown of governments across the world. However the Christian themes are still present and we hope to create a context where students can explore them, critique them and, hopefully, engage with them in some depth. What happens, and whether it achieves these heady aims, is a subject for the weekend I guess.