November 11, 2022
When I first set out to write this look at the year 2007 in film, I started with a long list of potential movies to cover, thoroughly going through the releases from that year (thanks Wikipedia!). That initial list was very long and I quickly realized that this would need to be two parts, and as it is, it’s still probably too long. I just couldn’t help myself – there were just too many great movies from this year that I wanted to revisit and write about. In fact, there were some pictures on that list that I just had to leave out, despite my love for them. One of those that didn’t make the cut was The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, the fantastic Western with Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. And my favorite film of that year, Zodiac, was one that I already covered in my look at the brilliant career of David Fincher here. Will I be revisiting Fincher’s filmography ahead of his new movie next year? Highly likely. Again, I just can’t help myself with films that I love.
Ok, let’s jump into part two. If you missed the first part, you can check it out here.
A Smart High-School Comedy – Juno
Before 2009, when the Oscars only nominated five movies for Best Picture, we would regularly see only ultra-serious films, historical epics, or tear-jerker dramas among the nominees. It was rare to see a comedy make its way into the group. Now that the Academy has expanded the nominations to ten, we routinely see comedies, action films, and popular movies nominated for Best Picture, which is fantastic. We need a world where popular films like Get Out, Ladybird, and Black Panther can get nominated, and even smaller pictures like Moonlight, Dallas Buyers Club, and Whiplash get into the conversation. It will be interesting to see how this year’s race shapes up, as the typical Oscar-bait films haven’t been lighting the world on fire, so there’s a chance we’ll see some popular movies nominated. Will one of them win? Could Top Gun: Maverick go all the way? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves – more to come on that topic much later. Let’s get back on track.
With the Oscars largely ignoring comedies in the mid-2000s, it was nice to see Juno get some critical recognition in 2007, following a very successful box-office run. The film tells the story of a high-school student (played by Elliot Page, nominated for Best Actress), who becomes pregnant and decides to give the child up for adoption to a couple played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman. We follow the story of Juno as she faces this life-altering event, while still dealing with being a teenager.
Unlike most high-school comedies, this one doesn’t rely on gross-out humor to find the laughs. The relationship between Juno and Bleeker (the baby’s father, played by Michael Cera) is very sweet, and feels realistic. Juno’s father and stepmother, played by J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, are probably in the pantheon of best movie parents ever. Despite their concerns about the impact on Juno’s life, they fully support the decision made to give the baby up for adoption. The movie does have an icky side with Bateman’s character getting a little too close to Juno as he clearly hasn’t grown up beyond the maturity of an adolescent. Despite that minor note, this is still a great picture that holds up very well after fifteen years. Besides Page’s performance (the film simply does not work at all if there is another person in that role), the key to the movie’s success is a wonderful script (by Diablo Cody, who won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay) and a soundtrack featuring songs written by Kimya Dawson that highlight the sweetness and awkwardness of two people dealing with real-life issues still trying to figure out how to be teenagers.
An Underrated Spy Drama – Breach
Over the years, there are certain movies that I’ve seen and instantly found to be rewatchable. It’s hard to say why – it could be the story, the performances, the soundtrack, or maybe it’s many things that come together in just the right way. A lot of those films are well-loved by movie fans, but then there are some that just get lost and seem to float away, forgotten that they even existed. This is one of those movies.
Breach was written and directed by Billy Ray, who has had a very successful career, including writing the screenplay for Captain Phillips and Richard Jewell, two films I liked a lot. Breach is a dramatization of the true story of one of the biggest spies in U.S. history, FBI agent Robert Hanssen. In 2001, he was arrested for espionage after selling U.S. intelligence secrets to Soviet agents for many years. It has been described as one of the worst cases of espionage in our country’s history, and the film tells the story of how he was caught.
Hanssen is portrayed by Chris Cooper, a veteran actor who is excellent in just about any movie in which he stars. He is assigned to a new department within the FBI and is tasked with managing aspiring agent Eric O’Neill, played by Ryan Phillippe. What Hanssen doesn’t know is that his new department is all a sham – it’s a sting operation set up by his superiors to catch him in the act of his crimes. O’Neill is only informed of the plan after he gains Hanssen’s trust, when the agent running the operation (played by Laura Linney, in a great performance) fills him in on Hanssen’s misdeeds. While Cooper is the highlight here, Phillippe is pretty good too. He has had a decent career, but probably never lived up to his full potential.
Breach is the kind of movie that can seem underwhelming if you know that Hanssen gets caught in the end. But that’s not the fun of watching this picture for me. I love a good spy story, especially one with a double agent and in this case, we have two double agents – Hanssen working for the FBI and with the Russians, and O’Neill working for Hanssen, but also for his superiors in the covert operation to take down Hanssen. The tension among the main characters grows throughout the film, as we slowly see Hanssen’s downfall emerge. With all of the great pictures released in 2007, I’m glad I found this one.
A Great Parody – Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Let’s get this out of the way – I spend a lot of time writing about the Oscar recognition of films I cover. That will not be the case with this one. Nope, Walk Hard is a very silly comedy (some might say downright stupid), but is pretty damn funny, especially if you are familiar with the genre of movies it is making fun of – the musician biopic. I previously wrote about the challenge of making these types of films work. Too many times, we get the paint-by-numbers formula and despite some strong music, the story itself feels stale. You know the beats – troubled childhood, family tragedy at a young age, defying the parents to pursue the dream, achieving early success, running away from home, the first marriage to the high-school sweetheart that inevitably falls apart, the second marriage, the alcohol / drug abuse, the stalled career, the breakup of the band, and finally, the redemption story where our protagonist finds success again and reconciles with the family. Whew! That’s a lot.
Walk Hard takes just about every one of those tropes and makes fun of them every step of the way. The story centers on Dewey Cox, a country boy who pursues his dream of making music and hits it big, leading to….well, you know the story. I’ve written many times before that parody is very hard to do successfully in movies. Too broad and it comes across as amateurish. Too focused and you miss the laughs and people think it’s a serious movie. There’s a big reason that Walk Hard works so well and that’s because we are fortunate to have John C. Reilly in the starring role. He has a long history of comedic roles where he is not afraid to “commit to the bit” and embrace the absurdity of the story.
There are a number of big names with small parts throughout Walk Hard, but one standout in a major role is Jenna Fischer, who plays Dewey’s backup singer turned mistress turned second wife in a performance that is very funny (and very different from Pam in The Office.) One other reason Walk Hard works so well is that you have a very strong script, which was co-written by Jake Kasdan (who directed the film) and Judd Apatow, still going strong in 2007 as I wrote about last week. Walk Hard has become a bit of a cult classic and has people wondering if it killed the musician biopic, or at least the ability to take them seriously. Maybe only parodies in this genre will work. Speaking of which…
Last week saw the premiere of a new musician biopic, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. I covered this in my Fall preview and wondered if I could figure out how to watch it, since it was only available on Roku. Good news! You can watch Weird for free, by simply going to Roku’s website. Should you watch it? Well, that depends. If you are a child of the 1980s and a card-carrying member of the MTV generation, you likely remember Yankovic’s creatively brilliant parody songs. And just like those musical numbers, there was no way Yankovic would take the story of his life and not have a little fun with it. So, while we get the general story of his journey to fame, we also get some very funny takes on the musician biopic tropes mentioned above, and some really absurd moments – some of which work, but too many are just a little too silly. Luckily, it’s pretty clear early on that this is not going to be a “completely” true story, only a ”partially” true story.
Throughout the movie, we get a lot of Weird Al’s most famous songs, which are always great to hear, and Daniel Radcliffe is outstanding as Yankovic, fully committing to the role. Another highlight was Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, who is very funny and (dare I say it) is a pretty good Madonna! Overall, it’s a pretty silly, mindless comedy. So, if you’re looking for something in that genre, it’s worth checking out, especially for a little 1980s nostalgia. One minor quibble is that the movie is a little long. I think they could have cut the portion of the plot where Weird Al has to go to Colombia to rescue his girlfriend (Madonna, naturally) who was kidnapped by Pablo Escobar. You read that right. Yeah, I’m going to guess that part was made up.
The Master at Work – The Savages and Charlie Wilson’s War
Let’s move on from the ridiculous to cover one of the best actors we’ve seen in the last forty years – the great Philip Seymour Hoffman. Throughout this blog series, I’ve covered a number of actor’s careers, primarily centered around the release of a new film of theirs. Sadly, Hoffman passed away in 2014, so we will never have the privilege of seeing him in a new role. That being said, he is on the short list of actors that I will likely go back to examine his career in more detail for a future post. There’s a decent chance that one (or more) of the three films he had in 2007 would appear in a top ten list of his best work.
First up is The Savages, a dark comedy with Hoffman and Laura Linney playing siblings who are forced to put their differences aside when their father’s health deteriorates following his partner’s death. The brother and sister drifted apart years ago, and were never really that close, but it’s funny what happens when a family crisis forces you to put the bullshit aside to focus on what is really important.
Hoffman plays a struggling writer, whose relationship is failing, and is trying to put his life back together. This is a theme with a lot of characters he played over the years – the guy who just can’t seem to get his shit together. Linney’s character has her own problems. She is also a struggling writer, living alone and having an affair with a married man. The Savages isn’t going to be one of those action-packed movies. It’s a quiet character story about real people in real relationships dealing with life’s real problems. And with Hoffman and Linney at the top of the story, it’s a great film.
In a completely different role that same year, Hoffman played a supporting part in Charlie Wilson’s War. It’s notable that even though this film was directed by Mike Nichols, features Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts at the top of the cast, and has a script written by Aaron Sorkin, the only member of the production to receive an Oscar nomination was Hoffman, for Best Supporting Actor. Alas, he lost to a once-in-a-generation performance that we’ll get to shortly.
Charlie Wilson’s War is a comedy-drama about a Texas congressman (Hanks as the title character) who partners with a CIA analyst (played by Hoffman) to assist the Afghanistan government in their war with the Soviet Union in the 1980s. At the time, civilians were being killed and running for other countries as their homeland was being destroyed. Roberts plays a Texas businesswoman who pushes Wilson to help the people of Afghanistan and makes a good comedic pair with Hanks. The film is a very good story about an isolated time in our history, while showing what a small group of dedicated individuals can do to help people in need. Sorkin’s script also doesn’t completely ignore the consequences of arming the people of Afghanistan, which led to the rise in terrorist activities the following decade, including the September 11th attacks. The messaging at the end is subtle, which I think is better than beating us over the head with it – we all know what happened. As much as I like Hanks and Roberts, the best part of the movie for me is Hoffman, who has some bombastic moments that are hysterical, but also some quieter moments where he can convey any kind of emotion effortlessly. A true master at work. Which brings us to our next film.
One Last Masterpiece – Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
For some filmmakers, we only get to see a small sampling of their expertise. Quentin Tarantino has been making movies for thirty years and has only made nine pictures. He also claims he will only make one more as he doesn’t want to keep making movies after he loses his talents. Then there are the directors who had an incredible work ethic, like Sidney Lumet, who directed dozens of films over a fifty year career. Classics like 12 Angry Men (his debut), Dog Day Afternoon, Network, and The Verdict are among his well-known pictures. His last directorial work was 2007’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, a clever crime-drama with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke as brothers who plot a scheme with deadly results.
Hoffman plays a finance executive who has been embezzling money from his company through a payroll scheme that auditors have started asking questions about. Hawke is a divorced father behind on child support and one of those guys who can’t seem to get out of his own way to get ahead. Oh yeah, Hawke’s character is having an affair with his brother’s wife (played by Marisa Tomei). With the two brothers in need of money, they decide to rob a business they know very well – their parents’ jewelry store. Things (naturally) do not go as planned.
If you are a fan of crime thrillers and appreciate storylines that are told in a non-linear fashion (I personally love it, but some people find it too confusing), this is a fantastic movie. And probably one that most people don’t remember or never heard about. Lumet does a masterful job of piecing together the story, told from multiple viewpoints, and keeping us guessing about who we should be rooting for, as there are many people in this story you could describe as loathsome. This is not exactly a feel-good movie, but that doesn’t diminish it from its excellence. I love the fact that we got such an outstanding picture from Lumet as his last movie, and it included such talented actors as Hoffman, Hawke, Tomei, and Albert Finney (as the brothers’ father and maybe the only redeeming character in the picture). True brilliance on display.
Clash of the Titans – No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood
Sometimes you just run into a juggernaut. Such was the case for Paul Thomas Anderson in 2007. It’s hard to predict which films are going to resonate with Academy voters when it comes to Oscar season. There are years where the Best Picture nominees look pretty weak and it’s easy to see a clear-cut winner. Then there are years like 2007 when the Best Picture nominees were all excellent – Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton and two powerhouse movies – There Will Be Blood and the winner, No Country for Old Men.
Now, the Academy has a history of giving someone an Oscar as a make-up for not rewarding them for a phenomenal performance in the moment. The easiest example is Al Pacino winning for (what I consider to be) the cartoonish performance in Scent of a Woman as a make-up for not winning for other wonderful movies, including The Godfather (and its sequel), Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico and Glengarry Glen Ross. Despite my feeling that Joel and Ethan Coen directed the Best Picture of 1996 (Fargo, which lost to The English Patient – insert Seinfeld joke here), it’s hard to call their 2007 Oscar win a make-up call, because No Country for Old Men is a freaking masterpiece. I’d still place it a close second in my list of favorite movies of the year, as I still think There Will Be Blood is just a little bit better. You can read my thoughts on that film in my post about the works of Paul Thomas Anderson here.
Back to the Oscar winner. No Country for Old Men is a Western crime-drama based on the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. The film tells the story of three men, whose lives intersect in West Texas in the early 1980s. Josh Brolin plays a man whose life seems to change overnight when he stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong, and walks away with $2 million in cash. He quickly realizes that keeping the money will require him to avoid the hitman, played by Javier Bardem in the role that won him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, hired to recover the money. The third man in our story is the local sheriff, played by Tommy Lee Jones, contemplating his own mortality as he chases down Brolin and Bardem.
I’ve recently been making my way through the filmography of the Coen Brothers and have to say this picture is right up there with Fargo and Miller’s Crossing as my favorites. The way they bring this story to life on screen is incredible for one simple reason – there is so little dialogue. As much as some movies can be weakened by exposition (where a character explains the plot to another character to help the audience understand the movie), this is just the opposite. You are forced to focus on the screen to see how the plot develops, and the three leads are phenomenal throughout the film. As we see the story unfold, with Bardem’s menacing assassin (with a terrifying weapon) chasing down Brolin, a feeling of dread builds and builds. No, this isn’t a happy story, but it’s a thrilling watch. It doesn’t hurt that we are treated to beautiful Texas landscapes as a location for this story. What a masterpiece.
That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed this two-part look at the best films of 2007. If you’d like to find where to see any of these selections, you can go to JustWatch.com, or check out my Film Index here which is a list of all of the movies I’ve covered. The index has a link to the JustWatch page for each movie, as well as the blog post where it’s reviewed. I’ll be off next week, but back in two weeks with another new topic, tied to one of my most anticipated films of the year, coming out next weekend. Thanks for reading and if you’d like to be notified of future posts, you can subscribe here.