The Most Overrated Movies of 2007

Now it is time to mention what I think are the most overrated movies of the year 2007.

Just to be clear, I liked every single one of the films listed below (I liked Michael Clayton a lot less than the others). I just can't see why some critics thought they were masterpieces and why some of them are being showered with many awards and nominations.

THE MOST OVERRATED MOVIES OF 2007

Michael Clayton - I still think it is the most overrated movie of 2007. Everybody is raving about it, when it simply didn't do that much for me. I actually thought the story was kind of convoluted and it went too much around the block to tell us one simple message: big corporations are corrupt and somebody has to step up and stop them, no matter the cost. Tom Wilkinson is a great actor, but here he is too self-conscious of his performance and you can see him striving to get an Oscar nomination. He is overacting, simply put. George Clooney is fine, but not spectacular and the one performance I liked very much was Tilda Swinton's, but as good as I think she is, she doesn't deserves any awards.

And now that we are talking of awards, how the heck did it get 7 Oscar nominations? I'm very very baffled by that. The Academy had a whole lot of very good movies to choose from (Gone Baby Gone, Zodiac, etc) and it went for this one?

I really like what Tony Gilroy did with the Bourne movies but here he just put me to sleep in some parts of the film and his direction didn't deserve a Best Director nod.

Just a head scratcher for me this year.

Ratatouille - Now, this is a film I did like. Thought the animation was amazing, Remy was just adorable, and the whole theme of creation/art/criticism was very very interesting. Critics are calling it a masterpiece, which I don't think it is. I was bored at times and when the focus of the film changed from Remy to annoying Linguini, the film just lost me. Linguini is one of the worst characters Pixar has created ... and had the story spent more time with the most interesting character (Remy) this would probably be in my top ten. To read my full review of the film go here.

El Violin - The story about a Mexican farmer/violinist who plays his music throughout towns ravished by bloody revolts and strong military oppression, received a great deal of praise in Mexico and has won countless awards in film festivals around the world. While I think it totally works as "cine de denuncia" or "cine social", it still doesn't deserve that amount of praise.

And overrated to some extent...

.... Hairspray - I thought is was very good fun and it was hilarious to see John Travolta in drag, but a 92% over at Rotten Tomatoes seems a little bit excessive to me.

Anyways, I'll stop bitching and moaning now. Look for the honorable mentions and my top ten films of 2007 in the coming days.

Nominations for the 80th Annual Academy Awards

The nominations for the 80th Academy Awards were announced very early this morning and as always there were some surprises and some snubs.

You can view the complete list of the nominees here.

I would love to comment on the quality of the nominated films or the performances, but sadly I have only seen 10 of all the Oscar contenders and only one in the Best Picture category.

Here are just some random thoughts on the Oscar nominations:

They really really like Cate Blanchett. Not only was she nominated for playing Bob Dylan in I'm not There, she also got in for Elizabeth: The Golden Age. She now has a total of five nominations, four of those in the last four years. And she has a huge possibility of wining again this year. Surprising.

And speaking of actresses, it was quite a shock to see Laura Linney get in for The Savages. I was expecting to see Angelina Jolie on that list since she has been nominated for almost every critic award, including the SAG. Also surprised to see Tommy Lee Jones for In the Valley of Ellah since he was practically missing from previous awards. I'm really glad for him since his performance was awesome.

I really wanted to see Jodie Foster get in for The Brave One. It is a real shame that the film in general didn't receive good reviews because if it had, she would surely have been nominated (even the critics who didn't like the movie raved about her performance). But, oh well, it doesn't take away from the fact that it was indeed a terrific performance.

Now, to one of my quibbles of this Oscar season: Michal Clayton. Was it a good movie? Yes. Was it a great movie? No. Did it deserve 7 nominations? NO. I just can't see what's so great about this. It was well made and I was entertained by it but it is not a masterpiece as many people seem to think it is. I can think of three films which were much much better (Jesse James, Zodiac, Gone Baby Gone) who should have been nominated in its spot. George Clooney must have very good PR with everybody in Hollywood, or maybe they just really like the guy. This is a head scratcher for me. (More about the film in my next post.)

Apparently Atonement directed itself since Joe Wright isn't in the running for Best Director. Somehow I kind of find it difficult to comprehend how they can nominate a film and not its director. Ultimately the director is responsible for the success of the whole film. The Academy needed to honor The Diving Bell and the Butterfly somewhere and Best Director was it.

Another thing that caught my eye was, as Nathaniel pointed out, that 40% of the nominated screenplays were written by women. These include Tamara Jenkins for The Savages, Sarah Polley for Away from Her, Nancy Oliver for Lars and the Real Girl, and Diablo Cody for Juno. YAY! We need more women in these professions!

Hopefully the writers strike will be over by February 24th so that we can have a proper ceremony.

That's all I can think of right now. Check back in a few hours for my Most Overrated Movies of 2007 post.

The Worst Movies of 2007

According to my calculations I saw a total of 68 films in theaters in the year 2007, which to me seems like very few.... but then again I do prefer quality over quantity. Hehe.

I'm going to start my review of 2007 by naming what I think were the worst movies of the year, then I'll do the overrated ones, the honorable mentions and finally my 10 favorites. So without further ado...

THE WORST MOVIES OF THE YEAR

Note: There were probably worse movies than the ones I'm going to list and you won't see things like Transfomers, Good Luck Chuck, The Reaping, Norbit, etc because I normally avoid crappy pictures. So, here we go. The films are listed in alphabetical order.

After the Wedding - A pretty controversial choice on my list considering that it was one of the five foreign films nominated for an Oscar this year. However, I really didn't like it. Thought it was too melodramatic, the style of the film gave me a headache, and those close ups were frankly annoying.

Alatriste - This Spanish film starring Viggo Mortensen as Captain Alatrise might be the most expensive movie made in Spain but it doesn't take away the fact that it is incredibly dull. You can't understand a word of what Mortensen is saying. Just awful.

The Black Dahlia - What happened to the Brian De Palma who directed The Untouchables and Scarface? This is a huge huge mess of a film. I didn't believe for a second that Scarlett Johansson was a femme fatale, Josh Harnett's can't hide the fact that he's a bore, and the whole film was just camp. The story goes off the rails too early. Instead of just focusing on the "Dahlia's" murder, De Palma introduces many subplots that are uninteresting and confusing.

Beowulf - I'm not really sold on this type of filmmaking. If you already hired good actors (Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, etc) why not just use them instead of CGI-ing them. I felt like I was watching a Playstation 3 game for two hours. The look of the characters was an improvement over The Polar Express, but still their expressions can't match those of a real actor. The film would have been amazing if they used the same technique in which Sin City or 300 were made.
Disturbia - This cheap Rear Window knock-off is adolescent tripe that mildly entertains and that strives too hard to recreate an R-rated horror movie but with a PG-13 rating. Besides, I can't understand what people see in Shia LeBouf. Sure, he's charismatic but he is far from being a great teen actor. Just because he was in two successful blockbusters this year (this and Transformers) and will star in the upcoming Indiana Jones people are hailing him as the next big thing.

Fracture - You would think that a film which stars Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling would be at least entertaining to watch. No so much with Fracture. Hopkins seems like he is sleepwalking throughout much of the whole film and doing his characteristic impersonation of a serial killer. The story really doesn't hold up and even though it is supposed to be a thriller it is one hell of a boring one.

Mr. Brooks - A huge mess of a film that even I was actually surprised by how bad it was. Another predictable, plain boring, and pretentious serial killer movie which has Wiliam Hurt overacting, a pathetic Demi Moore playing a cop, a horrendous Dane Cook, and a Kevin Costner acting like he is going to win an Oscar for this performance.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - It does seem like these pirates have overstayed their welcome. They had pretty much set up the story for this third one at the end of the last one and even offered the possibility of a relationship between Sparrow and Elizabeth. Sadly the third movie abandons all this and just resorts to more setting up and even though it has very good special effects it doesn't compensate for the fact that the story is confusing and incomprehensible. I really had no idea what was going on in the film. Johnny Depp was just annoying, Orland Bloom is a horrible actor and it was way tooo long.

Spider-Man 3 - What happened to Sam Raimi? He did a great job with the previous two Spider-Man movies and now he can't even make a decent one? He destroyed one of my favorite stories from the comic books by introducing too many villains, everything happens by coincidence in this movie, terrible character development, cheesy acting, etc.