December 29, 2007
52 pickup: the year in movies
A comprehensive list of new releases sugarhigh! saw in a movie theater in 2007, ranked from least to most interesting. All films received individual reviews, sometimes no more than a phrase, over the course of the year. Contents may have shifted during travel. Summary of year: via an inexorable systemic logic, unwilling mothers in movies must keep babies so that they can survive to be children in jeopardy in all remaining films.
52) Smokin' Aces (nothing)
51) Factory Girl (wasn't Smokin' Aces)
50) Paris je t'aime (didn't have Hayden Christenson)
49) Waitress (Cheryl Hines' micromonologues, Nathan Fillion's smile)
48) Shoot'em Up (Clive Owen not in fact charismatic enough to make shit smell like roses)
47) The Nanny Diaries (Giammati plays exact same role as in Shoot'em Up, seen from other perspective)
46) Severance (Theatre was quite clean)
45) Sweeney Todd (Edward Razorhands and the three-note melody)
44) American Gangster (Clarifying how good The Wire is)
43) Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten ("White Riot" a capella)
42) Two Days In Paris (Felt more like a week)
41) Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem ("Predator's a scrub," notes a friend)
40) No End In Sight (Anti-war doc's breakout star, Seth Moulton, turns out only to want a better war)
39) Stardust (Nice swordfight-played-as-videogame scene)
38) Dreamgirls (The club sets; Eddie Murphy's Marvin Gaye skullcap)
37) Avenue Montaigne (One brief image of the young Dani)
36) I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (It's funny, see, cuz they're not gay!)
35) Hot Fuzz (Lighting in British supermarket)
34) Ocean's 13 (Soderbergh's knack for shooting Vegas so you can't tell if it's a set or not)
33) The Mist (Too much monster/not enough mist)
32) The Brave One (A satisfying if false portrait of a Radiohead fan)
31) Notes on a Scandal (Bill Nighy dancing)
30) Golden Compass (How long before Compass vs. Narnia: Requiem?)
29) Charlie Wilson’s War (But what about Owen Wilson's war?)
28) We Own the Night (Have you noticed that all Joaquin Phoenix's characters have the same scar?)
27) Ratatouille (sugarhigh!'s mother notes this is Singin' In The Rain)
26) Juno (In which young Juno has a moment of clarity: "Sonic Youth fucking sucks!")
25) Michael Clayton (Good year for films that could've been called Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem)
24) Resident Evil: Extinction (Cinematic ontology of helicopters remains to be written)
23) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Pleasure of SRO crowd in huge theatre)
22) Helvetica (It's about the font)
21) The Kingdom ("Let us do our job....We're good at this." Yeah, in what universe? Meanwhile good parts are all Blackhawk Down)
20) Superbad (Not-so-superbadinage; this is what became of Tarantino's New American chitchat)
19) 30 Days of Night (Apparently the graphic novel series has a murderous book club)
18) Sunshine (Soderbergh's Solaris plus 28 Days Later divided by Nietzsche)
17) Blades of Glory (Ambient Ferrellage)
16) Disturbia (Strange racialized decision to have best friend recreate the standard John Cho performance)
15) Alpha Dog (Justin Timberlake in general)
14) The Bourne Ultimatum (Steve on Julia Stiles' role: "in like a magic bullet, out like a cigarette butt")
13) Shooter (Mark Wahlberg dressed as a frickin' yeti for the final showdown; Ned Beatty's career-long conversion into Buford T. Justice)
12) No Country for Old Men (Javier Bardem's Hairdo vs. Josh Brolin's Mustache: Requiem)
11) Backstage (Isild LeBesco's facial physiognomy; plausibility of such drecky pop being huge in France)
10) Grindhouse (Fake trailers, muscle cars, and a wrecker named Killdozer)
09) I Am Legend (Omega Man Takes Manhattan)
08) Knocked Up (Seth Rogen's delivery, the jokes about Martin's beard, Paul Rudd's three smiles)
07) 28 Weeks Later (Goodbye Dover Beach...)
06) Southland Tales (Impossible to think about, or stop thinking about)
05) I’m Not There (Tacit admission that the real Dylan vamoosed in the 70s; nothing would be funnier than a sequel)
04) Transformers (Has entire theory of American history, plus robot fights)
03) Pan's Labyrinth (Spanish Winona Ryder; Harold & the Purple Crayon riff; title better in English)
02) The Host (brief familial hallucination of feeding the lost child; Kang-ho Song's facial expressions)
01) Children of Men (blood on the lens for long tracking shot; Clive Owen's slumped shoulders)