1145 replies to this topic

[Elemeno P.T.]

This message board began as, and was intended to be primarily a forum for varying opinions about the music we hear. 177 SOMBIES voted in the 2007 'best albums' thread while only 54 voted here. Yet look a little closer and it's not hard to see that SOMBIES passion for film is also strong and growing.

When we began the formal 'best of' movie thread 3 years ago, we had around 15 participants, or about 1/7 the number who voted in the albums thread. Now the difference is closer to 1/3. The gap closing might be temporary, due more to the fact that this was a particularly great year for movies....or maybe more and more of us are recognizing in the films we see similarities to the message board we love:


We come to the Board to revel in the acerbic wit of SOMBIES like Slackmo, our Bruce Willis-esque version of the fiery Juno.

We try to convince our wives/girlfriends that they can deal with the chopped heads in the delightful Sweeney Todd...here on the Board many contemplate whether they can deal with the big head of Nick as a mod.

We come to the Board to debate the merits of The Killers vs. Arcade Fire...at the movies we search for the truth about killers (Zodiac) and Arcade liars (King of Kong).

We witness cold, harsh films about the old and new West (TWBB, Jesse James, No Country) whose legends will no doubt last long after the final edit...here on the Board, in a mometary lapse of reason, we indulge our harsh SOMBIE of the West by debating the merits of a band whose relevance peaked before The Final Cut.

We laugh at Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, Superbad) and his tendencies to be suspended in adolescence...here on the Board we're thankful that we are nothing like him...(wait, my wife's calling from upstairs..."Whaaat?...You need me to change the baby's diaper?...Just a minute!...I'm on Sound Opinions!")


So you see, there's much to connect with between our internet and film going personas. There's no reason to search any movie sites for a board to indulge our passions for celluloid. Instead let's throw out the welcome mat in the ETC. forum and force me to get a much bigger spreadsheet in 2008. Folks over at 'Film Responses Natural Domain', come on down. SOMBIES kick back and welcome our FRNDOS to these, the SOMB Best Films of 2007...

[Hero]

IS IT TOO LATE TO VOTE??? i wish i voted i couldnt figure out what my #1 would be

[theremin]

IS IT TOO LATE TO VOTE???

Damn! I wanted to say this!

[Asher Ford]

Woo! Movies! Let's start this thing!!

[theremin]

crap. I have to blurb. I have something I really want to do for one of them, but I don't think I'll have time.

[Elemeno P.T.]

"Mr. Cox needs to think about his whole life before he takes the stage"













60. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Directed by: Jake Kasdan

Memorable Quotes:

Sam: [after Dewey accidentally barges in a room filled with smoke and groupies]
[coughs]
Sam: Get outta here, Dewey!
Dewey Cox: What are y'all doin' in here?
Sam: We're smoking reefer and you don't want no part of this shit.
Dewey Cox: You're smoking *reefers*?
Sam: Yeah, 'course we are; can't you smell it?
Dewey Cox: No, Sam. I can't.
Girl Groupie: Come on, Dewey! Join the party!
[takes a hit off a joint]
Sam: No, Dewey, you don't want this. Get outta here!
Dewey Cox: You know what, I don't want no hangover. I can't get no hangover.
Sam: It doesn't give you a hangover!
Dewey Cox: Wha-I get addicted to it or something?
Sam: It's not habit-forming!
Dewey Cox: Oh, okay... well, I don't know... I don't want to overdose on it.
Sam: You can't OD on it!
Dewey Cox: It's not gonna make me wanna have sex, is it?
Sam: It makes sex even better!
Dewey Cox: Sounds kind of expensive.
Sam: It's the cheapest drug there is.
Dewey Cox: [at a loss and out of excuses] Hmm.
Sam: You don't want it!
Dewey Cox: I think I kinda want it.
Sam: Okay, but just this once. Come on in.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0841046/

From Roger Ebert's 3 star review:

John C. Reilly was appearing in Chicago onstage the other night as Dewey Cox, and the act may be something to fall back on if he ever gives up the daytime job. Apart from anything else demonstrated by "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," the movie shows that he can do plausible versions of Johnny Cash, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and on and on. He's like a kid who locked himself in his room singing along with his record collection and finally made it pay off.

The movie is a spoof of rock-star biopics, most obviously "Walk the Line," which borrows the element of the wife at home and the affair with the backup singer on the road. There's also a lift from "Ray," who, you may remember, was blamed for letting his little brother drown. Dewey Cox is out in the barn playing with machetes with his own brother one day when he inadvertently slices him in half. Fatally? The doctor observes: "It's a particularly bad case of somebody being cut in half."

Life after that is never quite right for Dewey, whose father turns up at every triumph to remind him, "The wrong brother died." He develops into a musical prodigy who masters an instrument almost as soon as he picks it up and segues effortlessly from one genre to another in order to stay on top of the charts. Soul music? Bubblegum rock? Acid rock? Surfin' songs? Folk rock? He does it all.

And all the time he's on a downward spiral, tempted by Sam, the drummer in his band (Tim Meadows of "Saturday Night Live"). Dewey is forever opening a door and finding Sam behind it with cute backup singers, sampling a drug that Sam warns him he is under no circumstances to ever, ever try. He always tries it and cycles through rehabs like a city inspector. His marriage (with Kristen Wiig) breaks up, he falls in love with his backup singer Darlene (Jenna Fischer), travels to India with the Beatles, crosses paths with Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley, and meets such as Jackson Browne and Lyle Lovett, playing themselves. And all leads to doom, because he keeps finding Sam behind another door.

The movie, directed by Jake Kasdan, was co-written by Kasdan and the productive Judd Apatow ("Superbad"), and they do an interesting thing: Instead of sending everything over the top at high energy, like "Top Secret" or "Airplane!," they allow Reilly to more or less actually play the character, so that, against all expectations, some scenes actually approach real sentiment. Reilly is required to walk a tightrope; is he suffering or kidding suffering, or kidding suffering about suffering? That we're not sure adds to the appeal.

Note: I must mention one peculiar element in the film. As Reilly is having a telephone conversation, a male penis is framed in the upper right corner of the screen. No explanation about why, or who it belongs to or what happens to it. Just a penis. I think this just about establishes a standard for gratuitous nudity. Speculate as I will, I cannot imagine why it's in the film. Did the cinematographer look through his viewfinder and say, "Jake, the upper right corner could use a penis"?

Ranked Highest By:
Johnny Rocket- #15

[Elemeno P.T.]

crap. I have to blurb.

I have something I really want to do for one of them, but I don't think I'll have time.

Take your time- get them to me by Friday and it's cool. Let me know if you can't so I can assign elsewhere.

This will be slower moving than I thought as I'm much busier with work then I expected to be.

What's the consensus on doing the quotes contest again? Free movie to the winner.

[theremin]

I Can get A blurb done. I wanted to do an audio blurb. Considering the festival starts thursday, I'm guessing those particular two days aren't going to help much =)

[caley]

I did not see Walk Hard, and did not want to, until I saw the one scene during Roeper's show where Cox goes on a drug trip and is running down the road flipping cars. Still missed it, though. I presume if it had come out in October when there was not a lot playing locally, I totally would have seen it, instead of at the end of the year when everything else important was out.

[Elemeno P.T.]

I Can get A blurb done.

I wanted to do an audio blurb.

Considering the festival starts thursday, I'm guessing those particular two days aren't going to help much =)

OK- just let me know by PM which one you won't be doing.

[theremin]

I Can get A blurb done.

I wanted to do an audio blurb.

Considering the festival starts thursday, I'm guessing those particular two days aren't going to help much =)

OK- just let me know by PM which one you won't be doing.

ummm...I can get TWO blurbs done, I just can't do this cool audio blurb I wanted to do, it'll just be a normal blurb.

[WesterMats]

Yes! I am really looking forward to the results, as this is the first year I've seen ~ 60 films, largely in order to vote in this thread.

[Ennui]

i feel guilty for not blurbing

[RadioHitchcock]

I really wanted to see Walk Hard, and then it came out and nobody seemed to care anymore. Was it that bad?

[Elemeno P.T.]

I Can get A blurb done.

I wanted to do an audio blurb.

Considering the festival starts thursday, I'm guessing those particular two days aren't going to help much =)

OK- just let me know by PM which one you won't be doing.

ummm...I can get TWO blurbs done, I just can't do this cool audio blurb I wanted to do, it'll just be a normal blurb.

so I should have just know not to read the capital 'A' as you only wanting to do one.

[yancy]

I did not see Walk Hard, and did not want to, until I saw the one scene during Roeper's show where Cox goes on a drug trip and is running down the road flipping cars.

You mean this part?

Just watch any random Will Ferrell movie instead. Proud of my fellow voters for placing this travesty at the bottom of the list, hanging on by its fingernails.

[Elemeno P.T.]

"Hard-Knock Life"











59. Orfanato, El (The Orphanage)
Directed by: Juan Anotonia Bayona

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464141/

From Roger Ebert's 3 1/2 star review:

Now here is an excellent example of why it is more frightening to await something than to experience it. "The Orphanage" has every opportunity to descend into routine shock and horror, or even into the pits with the slasher pictures, but it only pulls the trigger a couple of times. The rest is all waiting, anticipating, dreading. We need the genuine jolt that comes about midway, to let us see what the movie is capable of. The rest is fear.

Hitchcock was very wise about this. In his book-length conversation with Truffaut, he used a famous example to explain the difference between surprise and suspense. If people are seated at a table and a bomb explodes, that is surprise. If they are seated at a table, and you know there's a bomb under the table attached to a ticking clock, but they continue to play cards -- that's suspense. There's a bomb under "The Orphanage" for excruciating stretches of time.

That makes the film into a superior ghost story, if indeed there are ghosts in it. I am not sure: They may instead be the experience or illusion of ghosts in the mind of the heroine, and since we see through her eyes, we see what she sees and are no more capable than she is of being certain. That means when she walks down a dark staircase, or into an unlit corridor or a gloomy room, we're tense and fearful, whether we're experiencing a

haunted house or a haunted mind. And when she follows her son into a pitch-black cave, her flashlight shows only a thread of light through unlimited menace.

The movie centers on Laura (Belen Rueda), who as a young girl was raised in the orphanage before being taken away one day and adopted. Now in her 30s, she has returned with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and their young son Simon (Roger Princep) to buy the orphanage and run it as a home for sick or disabled children. She has memories here, most of them happy, she believes, but as images begin to swim into her mind and even her vision, she has horrifying notions about what might have happened to the playmates she left behind on the summer day 30 years ago.

Simon, too, seems disturbed, and since no other children have arrived, he creates imaginary playmates. One of them, a boy with a sack over his head, he shows in a drawing to his mother, who is startled because this very image exists in her own mind. Does that mean -- well, what could it mean? Telepathy? Or the possibility that Simon, too, is the product of her imagination? The line between reality and fantasy is so blurred in the film that it may even be, however unlikely, that Simon exists and is imagining her.

It matters not for us, because we are inside Laura's mind, no matter what. And when a decidedly sinister "social worker" (Montserrat Carulla) turns up, Simon learns after her visit that he is adopted and dying. He apparently runs away, even though he needs daily medication. His parents spend months searching for him, putting posters everywhere, convinced he is not dead. But many children may have died at the orphanage. The parents consult a psychic (Geraldine Chaplin), who possibly provides what people claim they want from a psychic (but really don't): the truth.

The film, a Spanish production directed by Juan Antonio Bayona and produced by Guillermo del Toro ("The Devil's Backbone," "Pan's Labyrinth"), is deliberately aimed at viewers with developed attention spans. It lingers to create atmosphere, a sense of place, a sympathy with the characters, instead of rushing into cheap thrills. Photographed by Oscar Faura, it has an uncanny way of re-creating that feeling we get when we're in a familiar building at an unfamiliar time, and we're not quite sure what to say if we're found there, and we might have just heard something, and why did the lights go out?

You may be capable of walking into any basement on earth, but if you go down the stairs into the darkened basement of the house you grew up in, do you still ... feel something?

Ranked Highest By:
worrywort- #7

[without_opinion]

would've made my top 10, easy

[MattDrufke]

Already a big thanks to Elemeno for knocking this one out. I have no doubt this will be a great thread. (Also, awesome intro blurb.) BRING IT ON!

[theremin]

Annie