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1. No Country for Old Men
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
No guts, no glory. That's my standard for giving pride of place to the year's best movies. I'm not looking for formal perfection, just the passion and exhilaration of personal filmmaking that walks the high wire and dares to fall on its ass. For me, no 2007 film experience had more creative juice than No Country for Old Men, a transfixing meditation on good and evil that enabled writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen to forge a blood connection with Cormac McCarthy's novel. Javier Bardem gives a career performance as the villain, and Tommy Lee Jones as a sheriff and Josh Brolin as a thief match him repping law and moral disorder. Screw the whining about the gore (grow up, we're a violent country) and an ending that no one gets except those who pay attention. I challenge you to name a better, more blistering movie this year. Call it, Friendo.
Read Peter Travers' review of No Country for Old Men here
Watch the trailer for No Country for Old Men here
Watch Peter Travers' video review of No Country for Old Men here
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2. Atonement
Directed by Joe Wright
Raw emotions roil under the Masterpiece Theater trappings of this tale of love and war. Christopher Hampton brings Ian McEwan's 2002 novel to the screen with all of its fierce challenges intact. Director Joe Wright finds just the right pair of besieged lovers in Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, and he elicits a jaw-dropping turn from Saoirse Ronan, 13, as a keeper of secrets and lies.
Read Peter Travers' review of Atonement here
Watch the trailer for Atonement here
Watch Peter Travers' video review of Atonement here
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3. Into the Wild
Directed by Sean Penn
Emile Hirsch invests himself totally in the role of Chris McCandless, the Emory College grad who walked into the Alaskan wilderness without a map in 1992 to test himself against his own limitations. But it's director Sean Penn, adapting the book by Jon Krakauer, who tells this remarkable true story as if it were part of his own DNA. This is personal filmmaking at its soaring best. Penn honors his subject and the courage it takes to push boundaries.
Read Peter Travers' review of Into the Wild here
Watch the trailer for Into the Wild here
Watch Peter Travers' video review of Into the Wild here
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4. Eastern Promises
Directed by David Cronenberg
Following his triumph with A History of Violence, David Cronenberg again investigates the nature of identity through this brutally mesmeric tale of the Russian mob in London. Viggo Mortensen astonishes as a tattooed operative caught in an ethical trap.
Read Peter Travers' review of Eastern Promises here
Watch the trailer for Eastern Promises here
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5. Sweeney Todd
Directed by Tim Burton
Just for the record, Tim Burton's translation of Stephen Sondheim's blood opera about the demon barber of Fleet Street is a striking achievement in every way, particularly for the tour de force of Johnny Depp, who acts and sings his way into the black heart of the title character.
Read Peter Travers' review of Sweeney Todd here
Watch the trailer for Sweeney Todd here
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6. American Gangster
Directed by Ridley Scott
The so-called "black Scarface" is a career high for Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas, the Seventies drug lord who cuts out the mob middlemen and peddles his own heroin until a bullheaded cop (Russell Crowe, who knows bullheaded) brings him in. Ridley Scott digs into this juicy tale with epic style and wit. No wonder Jay-Z was inspired to rap about it.
Read Peter Travers' review of American Gangster here
Watch the trailer for American Gangster here
Watch Peter Travers' video review of American Gangster here
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7. There Will Be Blood
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
"Gargantuan" is a puny word to describe the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis in this movie equivalent of hellfire. Try "electrifying" or "volcanic" or anything else that sounds dangerous if you get too close. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson borrows a bit of Upton Sinclair's Oil to tell the story of Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis), a turn-of-the-century prospector who strikes it oil-rich and learns hard how the ignorant armies of greed and bogus religion clash in America. Paul Dano also scores a knockout as a young preacher who gets under Plainview's skin. Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) is the kind of artful renegade who restores your faith in the harsh power of cinema. His filmmaking is raw, risky and built to leave bruises. This is his bloody and brilliant Citizen Kane. Don't even think of missing it.
Watch the trailer for There Will Be Blood here
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8. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Directed by Sidney Lumet
The directing Oscar that has eluded Sidney Lumet, 83, for half a century of classics, from 12 Angry Men and Fail-Safe through Network, Dog Day Afternoon and The Verdict, should be his by divine right for this long day's journey into family dysfunction. When brothers, superbly played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke, plan a no-victim robbery of their parents' jewelry store, things go explosively wrong. Lumet takes a first-rate script by Kelly Masterson and keeps it popping.
Read Peter Travers' review of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead here
Watch the trailer for Before the Devil Knows You're Dead here
Watch Peter Travers' video review of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead here
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9. I'm Not There
Directed by Todd Haynes
Think experimentation is dead? You'll think again when you see what tirelessly innovative Todd Haynes does with the life and shifting times of Bob Dylan in this biopic that shatters all the rules of biopics. By now you know that six dazzling actors play Dylan, with Cate Blanchett the most dazzling of all. But see I'm Not There a second or third time and watch even more riches unfold.
Read Peter Travers' review of I'm Not There here
Watch the trailer for I'm Not There here
Watch Peter Travers' video review of I'm Not There here
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10. Knocked Up and Juno
Knocked Up Directed by Judd Apatow
Juno Directed by Jason Reitman
I hate ties, but there's no better way to honor the year's two best and ballsiest comedies, both on the subject of unexpected pregnancy and both resonating with unexpectedly harsh truths. In Knocked Up, writer-director Judd Apatow — the new master of laughs with a sting — takes the guy view as schlubby Seth Rogen impregnates Katherine Heigl on a one-night stand and confronts his sworn enemy: maturity. In Juno, director Jason Reitman, working from a kick-ass original screenplay by Diablo Cody, takes the girl view by letting teenage Juno (the impossibly talented Ellen Page) bypass a hasty abortion in favor of having the baby and being pro-choice on the adoptive parents. Don't you love it when humor that bubbles also bristles?
Read Peter Travers' review of Juno here
Read Peter Travers' review of Knocked Up here
Watch the trailer for Knocked Up here
Watch Peter Travers' video review of Juno here
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WORST COMEDY
Eddie Murphy takes the sexist, racist prize for Norbit, playing three characters, including an obese woman, under tons of latex. No hiding, Eddie. You're busted.
Watch the trailer for Norbit here
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WORST DRAMA
Love in the Time of Cholera brings the magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez's novel to the screen minus the magic.
Watch the trailer for Love in the Time of Cholera here
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WORST EPIC
So much here, but let's go with Evan Almighty, a big-budget Noah's Ark update that sticks gifted Steve Carell with animals that defecate for real. Ditto the movie.
Read Peter Travers' review of Evan Almighty here
Watch the trailer for Evan Almighty here
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WORST HORROR
Is there anything sadder than a scare flick that thinks it's profound and isn't? I give you The Mist, an insult to Stephen King.
Watch the trailer for The Mist here
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WORST STAR VEHICLE
Jim Carrey is unintentionally hilarious in The Number 23, just edging out Lindsay Lohan in the sappy Georgia Rule.
Read Peter Travers' review of The Number 23 here
Watch the trailer for The Number 23 here
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WORST FAMILY FILM
If you can endure Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium for five minutes without puking, your stomach is cast-iron.
Watch the trailer for Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium here
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WORST SOFT-CORE SEX
There is no denying that a nearly naked Christina Ricci looks tasty even when chained to a radiator by Samuel L. Jackson. But the religioso psychobabble of Black Snake Moan is too big a price to pay. Get the poster instead, and drool.
Read Peter Travers' review of Black Snake Moan here
Watch the trailer for Black Snake Moan here
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WORST REMAKE
It has to be The Heartbreak Kid, in which Ben Stiller and the Farrelly brothers drown the wit and wisdom of Elaine May's 1972 original in an ocean of crude stupidity.
Read Peter Travers' review of The Heartbreak Kid here
Watch the trailer for The Heartbreak Kid here
Watch Peter Travers' video review of The Heartbreak Kid here
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WORST ANTI-WAR FILM
Rendition uses star names (Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Alan Arkin) to decry the U.S. policy of torturing suspected terrorists in foreign prisons, then revels in showing us the torture. And they wonder why audiences stayed home.
Read Peter Travers' review of Rendition here
Watch the trailer for Rendition here
Watch Peter Travers' video review of Rendition here
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THE MICHAEL BAY AWARD FOR WORST SOUL-SUCKING, DUMB-ASS BOTTOM FEEDER
Bay almost had it for Transformers — nobody does bull like Bay, he rocks it — but I'm going with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End for illustrating just how low talent will sink for a big fat payday.
Read Peter Travers' review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End here
Watch the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End here
Watch Peter Travers' video review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End here
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