The MRFH 2007 Revue

I gotta tell you, I’m pretty disappointed in all of you. Tenth anniversary gifts, according my research (I asked Jeeves), consist of either diamonds or tin, so I spent the majority of 2007 investing heavily in Alcoa wrap and made several promises to some lucky young ladies in the area, assuming that our readers would begin showering us with presents at any time. Alas, Twenty-Aught-Seven has come and gone, and I now find myself without enough tin foil to make a hat and bracing myself just in case the quartz earrings don’t go over as well as planned. So, let me just take a moment to say: SHAME! SHAME ON YOU ALL! SHAAAAAAAAAAAME!

Ahem.

So, bestowals of largesse (or lack of them) aside, 2007 was a good year. I became an official Mutant Reviewer and actually got to talk in real life to the boys and girls with the keys to the asylum (well, some of you), plus we then hired Mike and Eunice, who have both proven themselves awesome people in addition to moving me quickly up the rank in Mutant seniority. In the non-Interweb world, I’ve moved upwards and onwards and all the way across town into a real live farmhouse, complete with stables and haylofts and barncats and monthly rent and crummy cell phone reception and everything. I was also accepted into grad school and am slowly reteaching myself that “gimme some sugar, baby” has no place in scholarly analyses, no matter how well I think it fits.

The films of 2007 fared pretty well, too. Spider-Man, Jason Bourne, Danny Ocean, and Jack Sparrow all managed to complete their cinematic trifectas without falling flat on their faces. Bruce Willis showed us that John McClaine isn’t dead, he’s only been healing since 1995. Danny Radcliffe showed us that just because a man may have sex with a horse doesn’t preclude him from putting a hurtin’ on some Death Eaters when he needs to. Rush Hour 3 showed us that… well, that they could make a third Rush Hour movie, I guess. Even Fantastic Four 2 wasn’t the drivel I expected.

Beyond movies that were simply entertaining, we had a slew of movies — a slew, I tell ya - that were just plain good. 3:10 the Yuma, Black Snake Moan, and No Country for Old Men are all firmly planted in my ‘Ooh-let’s-watch-this-again’ pile. Judd Apatow cemented his status as resident Hollywood golden boy with the excellently funny Knocked Up and Superbad. 1408 was a truly creepy movie and a pitch-perfect Stephen King adaptation (plus it gets extra props for finally dethroning 187 as the first DVD in my collection). Eva Mendes knocked me out in We Own the Night, and Ben Affleck proved some serious chops behind the camera with Gone Baby Gone. Lastly was Jason Reitman’s Juno, which I technically didn’t see until 2008, but was funny and wonderful and brilliant and came out in 2007 so here it is on the list.

It wasn’t all roses, of course. Horror had less than a banner year, offering up Rob Zombie’s Halloween, Hostel II, The Hills Have Eyes 2, Hannibal Rising, and Saw IV among others (all of which I will admit to not actually seeing, but, by all accounts, I'm not missing much). Sweeney Todd, a movie I’ve been excitedly waiting on for years, finally got made under the scissorhands of director Tim Burton, who I’ve become increasingly hostile towards, and thus I will likely never really sit down to watch it. Also, somewhere around the midway point of 2007, someone apparently decided that the order of the day would become boring, unoriginal, generally pretentious ‘me-too’ antiwar films like Lions for Lambs and Rendition. If you couldn’t tell, I am not a fan. And then, of course, there’s Norbit. Bratz. Hitman. Alvin and the Chipmunks. I Know Who Killed Me. Surf’s Up. License to Wed. Mr. Woodcock. Dragon Wars.

Wow, that killed my enthusiasm.

Anyway, I liked 2007. Life was good, movies were good, and, now that it’s over, we’re one year closer to all owning hoverboards (Just eight more to go!). So let’s get our collective butt in gear and dive into the hype machines of Cloverfield, Indiana Jones 4, Rambo, The Dark Knight, The Pineapple Express, Bond 22, and Star Trek 11! 2008, ho!

Other Stuff I Liked: Eastern Promises, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, The Simpsons Movie, The Invasion, The Kingdom, Next, Grindhouse, TMNT, 300, Amazing Grace, Pathfinder

Other Stuff That I Didn’t: The Condemned, 28 Weeks Later, Transformers, Aliens Versus Predator: Requiem

The Embarrassingly Long List of Stuff That I Really Wanted to See But Didn’t Get To: Sunshine, Stardust, Shoot ‘Em Up, Across The Universe, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, Lust/Caution, The Darjeeling Limited, American Gangster, Beowulf, The Mist, Enchanted, Atonement, I Am Legend, There Will Be Blood