Movie yearbook 2007 edition

My annual Herald Movie Yearbook, in which I take one last look back at the year in movies, is running this Friday. The complete list will appear in the Weekend section, but here's a little preview:

Best comic-book movie: Spider-Man 3. Yeah, I know, I know. You're wrong.

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Worst comic-book movie: Ghost Rider.

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Best fight sequence: In Eastern Promises, Viggo Mortensen, wearing nothing but his tattoos, takes on two knife-wielding assailants in a bathhouse.

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Worst timing: Dreamgirls' Eddie Murphy, once favored to win the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award, went home empty-handed in part for starring in the lowbrow Norbit, released mere weeks before Oscar night.

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Best movie practically everyone ignored: The late-summer fantasy Stardust - a Princess Bride for a new generation.

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Best stage-to-screen adaptation: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, in which Tim Burton went for the jugular and came up with a demonic work of art.

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Scariest movie: 28 Weeks Later.

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Most rallying battle cry: "Spartans! Prepare for glory!" - King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) to his vastly outnumbered, surely doomed troops in 300.

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Most touching line of dialogue: "It's for me." - the German secret service police agent in The Lives of Others played by the late Ulrich Muhe, who passed away this summer at age 54 from stomach cancer.

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Best portrayal of adolescent angst: Jonah Hill, a curly-haired, bug-eyed, hilariously profane ball of short-tempered, hormonal rage in Superbad.

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Best Bob Dylan impersonation: In a movie filled with them, I'm Not There's Cate Blanchett trumped her male co-stars (including Heath Ledger, Richard Gere and Christian Bale).

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Best example of a previously goofy actor revealing serious dramatic chops: Casey Affleck in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Gone Baby Gone.

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Most unnerving moment: "Before I kill you, I'm going to throw your baby out the window." - the Zodiac killer to a stranded motorist (Ione Skye) riding in his car with her child on her lap in David Fincher's Zodiac.

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Funniest - yet still perceptive - depiction of marital discord: The increasingly vicious spats between a supposedly happily married couple (Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann) in Knocked Up.

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Performance of the year: Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood: "An ocean of oil under our feet."

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Most inexplicably successful crowdpleaser: Wild Hogs, which grossed $252 million worldwide. Meanwhile, the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem lumbered ever closer.

Comments

[erwin]

Rene, did you get a chance to watch Youth Without Youth this year? I'm really curious to know how that film was and if it's heading for Miami soon.

[ReneRodriguez]

Youth Without Youth opens in S. Fla. on Jan. 11. I've seen it: It's an extremely experimental piece by Coppola, probably the "smallest" film he's ever made in terms of how personal it is. It is also inscrutable and dull, unfortunately.

[erwin]

That is definately a shame to hear. I'll still watch it to make up my own mind but my expectations are now more humbler.

[Juan]

28 Days Later was an AWEFUL movie. Scary? The only thing scary in that movie was how utterly idiotic everything all the characers in the movie did. I'm sorry, i can only take so much stupidity and lack of logic tossed at me before i start calling "bullshit"

[Juan B.]

In the Eastern Promises fight, which of the three guys had the biggest weapon?