Hot Fuzz

There is all this chatter about Knocked Up and how funny it is, but personally I was miserable during that film. Kids scare me to death and if I was in that situation you would probably read a story about me playing out on the freeway. The truly funny film of 2007 so far is certainly Hot Fuzz from director Edgar Wright as he brings his Shaun of the Dead boys, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, back in action.

Aside from how funny the dialogue is in this film one of the true genius parts of it is how they can mix in such horrific and violent moments into a comedy and they too just add to the hilarity. There is a moment when one of the characters is actually pummeled with a falling stone, which ends up squashing his head and lodging in his neck. The character dances around the screen as you watch in horror, only to soon find yourself laughing your ass off. Now that is true comic genius.

Live Free or Die Hard

Matt Farrell: "You just killed a helicopter with a car!"

John McClane: "I ran out of bullets."

One of the cheesiest moments of Summer 2007, but it worked!

Live Free or Die Hard worked on so many levels even though you could obviously tell it was shot to be made into an R-rated film and then edited down for a PG-13. While we are going to have to wait for that unrated DVD it is surprising to me how well this fourth installment in the Die Hard series truly paid off.

Bruce Willis doesn't even need to try and be John McClane anymore, he just is McClane and his new sidekick for this outing is Justin Long, that annoying kid from the Apple commercials. I expected Long to drag this movie down into the gutter, but all of the one-liners in this film work and if it hadn't been for a few logic problems and Timothy Olyphant's highly unconvincing turn as the bad guy this might have found its way to the top spot.

Grindhouse (Death Proof)

Okay, so when it comes to box-office performance Grindhouse truly shit the bed. I mean the bed that Grindhouse lay in is covered with shit. This was supposed to be the Weinstein Company's big film of 2007 and it scored a meager $25 million at the box-office with a reported $67 million budget. Now those are a couple of numbers no studio accountant wants to crunch.

However, there is a silver lining for us all… Grindhouse has got to make its money back, or at least try. This means I am praying they treat this DVD with golden gloves and give us what we need, beginning with separate releases of the two films.

Yeah, Planet Terror was okay, but Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof was fantastic, and it is the reason this film sits at number three. Trust me, Planet Terror is being ignored here.

Death Proof is some of Tarantino's best writing and best action to date. On top of that he once again puts together a stellar cast including Uma Thurman's Kill Bill stunt-double Zoe Bell. Now that is a call only Quentin can make.

Once

The reason we get so few films as good and as unique as Once is that they are so hard to write and they have to be damned near perfect to truly work. Telling the story of an Irish busker and the young woman he meets while singing one night on the street this is a wonderful human drama that never stops engaging the audience all the way up until the final frame.

Fantastic dialogue, music, directing and acting from the unknown cast gives this film a sense of realism so rare in movies that you can't help but sit back and absorb it.

Once is going to be one of those films I can put in the DVD player at any time and just let it play whether I am watching it or not. It becomes part of your world and is a true gem.

Related post categories: Features, Top Tens :

Permalink   |   RSS Feed | No comments yet