Movies of 2007

2007 has been an interesting year for movies. The formula seemed to go that movies no-one really looked forward were awesome and movies that people were looking forward to turned out to be shit (or at least mediocre). So let’s have a look at the movies that either surprised or disappointed the hell out of us.

Sunshine: Director Danny Boyle is not the most well-known director, with only a few movies under his belt, all of which have been received adequately. Boyles previous films are of different variety (drama, comedy, horror), but he had never ventured into science fiction, possibly the most difficult genre of film to make.
Excitement level- 5/10.
In short, Sunshine is the greatest film ever made. Better than anything you’ve ever seen. If you have children, the day your children were born is going to be the second best day of your life if you watch this movie. This movie is better than having sex with an ice-cream sandwich. This movie is better than BASEketball. I suppose I could just point out one thing that is bad about the film and make you assume the rest is good, but I can’t. Nothing bad sticks out of this film, it’s flawless. The script is brilliant, the directing is adventurous, the acting is tops, and is possible the best sci-fi disaster flick ever, though I suppose that’s no real hard feat. Though it also happens to be the greatest movie ever.
Rating: 10/10

300: Following on the success of Sin City, 300 followed suit in a similar fashion. It was based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel (actually taken panel by panel, al a Sin City), was filmed entirely in front of a blue screen and featured comic book styles (note stylised blood and high doses of orange colours that made GTA: San Andreas look like an apple). Unlike Sin City however, 300 was not co-directed by Frank Miller and was directed by Zack Snyder, who had only made one commercial film, the Dawn of the Dead remake (one of the better remakes). There was excitement, but it was mainly coming from a small, cult-like crowd who were fans of the graphic novel, fans of Frank Miller or just liked the trailer.
Excitement level- 6/10.
When 300 came, it kicked ass. It kicked the ass so hard, we were wearing it on our heads and we were loving it. 300 was one of manliest films to be released in ages and one of the only decent fantasy films since Return of the King. The only bad thing about this film is that a spawned a movie quote that has squeezed it’s way into pop culture and ruined itself, but that’s not really the movie’s fault (just the fault of the dick-hole fanboys). If you haven’t seen 300 (and you most definitely have), watch it. You will grow twin Chinese maces between your legs.
Rating: 10/10

Transformers: After all these years and there was finally going to be a live-action transformers movie. We finally had the CGI abilities to make the transformers look un-fucking-believable. In the hands of executive producer Steven Spielberg, this was bound to be the greatest action movie ever, possibly the greatest movie ever.
Excitement level- 10/10.
In the hands of director Michael Bay, this turned out to be the worst movie ever. What confuses the hell out of me is that it was exactly what everyone hated, yet everyone loved it. To elaborate, the film is a dumb-dumb, fast action movie with shit blowing up and laden with CGI and cocky teen characters who eat up the first forty minutes of the film with character development ripped off from Spider-man. This is the sure ingredient to make a shit dinner film with diarrhoea dressing. Yet audiences ate up the shit like melted triple-chocolate ice-cream (okay, now I’m just making myself hungry). 10 minutes in, we know we were watching a Transformers movie. A further thirty minutes and we were watching a bad Disney Channel movies, written by the guy that directs all the sequels. So once I established the fact that this movie’s dialogue and storyline was a piece of shit, I decided that the action (which was still thirty minutes away) would be good. I was devastatingly wrong. Every shot in the movie last barely half a second, rendering the action useless. Hasn’t anyone told Michael Bay to slow the fuck down just a little? Don’t get me wrong, I love a good quick-cut, shaky-cam (if I didn’t, The Bourne Ultimatum would be on this list), but when you’re seeing two giant robots bash the shit out of each other, you want to see it. Yet when the camera is ogling Megan Fox’s asshole, the shot lasts for minutes. What a bunch of transformer-shit (oh by the way, a jive talking transformer pisses on a government person. While we’re at it, let’s make Goku an emo with his own Facebook in the up-coming Dragonball movie). You know a director cares about a movie when he refuses to do a sequel because the first film didn’t make it to Blu-Ray, but then changes his mind when he sees 300 on HD-DVD.
Rating: 3/10

Spider-man 3: Many were hoping that Spider-man 3 would follow on the success of the brilliant Spider-man and the even better Spider-man 2. And why wouldn’t it be? There were going to be three villains this time; the Green Goblin 2, the fan-favourite Sandman and even bigger fan-favourite Venom. On top of all them, Spider-man himself would also be a villain, under the control of the mysterious intergalactic dark gloop. Two trailers were released that made not only fans wet themselves with excitement and it was looking to be the greatest film ever, combining exciting action scenes with heart-warming conflicts.
Excitement level 10/10.
Spider-man 3 turned out to be good. In fact, a little too good for it’s own good. But the biggest problem with this movie was what the fuck was with the middle of it? I assumed Peter Parker getting taken over by the intergalactic shit would be the plot-line to the whole movie. Instead, it gets attached to him, he fights and then he takes it off. What? All in the space of half and hour? And the movie still has forty minutes to go? Oh man. They shouldn’t have even had the middle part in the first place, the gloop should’ve gone straight to and he becomes Venom, so the movie would finish 10 or 20 minutes earlier. Instead we get Peter Parker (literally) dancing around, which symbolises his evil-ness. I wish I was kidding. Parker convinces the audience he’s evil by donning an emo-Hitler haircut and eating cookies. Once we’ve gotten past that, there’s only twenty minutes of the film left and we’ve still got two enemies to kill, one friend turned enemy turned friend, and two dames in distress to fuck around with. Holy crap, perhaps a little too much of a good thing. It might’ve not been as good as what we’re expecting, but it was close to close.
Rating: 8/10

Beowulf: 3-D cinema is really something not that recent. It’s been around back when movies used to be fun. When they’d put on gimmicks and shit to make movie-going an unforgettable, thoroughly entertaining experience. A few film-makers tried to bring this excitement back to the cinemas with Grindhouse, but it commercially failed because audiences no longer go to see films to be entertained anymore. Anywho, another film tried a similar stunt at this. You may have guessed what movie it is. Yes, it was Beowulf and, yes, it did use 3-D. Why how clever of you. Go back to trading your Digimon cards online. No, come back, I’m so lonely.
Excitement level 9/10.
Anywho, many were suckered into seeing Beowulf for it’s 3-D gimmick which didn’t make everything come right the fuck out at you and totally make you shit from your dick, but stuck out of the screen a little as if “huh”. There were a few times when shit flew right out at you, but that was reserved for stuff like snow and daggers and NOT a fucking flying dragon fight. It makes sense that they didn’t overuse the 3-D (proper 3-D, that is), but it’s even worse when they underuse it. There may’ve been people out there (I’m really not sure, it doesn’t seem likely) that didn’t care about the 3-D and just wanted a good movie. But Beowulf failed at that as well.
Rating: 6/10

Well, that’s my recap on the weird and wonderful of movies for 2007. 2008 looks like a pretty good year as well, such as a live-adaptation of the children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are”, directed by Spike Jonze. That’s pretty much the only good-looking film of 2008. Oh well.