J. Hoberman, discussing the results of a "best of the year" poll of 56 American critics, in the Village Voice:
"Why shouldn't we be preoccupied with homicidal sociopaths? America's been at war for the past four and a half years — with, to cite the top-polling documentary, No End in Sight (#29). War makes you wonder what exactly defines murder and who is enabled to commit it. The morally ambiguous mode known as film noir was born during World War II and, as Jonathan Rosenbaum observed at the time, the national obsession with the cannibal genius Hannibal Lecter coincided with our first Iraq adventure, Operation Desert Storm. Where do these current killers come from? It's suggestive that both There Will Be Blood [right] and No Country for Old Men were shot in mid-Texas Bush country (although the former is set in California). It's even more provocative that none of these killers show the slightest remorse — just plumb evil, I guess."
***
Interesting analogy, though Hannibal Lecter and The Silence of the Lambs were worldwide hits. It didn't really matter if countries were at war or not. Also, though it's true that American film noir appeared during World War II, film noir itself was a product of late 1930s France. World War II was in the air, but it hadn't exploded on the ground, yet.
And was the U.S. involved in any war in 1960? That's when Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho became an unexpected blockbuster.
Anyhow, here are the top ten films of 2007, as per the Village Voice/LA Weekly poll:
1 There Will Be Blood by Paul Thomas Anderson
2 No Country for Old Men by Joel and Ethan Coen
3 Zodiac by David Fincher
4 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days by Cristian Mungiu
5 I'm Not There by Todd Haynes
6 Syndromes and a Century by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
7 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Julian Schnabel
8 Killer of Sheep by Charles Burnett
9 Ratatouille by Brad Bird
10 Colossal Youth by Pedro Costa
The complete list can be found here. As to be expected, it's quite eclectic, ranging from Alain Resnais' Private Fears in Public Places and David Lynch's Inland Empire to John Sayles' Honeydripper and Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone.
And someone, somewhere gave one vote to I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.
1 Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood (above)
2 Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises
3 Frank Langella, Starting Out in the Evening
4 Mathieu Amalric, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
5 George Clooney, Michael Clayton
6 Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah
7 Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
8 Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Savages
9 Christian Bale, Rescue Dawn
10 Gordon Pinsent, Away from Her and Chris Cooper, Breach
Daniel Day-Lewis was the favorite by a wide margin. After the top five, actors received only scattered votes — including one for Michael Moore in Sicko. Some of the others mentioned are Sam Riley for Control, Joseph Gordon-Levitt for The Lookout, and Song Kang-ho for the environmentally conscious Korean horror-comedy-drama The Host.
1 Anamaria Marinca, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (above)
2 Julie Christie, Away from Her
3 Carice van Houten, Black Book
4 Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
5 Ellen Page, Juno
6 Nicole Kidman, Margot at the Wedding
7 Laura Linney, The Savages
8 Kate Dickie, Red Road
9 Marina Hands, Lady Chatterley
10 Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
The actresses' list was more evenly divided, with ten or more votes going to the top fifteen performers. (Note that Cate Blanchett is listed in the Lead Actress category for I'm Not There.) Among the other 45 or so names in the list are Naomi Watts for Eastern Promises, Belén Rueda for The Orphanage, Isabelle Huppert for Comedy of Power, and Mirjana Karanovic for Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams.